We're coming towards the end of the third chapter of Shadows of Atlantis, as the plot-line in Egypt winds down. There's been some interesting developments along the way. There are some minor spoilers below, so if you don't want to have hints of what happens in the campaign, don't read on.
The move to Roll20 has mostly been fine; the sheets are a bit clunky but they work. The AV has mostly been okay, but it's very bandwidth dependent and I've had to cut back any use of music because that seems to finish off one of the player's connections. I've also noticed that lag has been variable at times for different people and that has had the odd moment when people talk over each other.
I'm loving the way that the desktop in the VTT looks; I've made a collage of maps and key images from each chapter as we play them and it works as a great aide memoire for me and the players. The Role VTT does have AV back now (6 months or so on) but I'm not moving back as I've spent too much time putting assets into Roll20.
We've had some player changes; Duncan has joined with a British Indian Army officer who has instantly changed the party dynamic, but, unfortunately, Guvnor has decided to leave the game as he's not feeling it and doesn't like the Cthulhu aspects. That did give me a moment of self-doubt about how I was running the game, but the others all want to go on, so a trip to Persia beckons for the next chapter. The dynamic is interesting, as we have some very dynamic, engaged players and some who are quieter and more reflective, which means I need to keep an eye on who gets the spotlight.
The Cthulhu aspect has been very low-key; they've encountered reanimated corpses courtesy of Nachtwölfe, including a villain they originally killed in Vienna which gave them quite a shock. They've also met serpent-people (and machine-gunned them to death). I loved that Simon held back and didn't use a spell until we reached Egypt, when he summoned the shadows from around and terrified a local gang that was trying to steal the car. We had a dream sequence in the Egyptian underworld which had me mentally envisaging Moonknight (Disney+), and then the horrifying death of a private soldier who was guarding the artefact which they'd retrieved. This resulted in the first mention of a mythos entity, because the party's sorcerer wanted to know what kind of spell had been used. The roll made for information was sufficient to establish a link to Yog-Sothoth.
I've just built up the next chapter into VTT. This mainly involves either screenshots for handouts, or extracting images from the book having loaded it into Affinity Publisher, pasting them into Acornand exporting as PNG files. I've also done the cut and paste for some of the reference material.
Shadows of Atlantis is a great campaign, but it isn't well written for use at the table. Having tracked down the original version for Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds, there's a lot of material which has been omitted in the new edition, including a number of key maps and references. I've ended up extracting text and the maps to use as handouts. Unfortunately, I'd already googled and found references and images on the web, so I'm tending to blend both sources together.
I'm pretty comfortable with 2d20 now, but I am suffering from some bleed from different edition's variations. Fortunately the players don't mind me checking a reference every now and again (and Duncan is quickly falling into the space that Alex occupied in my Curse of Strahd D&D 5e campaign, retaining references to the rules much better than I do). I enjoy the 2d20 engine, but sometimes I wonder if the players feel that their characters are really threatened. Certainly, they've dealt with everyone that I have thrown at them.
I must give a shout out to Dr Wynand De Beer's "Parallel Chronology of the Second World War"; this has been invaluable as a source of what is happening when across the politics and theatres in the war. It's structured really clearly and easy to reference.
Perhaps the biggest frustration is that we remain fortnightly; this brings the usual challenges of remembering what happened previously, and it can mean we miss a month if something comes up. Originally, one of the players had a game that was alternating; by the time this finished, the others had got a game going in the gap between so it remains fortnightly. We've had eight sessions this year, and four last year. Sometimes the pace can drop a little, but that's naturally in a game with investigation; also we're only getting 2-3 hours in each session.
Overall, I'm enjoying this, but I'd like to get something else up and running too. Hat tip to my players (Simon, Duncan, Paul, Graham and Tom) for being great sports.
16 June 2024
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