My friends and are are going to attempt Rising Tide in one evening starting at 2 and going till 12. With food break, intermissions and parental responsibilities we are guessing it will take this long.

I like this scenario but I've only ever finished it once. I'm never sure why it gets such a low rating for people? Is it the story? The balance or just the length?

Thoughts?

I enjoyed it. It's not as fast moving, and is mostly focused on investigating instead of combat. But it's got an interesting story and a fair amount of leeway for investigator decisions changing the final result. For what's it's worth, the one time I played it it took me about 4 hours. Average time going from the spreadsheet is around 4.5 hours.

It just feels really, really unfinished and is far away from reaching its potential.

I feel like the basic idea of "Rising Tide" is a really good one! In the beginning it really feels like you would be investigating in a mysterious and deep story. So for the first hour of playing, i was really in love with this mission.

But there are some bad mistakes (at least i would call them this way) that FFG did here:

1: The gigantic maps without all to much to find there. And again: The concept is really cool! I did really like the idea of visiting different areas of the city, choose where i go next and so on. But the thing is´: Out of the around 40 search tokens, that are going to appear in every area, only about 3 or 4 are really important for the story. The rest of them is (unfortunately) just a waste of time. A weapon here, another item there... we played this scenario 3 times now and it was evrytime the same: After a few hours of playing all of our investigators had their hands full of equipment... that they didnt need You dont need weapons here! And you also dont need about 95% of the rest that you might find!

And that would be kind of okay, if there would be a way to figure out what is important and what is not BEFORE you are interacting with those search tokens. But, to be honest, you can not! Sometimes a token seems to be really important and it turns out to be another wepon (yay!) and sometimes there is a token that seems to be just another useless item and all other sudden it turns to be the main clue for the investigation. It feels really random. And to get so many items that you cannot use did also feel really frustrating =/ Why are they there? It just makes no sense.

2: No one of the suspects does respond to your investigation. Sometimes while you are investigating you have the feeling of finding something really interesting, or you might learn something about one of your suspects. For example (careful! spoiler!) when you find out that Bobby Foster is somehow connected with the marsh - family (end of spoiler). We were really excited when we got that information and walked straight to Bobby to talk with him about that. But we couldnt. You can never. It dóesnt matter what you are finding, you wont be able to have a talk with the suspects about that. But of course i can ask them again and again about what they can tell me about innsmouth and if they did realize something strange xD And all over sudden i completely loose the feeling of really "investigating" here. It feels more like walking from one token to another...

3. The story "variety" . If you are going to play the mission multiple times you will see, that the story and a lot of the actions/discussions/etc. are almost completely the same. There are just minor things in the story that are different. But the cultists (in the end) were always completely different and (to be honest) most of the time really surprising for us. What does that mean: You cant solve the case by bour own mind. You maybe wont even guess in the right direction. And about 95% if the main story are not relevant for the investigation for the cultists because they are the same in each round. You just have to hope that you are going to find a proof for the place of the ritual or the cultists. And how do you do that? Just interact with all the search tokens, find a lot of useless stuff and hopefully find an important clue "by accident" That works fine for about an hour. And then it is going to become boring. For about 4 more hours. And thats just not how a mission of this kind should work in my opinion...

We are starting in about 35 minutes. I'll be careful to pay attention and see what my review is. I'm agonizing over character selection. I am a Rita Young guy. No need for another choice I love her. Her power matches up nicely with my impulsivity..

WE elected the mission and were setting up as a MAJOR thunderstorm rolled in. I could not tell the thunder of the APP from the real thunder. Its gonna pour and rain all nice....... I got my sound system cranked. We are going nowhere

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee .

PERFECT TIMING.

There was thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear...

Thunder has ended as has the first map. A cool clear sky has blossomed over Innsmouth and the investigators have bedded down for a quiet night of unnerving dreams. Roughly an hour play time.

WARNING SPOILERS

Michael McGlenn managed to find some hooch and waste money on a fountain. Then he went from person to person alienating people with his irish brogue......NOT GOING WELL!!!! DICE ARE AGAINST ME.

Dr Lee angered a Detective and the hotel owner with his Snideness. Then he got upset about a claustrophobic feeling room.

Min Thai Phan talked to frighting children and got the willies after upsetting two old ladies evening tea.

Kate Winthrop and her long sexy legs talked to a bookstore owner and managed thankfully to make our one and only friend so far. GOOD ROLL FINALLY

No one talked to Zadoc Allen sadly I hope we get there before his appointment with the Esoteric Order.....

After a short conversation and an intermission to go get fast food we have decided to go break into the detectives office and see what the snob who can't pl ay pool is having delivered. Also my wife is getting me and the rest of my team a box of dry apple cider....I hope that does not hinder the investigation. So far so good.

WARNING SPOILERS

Wow did that ever go badly. I figured it out and drew the insanity that I could not verbally disagree with the person to my left. During the discussion we followed the wrong suspect to the wrong location and got jumped. There was so much on the board it was insane. Min Thai Phan escaped to the comforts of an asylum, her mind shattered. The rest of us.....welllllll.....The rest of us.....didn't fare as well as she did. Any who were captured were likely sacrificed and fed to fishes or captured and bred with the fishes . I hope poor Michale McGlenn managed to go down fighting. Doc Lee really got aggressive towards the end. Kate Winthrop showed evil into the fires we lit.

I like the adventure. its a nice change of pace from the rest of them and plays much more like a Cthulhu based RPG. It follows the rising action of a Lovecraftian tale, starting low and unnerving then breaking out at the end. There was enough for us all to do and a number of things we didn't get to investigate. Sadly nowhere near enough puzzles. We found one. It was a good one though...

My advice:

1) Follow the clues: It's very easy to get excited trying to clean sweep every thing off the board but it wont solve the mystery for you.

2) Discuss the clues: Get your team on the same page and investigate whatever you ant be certain of.

3) Read the clues : When the app says review the clues, do so. (if we had done this we would have likely won) We ended up having to discuss without access to the in app journal.

4) Have Fun : Don't take it so seriously that it stops being fun.

5) NO PHONES : PUT YOUR #%&@ cellphone away while playing board games with friends. It's a board game. The purpose is to get together otherwise it would be an online multiplayer game. They went out of their way to keep this a board game treat it as such.

Out of interest, how long did it take? (I assume you didn't post immediately after the game, otherwise it seems it took 17+ hours )

With four players (some parenting and two inter missions) It took us about 7.5 hours. You could do it faster with fewer players and faster still without cell phones.

I recently played this scenario by my lonesome (which always goes faster) with four investigators in a blistering 2 1/2 hours!

20 hours ago, DeepOneRisen said:

I recently played this scenario by my lonesome (which always goes faster) with four investigators in a blistering 2 1/2 hours!

Yeah with no one to argue with and no one to tell long unrelated stories it can really chug along