Watcing Jack argue with Seth or explain things to him is strangely REALLY satisfying.

Small technical detail for Jack. When on the moon, keep the helmet *closed*.

I’ve just watched the review. Being from Morecambe in the UK. The fact that the scenario is set just over the bay in Barrow made me chuckle. They could have gone in a different direction with this. The folk of Barrow have got the “Innsmouth Look”!! Yet another book I “need” to buy.

“Holy crap, it’s totally Stargate!” , that line killed me.

@jamesmilton6529

2 жыл бұрын

Stargate had the better setup

I see the bad moon rising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightnin’. I see bad times today.

@SMAXZO

Жыл бұрын

It's a must for you to play this song during this module..

When you said that the module uses "lesser utilised Mythos creatures", I was hoping it was the Yith

The picture of the British lunar expedition was worth the price of the whole supplement just on its own. That moment when you realize, wait... Moon expedition? Awesome!

I love the idea of using Bad Moon Rising to extend the 3rd act inside the Yith homeworld and using it as the basis for either the finalie or beginning to a Pulp Cthulhu campaign. This could go a few ways, depending on how one would wanna do it. One option is to play it like it is in the game, with the players millions of years in the future, trying to escape back to their time, probably aided by other prisoners and races of beings. Another idea is to make the time jump something like 10-30 years instead, where waking the old one sparked an all-out invasion of the Yith, setting it more as a "War of the Worlds" kind of adventure. If the heroes had been on other adventures, they could be joined by old NPCs, now soldiers and generals in the ongoing war, while other NPC may be dead. Or maybe set it 50-100 years into the future, when the war is already fought and won by the Yith, the heroes now waking up in this dystopian Yith society, humanity on the run and nearing extinction, the heroes aided by a human resistance in an attempt to get them back in time and undo the horrible fate of mankind.

@AlluMan96

5 жыл бұрын

Another thing to note is the adventure hook. It's weird how weak it is, when it could have been so easy to fix. In order to get the plot-hook nice and deep into players, the most elegant of solutions is to make it specifically one of the PCs that get's the vision of the future. Have it be a scenario, where one of the PCs has agreed to help him in the demonstration, letting him see with his own eyes the horrible fate that is to come in the future. You either make this doctor an already-established expert in the mythos, possibly even an ally that the heroes can trust the word of or have the gig pay well enough that the PCs don't care one way or the other. Perhaps use some of the time between this and the mystery proper to also make sure to enforce the idea that the prediction is accurate. Have it be like they saw alot of other, smaller prophecies in those visions too and over the course of a handful of weeks or months, have these visions come true without fail to insinuate that these visions weren't just a parlor-trick. The diving accident itself is pretty good to ensure that, but making the PCs the ones that personally experience that will help sell the narrative. Hell, there are some fun things you could do with Moe as a character in the alternative scenarios I suggested. In the "Dystopian society" plot, you could have it so that Moe had kept looking into the future and armed with the knowledge of all that is going to transpire, he will dedicate the rest of his life to using both his own wealth and a few lottery-predictions he made to set a plan into motion that is set to go off whenever the players awake, which involves assisting them in getting back to the past to save the future.

My idea about "fixing" the spectator mode of the latter half: As they are going for the time machine, they are being chased, but the helpful human-yith is holding up the chasers. Players get inside the time machine, but before they can depart, the yithians damage the machine from the outside, and while travelling in time, it starts to have difficulties/malfunctions, so the players need to find and decypher the user manual, to fix the time machine, before it falls apart and they get trapped outside of space and time. Maybe the one decyphering it should be the player who swapped bodies previously with a yithian. When they arrive in the chosen time, have the time machine explode or something from the inappropriate repairs. This solves the later "problem" of why wouldn't they use the time machine again and again when they have access to it. I hope these ideas help some keepers

Whats crazier than the Stargate conection is similarities with the ending of this adventure with the Futurama episode "The Late Phillip J. Fry", where they use a time travel capsule and keep going forwards in time untill they witness the end of the universe and its rebirth into an identical universe in which they have to resume their lives (since the machine can only travel forwards in time and not backwards).

I love how Jack always has his lucky flask with him.

I've known this adventure for at least ten years, and I never realized the Stargate-ness of it...

1987? Geeze, one glimpse at some lady with Farrah hair, crazy sunglasses and day-glow spandex leggings and bangles and the party would all have to make a San check for 1d3/1d8 sanity XD.

@dubuyajay9964

5 жыл бұрын

Hey! The 80s was great! 🤨😤😡🤬

@justinjanicki6561

3 жыл бұрын

jesternario my current campaign is set in the 80s, my players loving call it Cthulhu Vice.

@jesternario

3 жыл бұрын

@@justinjanicki6561 HA! Have fun!

i thought about running this, then realised my table that has a "what's in it for us" mentality would just start harrasing people and start brawls during the part in london

I ran this a few years back as the end of a campaign, the party finished by in Victorian London surrounded by vampires (Anno Dracula type world)... they were totally freaked by that ending

When this adventure first came out, I read it, and I simultaneously had the impression that it was fantastically imaginative and the single worst adventure that I had ever read. I can't imagine running this without completely reimagining and changing the final third.

@lordbiscuitthetossable5352

4 жыл бұрын

My distinct impression is that this isn't so much a session that is intended to be played through but rather a story. A story can get away with these big jumps in logic by the sake of that the characters are ultimately completely at the mercy of the author, works less when with players who are much more likely to have different ideas then the GM. Even so, it's so random and requires significant modification to make sense. Why not cut out the awkward investigation and just have the military invite them in?

I'm a longtime Lovecraft fan, and I'll soon (hopefully, anyhow) be playing Call of Cthulhu for the first time. I love listening to your reviews of these adventure modules, as it hypes me up and gives me ideas for what kind of character I want to create. (My GM/Keeper will be running a Home Brew story, so I don't have to worry about spoilers.) It also provides me with some ideas for campaigns I might run myself. Thanks Seth, keep up the good work.

Damn. What ever happened with the Yithian PC?

Seth, your content is so entertaining that I went out and bought some Call of Cthulhu adventures. I don't even play Call of Cthulhu, we usually play D&D, but we're going to give it a try. great content keep cranking it out.

4 жыл бұрын

how did it go?

@peershaunm

4 жыл бұрын

@ they weren't having it, but i'll talk them into it eventually.

@shanelorrison5224

4 жыл бұрын

I also bought several Call of Cthulhu game books based on Seth’s reviews. My group is now starting our first Call of Cthulhu game this week.

@tommageddon2012

3 жыл бұрын

@@peershaunm I've also been trying to get my gaming group into Call of Cthulhu. I'm a nut for Lovecrafts work, and I have his complete collection. Read the whole thing more than once. The problem my players have with the system is they like to be definitive hero's, which draws them to games like D&D and Mutants and Masterminds, and their issue with Call of Cthulhu is that there's generally no "Win" situation. The bad still happens, you just work to prevent it for a while longer, which I can see where they're coming from. Someday I'll get a party together.

I just have that picture in my head of one of the Apollo-Crews finding remnants of what looks like early 20's diving gear next to an Union Jack.

Feels like the 2nd half of the adventure needs to be an entire series of adventures, instead of a railroaded storytime. Sometimes when you have a great story to tell, it can be easy to forget that you're making a game that has players, not just an audience.

Really enjoying watching all these reviews - I just found your channel. As a newer keeper, I find them super helpful. Even the adventures I'm not going to try soon, it's instructive to hear your explanations of your thought processes and adjustments. Thanks for the great content!

@SSkorkowsky

6 жыл бұрын

Thank you very much. I'm glad you find them helpful.

Excellent review, as always. I've always loved this scenario though I've never run it. I agree that the science fiction over horror aspect is very cool in this one. It is a bit prose driven as well. I also liked the idea they pose at the end of landing in the Victorian era during the Martian invasion (that is one of the possible endings they suggest, isn't it?). Kudos on Jack, as always. I wondered if you were going to shove his face into a diving suit and was not disappointed to see you did. The Yithians (and the Elder Things for that matter) get very little attention in the game. It almost feels as if they are more backdrop or scenery than actual races. I worked the Yithian in when I ran The Asylum and again, later, in a scenario too subtly (the players never even knew of its involvement) and I got to use one in City Beneath the Sands years ago. I think both races get too little action, personally.

@SSkorkowsky

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks. I love the story of it, but it's just too much exposition in the last third. Yes, there is an option to drop them in the middle of the Martian Invasion. I'd originally started making a big plastic helmet from an instruction page I found. It....did not go well. So I opted for just shoving my face into a picture.

6:11 “Just in case the PCs find themselves up against the wall, and they start getting frustrated, that’s when you can arrest them.” LOL! “Phew! We've been arrested!”

This is going to sound nuts, but what if the players ended up in 1987, 1897, 1887, or 1987 BC and thus tying into Moe's initial experiment? And does Moe=Moriarity? A bit simple for that evil genius, but still!

@SSkorkowsky

5 жыл бұрын

Nothing stops it. It even mentions you could drop then in Cthulhu by Gaslight or Modern Era, or any other time you wish

@railbaron1

4 жыл бұрын

I'd drop them in the middle of a CCR concert while there playing "Bad Moon Rising"

your voice is so relaxing Seth

The lack of urgency at the beginning is an issue. I got torund this by allowing the PCs to follow Williams and Niles after the inquest. Even if they lose them, they get some extra information, plus if spotted the Navy will start investigating the PCs, upping the tension.

This made me want to rewatch Stargate also. It was great!

Excellent Seth! And to think I was just about to write the comment that this should be a movie.

Now I really want to see the Goa'uld in a Call of Cthulhu game...

Loving the Sandman shirt.

thank you for posting this review

I have a plan for the ending of this campaign, first I totally intend to leave the choice of when the party gets on and off the time machine up to them, give or take a few years as margin of error. Riding on your point about a changes history, I think it could be fun to have this be a sort of campaign reboot, and they find their bee universe to be one similar to the top notch alternate history mod for Hearts of Iron 4 called Kaissereich, where the Germany and the Central Powers won the First World War, and give the players the added challenge of figuring out everything that changed in their new world.

I'm going to have to get hold of this as it looks like a fair bit of it is set in my old home town. (No, not the moon.)

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Fantastic review!

Jack the diver/ astronaut. Awesome!

Sheesh, my biggest surprise is that we live in Lancashire and my gf was born in Barrow-in-Furness, her mother still living there. Dont remember hearing sth odd there, I think I need to investigate....

@otakuofmine

Жыл бұрын

Only now by coincidence I showed her the end and realised: she was even born in the same year the scenario was published! :o

What is bath and sco phobia? Your review makes me consider playing Call of Cthulu but sadly all my friends are DnD players

@hysterical5408

5 жыл бұрын

Are they really hesitant into getting into a new system? If so, I recommend trying to get them to do a oneshot, something like Edge of Darkness(which is one that Seth has actually reviewed) is a good start I think as it's short, easy to understand, and if you get bored of the investigation, just have the zombies start popping up.

@Artemisthemp

5 жыл бұрын

@@hysterical5408 Seen all his Reviews and found out one of my Co workers actually know the Call of Cthulu system

@hysterical5408

5 жыл бұрын

@@Artemisthemp Oh, good to hear. Hope you can play it at some point.

Sounds like they'd have gone insane when experimented on. I know it's pulp cthulhu, though, but otherwise I don't see them making it through this one with any sanity left. How do you end up on the moon fighting slimey aliens and not go insane via classic Cthulhu rules (or at least expectations)? And the setup for this is pretty railroad, especially if the setting is about to be obliterated by the reboot (which should drive CoC characters insane). Literally all accomplishments lost, unless the new universe "them" had already done them, then gone on the same mission in this universe JUST as the PCs arrive to take their places. Maybe skip the railroad with some blurbs or montages, and get to a point where they need to do something instead of reading "at" them? Ugh. I hate being a spectator when I come to be a player.

@SSkorkowsky

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah, they showed up 2 weeks after their other selves had left. Sanity was ground down hard. I didn't even go into the Hound of Tindalos that chased their time machine for a few million years. That was one of the biggest San killers. Pulp Cthulhu is no nicer to Sanity than regular Call of Cthulhu, so all of the PC's were well into Indefinite Insanity by the end of it.

I'd be interested how you did Strength and Dexterity in the Lunar gravity, and did you use a similar rule to consumables in the Alien rpg?

When can we watch you play Seth?

So ... if you watched Stargate before the game, does it make it more enjoyable to play or less? Does it lose a sense of mystery if the players (not the characters, mind) know what the gate is or does? I remember playing a Space 1889 scenario (published by GDW) where - after a time - the players tumbled to the fact it was very loosely based on The Murders of The Rue Morgue. After that, it was difficult not to metagame for them. In the post mortem, I had to write in several major plot changes.

Have you played Down Darker Trails?

@SSkorkowsky

4 жыл бұрын

I finally got to play it recently. Fun game. More Hollywood Western with the Pulp rules than historic Western, which made it a lot of fun.

@rawrbeez6625

4 жыл бұрын

Seth Skorkowsky so would you say it’s better suited to the Pulp ruleset?

@SSkorkowsky

4 жыл бұрын

I say yes. But I'm also heavily biased toward the Pulp ruleset. Really it depends on how you want your own games to feel. If you want your PCs jumping off cliffs and onto horses while shooting two 6-guns and laughing, then definitely pulp.

Seth, love the review. If you have ever run it, I would love to hear your review of "The Spawn" from this same book.

@SSkorkowsky

6 жыл бұрын

Haven't tried The Spawn out yet. Next review might be Born in Darkness from that book.

I had a poster of that cover

You ever consider doing audiobook narration?

@SSkorkowsky

6 жыл бұрын

I've thought about it. But when I narrated a short story of mine for a podcast, I came to the understanding that I'm just not a voice actor and audiobooks should be left to the profeddional voice actors. When my first novel was going to be an audio book, my editor asked me to read it. I said no. So we got R.C. Bray and he's been way better than I would have been. Here's my terrible attempts to narrate. kzread.info/dash/bejne/iKqZtcdsfanNlps.html

15:56 oh my GOD CTHULHU TIME TRAVEL IS FUTURAMA RULES

Holy crap it's totally Stargate :D

This adventure has a lot of really good ideas I’m definitely going to steal but the adventure itself feels too clumsy for me. Sure it’s a cool story but I don’t meet up with all of my friends to tell them a story.

Cause baby we got Bad Moon! Wait that’s not how the song goes. Lols XD.

6:42 Haven't you heard of the Legend of Old Man Henderson?

The collection of awesome tshirts continues lol. A common problem in CoC is exactly why the PCs continue their investigation, especially since CoC characters are typically cerebral academics rather than burly soldier types so once the weird starts why would they go into the dark crypt...unarmed?

10:44 Once again absolutely baffled that Chaosium messed up the maps.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Rowland never got any Stargate cash.

The only question I have is how seeing the universe die and be reborn doesn't cost infinityd10/infinityd100 SAN. (Also, wow, Jack the NPC took NO prisoners on this one!!)

I hear a hurricane a blowing...

I still can't grasp why there wouldn't be more guns than marines... A pistol each and a rifle for every enlisted man (and noncom)

I also really want to watch Stargate... again.

Great idea but the scenario needs a massive rewrite

3 sec's in and thumbs up!

Once they "cracked" the mystery. Lol!

The pyramids of the Qu?

It's Stargate until it's The Late Phillip J. Fry.

I love Stargate!!!!!!

when you live close to the places in the review woop

Of course. When I'm abroad on vacation and I see a military base, my first instinct is to attack it. Well done, writers.

Enjoying your reviews very much. I totally agree with your approach to Cthulhu. I played 30 years ago and loved it. Trying to get my kids interested. This scenario was the beginning of the end for my campaigning. After getting through Masks and many scenrios my character was transported to Cthulhu Now at the end of Bad Moon Rising. So although I enjoyed the scenario it took me away from my beloved 1920's campaign.

Stargate? Okay. Can't beat the Yiithians? Oh really? HIT THE CLAYMORES!

Von Junkenbergs beste Abenteuer

Im i the only one who thought it was going to ne about werewolves

A...stare gaye.