Betrayal at the Mountains of Madness

I've been unable to open the files. Do you know if there's anything specific about them? Mac or PC? Is anyone else having difficulty?

I just tested the zip file again, and it seems to work just fine? is it the image files? or where are you having problems?

I get the zip files, and can then open them and see the png files. But I can't get those png files to open. I've tried various programs and online png sites and nothing opens them for me. I can see your pdf files fine, but not the pngs. :( I'm bummed, because this sounds like a great scenario!

PNG files are fairly normal picture types .... Perhaps you could try and hold down CTRL and then right click the mouse on top of one of the PNG files. Once you do that navigate down to the OPEN WITH menu and pick the image viewer you normally use it should be able to open it. If you want to set it as default then you can choose USE ANOTHER APP and then pick one and set it as default, then it should use it everytime from now on :) Let me know how it goes.

Alternativily you can download IRFANVIEW a great image viewer program. Cheers Carsten

I must be dense but I don't see the relevance of splitting into 3 separate zips. I just did png2pdf and intend to print all. Any suggestions?

Hello Kos! I think the split in three is based on both production realities and the FFG campaign model for longer campaigns.

There is a ”generic encounter package” like what is provided in the deluxe campaign boxes, encounter sets used throughout the campaign. Then there are two ”scenario folders”, as in Mythos Packs, with all the cards used only in that particular scenario.

That is how we interpreted it.

/Fredmans

about batmom-2: umm what's the thing with the Aftercastle-1 cards (and the others)? Are they stacked? Could you increase the text a bit, it's very tiny and the background is very dark as well. Hard to read from print. But also no idea how to use the (constructed) cards.

Also, are we supposed to play batmom-1 first? Is there any connection between the two stories? They seem kinda unrelated.

Hi Kos. Did you find the campaign guide? They've added a link to it at the top of this article now. I'm not sure what to do about the text size - on each card it's as large as it can be while still fitting. Not sure if I need think simplify some of them, apparatus can be a real problem here.

We just had our first play-though of the first two scenarios. We played three players: Daisy, Sefina and Yorrick. We thought the campaign so far is really really promising. The scenarios all show marks of well thought-out and implemented game mechanics. Two of us love the Lovecraft novella, so we love what you are doing with it. The Nazis and Aliens makes it all something of Lovecraft meets Wolfenstein meets X-files.

Spoiler alerts.

We downloaded the campaign from your wordpress page, so we have not played the latest update. If anything is changed in this version, please disregard it.

Boston Red Line:

We loved the scenario, but found it a little on the easy side. Yorrick managed to stall the Shoggoth with two Stunning Blows and Sefina dropped the new Myriad Gates to facilitate his rear guard activities. I think there may have been to few enemy encounters to add real pressure to him. So here are a few suggestions we thought of.:

The Cultist token is quite easy. I figure there might be some ramping involved (from 0 to -5 perhaps?), but nonetheless it adds to easing the skill checks, which are mostly set to 3.

The Star Chamber Agents are quite easy for experienced investigators. I think a 3-2-2 or 3-3-2 stat line would be somewhat harder, making them "trained" Acolytes.

The Alien Scheme that blocks investigation gets stuck if you manage to empty the location of cards before drawing it. Maybe the Shoggoth could free them. If a "free" enemy enters this location, discard this card?

Zombies at health 0. We drew a zombie turn 1. As it happened Yorrick had played an ally, but if he had not, it would have been discarded. Maybe start at health 1?

We managed to drag zombies backwards and evading them, leaving them useless. We recommend Hunter, which would be fitting for them. They could be "slow", exhausted by movement.

The Shoggoth! Since this monster is essential to the feeling of the scenario, we think it would benefit from some game effects. There is an agenda which basically tells you to re-shuffle the discard pile into the deck. Maybe the Shoggoth could move one extra location if unengaged, speeding up its chase?

If cultists do not have a purpose, maybe the Shoggoth could use it for flailing some pseudopods around. Every investigator at Shoggoth location receives 1 damage?

The potential XP in this scenario is huge. We gained 10 XP after rescuing 14 allies (clearing the last station with one turn to spare before allies would start kicking the dust from added damage).

Alien Abduction: Maybe change the test to Strength (4)? We found it too easy to keep them. Of course, we had Daisy's Encyclopaedia and Yorrick to manage most of these treacheries, but most parties will have means to buff strength, especially with starting XP.

Voyage South?

We loved the idea of having the ship known to us after weeks at sea. Maybe it could use a bit of explanation, to ease set-up.

The Star Chamber Commander? Are we interpreting it correctly if it does not move the first turn to flip the starting location?

The "Free" beast is chasing the Commander, right? So, the Free beast removes all tokens (horror and clues?) Yet, we need the clues for killing/moving the Commander. Maybe the Vanguards and the Commander should reduce clues to make it a little bit harder (say 2 clues/monster at end of enemy phase?). Since there are not that many enemies, we were quite unworried about Health and Sanity, and we did not quite really understand the Doom mechanism on the last agenda. I know there is some treachery that adds Doom, but the encounter deck was quite thick so we did not draw into them. The agenda says specifically to not add doom, only to remove it. Are we playing it wrong?

There were two treacheries: Lost in Translation and Sea Sickness, that we loved the flavour of, but they did not feel nasty to draw.

Sea Sickness: Since you do not want to move as much as you want to keep investigating the same location, this is probably a no-treachery 3/4th of the time, and a mild one as such. Maybe add a revelation test to add a -x to every skill for a turn, where x is the amount you failed by?

Lost in Translation: We do not get the connection between language and card draw. We interpreted the investigate actions as chatting with the German passengers, so we thought a temporary increase in shroud would be an alternative. Maybe +1 shroud for the turn (compared to the Core Set Obscuring fog, which has a removable +2).

General:

We had David Renfield abducted on the Voyage South. Maybe you should add a note as in the Exile rule about filling up the deck for free with 0XP cards if you somehow end up with an illegal deck.

Final comments:

This campaign is more than promising. They are well-designed scenarios, which are very fun to play, and the writing is good to. We are just worried that the scenarios might be a little too easy.

So, thank you so much of all the work you have put into this. By the way, the scenario guide on the wordpress page lists the set-up instruction for Scenario III, but we cannot find any printable cards for it.

Many many thanks from all of us,

Edit: Now we realize that Lost in translation is meant to hurt the discard action. That is all fine, but two of our three investigators had high intellect, so only Yorrick needed this option. This was actually quite useful. He cleared the engine room in no time, since he wants his assets in the discard anyway. Apart from that location, he had no other investigation opportunities. For us, this card had a very limited impact only during a very short window of time. A mechanism discarding random cards would be an alternative that always has a consequence.

We also thought a ss-colonel effect would be a fun alternative to the cultist token effect or as a treachery like the Spectre in Circle Undone (ready - move)

Finally, the campaign guide told us to remove two Massacres, leaving one in the encounter deck. Although it hurt a bit to have clues added, we felt the treachery card/title misplaced before the appropriate agenda. Was this a typo?

P.S. None of our group’s comments are meant to be criticism, we only want to add play tester input for you to create the best campaign possible. We believe this has a lot of potential, that us why we are bringing all these suggestions. After all, that is all they are, just suggestions.

Keep up the incredible work, Fredmans

I played through the first scenario tonight and a few things (besides it was a lot of fun): (1) It's not obvious in the campaign guide whether Ally assets count towards an ally slot. I presume they don't count and otherwise offer their skills. Maybe something to add to the comapaign guide.

I've added this to the campaign guide, thanks.

Played the two scenarios. LOVE them. :Love having all the Miskatonic characters around. This is a great start. When can we expect Scenario #3?

Scenario 3 is complete and playable, but I've been holding off making a printable version because I'm a bit unsure about one of the major mechanics. It's quite complex, and I'm worried it's too complex.

Hello! We managed to pick up where we left for the third scenario. We decided to play through all three scenarios again with different characters, so we will offer more thoughts in late January.

First off, Cold Heart was very different in many ways, which we all valued greatly. The No Connections rule turned some of our most valued cards into garbage. Fittingly, we gave them a similar use. The whole exploration mechanic was a lot of fun, and felt very streamlined and intuitive as well.

We had two initial queries to which we could not find immediate answers.

Immune (entropic damage): We could not find it, but ruled it that only damage from spells would work.

Exploration/Expedition teams. There is one scenario reference to all expedition teams. We played it as a misprint of exploration teams.

We have some more input, but want to play it again first.

Thanks for all the work. We are really enjoying it,

Fredmans

My group really enjoyed the campaign so far and are very grateful for the Tabletop Simulator download. We have played through Scenarios 1-4 once with two players (Tony Morgan and Luke Robinson) on standard difficulty. The text in the setup, resolutions, and interludes is a little long; in most cases you could cut a third of your word count to deliver the same information. The first three scenarios were very good, but I have some feedback on scenario four. My group got Resolution 3 for that scenario, but it was down to the wire (with some rules shenanigans) – though it is important to note that we forgot to flip the generator (my fault).

• MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD -

1. The intro needs some more framing on why the investigators are at the BFE camp in the setup blurb and what they hope/suspect to find. I know it is meant to be intentionally vague and mysterious.
2. In the intro, it would be nice to state that the investigators picked up, examined and pocketed the black crystals, so the that "Caustic Blob" treachery reasoning isn't only told in a flashback.
3. Locations should spawn with clues when revealed, with the early Acts stating clues cannot be gained due to darkness (instead of Act 5b just spawning them). This would give more reasoning and urgency to turn the generator on.
4. Too many questions are raised if the Doppelganger can speak fluent English (haven’t checked Shoggoth lore), e.g. why doesn’t it persuade the investigators? Instead, perhaps it could only parrot Dyer's voicelines rather than speak itself (e.g. remixed voicelines from when it was a bird).
5. This is a wild suggestion, but instead of spawning a "Stygian Hound" at the "Out in the snow" location, you could have a “Terrified Flammenwerfer Soldier” instead. This could also explain why the Stygian enemies can now attack in Agenda 2b if 7 doom was reached. An example of the card could be:

3 fight | 6 health | 3 evade. Aloof. Hunter. Prey (ready Stygian). At start of enemy phase before moving, if ready, deals 1 fire damage to every other enemy and investigator at his location. 0 damage, 0 horror. "Burn them! Burn them all!"

6. Might be nice to give the “Deeper Darkness” treachery an action to remove it from a location, e.g. an Investigate (5) check.
7. Maybe cut out Act 5a "Getting the Lights back" to shorten game, however I understand that the story text for killing the changeling AND turning on the generator wouldn't fit on the back of a single Act card.
8. Act 7a’s objective needs a bit more incentive, e.g. these monsters are a threat to all humanity if any escape. Furthermore, you could have a partial objective of fixing as many locations as possible (the more the better), with the resolution based on number of remaining locations with either a "Fire!" treachery or resource tokens on it.
9. The generator flipping into an enemy is thematically odd, perhaps you could just allow Stygian Anthropoids to upgrade into them normally.

Overall, good job and we are looking forward to the next scenario.

(edited: Extra note: it would also be helpful if there was a picture of suggested locations placement during setup)

Hi Samuel, thanks for this detailed feedback. After some other playthroughs I've totally revised this scenario and implemented changes quite like some of your suggestions. Acts 1 and 5 have gone, clues start on locations, and so on to make it a bit shorter and less complex. The darkness cards will have a way to avoid them. On point 8, I was trying to be careful not to make the optional extra objective seem too important - what you're actually supposed to do is run, and the optional extra is really a stretch goal for those who've played the scenario before and want to plan for it (like killing the shoggoth in scenario 2).

Hi! My group is playing through this campaign at the moment, really enjoying it so far. We'll be playing Scenario 5 later this week, which appears to be the last one available in the Tabletop Simulator mod -- but I notice that the campaign guide on your blog contains what look like full setup and resolution instructions for Scenario 6. Is the sixth scenario available to play somewhere? If it's still in playtesting we'd be happy to try out an "unfinished" version and give feedback. :-)

Hi Simon, sorry I didn't see this message. I've added the playtest version of Scenario 6 to the steam workshop mod so it's there to play if you want to.

Any chance we can get copies of the new scenarios to print?

Hi Robert, I'm planning to make print and play versions of the whole campaign once it's finished.

give us hope

Hi Simone. The campaign is now finished and playable via TTS. I'm (slowly) implementing the feedback I've received from the online version and the printable version will follow when that's ready.

I read a thread that around 2020 the files on AC were outdated. Where is the current version?

Rather frustratingly I've just spent and age downloading, sorting backs, double sided printing, cutting, laminating and trimming the first three scenarios from the files supplied here only to find things don't match up when following the Campaign Guide. The "Surging Rats" set mentioned in the guide must be the "Swarming Rats", which is OK, no big deal. The "Dark Dreams" set doesn't seem to exist though. Assuming another name change has taken place I thought perhaps that the set had been retitled "Pitch Black" (which does exist in the image files). However, I checked further through the guide at later scenarios, and both "Dark Dreams" and "Pitch Black" sets are used later on at different points - so they can't be the same set. Until the files for the print'n'play version are updated I'd steer clear of this campaign as it seems unplayable in it's current confused state (after a lot of wasted time, money and effort - grrr!). Lastly, a small minor nit-pick, Delphina Bell is missing her set icon from her card - not that it matters as I can't play it anyway...

I'm so sorry to hear that! The versions on here are very out of date but should still be playable if I can sort out the campaign guide for you properly. If you're able to contact me on Discord or Reddit (https://itswritingitself.wordpress.com/2019/09/06/betrayal-at-the-mountains-of-madness/#feedback) I can piece something together for you so you can play.

A good 3.5/5 but if I am forced to round it, I suppose I could put it at 4/5. The writing is solid but lacks a certain grit and grimness but I'll not deduct point for that. What I will deduct points for however is how overdesigned thus campaign is. KISS is maxim for a reason and this campaign suffers from having far too many mechanics crammed into it for the sake of facilitating novelty.

5/5 Amazing campaign!! Tim has gone above and beyond to innovate the gameplay, giving players unprecedented experiences, such as playing with Arkham investigators as allies and sneaking through a big map while huge battles take place in the sky. I played 10+ unofficial campaigns and this is the first time the level of innovation impressed me this much. This campaign will be appreciated by players who already know the core game well and are ready to put some effort to learn new rules. Personally, I enjoyed all scenarios for their richness and uniqueness, and it the campaign has a lot of replayability. I played as a true solo and it felt that the difficulty scaled well for single players like me.

Played the whole campaign with Mary and Rex (quite the pairing). I have to say the whole concept, story, and innovative scenarios made for a fantastic game.

I have played the CoC RPG adventure Beyond the Mountains of Madness so a few of the concepts were familiar, I guess Tim has played that too.

Loved the various chase themes that string this campaign together, you seem to be running for your life most of the time and the excitement grows as the enemies close in. The use of Allies from other scenarios is handled very well and sometimes sacrifices have to be made.

I plan on revisiting Betrayal a few more times, this is an excellent campaign, well done Tim

How can I download this to print&play, is there an updated version?

A fantastic campaign. Love the adversaries and historical background, the classic pulp tropes, and the innovative mechanics, particularly the various rivals and the multi-way situations that ensue. Played two-player once and am doing so again with a different friend.

hi guys still no printable pdfs?

Hi, does anyone know where I can download this campaign? Can anyone share?

I have reenabled the old download link, so you can grab it now. I will write the author to see if he has a newer version I can put up. Cheers Carsten

Is there any way to get this in a format so it can be printed by MPC? I don't want to "home brew" the cards. Thanks!