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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Byrons_Ghost" data-source="post: 815895" data-attributes="member: 7396">This probably won't help much, but here goes... from the sound of things, you may want to consider a different campaign to run. I've always felt that Dunwich was made with longtime CoC players in mind, the kind who know exactly what to look for and how to wade through row upon row of degenerate hill folk to get to it. If your players are as new to this as you seem to indicate, I don't see it working out too well.At the very least, I would take a shorter scenario and move it to Dunwich as a better starting hook- or at least as something to introduce the players to the sorts of things they need to do. You mentioned that you have Arkham, that's bound to have something that can be used as a starting point (I don't have the book myself, but it should have three or four scenarios). If you have a copy of CoC 5th ed, there's a scenario called "The Edge of Darkness" that I've often used as a campaign starter- it gets disparate characters together, sends them to a single site with a few clues and an easy (relatively speaking) monster, and gives them a framework to keep investigating after the scenario is over. Personally I always thought the hooks into Return to Dunwich were the weakest part- I haven't read Tynes' scenario, but it looked pretty short to me, more of a plot seed.If the Arkham scenarios or Edge of Darkness don't work for you, you might want to try the adventures at the Chaosium site, or rpgarchive.com, for some alternates.As to having them explore Dunwich, I would take things one step at a time. First they learn of the previous events of the horror, then they learn about the books and the sorcerer, and maybe meet the Believers. From them, they get some of the background of the area. At this point, the players will probably either wrap up their mission (ie prevent Whately's return) and leave, or decide to delve deeper into the area. If the latter is the case, then you can bring in all the stuff with the spores, the caverns, and Abhoth. I would just use portions of the caverns- they always struck me as too much of a dungeon crawl, and there's no reason to explore more than a fraction of them.If all else fails, you could just have them be in Dunwich for a while and notice the odd goings-on, such as having them inherit some property or something. If they had a relative die mysteriously, leaving behind odd manuscripts or whatnot, it might give them reason to start poking around.Another possibility is to start events during the Dunwich Horror, using it as a sort of backdrop. The PCs go down with Armitage and the rest and deal with some smaller, tangentnal things while Armitage and his cronies do their thing. They could assist by interviewing people to get the full story on the Whatelys, deal with some minor threats that were unleashed at the same time (maybe the Horror disrupted a mi-go mining operaton or something), and generally play through the background. Then, when Amos tries to get Wilbur's books, Armitage sends them to do the follow up work.</blockquote>

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