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Wednesday, February 14

Chapter 17: Adventus Regis - Introduction

I pulled out all the stops for this adventure: cardboard props, music from Requiem for a Dream, chocolate coins, Mega Miniatures’ Town Folk (I used them in groups of eight) and liberal use of my Battle Box from Fiery Dragon Productions. Did I mention I love my Battle Box?

I didn’t tell the players that this was a Call of Cthulhu adventure, but it didn’t take long for them to become completely freaked out. I should point out that this adventure is fairly disturbing, which helped put our PCs in some moral quandaries. As my brother is fond of putting it, “this is SO Resident Evil.”

I tried a bunch of different writing styles with this story hour. There are references to several of Campbell’s King in Yellow stories (specifically, what happens to Cal and Kham). The descriptions of the byakhee are straight from Lovecraft’s “The Festival.” And of course, there are the verses from Blish’s “More Light” version of the play. It’s a bit difficult to understand what’s going on without the context of the play itself. After all, this adventure kicks off a horrible inevitability—the birth of the King in Yellow, a play that drives to madness all who witness it.

The end fight was a tough battle, but perfectly balanced…a rarity. Fortunately, they did not take on the Avatar of Has--I mean the Unspeakable One. But then, any day when you can put down two byakhee (two very large, advanced byakhee) is a good day indeed. [MORE]

Labels: arcanis

posted by Mike Tresca at 9:53 PM

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