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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8657433" data-attributes="member: 86653">I haven't read or run Alone Against the Dark, but I've run the hell out of The Haunted House...what they're now calling The Haunting. It's a mess, honestly. It would work far, far better as a more linear adventure. Or at least a strong start pointing in one obvious (but different than the most obvious) direction. The setup is: you're hired to investigate a haunted house. That's it. That's the extent of the setup. Okay...so what's the first thing you do? If you're 99% of the players who've ever gone through this scenario, you literally go directly to the house...to investigate the house...like you're hired to do. Because of course you do.NPC: "Here's some cash, go find out if that house is haunted." PC: "Okay." B-line for the houseDesigners: "Not like that!" Everyone else: "What?"Which is the opposite of what the designers intent for you to do. They want you to investigate the house...by not going to the house. Instead, you go to the library, the Boston Globe, the Hall of Records, the courts, the police station, explore the neighborhood the house is in, and, based on what you find, you'll be pointed at two bonus locations, the sanitarium and a burned down church. After...after...you hit all or most of those locations, then you're expected to go to the house. Why? Because unless you know before going in that the place really is haunted and that there are some incredibly nasty things inside, then you're most likely going to die really, really fast. I mean fast even for Call of Cthulhu. You'd think in the 40 years they've been using that intro scenario they'd have built in something of a better start. Basically it's a disconnect between the assume play loop and what the designers actually wrote into the books. They assumed that the players, knowing they're playing CoC, would avoid going to the house (where the obvious danger is) and try to arm themselves with as much info about the house as they could before actually setting foot on the property. Near as I can tell, this assumption was not actually put on a page for the referee or players to read until some time much later, if ever.The best and longest game of Call of Cthulhu I've run was an Arkham-based open world sandbox. I used the Lovecraft Country supplements to populate the town (and region). Dropped in as many of the scenarios as I could get my hands on. And let the players go. If they wanted to focus on one scenario/mystery until completed, they could. If they wanted to run back-and-forth across town chasing a dozen leads to a dozen different mysteries, they could.Don't forget the North End of Boston stank of molasses for years (decades) after the 1919 flood. Especially when the weather turned hot.</blockquote>

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