Wanted! Your experience with Horror on the Orient Express

[Voadam]

OMG. Voadam! How the deuce are you?!

Very good thank you. Still in northern Virginia and doing well. Work keeps me too busy to do pbp stuff like I used to and I'm here a lot less than previously but I've been part of a weekly face to face game group for years now and I'm currently playing my Voadam character in a Wrath of the Righteous Pathfinder demon hunting adventure path game. Before this current one I was DMing the Reign of Winter Baba Yaga themed AP until the party TPK'd in the third adventure. Both have been a lot of fun. How are you?

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I'm great. I finished law school last May and am working as a prosecutor. Love my work. Family's healthy, so couldn't ask for more.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Game sessions.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

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?

I have played through the new campaign, not the old version, at a fast pace. It can indeed be quite deadly, but I think we had only four deaths with six players. As always, it's really easy to the Keeper to adjust this. There are a couple of potential TPK scenes, but the new campaign highlights them and makes suggestions.

The railroads nature is not actually as noticeable as you might expect. Each town has no "required" resolution, major villains can be killed or avoided. We skipped a town or two, and you can have multiple different endings. You can step off the train and catch later ones, fly between locations, or take side adventures

 

[CanadienneBacon]

The railroads nature is not actually as noticeable as you might expect. Each town has no "required" resolution, major villains can be killed or avoided. We skipped a town or two, and you can have multiple different endings. You can step off the train and catch later ones, fly between locations, or take side adventures

Oh. Does much of the adventuring occur on the train? I was hoping for intrigue on the train.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

The bulk of the adventuring is at locations; maybe two-thirds or so of the action? It's a little hard to quantify as it could be a lot more or less depending on how the keeper runs things and player choices. It's hard to say more without spoilers, but:

- the most tense and dangerous moment (when my character AND me as a player completely believed we were all about to die) was the culmination of a long session entirely on the train
- OUR finale sessions (~ 6 hours) was entirely on the train. However your may not be. I think for most groups, it will be.
- there are 3 or 4 major scenes set on the train (ones which will take significant play time)
- there are numerous smaller scenes on the train in and around locations; you meet many NPCs, see and react to events, and have to deal with officials and so on. The train is always in a session.
- there are optional scenarios with action mostly on the train. If you investigate a certain lead (which we did not) you might end up on trains in other dimensions, even.
- even when you are in a city, the logistics of the train journey are always on your mind. Where are your valuables? Is your rifle in your hotel, in the luggage car, waiting for you at the next stop? If our planned night-time activities do not work out well, which is the next train we can get out of town (this happened a lot to us ... We were a bit messy)

Here's a non-spoilery example from one mostly location based session: starting on the train, we pass through border control and conceal our less legal items, while pumping them for a bit of info. We meet a famous singer at lunch, and one of us spends much time chatting her up (informatively, but unsuccessfully). We arrive at the next town,decide what to bring to our hotel,mand start following our lead there. Much adventuring occurs, at the end of which we catch the train out before being stopped by the police. On the train out compartment is turned over, and we spend some time trying to work out who did that.

That is probably one of the least train focused sessions. 3-4 shorter scenes on the train only. The longer sessions involve a chase scene (on the train), a whodunnit serial killer murder tracking session, what in retrospect was I think was a trip to the dreamlands version of the train, a to-the-death combat with a vastly powerful foe, ...

You will spend a lot of time on th train. You will possibly die on it. Enjoy!

 

[ShadowDenizen]

I've loved this campaign since it was released back in the mid-90's, and I have purchased both the original when it came out, and the Revised Version, which was released recently.

First, production and value-wise, boht books are top notch. The Revised Version comes in a sturdy box, and is PACKED with gaming goodness. (I'd recommend the hard-copy over the PDF unless you're a complete digital enthusiast; you can get the set on Amazon for ~$75 bucks or so, which is only marginally more expnsieve than the PDF.

As to the Adventure itself...
A) Yes, it is potentially quite lethal, though, [excluding the Doom Traim Red-Herring in the prologue] they do a good job of ramping up to the danger, rather than throwing it at you right away. [Of course, lethality is dependent on the Keeper; in the introdcutory booklet, they offer options to keep players alive longer, including such options as simply "Doubling starting HP."]

B) The adventure is a bit railroady [pun-intended], though it's less noticable in this editon than in the previous version, to my mind. There's better connective tissue between scenarios, and the PC's get more info on some material that remained vague and behind-the-scenes in the orginal version. Most of the scenarios take place at cities where the Orient Express stops, obviously, and both editions largely hand-wave the trains schedule, opting for the more flexible "Trains are availabe as the Keeper sees fit" philosophy.

C) There are a few interludes on the train, along with cardtsock maps of the layout, and an entire book full of NPC's available for use. As Keeper you can add more or less time on the train as you see fit, of course.

D) Depsite the updates, there's still a few logical/plot gaps in the narrative, but, again they seem less obvious in this edition. (And the Keeper has Fenalik as a back-up should the PC"s utterly foul-up their mission and miss some of the Simulacrum pieces en route.)

That said, this is a rewarding campaing, but demands comittment from both PLayers and Keepers alike. And check out the recordings of actual-play from www.yog-sothoth.com ; the Braford Players (*led by Paul McLean) are by far my favorite actual-play podcasters, see if this campaign sounds up your alley.

 

[SteveC]

So I ran the original and had a great time with it. Yes, it's deadly, especially when some of your players can't seem to get into the proper mindset.

I actually had a character die before the adventure even started, which is a sort of record for me. That player losts six characters across the whole adventure.

My group still talks about the game years later, so it was a memorable adventure, but it is a railroad, and not just because of the fact that it's set on a train.

It also contains a monster that was rather jarringly not a mythos creature which my group liked, but others may not.

If you run it pay particular attention to the ending and try to figure out how to play it out. By the book your group may not find it particularly satisfying.

I'm trying not to spoil things here so I won't say too much more openly.

 

[Voadam]

CB, the PDF is currently the deal of the day for $36 on rpgnow. Early birthday present potential.

 

[Wycen]

First, I will point out that CoC and horror RPG's in general are not in my wheelhouse. I'm playing because I like the people I'm playing with.

We are currently on hiatus, but if I had to guess, about 3/5th of the way through. We actually started our campaign in America, made out way to London, England to stop Carcosa, and then found our way to the Orient Express.

Due to our extensive prologue, if you will, our original party was not the party that booked tickets on the Orient Express, which is not the current party finally making our way to Turkey.

I believe we are playing the original version based on the condition of the book's cover, though I know our GM is adding things since he pulled out the Cthulhu Invictus book for a dream sequence when we acquired a particular artifact.

Our GM has also told us of some of the things he's changed because it was too deadly. At this point we only have 1 original party member, or 2 if the person who really prefers combat oriented games ever shows up again.

I'm also not sure how mind shattering things would or could be. Our GM probably is a bit more liberal providing boosts to our sanity. That's also influenced by our actions and of course missing sessions keeps you saner than those who show up regularly.

Whatever version we are playing, it is literally a railroad. I'm not trying to be funny. This is in fact why my original character left the group. By some cosmic coincidence all the artifacts you need just happen to lie along the route that takes you to the destination that some mad wizard says will make the problem go away. After surviving Carcosa, my PC said "screw you guys, I'm going home" and so my new, more destructive, PC joined the group.

Most of the stops provide excuses to either find artifacts, which are needed if you follow the plan, or to interact with NPC's and explore the locales. First is France, then Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, plus probably a few other nameless places. Our trip may also have been more difficult by the explosion that destroyed the train we were on somewhere after Trieste from a stick of dynamite we threw at a monster.

There are multiple reoccurring villains.

We've had 2 catastrophic combats on 2 different trains, and at least 1 role playing session on the Orient Express. We've been dissuaded from travelling via car, particularly once we got into eastern Europe. We had to travel via foot and then plane thanks to the French Foreign Legion after the train blew up. That was straight to the next stop on the route.

Hopefully that isn't too spoily, but if you want more specific info I will try to rack my brain for it.