I Played my first game tonight. one investigator(ashcan pete) scenario 1b.

Now I usually take anything FGFG writes on a card and literally follow the instructions. I did this for this Games event cards.

So there are two cards that have the other investigators take a horror if they have not6 discovered a clue...then it say otherwise resolve 1 of the following.

now the thing is that narratively it whent a little wierdly.

pete enters the house...heads to the kitchen to check out smell...finds first clue...flaming zombie appears....maniac attackes him while leaving kitchen.

pete fights a running battle, with an axe he found, toward the foyer.(he wins but only 2 health left.

(not noticing the door layout(not game related just m,y cousin not paying attention) pete runs into loaboratory thinking he can get to the hallway through there

gets scared(2nd event without clue 2 being discovered)

explores laboratory and finds stuff there(useful) garden zombie appears.

pete unlocks suitcase...

ground starts shaking...somehow pete realizes that he can win by killing some maniac.

(my cousin grits teeth for upcoming final battle.)

three turns later house collapses...........? lol what? great game but.....did I do something wrong?

From my perspective Pete died a horribly confused man.......

Now....uhmm possible fix.......the event card 1 and 2 will just cause a horror every turn until the investigators discover the clue...thereby ensuring the investigators know whats going on at least.....

Its important to realize we just set it up and started playing> I knew I won by resolving the last event card but never looked at any of them and just assumed that it would make sense in the end.

There was no way he could have revealed the maniac and killed him in four turns with only the first clue revealed.

could my fix be unreasonable or is it intended that sometimes investigators have a house randomly fall on them?

I think the couple extra turns would not reduce the quickness or tension...especially if the sanity is being reduced every turn which puts a more immediate timing on the game. once you miss one clue/event then you will probably miss them all and then its over.

or possibly the word otherwise is taken to literally by me..but its been my experience that ffg uses literal interpretatiopn whereve rpossible...down to order of steps....so thoughts? even if you just want to say you laughed as hard as I did at poor pete.

edit: Meant 1A not 1B...sorry) also answered B and A for Question 2 and 3 respectively)

That's one of the scenarios where it really is pretty tough on a single investigator. I forget if they get extra time to achieve their objective if they reveal clue 1 before the penultimate event card, but in most cases, a single investigator really needs to be hoofing it to each clue without too much dallying or they are going to find things very tough in most cases. Gathering up all the items should really probably be left for when you have two investigators at least.

The game is rough on a single investigator. I strongly recommend 'investigator' characters for those that do single character that way you can usually get past puzzles in a single turn. Though I think that for a two player game (Keeper and Player), I would recommend the player handling two characters, so that can give you a bit more breathing room to explore and try to get things done.

jeffvandenberg said:

Although two of the investigator objectives in the first sceanrio would probably benefit greatly from having a combat character, not to mention it being useful to avoid sample carrying monsters from escaping to the altar.

With that in mind, I'd probably suggest Harvey Walters for a single character game, choosing the Shrivelling starting spell option to get the benefit of high Intellect, but decent damage output.

Try to get a group with 3-4 investigators. If there's only one player, maybe give him/her three investigators. Only two players, give them two investigators each.

The game tends to get pretty rough if you have a group that is too small, even with all the auto-balance stuff. Monsters just stand around longer, can focus on fewer characters, Locks take longer if the available characters are not intelligent enough, etc.
You can play all but Story 5 with only 1 investigator player and just let him/her play more than one investigator.

Yea I agree. I have five people I usually play with just they are never all around at the same time:P

I also Have a a good collection of FFG games. great game and I expected it to be tough for one guy.

the main thing I'm asking is if I read the 'Otherwise" part correctly. I am starting to think I did though. also I noticed this is the only scenario that has that so I am surmizing that this scenario is meant to have you miss things if you don't go fast enough.

Umm, yeah, you got it right.
If the player doesn't find the right clue, Walter doesn't show up and thus can't be killed. That's why more players = more chance to win and basically more fun.

The "If clue X wasn't found, deal X Horror" part is there to balance the investigator's speed, basically. If they are slower than the Event Counter expects them to be, they are dealt 1 sanity damage (which is annoying but nothing that slows them down), otherwise they have to fight additional monsters, slowing them down ~1-2 rounds

Ok this is getting interesting..... It goes back to the question, is this a two sided game? Investigators v's Keeper. Or is it a roleplay? Designed to tell an exciting narrative and great experipence.

I think it's both and have considered bending the rules in these situations. What about a sliding scale when it comes to events v's investigators?

Example....

I investigator = an extra two turns before an event happens?

Or... Turn times are suspended when doing time critical puzzles so your investigator doesn't waste half the game unlocking a door.

It would still balance out because the keeper gets access to more resources, but it gives the solo investigator time to savour the story rather than the "WTF just happened" story that happens too often.

I think scenario 1 is the only one that has this strange balancing mechanism in it, probably as it is designed as an introductory scenario. The other scenarios don't do this.

Bleached Lizard said:

Oh bummer. From a (hobby) designer's perspective I *really* liked that mechanic, because dynamic balancing based on group performance is freakin' awesome.

@ Rossin: You might try the "Optional" rules at the end of the Investigator's Guide. There's one about rolling a die before picking up the last event card (except in some specific cases), so there's no definite "last turn". Maybe adjust the roll based on group size? Something like "3 + number of investigators" with an additional +1 per roll? So a smaller game will be more likely to go on for 1-2 turns than a game with a full crew, which has a 70% chance to end immediately?
This of course only related to the last event card. You're right, with only 1 or 2 investigators it might be necessary to slow down completely. Probably just an extra +1 on the turn counter, or something like the rule about the last event card, only for ALL event cards... but better do the math before playing a game, we don't want it to run for 25+ turns now

Yea. My cousinI decided that if the event card where delayed he would inevitably have won or at least lasted to discover the cause.

we decided the best fix would be to have a single player play with two investigators.....the maniac is what slowed him down so horribly....I really thought it would kill him.

although did spend time fighting barehanded before I advised him to evadegrab the axe he had dropped(maniac special attack).

with two investigators the maniac will have trouble spawning(reason to use uncontrolled urges )will be easier to kill (slightly)

I also don't consider the result broken..it enhances the re-playability of what would otherwise be a simple and relatively quickly used up scenario...

I allowed my cousin to see what was under the stacks after the game but if you keep it a mystery then the scenario will be able to be tried again in the future without much lost.