Recently I got Chaosium's "Horror on the Orient Express" two volume campaign adventure for Call of Cthulhu. Paging through these two massive hardcovers totaling 700 pages, I am looking at NPCs, background history, plot intricacies, etc. I think "maybe I'm not smart enough to run this."
This got me thinking about other products I've purchased, including the original edition of Ptolus (seeing that the 5e revision Kickstarter recently funded.) It was so involved, so difficult to run, that I've been hesitant to run another urban campaign for the past 15 years or so.
In general, I have yet to encounter a campaign setting that doesn't completely overwhelm me - the one that was the closest to manageable was the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, because each location was presented in an unrelated, demiplane.
For campaigns, I'd say "Orient Express" is probably the most overwhelming I've seen - more than Masks of Nyarlahotep or any of the 5e campaign adventures. (Taken as a whole, maybe the Pathfinder Adventure Paths would be as overwhelming, but since they're published individually, they don't seem as daunting.)
What do you think? Have you ever been overwhelmed like this?
This got me thinking about other products I've purchased, including the original edition of Ptolus (seeing that the 5e revision Kickstarter recently funded.) It was so involved, so difficult to run, that I've been hesitant to run another urban campaign for the past 15 years or so.
In general, I have yet to encounter a campaign setting that doesn't completely overwhelm me - the one that was the closest to manageable was the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, because each location was presented in an unrelated, demiplane.
For campaigns, I'd say "Orient Express" is probably the most overwhelming I've seen - more than Masks of Nyarlahotep or any of the 5e campaign adventures. (Taken as a whole, maybe the Pathfinder Adventure Paths would be as overwhelming, but since they're published individually, they don't seem as daunting.)
What do you think? Have you ever been overwhelmed like this?