Did anyone else find this scenario just too difficult? I've played through most of the others and while have lost a few this is the first one that just felt absolutely unfair and as a result not fun. Basically when we started out we had several monster treachery cards before we had a chance to put on weapons so it took the first half of the first act to get out of that quagmire. Then when we had the clues to advance we had one turn before the agenda flipped due to doom. At that point it was over since we had to (1) get clues from locations (2) fight the ghosts (3) do whatever thing the ghost wanted us to do in order to stop them from reflipping (4) fight off the ghost at the location the OTHER ghost wanted us to go to and do something (5) get the large amount of clues on THAT location before we could finish off the ghost (6) avoid the super ghost hunting us that even if we evaded or killed would come back with treachery cards and attack out of turn.

The entire thing just seemed totally impossible unless you were able to advance the act as absolutely quickly as possible in order to clean up every one of the ghost locations before they lost aloof. Otherwise it feels absolutely unreasonable since there just isn't enough time to do the incredibly amount of work it's asking. Knowing that now I feel like maybe we could do better but the sense we got was that the urgency ramped up so significantly after the first half where there was almost no threat (except the witches bogging down our actions) to the second where you were screwed if you didn't know beforehand to rush to spawn the ghosts.

Maybe we were missing something and made it way more difficult than we had to but like I wrote earlier this is the first scenario that really just did feel remotely sensible in what it was asking. This isn't supposed to be a venting complaint, but more to see if other people had similar experiences since I'm worried my other player had such a bad time that they aren't going to be as interested in playing more if upcoming scenarios are similar.

I really liked it.

I don't have much to say, (it was hard, and some of the ghost mechanics were nasty surprises). We got 3 of them with a group of 3 players, but the last one was really close. It's going to widely change based on which ghosts spawn in what locations.

It's certainly one of the harder scenarios, and it can be easier or harder depending on random elements of setup. It certainly felt pretty hard at times; as Guardian I had a bit of a tough time, but it wasn't as bad as The Secret Name, honestly. Definitely had me wishing I'd gone for a more generically effective and less gimmicky build. But we got through it OK.

But as long as you have a lot of options for dealing with tough situations and a willingness to take a few hits, it seems very doable. We were playing on Hard, so it might end up way too much on Expert if that is your bag.

2 hours ago, Radish said:

The entire thing just seemed totally impossible unless you were able to advance the act as absolutely quickly as possible in order to clean up every one of the ghost locations before they lost aloof.

That wouldn't exactly help, would it? They're only Aloof at non-Spectral locations, and you can only discover clues at Spectral ones.

Anyway, you'll note that you get the Memento for banishing at least one Heretic, so the game doesn't really expect you to do well.

1 hour ago, Allonym said:

It's certainly one of the harder scenarios, and it can be easier or harder depending on random elements of setup. It certainly felt pretty hard at times; as Guardian I had a bit of a tough time, but it wasn't as bad as The Secret Name, honestly. Definitely had me wishing I'd gone for a more generically effective and less gimmicky build. But we got through it OK.

But as long as you have a lot of options for dealing with tough situations and a willingness to take a few hits, it seems very doable. We were playing on Hard, so it might end up way too much on Expert if that is your bag.

The Secret Name was the WORST. Like, I loved it, but I literally felt like I was being swarmed by rats. Horrible flesh-eating rats of doom.

I WILL say that narratively this one (Wages of Sin) did not make a whole lot of sense to me. I don't quite understand what kind of information we were looking for, and I feel like the only bit you get is from one specific ghost. The rest of the info is just non-info. I hate to say it, but it almost feels like they just wanted a ghosty scenario and didn't really have a reason to include it story-wise.

Please correct me if you noticed something or felt otherwise. I've only played it once (we are not part of the lodge), but I was left scratching my head a bit like... why are we here again?

38 minutes ago, Soakman said:

The Secret Name was the WORST. Like, I loved it, but I literally felt like I was being swarmed by rats. Horrible flesh-eating rats of doom.

I WILL say that narratively this one (Wages of Sin) did not make a whole lot of sense to me. I don't quite understand what kind of information we were looking for, and I feel like the only bit you get is from one specific ghost. The rest of the info is just non-info. I hate to say it, but it almost feels like they just wanted a ghosty scenario and didn't really have a reason to include it story-wise.

Please correct me if you noticed something or felt otherwise. I've only played it once (we are not part of the lodge), but I was left scratching my head a bit like... why are we here again?

I was playing Zoey-with-a-blessed-Tommy-Gun, so all I had to know was that they had the Heretic keyword and I was down with murdering them. The nerds in the group might have noticed some inconsistencies, but then we were with the Lodge because they seemed like good Christians, with their strong anti-witch messages; we certainly had a relatively decent idea that there would be something worth finding in the graveyard, though there was a bit of fudging from "investigating the graveyard" to "talking to all the ghosts"; I guess the idea is that the Spectral events are the same as the events in the Silver Twilight party, so there must be a connection, split up and look for clues!

My group likes to play to play scenarios twice through with the same investigators when campaigns are first released to try out slightly different deck ideas/ make different choices. We already found with the first scenario and Wages of Sin that there was a very big difference in difficulty depending on numerous random variables.

For the second play of the first scenario, despite knowing that people would have to be entirely self-sufficient for the first part and trying to plan accordingly, the clue specialists got monsters and the fighters got high shroud locations. We did manage to dig ourselves out, but the difference between the two plays was huge.

For our first playthrough of Wages of Sin, the heretics were generally where we wanted them to be or just next door, so we managed to get three. The next playthrough, at least two were on the wrong side of the map and the various monsters inbetween the two sides made trying to get them were we needed them a no go. We barely managed to get one heretic and due to a bit of bad luck/xp greed weren't able to escape. This feels somewhat intended as the number you need to banish to get at least something is quite low, so getting a bit of bad luck concerning placement isn't the worst thing.

If someone managed to get all 4 without giving themselves the perfect placement, I'd tell them to enter the lottery with that amount of luck.

Remember that this scenario is one of those that ask you to accomplish the task X number of times, much like Midnight Masks asks you to interrogate 6 cultists in NotZ. In these scenarios it is usually pretty much impossible to reliably accomplish every single thing. From the different campaigns, in these types of scenarios, it seems that accomplishing half before resigning is effectively a successful run-through.