Sunday, July 21, 2019

555 - A Balance of Blood 09


Skype of Cthulhu presents a Call of Cthulhu Invictus campaign: A Balance of Blood by Matt Puccio.
In this episode the Keeper and investigators have a round table discussion on the scenario, including the historic legends upon which it is based.    
 

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3 comments:

Mark said...

Really love these breakdowns of the adventure as they are fantastic insights into the adventure and what the players were thinking.
I think the level of evil needs to be explained as much of what the protagonists are doing are not seen as that evil this is the period when slaves were tortured in legal cases. It would have been interesting if Varavunis? had caused the miscarriage of his wife whilst drunk or had refused her access to a midwife instead believing his pet priest could sort out any problems. She seems to get along with him because she has too but she has in her heart not forgiven him. The reason for the creature to go after the family was as mentioned too random the mystery could come from the issue that she is mostly unaware of what's going on but like someone said the son could mention some odd behaviour of his Mum at night and she might have small memory lapses that get more frequent towards the full moon.She may even show signs of injuries from her night time excursions, she tries to deflect any questions maybe the players think her husband is beating her but she really doesn't know how she got them, or she might have grass stsons on her feet etc.
The priest could have been performing rituals with increasing desperation as he fears for his life if he can't save the son and those rituals bleed through into the players dreams for an additional sanity loss maybe his God offers them his version if the unspeakable promise. For the briefing I think something like the situation in the the Simon Scarrow books and how Narcissus deals with Cato and Macro.
Still not sure about the Dragon men being a thing it seemed a little red herring like the history was cool but with the big bads abilities the cannon fodder could have been the soldiers of Varavunis they become I'll by magic or poison and the big bads gets to work on them convincing them that their master is not worth their loyalty maybe they believe that they will be sacrificed by the priest so they have to overthrow him. They can be dialled down a little stat wise because they are sick so they can do damage to the party but can be defeated and by forcing Varavunis to kill his own men the big bad makes it more personal and painful.
Just my two cents it was a great game and I really enjoyed listening to it.

chris said...

I appreciate these post-game discussions quite a lot. Don't be shy about doing them, even when it's not a playtest feedback situation. We always do them in our local games, and I consider them an important part of the game.

chris said...

Oh, and to Matt: Really nice scenario, I just purchased it on drivethrurpg, hope that was the best place to get it (for you).

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