Bread and Circuses Campaign

Enjoyed this immensely, I found myself well and truely caught up in a 1930's detective/mystery movie. The plot works well. I did get lucky with a few rolls, especially at the end..where , well you know who, almost gave us the slip at the entrance/exit. Can't wait for the second scenario. Good job.

I've only read the first paragraph of the scenario rules and admired the art, but so far this looks amazing. Just saying.

Hello MJGrenier!

Great job there! :-) Any chance you can share the Strange Eons format for translation?

Sorry, can't. Did all the work in Photoshop.

I see... in that case, would it be possible for you to share the images of the cards? That way I should be able to recreate the whole scenario... A Google Drive link would be perfect!:-)

Thanks in advance!

Great art and theming. Overall very enjoyable. However, this scenario can be very tedious having to take multiple steps searching for a key Asset, then several more high tests in order to succeed. It was very challenging, but sometimes in an unfun way. Some inconsistencies with rules and set up text left me confused at time. Like I said, overall generally well thought out and enjoyable.

Thanks for the feedback. I was aware of possible negative similarities to the kind of notorious To Catch an Orc from LOTR (in which you're waiting for things to happen), but I just kind of rolled with it. What setup problems did you have? I'd like to clarify any issues in updated text.

A note on Enter the Dragon: Lin Xingjuan should not ready and engage an enemy due to her forced ability if exhausted. I'll have to update it when I can put new files together.

Would it be possible to get a version of the locations with icons instead of letters?

Thanks for asking, but I don’t have the art set up for it, and don’t have time at the moment to scan and crop everything. So unfortunately, I don’t have any plans to do that in the near future.

I personally prefer the letters, as I find it hard to differentiate some symbols at a glance and I’m color blind, so color coding is usually an awkward situation.

Thanks for your response, thought I'd ask since you might have the assets set up.

Although I'm not color blind I do find the symbols can be hard to distinguish sometimes. However, I've come to enjoy the style so I might try editing them when I get the time.

This was a beautiful and well-written scenario, such high production levels! I love the jazzy vibe combined with the lurking Lovecraftian horror of it all. Look forward to the next scenario, thanks heaps for sharing this!

Very slick design, thematic and well produced. Like the theme and the balance is pretty good(we played on Hard and barely lost). Two things:

1. There are a lot of typos and grammatical errors in the text which brings down the 'feel' when encountered.
2. There is quite some RNG on the ability on the location. This can be reduced by 'Put at the bottom of the deck' instead of 'shuffle back into the deck'.

Are you talking about The Bar location? That's a good call. I'm sure there are some typo issues, it's tough to get it all when it's in a hundred different files, but I'll try to go back over it when I can.

'Eyes of the Dragon' might be a bit over the top. It is easily the worst treachery card that an investigator can come across while playing the Arkham Horror LCG. I don't know what the balancing element would be, but all the little small elements combined can make it something that just can't be handled (the costs for moving, the check to get out, it could advance the agenda, needing to succeed by one, it not going away on its own, no one being able to do the check for another investigator, etc.).

I do agree with what another has mentioned about the wording. There were quite a few story segments that were written improperly that could use some review.

These of course are small things in an excellent scenario that you had provided. I appreciate the effort and time that you had invested in putting this together for us. The community will be thankful.

I appreciate the feedback, but could you point to the places in the text you think have issues? Do you mean the Act and Agenda cards, or the campaign text?

I looked over everything and saw most of the errors you’re probably mentioning. Tidied up other text too. I’ll send a new file when I get the chance to put it all together.

As for the treachery, you’re not wrong. I have an alternate version in mind, though it’s a bit too much detail to go in to here. I’d love to talk about your play experience if you have the chance. I’m on Reddit under the same username, and I frequent the Mythos Buster Discord server.

Great work. I've coded the 3 scenarios into octgn. Will post a google drive link tonight, for those interested !

Here are the 3 scenari for OCTGN : https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zFenFZ4spWxBxM-aYMck_AwR4GxHMo6J

Simply unrar in your octgn folder and play.

This is awesome. I did make some slight changes to the first two scenarios since you’ve posted this, which I detailed above. They shouldn’t make a significant difference in gameplay though.

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Hi, I'm really amazed with your job, and as I'm willing to share this experience with other french language teammates. Therefor I kindly ask you are willing to share your files. I used Strange Aeons, but I'm also making my debuts using Photoshop.

Thanks for the interest! I don’t have time at the moment to pack everything up that way, but as you’re the second person to request this, I’ll see if I can figure out an option in the future.

Might need a nsfw tag because of the red room. I saw it when preparing the deck but forgot about the room, so it was a little embarassing when I brought my female coworker to our arkham group where we were planning to play this one, an so explained to rules to her and when explaining movement out of a locations this was flipped as an example. Maybe not the most inclusive way to get the game around with other ppl, but she luckily took it well.

Hmm, you’re right. I’ll change the art.

Just a couple of questions about setup for Bread and Circuses:

• Which Edwin Bruce card goes in the Regular Deck? (Gambler or nephew?)
• What do I do with A Strange Idol?
• Do Imperial Regulars have Encounter card backs or Player card backs? What about the other "Regular" cards? Thanks. (It's a beautiful looking scenario BTW).

For anyone coming across this, here's what I think the answers are:

1. Nephew. Gambler is not used in play.
2. Nothing. Not used in play.
3. Imperial Regulars have encounter backs. Unique Regulars have Player backs.

It's a fun scenario. A few little bugs which detract a bit (I'll keep a list and send them to the creator after the campaign). What really impressed me is the pre scenario and interlude writing quality. Better than FFG stuff.

Yeah, you're correct on all of those. Thanks for the good words. I don't have time lately to work on any of this stuff, but it comes to mind once in a while. I hope to at least finish the fourth scenario some time in the next couple months.

The first three scenarios were great! Lots of good and fun ideas, great artwork, and engaging pulpy writing. Thank you.

I kept a list of minor bug fixes for the content I saw (there's plenty I didn't see). If you give me a way to pm you I'll send it over, that way you can address things whenever you find the time.

As a general comment to anyone reading this, the creators of these scenarios must put in a huge amount of effort. It would be great if everyone who plays them could provide constructive and specific feedback about any problems. With a little bit of effort the fan content could be as polished as the official stuff.

Do you Discord? I’m mjgrenier #2664. Username is the same on Reddit. I’d love to talk about it.

Love the Campaign and the high production value. I've ported the assets (including the custom investigators) over to Tabletop Simulator for people to enjoy:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1566309028

I also included it in my AH LCG mod, and added support for automatic chaos bag construction and clue spawning on my playarea:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1516223037

I did find what I assume is a typo in the flipped version of The Engine Room, where the location labels (G), (H) appear swapped, which makes no sense, so I took the liberty of changing them in the mod.

Cant imagine how much time it takes to create and make each scenario, not to mention write up the detailed campaign guide.. still, looking forward to the last chapter. :)

What's the best way to print these on my home printer? It doesn't look like there's card backs available for this to print

They’re set up to print on standard 8.5x11 paper. If you have a home printer that can run cardstock, you can give that a try. I didn’t include card backs for a couple reasons: it reduces file size, it’s difficult to print front to back lines up well on cheaper printers, and I felt most people would print on paper and insert over sleeved cards.

I’ve begun looking at finishing out the 4th scenario, so maybe I’ll reset up everything afterwards, but that will be a little while off still.

Just finished playing through this campaign and enjoyed it immensely. The art work is stunning and you've really got the pulp fiction style of writing down pat!. I'm just wondering about the 'Fire' and 'Hysteria' cards from Bon ' Voyage. I had all 4 copies out and was adding a doom from the engine because of clue threshold. That's a total of 5 doom being added at the end of an investigation phase! . There appears to be no way to remove the 'Fire' and 'Hysteria' cards from play, is this correct?. Or can I discard these cards if I remove all clues from their locations?. Thanks again for a great time, looking forward to part 4. How many scenarios do you plan on doing for this campaign?

There’s an action printed on the locations which will let you remove the treacheries If there are no clues on the locations (there should be at least).

I have ideas for 8, but just now getting around to then after a 6 month break. Maybe some day they’ll be done?

Ah I missed that ! Well that makes things more mangable then 😀. Can’t wait to continue this campaign and great to know you got more planned. You’ve left my two invesrigators stranded in the Atlantic but I think they will be alright, looks like they will be picked up by the Ship from the Svalbard Event scenario......(running two investigators through all the fan made scenarios).

I wonder about the size of the cards and how to cut them.

Other scenarios usually include card backs for the active cards (like treachery ) - The card size used in other scenarios are also standard size

For these scenarios I cannot get the card to fit the backs from other scenarios as they seem no to be standard size independently how the cards are cut.

Maybe its just non transparent sleeving that will work with the scenario cards ?

The cards are set up at 61.5mmx88mm, which is more or less the exact measurement of actual cards. Arkham Horror cards (and other card games I believe) are not actually the 2.5”x3.5” measurement you’ll see listed in places online. It could be that the other backs are set up at the slightly larger size?

That being said, it’s been pointed out to me that the middle two columns are a slightly different I size than the others? That confuses me, as the software I used sets everything up equally, but perhaps it was a compression issue somewhere along the line? Not sure.

As it does not match from the other scenarios backs I just black sleeve them. I think most of the other designers use Strange Eons 3 and thus the difference

Thx for the time and effort !

Great art. Some typos though:

1. Idol Thoughts => an idol is an clay figurine. Probably should be IDLE thoughts.
2. Though shall not => if you refer to biblical clay tablet texts, it should be THOU SHALT not. On the other hand 1 might be on purpose, but it might be good to reconsider.

The idol card refers to Cost of Azure, part 4. Is this still in progress perhaps?

It’s been on hold for a bit: I’ve had other projects I’ve been working on. Thanks for the interest, and maybe I can get back to it some time soon.

As per your text comments, the title is intentional. I’m not sure exactly what part you’re referring to with the shall/shalt comment, but good to know.

the "idol thoughts campaign guide (read me first).pdf" pdf shows the text top left in green

Though shall not make unto thee any graven images

which is a reference to Christian second commandment, see for example https://www.thoughtco.com/second-commandment-thou-shalt-not-make-graven-images-250901 You misspelled Though. I though it was pretty clear, but apparently not ;-)

btw shall was also mispelt and should be shalt. shalt is old english for imperative.

I'm interested too!

what is this cost of Azure chapter?

Question with spoilers. THe Parkers are in the dining area. Do they just stay there forever? I can’t think how they would get into the encounter deck. Thanks!

They shouldn’t be able to go into the encounter deck as far as I remember. It’s been a bit since I’ve looked at things, but maybe there’s something I missed?

There’s a point in the agendas at which the npcs begin to move. They’ll stay at the location they start at (placed through game actions on the generic ally cards in the encounter deck) until that point.

Ok thanks. I found a mistake I made I. The initial setup that explains my confusion. Great work by the way!

Loving the design and writing on this. But has anyone played true solo? With the card draw only being 4 I can't seem to ever make it thorough the encounter deck to pull enough regulars - and then being stuck in one location really hampers clue gathering.

Really enjoyed Bread and Circuses! I saw a link to the alternate investigators you created. They look awesome. Is there a file somewhere that we can download to print out?

I actually never made a print file now that you mention it. If you print true to size on the files it should be the right size.

This is my first comment on this page as we are playing through all the fan-made content. I would start off by saying that this is a very well designed campaign, the best we have encountered so far and we are very impressed and would love a fourth scenario in the future. The scenarios are just dripping with film-noir atmosphere.

Here follows a few queries and comments (spoiler alert!):

Bread and Circuses:

We loved the execution of the guest mechanic. Putting them back in the deck as you ”solved” them increase the odds of finding them as you whittle down the deck. We played a 3p-game so the deck thinned fast enough for us, but I could see this being a potential problem in a one or two player game. Maybe just one ability somewhere (location or enemy) to search the encounter deck for a guest and then shuffle would perhaps do. On the other hand, we had plenty of time left when we finished it.

The lookout: We interpreted the card as if it was possible to evade it without engaging it, otherwise the first agenda would be over really quick. If this is the case, it could be worth clearly stating it on the card, since the interpretation leads to two very different strategies, one much harder than the other.

The shootout: We loved the idea, but was a bit miffed about the outcome. The goons were a bit too easy for us to deal with to actually consider the balcony. I think the doormen and the rival gang members could have higher damage output (directly or indirectly, like adding damage to investigator(s) in the same location through the gang interaction mechanic.

Enter the Dragon:

Dragon Den: Is the Dragon Den attached or connected to its location? We played connected, since they have different shrouds, but both words are used, I think. It matters most for clearing it. I think both options are viable, although one is much harder.

By the way, we loved the dragon parade mechanic.

Bon Voyage:

This was a much more difficult scenario. I do not mind difficult scenarios, but the doom accumulation was very severe with three players, and from so many angles: clues treachery, fires, hysterias and bad draws. Once we got it to 2/round, we finally managed to squeeze out a resignation. The challenge was fun, but almost overwhelming because you needed monster/clue management in both ends. I loved the shortcut ally, but it still took a lot of running.

The atmosphere, however , was spot-on. The ship sinking, rocking and swaying was highly immersive.

Question: the gnawers. It says hunter and prey-engine room. we played it that if they wereunengaged, they moved to the engine room to gnaw some more, but only to make sense of the writing. hunter directs you toward investigators, so the alternative would be to use prey as tie-breaker as in ”prey - investigator in engine room”.

The problem was that investigators are occupied with shoring up in port and starboard, so there is no real reason for them to be in the engine room, so the prey instruction seemed unnecessary. We played it that if they were unengaged, they moved to the engine room. That really hurt us doom-wise, but seemed like the intended interpretation. Grateful for answer.

We loved the scenario, for all its difficulty, and will try the campaign again soon, to perhaps build a little bit differently.

We played Mark, Minh and Jenny (evasion/clues), but Jenny failed to take off in the last scenario. The most difficult part was to have two very high intellects handle both ends of the ship. With the token effects, we found ourselves very reluctant to take all the unbuffed investigate actions as well as fight actiond we needed to. skulls soon became auto-fails due to all the clues stacking in the engine room, gobbling up skill cards as well. one idea we had was to perhaps setting a cap to the skull (-5?). the other was to lower both cultist and tablet to -2.

Anyway, we loved the campaign and will surely play it again.

Sincerely, Fredrik

Thanks for the write up! It’s been a while since I’ve looked at these materials, so it’s hard for me to answer your questions off the cuff, but I’ll look into them. Your experience with the difficulty on Bon Voyage was mine as well, and largely the intended goal of the scenario. We managed to beat it at times in testing, but it’s total chaos.

I’d love to chat about the scenarios if you’re available to. My name on reddit if you use it is mjgrenier

Hi everyone!

I have just made a video playthrough of "Bread and Circuses." I had a great time with it!

Here's the video: https://youtu.be/c0LfmouBssc

I love the campaign so far! Is it intended to continue on beyond scenario 3? I finished Bon Voyage and was a bit surprised that it ended so abruptly.

Regardless, excellent work. The scenarios were tons of fun and the mechanics felt quite elegant. I hope you'll make more!

I’ve dragged my feet on it for two years now, but I do intend on finishing the fourth scenario at least within the next month. Seems like we’ll all have a little more time to play now.

That's great to hear! I've been looking at playing it but I've been holding off printing till the last scenario is out. How many scenarios is the campaign composed of? Is the fourth scenario the last one? Thank you.

No, it’s not the last one, but I try to make them all enjoyable as a stand-alone scenario so I’d suggest giving them a shot. I intend to work more on them but can’t make any promises as to timeline. The end goal is 8 scenarios with maybe touching up the custom investigators I made before as well.

Also, if you didn’t see it, Cost of Azure, the fourth scenario, was just posted earlier today. Thanks for the interest!

Thanks for the reply! I'll give them a try then. Also, I didn't know Cost of Azure was part of B&C campaign, it might be worth it to point it out somewhere.

Agreed. I’m going to try to put together a little more overall campaign material at some point soon then I can wrap it all together.

Just finished this on TTS with 4 investigators and we all highly recommend it. Fun scenarios, very creative use of the mechanics of the game, a lot of variety in locations and actions. The story is solid and consistent, the characters interesting. Very highly recommended.

Also started this campaign on TTS with my partner as Minh and Mark. Overall, a really good experience. So far we've only played the first scenario, but looking forward to the rest. I've played a few fan scenarios and prefer to play them on TTS before printing and cutting everything out just to see if they will stand up to multiple plays. This one does. I hope the rest are also fun so I can store the whole set for replay down the road.

Minor issues with a few easy to make typos on some cards. It is clear they are just typos and the creator has ability to write a story that is clear and interesting, so not really an issue. Mechanics were clear.

The biggest frustration we had was that Minh got locked down for several turns by a card that prevents you from investigating. Yes, it is avoidable, but no so much when there isn't a way to get rid of enemies unless you lose 6-7 turns. Losing your entire turn is usually not fun. An action, fine, but removing the ability to progress entirely seems overmuch.

Along with that the Lookout Enemy is a big nuisance if you have low agility investigators as there is nothing you can do unless you send someone to go distract the guy (since he's a hunter) while the other investigates. That is what we ended up doing, but since we weren't really able to investigate near the lookout, Mark who was distracting also couldn't fight them because it would have cost us multiple turns during Act 1 (turns that, by the way, unless you are very lucky you will need to finish the scenario).

All of that being said, we played on easy and were able to win though we only had 1 turn left. I feel the scenario would have been much much easier with a rogue. But still had a blast. Thanks for the play, and we'll be looking forward to Enter the Dragon.

PS. I also loved the art and am curious where it came from.

Unsure if I am missing something or if perhaps the TTS scenario guide is out of date or if, maybe, there's no problem at all.

We played Enter the Dragon (much fun) and received resolution 6. The interlude and prologue of Bon Voyage does not mention Resolution 6 at all, so is it correct to assume we jump right to the intro/set-up for Bon Voyage and read nothing else? Strikes me as just a bit odd because we rescued Feng and there are a couple prologues where he addresses the investigators. Wasn't sure if resolution 6 has him not talking to us for some particular reason?

Huh, no, this is definitely an oversight. "Stories Past" is meant to be read regardless of the outcome of Enter the dragon. The other segments that precede it based on Enter the Dragon's resolution are just meant to make "Stories Past" make sense based on the story ending of Enter the Dragon.

I had the same situation when I played this weekend. I figured the intent was to read Stories Past otherwise Bon Voyage doesn't make any sense.

I’ve looked back at the file and it’s a typo that Resolution 5 should say Resolution 6. I’m slowly working on updating files and hopefully will have something by this weekend.

I played this with two of my friends and I must commend you on this campaign. I think this is one of the best designed standalone/campaigns I have tried. You have a real knack for designing.

If you're looking for a playtester in the future I would be happy to join up with you.

Hit me up on discord or reddit, I’m down to talk about it. mjgrenier#2664 on discord, same name on reddit.

Has this been proofread? I see no newer version.

I like the story but I need help finding out which card (treachery) is suppin the encounter deck in which in the investigators

The campaign guide should specify what to do with each card in scenario setup. Was there a card you had a question on?

Your cards do not have backs to them? I am new to print and play but all my sleeves are clear... So not including backs means I need to reprint another fan-made expansion that does include backs and cut and combine them

I’ll be updating them with backs at some point, I’ve just been sidetracked by a lot of things lately. I wouldn’t suggest printing them front-to-back with another scenario, as they almost certainly wouldn’t line up.

As a short term fix you can slip them in front of other existing cards with the corresponding backs.

Incredible campaign so far! Loving it.

Are you able to make this as single pngs with bleed so they can be printed on a site like printerstudio.com?

My friend and I really enjoyed the campaign (including Cost of Azure)! As we're both big on puns, the jokes throughout the scenarios really did it for us :D We also very much liked your limited use of monsters, although Bon Voyage reminded us a little of the Essex County Express in terms of complete escalation from one second to the other but it was still nicely done! A few points of criticism and one larger rule mistake: in almost every scenario there was one mechanic where a cap seemed to be in order for us. For example the Skull-Icon in the first scenario or maybe the amount of clues in the engine room in the third felt like a cap to the difficulty would improve the scenarios in terms of balance. The scaling on some of these could just get too much out of hand. The rule mistake I mentioned refers to the last Act of Bon Voyage. It still has the free action to take over uncontrolled Assets and The Hungry Masses is one of them, so you could just skip the parley action and use the one on the act instead. We ignored this overlook in our playthrough but you might like to update it. Anyway, we had great fun so far and look forward to more Scenarios for this Campaign!

Hey that’s a good point about getting around Parley. Thanks for the heads up, glad you had fun!

I have played the first two scenarios, and so far this is one of the best campaigns I have played so far. I have really liked that the scenarios see mostly humans and make the fictional elements less prevalent and thus more special. I played them solo with Joe, and so far I have managed to successfully finish both scenarios on the last turn. The scenarios have been challenging, not too hard nor too easy. A hard/expert version would be great for more players. An error I noticed is that the locations in the second scenario are oddly placed, the back and front aren't side by side in half of the locations. I am specially impressed by the amount of variability and story in each scenario. There are a ton of things that can change in different playthroughs, which is quite uncommon for fan-made scenarios. Thanks for making this campaign :)

Hello Matt, Congratulations for your work ! I’m a member of the french community “Horreur à arkham jce”, we are looking for fanmade scenarios that we could translate to increase the number of adventures available in french. Would you allow us to translate this adventures for french-speaking players ? Thank you in advance for your answer. Mitch

You have to cut every edge of every card. If they were laid out without a gap between the cards, cutting one card edge is cutting two. Lots of work here, almost double, and its harder to cut them perfect.

the searching for "Imperial Regular" mechanic in Bread and Circueses should be changed because if Zoey's Smite the Wiked weakness discards both of them to the encounter discard, it's impossible to ever draw them again

Hey just thought I poke you again since 'Im so excited to try this: you ever consider converting your scenarios into individual files with bleed so they can be printed on a site such as printerstudio?

It’s not something I’ve really considered putting work into and I’m currently more or less away from the game, so unfortunately it likely won’t happen in the foreseeable future. The files up on here have the necessary bleed to produce printed products, but as you point out, it won’t work for a print on demand service like Printerstudio.

NO SPOILER

Hi, very good campaign so far !!!

We played them all and liked them all. It's good game design, ennemies and original scenarios in general !

Some rules are a bit fuzzy some times but nothing you cannot comprehend.

So yeah, keep up the good work and we long to play your next scenario if you ever continue this campaign ! :)

Hi Matt,

Part 2 : Enter the dragon questions: I'm building the campaign, and found Suan Ming, Shanghaied, Scales of the Dragon, Eyes of the Dragon, Gifts of the Orient, Wall of Babel, Dragon Dance Parade, Waking Nightmare, The Taste of Dreams, in the file called Encounter, so the backs should be the tentacles, correct?

"Enter the Dragon" overview card (-X,-3,-3) has no back. The Dragon's Den (location) has no back either. Should these two be glued together?

Bread and Circuses: "encounter cards v2 combined"

• p1 backs obviously have the black sun.
• p2 backs are enemies, hence, tentacles.
• p3 also, however Bottoms up, is a Treachery Revelation... is that tentacle or black sun?
• p4 gotta dance, nimble fingers, etc same?
• p8 has two "undiscovered" locations named "I", should they be glued to the J and K respectively?
• p9 what is the back page of the "Bread and Circuses" overview page?

Hi Matt, Bon Voyage questions:

• Location G and H are both Engine rooms, should these be glued together? Is it some kind of instruction that once discovered it cannot be revisited?
• Aquaphobia, Dragged Down, Fire: also treachery/revelation, guessing these should have tentacle backs?
• Hysteria... Rising tide: tentacles?
• Rising Tide .. Uncanny Allure: tentacles?
• "bon voyage encounter cards-7.pdf" these should have black sun backs, correct?
• what goes on the back of "Bon voyage" overview card? Herman Finley?

There is a rather large issue with 'Palach' as it is written. First off, there is no instance in the game that refers to "Drawing" a chaos token.It should be "If you revealed a X symbol while attacking with Palach, do Y." Also, it needs a bit of extra text at the top like: "Doom tokens on Palach do not count toward the agenda advancement requirment." Because, as it currently stands, you still end up advancing the agenda even if you don't draw the mentioned chaos symbols, it just happens during the mythos phase, because doom tokens on any cards in play still count towards the advancement requirment.

Hi! Is this still in progress? Any expected release date for the following scenarios?