I ran it again, did it go any better?

So on the 14th, I took the scenario to my bosses for a night of gaming. It was a group of 4, so less people to manage, but did that make things any easier?

Well yes and no. First things first, 3 of the 4 are gamers, not TTRPG but still, so have a fundamentally different mindset on how a game is meant to game. This meant that while they were taking on the roles of their characters, there was still a conversation of “if we had the ability to escape too soon, then game is over, so what we want to do probably isn’t going to work”, so this kinda introduced a different element of meta gaming (is that the right term?). I did still allow them to try everything they wanted, but there was always that underpinned, it wont work because that is too easy, thought train.

Aside from that, their sense of investigation and question asking was a lot fuller. I think it helped that I distilled each room (thanks to chatGPT) to bullet points rather than verbatim text blocks. It gave me the opportunity to describe things a little easier because I wasn’t trying to take a block of text and reword it on the fly. There was an unexpected result from this game though, they managed to investigate less rooms, than the last group did.

This game went from 7:30pm to about midnight, which is longer than the other group played, so how did they search less? I think they managed to spend so long actually investigating rooms and asking questions, it managed to pad out the time they spent in those rooms. I don’t think it really impacted anything too much though. I think their path of travel was; the complete ground floor, to the basement into the coal room (which ended up with a bout of madness), back up to the living room then finally upstairs.

When they got upstairs, the only places they had time to look in was the master bedroom, the sewing room and the cupola. By the time they had come out of the cupola, it was getting late and I needed to force a wrap up. This left the rest of the rooms upstairs unchecked, but because of the rooms already checked, it didn’t really matter this time. So once they stepped back out of the sewing room, I had the cat appear to coax them downstairs to the basement and under the house. I think the next action exemplifies what these guys are like… One of them took a can of tinned food, opened it, then smothered it over their body to try and lure the cat to them!

How did it end?

You know, it ended in pretty much the same way as the last. Once they got under the house, even though I tried to lure them into the alcove where Evelyn was sitting, they went right down the path towards the exit. This time, they sent one guy up, who went to the shed, grabbed an axe and broke the front door down. This time however, I had the cat sitting ready to fight (and eventually kill) the player who broke the door down. The other 3 had already started back tracking to go out the front door and came face to face with Evelyn in the same way the first group did.

One player was eaten while the other 2 legged it out of the house.

What is the takeaway from this one?

Well I am not sure. The 2 groups seemed like they played the same way but with different approaches. Although this time one of the players kept suggesting they split up to cover more ground, the other 3 were adamant on not doing that! Not a problem this time though because there were less of them and was easier to give a little attention to all at the same time.

Although there was only a difference of 2 people, it seemed far easier to control and manage the players. Less noise, less thoughts and less conflicting ideas. The old adage of “too many chefs” rings true here for sure.

We all thoroughly enjoyed the game and we have another date penciled in for the 23rd Jan, 2 of the others need wifey permission to come and game.

More of the same?

I will put it to the group before we settle on anything, but I have bought the beginner box for Starfinder and I will be buying the beginner box for Pathfinder during Black Friday on Amazon. Most of them had played HeroQuest when they were teenagers, so they might be interested in one of the other games. But if they want to play Call of Cthulhu again, then I am thinking of running “The Carnival of Madness” or “Viral”, both modern day scenarios. I haven’t looked at Viral, but looking at the other, it looks like it might take a couple of sessions to get through. Which with this group might be a bit tougher to do, because of the potential sporadic availability of this group. Families… always getting in the way of being nerdy bastards!

So who knows!

Well on Sunday 23rd Nov, my family group will be sitting down to roll characters for the upcoming campaign. They have all decided they want to spend the time to do it and as this is the only time this month we will be together, even though it will only be for a couple of hours, they want to do it.

I have also said I will try and run a D&D scenario from the Hellfire Club box set for the young girls. But we will only have 4 hours in total then, that includes time to eat and what not. So might be all over the place or the D&D game wont happen. We will have to see. I will report back on the days shenanigans regardless.

Anyway, until next time!

Much Love <3