Play@YSDC

Eddie,make a sanity 0/1d3 check please.

OOC,Sanity roll (current level 32) for seeing the remains: [dice]0[/dice] Sanity loss for seeing the remains: [dice]1[/dice]

Richard,make a sanity 0/1d3 test.

Ben,so i am assuming that I can't make a 0 chance sanity test (thats what it was in ur spoiler button) so here is the sanity damage [dice]0[/dice]

Richard,no, that means you make a sanity test. Roll 1d100, if you get your sanity or lower, you suffer 0 points. If you fail, you suffer 1d3 points.

Ben,Sanity test roll [dice]0[/dice] so it looks like i took the sanity damage

Listen,both of you make a listen check.

OOC,Listen roll (55% skill) in the cavern: [dice]0[/dice]

Eddie,you hear a slight rustling, like flesh sliding against stone, a small faint voice shispers inside your head, scratching at the inside of your skull, "Help me"

Listen,[dice]0[/dice]

OOC,Are there any exits we missed? Do these three tunnels all reach dead ends, or did we not fully explore the east tunnel?

ooc,You did not explore the NW room at all as it was full of refuse. You only searched about 10% of the East room and left because of the whispers. All 3 rooms seem to be deadends.

ooc,please make a listen check

OOC,Listen roll (55% skill) down the east tunnel: [dice]0[/dice]

Listen Check,[dice]0[/dice]

Eddie,As you go to pick it up, you realize it is extremely heavy. It is almost 2 cu.ft. of granite. So it weighs just under 300 lbs.

OOC,I know why the dice roller didn't work. 0 was in the dice tags, not 1d100. It must have been quoted from an earlier roll.

ooc,we can wrap it up here, or role-play it out, its up to you guys.

OOC,Thank you, I did enjoy it! Do you have a list anywhere of which skills we used? Sanity gain (current level 29): [dice]0[/dice]+[dice]1[/dice]+[dice]2[/dice]+[dice]3[/dice] Sanity increased to 43.

OOC,I'll have to go through the posts and see which skills I successfully used when I have time, which won't be until at least the weekend. One thing is that I felt that the Star-Spawn is way too tough. Yes, I used one myself (and a tougher than average one, thanks to the die rolls when I "spawned" it) in The Shadow Over Dunwich, but the players had UNIT's modern (circa 1985) firepower at their disposal, as well as plenty of UNIT soldiers to act as cannon fodder. Two of them ended up killing it in one round by both rolling 01 when shooting it using assault rifles on full auto. We had shotguns and dynamite, which did the job, but we were extremely lucky to get off with only one character death and not a TPK. Was there a better way to defeat it other than through combat?

Thoughts,Thanks, really enjoyed it! Shame about Norman, but that is why I enjoy this game. At the very least, he died saving the woman he harbored some affection for. There are less worthy causes. I don't really have any complaints. The Star Spawn was pretty tough. Based on your own anecdotes I feel like we got really lucky with killing it. But if we all had had Tommy Guns or shotguns it might have gone better. Or even more dynamite. The only thing that struck me as even a little odd was how easily Phil went down. But at the end of the day he was a squishy human, so maybe I should not be surprised. ;) If you'd like to share, I'd like to learn how the other groups you ran for did. Were we the most successful?

Spoilers,Yes, you are the first ones to actually kill the Star Spawn and have most of the party live. You really aren't supposed to win with guns, but so many impales with shotguns can blow that out of the water. (/Pun). One other group managed to collapse the pit tunnel and only lost a couple players, but that is only a temporary fix as the Star Spawn is still down there. One group managed to kill it in a suicide run. They went exploring the lower tunnels and got trapped in the main room below. They tried to fight it straight up, and 3 died in the first round, 2 more in the 2nd, it was a slaughter. So the last character who had a bundle of dynamite, lit them and ran at it to give him a big hug. It was wounded pretty bad already and the 5 sticks of dynamite at point blank range did it in. There are several ways to deal with him, but you didn't really investigate any of those possibilities. I won't go into too many details, but there was a spell in town to banish him, there were a couple ways to get weapons that bypassed his massive armor. So combined with shotguns, that would work. Tommy guns don't do so well, because only the first bullet can impale, the rest are pretty useless, doing 1 or 2 points max. I have come up with an "accidental" way to deal with him as well involving the 2 statues. Didn't really apply to you as this was added after you were in it. Sorry the module changed as you played. You could collapse the tunnel, but you had to go down into the pit, and plant the dynamite in the walls to cause them to collapse. Dropping it from above would never work. To do this properly you probably have to send someone down to distract the Star Spawn long enough to get it planted and get back up the ropes. You could use some quick pulley rope system with counterweights, but that would involve a lot of work and engineering, but could be done. Dynamite really won't do that much ecspecially individual sticks because of their fuses. All he has to do is get a little bit away from it, and odds are it won't even hurt him. When you heard the footsteps running away, that was him getting away from the dynamite. The best use of it, besides collapsing the tunnel, would have been to set a trap with it, using an electrical detonator with several sticks. Lure him there with lamb chops (his favorite) and set it off. The girl at the hardware store has a high demolitions skill and could rig it up for you and is willing to help. While the Colonel bugged out when he saw the deep ones, he is an expert on military tactics and could have drawn up the plan to do it. Phil wasn't designed to be too tough, but in every playtest he went down like a cheap whore. So I've added an NPC to the book to give him a bit of protection. A backer from Kickstarter helped design her. You never went to the Pigeon Cove chapel. If you had you would have run into Rev. Sardonicus. He maintains the chapel and is the front man, being charismatic and a slick salesman. But has no real power. Given enough interogation, he flips on Phil and the whole cult as to what's going on. In the book, Sardonicus is married to Raven "Shadowz" Alexis. She is seriously attracted to power and will do whatever it takes to get it. She originally thought Sardonicus was the power behind the cult, when she found out she was wrong, she has started having an affair with Phil and was planning to kill Sardonicus. She has a couple spells to manipulate shadows she can use to make him harder to hit and gives him a chance to escape if he gets hurt but not killed. Phil is actually a pretty powerful wizard, but is using all his magic to keep the artists coming to town as sacrifices and to keep the Star Spawn pacified and not running rampant. He only has enough magic to call his spirit animal (the crow) to spy on you or attack you. There is so much to do an see in the town, you only hit maybe 20% of it. But spread out over 2 years its hard to remember everything. So many back stories you just barely touched on or didn't follow up on. The chapel, the witch house, the cage behind the hardware store, the names on the list you found. I know you found the tunnels and went for the win, which was the right move. But I like my worlds to have a bit of depth to them. I am changing up a few things. Getting rid of the illusions from the first scene, nice idea but can be so abused. So instead of the flat and the 2 boys turning into cyclops, your cars are attacked by a swirling mass of crows, which can cause you to wreck your cars. It works much cleaner and fits with the crows watching you all the time. A bunch of names are changing due to a special backer level to allow people to pay to have their name be an NPC. So Phil is actually changing to Gabriel in the book. I actually like it better. I am so use to calling him Phil it seems strange, but Gabriel I think is a better evil NPC name. I am providing the players with a map of the city. I should have done that from the beginning. Not sure what I was doing with the whole, no maps, it just makes things harder to understand. In the book, there will be a Keeper map with all the important info on it. And then a player map with only a few buildings marked. The Woods House, the Police station, the Library, Railroad station, and the Post office/telegraph office. that will be perforated so the Keeper can remove it and give it to the players. It's really nice. Any other questions.

OOC,One reason we didn't explore and discover as much was that we didn't have a chance after a certain point. We were trying to retreat back to Boston and regroup when the entire cult came after us. Once we killed them, there was nothing holding the Star-Spawn in check, and we had to deal with it.