Horror/Orient Express: Alternatives (keepers only/SPOILERS!)

[ghostdog]

I say keepers only because what is discussed here will invariably contain spoilers for the game Horror on the Orient Express, as I wish to discuss alternatives to the background story for the game and would like to discuss twists keepers have used when they ran it, or ideas on alterations to the backstory as it is.

The reason I ask is down to one or two players in my group who may have read briefly some of what happens in the game (with regard to background twists etc) and was looking for alternative ways of surprising said players.

any ideas?

[ThothAmon]

Many moons ago I published lengthy conversion notes to the Strange Aeons list. They should still be online somewhere, perhaps in my old Geocities site.

[ThothAmon]

Yup, still there. And so is Mike Lay's improved layout version. Maybe I should have taken everyones advice at the time of writing and pitched a rewrite to Chaosium

Here are the links:

http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/l...1/cd_0001.html

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctsu0009/coc/orient1.htm

Find anything of use in there?

[ghostdog]

many thanks for those links. great stuff.

[Badger]

As a keeper who finished running Orient Express recently, i can definitely recommend Mike Lay's website; it was a huge asset for me. In particular, i took to heart the suggestion to do away entirely with Baba Yaga - it really was an unnecessary addition to the plot. I instead inserted a local vampire that was terrorizing the local gypsy tribe, who was guarding one of the Simulacrum pieces...again, an idea from the website. It helped smooth things out considerably, and is a wonderful resource.

-Badger

[binderoftheunboundbook]

Erk... from my experience the Baba-Yaga section ran the best from the entire campaign.

To be honest HoTOE isn't, IMO, the best set of adventures ever made, in fact I get the idea that lots is missing from the whole story. Some of the information is a bit scant in the adventure and worse it does really have a huge 'Mythos Hoedown' factor to it.

Personally of all the great campaigns I rate it near the bottom.

Cheers - Binder

[dogstar]

Interestingly PISCES, the British Delta Green, start from the discoveries made by the British Ambassador in Turkey and Military Intelligences discovery of an occult plot against the future king, that forms the rounding out of Horror on the.....

though I suspect almost all survivors are going to be in serious need of a 'very big lie down' possibly on a couch....

[ThothAmon]

My players felt that they had played better campaigns in HOTOE, and I placed comments to that effect on the material which Mike Lay put up on his site. The main problem (linearity) affected my group doubly as they were used to open-ended gaming.

I think HOTOE could be improved dramatically with a little tailoring, which is why I produced all that blurb in the first place. From a GMs viewpoint there are very good points in HOTOE and some of the set pieces are quite unique in the annals of CoC gaming.

[ghostdog]

Just ran a game last night...first time in ages since I ran my gaslight campaign. It was kinda nice keeping again. This game was "slow boat" from fearful passages, which is one in a series of short one nighters leading up to Horror on the Orient Express. Next we've got No Man's Land

Interesting to note in your ammended version the use of Iron ghost which is also from fearful passages. Shall certainly be employing that. That inspired me to consider replacing quite a number of scenarios. Another one as well as "Iron Ghost" would be "Blood on the tracks" for the trip to France. That's a classic.

[ThothAmon]

'Iron Ghost' is a nice wee scenario. It worked particularly well for us as a spiritual warning beware-of-trains type foreshadowing. Much fun to be had

The scenarios in 'Fearful Passages' are something of a mixed bag. I wasn't overly keen on 'Slow Boat', perhaps because my group had previosuly messed about with canal boats in the scenario 'The Shadow Over Darkbank' from 'Green And Pleasant Land'.

Although I did find a campaign use for the occult investigator (Marcus Raven?) as a disposable NPC in yet another scenario.