I have read through Tim Wiseman's creation twice now, and overall, I consider it to be one of the best campaigns that Chaosium has released. As has been commented on before many times, TotK is in a different vein to other of Chaosium's publications. TotK leans more towards the Purist end of the Pulp/Purist spectrum of Call of Cthulhu campaigns. While it in no way approaches the bleak hopelessness of Grahame Walmsley's fantastic series of Purist adventures for Trail of Cthulhu, it is still a country mile from the globe-trotting cultist-fest of MoN, or the action soaked Grande Tour of Horror on the Orient Express.
Although I admire Tim Wiseman greatly for writing such a good campaign, in a tradition as old as the hobby itself, I will be changing a few aspects of the adventure to suit our group's style. In places, I get the feeling that the campaign has been written around characters that already exist in the author's gaming group, or, at least, written for certain tropisms within his players styles. This is not a negative criticism, in fact, I prefer this style of writing far more than a game or supplement that feels as if it was written by a focus group. I like the sharp edges and peculiarities not to be filed off.
That all being said, the changes I will be making will be small. In particular, I will change the campaign's 'hook'. While I will stick with the advice on types of character, I will inveigle them in to the campaign in a different manner, and more slowly. I am also going to create smaller, personal hooks for each character.
Having mentioned Trail of Cthulhu, I'm going to play around with using it's concepts of Pillars of Sanity and Drives. I have as yet not run a ToC game, but the forthcoming Eternal Lies campaign may very well change that.
Personally, I am really looking forward to getting in to this campaign. It will be slightly different from our usual Call of Cthulhu games. I think like many others, our group tends towards the Pulpier end of the spectrum. I'd like to try to bring a grittier, more loathsome atmosphere to this campaign. I think it deserves that extra bit of effort. In the past, when we have played on-line, we have used video conferencing. I'm thinking of experimenting with using voice only, and a new method of passing notes to the players. TotK allows for some nice inter-party paranoia and suspicion. While I am not a huge fan of character conflict, I think TotK allows just enough to add another edge to the adventure.
As a group, the five of us have been playing RPGs for over thirty years, and almost exclusively within the same group. There have been a few others who have come and gone along the years, but now it is just the five of us who get together four times a year for a long weekend of face to face gaming. Like most groups belonging to the same peer group, we started with either Holmes' edition D&D, or Red Box Basic. Today we play Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, Traveller and All Flesh Must Be Eaten. In the pipeline is Savage Worlds Pulp Adventures, Mistborn, and a new AFMBE campaign as a playtest. We also dig good board games, and the others really like poker.
So, all that needs to be done now before we start is character generation.
