Wanted! Your experience with Horror on the Orient Express

[CanadienneBacon]

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Credit: Chaosium, Inc.​

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I'm a huge Agatha Christie fan, and I'm also a fan of PbP gaming. Horror on the Orient Express, a Call of Cthulu mega-adventure, caught my eye today while I was looking at CoC .pdfs. I admit it. I drooled.

The .pdf sells for $60. The blurb on the Chaosium website says that the campaign contains nineteen (19) adventures and 1100+ pages.

Have any of you run or played Horror on the Orient Express? Anyone seen or thumbed through a print copy? I would like to know the good, the bad, and the ugly. Is it fun? Does it have (a lot of) errors? Does each adventure contain monster stats? What would I need to purchase separately to successfully run it? Are any of the 19 adventures better suited to PbP? If you played through some or all of it, how often did you lose characters due to death or insanity? Is there anything particularly relevant to this adventure that you'd recommend a DM or players know when creating characters or planning the campaign?

The sheer length of this bad boy makes me uncomfortable. I wouldn't attempt to run all of it as a PbP; I'd want to select snippets to run. $60 is pricey. I'm hoping someone here will have experience with the adventure and can speak to its worth.

 

[Deepfire]

Played the german version (which has a lot more background material - part of it quite useless) - it's a very railroady campaign (not only because of the train, of course) - a lot logical gaps - a lot of work to do to run it smoothly, but it still was a great experience and took us some years to finish.

If you play it, read it completely. Twice. There are connections which span years in real time play, so it's better to be informed from the first minute on. And be prepared to improvise heavily if your group is as interested in changing your plans as mine was. :-D

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

I ran the original. It was much fun.

There's even a novel based on this campaign:
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/store/product/7-the-express-diaries/

I've also had a look at the new (much expanded) edition.
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/articles.html/_/main/marty-and-the-horror-on-the-orient-express

$60 may be a lot if you're just going to browse through it, but it's cheap if you're going to play it or read it in depth.

 

[Jhaelen]

I only recall some comments by fellow RPG players that the adventure was rather deadly (yes, even for CoC!), so they never got very far into it.

 

[Voadam]

CB,

I too saw it and would like reviews to see how cool it actually is. My initial thought was "Want!" but then the $60 price tag gave me pause. I would not get it for PBP. Way too long. Even medium length mega adventures are ambitious for PBP. Your Rod of Seven Parts game was fantastic and lasted a long time but the source material for that PDF is listed at 300 pages, nowhere near this size.

There are other Chaosium long adventures with great reviews that you should probably check out first if you really want one to use in PBP. Shadows of Yog Sothoth is $13.17 and 176 pages and considered a great multichapter one, one of the earliest CoC classics. Tatters of the King is 236 pages for $15.95. Talien's review of doing this with Arcanis and Freeport setting D&D makes it look really cool. Masks of Nyarlothep is 248 pages, $19.22 and considered a high quality classic by many. Beyond the Mountains of Madness is another one considered fantastic at 440 pages and $21.97. I bought Masks during one of the sales and the collected d20 CoC Nocturnum by FFG when they had that PDF for sale but I haven't done much more than open them briefly since I got them. I keep eyeing the others though, particularly when Chaosium holds a sale.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

OMG. Voadam! How the deuce are you?!

Yeah...really, for PbP, I've arrived at the conclusion that 20 pages is actually the sweet spot for adventure length. I'm running a d20 Modern and a 5e Stonefast game right now via PbP, and have taken care to award a level-up in order to keep my players motivated to post. We've finished one of the short modules in the d20 Modern game (those mods are something like 6 pp each), and have gamed through approximately 25% of Stonefast. A big draw for me for both of those games is thay we can actually FINISH them.

The length of Horror on the Orient Express is a major drawback for me, as a PbP DM.

Can anyone speak to whether Horror has multiple errors? Or is it well-constructed?

 

[CanadienneBacon]

. . . it's a very railroady campaign (not only because of the train, of course) - a lot logical gaps . . . .

This is the sort of comment that concerns me. I like for players to have choices, and meaningful opportunity to affect their environment. With HotOE set on a train, however, I'm not sure how to counteract its "railroadiness." What are some things one could do to make it less railroady, do you think?

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

Recently re-released are audio recordings based on the 1991 Horror on the Orient Express campaign.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

[MENTION=25112]PaulofCthulu[/MENTION], what's the link lead to? Is it a recording released by Chaosium, or something you personally generated? A gaming session, maybe?

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

Game sessions.