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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7271398" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, sorry, but that is the opposite of dramatic.  There are plenty of CoC scenarios that do dramatic just fine, including for example the example ones like 'The Haunting', 'Edge of Darkness', and 'A Cracked and Crooked Manse'.   But that scenario is not dramatic - it's cheesy, lame, and poor design.   Any freaking keeper could have a scenario with 'You open a door, and you see Yog-Sothoth.  Roll an insanity check.'   But such a scenario would not be dramatic.Again, you seem overly comfortable with metagaming for my taste.  By saying you'd not hit them up for full sanity risks for not 'interacting so closely' - this is a tacit admission that you can't use the scenario as written.   There is no interacting with the scenario as written.  It's just a movie that plays out that the PC's are supposed to do what with?  Run away from in anticipation that there will be overwhelming sanity loss if they stick around to try to figure out what is happening?  That's not dramatic.[SBLOCK]All of those can be resolved quite easily with sufficient firepower.   In New York, a couple of grenades tossed into a room full of naked people with no weapons in close quarters and a few trench broom style shotguns and the whole crowd is dead.  Poor some gasoline into the pit to kill whatever that thing is without looking at it (because almost no mythos monsters are immune to fire) and you're done.  The only SAN loss you have to worry about is an angry keeper punishing you for ruining the scenario by being too ruthless when fighting... murderous cultists aiming to destroy the world.  Cairo might offer the best scenario for having a couple of .404 Rigby's with a telescopic sight, as it's the nastiest sorcerer in the bunch and probably can destroy any party he sets his mind to destroying but he goes down like a chump to a head shot from a shooter he's not aware of.  Only a Keeper deciding Nyarthaloptep personally intervenes stops that strategy, and if that is the case then why doesn't the Dark Pharoah just squash the PC's personally - ei,  "You open the door, it's Nyarthalotep."   London is fundamentally similar.  You don't actually need to do anything here but you can keep a keeper from punishing you with easily justifiable replacement NPC's by killing off both sorcerers.  The easiest way to do that is the same methodology used in Cairo.  A bit of hide and sneak and a well prepared fighting position.  If you stop the ceremony with some well placed rifle fire before it starts, you win and the rest is just some library research with no real pressure on you.[/SBLOCK] Look at it this way, the whole campaign hinges on the PC's will be able to follow the trail of clues.  To that end, the scenario GUMSHOE like leaves breadcrumbs everywhere than even minimally competent parties will be able to follow.  So all the actual challenge is dealing with those sorcerers and their nigh endless stream of cultists and summoned minions.   Not fighting the sorcerers in any sort of symmetrical warfare is the only viable strategy, which can mostly easily be accomplished by a team of commandos since the sorcerers have vastly more magical power than the PC's will ever have and their minions are immune to SAN loss while police officers and soldiers - even if you could recruit them - certainly are not.  The biggest danger I can see in this approach is the aforementioned police officers and soldiers.  Although, I suppose a truly ruthless party would set the police up and rely on all that SAN loss and resulting carnage to cover their own tracks and provide justification to the authorities.This is the whole point.  The 'genre' is what the game creates, and not what the game intends to create.  The game might intend to create Lovecraftian horror and may even do so on the assumption the players 'behave', but what if the PC's don't behave?  Just metagame?</blockquote>

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