Call of Cthulhu: Black Devil Mountain - RPG Review
Вставка
- Опубліковано 24 тра 2017
- A look at and GM tips for the classic Call of Cthulhu adventure "Black Devil Mountain," a scenario with a great setup, wonderful NPCs, and lots of combat. It's not a great scenario, but with a little work you can have a great time.
As someone who's read the Lumley books, I came to a full stop when you said, "Adult Cthonian." Wow. That's... a bit much to throw at a party alone.
I know Seth's being nice, but as Reviews from Rlyeh puts it
"The third scenario, ‘Black Devil Mountain’, has a justifiably and uneviable record as one of the worst scenarios ever published for Call of Cthulhu. "
Hey, I had an idea to use this scenario as a pulp cthulhu campaign opening, where this module (modified of course) starts in the early 1920s, then the characters are so traumatized and damaged from everything that happens (zombies, ghouls, cthonians etc.) that they have a 10 year gap to where they now reunite in the early 1930s to join an organization that combats and investigates the threats of the mythos, especially those related to Hastur and his followers
Great, video and a great review of this scenario. But hot damn, Cthonians, zombies++, ghouls, bears and undead shamans? The writer really must have hated his own play groups for that all-star cast of hostiles...
Oh yeah. Mythos-hoedown to be sure. I have no clue how a regular party could have survived it. I didn't even get into the necromancer skeleton-thing. It's a campaign's worth of bad guys all packed into the area the size of an Applebee's
So a normal applebees?
@@SSkorkowsky The module's author, David Hardrave, was the creator of the Arduin Grimoire series of game books, which were kind of original edition D&D and, well, just about anything else you could cram into it. Crazy, deadly stuff. So it's no surprise that BDM would look more like an Old School D&D adventure than an appropriate CoC module.
About the only thing missing from this is Cthulhu or Hastur showing up to make it worse.
So more like a Wafflehouse?
I love your skits man, theyre just so short and packed full of jokes and don't overstay. Perfection.
Hastur gets an honorable mention I see! He's my favorite hehe.
Oop! You spoke his name... roll it!
I seriously want to fit this in early into Pulp Cthulhu The Mummy/Mask of Nyarlethotep to give my players a nice base of operations
This sounds like a great Wild West adventure. Would be cool with Down Darker Trails.
Damnit Cooter!
Cooter has been the death of many a good man
It's crazy the way some of these older scenarios have these insane, party wiping monsters just sort of thrown in there. One of the old 90s campaigns (I think it was At Your Door) had a basement room in an office building that just had a shoggoth in it. There's just a shoggoth there because I don't know why. I used to call these things basement shoggoths after that encounter. It was like they really didn't get that these things are as good as unstoppable and quite capable of wiping out the whole group in one round. It's a campaign ending encounter and it's just there in this room.
Excellent video! Not only for BDM but for all less than perfect scenarios. I recall playing this scenario years ago with a bunch of college friends and we pretty much laughed our way through it. But now I may try it again using your suggestion.
Awesome review, and one of my favorite videos of yours. I'd been eyeing this scenario for some time, and knowing more about the adventure helped me better adapt it for my game. In addition to many of the changes you made I made the following revisions. Black Devil Mountain was moved to southwest Colorado near 4 corners and the Navajo Nation, though I did have to redo the map. Bear who Laughs was changed from an undead shaman to a skinwalker from navajo folklore and WAS the bear near the burial ground (hense the nickname Bear who Laughs), in addition his patron was changed from Hastur to Nyarlathotep. The property was made into a ranch, with routine cattle mutilation preformed by the ghouls. The Chthonian and zombies were dropped in favor of a serious buff to Bear who Laughs to match the skinwalker legends and a bioluminescent Hunting Horror that caused a few fun chase scenes and animal abduction sightings. Since Black Tom was a descendant of Bear who Laughs, he knew his true name and, with the help of the PC's, was able to confront the skinwalker and kill him via addressing him with his true name. Between your suggestions and the tweaks I made, the adventure turned from a poor module with great ideas to one of our best sessions yet.
Excellent video. I remember this as being one of the "meat grinder" scenarios from the good old days. I'm going to have to check out the Pulp rules. I think my play group might dig this take on the rules.
Another great CoC video Seth! With all your modifications sounds like Black Devil Mountain was fun. looking forward to your next vid, fantastic job :)
Thanks.
Great ideas and overview, I might look at buying this adventure
Nicely done. I like the additions and changes you make to scenarios. I own this one (it's part of my collection of Maine scenarios) and hope to run it sometime soon. I agree on the mythos roundup that a lot of the older scenarios used. It doesn't make a lot of sense. I'll have to give this one a second look. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, there were a ton of monsters in an extremely small area. I kept passing up this scenario because it was too much mythos and not enough plot, but something just kept bringing me back to it. Finally I figured out how I could fix it.
I always had a soft spot for this one because it's literally set in the tiny rural part of Maine I grew up in.
A quick google search will find several floor plans of a certain cabin, or at least as close as you can get, from the Evil Dead films that would do very well for this adventure. A little work can even remove the bathroom (Which wasn’t actually in the cabin they used for filming that, anyway).
First time I played in this module I fell to Bear Who Laughs hallucinations and impaled my best friend with a baseball bat. Impaled. Baseball. Bat.. Ouch!!
You can probably cut someone's neck using a baseball bat. It's all in the wrists...
Running Call of Cthulhu for the first time ever tomorrow on my Birthday. I’m running Amidst the Ancient Trees as a one-off, just to teach people who’ve never played it. Any tips or hints? I’ve been loving these reviews!
Never played that one, so no specific advice. Good luck and have fun.
Curses! Oh well, love your videos! I think I’ve learned a lot about being a good game master whether it’s Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, or Starfinder just by watching them, and learning how you think as a game master logically and thoroughly.
Seth Skorkowsky After an hour and a half, I had the players (none of whom have ever played this game before) hooked. They were scared out of their wits, and when one of them, a private detective brought in by the family of the kidnapped girl, witnessed the undead soldier, the player was just as freaked as his character. It was awesome.
“Holy crap Cooter WTH” lol 😂
Really nice video, just discovered this channel and subscribed immediatly. I would really like a review on aCall of Cthulhu module or adventure that you found really scary too. Keep up the great(old ones) work!
Thanks. Scariest so-far was Edge of Darkness. Crack'd and Crook'd Manse also had a great mood to it. Reviewed both of those so-far.
Crook'd and Crack'd sure was scary, i also added the fact that the creature was only visible through a mirror, wich added some extra creepy points. Im going to master edge next week as a starting scenario of my new campaign so i will surely give it a look, thanks!
@@raptorjesues1445 The thing with the mirror is excellent. Instant nightmare fuel...
I tend to modernize CoC so this might not be as good for some but I think looking at the video game, Until Dawn could be useful. Maybe just for atmosphere but I think I would move the scenario to Montana and merge elements of each together.
Seth, I love your Channel, and I adopt and test many of your ideas in my campaign, and I think your critique of this module is spot on in many parts. But I did want to mention that North Eastern Native Americans by the 1700s had homes that were pretty indistinguishable from Europeans, and the technological trade was extensive, so the doors being regular European style doors is not really an issues, since after all building an underground labyrinth was not their practices anyway and is even more absurd, they most likely engaged in Sky Burials, where you build a scaffolding in the forest canopy in some spiritual/holy ground. This in and of itself could make for a great setting though, as undead raining down on the party sounds pretty scary to me. Sky burials and my other claims can be googled, but my understanding comes from lectures at the American Museum of Natural History principally from Robert S. Grumet, Native American Scholar who is a widely recognized authority on this subject. Thanks for all you do! I really appreciate your channel!
A friend ran this one strait when it came out. We lasted 15 minutes.
I can't remember the name but there wasn't HP Lovecraft story dealing with an old native american burial mound.
This reminded me of that story. As well the mound map reminds me of old dungeons and dragons lizard man village we played through, amd the land map reminded me of the ones west end games did
If you can get the Asylum and other tails, you can run the series like a season of The Cthulhu Files. Dana Mulder and Fox Skelly are always the perfect NPC team to have as backup. Officer Dave Caine, and the STU are a good back up if things get too dicey.
jack gets all the fun
My friend is questioning trying pulp cthulhu so im gonna use this to help him get into it (also giving me a way to bring him into the campaign) im gonna make some heavy adjustments but im hoping the dungeon crawly bits will help him get into it.
i was using a native american character when we did this, it was his relative that called them there. my character had a sawn off in a shoulder holster under a trench coat as always along with a neck knife that was used to kill the bear and we set the zombies on fire
Yeah the thing is I think dungeon crawls to be a great idea for Call of Cthulhu... but if you want to use them they have to be made to order. You cannot simply have traps for traps sake and you have to use monsters VERY intelligently and sparingly.
10:59 What is it's stuff he's "acquired" from the early European Colonists?
Hot damn! Where do I get that shirt?
More CoC scenario review pls
What was their plan for the religious guy?
Their plan was to take him there so he'd freak out or something. I'm not entirely sure. They thought it would be funny and then they got stabbed, had to subdue him, and they really regretted doing it.
just played this scenario with the pulp rules and had a blast, my character (Joseph Fitzpatrick Thrope Flemming Lockheart) uncovered a hidden cave and stole a legendary tome from the skeleton of an explorer that was responsible for the death of numerous Native Americans and awoken it and engaged in a machete vs rapier fight with it and won
This sounds amazing! Glad you had fun with it.
might want to update the audio. Left headphone is getting feedback.
Hey, anyone know were to get a digital copy?
If he follows Hastur, why not put in a copy of the play King in Yellow?
A Native American scroll that tells the story of the play with the appropriate cultural flavor
Why do you pronounce "four-die-six" instead of "four-D-six"? Not judging, but as a non-native speaker, I'd like to know if that's standard or not '-'
Not sure how common it is (I just never pay attention) But the reason I do it comes from RPG books calling the different kinds of dice as D4, D6, D10, etc. So I just refer to the dice like that "Hand me that D12," or "Damage is 3 D6."
that is pretty standard gamer talk
How do you manage combat with large numbers of creatures in Call of Cthulhu? The game's core rulebook seems to brush over combat grids, and I can imagine my hypothetical players constantly asking how they could run around the zombies and avoid getting hit. Is there a good combat grid system?
We just use a board and minis like we do for other games and it works fine.
@@SSkorkowsky Good to know, thank you! I have only actually run The Haunting, but even then I realized just how FAST a temporarily insane character is when they're fleeing combat - two or three turns and they'd be out of the first basement room and off the map.
05:23 "You moved the headstones but you didn't move the BODIES!!!!" D-X
We're all just Npcs in a game!!! Please end my life... I shouldn't have studied that Tome!
I don't think his real name is Cooter.
What is Black Tom's accent even supposed to be? It doesn't really look much like a Maine accent as far as I know (which, to be fair, is not much) and the way some of it is phrased seems to imply it's foreign. It looks a mostly-failed attempt at a French-Canadian accent where the author thought they could get away with slipping in a lot of elements from a European French accent.
Traps? Talk to any real life archeologist about traps. They just aren't a real thing in burials.
Wow, that "black tom" character has not aged well
Wait until you find out about Black Peter