Running MACHINE TRACTOR STATION KHARKOV-37 Any tips (Possble Spoilers)

[Pickman]

Hi Guys,

Running MACHINE TRACTOR STATION KHARKOV-37 at my club next week.

Have assigned charcuters and have asked them to read them throughly.

Any other tips/Hints for running this scenaro.

Cheers

Matt

[MikeM]

I can only advise from the perspective of running it from the first draft (sometime before it was published) - it was kindly given to the Kult of Keepers to run at a convention. The key thing I remember was the potential for the players to get bogged down in travelling between the sites (which from memory are quite some way apart) - thus, keep things pacy. Which of course is fair advice for most scenarios!

cheers

[nickedwards]

Perhaps its obvious but all the value is in the atmosphere - i didnt successfully get this over and it wasnt as effective as i thought (there is a danger that nothing happens...attack by invisible beast...nothing happens. I think stoking up conflict within the humans is probably key

[Fredde72]

I have run this a number of times at conventions and it is always a sure success.
Only problem is that it is rather long for a four-six hours slot. You have to keep the speed up.

I put a little extra work into some of the handouts.
Since the basis is copyrighted material, it seems wrong to put them up here, but if you PM me your email adress I will send them to you.

Best regards, Fredrik

[wombat1]

As Nickedwards suggests, the human conflict is key. All of the characters have an agenda and instructions of their own, and these can sometimes conflict. It is set in Stalin's Soviet Union, so paranoia is crucial.

[Shrike]

I am running this very soon and thus am also in market for extra supplementary materials. PM sent.

[Andreas Junzell]

Thanks to Fredde72 for sending me the handouts.

[WinstonP]

I have no objections to someone posting improved versions of the handouts. Actually, I love to see what people have done with my scenario.

[AIEEE]

I've only got a couple of suggestions from when I've run this pretty fantastic game.

Firstly a simple one. Make sure everyone reads everything on their character sheets. I had one player who never realised he was an elite GRU hitman throughout the whole scenario. The whole thing was pretty rushed though.

Second-time round, I did better. My only suggestion from that one would be to ensure that everyone gets a chance to read all the handouts if they want, especially the GRU guys. One of them didn't get a chance to read the un-invisible-inked diary and so never realised that the OGPU agents had already been and died. He died just as the Colour left, popping a suicide pill and sending off a last encoded message to GRU.

And speaking of the Colour leaving, I'd say to ignore most of the rules on how the Colour feeds and when it leaves, and in exchange run it at the speed of plot, at least for all the NPCs. It's easy to get a bit bogged down in rolling for all 20 NPC soldiers, so keep the rolling for the PCs and have the Colour gain power as is dramatically appropriate.

But yeah, really cool scenario.

[Andreas Junzell]

Thanks to this thread, I just bought the PDF from Chaosium. Seems real cool. Also, nice to read all the tips! Kudos

[Fredde72]

I have no objections to someone posting improved versions of the handouts. Actually, I love to see what people have done with my scenario.

Since it is ok with Winston, I upload it here.

It is two versions of Chirikovs sketchbook, one with pictures where you can see the text very faint in the background and one with text, where the pictures show though faintly in the background.
They were designed to be printed on A4 sized paper, double sided, with two pages to an A4. Then you fold them and make a booklet.
I hand out the one with pictures first, together with some small vials of colored water (whiteboardpens will do almost as well). Sometimes the players see the text themself and assume it is invisible ink, sometimes you have to give them a hint (idea roll, spot hidden, whatever) that it is there. As soon as they know there is text, they usually start experimenting with the vials, then just give them the other booklet.

Then there is a set of internal passports that are found in one of the barracks.
There is quite a lot of information to be "mined" from these passports, but it is a lot of work to do so.
(Relatively) obvious clues is that there is people from the OGPU there. You can also see that one of the stations have lots of non party members, that's the old believers.

I also included some posters. I have printed them and use them to decorate the room with.
Finally, there are two extra characters.
I have run balalajka music in the background, it can be found on youtube.

Use them anyway you like and hope you will have fun with the game.

Best regards, Fredrik

EDIT; it wasn't obvious how to upload, since on of the .doc files is larger than 3Mb.
I had to split it in three parts. Instructions. Download them in a directory, rename the one named "Sketchbook empty split_z01.zip" to "Sketchbook empty split.z01" and the one named "Sketchbook empty split_z02.zip" to "Sketchbook empty split.z02". Then unpack the "Sketchbook empty split.zip" file and it should work. More files to follow in next post, since I seem to have reached the size limit.

[Fredde72]

And here comes the last files.

Please note that it is not my paintings in the notebook. They were shamelessly "borrowed" on the internet.

Best regards, Fredrik

[Camillus]

Thanks Fredrik those are very good.

[wombat1]

Cool and an excellent resource Fredrik!

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times blog on the (now) Russian internal passport. A very sad commentary.

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/20...oviet-vestige/

[Tigger_MK4]

With the exception that the Russian system is paper-based rather than databased, its not alot different from the data that is available at a moments notice in the UK.

If it wasnt for the fact there are 90 other people in the UK with my name, making it a little more effort to narrow down, you could pretty much find that info on me, online, in less than five minutes.
(Which is a whole different kettle of privacy fish)