The Hils Rise Wild - some impressions

Last Saturday we played The Hills Rise Wild for Call of Cthulhu. Now after the fact I'm wondering why I decided to play that scenario? Let me put it this way.

In the scenario, the text describes how the players are introduced to the events and then sketches out a trip into the wilderness and then on day three, it say "this is when the scenario start for real" (paraphrased). There's a problem there.

As written, this assumes that it takes two days to travel to where the scenario start. When we ran it my players checked the capabilities of their car and we looked at the maps of New England I had printed out. It turned out the actual travel time, unless you stop and ask the locals every mile, is one hour. Have I missed something, or have the author only assumed that the investigators stop every mile? Nothing in the background and the introduction suggest that. I guess you could me a sloppy Keeper, but this was something I did not foresee.

I'm going to suggest something.

When you write a scenario which needs a trek through the wilderness, you need a map and a preferably hex grid on it. Discrete units of travel, like hexes, makes it possible to easily measure how far you get in a certain time. Also, if there are to be things happening while travelling, make a list of encounters and/or a random list.

Nothing really broke down, but if the author had intended the scenario to be a slowly building event, there should be in the adventure and not glossed over. I thought the stuff that was in there, but when actually trying to run it I improvised most of it.

Now, why didn't I see this coming? Maybe it takes some training to see what is a good scenario and I think that this kind of scenario, wilderness hex crawl for lack of a better word, is not something I'm very comfortable with.

Hexcrawling Call of Cthulhu

This coming Saturday I'm supposed to be running a Call of Cthulhu game. I guess it goes without saying that if you plan on playing in that game, the rest might be less fun to read before the game.

Since I like Arkham, and I own the sourcebook, I had planned to run the scenario The Hills Rise Wild from that book. But, some parts of it I'm not very sure on how to handle.

Basically, the scenario is about finding pieces of a crashed meteorite. While searching in the rural outback the investigators will find this cabin where a homicidal maniac keeps his family in thrall, and plans to do the Investigators in as soon as he can.

The problem I'm having is the part where the players are supposed to be driving around in the rural outback, talking to farmers and searching the area for hints of a crashed meteorite. How do you make that part fun?

Looking at the scenario I think it's quite likely that rolling a few rolls for reactions, rolling a few rolls for search skills and then suddenly start to flesh out a cabin and some individuals living there, will be a dead give away that seems people are special and probably the main focus of the adventure. In CoC that means scary stuff to run away from. It will be a very short session if they do.

Improvising some odd rural folk and their quaint tales I can manage, and probably also describing the increasing decrepitude of the area and buildings. But, how to make the search in the fields interesting?

Anyone have any experience running that scenario, or have any hints on how to make a rural trek and meteorite search more engaging, so as to not bore the players until they get to meet some crazies?

Dungeons in new games

Zak wrote something interesting about dungeons the other day. He notes that newer RPG are often a bit more cinematic and also they usually don't feature dungeons. This made me think.

I have a few friends who have been playing role playing games since way back. They also have one thing in common in that they look and sound a lot less enthusiastic when you mention the word "dungeon".

For some people the fun part, and even the whole point of, playing a RPG is to interact with NPCs - to roleplay. What is interesting with dungeons though, is that like Zak writes anything, however mundane, is potentially interesting. Exploring the environment is what the game is about. Your role is not method acting, it's interacting with the other party members and acting out your role in the party. This doesn't necessarily mean you don't do roleplaying!

I still wonder how to make my friends more enthusiastic about this kind of roleplaying. We might like slightly different kinds of gaming, but you play with the gamers you've got and like to hang out with. Also, I like to think roleplaying can be a lot of different things, maybe even at the same time, for different people.

Maybe there is a way to make NPC interactions more common in a dungeon environment? Maybe there is a way to make the virtues of explorative play more common in the NPC crowded city based game? I'm not sure how, but I like to think it can be done.

If James Joyce does that in his exploration of Dublin, maybe I need to read it? I think that sometimes cityscapes have been less used as a canvas of the fantastic than they deserve. While going down a hole in the ground to dig out treasure have a certain resonance of the Hero's Journey, I guess the urban jungle can be just as wild and feel just as much like a game of exploration. How would it be to do a hexcrawl of a fantasy city?

It would be interesting if Zak Sabbath was the one who finally made me read James Joyce, because I wanted to read the dungeon crawl novel, Ulysses.