Hey all,

I have everything released so far, but have just gotten 2 more people hooked. One has finished a Carcosa cycle, and one is playing through Dunwich with us now (his first cycle). My question is should I be using the Return To sets? I have them, but neither has ever played Dunwich before. They may never play it again.

To Return To or not to Return To? I've only played through Return to Dunwich once. I'm mostly worried about the Essex Express because it is a 4 player game but can't remember if Return To makes it less likely to basically auto lose.

I would definitely consider using Return to the Essex County Express, since it makes that scenario much better. In most cases, Return to the Dunwich Legacy isn't significantly more difficult. The main increases in difficulty are likely to be in Miskatonic Museum, Where Doom Awaits, Blood on the Altar and Lost in Time and Space. In general I'd probably want to play the base set a couple of times before moving to Return, since there's different encounter sets so different experiences. Of course, you could go for a more custom approach, mixing the two, but you'd have to be confident in the appropriateness of your approach.

Incidentally, I would recommend not using Return to the Night of the Zealot for the first ever game with new players, since the base Gathering is an intro scenario and the Return makes it a more fleshed-out scenario.

And Return to the Path to Carcosa is a whole different situation, with story differences and the Return to... box not really improving the campaign as such.

Yeah. This is along the lines of what I was thinking. There is a good chance these players will only play through each cycle once. We’re at the 3rd scenario and haven’t been using Return, but the museum and Essex are really the two scenarios I’m most concerned about. Museum is pretty dry (one of the players is a combat exclusive Zoey). But we also have 4 players so the bufffs to the hunting horror are going to cycle fast.

I'd at least replace Ancient Evils and the locations in Where Doom Awaits.

Can I just say: it's probably better with more players, but the main addition to Return to Essex made solo absolutely brutal for me.

You absolutely can say. I am just worried about a first agenda scenario ender.

30 minutes ago, Soakman said:

You absolutely can say. I am just worried about a first agenda scenario ender.

I can't remember what the back of the replacement Agendas say for Essex County Express, but couldn't you just use these and leave everything else unchanged? Alternatively/additionally, as @Eldan985 said, you could replace Ancient Evils with Resurgent Evils even if it is just for that scenario.

Similarly, even if you change nothing else I think you can safely replace Base of the Hill and Ascending Path in Where Doom Awaits with the new, better versions. Having said that I think the original versions will be less of a problem if you have four players.

Otherwise I probably wouldn't change anything else, except for maybe using the unique Broods in Undimensioned and Unseen just so that you get a bit of variety. It depends on whether you think your group can handle them since they are a bit more difficult than the default Brood.

Thanks guys. Really appreciate the ideas. I am leaning toward replacing the ancient evils with resurgent evils during Essex. And the rest of the suggestions are also very welcome. I've decided I'll leave Miskatonic Museum alone (that's what we'll be playing today). Never really thought about how the Hunting Horror will really scale with additional encounter pulls, but I'll just leave it. If all else fails and he's not that threatening, Zooey has 2 copies of Sixth Sense as a back up clueing mechanism if she gets bored.

Miskatonic Museum has never been one of my favorites to begin with, but I don't want to jade them with that knowledge, haha.

I find Miskatonic Museum more fun if I think of it as a dash round the exhibits trying to collect as many xp as possible before Beyond the Veil kills you. Sort of like Supermarket Sweep, but with the addition of also being pursued by a flying snake.

22 minutes ago, Assussanni said:

I find Miskatonic Museum more fun if I think of it as a dash round the exhibits trying to collect as many xp as possible before Beyond the Veil kills you. Sort of like Supermarket Sweep, but with the addition of also being pursued by a flying snake.

That's fair. We have pretty solid encounter manipulation in our group. I'm running a custom creation seeker (Eunice Goulding, the Geometrician) who can essentially use First Watch (except everyone has to have 1 encounter) once per turn after she successfully investigates a location, and she has 2 Forewarned at this point and Agnes has 1 ward of protection, so we may be able to dodge those if we're lucky and see them coming on the correct turns.

Other investigators include Zooey as a combat fighty person, and Finn as a jack of all trades extra cluer.

How will they know which encounter sets are being used? Are they setting everything up?

Seems like an opportunity to curate the experience since, as you say,. they're only going through it once.

I mean, only the chef knows what happened in the kitchen, amiright?

2 hours ago, Assussanni said:

I can't remember what the back of the replacement Agendas say for Essex County Express, but couldn't you just use these and leave everything else unchanged?

15 hours ago, CSerpent said:

That was exactly what made my play of it so rough. The Conductor was awful to deal with.

But again, that was solo. It'd be different with a dedicated fighter/evader.

That explains why I couldn't remember what the text on the back of Agenda 0 was!

On 1/22/2020 at 11:14 AM, Soakman said:

I find Miskatonic Museum more fun if I think of it as a dash round the exhibits trying to collect as many xp as possible before Beyond the Veil kills you. Sort of like Supermarket Sweep, but with the addition of also being pursued by a flying snake.

That’s an old British TV show! I can’t remember the name of it, but it was basically giving a list of clues to things people had to find in the British Museum with a time limit. First one back wins. Or something along those lines. Sans the snakes of course.

On 1/23/2020 at 9:50 PM, Mimi61 said:

That’s an old British TV show! I can’t remember the name of it, but it was basically giving a list of clues to things people had to find in the British Museum with a time limit. First one back wins. Or something along those lines. Sans the snakes of course.

You refer of course to Relic: Guardians of the Museum which was probably more like the Crystal Maze than you remember it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relic:_Guardians_of_the_Museum

https://youtu.be/CBceLEvN88Q

British TV was full of shows where you had to run around solving puzzles

Sometimes they have you a helicopter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Hunt_(British_game_show)

Sometimes they locked you in a mock prison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailbreak_(TV_series)

or dumped you on a rock n the English Channel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Boyard_(game_show)

The best of course was where they sent you to an alien planet (by Tube train) and menaced you with potted plants!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_Game

Thus preparing the nation's children to grow up and become masters of Arkham Horror.

15 hours ago, ArkhamChronicle said:

You refer of course to Relic: Guardians of the Museum which was probably more like the Crystal Maze than you remember it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relic:_Guardians_of_the_Museum

https://youtu.be/CBceLEvN88Q

British TV was full of shows where you had to run around solving puzzles

Sometimes they have you a helicopter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Hunt_(British_game_show)

Sometimes they locked you in a mock prison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailbreak_(TV_series)

or dumped you on a rock n the English Channel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Boyard_(game_show)

The best of course was where they sent you to an alien planet (by Tube train) and menaced you with potted plants!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_Game

Thus preparing the nation's children to grow up and become masters of Arkham Horror.

That was it! Relic, Guardians of the museum. And if you went to the British Museum, they gave you a card and you could quasi participate. We ran around all over the place trying to find everything. It was amazing fun. Who knew how that skill set would now be employed! Although an Arkham scenario to the cosmos and being threatened with potted plants seems eerily possible...

The British Museum has also featured in a number Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game scenarios.

I typically get Return To products to breath new life into old campaigns and update my player card collection. I will make the cards available for upgrades regardless if my fellow players have played as much as I have or are brand new to the game, however, I refuse to play Return To if my party has not played the original campaign first.