Some advice on running The Haunting

[Scarecrovv]

I just started running The Haunting for a group during our lunchbreak.

There are three players, playing a Journalist, Mechanic and Parapsychologist. They are all seasoned roleplayers but the player playing the parapsychologist has never played CoC before.

I set the scenario up by making the landlord of the house, the journalist's editor. He wants the Journo and his 'ghost-hunting' friends to give the place a clean bill of health so that he can sell the cursed thing off. He mentions that the place has a history, but I maybe should have underlined it.

As I feared, the group asked no questions, did no investigation and set straight off for the house. To be fair, the landlord just asked them to look the place over, so it's not unreasonable.
During their exploration of the ground floor, they started to realise that they knew absolutely nothing about the events or history of the place. I got the Journo to make an idea roll to think of maybe researching the history in the sources listed in the scenario, but he failed. They continued to explore the house. They've gone through the ground floor and explored everything except the cellar, which they've mistaken for the kitchen larder. They decided that the junk-filled store room wasn't wrth the effort, so they haven't found the diaries. They are about to go upstairs and that's where we had to leave it. A pretty uneventful first session, but they didn't seem too concerned and we're playing again on Thursday.

Now, I don't mind the lack of investigation, that's up to them, what's bothering me is this: If the players don't bother with the cellar, Corbett [sic, see below] will surely just leave them be. He doesn't want to draw attention to himself, so as long as they don't explore the cellar, he's surely best just leaving them alone, isn't he? No bed/window shennanigans, no floating knife and no mind control. This'll make for a very dull introductory scenario. Obviously I'll try and draw their attention to the fact that the cellar door is actually a cellar door and not a larder door. Hopefully that will set things off. Trouble is, I don't want to do it in such a way that makes it obvious that it's important - more important than the bedroom.

I suppose my main concern is that they'll explore the whole house except the cellar and nothing will happen - which will be a massively unrewarding experience for all concerned.

I'm hoping that if one of them does end up going through the window and/or attacked by the floating knife, they might decide to tactically withdraw and do some research. I might, if they continue to wax lyrical about their lack of knowledge get them all to make idea rolls.

Any advice on how to play it on Thursday?

Crow

Being a resident of the West Midlands, UK I've relocated the house to Stoneleigh, a small village half way between Leamington and Coventry. Victor Macario has become Robert Macdonald and his wife has become Maimie. Corbitt has become Corbett and Roxbury has become the Warwickshire County Asylum, Hatton. A real just place a few miles up the road.

[JonHook]

First off, I love your changes to the adventure to make it more approachable for you and your players. Well done, sir.

Second, I hope your players DON'T fully explore the house. See if you can get your players to give the Journalist's boss a "clean bill of health" for the house. Then, you make the boss grateful for their work. Then "fade to black" since they completed their investigation. Then, you re-open the story, a few days later... the Journalist has been doing his job, but it's been a couple of days since anyone in the office has seen the boss. Suddenly, word comes into the office that the boss is dead. He was murdered in the house he was trying to rent out.

Neighbors to the Corbett house heard a strange noise, and when they eventually dared to check it out, they found the boss's body half-way out of the living room window. He died from what seems like a bizarre accident. He must have tripped or slipped in the living room, and his head went through the window, and the shards of glass gruesomely severed his throat. He bled out all over the window sill, inside and out of the house. His eyes are wide open, and there is an expression of fear permanently etched onto his face.

See if this will motivate the investigators to re-investigate the house. Have a few papers on the house's background either in the boss's office, or at his home. Those papers could be a couple of the clues available from the library or newspaper morgue. If the investigators don't get started re-investigating, then have a wake for the boss in his home, hosted by his widow, and have the papers/clues in his home office.

This then should be enough of a hook to get your investigators to dive deeper into the house's history, and then get them back into the house to see what really killed the boss. The local cops have closed the case as an accident, so it is totally open for the investigators to snoop into this further.

[Prof Stephen Thomas]

Hi Scarecrovv, I'm a Call of Cthulhu newbie but by coincidence I'm planning to run this scenario and if you don't mind me chipping in I've a couple of suggestions.

Firstly, I'm with you regarding Corbett's next actions. I think he'd leave the 'investigators' alone all the time they weren't endangering him. That means no action upstairs this time around, and unless they investigate the kitchen again which I'd discourage, a fruitless visit.

However, in my opinion that isn't a bad thing in this instance since it will hopefully help make the players recognise that they need to consider other ways of playing. Right now they're working through this like it was a D&D dungeon delve or similar rather than Cthulhu. They need to really start using their brains and role-playing their characters. This time around I'd be more overt about the options open to them if they still don't know where to take things. Hopefully by the end of your next session they'll be well on the way to knowing more about the house and it's history, and I would think that as soon as they start picking up some of the clues/facts, it'll encourage them to act more like characters questing for knowledge rather than treasure.

If by some chance they do go back to the basement, then again I'd maybe play things cool, with no obvious clues as to what lies there and a quiet Corbett. Meeting Corbett would be a shame without knowing more background, whatever the eventual outcome.

For interest I'm also going to change the setting and names. I'm looking forward to playing this as a 'Gaslight' adventure, set in an old house on the outskirts of London.

Good luck.

[Prof Stephen Thomas]

First off, I love your changes to the adventure to make it more approachable for you and your players. Well done, sir.

Second, I hope your players DON'T fully explore the house. See if you can get your players to give the Journalist's boss a "clean bill of health" for the house. Then, you make the boss grateful for their work. Then "fade to black" since they completed their investigation. Then, you re-open the story, a few days later... the Journalist has been doing his job, but it's been a couple of days since anyone in the office has seen the boss. Suddenly, word comes into the office that the boss is dead. He was murdered in the house he was trying to rent out.

Neighbors to the Corbett house heard a strange noise, and when they eventually dared to check it out, they found the boss's body half-way out of the living room window. He died from what seems like a bizarre accident. He must have tripped or slipped in the living room, and his head went through the window, and the shards of glass gruesomely severed his throat. He bled out all over the window sill, inside and out of the house. His eyes are wide open, and there is an expression of fear permanently etched onto his face.

See if this will motivate the investigators to re-investigate the house. Have a few papers on the house's background either in the boss's office, or at his home. Those papers could be a couple of the clues available from the library or newspaper morgue. If the investigators don't get started re-investigating, then have a wake for the boss in his home, hosted by his widow, and have the papers/clues in his home office.

This then should be enough of a hook to get your investigators to dive deeper into the house's history, and then get them back into the house to see what really killed the boss. The local cops have closed the case as an accident, so it is totally open for the investigators to snoop into this further.

I missed this as I was typing my post but it's a really nice suggestion for handling the 'clean bill of health' outcome.

[Scarecrovv]

Thanks, chaps. That's sound advice. I was afeared of having a second session where nothing happens, but you're right, the 'clean bill of health' approach isn't actually that bad. They have rather rushed into it and it's a good way of teaching them that, as you say, this doesn't work like D&D and this isn't a dungeon.

Incidentally, they've already generated a couple of particularly odd 'red herrings' for themselves. One of the players is deeply suspicious of the mahogany table in the dining room (We can't understand why), they don't understand why there's no back door to the house - actually they find the layout of the house odd in general - and why firewood and coal is kept inside (I put these things down to it probably being a New-England house design rather than a Warwickshire one) and they also want to know why the rats have eaten the food in the kitchen, but not the food in the dining room. Hmmmmmm......

Crow

[Scarecrovv]

Thinking more on this, when they explore the third bedroom, even if Corbett has no call to attack them, they'll get the distinct sense that something is up with that room and the fact that they're not directly confronted by 'the monster', hopefull will provoke them into trying some different things to solve the mystery.

Crow

[Mr. Bill]

I love the idea of the investigators giving a clean bill of health and the boss being murdered. It's a show of the importance of thoroughness that carries some guilt and personal responsibility and real horror along with it, and it'll certainly get them looking into the house again.

However, if your players have even a quark of genre savvy, they're not likely to give the place a once-over and, finding nothing, just go, "Ah, well - guess there's nothing wrong here after all!" They know it's a Call of Cthulhu investigation, and even the one who's never played knows he/she's signed up for a horror game. Why on earth would the investigation end with a dead end, they'll ask themselves. And the answer: it wouldn't, of course. So I have a feeling they'll return to that ignored door in the kitchen or search the junk room a bit more thoroughly once it's clear their other efforts haven't turned anything up.

In any case, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the idea of Corbitt preemptively attacking the investigators. Especially if there are only three of them, he may decide it's easier to kill the meddlers quickly and quietly before they even have a chance to cause trouble for him. Of course, he's also both a) a long-mad Mythos sorcerer, and b) a desiccated undead monster, so I'm not sure how strong a reason he even needs to do some killing.

And luring them up the stairs to the bedroom and waiting for them to stumble down into the cellar aren't the only ways he can get to the PCs, either: remember he can both Dominate and Summon Dimensional Shambler. Either of these could turn into either a TPK or a very dire warning, and certainly either would be a dramatic turn of events.

[Scarecrovv]

Well, that went better than expected.

Exploring the upstairs, the Parapsychologist got a really bad feeling about the third bedroom but nothing happened in there, so they continued to explore. Once they'd checked all the rooms, they were at a bit of a loss. I got the mechanic to make an idea roll and he realised that there was one door they hadn't checked - the cellar door. The Journalist made a luck roll and discovered the cellar key on the same ring as the front door key. They unlocked, unbolted and opened the door, shone their torch down the steps and then heard a resounding, thunderous boom from upstairs. Abandoning all thought of the cellar, they ran upstairs to see what was going on. As they reached the top, they heard a second boom clearly coming from room 3. The journo looked into the room and as he did so, heard a pit-pat on his hat and realised the ceiling was dripping blood. They then decided to check the attic (which I had to improvise) but found nothing up there but junk, cobwebs and dust. Then the blood was gone.
The mechanic and the parapsychologist decided to go down to the cellar again leaving the journo with his camera to photograph anything that happened in the room. As they got to the bottom of the stairs, the journo heard scratching at the window. He went over to check it out and I sat silently praying that he wouldn't make his dodge roll. He didn't. In fact, not only did he fail, sending him crashing out of the window, but I got him to make a luck roll to give him the chance to stop on the roof outside and not fall all the way to the ground. He rolled 100. He fell from the roof landing in a bloody heap at ground level with zero hit points. Fortunately the Parapsychologist was able to administer first aid and they bundled him into the car and set off for the hospital.

We resume tomorrow.

That was fantastic!

Crow

[LoneKharnivore]

I do love that bed...

[Scarecrovv]

Actually, I'm not sure what to do with the journo now. He's obviously going to be in traction for some time, but as it's literally only our second session, I don't really want to remove him completely. The player is a veteran CoC player and even asked me if he should create a new character, so he's fine with it, but I'm loathe to do that so soon. Eventually, sure, but maybe this time I'll rule that most of his wounds are superficial and he was largely just knocked unconcious. As long as nothing's broken, he just has to wander about looking like an Egyptian Mummy for a bit

Crow

[Mr. Bill]

Why not give the player a new sheet, and get the journo character in on the next scenario, leaving a few months in between to heal up? He's still alive, it would just feel kind of backpedal-y to go, "Y'know what? Screw it, he's actually pretty much okay!"

And given their most recent experience in the house (the other PCs don't even know what happened to the journo, remember, especially if he hasn't regained consciousness), it's certainly not unlikely that they'd seek aid in their next sweep of the house, whether it's a helpful neighborhood cop, a medium, a priest/exorcist, or whatever other damn thing. Fun new wrinkle, especially since the new character can continue to show a level of skepticism that the other PCs can no longer afford.

[Scarecrovv]

Yeah, you're right. I'll tell him tomorrow how long he's likely to be convalescing and leave it up to the group as to what they want to do. If he decides to create a temporary new character (or even a permanent one), then fine. As I say, he's a CoC vet so he's cool with it.

Crow

[JonHook]

Mr. Bill has a great idea. Besides, it's CoC... your players shouldn't get too attached to their characters.

What if the new character is a neighborhood teenager who has heard all kinds of stories about the house and it's previous owners, and is super curious to get a look inside. The kid could have been the first person on the scene to help the Journalist as he "fell" out of the window.

[Scarecrovv]

Incidentally, if I understand correctly, Corbitt has been entombed in the cellar all these years because he is transforming into something. Has there ever been any speculation as to what it is he's transforming into or how long it will take? He's been under there for quite some time and is largely still just humanoid. I ask because it occured to me that there's no time limit on the scenario (which is fine for a first adventure, really) and I wondered what would happen eventually if Corbitt was never found or stopped.

[Prof Stephen Thomas]

Sounds like you had a much better experience in your second session Scarecrovv, and I'm really liking the ideas this thread is throwing up. The blood dripping from the ceiling which then disappears was a nice touch.

You're right about Corbitt's transformation, and the scenario doesn't give away too much. It seems like its a long term process though, which a fair way to go before completion. A nice research subject?!