Thanks for the warning. By now, based on running Shadows of Atlantis, reading Children of Fear, and hearing about this, the name Lynne Hardy is starting to become a warning light to me.
Excellent review Jeff. A fair one and you did raise a good point. Who really does play anything as presented to us. We tweak and alter published material to our heart's content. However repairing it? Hmmm. Some of the plausibility, historical errors. Just the ones you pointed out, in addition to those you saw but didn't mention. Makes it tough to be excited about this. I haven't ordered this one yet, nearly did yesterday but glad I held off and now might wait for it to go to clearance sale or some jazz like that. Great review. Having done years of (album) reviews I can tell you that reviewing what you love or find to be excellent is easy, reviewing what doesn't float your boat is far more difficult to do and remain positive and balanced between what you like and what you did not.
SUPERB REVIEW. It proves you arent a "yes man". That was the nicest "bad review" ive ever seen! Altering 1920s history to match contemporary culture is GARBAGE. WE PLAY CTHULHU because we like the 1920s era and its culture. Its a horrible business decision to do that. Facts stand anyway. "Copycat art" doesnt work either. Chaosium can certainly do better and has greatly improved since 81. Ill be doing my own campaigns with independent authors anyway. Meanwhile, i subscribed thanks to this one review of yours...no longer JUST a viewer. Good regards sir!!
The SS Champagne appears to be heavily based on the RMS Mauretania, which was the premier ocean liner prior to the launch of the RMS Titanic. The loss of such a ship would indeed cause a lot of attention. If I were to run the campaign (which I most likely won't), I would pick a more average liner.
With just a little research you could easily find other, far smaller ships which actually had passenger cabins. Most people don't realize most ships built for transporting cargo also had passenger berths. ~ Jeff
@@Thegaminggang There are several websites dedicated to historical shipping, and some have deck plans of the more everyday liners and cruise ships. I've been working on an adventure in part taking place during a documented cruise, where I managed to find a physical, vintage copy of the deck plans. I'm sometimes too fixated on details, but here we see what happens the authors aren't. BTW, did "Champagne" stop over at Cork, Ireland? ...I'll show myself out.
12:35 The Canandaigua Lake Natural Science Camp (Ontario County, NY) admitted both boys and girls starting in 1891 (potentially making it the first co-ed summer camp in the US). Notably some Jewish Summer Camps also became coed in the 1920's and 30s.
The reality is the VAST majority of summer camps for kids were not for boys and girls; it was one or the other. It's my understanding the Canandaigua Lake Natural Science Camp didn't offer co-ed camps in 1891; they set aside a month for only girls to attend. You're right some religious groups did have a handful of boys and girls together in overnight camps by the later 1930s, but the camp in the adventure has no affiliation and this takes place in the 20s. I understand your point but from reading the book I can tell making the camp in the adventure for teenage boys and girls isn't the designer creating a historical exception but simply a case of not doing much research. ~ Jeff
You know what it reminds me of? “Terror from the Skies,” a Cthulhu adventure from 2007 (or thereabouts). Same sort of things not adding up, weak hooks, etc. famously, that campaign has a final chapter set on a zeppelin but no floor plans for said zeppelin.
Many plot hooks for enticing players. Where they volunteer to endanger their character's lives. It is a challenge to make a convincing pursuit for them. Especially when it involves multiple characters going to an unknown location to investigate. Thus trapping all the characters together in an otherwise safe desolate location. A substantial upfront payment for doing a job. Otherwise, having close family and friends of each character in emanate danger. These generally are typical plot hooks. Which devolves into more of a slasher flick storyline when it involves multiple characters.
Sometimes you also have to ask the players to set aside that THEY know it's a Cthulhu plot and likely to be super dangerous and instead ask them what would their characters think - would they go to a remote village to look at an old house one of them inherited... 🙂
Plenty of summer camps were co-ed in the 20s, really feel like that was a pointless nitpick. I do think the ship should be smaller (maybe 300ft) which would both make sense for why the investigators are going to it, why it isn't bigger news, and allow for tighter quarters.
Funny, I did some research before recording the review and I found the exact opposite as far as summer camps for kids. I( can't say with certainty since I wasn't around in the 1920s but from peeking around the internet I was led to see camps were offered for boy and for girls but rarely for boys and girls in the 20s. There's just a bunch of weird inaccuracies sprinkled throughout this book. Once again this book comes across as rushed. ~ Jeff
Definitely seems like something that might be fun to, as you say, take apart and rebuild. I like some of the ideas, for sure. I also like that it's like a mini-campaign. It's nice to see some things of a length between one-shot and massive, multi-year epics. That said, there are other semi-recent Chaosium books I haven't picked up that are ahead of it in line.
This release feels weird in general. it was supposed to come out in April - Dicebreaker announced it back in Feb/March after the Arkham Book release, along with another book that's more of a 3-shot. Then it was radio silence until June - where we got the official announcement for the October release, but suddenly it's now a month early. Also, we haven't gotten a full length campaign since 2021 with Harvest. So it feels REALLY disappointing that this is the first campaign since then, and since the release of Arkham (which was SO positive).
That's correct! The review video was actually the first time I'd cracked the book open since it had just arrived a few minutes before. The PDF does include separate PDFs of handouts, maps, etc. ~ Jeff
I must add 2 things: 1. A rogue wave can crash a ship that way. Coming from the front, after passing the wave, there is a huge impact sinking the bow. If the angle, height, wieght and speed are correct it can even sink it as low as 25 meters crushing the bow's hull due ti pressure. 2. BRP Chaosium Challenge went from April to september 26th. They were expecting 32 entries but came with 195 taking a lot of resources in a very small company. We were expecting results as soon as June. Funny thing is I knew this first hand since my friend got the People's Choice Award. By the way, first time I stumble your content, and was nice. Looking forward for more.👍👍👍
I can't imagine getting existing characters into Scenario 1. If a ship were lost at sea, other ships would go investigate. Why are my Arkhamite investigators already afloat? Or are they somehow hired to board a ship that is being dispatched to go find the liner? That just wouldn't happen. Very odd. And the loss of such a ship with all hands would go down in history as an epic disaster.
I bought this one blind because there were no reviews and I had been waiting for it eagerly. As someone who works in media distribution I should have realized there must have been a late embargo and all that entails. The anachronisms stick out like sore thumbs, and the art is a bit weak but overwhelmingly my takeaway is the lack of promotion. It wasn't available on their website until almost 5 eastern on release day. This is the second release from them lately where I felt like I had to hunt it down on release day with no real promotion from them.
@@Casey093 Yep, however sometimes production delays can also lead to a tight review window, so with no public knowledge of a same-day embargo I assumed as such.
@@KyleMahaney Why did they hold back the reviews of the pdf files? The quality of their books is known by now, that does not influence a buying decision nearly as much as the content, even when printing and distributing the books to the stores takes another few weeks.
@@Casey093 PDF files can also have production delays for books like this. Tweaking assets down from their print-quality forms to load well on devices while not showing artifacts requires effort. It would have been reasonable to think they were late getting PDF's to people so therefore reviews were tight. However, we now know they had time to get hardcovers to reviews so at least a 48 hour embargo would likely have been possible. But this video doesn't mention how much time reviewers had with the material. It could have been very short. And it's unfair to reviewers to give such a tight turnaround when uploading content at the same time as everyone else is vital to their contents performance. We don't have enough information there to really know the situation, but it bodes ill.
About to run Chapter 1 in few days and it does sound ok. But the ship is to big tor the amount of leads/clues investigators can find, afraid that it will seam to empty. And to tell the truth I think creature in chapter 1 is weak for my investigators an least. So I will need to change tings a bit, so it would feel like a horror investigation. Chapter 1 dose have good evets and ideas.
Part of the allure of games like Call of Cthulhu is the feeling of actually being in a different time period with its own problems, injustices, antiquated ideas, and hang ups. You can bend the rules female investigators being able to cross state lines, or knowing how to use military equipment, that I can let slide, but when you get basic facts wrong, like the size of the cruise liner (there is a reason The Enterprise always took 8 hours to fix, it was enormous), or coed summer camps in the 20s, you start losing me. It might be little things, sure, but it still destroys the believability
Chapter 1: Investigate the murder house, no, the murder ship. Escape. Chapter 2: Investigate a random murder somewhere. Why? Yawn... Chapter 3: Go to the village, mind the evil creatures and stop the evil ritual. Mega yawn! Can this get any more clichee and over-used? Honestly, this is a chat-GPT story hacked together in an afternoon, and no amount of added pictures and stuff will make this helpful to run a fun campaign. The obvious plot-holes... why does nobody care if a ship with 3000 people is adrift? How should some random people repair it and sail it home in a few hours? Come on, chaosium, this is why I never buy any of your campaign books. No wonder they put up a review embargo for it... because if their product was any good, why skip the free marketing? Thank you for the review, I was really looking forward to buying this book, and you saved me from a bad purchase.
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Thanks for the warning.
By now, based on running Shadows of Atlantis, reading Children of Fear, and hearing about this, the name Lynne Hardy is starting to become a warning light to me.
Excellent review Jeff. A fair one and you did raise a good point. Who really does play anything as presented to us. We tweak and alter published material to our heart's content. However repairing it? Hmmm.
Some of the plausibility, historical errors. Just the ones you pointed out, in addition to those you saw but didn't mention. Makes it tough to be excited about this. I haven't ordered this one yet, nearly did yesterday but glad I held off and now might wait for it to go to clearance sale or some jazz like that. Great review. Having done years of (album) reviews I can tell you that reviewing what you love or find to be excellent is easy, reviewing what doesn't float your boat is far more difficult to do and remain positive and balanced between what you like and what you did not.
SUPERB REVIEW. It proves you arent a "yes man". That was the nicest "bad review" ive ever seen! Altering 1920s history to match contemporary culture is GARBAGE. WE PLAY CTHULHU because we like the 1920s era and its culture. Its a horrible business decision to do that. Facts stand anyway. "Copycat art" doesnt work either. Chaosium can certainly do better and has greatly improved since 81. Ill be doing my own campaigns with independent authors anyway. Meanwhile, i subscribed thanks to this one review of yours...no longer JUST a viewer. Good regards sir!!
The SS Champagne appears to be heavily based on the RMS Mauretania, which was the premier ocean liner prior to the launch of the RMS Titanic. The loss of such a ship would indeed cause a lot of attention. If I were to run the campaign (which I most likely won't), I would pick a more average liner.
With just a little research you could easily find other, far smaller ships which actually had passenger cabins. Most people don't realize most ships built for transporting cargo also had passenger berths. ~ Jeff
@@Thegaminggang There are several websites dedicated to historical shipping, and some have deck plans of the more everyday liners and cruise ships. I've been working on an adventure in part taking place during a documented cruise, where I managed to find a physical, vintage copy of the deck plans. I'm sometimes too fixated on details, but here we see what happens the authors aren't.
BTW, did "Champagne" stop over at Cork, Ireland? ...I'll show myself out.
Thank you for this. I almost pulled the trigger and ordered the book, sight unseen. Now, I believe I will hold off.
12:35 The Canandaigua Lake Natural Science Camp (Ontario County, NY) admitted both boys and girls starting in 1891 (potentially making it the first co-ed summer camp in the US). Notably some Jewish Summer Camps also became coed in the 1920's and 30s.
The reality is the VAST majority of summer camps for kids were not for boys and girls; it was one or the other. It's my understanding the Canandaigua Lake Natural Science Camp didn't offer co-ed camps in 1891; they set aside a month for only girls to attend. You're right some religious groups did have a handful of boys and girls together in overnight camps by the later 1930s, but the camp in the adventure has no affiliation and this takes place in the 20s. I understand your point but from reading the book I can tell making the camp in the adventure for teenage boys and girls isn't the designer creating a historical exception but simply a case of not doing much research. ~ Jeff
You know what it reminds me of? “Terror from the Skies,” a Cthulhu adventure from 2007 (or thereabouts). Same sort of things not adding up, weak hooks, etc. famously, that campaign has a final chapter set on a zeppelin but no floor plans for said zeppelin.
Must say, I'm very much enjoying the 4 video Jeffstravaganza; really need to get round to running some Call of Cthulhu.
I see you also had the misprint on p. 74. Thanks for confirming I'm not the only one.
Many plot hooks for enticing players. Where they volunteer to endanger their character's lives. It is a challenge to make a convincing pursuit for them. Especially when it involves multiple characters going to an unknown location to investigate.
Thus trapping all the characters together in an otherwise safe desolate location. A substantial upfront payment for doing a job. Otherwise, having close family and friends of each character in emanate danger. These generally are typical plot hooks. Which devolves into more of a slasher flick storyline when it involves multiple characters.
Sometimes you also have to ask the players to set aside that THEY know it's a Cthulhu plot and likely to be super dangerous and instead ask them what would their characters think - would they go to a remote village to look at an old house one of them inherited... 🙂
Plenty of summer camps were co-ed in the 20s, really feel like that was a pointless nitpick. I do think the ship should be smaller (maybe 300ft) which would both make sense for why the investigators are going to it, why it isn't bigger news, and allow for tighter quarters.
Funny, I did some research before recording the review and I found the exact opposite as far as summer camps for kids. I( can't say with certainty since I wasn't around in the 1920s but from peeking around the internet I was led to see camps were offered for boy and for girls but rarely for boys and girls in the 20s. There's just a bunch of weird inaccuracies sprinkled throughout this book. Once again this book comes across as rushed. ~ Jeff
Definitely seems like something that might be fun to, as you say, take apart and rebuild. I like some of the ideas, for sure. I also like that it's like a mini-campaign. It's nice to see some things of a length between one-shot and massive, multi-year epics. That said, there are other semi-recent Chaosium books I haven't picked up that are ahead of it in line.
This release feels weird in general. it was supposed to come out in April - Dicebreaker announced it back in Feb/March after the Arkham Book release, along with another book that's more of a 3-shot. Then it was radio silence until June - where we got the official announcement for the October release, but suddenly it's now a month early.
Also, we haven't gotten a full length campaign since 2021 with Harvest. So it feels REALLY disappointing that this is the first campaign since then, and since the release of Arkham (which was SO positive).
Thanks Jeff, I also noticed the handouts aren't in the back of the book.
That's correct! The review video was actually the first time I'd cracked the book open since it had just arrived a few minutes before. The PDF does include separate PDFs of handouts, maps, etc. ~ Jeff
@@Thegaminggang yep just a trend I noticed with nameless horrors 2nd.
I must add 2 things:
1. A rogue wave can crash a ship that way.
Coming from the front, after passing the wave, there is a huge impact sinking the bow. If the angle, height, wieght and speed are correct it can even sink it as low as 25 meters crushing the bow's hull due ti pressure.
2. BRP Chaosium Challenge went from April to september 26th. They were expecting 32 entries but came with 195 taking a lot of resources in a very small company.
We were expecting results as soon as June.
Funny thing is I knew this first hand since my friend got the People's Choice Award.
By the way, first time I stumble your content, and was nice. Looking forward for more.👍👍👍
I can't imagine getting existing characters into Scenario 1. If a ship were lost at sea, other ships would go investigate. Why are my Arkhamite investigators already afloat? Or are they somehow hired to board a ship that is being dispatched to go find the liner? That just wouldn't happen. Very odd. And the loss of such a ship with all hands would go down in history as an epic disaster.
I bought this one blind because there were no reviews and I had been waiting for it eagerly. As someone who works in media distribution I should have realized there must have been a late embargo and all that entails. The anachronisms stick out like sore thumbs, and the art is a bit weak but overwhelmingly my takeaway is the lack of promotion. It wasn't available on their website until almost 5 eastern on release day. This is the second release from them lately where I felt like I had to hunt it down on release day with no real promotion from them.
Nobody would hide a great product, this is a bad sign.
@@Casey093 Yep, however sometimes production delays can also lead to a tight review window, so with no public knowledge of a same-day embargo I assumed as such.
@@KyleMahaney Why did they hold back the reviews of the pdf files? The quality of their books is known by now, that does not influence a buying decision nearly as much as the content, even when printing and distributing the books to the stores takes another few weeks.
@@Casey093 PDF files can also have production delays for books like this. Tweaking assets down from their print-quality forms to load well on devices while not showing artifacts requires effort. It would have been reasonable to think they were late getting PDF's to people so therefore reviews were tight. However, we now know they had time to get hardcovers to reviews so at least a 48 hour embargo would likely have been possible.
But this video doesn't mention how much time reviewers had with the material. It could have been very short. And it's unfair to reviewers to give such a tight turnaround when uploading content at the same time as everyone else is vital to their contents performance. We don't have enough information there to really know the situation, but it bodes ill.
@@KyleMahaney It seems like a rushed release, which fits the half-baked content. I think we can agree on this. Thank you for your insight. 🙂
About to run Chapter 1 in few days and it does sound ok. But the ship is to big tor the amount of leads/clues investigators can find, afraid that it will seam to empty. And to tell the truth I think creature in chapter 1 is weak for my investigators an least. So I will need to change tings a bit, so it would feel like a horror investigation. Chapter 1 dose have good evets and ideas.
Part of the allure of games like Call of Cthulhu is the feeling of actually being in a different time period with its own problems, injustices, antiquated ideas, and hang ups. You can bend the rules female investigators being able to cross state lines, or knowing how to use military equipment, that I can let slide, but when you get basic facts wrong, like the size of the cruise liner (there is a reason The Enterprise always took 8 hours to fix, it was enormous), or coed summer camps in the 20s, you start losing me. It might be little things, sure, but it still destroys the believability
MCSM reference
Chapter 1: Investigate the murder house, no, the murder ship. Escape.
Chapter 2: Investigate a random murder somewhere. Why? Yawn...
Chapter 3: Go to the village, mind the evil creatures and stop the evil ritual. Mega yawn!
Can this get any more clichee and over-used?
Honestly, this is a chat-GPT story hacked together in an afternoon, and no amount of added pictures and stuff will make this helpful to run a fun campaign.
The obvious plot-holes... why does nobody care if a ship with 3000 people is adrift? How should some random people repair it and sail it home in a few hours?
Come on, chaosium, this is why I never buy any of your campaign books.
No wonder they put up a review embargo for it... because if their product was any good, why skip the free marketing?
Thank you for the review, I was really looking forward to buying this book, and you saved me from a bad purchase.
Good review Jeff. Maybe it's just me but this adventure seems a little half-hearted and I'm biased towards Call of Cthulhu material.
It's not just you. ~ Jeff