Opens with Shia LaBeouf, a fellow Scot and a clear, honest review. Fantastic content, thank you for producing it. I’m planning on running Call of Cthulhu in the new year and these reviews will help me narrow down some one shots to start them off with.
I decided to only provide the letter and journal upfront along with a safe deposit box key (with a logo of the Bank of Arkham on the fob.) If they go to the bank and gain access, inside the safety deposit box is the sarcophagus, farmhouse deed and farmhouse key. The players can only be given the box by the bank's staff if they deliver the security passphrase ("Dark Brotherhood" - which I have be Rupert's last exclaimed words and mention a few times when describing the journal) OR if Agnes or Bertrand are present. This means that even if the group fail at realising what the passphrase is, they can get the family involved if they really want in the box. The thing is, they don't HAVE to see the box's contents at all to proceed but it means they have an avenue of investigation that actually pays off.
I ran EoD last night and agree with lots of your points here. The sarcophagus and Marion's fate are meant to be potential story hooks for future scenarios, but as a new keeper I was really just relieved when my players correctly ignored these red herrings and headed straight to the village. Perhaps the idea is to teach new keepers to amend boring content, not sure. I just didn't want it to drag over into a second sitting. Also some more guidance on how to make the ritual fun wouldn't go amiss. We all had a good time but in the end I think I made the ritual too easy and probably butchered the sanity rules. Looking forward to Dead Man Stomp!
So, it needs to be said that your materials are amazing. Well done. I would add, however, that since this is a beginner's scenario, I appreciate the redundancies (especially with new players).
Hey there, thanks. That is pretty valid yep. If it was spaced into the meat of the scenario and became a reminder, I'd be more forgiving, but it is all front load, which will usually makes players switch off, as it is just too much to take in. And they get to keep the handout to look at to refresh themselves, so that information is always on hand, throughout the scenario.
This really should have had the info spread out amongst a few departments. Not a massive info dump right at the start for players and DM to wade through, esp if they are new to RPG's or Roll20. You'd most likely need to edit the handouts, so they aren't just the same thing repeated. Add in a few personal exchanges between the NPC's in sidenotes. That gives them a reason to visit X professor mentioned on a handout. It also lets you RP some info to your players, and they get to do something other than read off a screen. As for a restricted area. I'd have them get stopped before they get too near it. If they try to bribe or sweet talk the guard. Just have him agree to let the players in, but not right now because the archaeology faculty will have his/her guts for garters. Then tempt the players away with other people to talk to and things to do. With any luck, you haven't told them too much. So they still have other leads to explore around campus. Players should naturally head to the shack at some point before trying to enter the restricted area again anyway. Provided you bread crumb out the info decently. It will seem like the next logical thing to check out. I would go with the wards preventing the vast majority of zombies from entering. With maybe the odd one managing to find a way in. Then have the ritual also affect the ward's power to protect the players. So the ritual is dispelling all magic within a given area or the like. That way you can ramp up the final battle. To be fair, this sort of sounds like it was written as a con one shot kinda deal. I think if you put in the work, this could fun as a one/two shot for new players. But only if you put some real work into how you give the players the info, and something else to do at the start.
Thank you! I just ran this and hadn't heard these criticisms like Rupert Merriweather repeats himself in his letters & this was my first adventure I had ever run and have never played Call of Cthulhu, except the Soloquest, "Alone Against the Flames." I tried to run this scenario and I kept rolling fails on my sanity rolls and so I didn't have insanity driving the story forward. Then I didn't know from reading, was I literally supposed to make this all take two hours of my players reciting the Latin, because it kind of makes it sound like that's what you are supposed to do, but my players really didn't want to do that. I didn't know if I was supposed to just be randomly bringing the things up or who is supposed to go. I was really quite at a loss. I'm going to try again but running, "Dead Mans Stomp" or possibly a different scenario. I need to organize things better and plan on buying the Keepers Tips Book and some other some other Call of Cthulhu material. I really want to play and have it go well, it's especially difficult though as I have never really played and I'm trying to run the game with a bunch of players who have never played either.
Also, they found Maggie McPherter's body before ever going into the farmhouse and called the authorities who took away the body. The officers went in the house and took away Red Jake thinking he killed Maggie so neither of them were there for my players to fight. I probably should have had the Lurker kill the officers but I just went with the first thing that occurred to me at the time.
It all takes time. Don't sweat the small stuff and have fun with it. Yeah running the same adventure a few times has its benefits for sure. Dead man's stomp is a little harder to run. But best of luck with it!
They really messed up with the 7th version of this scenario, by adding tons of bloat at the beginning. In the 6th edition version of the scenario (available in the 6th rulebook), there was only a brief speech by Rupert Merriweather, no cover letter, and the journal only had 1 entry. For 7th edition, they for some reason tripled the length of Rupert's speech, added a bunch of additional journal entries, and added a pointless letter.
Oh is that true!? It definitely reads like someone had a minimum word count to adhere to - either the same info repeated over and over, or interesting nuggets of information that lead nowhere.
Thanks, we are getting more hits each week! hopefully we'll get a stead growth over the next few years. I'll get on those cue cards, thanks for letting me know.
This is such a good series! I am a completely new keeper and I have been working through the starter kit. I loved the flames scenario and found it really engrossing, paper chase isn't great but was really good as someone who was completely new and edge of darkness helped me with the next step of understanding some aspects of combat. But there were lots of ways this scenario fell flat for me which made me worry Call of Cthullu wouldn't be for me generally which is it feels like every bit of creative thinking doesn't get you anywhere. It's super rail roady in that you just move forward. The only thing I did was try the thing of the lurker throwing the racoon through the windows and then animate it. The players attacked the zombie racoon and threw it through the windows where the racoon instantly went limp, then then worked out that if they pull the zombies into the house they can disable it. (although actually the lurker could animate it in the house). I made the hobo run away, but maybe I should have had him stay and fight. It's really nice seeing someone make the flaws with this scenario clear.
Glad you had fun with it anyhow. Yeah its a little rough around the edges, and there is better out there. If you want some more creative freedom, i'd definitely look at Crimson Letters/The Code/Amidst the Ancient Trees, Blackwater Creek, These are all great once you have a feel for the game and want to flex your creativity.
@@RPGNook In thinking of admist the ancient trees. I haven't found any reviews of that yet. I haven't looked at crimson letters yet but one person in my group really liked murder mysteries .is that good for that? I want a kind of supernatural murder mystery. I have a question I'll ask about you haunting review there
@@RPGNook awesome! I might do ancient trees then crimson just so I have a little more experience as a keeper. I've done edge of darkness and the haunting now and I like how much of a different vibe ancient trees has.
Btw, it is crazy how much difference these packs make because we're doing everything on roll 20 now instead of in person. I thibk given that I'm a geek and playing with geeks we almost all have some form of adhd. Having a map or something to focus on visually instead of everything being described by voice makes a huge difference to immersion and concentration. The other small bit of feedback from your the haunting handout. Is the players kept asking where the second hand book store was. They liked the idea of being able to travel to destination based on efficient travel and then liked meeting back at the book store. I dunno if you wanna make that change though because maybe it would confuse games where the book store isn't used.
Hi, we are working us through the starter kit right now and had the paper chase story tonight. As a keeper I prepare now this one for our next session :P Thank you for the material! Especially the sound files seem like a great idea!
I'm actually now in the same position. I'll run paper chase for one player (he is new to ttrpgs) and then I'd like to run Edge~ for 3 players. It does look like I'll have to do some work to improve the first half of the story though. Did your sessions work out well?
@@johncaldwell3117 they tried too many things in the first half, that I did not account for. Like investigating the nurses and doctors of the hospital, and it took a long time to bring them to the old house in the woods. Next time I would make a little map of the city with POints of interest they can visit as well as help very new players a little more to get out of the city. The second half was a great success though :) have fun!
@@varnster9438 This is an open ended question that is suppose to be a hook into your own story and allow you to create a narrative. The implications are those that want the box, either a cult or hertiage/family that is discovered in the libarary. Ultimately its never really explained properly outside some passing text that there is these leads that go nowhere and it is a little confusing. The story its lies elsewhere, and it can cause a headache to new Keepers, who are the target audience of the boxset. So there is a disconnect in the agenda and information from the author to the Keepers in imo.
This is awesome - really. We are changing to CoC on Thursday, and I will run the scenario as the first one. Thanks a million. One question: The sound files has some background noices. Is that to simulate the 1920s?, because it does provide some flavor. But it might be an annoying element when listening to the 5 min recording.
yes unfortunately the player produced it by himself, i had similar thoughts, but they were already done and couldn't be removed. In the future i'll make sure the audio has no or minimum backtrack noise.
Hello! Thanks for the amazing material. I want to translate it to Portuguese, is it possible to get the source material to make the edits? I totally understand if it's not as they're your intellectual property. Thanks!
When I ran this I added a chase scene on the way to the house involving zombie deer.
Opens with Shia LaBeouf, a fellow Scot and a clear, honest review. Fantastic content, thank you for producing it. I’m planning on running Call of Cthulhu in the new year and these reviews will help me narrow down some one shots to start them off with.
Cheers, thats great to hear. All the best with your games!
I decided to only provide the letter and journal upfront along with a safe deposit box key (with a logo of the Bank of Arkham on the fob.) If they go to the bank and gain access, inside the safety deposit box is the sarcophagus, farmhouse deed and farmhouse key. The players can only be given the box by the bank's staff if they deliver the security passphrase ("Dark Brotherhood" - which I have be Rupert's last exclaimed words and mention a few times when describing the journal) OR if Agnes or Bertrand are present. This means that even if the group fail at realising what the passphrase is, they can get the family involved if they really want in the box. The thing is, they don't HAVE to see the box's contents at all to proceed but it means they have an avenue of investigation that actually pays off.
Thats a pretty neat idea to give it some teeth.
We will be running this in the next few months and your pack is a blessing! We will be giving you all a huge shout out in our game!
Wow, thanks! Make sure to post a link to your stream, when its up!
I ran EoD last night and agree with lots of your points here. The sarcophagus and Marion's fate are meant to be potential story hooks for future scenarios, but as a new keeper I was really just relieved when my players correctly ignored these red herrings and headed straight to the village. Perhaps the idea is to teach new keepers to amend boring content, not sure. I just didn't want it to drag over into a second sitting. Also some more guidance on how to make the ritual fun wouldn't go amiss. We all had a good time but in the end I think I made the ritual too easy and probably butchered the sanity rules. Looking forward to Dead Man Stomp!
Thanks for the resources in the dropbox link! Life saver when you have 1 hour to prep!
Happy to help!
So, it needs to be said that your materials are amazing. Well done. I would add, however, that since this is a beginner's scenario, I appreciate the redundancies (especially with new players).
Hey there, thanks.
That is pretty valid yep. If it was spaced into the meat of the scenario and became a reminder, I'd be more forgiving, but it is all front load, which will usually makes players switch off, as it is just too much to take in. And they get to keep the handout to look at to refresh themselves, so that information is always on hand, throughout the scenario.
This really should have had the info spread out amongst a few departments. Not a massive info dump right at the start for players and DM to wade through, esp if they are new to RPG's or Roll20.
You'd most likely need to edit the handouts, so they aren't just the same thing repeated. Add in a few personal exchanges between the NPC's in sidenotes. That gives them a reason to visit X professor mentioned on a handout. It also lets you RP some info to your players, and they get to do something other than read off a screen.
As for a restricted area. I'd have them get stopped before they get too near it. If they try to bribe or sweet talk the guard. Just have him agree to let the players in, but not right now because the archaeology faculty will have his/her guts for garters. Then tempt the players away with other people to talk to and things to do. With any luck, you haven't told them too much. So they still have other leads to explore around campus.
Players should naturally head to the shack at some point before trying to enter the restricted area again anyway. Provided you bread crumb out the info decently. It will seem like the next logical thing to check out.
I would go with the wards preventing the vast majority of zombies from entering. With maybe the odd one managing to find a way in. Then have the ritual also affect the ward's power to protect the players. So the ritual is dispelling all magic within a given area or the like. That way you can ramp up the final battle.
To be fair, this sort of sounds like it was written as a con one shot kinda deal. I think if you put in the work, this could fun as a one/two shot for new players. But only if you put some real work into how you give the players the info, and something else to do at the start.
Thank you! I just ran this and hadn't heard these criticisms like Rupert Merriweather repeats himself in his letters & this was my first adventure I had ever run and have never played Call of Cthulhu, except the Soloquest, "Alone Against the Flames." I tried to run this scenario and I kept rolling fails on my sanity rolls and so I didn't have insanity driving the story forward. Then I didn't know from reading, was I literally supposed to make this all take two hours of my players reciting the Latin, because it kind of makes it sound like that's what you are supposed to do, but my players really didn't want to do that. I didn't know if I was supposed to just be randomly bringing the things up or who is supposed to go. I was really quite at a loss. I'm going to try again but running, "Dead Mans Stomp" or possibly a different scenario. I need to organize things better and plan on buying the Keepers Tips Book and some other some other Call of Cthulhu material. I really want to play and have it go well, it's especially difficult though as I have never really played and I'm trying to run the game with a bunch of players who have never played either.
Also, they found Maggie McPherter's body before ever going into the farmhouse and called the authorities who took away the body. The officers went in the house and took away Red Jake thinking he killed Maggie so neither of them were there for my players to fight. I probably should have had the Lurker kill the officers but I just went with the first thing that occurred to me at the time.
It all takes time. Don't sweat the small stuff and have fun with it. Yeah running the same adventure a few times has its benefits for sure. Dead man's stomp is a little harder to run. But best of luck with it!
They really messed up with the 7th version of this scenario, by adding tons of bloat at the beginning.
In the 6th edition version of the scenario (available in the 6th rulebook), there was only a brief speech by Rupert Merriweather, no cover letter, and the journal only had 1 entry.
For 7th edition, they for some reason tripled the length of Rupert's speech, added a bunch of additional journal entries, and added a pointless letter.
Oh is that true!? It definitely reads like someone had a minimum word count to adhere to - either the same info repeated over and over, or interesting nuggets of information that lead nowhere.
Thanks for the prop pack!
Running this again this weekend
I might borrow the cabin and ritual as the destination for a better investigation
This is great stuff - you deserve more hits! Only issue is the missing cue cards. Thanks very much - this all helps an ill-prepared Keeper!
Thanks, we are getting more hits each week! hopefully we'll get a stead growth over the next few years. I'll get on those cue cards, thanks for letting me know.
@@RPGNook Thanks for the great work! Any news on the cue cards?
@@gutodemolay i should have time to get to them on wednesday.
@@RPGNook Great stuff. Awaiting the cue cards aswell. Will be using this stuff for a Halloween game.
This is up to date now. Cue Cards are added.
Super break down and hand outs. Cheers
This is such a good series! I am a completely new keeper and I have been working through the starter kit. I loved the flames scenario and found it really engrossing, paper chase isn't great but was really good as someone who was completely new and edge of darkness helped me with the next step of understanding some aspects of combat. But there were lots of ways this scenario fell flat for me which made me worry Call of Cthullu wouldn't be for me generally which is it feels like every bit of creative thinking doesn't get you anywhere. It's super rail roady in that you just move forward.
The only thing I did was try the thing of the lurker throwing the racoon through the windows and then animate it. The players attacked the zombie racoon and threw it through the windows where the racoon instantly went limp, then then worked out that if they pull the zombies into the house they can disable it. (although actually the lurker could animate it in the house).
I made the hobo run away, but maybe I should have had him stay and fight.
It's really nice seeing someone make the flaws with this scenario clear.
Glad you had fun with it anyhow. Yeah its a little rough around the edges, and there is better out there. If you want some more creative freedom, i'd definitely look at Crimson Letters/The Code/Amidst the Ancient Trees, Blackwater Creek, These are all great once you have a feel for the game and want to flex your creativity.
@@RPGNook In thinking of admist the ancient trees. I haven't found any reviews of that yet. I haven't looked at crimson letters yet but one person in my group really liked murder mysteries .is that good for that? I want a kind of supernatural murder mystery. I have a question I'll ask about you haunting review there
@@yautjacetanu I'll have a review up for Amidst the Ancient Trees, on Tuesday. Crimson Letters is the best investigation i've played so far.
@@RPGNook awesome! I might do ancient trees then crimson just so I have a little more experience as a keeper. I've done edge of darkness and the haunting now and I like how much of a different vibe ancient trees has.
Btw, it is crazy how much difference these packs make because we're doing everything on roll 20 now instead of in person. I thibk given that I'm a geek and playing with geeks we almost all have some form of adhd. Having a map or something to focus on visually instead of everything being described by voice makes a huge difference to immersion and concentration.
The other small bit of feedback from your the haunting handout. Is the players kept asking where the second hand book store was. They liked the idea of being able to travel to destination based on efficient travel and then liked meeting back at the book store. I dunno if you wanna make that change though because maybe it would confuse games where the book store isn't used.
Hi, we are working us through the starter kit right now and had the paper chase story tonight. As a keeper I prepare now this one for our next session :P Thank you for the material! Especially the sound files seem like a great idea!
I'm actually now in the same position. I'll run paper chase for one player (he is new to ttrpgs) and then I'd like to run Edge~ for 3 players. It does look like I'll have to do some work to improve the first half of the story though.
Did your sessions work out well?
@@johncaldwell3117 they tried too many things in the first half, that I did not account for. Like investigating the nurses and doctors of the hospital, and it took a long time to bring them to the old house in the woods. Next time I would make a little map of the city with POints of interest they can visit as well as help very new players a little more to get out of the city. The second half was a great success though :) have fun!
Excellent a fellow scot, greetings from inverness!
Hello there! :D
Great quality vid and resource kit!
Glad it was helpful!
@@RPGNook yeah very… one question I can’t get to the bottom of. Who kills Marion? Am I missing something?
@@varnster9438 This is an open ended question that is suppose to be a hook into your own story and allow you to create a narrative. The implications are those that want the box, either a cult or hertiage/family that is discovered in the libarary. Ultimately its never really explained properly outside some passing text that there is these leads that go nowhere and it is a little confusing. The story its lies elsewhere, and it can cause a headache to new Keepers, who are the target audience of the boxset. So there is a disconnect in the agenda and information from the author to the Keepers in imo.
love it
f*kin nightmare ;-)) - dont hold back!
used your stuff for the haunting, worked really well
Hey, RPG Nook. it is particularly amazing video. thank. :)
Thanks.
I started my group on this scenario probably 10 years ago. No issues with my PCs but yours might stray if you're not careful.
This is awesome - really. We are changing to CoC on Thursday, and I will run the scenario as the first one. Thanks a million. One question: The sound files has some background noices. Is that to simulate the 1920s?, because it does provide some flavor. But it might be an annoying element when listening to the 5 min recording.
yes unfortunately the player produced it by himself, i had similar thoughts, but they were already done and couldn't be removed. In the future i'll make sure the audio has no or minimum backtrack noise.
Thanks a lot! What software do you use in video?
I use Davinci Resolve, its free and industry standard.
Some good info here, though I'm pretty sure the Dark Brotherhood didn't purchase the house 100 years later than when they were founded ;)
i just noticed, ah well.
Hello! Thanks for the amazing material. I want to translate it to Portuguese, is it possible to get the source material to make the edits? I totally understand if it's not as they're your intellectual property. Thanks!
Hey there, i don't have the files any more after getting a new pc. Sorry. But thats a great idea, maybe for the next one.
none of your audio or animated lets me run it. no option to start any audio etc
Seem to work fine for me, you might need the correct progarms/codecs.