Call of Cthulhu RPG: Genius Loci Scenario Breakdown.
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- Genius Loci
Scenario Breakdown: i.imgur.com/KP...
Affiliate Link: www.drivethrur...
System & Scenario - 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu
Published by - Chaosium, in the Doors to Darkness.
Written by - Brain Courtmanche
Art by - Pat Loboyko, Dean Engelhardt
Price - £27.29
Era - Classic 1920s
Location - Danvers, Near Salem
Given Length - 1 shot
Type of Scenario - Framework,
Flow - Sandbox,
Blueprint of Danvers: www.danverslib...
Danvers Asylum Area Map: www.digitalcom...
Call of Cthulhu Scenarios: tinyurl.com/Gra...
Dead of Night Scenarios: tinyurl.com/De...
Hey, just found the channel and subbed. Thanks for the video, this is super helpful. I ran The Haunting last night for my pretty seasoned group of players (coming from lancer, dnd, path/starfinder etc) and they absolutely loved it. I'm going to be running this scenario for them soon and I'm glad this resource is available, love the diagram.
I wanted to comment on your discussion of the chase sequences. Honestly I've been using a homebrew one that is effectively a stripped down version and I thought I would share in hopes others might find it helpful or know how I could improve it. I imported it from my older dnd games before chase sequences were a thing and then adapted it to this system, so if there's issues please let me know!
A chase starts when a creature or party member flees, and at least one other creature or party member decides to pursue it. Any further pursuers also partake in the contest, following DEX initiative order. When this happens the pursuer triggers a chase contest, and both the quarry and the pursuer roll, comparing their roll to the quarry’s original roll for each "scene" that the participants encounter. Depending on the scene the Keeper may call for different skills to navigate the situation (e.g. fumbling with keys to quickly unlock a door versus leaping over crates in a dimly lit alley might require dex and str checks respectively). If the quarry or pursuer is a group, average out the roll between all members.
The distance between pursuers and quarry is represented by "gaps", an abstract measurement of the distance. Each scene will begin with a predetermined amount between pursuer and quarry. For each scene that a pursuer wins the skill contest they close the gap by one; for each scene that a quarry wins the contest they widen it by one. The Keeper determines how many gaps the chase begins with and how many a quarry needs to get to before the pursuer loses them (e.g. A byakhee soars down from on high, aiming to snatch one of the investigators. Our investigators flee, initiating the chase. Because they saw the byakhee high in the air they get a head start, thus making our beginning gap count three. The keeper sets that the investigators need 5 gaps to lose the beast in the nearby woods that they make a dash for.) A chase may also end when a pursuer uses a maneuver to grab the quarry once they reach 0 gaps.
Very cool! Thanks for sharing, i'm sure others will find that useful.
I actually found your channel last week when I started running this scenario for my first CoC game ever (I have some previous GM experience but not much, this is maybe the fourth time I've run any game at all. Just recently I ran the quickstart adventure for Runequest, so both I and my players were acquainted with similar rules to CoC, at least). It's only after our first session ended with the players on the morning before the New Moon, getting ready to infiltrate the asylum and break out their friend long before the ritual, that I realized the scenario as written really doesn't give a beginning GM enough to go on when the players go for that perfectly logical course of action, and started looking for resources.
Thankfully it ended up going pretty well, thanks in part to your video I think! I hastily dug up the real-life map of the Asylum, and I had a general idea what their plan was (none of the three PCs are much good at brawling or shooting, but one of them has a pretty high disguise skill, and another is an actual doctor, so infiltration was more their speed than knocking down the door), so I made some general plans and prepared to improvise, and just that helped a lot.
I intended to give them a shot at breaking out Croswell if they had a decent plan and got lucky, but the warden was reasonably expecting them to try something at that point, so security around the sacrifice-to-be was pretty tight. Two PCs went in as a doctor and nurse through the front door, while the third went in as a janitor through a side door he had previously been lucky enough to notice didn't lock properly.
The doctor and nurse did get in, but were quietly flagged as suspicious by the receptionist, and word eventually got to the warden. Meanwhile, the janitor was luckier, fast-talked and charmed his way out of a few sticky situations, helped the two others get their hands on a variety of useful items, and hatched a plan to start some minor fires and trigger alarms to distract guards or get them to evacuate. He nearly got caught, but just barely avoided getting blamed for the fires. Ultimately the plan only made it slightly easier to reach Croswell's cell, which was still guarded by three orderlies. The doctor and nurse went for Croswell while the janitor was busy cleaning up after himself and avoiding blame for the fires.
Just as they were within sight of the cell and could tell that they weren't getting there without a fight they were unlikely to win, I gave them a listen check to overhear that they were going to take everyone outside tonight for the ritual, hopefully letting them know that might be a good opportunity, but that wasn't enough to get them to reconsider their plan (which was fair enough; they had done pretty well overall and were within sight of the prize). So they ended up assaulting the three orderlies, taking the first by surprise and putting him to sleep with a heavy dose of morphine. Guns spooked one of the two remaining ones, but their combat skills were simply too mediocre even with bonus dice for them to best the beefy orderly, plus at this point the warden had gotten wind of things and was rapidly arriving with reinforcements.
So two of the PCs got knocked out and captured, but the third consistently found good ways to use his skills and disguise, and ultimately got his hands on the other PCs' belongings, including stuff they had left in the car, and started infiltrating the ritual as a participant/viewer. He almost got stuck watching as his friends got ripped apart, but managed to slip away at the last minute, and ended up in a good position to jump the asylum and shoot him as soon as the carnage started. The other PCs were put in straitjackets and brought alongside the main sacrifice, leaving them unable to fight until freed but at least able to run and dodge once things got chaotic.
So the ritual ended up going off roughly as outlined in the book, except it was also a daring rescue of some of the PCs. And ultimately, I think it was kind of a happy accident I went with that scenario, because it forced me out of my comfort zone into some improvisation, that probably ended up being the best part of the scenario! One nice side effect of running this scenario first is that PCs stand out among members of a sort of circle of people interested in the occult, so Croswell or other people in the same circle are a great easy way to introduce further scenarios or even replacement investigators. Anyway, all that is probably too much info, but I just wanted to share my experience actually running this as my first CoC scenario.
Its great to hear that you had a good time with it, especially as a new keeper! Sounds like you handled it really well.
Amazing video, thank you. I was thinking about running this scenario and this video definitely helps a lot.
Let us know how it went if you run it :D
This was actually super helpful, and gave me some ideas for how to run this scenario in the future. Thank you so much, guys.
Fantastic video. Really really helpful discussion about the scenario, planning to run this next weekend and has helped me know about some of the things to watch out for
Glad it was of use, let us know how you get on!
@@RPGNook Will do, I've definitely taken the fact players might make it more of an early heist into account and just the sheer lack of a layout of the hospital. Just found an original floor layout plan in super high res and im totally going to use the university printing service for totally work related legitimate reasons and get a large map of the place printed :P www.danverslibrary.org/archive/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/DSH-210.jpg
Put a link to the map too if u dont have one :3 No idea why it's not a prop in the book. Was so easy to find...
@@dan2124 Copyright most likely, but its easy enough to create their own version. Again it might come down to page count too, but i'll put the link in the description.
www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:js956j91j So thought i might as well post this as well as totally nerding out at the find. Its a ultra high res scan of a map of the grounds in 1875. Its so high res you can zoom in and see the fading of the pencil marks on the page. This could easily be printed in A0 as an uber prop
@@dan2124 nice find!
Im running this as my first keeper scenario, thanks for the video!
No problem!
Hello ! Loved the video Thank you @RPGNook ! Please can you tell me what website / software you used as a chalkboard here ? I find that very slick. Thank you !
Glad you liked the video. I just make the boards with Adobe Illustrator.
This is going to be the next scenario that I run, but I'm going to try changing things up a little, and the advice you've given has been really helpful in thinking about things.
IMHO, the whole "asylum warden is the nasty man" is so overdone. I'm thinking to borrow some inspiration from Thief: Deadly Shadows and Solaris. I feel it's a little more interesting to have the asylum be a character in itself as pervasively influenced by the Lloigor. Given the presence and character of the real Danvers that seems more fitting. Also in my mind, perhaps the warden had a son who passed away but the Lloigor has brought back a twisted facsimile. It uses this facsimile (perhaps the child is part reptilian in appearance?) as a way to keep the warden under its influence, although the warden himself would not be as outwardly comically evil as he seems to be in the scenario as written.
I'm also not sure about using a lake as it really seems that there's too many "there's something in the water!" cliches in Cthulhu scenarios, to the point that my investigators might just assume it's Gla'aki again. Will have to come up with something else, perhaps more like Stonehenge, objects of power around the amphitheatre where the Lloigor could form, albeit bound there.
Yeah i agree with that, the under the lake is very overused, and obvious. But at the same time its not really focus on until the reveal, so i can be an off hand comment that it exists until the finale. But its easy enough to move the Iloigor to the tunnel complex below the facility, that is a nice creepy setting too.
I have to say, I actually got terrified while I was reading this scenario, I thought the mood was extremely good, the entire setup of the scenario is great. The problem that I ran into while running this scenario was that my players kept trying to run straight to the ending, thinking they could “reason” with the entity in some way, and one of them ended up killed by an orderly, another ended up captured, so I had him set to be sacrificed as well, adding extra tension. Only two members of the group survived and were set to spring their friends. They ended up getting a Tommy gun and dynamite, cutting through the crowd with the gun and throwing dynamite to stop the insane orderlies from following them. I still love the idea of this scenario but the players can easily go off script, one needs to really give clues to get them out of the asylum. The way I got around the Elder Sign situation was to use this scenario to bridge it to the Crimson Letters scenario, introducing the character of Abner (the antiquities book dealer who is turning into a ghoul), having him offer the investigators to create the Elder Sign needed in exchange for them looking into the missing Witch Trial papers, and introducing him as an obviously dangerous man, but their only hope.
Yeah Crimson Letters is one of my favourite scenarios to date. it is very flexible to add to.
Lot of odd things in that scenario. You mentioned the documents they discover in the hospital but also there was the patient that "escaped" to kill the investigators but who told them the truth instead... then he got back to the asylum to finally get killed... Why in the hell that guy returned to the hospital when he had the opportunity to run far away ? Something that puzzles me too is the ritual with the people beating each others before the Lloigor contempt. It makes all the sacrificial scene confusing as that violence seems first to not be directed to the sacrificed people first. Very weird stuff.
I think the answers are the Lloigor made everyone do it, But yeah there are some head scratching things in there.
MacBride may have been captured and forcefully returned to the asylum then killed, there are no details about how he got back to his cell. Regarding the violent orgy, the Lloigor is an alien being and should be very weird :D - obviously having the orderlies harm themselves has been an ongoing thing based on the scars and wounds they display
Really guys? You're looking for this module to hold your hand the whole way? There's a gap of roughly 3 days where players get to do their own thing. Any keeper/gm worth their salt can manage time skips if players aren't utilising their free time.
This module is designed for new keepers. So yes, we are looking for that extra direction. As by design its supposed to offer it. And while running it Orf was a beginner keeper, and this issue came up. I've seen plenty experienced keeper struggle with this as well. So it isn't a minor issue, but scoff if you want, that's cool.
@@RPGNook But the scenario as written gives excellent advice for new keepers. I respect that you must have many more under your belt but what more can you ask for as a beginner? The only thing I can think of would be that when searching for info on Berger etc that it doesn't supply npcs to go to.
Anyway, my comment wasn't so much to scoff as to say that I don't think the scenario deserves the flack you had been throwing its way. We found it really fun with bare minimum of effort to flesh out.
I'm not here to argue though I enjoy your videos and find them very insightful so thanks for the work! I just thought the scenario deserved some defence is all.
I'm curious though, in your opinion what scenario is the gold standard for beginners?
@@asheralocke Sorry, didn't get a noticfication for your reply, I think Lightless Beacon does a good job for it, however does lack social rolls. I'm absolutely fine with anyone voicing their opinion, the videos are just mine. That said, Genius Loci does have glaring plot and sturcture problems. Beginner scenarios need to be 100% solid on that front, in GL there is plenty of things which can trip up a new keeper, with no experince in other TTRPGs.
Bit late but class video helps explain the scenario as a starting point well