How to fix this scenario: The macguffin downed the plane. The macguffin drove the moonshiner nuts. He killed the previous divers. The shady character had hired the dive team but hasn’t heard back, so he is now paying premium to learn what happened as well as get the macguffin. The macguffin activated again when brought to the surface, making the moonshiner transform and do appropriately monastery things.
Okay, that's a really good idea. It would work not unlike running a one-shot session with fresh, not-yet-scarred investigators. Except their performance in that scenario _actually matters_ in a larger context, so the players have a vested interest in making sure their temporary diver PCs succeed. (Because if they don't, their main PCs don't get what they're looking for).
That's a great plan. You could go with the idea that disturbing the artifact summons a creature, too -- I have the mental image of a sort of fishlike entity that rams the barge, shoving it along, and then you play out the "dragged along the bottom" segment almost as written, except it's *actually caused by a mythos creature* rather than a grumpy drunk.
I wish more people reviewed game modules like you do, because there are so many games I would like to run but I need more information on them. Thanks for these reviews!
Yeah I've only been DMing for about 2 years and good modules are crazy helpful even if I'm just cannibalising them or Frankensteining them together. Sometimes I modify a module to the point where you can't tell it's the same thing, but I still need that framework to hang it on The reason I only dare running D&D and CoC is the abundance of great modules out there. If I wanted to run something like Vampire the Masquerade, which seems to have almost this disdainful attitude towards modules then I wouldn't even know where to begin.
Yup! I don't have that much cash and don't wanna go buying a module based on a few random reviews online.... Thanks to seth I can buy a module with confidence
Exactly, he frequently reviews bad adventure modules, his detractors just don't realize it because he doesn't just say "this adventure sucks." He instead picks out the good parts and rewrites the rest of the adventure to make it work, which is way more interesting to me than negatively tearing them apart.
@@Tony-dh7mz this may be late but i just recently found his channel i just started running call of cthulhu games myself but anyway maybe chaosium put him on the payroll bc they appreciate his criticisms and the want to do better so they are asking him to honestly review adventures idk like i said i am new and not trying to be disrespectful just an idea
Great review. It sounds like someone came up with in depth diving rules then had to tack on an adventure to get it published in Fearful Passages. There may have been a much more involved adventure but had to be cut way down to fit page count.
Idea: The plate is an ancient & highly polished metal plate. Used as a mirror long long ago. When someone looks into the plate in natural sunlight, or maybe moonlight, they can see shadows of an 'other world' in the background. When brought up from the depths, an NPC (probably the diver, leaving the moonshiner jerk as a red herring) looks into it too long and becomes possessed by an entity from that other place. This possessed NPC steals the plate as soon as they can in order to convert more humans into these others (whatever kind you want, or some new nasty). As time goes on, more people are being turned, and you can possibly add a proper gate/summoning of a bigger nasty, or other world incursion of some sort, as a bad guy goal in order to give them a loose time limit. Room for false positives and paranoia in the nearby small town. Add mutations, etc, to ratchet up the CoC tentacle pron. It may not be mind blowingly original, but it sounds much better than some Diving skill rolls.
@@Dorian_sapiens Thanks! I think the dive could be used as a tiny starter seed for something much larger. Hrmm.. transdimensional seed.. perhaps bursting out of people Alien style? Hrm. Lots to spread out and flower with.
You could tie it into the king in yellow, this whole things is just begging for that type of influence imo. I was thinking rival moonshiners or mobster or cultist who used magic to help crash the air craft would make this more interesting. the drunk boat owner could have strategically acquired to another location one of the diving suits after it reminded him of his time in the navy where he used one. Rolling the teacher and drunk farmer into one npc removing the need to leave the setting and preserving the suit. The hostile moonshine rivals or mobster he had a bad deal with or cultists who helped the plane crash could have taken the farmers kid/wife/goat/dog as a hostage or wacked them last time they came after the farmer. Adding this element creates a conflict they either need to avoid or help solve adding some fun conflict or agency to the game. It would also allow a sniper or just some hostile npc to take pot shots at the boat to cause the boat to start moving after the farmer is hit real bad and to give the air pumpers something to do besides just pump air and fight the drunk.
Why not two monsters? One for the group on the surface and one for the divers? Also, it seems very strange that the first dive team would just leave their suits behind. As you described it, it seemed to make sense to me that Bill had killed them and disposed of their bodies. Perhaps he found part of the McGuffin or a second McGuffin that gave him some strange powers and/or drove him mad in the process. Well done, as always, and very entertaining. Thanks for sharing.
Perhaps he thought the first set of divers had brought ALL of the treasure when he killed them. He kept their stuff, so when the new investigators arrived he thought there was more and offers the equipment. He plans to kill them. That's the two monsters. The Thing in the water and the old man, with gun, on the barge / platform. Or maybe there is a creature in the lake that has become friends with the old man and they are conspiring to get the investigators... Check out this horror comic book story from 1975, "Fish Story" for a "good" creature to fight with the old man. diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2018/01/addicted-to-alex-nino-fish-story-by.html?m=1
You're a genius. Head cannon is now Bill murdered the first team and the multi-thousand dollar suits are actually hints the first team never went back alive. When the PC asks to contact the first team, Bill would then have a reason to make things difficult for them to contact the first team. Bill then tries to murder the diving instructor and the PC under the water, and when caught, would blame it on him getting drunk. This end with a battle with the actual villain, whatever was possessing Bill, or maybe just Bill himself who is actually insane and can summon deep ones. The reward would be Bill's large boat and his waterfront house as a new base of operations.
The fact that the tablet is implied to have some kind of connection to dreams feels like an enormous wasted opportunity. It could be a great set-up to have some strange Dreamlands creature swimming around in the lake, either to protect the artifact, or simply as a hungry alien animal in the vicinity of the wreck trying to get its next meal.
@@bbd121I like that idea I was thinking maybe bill give you a kick back of his booze running from time to time and connects the players with his parters as as a reward/plot hook depending on what you wanted to do or have You could give the players the little place just have it be complete with his crops, still, some tnt under the floor which isn’t too crazy with stump clearing being a thing and former buyers wondering where their product is as a reward. Have the deed be either with the tnt or not there at all imo The buyers/mobsters could “help” make the place legally the players for a small fee/favor/more booze or for just letting their guy set up a little place and keep it all going like the farmer did giving them a new patsy (the players) for the land and the fact you just cut out a unreliable and unheeded guy for the organized crime in the area. This lake could become a real hot bed for crime if you wanted it to and all the stuff that could provide.
Thought: If you have an underwater monster, have it circulate between attacking the divers underwater and the people on the raft. Like a big shadow sweeps by the divers, threatening to knock them over and/or sever their lifelines and air tubes. Then the thing swirls around and jumps over the raft threatening to knock it over, possibly knock a player into the water and dissrupting the pumping crew. Then you go from there, and the players have to either try to stay and fight or try to make it to land - possibly with the divers having to "run" for shore if they are unable to climb or be pulled upp by the top side crew, who has to manuver the raft to not get sunk while this thing harras them.
Might just add in here... Washington/Oregon were WELL known for big-timber country... Why not just have the lake attached to some river for the logging industry... This leads into the "jerk" NPC local... Not just a boozer/bootlegger, and conn'ing folks out of money for his ownership of the lake, but there's ancient (extinct?) wood left laying down there... AND his barge is the only one big and bad-ass enough to do the work for getting it.. AND that lends to the "barge" and dive equipment (questionable stuff in the barn) NOT being left by the rescuers, but either collected over years by the NPC-local, as well as "reasonably" bought from the Rescue/Salvage Team... The "barge" could even be a clever (primitive and crude) setup on pontoons, specifically for salvaging logs, but so unstable above the surface that it's extra difficult to stand when "overtly large monsters" are trying to topple it... Not that it's bound to sink, being water-tight and durable... just unstable as a walking platform. Overhead structures and a lack of "main deck space" don't mean you can't still dive, either... it just puts space at a premium (with the right design)... Have a couple NPC's available in town who can also dive... These are probably fellow "log salvagers" who work with "the jerk"... SO they can be manipulated by the want/need to get the PC's happy enough to leave soon, so the secrets of remarkably rare and valuable wood varieties can be kept under wraps... OR if the PC's figure out the gig, BLACKMAIL also works well... The macguffin, COULD be the source of a monster... OR there could be some weird "nexus of powers" principle with techno-gobblety-gook between artifacts and ley-lines, and intersections of ley-lines creating power places where special magnetism attracts worse and worse factors of insanity and luck... SO a giant crocodile has taken up residence in the lake, and is starting (not so quietly akin to Lake Placid... movie reference) to eat people... among other things. AND it's eaten part of the plane, with the macguffin... SO now you can run all kinds of scenarios around cultists interested in the giant crocodiles that shouldn't be in Washington State... The pilot going to the asylum for delusions of everything from flying tentacle monsters (resembling a certain flying spaghetti monster?) attacking aircraft, missing billionaires with screws loose (staring right at you Howard Hughes)... and even a backwoods country fried feud between locals who want their wood kept secret and at least one or two outside industrialists who are CONVINCED there's still at least a standing grove of "old growth" left of this extinct poplar or some such thing... If you wanted a slightly modern bint, you could even stick a few "Pseudo-GreenPeace" activists into the area trying THEIR damnedest to save the last of the extinct trees, and causing regular headaches for just about everybody in the game... good, bad, ugly, or otherwise. If you like this kind of thing, TAKE TAKE TAKE... as long as you enjoy it. A little bit of sketch-work and a model or two, and I think this could be a regular comedy-drama gold mine with some horror survival tossed in. ;o)
Would a Bull Shark be scary enough? It's not supernatural, but if the lake or pond is near a river, he could theoretically end up there from an overflow/flooding. Fun fact, that shark is the only one that can exist in both fresh and salt water and the infamous attacks the novel "Jaws" were based upon were Bull shark attacks in the early 1900s-and some of those were in rivers.
A way to give the players urgency will be that when they arrive at the lake they found another group of divers that are trying to recover the item or any valuables that remain in the plane, the rival group has his own barge and diving equipment but they don't know where the plane crashed and they are searching for it. Billy does know the plane location because he was the one who saw the plane crashing in the water and is angry that the other group has his own barge and equipment. Of course the grumpy old drunk will rent his barge for a price but will not tell the players where the planed crashed forcing him to be at the barge when they are diving and causing the incident when he gets drunk. It can also lead to a fight with the rival group who will try to steal the item once the players found it (or the other way around). EDIT: Of course the players will need to have either some point in the divers skill already or enough time to do the training, maybe the other diving group is not already there and will arrive in a few days giving the players a chance to improve their diving skill.
Here's an idea: The PCs run their normal - non-diver - PCs on the boat, holding off cultists with the added complication of keeping the boat stead for their other "characters." These other characters could be the dive crew, a group of specially made characters, just for this adventure (and maybe others in the future). They could even be another mythos-fighting group, or (my favorite idea) not. But, they go down and deal with the mythos creature tied to the relic at the same time the regular PCs are above fighting the cultists. Both groups are ran by your players, each player controlling their character and one diver. It could be a fun encounter, jumping back-and-forth between the groups. If the non-divers mess up and the boat moves too much it could complicate things down below - or it could end up saving one or more of their lives as they are suddenly pulled beyond the creature's grasp. Does that sound doable?
Seth, I just wanna tell you that you're so wholesome and make me happy when I watch your vids. Thank you and keep doing what you do. Thanks for teaching me how to play Call of Cthulhu
I liked the review. It sounds like they spent a lot of time on the diving rules, but not much on the actual adventure. I have to say that a scenario where part of the party is submerged searching for a hidden relic while the rest of the party is running the oxygen compressr and is battling swarms of Deep Ones, does have a real Pulp Cthulu feel to it.
Belloq "Dr Jones. Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away" Me "SURE! TAKE IT! I DIDN'T WANT IT ANYWAY! But you'll never take my hopes and dreams Belloq, never my hopes and dreams...."
I have an idea for the finale: 1) Going with your "the monster comes up to the raft and somebody gotta keeps pumping" The object is sealed with some weird curse thus it can only be picked up by the guy who cast the curse (the dead guy from the crash), so to destroy/kill the monster the PC underwater has to perform a ritual or sth while the others gotta stay alive/pump. 2) I like the "divers getting dragged along the ground underwater" part of the original. So say the lake is actually an artificial one and that there is a damn holding it in. So after getting the item, either a weird mythos monster or the cultists destroy the damn and it turns into a rafting session for the guys up top and a hardcore survival challange for the divers (also a possible chase scene)
Half-baked, incomplete but maybe workable idea: Let the players hire the best dive team in the area. Catch is they have to work the pump. The team never returns (byakhee), and all the other teams decide it must have been unsafe and won't go. However, the instructor NPC finds out about their plight, and, due to money trouble, offers to train them for a month to get them up to 50-60‰ Diving. This all draws the cult's attention, and they attack using another craft, so while the people below fight the byakhee, the people above fight the cult.
I've been thinking over the problem of how to convince the players not to just pay somebody else to do the job for them, and it reminded me of how the movie Armageddon solved that problem. As in: what if the professional divers *can* do the job, but there's some element added to the excavation that only your player characters can solve, like proper lock picking, explosive handling or mythos knowledge? You could even have one or two of them come with the PCs for support, then either leave when their expertise ends and the PC's begins, or have them get killed off to increase the stakes of the adventure.
I was going to suggest the same thing. One of Seth's earlier Cthulhu reviews had a similar set up to get the PCs into diving suit esc environment suits so I'm surprised he didn't use that adventure as inspiration. As for why they'd leave the PCs alone to do the job and adding sense of urgency. It could be whoever was funding the dive pulls out due to all the problems caused by either the mythos or cultist sabotage. Now they only have X many days to get the artefact before the diving equipment is taken away.
One way to spice up the diving aspect would be to have Rival cultists with access to diving equipment (through murder or indoctrination of professional diver?) and a fight breaking out both on and under the lake with perhaps two cultists in diving suits carrying knives and/or harpoons attempting to cut their rival's air hose.
Underwater Cthulhu is, conceptually, really obvious fodder for adventures. So much Mythos stuff is tied directly to bodies of water, from _A Shadow Over Innsmouth_ to _Call of Cthulhu_ itself to _The Doom That Came To Sarnath_ , just to name a few. The watery depths and the horrors they hid were a huge fixation for Lovecraft. Yet rarely do Lovecraft's protagonists actually venture beneath the waves themselves. _The Temple_ being the major exception. Which is a missed opportunity, since being underwater - especially for 1920s humans - might as well be a space walk for all the disempowerment they feel. Moreso, really, because most space walks don't have monsters hiding in the gloom. There's great potential in aquatic investigations. As stated in the video, the major hitch in such adventures is getting the investigators down there, without making them entirely helpless. They should FEEL disempowered, but not completely, as that's no fun. If they're supposed to go diving, they really need to already have experience with it. I mentioned The Temple earlier, and I think that's one of the better scenarios. The investigators are passengers or crew on a submarine, when they get roped into some undersea eldritch shenanigans. Such PCs would probably have decent scores in Diving, so going into the deep won't leave them as sitting ducks. If you want to cheat the technology, you could assume that the diving suits even have their own tanks of compressed oxygen, so they aren't dependent on someone else pumping air to them. Further, an adventure occurring in a sub or in a sunken temple with some air pockets creates an obvious Closed Circle effect. The characters aren't just going to be able to run at the first sign of trouble. Again, very much like horror set in space; they are stuck in oases of habitability, surrounded by a (in this case literal) sea of death, and a monster is trapped there with them.
So say the pilot survives like your in your modified version and the players learn from him or the auction house that the item they're after will only stay sealed or intact underwater for so many days. That would give them urgency to dive as soon as possible. Anyway just a thought, really enjoy your channel, it's great to listen and just imagine the adventure as you explain it.
Another great vid Seth! I love how annoyed Jack is, "That is not a scenario, that is a SCENE!" Delightful. I've flipped through that book and it seems like most of the scenarios they present work better as set pieces in a larger story or as ideas that need to be fleshed out more before they're playable on their own.
Based on this, I get the feeling that whoever wrote it was more interested in the rules than presenting a good story. I've also got a question: in your "How to Run a Module" video you mentioned that you have two general categories - "Not Workable" and "Needs Work." So I was wondering - are there any modules that you've run that required minimal to no work to run?
When you talked about adding a monster under the water, the first thought that came to mind was a chase scene. Imagining some mythos creature snapping at the heels of a diver, knowing it is futile to fight while trying to get back to the surface is pretty terrifying to me. Maybe add a third party to the chase to cause the guys topside to have their own problems to deal with, like the cultists you planned. I have yet to play CoC (trying to get my pals on board and excited), but I feel like it would come together pretty well when the divers make it back on the barge, and the monster bursts out of the water and flips the cultists' boat, maybe grabbing a few in the process to convey how quickly one could get boned by this thing.
One way to use the dive rules might be to run "The Crystal of Chaos" from 2013's "The House of R'lyeh", but have the investigators recover the Shining Trapezohedron from the bottom of Narraganset Bay, rather than the steeple of the Free-Will Church on Federal Hill. In the water, the diving investigators might encounter a voonith that had been pulled from the Dreamlands by the crystal.
There was a Lovecraft story wherein a sunken U-Boat captain goes and explores a cave underwater. Why not use that? If it is underwater, if you really want to go all out-the characters go to the Sunken City of R'yleh?
Seth, your re-working of the adventure was a major improvement. As you mentioned, the "timer" you selected, a single team of cultists racing to beat the players, was an issue. After the players ambushed them, no more timer... anti-climatic ending. You could have had a cult hire some goons (one is an ex-navy diver) who has a couple of lackeys help him kidnap the dive instructor, forcing him to help recover the item. If the players defeat the goons, they have freed a grateful diver who can train (one of) them using the goons/divers equipment. He can also share the information that the cult gave the goons a deadline for recovery because unless the item is properly warded using a special ceremony by a certain astrological event (eclipse, solstice, etc) that something very bad will happen. In other words the item itself is a "timer" that you can use to motivate the players to rush to recover it. They could then investigate how to perform the ceremony themselves to save the day, or risk handing it off to this shady contact instead. Another idea for some underwater excitement is to have a body left in the plane which the item can use as a weak puppet (something that could be either fought or outsmarted) to resist the players efforts to recover it in time. Perhaps the plane is not the only source of bodies in the lake... the drunken farmer's wife did "run off" several years ago. Maybe she's been resting peacefully at the bottom of the lake for a few years, and the item "awakens" her and she attacks her husband and makes trouble for the players. Thanks for the review.
The more I think about it, the more I think this was meant to be a bunch of rules and options for Diving with a tiny half-baked "Learn 2 dive" scenario included
You could always have the PCs play the Diving Crew hired by their usual characters. Probably work with a 'Space Truckers' (Alien Crew) kind of feeling. Also nothing stops the Mythos Creature to be some kind of Alligator that has been affected by the artefact (maybe it swallowed it after eating the guy carrying it). Kind of a 'Lake Placid' or 'Jaws' kind of vibe. Sorry for the ramble.
Always happy to see another review for call of cthulhu was a dnd DM and now i do both and cthulhu is quickly becoming my preferred game. Do you have any plans to do a horror on the orient express review? Sounds really interesting if not no worries keep up the great work :D
I own Horror on the Orient Express and really want to try it, but it just keeps getting moved back on the priority stack. Part of it is that huge campaigns like that are a very long-term commitment and intimidate me. I always worry we'll get like 10 sessions in and lose interest or something. We really like mixing things up with an Adventure-of-the-Week style.
@@SSkorkowsky okay no problem, i must admit that does concern me as well whether people will want to see it through to the end. Hopefully one day it will happen though, if it is anything like the two head serpent campaign it will be a blast :)
I don't know if this has already been recommended but a Keeper could make some sort of threat attack or disrupt the players on the surface while the player under the water is retrieving the item. It involves everyone and if the players end up paying the dive team than all the players could help defend the dive team. As an added bonus you could add an aspect were the item effects the person/people sent down to retrieve it. You could also easily change the location of the plane crash to fit in better with a current campaign or threat.
Sorry to ask on an unrelated video, Mr. Skarkowsky, but I have a coming Cthulhu session in which I will be using my own scenario for the very first time. I did a published adventure in which the players were sent to the future and laid the groundwork for them to go to the Severn River Valley in England, knowing that the current campaign was sending them to Scotland. After looking at Gla’aki’s stats, the intended villain, I realized that killing him outright would be nearly impossible, but the Demi-god Yogolonac also lives in the same region. My idea is that during a goodwill tour of the area, Gla’aki intentionally separated Edward VIII, crown prince of Wales from his entourage, and he’s hiding out waiting for his military escort to find him. Yogolonac, disguised as an innkeeper, and the dreaded spirit of the Black Abbott is haunting the Cotswold region and intends to possess the crown prince, taking control of the British Crown, and in return, using its resources to find the comet fragments to free Gla’aki. Will this work as a scenario or is it too far fetched?
With all the scenarios I've written or read, there's very little that's too far-fetched as long as it makes sense within the story. X leads to Y, which leads to Z. As long as it feels like it makes sense in the game story and nothing is just random and feel haphazardly thrown on, you should be fine. The rest just comes down to how it plays, what your players do, and what plans your dice have. The other part is that the PCs can figure it out by the end. Many scenarios neglect the part where the PCs learn why something is happening, even though the GM knows and maybe the players know after the fact, but there's no possible way for the PC's to get the reasons for all that's happening.
Seth Skorkowsky thanks so much. My players tell me I’m a good GM, but I’ve only run scenarios written by other people in every instance of play. I feel like a kid going to get the mail for the first time without his dad holding his hand. In the end, it’s not really that big a deal, but it’s still a scary prospect for the first time.
Those old diving suits are scary enough as is have you ever seen that mythbusters episode where the pressure cracks the face hole glass on that and the body inside bursts? Also Jack has a new hat o.o
Yeah I had to use this with my guys because I had to come up with something quick and one member wasn’t able to come and this was something I already knew and they enjoyed it thank you for saving my call of Cthulhu game.
I'd make the item an old book or manuscript in an ornate box, that while the box might protect it for a limited duration, the longer it was submerged, the grater the risk of it being destroyed.
I'm thinking of a survival situation instead where players go to investigate a missing group of divers on an island. Playing with a couple of ideas, but the scene I'm getting is that one or two players are in suits diving to get something they need, either to fix their boat before a massive storm hits the island, and/or to stop a god from breaking free, with all the tension on the diving party doing crazy puzzles/traps underwater, when something(s) attacks the boat and the other players need to fight them off while keeping the pumps running.
You can also find diving rules in the "Spawn of Azathoth" campaign (It's not an important scene in the campaign, but it looks like a nice parenthesis in the adventure)
I haven't looked at the diving rules mentioned in the video but just based on your review and your version of the adventure, what I might have changed is that (1) I'd switch the personalities of Bill Taylor and Jake Walsh. (2) When the PCs arrived to recover the artifact they learned that another group (the cult) had visited recently and asked Bill Taylor about using an antique diving suit he happened to own because he uses it to explore the lake. Bill got the notion these individuals were up to no good, and sent them away, but forwarded them to Jake Walsh if they wanted to learn to dive and get equipment. (3) Have the PCs 'train' will Bill in diving, and one night see a strange boat on the opposite end of the lake (the cult). (4) Have the PCs search for the wreckage at the same time as the cult, the group above the water fights the cult itself while the PC below the water tries to secure the Dreamplate before the cult diver can bring it to the surface. One point I find strange that you didn't go into is -why- the plane went down in the first place. The Dreamplate or Mythos artifact being bound in some way to a creature who is released when someone takes hold of it could lead to point (5) where the PC who recovers the dreamplate brings it to the surface, and as they do, the creature very easily destroys the cult and then attacks the players who have to defend the plate as they head back to shore.
Thanks for the headsup. The vanilla scenario was underwhelming as hell. After this review, I tried to reincorport it into our homebrewn "Daughter of Rhan-Tegoth" (Yup sequel to Horror in the Museum) campaign and had to make some major changes, such as including more modern autonomous dive suits (our campaign is takes place in the 80s) that have their own oxygen supply and comm system, so that every player can participate equally in the dive. All in all it fairly enjoyable.
As for monsters, I probably would try something that can surface to the boat while it's body remains underwater, dividing its attention and perhaps allowing the divers some kind of stealth advantage as it focuses on the boat.
Hi Seth, here's a few things that occurred to me for improving the module. First, let the players hire a dive team, but make the object they're collecting hazardous enough that this 3rd-party attempt will dramatically fail. The players can be up on the boat pumping air for the divers, and observing all sorts of weird phenomena as they frantically try to pull the panicking team back up. These divers give a HELL NO to going down there ever again, and they're psychologically scarred enough that they leave behind their (now partially damaged) diving gear and just run, RUN away from the boat as soon as it's near dry land. Luckily, the players do remember a buddy from their organization who can come down and repair the gear, teach them diving, and lead the team. They could even be on their way from the start, but they decided on the diving team in the mean time. This NPC is someone with just a bit of mythos experience, so they're someone the team can rely on, and he/she brings several buddies who can operate the pumps FOR THE PLAYERS. This NPC can also provide equipment on loan (including diving suits and harpoons) if the players decide to not hire a team, and instead camp out on the lake and observe troubling phenomena from the shore that add a sense of urgency. So we've solved several problems here: 1. The players got to hire a diving team (smart), and were rewarded with some very cool scenes showing the threat level below the waves. They had agency, and now it's a matter of "nobody but us is qualified to do this!". If they don't hire a diving team, that's good too! We're presenting a problem with multiple ways of solving it (and lots of neat ways for those solutions to contribute to the story), and we have a backup NPC who's going to help them move forward. 2. The players get to ALL go down in diving suits. NPCs are covering manning the boat, and the drunk local's testicles will be violently exploded by this team if he tries anything dangerous. 3. Whatever is down there is going to be a hell of a trip, and the players might even find themselves briefly in another world as this object opens a portal and the players fall through. Now they need to deal with this other world, and still keep their suits viable enough to make the trip back alive.
At a glance, it sounds like it makes more sense for the property owner to hire the investigators to dive in his lake as a salvage mission, cutting out a lot of the railroady coincidences that would need to happen just to get the investigators onto the scenario's first page. Retrieving a MacGuffin from an airplane is such a vague goal, I guess it can work, but it could be replaced by pretty much anything - a sunken boat maybe, or a submerged ruin... maybe a creepy old town that was submerged when the valley was flooded into a local reservoir? Or maybe an old-fashioned paddle steamboat that used to sail one of the Great Lakes, sunk with a colorful passenger with eerie cargo in a mysterious storm? Make it something bigger than a plane, so it becomes an exploration scenario as much as anything, as the diving investigators explore haunted ruins or a creepy shipwreck, maybe looking for a MacGuffin in a race against time with some cultist rivals. For the investigators who aren't diving, you could play a bit on "The Fog": a weird mist rolls in, and hidden in the mist is the cultists' ship, leading to a ship-to-ship battle while the divers do their thing. Some unfinished ideas that occurred to me to spice up the original scenario, that I couldn't find a place for, include: * sounds like the scenario could have used some pre-gen divers; * perhaps the scenario could use an (optional?) lake monster, not necessarily a direct threat; * the "dream plate" suggests one of those weird Dreamlands boats to me, maybe there's a Dreamlands scenario buried in here somewhere; maybe cultists beat the investigators to the wreckage, but by the time the investigators get there, the cultists are missing, and their boat is mysteriously abandoned and adrift on the lake, leading perhaps to some creepy shenanigans with the abandoned boat for some investigators to deal with while the others are diving; * that annoying farmer NPC sounds like he'd be more fun to have disappear before the investigators arrive, his house weirdly ransacked, a trail leading to the lake....
Deep Ones!!!! God, I kept waiting for you to say it. This adventure just screams deep ones, possibly with some underwater tunnels that connect the lake to the ocean or a subterreanean city, which would be cool. As is? Eh. I've got a lawn to mow.
I was wondering if the sense of urgency can be created via the buyer? I.e. they want their item in time or the pay gets reduced. This is a good incentive for the PCs to finish the job on time but also they're not going to get nothing if they don't finish on time. Or I'd consider the PCs having to get to the crash site and try diving before the rescue/recovery team got there. As for the actual horror. Being in a heavy diving suit in a semi-lit space means that they're already quite claustrophobic Let the thing grab the NPC and suddenly the PC is left on their own under the water Meanwhile the PCs on the boat get attacked, while the creature will also attempt to destroy the air equipment on the boat. I always love watching your videos! Thank you for giving potential keepers so many ideas!
Your second story suggestion sounds like it would work better. You could add an element where the divers have to retrieve the artifact and do something with it in order for the Mythos beastie to be successfully defeated by the PCs on the barge, or defeated in a timely fashion. Maybe the binding to the artifact gives the creature armor, abilities, or healing that the divers can negate by breaking/repairing/using the artifact in some fashion.
my idea for adding urgency would be to say that the artefact is made of metal and that the contact with the water does damage it. Also those cultists might be actualyl somehow linked to some foul deep one spawn so there might be at least the threat of underwater combat.
Wow. This is the first bad Cthulhu review I've seen Seth give, out of the dozen or more I've watched. I always love the improvements he makes. In this case, I think it makes sense for the investigators to hire divers but then have to fight cultists topside while the divers deal with the recovery. The players could even also play the NPC divers who encounter the mythos menace under water and have some specific task they can try to complete to neutralize it (putting the genie back in the bottle, so to speak). Regardless, somehow the investigators topside have to get attacked by a monster coming up. Maybe a diver that doesn't survive becomes a monster or multiple monsters are released, and at least one can't be stopped (it's container was broken in the crash).
I imagine such a niche adventure like this, requires - besides the obvious critical changes - also a niche group of characters. It would probably fit if the characters actually play a group of treasure divers - 'Relic Hunter' or Tomb Raider style. Insert it in a running campaign or play it with non-diver characters seems troublesome at best. Also one should add some further changes: * NPCs who operate the pumps and suits for every character, so they can go together. * Harpoon guns. And something you can shoot at. * You can do the whole 'boat starts up and yanks the character' simply by adding some sea monster attacking the boat... * Strange hazards in the water, like hot, acidic wells - which corrode the suits (staying away far enough thins the acid so it becomes harmless... * As we talk about obvious volcanic activity - maybe a volcano ready to break out. - but here we start to create a completely new adventure...
... what if you run Dagger of Thoth, at the end of which there's a mention of "Thoth's Collection" which includes the "Thoth's Glass Eye" which is on the plane featured in *Fear of Flying*. In fact, the co-pilot's mythos experience could have planted him squarely in the position of undercover courier of the Glass Eye. So effectively, it plays like this: Employer to Underlings: "go to [Richmond, Virginia or wherever you like] and wait. you'll know cue when you see it" E to Clarke: "get on this plane and get the Artifact. it has a security escort so crashing the plane will be a good cover for the mission." >PCs are on the plane, dispatch Clarke but not before the plane runs out of fuel from a punctured fuel line after the second morning embarkment. >PCs escape the plane crash and make their way to the site. reporters are on the scene that night. E to Jake the Instructor: "hey, I've got an employee with LEO credentials waiting for you on-scene. my bank courier will arrive inside the hour with an advance on the payment, the rest you'll get after." >Jake arrives on scene. Teaches the PCs what's what and takes a liking to them. He agrees to help the PCs and also take payment through salvage from the crash. Underlings to Employer: "hey Boss, Clarke's a no-show. You want us to wait for a different lieutenant? it'll take a week? ok." the rest of the scene plays like you said yours did. adjust as needed.
Here is how I would fix the adventure: what the players need to find is on a dead body, that was killed by some politician. The players aren't allowed to call a random divers team, because nobody can see the corpse, or it would cause a scandal, and they have a time limit because some nosy journalist is coming to investigate in a few days and will find the body (he got tipped). The players are paid handsomely for doing the dive discretely and fast. And when they go underwater there are FIVE CTHULHUS! (last part is optional)
I have a thought (if it hasn't been shared already) on how a scenario like Crash Dive may work: make the item they're retrieving be what puts them on the clock as part of a larger adventure. For example, the main adventure involves a mythos relic of some sort being stolen for a collector, but the PCs are hired by someone who knows the true nature of the item, and if it isn't returned to it's rightful place by X timeframe, something terrible will happen. So they have to investigate who stole it, where it went, and then track it down. This should take time, but still leave a comfortable window. On the way back, hit them with something like Fear of Flying, where in the climactic confrontation, one of the propellers is damaged/destroyed, sheering off the side of the aircraft near the back. Upon landing, they'll learn that the damage also destroyed some of the cargo ties and while their personal belongings are safe, the case holding the mythos object is gone. Now things get tense as they have to investigate where the plane was when the cargo fell out and work out where it might have fallen, and of course there's only a few people who live out about where it should have landed, and someone will mention seeing something fall towards the lake when asked. A modified Crash Dive scenario than ensues where investigators have to weigh how much time they have left vs the danger and going down and retrieving the object, knowing the consequences of failing to return it in time. To add to the matter, maybe the object's presence in the lake is causing strange changes, both letting investigators know they're on the right track and adding some creepiness to the dive itself or causing the reflections to those looking in the lake to be wrong somehow. If the suit gets damaged from a failed skill check, do they press on to get the object on the first try, or be safe and surface for repairs, maybe loosing another day on the clock? Or maybe the object was put there by a cult as part of a ritual and the only way to stop it is to remove the object from the center of the lake. Again, make the McGuffin what makes the adventure time sensitive and players will stress over getting it out as quickly as possible.
I agree, this is more of a scenario hook than a scenario, but the greatest mistake Chaosium made was not including the NPC who starts the scenario off in 'Secrets of LA' where he would have been available to a wider range of Keepers. That's someone who can spark off all kinds of scenarios.
Seth have you played Grace Under Pressure? It’s a fantastic scenario and develops a good underwater theme. I’d love to hear what you think about it. The diving rules you mention here would help with Grace.
Random idea: During the character creation process each Player makes three NPC characters from their backstory; these NPCs cabn have one specialized skill or resource. The Keeper then keeps these NPCs in reserve. When an adventure calls for the chaarcters to need an NPCs help, the Keeper can just whip out one of these NPCs to fill that role.
Maybe the plate summons a slowly increasing number of monsters every round, so the boaters will eventually get overwhelmed while the divers have to do some sort of puzzle underwater to turn it off, and the boaters meed to fend off the attack while also pumping air for the divers.
You know, it might work well to run this in a very different way. Offer the dive school as part of it being a reward, pointing towards another adventure after it, getting the entire group a new skill that might need the entire group having it at a later point. On top of that, I'd shift this to Pulp Cthulhu, and I'd run it after the Two Headed Serpent as a way to introduce new characters for those lost at the end of that campaign. Have them contacted by allies after it, perhaps even including the other surviving human from Cadeus, and having him be the "shady" contact, and having the plane crash and relic be due to Cadeus in some way. Having it be a potentially dangerous item. The monster running about that you suggested could be an interesting thing here. The players find out about it (narrow escape, local jackass gets chomped after the first dive...skip the prior team having been there...or the prior team might be dead and jackass decided to sacrifice people to the thing). Add some research that they need to do something to the relic to remove the beastie from play...so the diver has something to do while occasionally getting attacked, the people on the surface have to keep the pump going and fight off the monster. Using this as a starting point for having the players realize that despite the serpentpeople, well, the stated goal that Cadeus had is something still necessary...perhaps starting to set up for a new group themselves.
Okay, I think this would be a great startinf adventure (wirh heavy changes), let me explain: This asventure requires a pre-existence of some skill, so you could either have your players make characters with thise skills or make it a mini scenario that is from the perspective of the salvage team and not your investigators. Now, about those changes: the artifact could play a role in both the plane crash and the boat heading to shore. Maybe it is a tar-like substance that moves on its own and is attracted to machines, messing with them when it comes in contact. The tar is then contained in a jar of some kind. The jar is opened on the play, boom, crash. The jar is in the water when you’re out there on the barge, boom, the barge starts moving. Now you can have players in the water struggling against the force (as well as trying to recontain the machine-tar and players on top trying to control the barge and get rid of the machine-tar. This incident could introduce a group to the mythos, or affect the salvage team, which the PCs would then hear about and check out (though the players will know the full story). If the later, then you could have the machine-tar become overgrown in the vicinity, making a weird bio-machine-place that the PCs have to explore/fight. At this point it's not even the same adventure.
Use the initial setup and then have the relic activate. Option 1 it brings creatures from the dreamland to the local area or Option 2 the mirror brings dreams of the locals to life, while they are asleep.
I have an idea that the dreamplate is a portal/beacon. That way, players under and over the water can have something to do. They would have to find a way to close the portal quickly otherwise the area might be overrun with whatever Mythos creature you want.
Think one solution would have been to let them hire the crew to get it, and while they're down there, the party gets ambushed up top, so you get your frantic pumping and fighting, without splitting the party.
I ran this scenario in the modern day and all of the players were russian divers who had to recover a crashed american plane loaded with equipment to analyze. They were equipped with needle guns and underwater pistols. Thats my take on solving the modules problems (although it may have just been a different module at that point).
Another way to prevent players from hiring a diving team would be the good old artisan way (there are some funny sketches around about this, at least here in germany our artisans are infamous for this stuff). Means they'll charge generously for the drive to and from the lake, equipment wear, high hourly rates, danger pay, (if they are the same team that was there before) a special Bill Taylor fee for again putting up with this guy. Then they will estimate their time (arrival, setup, lunch break, finishing setup, early closing time; diving being estimated as another 3 days, sinc preparation and work after diving take up so much work and time) and what it will cost the PCs (drive should be around 100 dollar a way no matter the distance, then 30 dollars per hour; and again this is only the first day on which the team won't do any actual diving). And of course this estimate will not be done on a phone call, they'll have to wait for an estimate of cost they'll get as a letter. The PCs will likely not want to deal with that.
I had there be a neat little water monster Then the shady contact betrayed them and nearly killed them Ended the scenario with a epic thing of them heading into Boston and shooting the guy dead It was cool as heck
Just have the previous diving team suffering horrific nightmares about the lake since diving down there and having no desire to get near there again and have the rumor spread and having the bumpkin having secretly gone mad from prolonged exposure.
Maybe have the item that's in the water be some form of puzzle box that got opened during the crash (or maybe before the crash, causing it in the first place), releasing some nasty that starts munching its way through the local populace. Closing the item will instantly banish (or at least severely weaken) the monster, and if it were to be killed with the item still opened, it will eventually release a new one. That way, there is an incentive to go down and retrieve that item. If the monster has some way to lure it into away from the item for a while reliably, there should be something to do for the whole party: -diver(s) go down and close that f***er up -someone does the air management (and maybe gives instructions for the divers on how to close the item if it's some sort of reverse puzzle cube) ---High stakes 'Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes' -the rest can lure the monster and distract it
On your parting shot, I would think it should be obvious to people that you "never give a bad review" because you only review things you've personally run (as you have repeatedly stated before). You don't strike me as the kind of guy that would put his players through a crappy adventure just to create content. You also strike me as a decent guy that would try to find some good in things and would try to find the good things in something that is otherwise mediocre, at best. It's blatantly obvious you read these things before you try them and are experienced enough to have a good idea of what will work for you and your players. Sounds to me that critics saying you don't give bad reviews don't pay attention, or maybe have an axe to grind. But that's just me. I appreciate your videos and I hope that they have helped make me a better GM.
Sounds like the whole adventure as written is good for a small step in a larger adventure. In order to keep the players on the barge in the action you can have creatures board the barge from the lake. That way the guys pumping need to defend themselves, the pump, and the barge while the divers are also occupied.
The monster scenario could work as a complication to the players hiring some divers. The NPC divers go down, wake up the monster, and the player characters up top have to distract it, fight it, and keep pumping air down to the divers below as the other NPC crew go crazy from seeing this mythos creature.
I don't get people, sometimes. Seth has many times advised that an adventure is no good if run as-written. Advising on the many ways such an adventure can be made workable, and noting its few good qualities is nowhere near the same thing as giving everything a good review. These sorts of videos are far more constructive than just saying a thing sucks and leaving it at that. RUclips has plenty of that sort of negativity already.
I think mixing both would be a good idea for the ending. Maybe the cult attacks just as the device is grabbed. Now one teams has to deal with these cultist while this diver is getting chased through all the nooks of this plane and maybe underwater cave. Probably better though to bump up diving to something higher
Maybe it would already help to not split the party through the air pump? Maybe enlarge the lake so the entire party is needed to search it, so they all go under, and some hired npcs or something take care of the pumping? It would at least make designing improvements easier because you don't need to take the party split into account.
It feels to me like the trick might be to give the divers and the players topside some related but different critical challenges - like an attack topside in which the pcs must defend the pump and keep it going while there's a ticking clock going on down below with potentially dangerous manoeuvrers that need to be made.
Perhaps there is a time element to the item itself. " On the second blue moon of the year, nightmares will be unleashed" or something. The next blue moon is a week or so off so the PCs can't wait around. That may work, especially if the "air pumpers" have to deal with holding off cultist boarding parties while keeping the equipment running. ... still, 20% ...
I have an ending for you Seth. make the object at the bottom of the lake something wanted by a creature that can't go in the water and doesn't like to be in daylight(cuz the dive will happen at day, i'm sure). so when the party recovers it the critter comes to find them the next night...or follows them until it catches up.
This would actually be a good setup for a Delta Green campaign. Mostly if you set it up at modern times. Then it's about sneaking past the farmer and getting into the lake
Great video as usual. I really don't mind a CoC adventure not having any sort of mythos threats, but it has to earn not having them with the players. This one sounded rough as-is. How about the jerk farmer has been secretly murdering people who stumble onto his bootleg operation and tossing their bodies in the lake? Then, the artifact in the plane has some sort of resurrection capability that brings all these murdered bodies back to life. Maybe they would be a low enough threat to not overwhelm underwater characters, while the majority make their way up to the deck of the barge and cause problems up there at the same time? You could even foreshadow this with odd sightings of strange humanoid creatures around the lake some nights the players hear about.That way you give the players a reason to deal with Bill somehow, either themselves or by turning him over to the law. It's not perfect, but it could work.
So to create this urgency, one may want to have an event tied to recovering the object, like for example a ritual that they need to do at certain moment with the object, or maybe someone's life is at risk if the party don't get the object on time, or maybe the salt can ruin the object and they have certain amount of hours, or maybe they have a deadline in their contract to retrieve the item, that stipulates significant reduction in the payment in case of a delay, or maybe they learn the cult is coming to retrieve the item but with a bigger deadly force than their group, maybe the cult have the police on their side. Also if combined all or some of the options it makes it super urgent. Lol.
I would have had the Dreamplate bring a dream by nearby sleeping person to life. It would manifest as a physical place near the plate. The needle and thread will guide a person who is awake to the one living in the manifested dream. In this case an important NPC who was on the plane and fell unconcious from the crash. I would allow the diver to remove his suit and walk around the dream area (maybe the other players pull up suit to check on diver only to find an empty suit). Dream creatures would give players topside something to occupy them, and actually give old drunk a good reason to fire up barge and drag divers. In later scenario, the dream plate would be used to get an item that must be dreamed into existence.
A diver player with gear already on hand could go to the location, pay to use the barge, land, etc. without the drunk in tow, go out to the plane, dive, retrieve the artifact, and go home in what for my players would be about 30 minutes. I agree with Jack, definitely a scene.
My personnel idea is not to have the players go through it at all, but have a NPC mention a story similar to it, or even better, have a mythos-knowledgeable NPC go to recover one artifact at the bottom of a lake while the PCS are elsewhere. Just me tho
How to fix this scenario:
The macguffin downed the plane.
The macguffin drove the moonshiner nuts.
He killed the previous divers.
The shady character had hired the dive team but hasn’t heard back, so he is now paying premium to learn what happened as well as get the macguffin.
The macguffin activated again when brought to the surface, making the moonshiner transform and do appropriately monastery things.
I could be down for this.
Adding to this, the moonshiner uses water from the lake in his moonshine, so others are being affected too.
I'd likely just let them pay divers, and then have them play those divers.
That's cool!
Okay, that's a really good idea. It would work not unlike running a one-shot session with fresh, not-yet-scarred investigators. Except their performance in that scenario _actually matters_ in a larger context, so the players have a vested interest in making sure their temporary diver PCs succeed. (Because if they don't, their main PCs don't get what they're looking for).
Yes, this is the answer!
My GM did this. Worked amazingly!
That's a great plan. You could go with the idea that disturbing the artifact summons a creature, too -- I have the mental image of a sort of fishlike entity that rams the barge, shoving it along, and then you play out the "dragged along the bottom" segment almost as written, except it's *actually caused by a mythos creature* rather than a grumpy drunk.
I wish more people reviewed game modules like you do, because there are so many games I would like to run but I need more information on them. Thanks for these reviews!
Yeah I've only been DMing for about 2 years and good modules are crazy helpful even if I'm just cannibalising them or Frankensteining them together. Sometimes I modify a module to the point where you can't tell it's the same thing, but I still need that framework to hang it on
The reason I only dare running D&D and CoC is the abundance of great modules out there. If I wanted to run something like Vampire the Masquerade, which seems to have almost this disdainful attitude towards modules then I wouldn't even know where to begin.
Yup! I don't have that much cash and don't wanna go buying a module based on a few random reviews online.... Thanks to seth I can buy a module with confidence
I love that instead of saying it’s bad you have a more constructive style of how it can be better
Unless its irredeemably bad, you can either do damage control or use it for inspiration,
Exactly, he frequently reviews bad adventure modules, his detractors just don't realize it because he doesn't just say "this adventure sucks." He instead picks out the good parts and rewrites the rest of the adventure to make it work, which is way more interesting to me than negatively tearing them apart.
@@AlteredNova04 That plus he's on Chaosiums payroll....
@@Tony-dh7mz I mean he said it’s very bad. He’s being totally honest. Even if he is on the payroll he’s not letting that affect him
@@Tony-dh7mz this may be late but i just recently found his channel i just started running call of cthulhu games myself but anyway maybe chaosium put him on the payroll bc they appreciate his criticisms and the want to do better so they are asking him to honestly review adventures idk like i said i am new and not trying to be disrespectful just an idea
Great review.
It sounds like someone came up with in depth diving rules then had to tack on an adventure to get it published in Fearful Passages.
There may have been a much more involved adventure but had to be cut way down to fit page count.
Way I would do the cost of the tip is the players owe them a favor to be repaid at a latter time, setting up another adventure.
Not a bad idea at all.
Idea:
The plate is an ancient & highly polished metal plate. Used as a mirror long long ago.
When someone looks into the plate in natural sunlight, or maybe moonlight, they can see shadows of an 'other world' in the background. When brought up from the depths, an NPC (probably the diver, leaving the moonshiner jerk as a red herring) looks into it too long and becomes possessed by an entity from that other place. This possessed NPC steals the plate as soon as they can in order to convert more humans into these others (whatever kind you want, or some new nasty). As time goes on, more people are being turned, and you can possibly add a proper gate/summoning of a bigger nasty, or other world incursion of some sort, as a bad guy goal in order to give them a loose time limit. Room for false positives and paranoia in the nearby small town. Add mutations, etc, to ratchet up the CoC tentacle pron.
It may not be mind blowingly original, but it sounds much better than some Diving skill rolls.
Nice.
@@Dorian_sapiens Thanks!
I think the dive could be used as a tiny starter seed for something much larger.
Hrmm.. transdimensional seed.. perhaps bursting out of people Alien style? Hrm. Lots to spread out and flower with.
Scrying mirrors are a real thing,
You could tie it into the king in yellow, this whole things is just begging for that type of influence imo.
I was thinking rival moonshiners or mobster or cultist who used magic to help crash the air craft would make this more interesting.
the drunk boat owner could have strategically acquired to another location one of the diving suits after it reminded him of his time in the navy where he used one. Rolling the teacher and drunk farmer into one npc removing the need to leave the setting and preserving the suit.
The hostile moonshine rivals or mobster he had a bad deal with or cultists who helped the plane crash could have taken the farmers kid/wife/goat/dog as a hostage or wacked them last time they came after the farmer.
Adding this element creates a conflict they either need to avoid or help solve adding some fun conflict or agency to the game. It would also allow a sniper or just some hostile npc to take pot shots at the boat to cause the boat to start moving after the farmer is hit real bad and to give the air pumpers something to do besides just pump air and fight the drunk.
Why not two monsters? One for the group on the surface and one for the divers?
Also, it seems very strange that the first dive team would just leave their suits behind. As you described it, it seemed to make sense to me that Bill had killed them and disposed of their bodies. Perhaps he found part of the McGuffin or a second McGuffin that gave him some strange powers and/or drove him mad in the process.
Well done, as always, and very entertaining. Thanks for sharing.
Perhaps he thought the first set of divers had brought ALL of the treasure when he killed them. He kept their stuff, so when the new investigators arrived he thought there was more and offers the equipment. He plans to kill them.
That's the two monsters. The Thing in the water and the old man, with gun, on the barge / platform.
Or maybe there is a creature in the lake that has become friends with the old man and they are conspiring to get the investigators...
Check out this horror comic book story from 1975, "Fish Story" for a "good" creature to fight with the old man.
diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2018/01/addicted-to-alex-nino-fish-story-by.html?m=1
You could also have them leave the suites behind because of something they saw under water! :)
You're a genius. Head cannon is now Bill murdered the first team and the multi-thousand dollar suits are actually hints the first team never went back alive. When the PC asks to contact the first team, Bill would then have a reason to make things difficult for them to contact the first team. Bill then tries to murder the diving instructor and the PC under the water, and when caught, would blame it on him getting drunk. This end with a battle with the actual villain, whatever was possessing Bill, or maybe just Bill himself who is actually insane and can summon deep ones. The reward would be Bill's large boat and his waterfront house as a new base of operations.
The fact that the tablet is implied to have some kind of connection to dreams feels like an enormous wasted opportunity. It could be a great set-up to have some strange Dreamlands creature swimming around in the lake, either to protect the artifact, or simply as a hungry alien animal in the vicinity of the wreck trying to get its next meal.
@@bbd121I like that idea I was thinking maybe bill give you a kick back of his booze running from time to time and connects the players with his parters as as a reward/plot hook depending on what you wanted to do or have
You could give the players the little place just have it be complete with his crops, still, some tnt under the floor which isn’t too crazy with stump clearing being a thing and former buyers wondering where their product is as a reward.
Have the deed be either with the tnt or not there at all imo
The buyers/mobsters could “help” make the place legally the players for a small fee/favor/more booze or for just letting their guy set up a little place and keep it all going like the farmer did giving them a new patsy (the players) for the land and the fact you just cut out a unreliable and unheeded guy for the organized crime in the area.
This lake could become a real hot bed for crime if you wanted it to and all the stuff that could provide.
9 page book, 17 minute video never change Seth!
Thought:
If you have an underwater monster, have it circulate between attacking the divers underwater and the people on the raft. Like a big shadow sweeps by the divers, threatening to knock them over and/or sever their lifelines and air tubes. Then the thing swirls around and jumps over the raft threatening to knock it over, possibly knock a player into the water and dissrupting the pumping crew. Then you go from there, and the players have to either try to stay and fight or try to make it to land - possibly with the divers having to "run" for shore if they are unable to climb or be pulled upp by the top side crew, who has to manuver the raft to not get sunk while this thing harras them.
Might just add in here...
Washington/Oregon were WELL known for big-timber country... Why not just have the lake attached to some river for the logging industry...
This leads into the "jerk" NPC local... Not just a boozer/bootlegger, and conn'ing folks out of money for his ownership of the lake, but there's ancient (extinct?) wood left laying down there... AND his barge is the only one big and bad-ass enough to do the work for getting it..
AND that lends to the "barge" and dive equipment (questionable stuff in the barn) NOT being left by the rescuers, but either collected over years by the NPC-local, as well as "reasonably" bought from the Rescue/Salvage Team...
The "barge" could even be a clever (primitive and crude) setup on pontoons, specifically for salvaging logs, but so unstable above the surface that it's extra difficult to stand when "overtly large monsters" are trying to topple it... Not that it's bound to sink, being water-tight and durable... just unstable as a walking platform.
Overhead structures and a lack of "main deck space" don't mean you can't still dive, either... it just puts space at a premium (with the right design)...
Have a couple NPC's available in town who can also dive... These are probably fellow "log salvagers" who work with "the jerk"... SO they can be manipulated by the want/need to get the PC's happy enough to leave soon, so the secrets of remarkably rare and valuable wood varieties can be kept under wraps...
OR if the PC's figure out the gig, BLACKMAIL also works well...
The macguffin, COULD be the source of a monster... OR there could be some weird "nexus of powers" principle with techno-gobblety-gook between artifacts and ley-lines, and intersections of ley-lines creating power places where special magnetism attracts worse and worse factors of insanity and luck... SO a giant crocodile has taken up residence in the lake, and is starting (not so quietly akin to Lake Placid... movie reference) to eat people... among other things. AND it's eaten part of the plane, with the macguffin...
SO now you can run all kinds of scenarios around cultists interested in the giant crocodiles that shouldn't be in Washington State... The pilot going to the asylum for delusions of everything from flying tentacle monsters (resembling a certain flying spaghetti monster?) attacking aircraft, missing billionaires with screws loose (staring right at you Howard Hughes)... and even a backwoods country fried feud between locals who want their wood kept secret and at least one or two outside industrialists who are CONVINCED there's still at least a standing grove of "old growth" left of this extinct poplar or some such thing...
If you wanted a slightly modern bint, you could even stick a few "Pseudo-GreenPeace" activists into the area trying THEIR damnedest to save the last of the extinct trees, and causing regular headaches for just about everybody in the game... good, bad, ugly, or otherwise.
If you like this kind of thing, TAKE TAKE TAKE... as long as you enjoy it. A little bit of sketch-work and a model or two, and I think this could be a regular comedy-drama gold mine with some horror survival tossed in. ;o)
Would a Bull Shark be scary enough? It's not supernatural, but if the lake or pond is near a river, he could theoretically end up there from an overflow/flooding. Fun fact, that shark is the only one that can exist in both fresh and salt water and the infamous attacks the novel "Jaws" were based upon were Bull shark attacks in the early 1900s-and some of those were in rivers.
A way to give the players urgency will be that when they arrive at the lake they found another group of divers that are trying to recover the item or any valuables that remain in the plane, the rival group has his own barge and diving equipment but they don't know where the plane crashed and they are searching for it. Billy does know the plane location because he was the one who saw the plane crashing in the water and is angry that the other group has his own barge and equipment. Of course the grumpy old drunk will rent his barge for a price but will not tell the players where the planed crashed forcing him to be at the barge when they are diving and causing the incident when he gets drunk. It can also lead to a fight with the rival group who will try to steal the item once the players found it (or the other way around).
EDIT: Of course the players will need to have either some point in the divers skill already or enough time to do the training, maybe the other diving group is not already there and will arrive in a few days giving the players a chance to improve their diving skill.
A diving adventure with no Deep Ones? Chaosium, I am disappoint.
No Diving without Deep Ones?!
Must be talkin about Jack Dempsey i in the fourth round.
@@Tony-dh7mz "Jack Dempsey in the fourth round?"
@Brother Malachai
As in “Taking a Dive”
(Throwing the match)
@@Tony-dh7mz Oh. Turns out there's a Jack Dempsey fish too.
@Dubuya Jay....irony...maybe....can’t say nothin...
Here's an idea: The PCs run their normal - non-diver - PCs on the boat, holding off cultists with the added complication of keeping the boat stead for their other "characters." These other characters could be the dive crew, a group of specially made characters, just for this adventure (and maybe others in the future). They could even be another mythos-fighting group, or (my favorite idea) not. But, they go down and deal with the mythos creature tied to the relic at the same time the regular PCs are above fighting the cultists. Both groups are ran by your players, each player controlling their character and one diver. It could be a fun encounter, jumping back-and-forth between the groups. If the non-divers mess up and the boat moves too much it could complicate things down below - or it could end up saving one or more of their lives as they are suddenly pulled beyond the creature's grasp. Does that sound doable?
Seth, I just wanna tell you that you're so wholesome and make me happy when I watch your vids. Thank you and keep doing what you do. Thanks for teaching me how to play Call of Cthulhu
I liked the review. It sounds like they spent a lot of time on the diving rules, but not much on the actual adventure. I have to say that a scenario where part of the party is submerged searching for a hidden relic while the rest of the party is running the oxygen compressr and is battling swarms of Deep Ones, does have a real Pulp Cthulu feel to it.
Belloq "Dr Jones. Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away"
Me "SURE! TAKE IT! I DIDN'T WANT IT ANYWAY!
But you'll never take my hopes and dreams Belloq, never my hopes and dreams...."
Jack the NPC as a Death Watch Space Marine would be hilarious. 'Purgin' heretics, brother!'
I need this to happen
I would re-explain it that the divers have *gasp* dissapeared!
I always click like before I see your videos, garanteed quality
As always Seth great video. Thank you for everything you do for the community. Keep up the great work bud
I don’t even really play COC but I absolutely love these videos!
I have an idea for the finale:
1) Going with your "the monster comes up to the raft and somebody gotta keeps pumping" The object is sealed with some weird curse thus it can only be picked up by the guy who cast the curse (the dead guy from the crash), so to destroy/kill the monster the PC underwater has to perform a ritual or sth while the others gotta stay alive/pump.
2) I like the "divers getting dragged along the ground underwater" part of the original. So say the lake is actually an artificial one and that there is a damn holding it in. So after getting the item, either a weird mythos monster or the cultists destroy the damn and it turns into a rafting session for the guys up top and a hardcore survival challange for the divers (also a possible chase scene)
Half-baked, incomplete but maybe workable idea: Let the players hire the best dive team in the area. Catch is they have to work the pump. The team never returns (byakhee), and all the other teams decide it must have been unsafe and won't go. However, the instructor NPC finds out about their plight, and, due to money trouble, offers to train them for a month to get them up to 50-60‰ Diving. This all draws the cult's attention, and they attack using another craft, so while the people below fight the byakhee, the people above fight the cult.
I've been thinking over the problem of how to convince the players not to just pay somebody else to do the job for them, and it reminded me of how the movie Armageddon solved that problem. As in: what if the professional divers *can* do the job, but there's some element added to the excavation that only your player characters can solve, like proper lock picking, explosive handling or mythos knowledge? You could even have one or two of them come with the PCs for support, then either leave when their expertise ends and the PC's begins, or have them get killed off to increase the stakes of the adventure.
I was going to suggest the same thing. One of Seth's earlier Cthulhu reviews had a similar set up to get the PCs into diving suit esc environment suits so I'm surprised he didn't use that adventure as inspiration.
As for why they'd leave the PCs alone to do the job and adding sense of urgency. It could be whoever was funding the dive pulls out due to all the problems caused by either the mythos or cultist sabotage. Now they only have X many days to get the artefact before the diving equipment is taken away.
One way to spice up the diving aspect would be to have Rival cultists with access to diving equipment (through murder or indoctrination of professional diver?) and a fight breaking out both on and under the lake with perhaps two cultists in diving suits carrying knives and/or harpoons attempting to cut their rival's air hose.
Underwater Cthulhu is, conceptually, really obvious fodder for adventures. So much Mythos stuff is tied directly to bodies of water, from _A Shadow Over Innsmouth_ to _Call of Cthulhu_ itself to _The Doom That Came To Sarnath_ , just to name a few. The watery depths and the horrors they hid were a huge fixation for Lovecraft. Yet rarely do Lovecraft's protagonists actually venture beneath the waves themselves. _The Temple_ being the major exception. Which is a missed opportunity, since being underwater - especially for 1920s humans - might as well be a space walk for all the disempowerment they feel. Moreso, really, because most space walks don't have monsters hiding in the gloom. There's great potential in aquatic investigations.
As stated in the video, the major hitch in such adventures is getting the investigators down there, without making them entirely helpless. They should FEEL disempowered, but not completely, as that's no fun. If they're supposed to go diving, they really need to already have experience with it.
I mentioned The Temple earlier, and I think that's one of the better scenarios. The investigators are passengers or crew on a submarine, when they get roped into some undersea eldritch shenanigans. Such PCs would probably have decent scores in Diving, so going into the deep won't leave them as sitting ducks. If you want to cheat the technology, you could assume that the diving suits even have their own tanks of compressed oxygen, so they aren't dependent on someone else pumping air to them. Further, an adventure occurring in a sub or in a sunken temple with some air pockets creates an obvious Closed Circle effect. The characters aren't just going to be able to run at the first sign of trouble. Again, very much like horror set in space; they are stuck in oases of habitability, surrounded by a (in this case literal) sea of death, and a monster is trapped there with them.
So say the pilot survives like your in your modified version and the players learn from him or the auction house that the item they're after will only stay sealed or intact underwater for so many days. That would give them urgency to dive as soon as possible. Anyway just a thought, really enjoy your channel, it's great to listen and just imagine the adventure as you explain it.
Another great vid Seth!
I love how annoyed Jack is, "That is not a scenario, that is a SCENE!" Delightful.
I've flipped through that book and it seems like most of the scenarios they present work better as set pieces in a larger story or as ideas that need to be fleshed out more before they're playable on their own.
Based on this, I get the feeling that whoever wrote it was more interested in the rules than presenting a good story.
I've also got a question: in your "How to Run a Module" video you mentioned that you have two general categories - "Not Workable" and "Needs Work." So I was wondering - are there any modules that you've run that required minimal to no work to run?
The Haunting and Edge of Darkness were pretty much Grab-n-Go level. Any additional work I put into them was out of want rather than need.
When you talked about adding a monster under the water, the first thought that came to mind was a chase scene.
Imagining some mythos creature snapping at the heels of a diver, knowing it is futile to fight while trying to get back to the surface is pretty terrifying to me. Maybe add a third party to the chase to cause the guys topside to have their own problems to deal with, like the cultists you planned.
I have yet to play CoC (trying to get my pals on board and excited), but I feel like it would come together pretty well when the divers make it back on the barge, and the monster bursts out of the water and flips the cultists' boat, maybe grabbing a few in the process to convey how quickly one could get boned by this thing.
One way to use the dive rules might be to run "The Crystal of Chaos" from 2013's "The House of R'lyeh", but have the investigators recover the Shining Trapezohedron from the bottom of Narraganset Bay, rather than the steeple of the Free-Will Church on Federal Hill. In the water, the diving investigators might encounter a voonith that had been pulled from the Dreamlands by the crystal.
There was a Lovecraft story wherein a sunken U-Boat captain goes and explores a cave underwater. Why not use that? If it is underwater, if you really want to go all out-the characters go to the Sunken City of R'yleh?
I can't wait to hear Seth's opinion on Cyberpunk red when it comes out.
I hope they burn everything that was in fuzion the game doesn't need HP
I am currently running a Call of Cthulhu game and I can totally fit this right in. Thanks.
The brass on that diving helmet came out well.
Seth, your re-working of the adventure was a major improvement. As you mentioned, the "timer" you selected, a single team of cultists racing to beat the players, was an issue. After the players ambushed them, no more timer... anti-climatic ending.
You could have had a cult hire some goons (one is an ex-navy diver) who has a couple of lackeys help him kidnap the dive instructor, forcing him to help recover the item. If the players defeat the goons, they have freed a grateful diver who can train (one of) them using the goons/divers equipment. He can also share the information that the cult gave the goons a deadline for recovery because unless the item is properly warded using a special ceremony by a certain astrological event (eclipse, solstice, etc) that something very bad will happen. In other words the item itself is a "timer" that you can use to motivate the players to rush to recover it. They could then investigate how to perform the ceremony themselves to save the day, or risk handing it off to this shady contact instead.
Another idea for some underwater excitement is to have a body left in the plane which the item can use as a weak puppet (something that could be either fought or outsmarted) to resist the players efforts to recover it in time. Perhaps the plane is not the only source of bodies in the lake... the drunken farmer's wife did "run off" several years ago. Maybe she's been resting peacefully at the bottom of the lake for a few years, and the item "awakens" her and she attacks her husband and makes trouble for the players.
Thanks for the review.
One word, "The Abyss"
DAMN!
Except it's a pond for a lake. X_x
Point missed,
Extrapolate content,
Reuse in the abyss situation
Think technically....
The more I think about it, the more I think this was meant to be a bunch of rules and options for Diving with a tiny half-baked "Learn 2 dive" scenario included
You could always have the PCs play the Diving Crew hired by their usual characters. Probably work with a 'Space Truckers' (Alien Crew) kind of feeling. Also nothing stops the Mythos Creature to be some kind of Alligator that has been affected by the artefact (maybe it swallowed it after eating the guy carrying it). Kind of a 'Lake Placid' or 'Jaws' kind of vibe. Sorry for the ramble.
Always happy to see another review for call of cthulhu was a dnd DM and now i do both and cthulhu is quickly becoming my preferred game. Do you have any plans to do a horror on the orient express review? Sounds really interesting if not no worries keep up the great work :D
I own Horror on the Orient Express and really want to try it, but it just keeps getting moved back on the priority stack. Part of it is that huge campaigns like that are a very long-term commitment and intimidate me. I always worry we'll get like 10 sessions in and lose interest or something. We really like mixing things up with an Adventure-of-the-Week style.
@@SSkorkowsky okay no problem, i must admit that does concern me as well whether people will want to see it through to the end. Hopefully one day it will happen though, if it is anything like the two head serpent campaign it will be a blast :)
The old Decker problem with cyberpunk/shadowrun
The issue I’ve seen with witch decking and netrunning in shadowrun and cyberpunk is the those rules just don’t want to be played.
@@docartemis2878 Personally I enjoy having 4-5 rounds for every 1 round of combat everyone else gets. Doesn't ruin the game at all.
Thank you for showing that we can learn at least as much from our failures as we do our success.
Great Points - thanks for the review!
I don't know if this has already been recommended but a Keeper could make some sort of threat attack or disrupt the players on the surface while the player under the water is retrieving the item. It involves everyone and if the players end up paying the dive team than all the players could help defend the dive team. As an added bonus you could add an aspect were the item effects the person/people sent down to retrieve it. You could also easily change the location of the plane crash to fit in better with a current campaign or threat.
Sorry to ask on an unrelated video, Mr. Skarkowsky, but I have a coming Cthulhu session in which I will be using my own scenario for the very first time. I did a published adventure in which the players were sent to the future and laid the groundwork for them to go to the Severn River Valley in England, knowing that the current campaign was sending them to Scotland. After looking at Gla’aki’s stats, the intended villain, I realized that killing him outright would be nearly impossible, but the Demi-god Yogolonac also lives in the same region. My idea is that during a goodwill tour of the area, Gla’aki intentionally separated Edward VIII, crown prince of Wales from his entourage, and he’s hiding out waiting for his military escort to find him. Yogolonac, disguised as an innkeeper, and the dreaded spirit of the Black Abbott is haunting the Cotswold region and intends to possess the crown prince, taking control of the British Crown, and in return, using its resources to find the comet fragments to free Gla’aki. Will this work as a scenario or is it too far fetched?
With all the scenarios I've written or read, there's very little that's too far-fetched as long as it makes sense within the story. X leads to Y, which leads to Z. As long as it feels like it makes sense in the game story and nothing is just random and feel haphazardly thrown on, you should be fine. The rest just comes down to how it plays, what your players do, and what plans your dice have. The other part is that the PCs can figure it out by the end. Many scenarios neglect the part where the PCs learn why something is happening, even though the GM knows and maybe the players know after the fact, but there's no possible way for the PC's to get the reasons for all that's happening.
Seth Skorkowsky thanks so much. My players tell me I’m a good GM, but I’ve only run scenarios written by other people in every instance of play. I feel like a kid going to get the mail for the first time without his dad holding his hand. In the end, it’s not really that big a deal, but it’s still a scary prospect for the first time.
Those old diving suits are scary enough as is have you ever seen that mythbusters episode where the pressure cracks the face hole glass on that and the body inside bursts?
Also Jack has a new hat o.o
Yeah I had to use this with my guys because I had to come up with something quick and one member wasn’t able to come and this was something I already knew and they enjoyed it thank you for saving my call of Cthulhu game.
I'd make the item an old book or manuscript in an ornate box, that while the box might protect it for a limited duration, the longer it was submerged, the grater the risk of it being destroyed.
I'm thinking of a survival situation instead where players go to investigate a missing group of divers on an island. Playing with a couple of ideas, but the scene I'm getting is that one or two players are in suits diving to get something they need, either to fix their boat before a massive storm hits the island, and/or to stop a god from breaking free, with all the tension on the diving party doing crazy puzzles/traps underwater, when something(s) attacks the boat and the other players need to fight them off while keeping the pumps running.
You can also find diving rules in the "Spawn of Azathoth" campaign (It's not an important scene in the campaign, but it looks like a nice parenthesis in the adventure)
An interesting if flawed scenario. Definitely gonna use this as inspiration for my own campaign. Thanks Seth :)
I haven't looked at the diving rules mentioned in the video but just based on your review and your version of the adventure, what I might have changed is that (1) I'd switch the personalities of Bill Taylor and Jake Walsh. (2) When the PCs arrived to recover the artifact they learned that another group (the cult) had visited recently and asked Bill Taylor about using an antique diving suit he happened to own because he uses it to explore the lake. Bill got the notion these individuals were up to no good, and sent them away, but forwarded them to Jake Walsh if they wanted to learn to dive and get equipment. (3) Have the PCs 'train' will Bill in diving, and one night see a strange boat on the opposite end of the lake (the cult). (4) Have the PCs search for the wreckage at the same time as the cult, the group above the water fights the cult itself while the PC below the water tries to secure the Dreamplate before the cult diver can bring it to the surface.
One point I find strange that you didn't go into is -why- the plane went down in the first place. The Dreamplate or Mythos artifact being bound in some way to a creature who is released when someone takes hold of it could lead to point (5) where the PC who recovers the dreamplate brings it to the surface, and as they do, the creature very easily destroys the cult and then attacks the players who have to defend the plate as they head back to shore.
Thanks for the headsup. The vanilla scenario was underwhelming as hell. After this review, I tried to reincorport it into our homebrewn "Daughter of Rhan-Tegoth" (Yup sequel to Horror in the Museum) campaign and had to make some major changes, such as including more modern autonomous dive suits (our campaign is takes place in the 80s) that have their own oxygen supply and comm system, so that every player can participate equally in the dive. All in all it fairly enjoyable.
As for monsters, I probably would try something that can surface to the boat while it's body remains underwater, dividing its attention and perhaps allowing the divers some kind of stealth advantage as it focuses on the boat.
Hi Seth, here's a few things that occurred to me for improving the module. First, let the players hire a dive team, but make the object they're collecting hazardous enough that this 3rd-party attempt will dramatically fail. The players can be up on the boat pumping air for the divers, and observing all sorts of weird phenomena as they frantically try to pull the panicking team back up. These divers give a HELL NO to going down there ever again, and they're psychologically scarred enough that they leave behind their (now partially damaged) diving gear and just run, RUN away from the boat as soon as it's near dry land. Luckily, the players do remember a buddy from their organization who can come down and repair the gear, teach them diving, and lead the team. They could even be on their way from the start, but they decided on the diving team in the mean time. This NPC is someone with just a bit of mythos experience, so they're someone the team can rely on, and he/she brings several buddies who can operate the pumps FOR THE PLAYERS. This NPC can also provide equipment on loan (including diving suits and harpoons) if the players decide to not hire a team, and instead camp out on the lake and observe troubling phenomena from the shore that add a sense of urgency.
So we've solved several problems here:
1. The players got to hire a diving team (smart), and were rewarded with some very cool scenes showing the threat level below the waves. They had agency, and now it's a matter of "nobody but us is qualified to do this!". If they don't hire a diving team, that's good too! We're presenting a problem with multiple ways of solving it (and lots of neat ways for those solutions to contribute to the story), and we have a backup NPC who's going to help them move forward.
2. The players get to ALL go down in diving suits. NPCs are covering manning the boat, and the drunk local's testicles will be violently exploded by this team if he tries anything dangerous.
3. Whatever is down there is going to be a hell of a trip, and the players might even find themselves briefly in another world as this object opens a portal and the players fall through. Now they need to deal with this other world, and still keep their suits viable enough to make the trip back alive.
Thanks for all your excellent work, and also all the other work. ;)
At a glance, it sounds like it makes more sense for the property owner to hire the investigators to dive in his lake as a salvage mission, cutting out a lot of the railroady coincidences that would need to happen just to get the investigators onto the scenario's first page. Retrieving a MacGuffin from an airplane is such a vague goal, I guess it can work, but it could be replaced by pretty much anything - a sunken boat maybe, or a submerged ruin... maybe a creepy old town that was submerged when the valley was flooded into a local reservoir? Or maybe an old-fashioned paddle steamboat that used to sail one of the Great Lakes, sunk with a colorful passenger with eerie cargo in a mysterious storm? Make it something bigger than a plane, so it becomes an exploration scenario as much as anything, as the diving investigators explore haunted ruins or a creepy shipwreck, maybe looking for a MacGuffin in a race against time with some cultist rivals. For the investigators who aren't diving, you could play a bit on "The Fog": a weird mist rolls in, and hidden in the mist is the cultists' ship, leading to a ship-to-ship battle while the divers do their thing.
Some unfinished ideas that occurred to me to spice up the original scenario, that I couldn't find a place for, include:
* sounds like the scenario could have used some pre-gen divers;
* perhaps the scenario could use an (optional?) lake monster, not necessarily a direct threat;
* the "dream plate" suggests one of those weird Dreamlands boats to me, maybe there's a Dreamlands scenario buried in here somewhere; maybe cultists beat the investigators to the wreckage, but by the time the investigators get there, the cultists are missing, and their boat is mysteriously abandoned and adrift on the lake, leading perhaps to some creepy shenanigans with the abandoned boat for some investigators to deal with while the others are diving;
* that annoying farmer NPC sounds like he'd be more fun to have disappear before the investigators arrive, his house weirdly ransacked, a trail leading to the lake....
Sounds like a situation where you use the initial hook, then write up an actual adventure off it. Great video, thanks for the warning
Deep Ones!!!!
God, I kept waiting for you to say it. This adventure just screams deep ones, possibly with some underwater tunnels that connect the lake to the ocean or a subterreanean city, which would be cool. As is? Eh. I've got a lawn to mow.
I was wondering if the sense of urgency can be created via the buyer? I.e. they want their item in time or the pay gets reduced. This is a good incentive for the PCs to finish the job on time but also they're not going to get nothing if they don't finish on time.
Or I'd consider the PCs having to get to the crash site and try diving before the rescue/recovery team got there.
As for the actual horror. Being in a heavy diving suit in a semi-lit space means that they're already quite claustrophobic
Let the thing grab the NPC and suddenly the PC is left on their own under the water
Meanwhile the PCs on the boat get attacked, while the creature will also attempt to destroy the air equipment on the boat.
I always love watching your videos! Thank you for giving potential keepers so many ideas!
This could be used as an introduction to diving before using the diving in some grand underwater adventure
Your second story suggestion sounds like it would work better. You could add an element where the divers have to retrieve the artifact and do something with it in order for the Mythos beastie to be successfully defeated by the PCs on the barge, or defeated in a timely fashion. Maybe the binding to the artifact gives the creature armor, abilities, or healing that the divers can negate by breaking/repairing/using the artifact in some fashion.
Fantastic video, as always!
my idea for adding urgency would be to say that the artefact is made of metal and that the contact with the water does damage it. Also those cultists might be actualyl somehow linked to some foul deep one spawn so there might be at least the threat of underwater combat.
Wow. This is the first bad Cthulhu review I've seen Seth give, out of the dozen or more I've watched. I always love the improvements he makes. In this case, I think it makes sense for the investigators to hire divers but then have to fight cultists topside while the divers deal with the recovery. The players could even also play the NPC divers who encounter the mythos menace under water and have some specific task they can try to complete to neutralize it (putting the genie back in the bottle, so to speak).
Regardless, somehow the investigators topside have to get attacked by a monster coming up. Maybe a diver that doesn't survive becomes a monster or multiple monsters are released, and at least one can't be stopped (it's container was broken in the crash).
I imagine such a niche adventure like this, requires - besides the obvious critical changes - also a niche group of characters.
It would probably fit if the characters actually play a group of treasure divers - 'Relic Hunter' or Tomb Raider style. Insert it in a running campaign or play it with non-diver characters seems troublesome at best.
Also one should add some further changes:
* NPCs who operate the pumps and suits for every character, so they can go together.
* Harpoon guns. And something you can shoot at.
* You can do the whole 'boat starts up and yanks the character' simply by adding some sea monster attacking the boat...
* Strange hazards in the water, like hot, acidic wells - which corrode the suits (staying away far enough thins the acid so it becomes harmless...
* As we talk about obvious volcanic activity - maybe a volcano ready to break out. - but here we start to create a completely new adventure...
... what if you run Dagger of Thoth, at the end of which there's a mention of "Thoth's Collection" which includes the "Thoth's Glass Eye" which is on the plane featured in *Fear of Flying*. In fact, the co-pilot's mythos experience could have planted him squarely in the position of undercover courier of the Glass Eye.
So effectively, it plays like this:
Employer to Underlings:
"go to [Richmond, Virginia or wherever you like] and wait. you'll know cue when you see it"
E to Clarke:
"get on this plane and get the Artifact. it has a security escort so crashing the plane will be a good cover for the mission."
>PCs are on the plane, dispatch Clarke but not before the plane runs out of fuel from a punctured fuel line after the second morning embarkment.
>PCs escape the plane crash and make their way to the site. reporters are on the scene that night.
E to Jake the Instructor:
"hey, I've got an employee with LEO credentials waiting for you on-scene. my bank courier will arrive inside the hour with an advance on the payment, the rest you'll get after."
>Jake arrives on scene. Teaches the PCs what's what and takes a liking to them. He agrees to help the PCs and also take payment through salvage from the crash.
Underlings to Employer:
"hey Boss, Clarke's a no-show. You want us to wait for a different lieutenant? it'll take a week? ok."
the rest of the scene plays like you said yours did. adjust as needed.
Here is how I would fix the adventure: what the players need to find is on a dead body, that was killed by some politician. The players aren't allowed to call a random divers team, because nobody can see the corpse, or it would cause a scandal, and they have a time limit because some nosy journalist is coming to investigate in a few days and will find the body (he got tipped). The players are paid handsomely for doing the dive discretely and fast. And when they go underwater there are FIVE CTHULHUS! (last part is optional)
Oh, I see what you did there. :D
I have a thought (if it hasn't been shared already) on how a scenario like Crash Dive may work: make the item they're retrieving be what puts them on the clock as part of a larger adventure. For example, the main adventure involves a mythos relic of some sort being stolen for a collector, but the PCs are hired by someone who knows the true nature of the item, and if it isn't returned to it's rightful place by X timeframe, something terrible will happen. So they have to investigate who stole it, where it went, and then track it down. This should take time, but still leave a comfortable window. On the way back, hit them with something like Fear of Flying, where in the climactic confrontation, one of the propellers is damaged/destroyed, sheering off the side of the aircraft near the back. Upon landing, they'll learn that the damage also destroyed some of the cargo ties and while their personal belongings are safe, the case holding the mythos object is gone.
Now things get tense as they have to investigate where the plane was when the cargo fell out and work out where it might have fallen, and of course there's only a few people who live out about where it should have landed, and someone will mention seeing something fall towards the lake when asked. A modified Crash Dive scenario than ensues where investigators have to weigh how much time they have left vs the danger and going down and retrieving the object, knowing the consequences of failing to return it in time. To add to the matter, maybe the object's presence in the lake is causing strange changes, both letting investigators know they're on the right track and adding some creepiness to the dive itself or causing the reflections to those looking in the lake to be wrong somehow. If the suit gets damaged from a failed skill check, do they press on to get the object on the first try, or be safe and surface for repairs, maybe loosing another day on the clock?
Or maybe the object was put there by a cult as part of a ritual and the only way to stop it is to remove the object from the center of the lake. Again, make the McGuffin what makes the adventure time sensitive and players will stress over getting it out as quickly as possible.
I agree, this is more of a scenario hook than a scenario, but the greatest mistake Chaosium made was not including the NPC who starts the scenario off in 'Secrets of LA' where he would have been available to a wider range of Keepers. That's someone who can spark off all kinds of scenarios.
Seth have you played Grace Under Pressure? It’s a fantastic scenario and develops a good underwater theme. I’d love to hear what you think about it.
The diving rules you mention here would help with Grace.
Random idea: During the character creation process each Player makes three NPC characters from their backstory; these NPCs cabn have one specialized skill or resource. The Keeper then keeps these NPCs in reserve. When an adventure calls for the chaarcters to need an NPCs help, the Keeper can just whip out one of these NPCs to fill that role.
Maybe the plate summons a slowly increasing number of monsters every round, so the boaters will eventually get overwhelmed while the divers have to do some sort of puzzle underwater to turn it off, and the boaters meed to fend off the attack while also pumping air for the divers.
Thank You for the fair and honest review!
You know, it might work well to run this in a very different way.
Offer the dive school as part of it being a reward, pointing towards another adventure after it, getting the entire group a new skill that might need the entire group having it at a later point.
On top of that, I'd shift this to Pulp Cthulhu, and I'd run it after the Two Headed Serpent as a way to introduce new characters for those lost at the end of that campaign. Have them contacted by allies after it, perhaps even including the other surviving human from Cadeus, and having him be the "shady" contact, and having the plane crash and relic be due to Cadeus in some way. Having it be a potentially dangerous item.
The monster running about that you suggested could be an interesting thing here. The players find out about it (narrow escape, local jackass gets chomped after the first dive...skip the prior team having been there...or the prior team might be dead and jackass decided to sacrifice people to the thing). Add some research that they need to do something to the relic to remove the beastie from play...so the diver has something to do while occasionally getting attacked, the people on the surface have to keep the pump going and fight off the monster.
Using this as a starting point for having the players realize that despite the serpentpeople, well, the stated goal that Cadeus had is something still necessary...perhaps starting to set up for a new group themselves.
Okay, I think this would be a great startinf adventure (wirh heavy changes), let me explain:
This asventure requires a pre-existence of some skill, so you could either have your players make characters with thise skills or make it a mini scenario that is from the perspective of the salvage team and not your investigators.
Now, about those changes: the artifact could play a role in both the plane crash and the boat heading to shore. Maybe it is a tar-like substance that moves on its own and is attracted to machines, messing with them when it comes in contact. The tar is then contained in a jar of some kind. The jar is opened on the play, boom, crash. The jar is in the water when you’re out there on the barge, boom, the barge starts moving. Now you can have players in the water struggling against the force (as well as trying to recontain the machine-tar and players on top trying to control the barge and get rid of the machine-tar.
This incident could introduce a group to the mythos, or affect the salvage team, which the PCs would then hear about and check out (though the players will know the full story). If the later, then you could have the machine-tar become overgrown in the vicinity, making a weird bio-machine-place that the PCs have to explore/fight.
At this point it's not even the same adventure.
Use the initial setup and then have the relic activate. Option 1 it brings creatures from the dreamland to the local area or Option 2 the mirror brings dreams of the locals to life, while they are asleep.
I have an idea that the dreamplate is a portal/beacon. That way, players under and over the water can have something to do. They would have to find a way to close the portal quickly otherwise the area might be overrun with whatever Mythos creature you want.
Think one solution would have been to let them hire the crew to get it, and while they're down there, the party gets ambushed up top, so you get your frantic pumping and fighting, without splitting the party.
I ran this scenario in the modern day and all of the players were russian divers who had to recover a crashed american plane loaded with equipment to analyze. They were equipped with needle guns and underwater pistols. Thats my take on solving the modules problems (although it may have just been a different module at that point).
Another way to prevent players from hiring a diving team would be the good old artisan way (there are some funny sketches around about this, at least here in germany our artisans are infamous for this stuff).
Means they'll charge generously for the drive to and from the lake, equipment wear, high hourly rates, danger pay, (if they are the same team that was there before) a special Bill Taylor fee for again putting up with this guy. Then they will estimate their time (arrival, setup, lunch break, finishing setup, early closing time; diving being estimated as another 3 days, sinc preparation and work after diving take up so much work and time) and what it will cost the PCs (drive should be around 100 dollar a way no matter the distance, then 30 dollars per hour; and again this is only the first day on which the team won't do any actual diving). And of course this estimate will not be done on a phone call, they'll have to wait for an estimate of cost they'll get as a letter. The PCs will likely not want to deal with that.
I had there be a neat little water monster
Then the shady contact betrayed them and nearly killed them
Ended the scenario with a epic thing of them heading into Boston and shooting the guy dead
It was cool as heck
Just have the previous diving team suffering horrific nightmares about the lake since diving down there and having no desire to get near there again and have the rumor spread and having the bumpkin having secretly gone mad from prolonged exposure.
Maybe have the item that's in the water be some form of puzzle box that got opened during the crash (or maybe before the crash, causing it in the first place), releasing some nasty that starts munching its way through the local populace.
Closing the item will instantly banish (or at least severely weaken) the monster, and if it were to be killed with the item still opened, it will eventually release a new one.
That way, there is an incentive to go down and retrieve that item.
If the monster has some way to lure it into away from the item for a while reliably, there should be something to do for the whole party:
-diver(s) go down and close that f***er up
-someone does the air management (and maybe gives instructions for the divers on how to close the item if it's some sort of reverse puzzle cube)
---High stakes 'Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes'
-the rest can lure the monster and distract it
Another good one Seth!
On your parting shot, I would think it should be obvious to people that you "never give a bad review" because you only review things you've personally run (as you have repeatedly stated before). You don't strike me as the kind of guy that would put his players through a crappy adventure just to create content. You also strike me as a decent guy that would try to find some good in things and would try to find the good things in something that is otherwise mediocre, at best. It's blatantly obvious you read these things before you try them and are experienced enough to have a good idea of what will work for you and your players. Sounds to me that critics saying you don't give bad reviews don't pay attention, or maybe have an axe to grind. But that's just me. I appreciate your videos and I hope that they have helped make me a better GM.
Sounds like the whole adventure as written is good for a small step in a larger adventure. In order to keep the players on the barge in the action you can have creatures board the barge from the lake. That way the guys pumping need to defend themselves, the pump, and the barge while the divers are also occupied.
The monster scenario could work as a complication to the players hiring some divers. The NPC divers go down, wake up the monster, and the player characters up top have to distract it, fight it, and keep pumping air down to the divers below as the other NPC crew go crazy from seeing this mythos creature.
I don't get people, sometimes. Seth has many times advised that an adventure is no good if run as-written. Advising on the many ways such an adventure can be made workable, and noting its few good qualities is nowhere near the same thing as giving everything a good review. These sorts of videos are far more constructive than just saying a thing sucks and leaving it at that. RUclips has plenty of that sort of negativity already.
I think mixing both would be a good idea for the ending. Maybe the cult attacks just as the device is grabbed. Now one teams has to deal with these cultist while this diver is getting chased through all the nooks of this plane and maybe underwater cave. Probably better though to bump up diving to something higher
Maybe it would already help to not split the party through the air pump? Maybe enlarge the lake so the entire party is needed to search it, so they all go under, and some hired npcs or something take care of the pumping? It would at least make designing improvements easier because you don't need to take the party split into account.
It feels to me like the trick might be to give the divers and the players topside some related but different critical challenges - like an attack topside in which the pcs must defend the pump and keep it going while there's a ticking clock going on down below with potentially dangerous manoeuvrers that need to be made.
Perhaps there is a time element to the item itself. " On the second blue moon of the year, nightmares will be unleashed" or something. The next blue moon is a week or so off so the PCs can't wait around. That may work, especially if the "air pumpers" have to deal with holding off cultist boarding parties while keeping the equipment running. ... still, 20% ...
I have an ending for you Seth. make the object at the bottom of the lake something wanted by a creature that can't go in the water and doesn't like to be in daylight(cuz the dive will happen at day, i'm sure). so when the party recovers it the critter comes to find them the next night...or follows them until it catches up.
This would actually be a good setup for a Delta Green campaign. Mostly if you set it up at modern times. Then it's about sneaking past the farmer and getting into the lake
Great video as usual. I really don't mind a CoC adventure not having any sort of mythos threats, but it has to earn not having them with the players. This one sounded rough as-is. How about the jerk farmer has been secretly murdering people who stumble onto his bootleg operation and tossing their bodies in the lake? Then, the artifact in the plane has some sort of resurrection capability that brings all these murdered bodies back to life. Maybe they would be a low enough threat to not overwhelm underwater characters, while the majority make their way up to the deck of the barge and cause problems up there at the same time? You could even foreshadow this with odd sightings of strange humanoid creatures around the lake some nights the players hear about.That way you give the players a reason to deal with Bill somehow, either themselves or by turning him over to the law. It's not perfect, but it could work.
So to create this urgency, one may want to have an event tied to recovering the object, like for example a ritual that they need to do at certain moment with the object, or maybe someone's life is at risk if the party don't get the object on time, or maybe the salt can ruin the object and they have certain amount of hours, or maybe they have a deadline in their contract to retrieve the item, that stipulates significant reduction in the payment in case of a delay, or maybe they learn the cult is coming to retrieve the item but with a bigger deadly force than their group, maybe the cult have the police on their side. Also if combined all or some of the options it makes it super urgent. Lol.
I would have had the Dreamplate bring a dream by nearby sleeping person to life. It would manifest as a physical place near the plate. The needle and thread will guide a person who is awake to the one living in the manifested dream. In this case an important NPC who was on the plane and fell unconcious from the crash. I would allow the diver to remove his suit and walk around the dream area (maybe the other players pull up suit to check on diver only to find an empty suit). Dream creatures would give players topside something to occupy them, and actually give old drunk a good reason to fire up barge and drag divers. In later scenario, the dream plate would be used to get an item that must be dreamed into existence.
A diver player with gear already on hand could go to the location, pay to use the barge, land, etc. without the drunk in tow, go out to the plane, dive, retrieve the artifact, and go home in what for my players would be about 30 minutes.
I agree with Jack, definitely a scene.
My personnel idea is not to have the players go through it at all, but have a NPC mention a story similar to it, or even better, have a mythos-knowledgeable NPC go to recover one artifact at the bottom of a lake while the PCS are elsewhere.
Just me tho