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Well, that went smoothly. It definitely helped that you got rid of the named cultists so you didn't have to deal with them all at once.
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May 4, 2023 17:32
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That definitely looked like you played everything about as smoothly as possible. Very cool, but I'm excited to see what it looks like when everything goes pear-shaped.
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May 4, 2023 18:29
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Yeah, the first time I played this I didn't deal with the ghoul priest or all the cultists, and having them all pile onto you in the woods is not a good time -- plus if you don't finish a scenario optimally, you won't have all the experience you might have so you will be going into the next one at a disadvantage anyway.
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May 4, 2023 18:46
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Alternate Paths What happened in this campaign is just one way that the events of tonight could've played out. Arkham Horror has a massive amount of replayability; not only can you play with a wide variety of characters, but every campaign is chock-full of choices and multiple endings. Today, we'll take a look at other ways things could have gone in Night of the Zealot. First, The Gathering. When we killed the Ghoul Priest, Lita Chantler demanded that we burn our house down to finish off the ghouls inside. In our story, we refused her demand, but what if we'd taken up the torch? quote:Resolution 1 The main difference here, aside from the obvious, is that Lita is much more affable with the investigators, with the lead investigator adding her card to their deck.  She's a pretty solid ally! The combat boost is great, and she's got a lot of health and sanity for soaking hits. All that value for zero resources! Now, that's what's different about the choice we made when we won the scenario. But what if things had gone badly?   We finished the scenario before the second agenda filled up with doom. Had we flipped it, we would've been faced with another ghoul to fight. That wouldn't have been too bad, since Roland can take out weaker ghouls pretty easily.  And he would've needed to do it quickly! 10 doom looks like a massive threshold, except that every ghoul in play would speed up that countdown. Realistically, once you're at this point, you need to win in a couple of rounds or it's game over.  What happens next depends on whether the investigators had been able to gather enough clues and unlock the Parlor. If we had, we'd have been left bruised, but alive: quote:No resolution was reached Here, our house is left standing, and we still get to add Lita's card to our deck. However, since we didn't kill the Ghoul Priest, it will return to hound us in the future. It's worth mentioning that this is also the resolution you get if each player resigns from the scenario. The outcome is the same, but we don't suffer the physical trauma from the agenda. If you're in a spot where it doesn't look like you can win, taking the L and resigning early will often offset some of the bad stuff that happens. But what if we hadn't yet managed to dispel the barrier blocking the Parlor? Well... quote:Resolution 3 The worst happens, and each investigator is killed. This isn't just "defeat and move on", they're dead dead. If you want to play the next scenario, you can, but you have to make a fresh new character with no experience. This is devastating, as you can imagine, and can be quite the shock to new players. Even in the tutorial, Arkham Horror doesn't mess around! Moving on to Scenario 2, The Midnight Masks. Compared to The Gathering, there's not as many changes here. First, if we had chosen to burn our house down, that location would've been removed from play and we'd start in the center of town instead. Losing access to those easy couple of clues and valuable location action would've made our job a lot harder, and honestly could've made the difference between winning and losing, given how close it was at the end there.  If we hadn't managed to kill the Ghoul Priest, it would also pop back up here, getting shuffled into the encounter deck and potentially drawn during any Mythos Phase. That would've been a real problem, as we already had enough on our plate dealing with all those cultists! As for ending the scenario, we cut it awfully close, with only about a round to spare before time ran out. If necessary, we could have resigned before taking out the last cultist; if we had, we would've recorded any cultists that we didn't deal with, and they'd pop back up in the final scenario. On the other hand, what if the agenda advanced?   quote:Resolution 2 Well that's... not so bad actually. Compared to the first scenario anyway! The only difference between this, and resigning, is that we've taken longer to finish, which will have a consequence next scenario. So let's move on to the scenario with the biggest differences, The Devourer Below. Starting off with setup, if we'd run out of time in the previous scenario, that would've forced each investigator to discard two cards, at random, from their opening hands. Also, if the Ghoul Priest was still alive, we'd do the same thing and drop it into the encounter deck yet again. You really don't want to let it get away in the first scenario! And speaking of setup, we added a few cards to the encounter deck from one of the big bads of Arkham (Hastur, in our case). We only saw one of his treacheries, and looking at what could've been, we really dodged a bullet.  Each "Agents" set has its own nasty monsters. Two of those Screeching Byakhees were in the deck, just waiting to be drawn at the worst possible moment. Of course, that's not the only bullet we dodged. When we advanced the act the first time, we were told to spawn all the cultists that we failed to deal with in the last scenario. In this run nothing happened, but it could've been a real mess if we hadn't done as well.  Pictured: a real mess Naturally, these additional threats would've slowed us down signficantly. We won the game before the second agenda advanced, but if we'd taken longer, here's what would've happened:  Wendy might have been able to pass that test, but Roland definitely would've failed, giving him a brand-new weakness. A real kick in the pants at this juncture.  And that leads into the final agenda. 5 rounds is not a lot of time to win (and it's really less than that with Ancient Evils in the deck). But you really, really want to finish the game before this agenda flips, because when it does...  ...the ritual is completed, and can no longer be stopped. Now, there's only one way to win: defeating Umôrdhoth. And good luck pulling that off.  There's a LOT going on here. The first thing that jumps out is that damage and horror - good luck surviving more than one hit. And evading him won't help, since he'll just ready up and hit you right back. In addition, Umôrdhoth is "massive", which means that he's so big that one investigator can't hold his attention. He'll attack everyone in his location, no matter how many players there are. And if you want to kill him, you'll have to get past his 5 fight stat enough times to deal 14 damage, which will almost certainly take more than one round, all the while dealing with whatever monsters and treacheries pop up to get in your way. No, you're going to lose, and when you do, this is the ending of the campaign: quote:No resolution was reached The campaign is lost, Arkham succumbs to Umôrdhoth's terror, and each investigator is killed. But wait, if this thing is really just after Lita, can't we, you know... give it what it wants? As it says on Umôrdhoth's card, if you control Lita, you can sacrifice her to go straight to a... different ending. quote:Resolution 3 We survive, and the city is saved, but at a terrible price. Our actions weigh heavily on our concience, and we suffer additional trauma and weaknesses as a result. But if the investigators are well-prepared, and are skilled and lucky enough to overcome the threat, then one final ending awaits us. quote:Resolution 2 And with that, we've finally come to the end of The Night of the Zealot. In the next campaign, we'll be tackling a sinister conspiracy in the town of Dunwich. Over the course of eight scenarios, we'll look into kidnappings, gamble at a seedy club, break into a museum, and much, much more. We'll also meet a new team of investigators, ready to take on the challenge and maybe even live to tell the tale. There's trouble a-brewing in The Dunwich Legacy. Phelddagrif fucked around with this message at 05:28 on May 10, 2023 |
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May 5, 2023 03:15
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Great LP so far, love this game, shame it's tough to get folks into it sometimes.
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May 5, 2023 03:57
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“Umôrdhoth is a just god who claims only the guilty and the dead. Go, and you shall be spared.” ...If this is a god who consumes the dead and the guilty, why are we fighting so many ghouls?! 
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May 5, 2023 06:17
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Those are the ones he didn't claim, obviously
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May 5, 2023 10:00
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TeeQueue posted:“Umôrdhoth is a just god who claims only the guilty and the dead. Go, and you shall be spared.” Lovecraft's ghouls aren't undead, but rather monsters who eat the dead. They're actually closer to Wendigos or the original Arabic ghuls.
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May 5, 2023 13:37
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Yeah Lovecraft wrote the ghouls long before D&D and such made them "undead" in popular culture. Incidentally, traditionalist ghouls prefer old rotted corpses to fresh ones, and there's a schism in their culture between those that choose to stay hidden away in ancient graveyards and catacombs and those that prey upon fresh corpses and interact directly with humans to form cults. Humans are also able to turn into ghouls, either through reading certain texts or via partaking in necrophagy in ghoul rituals. This is often how cult-forming ghouls increase their numbers, as ghouls naturally breed extremely slowly. StillFullyTerrible fucked around with this message at 16:48 on May 5, 2023 |
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May 5, 2023 16:38
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Isn't the cult's ghoul-ness unrelated from the big monster? Lita Chantler trashed one of their hideouts and passed them off, so they're firing off a non-ghoul associated vengeance monster ritual they had lying around at her
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May 6, 2023 01:01
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 “I’m going to burn his accursed diary, and if you men are wise you’ll dynamite that altar-stone up there, and pull down all the rings of standing stones on the other hills. Things like that brought down the beings those Whateleys were so fond of...” The Dunwich Legacy is the first full-size expansion to Arkham Horror, and this is where the real potential of the game takes off. Now that we've gotten our feet wet, we'll venture beyond Arkham to explore the wider world, and try to stop another cult working to bring an end to the world. Because let's face it, what is Arkham Horror without its cults? Once again we'll be bringing along two investigators. Roland and Wendy did a fine job in the first campaign, but we've got some new blood stepping up to the plate. The lead investigator in this campaign will be Jim Culver:  Jazz has been nothing but trouble for Jim since the day he picked up his daddy's trumpet. There was something weird and otherworldly about the writing on the inside of the bell, but the tones from it were smooth and dark, like good coffee. That trumpet landed Jim a lot of gigs until the time it made Widow Jenkins get up and dance, the day he played at her funeral. After that, it was kind of hard to find work. Since then, Jim has learned a lot about jazz - and the things the graveyard ghouls talk about on cold autumn nights. Lately, they've been talking about The End, as in the end of everything that is and could be. The Final Rhapsody. The fact is, Jim isn't too keen on that idea. Jim's class is the Mystic, essentially a spellcaster. Many of his cards rely on his Willpower stat rather than Combat or Intellect. His ability allows his to treat skull tokens as 0's. It's not flashy or exciting, but it makes passing tests more reliable, especially once we get some experience and have ways of manipulating the chaos bag to make those tokens show up more often. Jim doesn't have any huge weaknesses; he's kind of an all-rounder in that regard. As such, there are a few different ways to build his deck, usually focusing on either gathering clues or on combat. We'll be mainly going with a combat focus, as our other investigator will need the help. Our second investigator is Rex Murphy:  When disaster strikes, Rex Murphy is usually on hand, suffering the consequences. After spending a day with Rex, even the most hardened skeptic will concede that the man is cursed. Anytime he had a lead on a good story, something would go wrong. That business in Innsmouth with the photographs that had blown out to sea. The tracks in Dunwich that had washed away in the rain just before he'd brought the sheriff. His terrible fortune has more than once exposed him to gruesome beasts and occult conspiracies. To survive, Rex has developed an inquisitive mind, keeping one step ahead of the next disaster. Rex is a Seeker, and he's a drat good one. With his high Intellect he's made to gather clues, and his special ability allows him to pick up two at once. As such, many of his cards are focus on raising his Intellect stat to make sure he gathers clues as quickly and efficiently as possible, while also keeping him out of trouble. (The "Mutated" keyword is there because we're playing with the latest Taboo. As originally printed, there was no limit to how many times Rex's ability could trigger. Even limited to once per round, it's still incredibly strong!) Like Wendy, Rex doesn't have the muscle to be fighting enemies. While he's got a few tricks in his deck, we'll need Jim to step in to handle any real danger. With our team assembled, it's time to dive in! quote:Prologue This sounds like trouble. Right away we're asked to decide who we're going to look for first, Rice or Morgan. While back-room gambling could be dangerous for Dr. Morgan, it sounds like Professor Rice found something important, and his sudden disappearance is more than a little concerning. We'll go after him first.  Part I: Extracurricular Activity Dr. Armitage is worried his colleague, Professor Warren Rice, might be in trouble, so he has asked for your help in finding his friend. He seems unreasonably nervous about his colleague’s disappearance considering Professor Rice has only been “missing” for a matter of hours… quote:Setup  Here's our map of the campus - we start at the Quad in the middle, and have a lot of different places to begin our hunt for the professor.   No sign of him here, naturally. Let's check out the agenda and act cards for some guidance on where to go.  No surprises there! Our first goal is to collect six clues, and the Humanities Building seems as good a place as any to start. - Round 1 - Rex is our best clue-getter, so he's going to go check out the Humanities Building for any sign of Rice. quote:> Rex moves to the Humanities Building.   Well, there's no sign of the professor, but there's a bunch of clues to gather! quote:> Rex plays Dr. Milan Christopher.  And we've got the tools for the job. Both Milan and the Magnifying Glass give us a boost to our Intellect (the glass is fast, so it doesn't take an action to play) so we're investigating at a skill of 6. Milan was also hit by the Taboo; his ability used to work on every investigation, not just once per round. quote:> Rex investigates (6 to 3). Chaos token is a 0. Success! Rex discovers 2 clues and gains 1 resource. This is why Rex is so strong; we've saved an action on a future investigation, and every time we can pull this off, that's another action gained. Over to Jim, but before we take his turn, there's a card we need to look at.  Jim's random basic weakness is Indebted. Unlike other weaknesses, this one has the "Permanent" keyword, which means it starts every game in play. While it doesn't take up space in his deck, it also means we'll be suffering its effects every game. 2 fewer resources isn't a lot, but it'll slow us down when we're just trying to get going. Anyway, we don't have the tools to investigate like Rex does, so this round will just be setting up. quote:> Jim plays Arcane Initiate.  The Arcane Initiate is a very useful ally that helps us find our important spells (Jim actually didn't draw any spells in his opening hand, even after a mulligan). It's essentially a free card draw every round. The doom that she comes with does count towards the agenda, but there are ways around that. For now, let's take advantage of her ability. quote:Jim activates Arcane Initiate and draws Ward of Protection. We'll be seeing this card soon enough, I'm sure. For now, we'll just keep getting cards in play. quote:> Jim gains a resource.  Another key card in any Mystic's arsenal. The rosary doesn't look like much, but a Mystic lives or dies by their Willpower, and any boost to the stat is welcome. The extra soak for horror is also handy, given that some Mystic abilities tend to drive them a little bit mad. That's all we can do in the first round, so with no enemies in play we take upkeep and move on. - Round 2 - The first doom on the agenda brings the total in play to 2, including the one on the Initiate.  A new campaign brings with it new treacheries. Jim's first card is Beyond the Veil, which looks scarier than it really is. If his deck runs out of cards, he'll take enough damage to be defeated, but really we should win or lose before that happens. As we'll see though, the game has a few ways of its own to empty our deck.  Since Beyond the Veil has surge, we draw another card from the encounter deck, and find a Whippoorwill. This card might be almost as notorious as Ancient Evils for how annoying it can be. You'll notice it spawned at Jim's location, but it's not engaged with him. That's because of its "aloof" keyword - aloof monsters don't engage on their own, choosing to just hang around, watching. While it's at Jim's location, it's lowering all his skills, and even if we leave it'll just chase us down thanks to its "hunter" keyword. There's more to aloof, but we'll cover that as it becomes relevant.  Rex draws Pushed into the Beyond, which forces him to shuffle an asset from play into his deck and discard cards from it. Magnifying Glass is less of an investment than Milan, so we shuffle that in, and thankfully don't lose a copy from his deck. It's still pretty annoying since now his investigation skill has dropped a bit; hopefully that won't slow us down too much. quote:> Rex investigates (5 to 3). Chaos token is a skull. Our first special token - let's check the reference card.  A -1 is fine; we shouldn't get hit by that discard effect too often. (The chaos bag has two skull tokens and one cultist; there's no elder things in there right now). We pass the test, but since we only succeeded by 1, Rex's ability doesn't get us an extra clue. quote:> Rex investigates (5 to 3). Chaos token is the autofail. The Humanities Building is clean and we have 4 of the 6 clues we need. Meanwhile, Jim's still gearing up for danger. quote:Jim activates Arcane Initiate, drawing Shrivelling.  Shrivelling is our main combat spell. Much like a .45 Automatic, this deals 2 damage to its target when it hits, but since there are limited uses, we want to make them count. Jim's got plenty of soak for the horror, if it comes up. Nothing happens in the enemy phase; since the Whippoorwill is aloof and unengaged, it won't attack us. - Round 3 - 3 of 7 doom, counting the Initiate.  Jim's card, Light of Aforgomon, isn't as scary as it looks. While it's in play, any damage or horror we take has to go straight to the investigators and can't be soaked by allies. Once the act or agenda this is attached to advances, this card goes away. Since we almost have enough clues, we'll put this on the act.  This game really wants us to discard cards! Rex would consider just taking it on the chin when he leaves the Humanities Building, but we'll regret that if we draw a Beyond the Veil, so he might as well try to pass. quote:> Rex attempts to move, committing Guts to test against Arcane Barrier (5 to 4). Chaos token is a -2. Rex discards the top 5 cards of his deck and moves to Orne Library. Worth a shot! Failing the test was actually a blessing in disguise, as one of the cards Rex discarded was his weakness.  Rex's Curse is one of the more obnoxious weaknesses; while it's in play, he has to pass every single skill test twice. And if it makes him fail a test, it doesn't even get discarded - it goes right back into his deck, ready to be drawn again. Since it went straight from our deck to the discard pile, it's gone for good.   Ah, our first source of victory points. As we'll see, Dunwich Legacy is famously stingy on experience, so we'll have to take anything we can find. Thankfully, Rex found another copy of Magnifying Glass, so he should have a pretty easy time getting this one. quote:Rex plays Magnifying Glass. We've got 6 clues! Let's advance the act right away (and discard Light of Aforgomon).   A lead! The janitor, Jazz, is somewhere in the 30-card encounter deck, and we've got to track him down by gathering more clues. Let's see if Jim can help. quote:Jim activates Arcane Initiate, but doesn't find a spell.   An easy source of clues! Even with no tools, Jim should be able to gather these relatively easily. Before we do, we should take a quick peek at the Dormitories that were just put into play.  No way to get in there right now; we'll worry about that later. For now, let's try to investigate. quote:> Jim investigates (3 to 1). Chaos token is a cultist (-1). Success! Jim doesn't have any discarded cards yet, so the cultist is still a good token to draw. With that clue, let's see if we can find Jazz. quote:> Jim spends a clue to activate the act, discarding the top 5 cards of the encounter deck. No sign of him yet, but we'll find him soon enough. In the enemy phase the Whippoorwill hunts; since both investigators are the same distance, we'll have it move to Rex since he's about to leave the library anyway. - Round 4 - Doom's at 4 of 7.  Jim draws a Thrall! Not a particularly threatening monster. It does have the spawn instruction to appear at the location with the most clues. Since that's the Student Union right now, it'll engage with Jim like normal. Rex gets another Arcane Barrier; with the Whippoorwill there, he has no chance of passing that test now. Since Jim has the immediate threat, let's switch things up and have him go first this time. quote:Jim activates Arcane Initiate, but doesn't find a spell. Excellent, one problem dealt with. Importantly, Jim's ability treats the modifier on skulls as a 0, but they're still a skull token for other purposes, which is why Shrivelling still inflicted a horror. quote:> Jim investigates (3 to 1). Chaos token is a +1. Success! Still no sign of Jazz. Let's see if Rex has better luck. quote:> Rex attempts to move, testing against Arcane Barrier (2 to 4). Chaos token is a -2. Rex discards the top 5 cards of his deck and moves to Miskatonic Quad.   Another location with easy-to-gather clues! We're also continuing to expand our map of the campus by adding on the Alchemy Labs.  And another place we can't do anything with yet. quote:> Rex investigates (6 to 2). Chaos token is a -3. Success! Rex discovers a clue and gains a resource. Another success by only 1. We've bumped things up to standard difficulty, so the chaos bag is a bit worse than it was in the last campaign. The Whippoorwill moves to the central Quad, so it's not bothering us right now. - Round 5 - Up to 5 doom in play.  We've seen Jim's treachery before. Locked Door means that we won't be investigating the Science Building any more until it's dealt with.  But the second Whippoorwill that Rex draws makes that task much more difficult. As much as we want to find Jazz quickly, we can't let these birds build up, or we won't be passing any skill tests. quote:Jim activates Arcane Initiate, but doesn't find a spell. And here we have the main reason why aloof enemies are so annoying. We want to kill these Whippoorwills to stop them from lowering our stats. However, if an enemy is aloof, you can't attack it while it's not engaged with anyone. You have to waste an action just getting its attention before you can even try to kill it. quote:> Jim activates Shriveling to attack Whippoorwill (4 to 2). Chaos token is a -3. Bad luck; a -3 is bad enough that we fail the test and don't kill the bird. Well, it would be, except...  Lucky! gives us enough of a boost to pass the test! The Dunwich Legacy investigators are able to bring a few off-class cards in their decks; since Jim's spell charges are so valuable, we want to make sure he doesn't waste them. Right, Rex isn't doing any good where he's at, so let's move away from that Whippoorwill and keep looking for Jazz. quote:> Rex moves to Miskatonic Quad.  Finally! Now that we've found him, we've just got to pass a simple Intellect skill test to gain his trust. Should be no problem for Rex! quote:> Rex parleys with "Jazz" Mulligan, committing Unexpected Courage (7 to 3). Chaos token is the elder sign. The elder sign let Rex smash this skill test; no way are we choosing to fail! We take control of Jazz, and advance the act:  Well that sounds like a problem.  A BIG problem... Phelddagrif fucked around with this message at 05:35 on May 10, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 18:05
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Everyone knows Rex Murphy the reporter looks like this:
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May 7, 2023 18:29
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13 health on the first major boss in the game.... Yeah, our boy Jim with WEAPON: TRUMPET can handle it, I believe in him.
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May 8, 2023 08:42
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TeeQueue posted:13 health on the first major boss in the game.... Welcome to Arkham. It's hard. There are ways to deal with most of the stuff, the scenarios usually give you an alternative route to punching everything back to eternal sleep and all characters are viable, but you kinda have to know what's coming. The first go around you're going to suffer.
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May 8, 2023 10:22
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Never underestimate the power of jazz.
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May 8, 2023 12:48
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I bet an oboe solo could take out 13 health without any issues.
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May 8, 2023 16:29
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ah, good old trusty Shrivelling, the Magic Missile of the Cthulhu Mythos
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May 8, 2023 16:45
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"I cast trumpet on the darkness!"
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May 8, 2023 17:23
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IIRC our group played through this back prior to Rex's taboo, and yeah, it's exactly as busted as stated. Unquestioned best cluever in the game, campaign was definitely way easier with him around. Of course, to balance that I was playing "Ashcan" Pete and had to ask the group for a scenario restart after running face-first into that wonderful "achievement" (which I hope you'll cover when you get there). Jim's an interesting pick for a second - personally always seemed like he didn't really bring anything to the table even as far as jack of all trades characters go. Curious to see how you build him.
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May 8, 2023 17:27
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Nick Buntline posted:IIRC our group played through this back prior to Rex's taboo, and yeah, it's exactly as busted as stated. Unquestioned best cluever in the game, campaign was definitely way easier with him around. Of course, to balance that I was playing "Ashcan" Pete and had to ask the group for a scenario restart after running face-first into that wonderful "achievement" (which I hope you'll cover when you get there). I know exactly what you're talking about, and ouch, yeah, I'd definitely call for a mulligan. Jim is here for a few reasons. I wanted to show off different classes, which gave the options of Rex, Jim, and Jenny (for now I'm planning to just use the investigators from the sets they came in). Rex is too good to leave behind, so that left Jim and Jenny for the second slot. And I don't personally think Jenny is a great Rogue to show off first - her statline and ability are uninteresting, and we don't have access to a lot of cards in our current pool to get her up to speed. Jim is a perfectly fine Mystic, if a little on the weaker side, and balances out Rex pretty well. Plus, there's a specific reason I wanted a Mystic in this low-XP campaign, as we may or may not see in the next update...
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May 8, 2023 18:27
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so is Taboo just their fancy name for Errata (and Mutated is just a "you are not being gas lit, this card is different")?
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May 8, 2023 21:52
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I like to think of it as "Patched."
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May 8, 2023 22:22
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There are some actually errata’d cards, though those are fairly few and far between. Taboo is more like a list of official patch notes: it changes and updates with new releases, and it’s not just limited to nerfing cards - some cards actually get a significant boost. Officially it’s supposed to be an all-or-nothing thing - you either play with Taboo on or you don’t - but many people just play with the specific cards they want Taboo’d and that’s fine too. In the case of Rex Murphy, I’m not sure if the lack of “once per round” was a genuine oversight or if they thought it would be too difficult to pull off succeeding by 2 multiple times a turn, but even when he was first released it wasn’t too difficult to set him up to pulverize every single investigate test and farm clues at lightning speed.
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May 9, 2023 03:54
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Is Jim's trumpet in his deck? Is it his unique item/card?
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May 9, 2023 18:16
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Extracurricular Activity: Part 2 We've explored all over the campus, but there's no sign of Professor Warren Rice. Our only lead so far has been someone who saw a strange man entering his office in the faculty building. We've enlisted the aid of the head janitor to unlock the way, but just as we were about to head over, something went terribly wrong. See? It says so right there on the card! The Experiment is our "boss" of this scenario. Like the Ghoul Priest from the previous campaign, it's a big ol' pile of health and damage, and if we can bring it down, we'll advance to the end of the final act. Speaking of the act, this creature was spawned after we finished Act 2, so let's check out our final objective.  Seems we have a few options! Killing the Experiment is obviously one of them, and it sounds like finding Rice is another, since that's why we came here in the first place. We've also got the third option of heading to the dorms and warning the students; with Jazz in tow we'll be able to get inside. We don't really want to fight the Experiment right now, as it'll be hard for us to deal the 13 damage needed to take it down. On the other hand, it does have Victory 2... Well, we can figure that out later; for now, both investigators have taken their turns. The Whippoorwill in the Science Building moves over to the Quad, and both investigators take their upkeep. - Round 6 - There's 6 doom in play now, counting the Initiate. If possible we should kill her off this round, to remove her doom and buy us an extra round of play.  Jim's treachery, Eager for Death, might do that for us. Normally it'd be great if we pass this skill test, but if we fail, we can assign one of the horror to the Initiate which will finish it off. There's a window where free actions can be taken during skill tests, so we exhaust the Initiate one last time, but don't find a spell to draw. In this case however, we end up drawing a 0 chaos token so we pass the test. Guess we'll have to find another way!  Rex draws another Thrall, which in this case spawns in the Science Building, since that's the only spot with any clues. We'll probably just end up ignoring it; the only reason we'd head that way now is to fight the Experiment, and that's the last thing we want to do right now. If we want to get into any of the locked areas of the school, then Rex will need to go first so Jazz can let him in. quote:> Rex moves to the Administration Building.   There's nothing of note here; with no victory points and us having no need for clues, we'll just move on. quote:> Rex moves to the Faculty Offices.  Jazz's ability lets Rex ignore this text, so he can walk right in.  That's more like it! Another victory point, and another way we can end the game. This is most likely where Rice is hiding, so once we gather 4 clues, we should be able to find him and get out of here, if we so choose. Now, we do have to spawn an enemy when we reveal this location. And there is a weak Thrall in the discard pile that we could deal with pretty easily. But, there's also a tougher monster in there with a victory point, and those are pretty valuable...  What's the worst that could happen? One action left; let's make it easier for Jim to deal with this guy so we can get back to cluevering. quote:Rex plays Shortcut and moves to Administration Building.  Shortcut is a very handy card - since it's fast, it lets us move closer to Jim without spending an action. And since enemies only do attacks of opportunity when we actually take an action, we avoid that damage as well. quote:> Rex evades Wizard of Yog-Sothoth, committing Manual Dexterity (5 to 3). Chaos token is a skull (-1). Success! It took two copies of Shortcut, but now the monster has been dropped off near Jim, and we'll be able to start gathering those clues next round. Now then, Jim's going to use this Whippoorwill to kill two birds with one stone. Well, one bird and one source of doom. quote:> Jim engages Whippoorwill. Playing a card is one of the actions that provokes an attack of opportunity. Because of that, we were able to kill off the Initiate and get rid of its doom right before it affected the game.  The Ritual Candles aren't anything terribly special; they give a small boost to a few tokens in the bag, but anything that makes Jim more reliable is always nice. (This is another Taboo'd card, though in this case it's not for balance so much as it is to let it work with tokens that were released in later expansions.) Since we only have 2 charges of Shriveling left, let's not waste one on this bird. quote:> Jim fights Whippoorwill, committing Unexpected Courage (4 to 2). Chaos token is a -1. Success! Whippoorwill is defeated. Hopefully that's the last we've seen of them. - Round 7 - 6 doom for real now, so the agenda will advance next round. Jim draws another Light of Aforgomon; we'll add it to the agenda this time so it'll only stick around for one round.  Rex's card is Offer of Power, and really, unless you're about to go insane from horror, I can't imagine any situation where you draw 2 cards here. The doom cost is just absurdly high. As it is, Rex has a healthy 9 sanity and gladly takes the 2 horror (direct to him, thanks to Light of Aforgomon). Jim's up first; let's take this wizard down. quote:> Jim moves to Administration Building. Wizard of Yog-Sothoth engages Jim. Outstanding! It took some work, but that's another valuable victory point in the books. Jim's elder sign is simply a +1 (boosted to 2 thanks to the Ritual Candles), but that's more than good enough. Now it's Rex's turn to get a point. quote:> Rex investigates (6 to 2). Chaos token is a cultist (-3). Success! Rex discovers a clue and gains a resource. And that's another victory point earned! We've also got enough clues to spend here and advance to a resolution, but there's really no rush. Let's keep looking around and see if we can earn more experience before ending it. - Round 8 - That's our 7th doom, and the first agenda done.  Jim only has 6 cards in his discard so he takes 1 horror, but Rex has a whopping 18 discarded cards and takes 2. Light of Aforgomon is still technically in play, so this horror goes straight to the investigators. Since this is the first scenario of the campaign, the game gives us a little more time to finish than we'd otherwise have if we came here later.  It's not entirely free though! For the next couple rounds we'll have a maximum hand size of 5 instead of 8, so this is the time to play any extra cards we've been holding on to.  Jim draws our favorite treachery, Ancient Evils! Losing a round is about the worst thing that can happen, so this is a good a time as any to show off that spell we found way back in the first round.  Ward of Protection is one of the strongest cards in a Mystic's arsenal. There are some incredibly nasty treacheries, and the ability to just say "nope" can't be understated. One of my favorite things about playing a Mystic.  Rex gets another new card, In this case, Rex draws a -3 token, so he fails the test and discard 5 cards, leaving him with just 3 cards left. The last place left to explore, besides the Alchemy Labs with the Experiment, is the Dormitories, so let's start heading that way. quote:>> Rex moves to the Administration Building, then to the Miskatonic Quad.  Since we've got some extra time, Rex is going to start working on a bit of a side quest. Strange Solution isn't a particularly good card; passing a high intellect test just gets us two cards. However, once we do pass the test, we'll be able to spend some experience to upgrade this into a significantly stronger item. We'll see more about what this means when we get to deckbuilding. quote:>> Jim moves to the Miskatonic Quad, then to the Student Union.  Can't move in to the Dormitories without Rex, so we might as well show off Jim's signature item! The trumpet isn't particularly exciting, and is often just committed to a Willpower test, but a passive source of healing for horror is pretty nice, since Mystics tend to take some extra horror anyway. It's a lot more powerful in larger groups, since it triggers off any player drawing a skull token, but hopefully we'll get to make use of it. - Round 9 - 1 of 3 doom. Jim draws another Thrall; since the Administration Building has 2 clues, it spawns over there. Rex's card is Pushed Into the Beyond, which once again forces him to shuffle an asset into his deck. We'll go ahead and lose Magnifying Glass again; his deck only has 2 cards in it, so he discards everything and takes 2 horror. Let's crack on and check on the students. quote:>> Rex moves to the Student Union, then to the Dormitories.   Looks like they're doing fine, and they also have a victory point for us to earn! Six clues is a lot, but between Rex's ability and the low shroud, this shouldn't take much time at all to knock out. quote:> Rex investigates, committing Deduction (6 to 1). Chaos token is the autofail. Unless the game has anything to say about it! quote:> Jim moves to the Dormitories.  If Rex is going to be slowed down gathering those clues, Jim will be there to pick up the slack. Rite of Seeking is our main tool for investigating, letting us pick up two clues at once each time we succeed. There is the risk of losing all of our actions, so it's usually better to do this on the second or third action of the turn. During upkeep, Rex takes another horror, since he has to reshuffle his discard pile to form a new deck. - Round 10 - Doom's at 2 of 3. Jim draws another Locked Door, which would go on the Dormitories. Neither investigator is particularly skilled at combat or agility checks, so he plays another Ward of Protection to cancel it. Rex draws Visions of Futures Past, and manages to pull the elder sign, which is enough to pass the test. While he could choose to fail instead and draw 3 cards, his hand size is reduced thanks to the agenda, so there'd be no real benefit. Take two at investigating the Dormitories: quote:> Rex investigates (5 to 1). Chaos token is a -3. Success! Rex discovers a clue and gains a resource. 4 clues down, 2 to go. quote:> Jim plays Arcane Initiate. You might think that playing another Initiate is an odd thing to do, but this is actually the perfect time to play her. The agenda was going to advance next round anyway, so the doom she adds does nothing at all, and will be removed when that happens. quote:Jim activates Arcane Initiate, but doesn't find a spell. Alright, that's another victory point! We have more than enough clues to end the game, either by alerting the students, or tracking down Professor Rice. However, Rex still wants to research his Strange Solution, so we'll wait a round and let him do that before deciding where we want to go. quote:> Jim draws a card. - Round 11 - There's more than enough doom in play to advance the agenda, so all of it clears away.  The Experiment, no longer content to sit idly by, starts moving in our direction.  And here we have our final agenda. Every other round, the Experiment will advance towards the Dormitories, and if it gets there, well... There's more at stake here than the professor. We have to protect these students from this abomination, one way or another. Hopefully he'll be able to stay safe until then...  In any event, we still have to draw encounter cards. Jim get another new treachery, Terror from Beyond, and this is the first time that the "peril" keyword has really been relevant. Jim has to choose a type of card, and everyone will discard all cards from their hand of the chosen type, but he can't consult with Rex. Since Jim doesn't have any skill cards in his hand, that's what he chooses. Rex only had to discard a Perception, so he's fine with that choice. Rex gets another Offer of Power; he takes the horror again, but with only 2 sanity remaining he's getting pretty close to defeat. As tempting as those 2 victory points are on the Experiment, there's no way we're dealing enough damage to take it down before getting knocked out, so we'll have to let them go, and warn the students of the incoming danger. Just a few things to do. quote:> Rex activates Strange Solution to test intellect, committing Laboratory Assistant (6 to 4). Chaos token is a -2. Success! Rex discards Strange Solution, draws 2 cards, and has "identified the solution." Great, with that done we won't have to worry about trying that test again for the rest of the campaign. Now Jim's going to play us out with one last song. quote:> Jim plays Delve Too Deep.  Ahh, Delve. One of my favorite cards. Games have been lost from the hubris of playing this card when things were looking up, only for monsters to show up and turn everything on its head. It's a bit of a risk, but if we can survive two encounter cards, we'll have another victory point in our pocket.  And we're safe! Neither card does anything of note, so we add Delve to the victory display, spend six clues, and get the students to safety. quote:Resolution 2 Seems like we were too late to rescue the professor. At least the student are safe, I don't want to think about what would've happened if that abomination reached them.  Here we have our new and improved victory display, thanks to the fine folks on the mod dev team. 5 experience is a fantastic start for Dunwich, and we'll be putting that to good use. Finally, a look at our campaign log before signing off. quote:Campaign Log Phelddagrif fucked around with this message at 00:49 on May 11, 2023 |
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May 10, 2023 01:29
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1920s dormitories are well known to have fire alarms
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May 10, 2023 05:13
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Slaan posted:1920s dormitories are well known to have fire alarms Considering it's Miskatonic, it's probably an 'eldritch being' alarm and the faculty just say it's for fires so as not to alarm the students.
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May 10, 2023 12:23
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Interlude - Deckbuilding Today we'll be taking a closer look at our team of investigators, what's up with their decks and how they can be improved.  Jim Culver is a Mystic, who casts powerful, limited-use spells. A Mystic's primary stat is Willpower, and Jim's is pretty good but not the best. It's a bit decieving though, since his ability to treat skull tokens as 0's makes him a bit more consistent at passing tests. In addition to Mystic and Neutral cards, he can bring up to five cards from other classes, to supplement his repertoire.  With our current cardpool, there's not a ton of spell options available, but what we do have is pretty good! Shrivelling is a lot like Guardian weapons, and Rite of Seeking is an efficient tool for gathering clues. The level 0 versions of these spells are nothing special, but their higher-level counterparts are much more powerful. And Ward of Protection is a game-changer, completely neutering the difficulty of some scenarios.  Jim's brought a few tools to support his spellcasting. Holy Rosary is a key card in a Mystic's arsenal, boosting their most important stat and soaking up a bit of horror. Arcane Initiate is a great way of finding more spells, as they can get used up pretty quickly. The doom can be intimidating at first, but we've already seen a few ways to get around that.  Naturally a few economy cards are needed to afford those assets. In addition to Emergency Cache, Jim has a copy of Forbidden Knowledge in his deck. This both supplements his resource income, and gives him another way to deal with an Arcane Initiate that's outlived its usefulness.  Ritual Candles provide another boost to Jim's skill testing ability, making some of the worst tokens in the bag a little less bad. A copy of Fine Clothes is there to help with Parley checks; there's a few of these tests early in the campaign, and we can swap this out once we've progressed a bit farther.  And of course he's brought a few cards for skill tests. Fearless both gives him another Willpower boost and the ability to heal any mental damage he's taken.  Every Mystic deals with dark and mysterious forces; sometimes it's just a bit more direct. We've seen Delve Too Deep already; we can play up to two copies, and each one we do makes things that much easier later in the campaign. (Assuming we don't get ourselves killed in the process.) A single copy of Drawn to the Flame is there just in case there's a difficult source of clues that we need to grab quickly; the tradeoff is (usually) worth it!  These are the off-class cards in Jim's deck. In addition to the two copies of Lucky, he's got a Guard Dog and a Fire Axe to help him deal with enemies. Scavenging isn't useful for him right now, but it's there to help him recover one of the cards we'll be picking up with some experience.  Jim's Trumpet, his signature item, is on the weaker side. Without a reliable source of skull tokens, this won't have much effect, especially in a 2-player game, and healing is one of the less valuable abilities. I don't plan to play this much, unless the right opportunity presents itself; at least it has some very useful skill icons! Jim's primary weakness is Final Rhapsody, and it's... not that bad? With this campaign's chaos bag, the worst case is he takes 3 damage and 3 horror, but that's extremely unlikely. It's entirely possible that this just winds up doing nothing. Again, on the weaker side of signature cards. Honestly his random basic weakness, Indebted, is a bigger deal. In the first scenario we didn't draw any economy cards, so a few of our early actions were just spent taking resources. And since this is a permanent card, we'll be suffering its effect in every single game. Not fun!  Rex Murphy is an extremely powerful Seeker, unparalled in his speed at gathering clues. The only thing holding him back is his Intellect, so we naturally want ways of boosting that, and of keeping him safe from potential threats.  We've got some excellent tools to do the former. Between Dr. Milan Christopher and two copies of Magnifying Glass, we can boost Rex's natural investigation skill as high as 7. And Flashlight is there as a backup, and to help with higher-shroud locations.  As far as getting out of trouble, Seekers have a few tricks for that. "I've got a plan!" is expensive, but has the potential to deal up to 4 damage with one attack (since Rex tends to be loaded up with clues anyway). Mind over Matter is kind of a weaker version of that, but it also helps Rex deal with Locked Doors and other difficult tests that don't just involve fighting. Shortcut we've seen improves Rex's mobility, which can get him out of a jam when the monsters just don't want to leave him alone. He can also use it on Jim to save him an action, which can be clutch in the right circumstances.  A copy of Hyperawareness is there as a way for Rex to spend all those resources that he gets from Dr. Milan (we had quite a bank at the end of the first scenario, and nothing to use them for). And if the good doctor doesn't show up early, Laboratory Assistant will draw him a few more cards to speed up the search.  And of course, he's got the regular complement of skills.  Strange Solution is a bit of a strange inclusion, as its level 0 version is all but useless. Now that we've passed the skill test, it can be upgraded into a few different items, which give Rex powerful tools for fighting, evading, or healing.  Rex's off-class cards are mostly on the "staying out of trouble" side of things. Another two copies of Ward of Protection are there to deal with the worst of the treacheries, and two copies of Elusive gets him away from monsters (this is another taboo'd card; as printed it let you move to any revealed location, no matter the distance). Finally, Lone Wolf is there in case Milan isn't in Rex's opening hand, to supplement his income in the early game.  Rex is the first investigator we've seen whose signature card is an event, rather than an asset. Search for the Truth is a pretty dang strong event, too, letting Rex draw upwards of 5 cards. This is probably best played after getting hit by Amnesia, as we'll see in a second. And if he doesn't need the cards, this also has a bundle of Intellect icons for those high-shroud locations. As for his weaknesses, they're both pretty awful. Rex's Curse is incredibly annoying, as it doubles the chance of drawing the autofail or a similarly punishing token, and there's nothing that can be done about it. At best, you fail a skill test with it early, it shuffles back into your deck, and you don't draw it again. At worst, you just can't manage to get rid of it, and it makes you fail an important test at a critical moment. And Amnesia is one of the more dangerous basic weaknesses. While Paranoia can make you lose your resources, you can play around that by planning how you play your cards and when you draw more. But Amnesia is much harder to play around, since you're often saving several cards to use at the right moment, until this comes around and wrecks your plans. Its very presense in Rex's deck makes his signature event much worse, since now there's a decent chance that he draws this and has to discard all the cards he just drew. As far as improving these decks, there's a few key cards we want to get early. Jim's primary purpose in our group is dealing with enemies, and as such we want to upgrade his ability to fight.  Shrivelling is the obvious choice here. The level 3 version gives Jim a +2 boost to his Willpower for each attack, making him much more reliable at taking on tougher foes. We only have enough experience to upgrade one of these cards, so he'll be banking the other 2 points.  Rex has a few different things he wants, but this time he's going to spend 4 exp to upgrade one of his Strange Solutions to the Acidic Ichor variant. We're about to head into the lion's den, and we'll want every tool for quickly dealing with enemies that we can get. The last point of experience will be banked for next time. That's all for this look at deckbuilding! Next time, we head into Investigator decks: Jim Culver Rex Murphy
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May 13, 2023 15:33
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 Part II: The House Always Wins Dr. Armitage suggested you track down his associate Dr. Francis Morgan. He’s not sure whether Dr. Morgan is in trouble, but he’s not particularly happy with his colleague’s present choice of company. He’s in the Clover Club, a notorious gambling joint somewhere downtown. Finding the club’s exact location isn’t easy—you have to grease a few palms just to learn which of the Downtown restaurants operates as the club’s front. That restaurant is La Bella Luna, a somewhat upscale Italian eatery by the theatre. You change into your Sunday best and make your way there. In front of La Bella Luna stands a man in a pinstripe suit who sizes you up as you approach. “Enjoy yourselves,” he says with a snake-like grin as he holds open the restaurant’s front door. quote:Setup   Welcome to La Bella Luna, the finest establishment in town. If you would come right this way, our wait staff will show you to your table. We have an unparalled selection of wines and spirits, and our hand-made pasta (made fresh just this morning!) is second-to-none. Of course, if you're here for... other entertainment, you and your friends may follow me behind the bar. We only ask that you let my associate here pat you down for anything dangerous. Weapons, contraband, cameras, police badges. You understand. Please, make yourselves comfortable. Our staff will be glad to provide you with a drink, a light, or whatever else you might need to make your stay here a pleasant one. Don't mind the gentleman, he's here to keep an eye on things and make sure the games run smoothly. Try not to get on his bad side. Naturally we have a fully stocked bar; we source our beverages from a variety of sources. All of them legal, of course. You simply must try the whiskey; I'm not sure what they use to give it that rich body and flavor, but it's to die for. And finally, our tables. You'll find games of roulette, craps, blackjack, poker, and more, enough to keep a soul entertained until the break of dawn. We also offer private rooms for high rollers and... special guests. If fortune is on your side, you may get a chance to visit them for yourselves.Now I must be off, but please, have a wonderful evening and enjoy yourselves. And do stay out of trouble; my friend here is very good at handling troublemakers.  Welcome to the second scenario of the Dunwich Legacy, The House Always Wins (or the first, depending on what was chosen in the prologue). We're on the hunt for Dr. Francis Morgan, professor of archaeology and gambling addict, who hasn't been seen since entering this establishment. We've got to ask around and find out if anyone here has any idea where he went. - Round 1 - quote:Rex plays Magnifying Glass. No Milan this time around so our economy will be slower, but Rex is still a beast at collecting clues. quote:>> Jim draws 2 cards. A pretty quiet first turn, but really we're just stalling for now.  The Pit Boss is a hunter, so he comes outside to see what we're up to. Thanks to the current agenda, he's also aloof, meaning he won't attack us (for now). And now that he's moved out of the Lounge, we're free to head inside and keep looking for clues without interference. - Round 2 - The first of 4 doom is added to the agenda.  Jim draws our favorite little nuisance, the Swarm of Rats. Since these aren't criminals (at least I think they aren't!), they do engage him, so he'll need to swat them away before doing anything else.  Playing into the gambling theme, Rex's card is Twist of Fate. He pulls the autofail token (probably the best time to get it!) and takes 2 horror. We could "cheat" here and treat this as a positive token, but our friend watching us might not look too kindly on that... quote:Rex plays Shortcut, moving Jim to the Clover Club Lounge. We're on a tight timer here, so both Jim and Rex are saved an action moving inside.  Interesting; there's nothing to investigate here, but if we have a spare Ally, we can send them to schmooze and ask around for information. And as it happens, we do! quote:> Rex activates Clover Club Lounge, discarding Laboratory Assistant to gain 2 clues. We're limited to doing this once, so let's move on and see what else we can find. quote:> Rex moves to the Clover Club Cardroom.  Feel like gambling? For two resources, we can have a go at the slots, with a chance of finding a few clues each time we play. The odds aren't great - there are 15 tokens in the bag, 6 of which will get us clues and 9 that won't. Well, we might as well try it once, Rex has one action left and nothing else to do with it. Probably just a waste of time though. quote:> Rex activates Clover Club Cardroom, spending 2 resources. Reveals the elder sign, gaining 2 clues and 2 resources.  Or he could just get it on the first try! Who needs to cheat when you've got luck like this? Over to Jim, who has a rat problem to deal with and more clues to discover. quote:> Jim fights Swarm of Rats (3 to 1). Chaos token is a +1. Success! Swarm of Rats is defeated! The location is limited to getting clues once per game, but that's a separate limit for each investigator. Now that we have 8 clues, we're forced to immediately advance:  Little surprise there; looks like Dr. Morgan fell for the oldest trick in the casino handbook. Though, this doesn't really seem like the kind of place where they'll happily let you take your winnings and leave.  The Darkened Hall is connected to the Cardroom, so that's the way we'll have to head next if we want to find Morgan. Thankfully, we're still in the first agenda so that Thug is aloof.  And here's our next objective. Find 4 clues, find the VIP Area, and find Dr. Morgan. Time to start heading that way. quote:> Jim moves to the Clover Club Cardroom. The Pit Boss moves back into the Lounge; as much as I'd like to fight him for that Victory Point, doing so will immediately advance the agenda, so we'll have to wait for now. - Round 3 - 2 of 4 doom.  Jim draws Arousing Suspicions, which could be incredibly dangerous. Thankfully we're alone in the Cardroom, so he just loses 2 resources. Rex gets another Swarm of Rats, so Jim's going to go first to get that away from him. quote:> Jim fights Swarm of Rats (3 to 1). Chaos token is a -1. Success! Swarm of Rats is defeated!  A new suite of locations to investigate. One of them must be the VIP Area, but I don't think our friend here will be much help in finding it. quote:> Jim moves to Back Hall Doorway (W).   No luck here, this is just the rear exit. It's not a total loss though, as this is the first location with a victory point! We'll want to clear this one out before we're done. quote:>> Rex moves to Darkened Hall, then to Back Hall Doorway (S).  And another one! No time to wait, let's nab these clues. quote:Rex plays Magnifying Glass. Two Magnifying Glasses makes Rex nigh-unstoppable at finding clues at these easier locations. Shame that he only got one clue, but we'll get the other one next round. - Round 4 - Doom's at 3 of 4. The agenda will advance next round, and when it does the enemies will lose Aloof. We'll need to be prepared for when that happens.  Jim's card, Cursed Luck, shows up at kind of a bad time. He's going to be setting up to fight the criminals, and we don't have a good way to get rid of this. Hopefully it won't cause a problem.  Rex draws Something in the Drinks, but since neither investigator has visited the bar or had a drink, it has no effect. It surges into another copy of Arousing Suspicions, costing him 2 resources. quote:> Rex investigates (6 to 2). Chaos token is a -1. Success! Rex discovers a clue.  Well this isn't good. We've searched every location but there's no sign of Morgan, and it looks like there was a struggle or fight in here. I hope he's all right, but we need to prepare for the worst. quote:> Jim moves to Darkened Hall. His main attack spell has been freshly upgraded and is ready to go. Good thing, too, since the Pit Boss has made its way down to our location. During upkeep, Rex doesn't get a resource or a card thanks to the effect on the VIP Area. Let's try to finish this act next round and move out of here. - Round 5 - The first agenda advances.  They've finally gotten tired of our bullshit and are ready to kick us out. The Thug and Pit Boss immediately engage with Jim; hopefully he'll be able to deal with them both this round. Since we've already completed Extracurricular Activity, we skip straight to the end of the next agenda (if we were doing this one first instead, we'd get 3 extra rounds).   What was in those drinks!? So the front entrance is... gone. That's the least of our problems; we've got a very limited amount of time to finish our objective and get out of here.  We're on the last agenda; seven more doom and it's over. This is not a long scenario!  And of course we still have encounter cards to deal with. Jim's drawn Dissonant Voices, which won't do anything; he's just going to be attacking three times. Rex draws yet another copy of Arousing Suspicions, losing another 2 resources. Let's take out these thugs. quote:> Jim activates Shrivelling to attack Clover Club Pit Boss, committing Guts (7 to 3). Chaos token is a -2. Success! Clover Club Pit Boss takes 2 damage, and Jim discards Cursed Luck. All right, that's one set of threats dealt with. Rex needs to take care of the act before more show up. quote:> Rex investigates, committing Deduction (7 to 3). Chaos token is a skull.  Took long enough for one of these to show up! If we check the reference card, we see that skulls are a -2, although we can pay to turn them into a 0. That's not necessary here; we've got more than enough to pass the test and pick up both clues. Let's finally advance that act.  Well drat, he's not here, and things in the club are quickly going to hell.  There's already another monster on the board, and it's endangering the civilians! That Peter Clover fellow looks important; we probably want to help him before his health runs out.  And the game agrees! If we can reach him, and parley twice, we'll be able to escort him to safety. Or we could just leave; the goal is to simply resign, but really, we might as well try to help. quote:> Rex moves to Darkened Hall. In the enemy phase, Peter takes a damage, and both hunter enemies move to the Cardroom. It's not gonna be easy to make it past them. - Round 6 - First of 7 doom.  Jim draws Rotting Remains; we really don't care about horror at this point so he just tests 4 to 3, and get a lucky +1. Rex gets another Twist of Fate; yet again the token is the autofail, so yet again he takes 2 horror (we don't have the option to cheat the token anymore). Jim has the best odds of parleying with Peter, so Rex will go first and get the monsters' attention. quote:> Rex plays Strange Solution (Acidic Ichor). And maybe deal some damage at the same time. quote:> Rex moves to Clover Club Cardroom, engaging Servant of the Lurker and Conglomeration of Spheres. That thing hits way too hard to mess around with; better to evade and keep it busy. quote:>> Jim moves to the Clover Club Cardroom, then to the Clover Club Bar.  This was an alternate way of picking up clues early on; if we hadn't lucked out in the Cardroom, we could've come here to get the last few we needed. As it is, there's only one reason we're here now. quote:> Jim plays Fine Clothes.  And Jim's come dressed to impress. The Conglomeration still engaged with Rex attacks him, dealing a damage and a horror, and the other abomination re-engages. This is starting to go south, we've got to hurry. - Round 7 - 2 of 7 doom.  And each investigator draws a criminal enemy. This is actually pretty good for us, as we'll see shortly. Peter's only got 1 health left, so we need to recruit him this turn. The Fine Clothes that Jim played last round should make this pretty easy. quote:> Jim parleys with Peter Clover (4 to 1). Chaos token is a 0. Success! That was too close. Thankfully, parleying is one of the actions that don't provoke attacks of opportunity, so we didn't have to worry about that thug. Now we just have to get out of here. quote:Jim activates Peter Clover to automatically evade O'Bannion's Thug. And help keep Rex alive while we're at it. quote:> Rex evades Servant of the Lurker; Jim commits Unexpected Courage (5 to 2). Chaos token is a -1. Success! The Conglomeration has 6 health so it's still standing, if just barely. At the start of the enemy phase the agenda kicks in, discarding the Mobster engaged with Rex, so only the abomination attacks him.  Finally, the Servant of the Lurker readies and engages with Jim (its prey is the investigator with the lowest Agility, and Jim has a mere 2). - Round 8 - Doom's up to 3. Jim draws a Cursed Luck, and Rex gets a Swarm of Rats. We've still got way too many enemies, and not a lot of tools for fighting them with. quote:> Rex activates Strange Solution to attack Conglomeration of Spheres (6 to 1). Chaos token is a -4. Success! Conglomeration of Spheres is defeated!  The Strange Solution is out of charges, and we don't have any tools to help out Jim. The Laboratory Assistant should be able to help find more answers, and also give Rex a bit of much-needed horror soak. Of course, Rex's weakness takes this opportunity to show up while we're in a mess. At least it's near the end, and we shouldn't have too many more skill tests we need to pass. Jim only has one Shriveling charge left, which won't kill this abomination, so we really just need to evade it and get out of here. Problem is, neither investigator has any Agility skills in their hand, and the Cursed Luck is making it almost impossible to pass the test anyway. Let's try to deal with that last problem first. quote:> Jim activates Shrivelling to attack Servant of the Lurker; Jim commits Arcane Initiate and Rex commits Guts (8 to 4). Chaos token is a -3. Success! Servant of the Lurker takes 2 damage and Cursed Luck is discarded. Jim's special ability pays off, letting him treat the skull as a 0 (boosted to 1 by the Ritual Candles). We're safe from attacks this turn, though the abomination immediately re-engages after the enemy phase. - Round 9 - 4 of 7 doom. Getting down to the wire! Jim draws another Swarm of Rats, and Rex gets Rotting Remains. He can't afford to take more horror, so he commits Guts to go at 5 to 3. The first chaos token is a -1, but Rex's Curse forces him to cancel and re-draw the token. Thankfully the new token is a +1, so he's fine, this time. We've got to get away from this abomination, now. Jim is no good at evading, so Rex is going to cover for him. quote:> Rex engages Servant of the Lurker.  We need every advantage we have to pass this test, and this will let Rex not only use his Intellect to evade, but commit cards that boost it. quote:> Rex evades Servant of the Lurker, committing Perception (6 to 2). Chaos token is a 0; Rex's Curse re-draws the token as a -1. Success! Made it! Jim still has a rat infestation, but of all the potential problems that's pretty low on the list. quote:> Jim attacks Swarm of Rats, committing Fire Axe (4 to 1). Chaos token is a -1. Success! Swarm of Rats is defeated. We should be safe now; Jim can resign right here, and Rex is just one move away, so as long as nothing bad happens-  Spoke too soon! Jim's weakness, Final Rhapsody, has the potential to inflict some serious damage. If he gets really unlucky he'll take 3 damage and 3 horror. That said, Jim hasn't taken a single hit this scenario, so even if this goes really badly, he should be fine.  And it goes well, dealing just 1 and 1. The Fine Clothes soak it all; we don't need to parley any more. - Round 10 - 5 doom in play, 2 to go. The encounter cards this round are the same as the last; a Swarm of Rats for Jim, and Rotting Remains for Rex. Rex's been holding on to a Ward of Protection, so he'll play that to cancel the card. Now, we'd love to pick up those clues in the Back Alley before resigning for the victory point, but there's a problem. There's a rule that when you resign, you drop any clues you're carrying on your location. This means that even if we pick up those clues, we'll have to leave them here when we resign, so there'd be no point. Instead, Rex will just run to safety. quote:> Rex moves to Back Alley. One down, one to go! Don't worry, Jim's right behind him, there's nothing else we need to- quote:> Jim plays Delve Too Deep. Draws Conglomeration of Spheres. Delve Too Deep is added to the victory display! Uh, Jim? Exit's right here, let's get going- quote:> Jim plays Delve Too Deep. Conglomeration of Spheres makes an attack of opportunity. Draws Something in the Drinks, which surges into Twist of Fate. Jim plays Ward of Protection to cancel the revelation effect. Delve Too Deep is added to the victory display! In all seriousness, we had actions to spare and these were an easy source of victory points. Since Rex has already resigned, Jim's the only one who has to draw encounter cards, and with full health and sanity, there was no risk of losing. Let's get out of here, for real this time. quote:> Jim resigns. And at last, the final act advances.  quote:Resolution 3 Another rousing success! Well, we didn't find any sign of Dr. Morgan. And we've gotten friendly with some mob types. But other than that, definitely a success.  Hell, any scenario where we gain 5 experience in Dunwich is a win in my book. Well, we've chased down both of Armitage's requests, and both were dead ends. Next time, we'll check in with the professor, and hopefully get some answers about what's happened to his friends. quote:Campaign Log
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May 14, 2023 22:28
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 The next scenario has a significant choice to make, so it's time for a poll! We'll be going on the hunt for a copy of the Necronomicon, a tome of great and dangerous power. The knowledge kept within could be of great aid to us, given the monsters we've already faced and that will continue to hound us. On the other hand, as long as this book exists, there is the risk that it falls into the wrong hands and is used for some terrible purpose. Given the choice, do we keep the Necronomicon, or destroy it?
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May 14, 2023 22:29
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My group just finished the Necronomicon scenario and we voted to keep it, so selfishly I'd like to see what happens if you destroy it. (We've also had the same outcomes so far, though we killed the Experiment rather than rescuing the students.) Really enjoying reading this LP, by the way! Rythian fucked around with this message at 23:49 on May 14, 2023 |
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May 14, 2023 23:47
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Keep it It's not like we haven't had multiple unholy abominations running round the city chasing us or anything that will toitally have something to do with said book or anything!
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May 15, 2023 00:13
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Keep it We Must Consult the Necronomicon has always reminded me of the Addams Family Pinball table.
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May 15, 2023 00:16
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Destroy it.
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May 15, 2023 00:16
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DESTROY it!
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May 15, 2023 00:36
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Rythian posted:My group just finished the Necronomicon scenario and we voted to keep it, so selfishly I'd like to see what happens if you destroy it. (We've also had the same outcomes so far, though we killed the Experiment rather than rescuing the students.) Thanks, that means a lot 
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May 15, 2023 00:47
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Agreeing with everyone else that this LP has been fantastic so far! I would also like to toss a vote at DESTROY IT!
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May 15, 2023 01:07
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Destroy!
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May 15, 2023 01:39
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This is great to watch. As for the choice... hmm Oh heck, why not? I'm sure we won't have any trouble DESTROYing the book that gave Ash endless trouble in his world.
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May 15, 2023 02:12
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Destroy it!
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May 15, 2023 03:25
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