Unland Review - Call of Cthulhu (Fear's Sharp Little Needles)

Review of the Call of Cthulhu (but run through Kult: Divinity Lost) scenario Unland, written by Scott Dorward for Stygian Fox’s Fear’s Sharp Little Needles.
Text review on mjrrpg.com:
mjrrpg.com/unl...
Fears' Sharp Little Needles on DriveThruRPG:
www.drivethrur...
Sue Savage's Character Sheets:
drive.google.c...
Sue Savage's blog, Savage Spiel:
savagespiel.bl...
Thank you to Cryochamber for use of their album, Cthulhu.
• Cthulhu - A Cryo Chamb...
cryochamber.ba...

[@verlandes1]

The GM for our ungoing fantasy campaign had to cancel this past weekend, so I said I could run a one shot. Read Unland on the train to the location, 30m of reading and no prep time.
Worked really well, me and the players had a really good time with this. Having the players come up with their lies at the end was a high point.
FSLN is really a great book for when someone cancels and you need a scenario on the fly.

[@zachmckinney2497]

Thank you for your content.
This is one of the best coc adventures.

[@hoemuffin]

Spoilers in comment!
I'm going to be running Unland in a week or so in CoC for a 4 player group, still not sure if makes more sense to do the dark secret myself or have my players make it up - on the one hand it gives them more authorship, on the other hand I wonder if it'll telegraph the big reveal. Also not sure if its better to have them keep the characters secrets from one another or have it out in the open when they choose the pregen.
Going with a spin on an aspiring social media influencer, their struggling drone/camera person, a washed up former paranormal TV show host trying to reclaim his glory days, a just released former inmate trying to find out what happened to their sister (the aforementioned NPC). Not sure if it makes sense to make a few more pregens and letting the players choose, or just having 4 since I'm not worried about any unexpected accidents

[@mjrrpg]

Depends on what sort of feeling you're going for, but I prefer preparing them in advance to make sure they overlap. It was also good fun watching my players faces when after they chose their characters and read over their backgrounds, then sheepishly looked and the other player whose character theirs had screwed over.
But I can see having them each make their own background would also make things more cooperative and dramatic. Everyone would be in on it, making it more about the characters than the players. Either would work, I think!