The Festival

Thanks to any and all for taking the time printing and playing this scenario. It was a lot of fun to craft. One small correction to the text on Agenda 3b. Game text under the italics should read: "Place the set-aside Stygian Grotto location into play. Move all investigators and enemies from Kingsport locations to the Stygian Grotto. Advance to Act 4a." Apologies for this oversight. This tweak will be included in a final version, once I've collected more feedback from players.

Now updated with version 1.3, fixing some poor wording on cards.

Hi, Congratulations Matthew for this scenario. 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 adventure for french-speaking players ? Thank you in advance for your answer.

It would be great to see this scenario in French! I would be happy to send you the files/card images. You can email me directly at matthew.heiti@yahoo.ca and let me know if you'd like individual card images or the Strange Eons files.

hey matthew! finally got this printed up and was just laying it out.

two questions: 1 -- do you have a suggested layout for it? i can't seem to figure out a layout i'm super happy with. the streets all connect to Orange Point but only Ship Street connects to Green Lane (but Green Lane connects back to all the streets, i think). if you have a suggested layout, that would be awesome! 2 -- i printed the previous version so don't have you latest updates -- anything major i should be looking out for? anyway, thanks for the hard work -- it's freezing cold in NYC today and seems like the perfect adventure to stay inside and play! i'll let you know how it goes.

Will! Thank you so much for taking the time to print this out, and apologies for the errors in the earlier version you've printed. I can point you to the BGG thread where I post a photo of a suggested layout and detail what's changed from earlier versions - they're all small text corrections that you should be able to 'roll' with as you play: https://boardgamegeek.com/article/27888556#27888556

But, in brief:

1. Suggested layout would place the Kingsport locations stacked, as a "Christmas tree": Green Lane as the base, the 3 squares above this (Ship Street at centre), then the 2 triangles, then Central Hill, then the White Church. The three hillside locations could be stacked parallel to the town: Orange Point, Burying Ground, Strange High House in the Mist. This way, it should seem pretty apparent how all locations connect. The labyrinthine nature of the town streets became necessary because the Strange Eons app only allows 9 unique locations icons!
2. The link above should tell you about all errata on the cards. Get in touch if anything is unclear.

Please let me know about your experience playing it. I'd be very open to hearing any feedback to improve it! (I live in Northern Ontario, Canada - so I completely sympathize with the need to hibernate!)

Hello Matthew,

first of all, great scenario!

Any chance you can upload the card images as well?

I'd love to translate this into Italian, and I need the images to recreate every card... can you help me?

Thanks in advance! :-)

Hi Alessio! That sounds great - I'd love to see this get an Italian translation! What exactly do you need to make this happen? I used Strange Eons to create the scenario - if you do the same, I could send you the work files and you could make the changes directly into the app. You can email me directly at matthew.heiti@yahoo.ca

Hello Matthew,

thank you so much for the quick reply!

Yes, I use Strange Eons as well: it would be great if you could send me the work files via WeTransfer, Google Drive or whichever means you prefer :-)

Also, thank you very much for your e-mail address! Here's mine: panno851@gmail.com

For the record, I've also translated another scenario called The Grand Oak Hotel!

I still need to get used to Arkham Horror's writing style, but I think (or better, I hope) I'm getting the hang of it! :-D

Thanks again!

Ciao Alessio. Leggo che hai tradotto lo scenario del Grand Oak Hotel. Dove posso trovare i link per il download? Io ho tradotto gli scenari "the collector" e "the curse of amulotep". Ho inviato i file all'admin così li può caricare sul sito. Sarei contento di poter collaborare con te nella traduzione di altri scenari, così da dividere il carico di lavoro.

Ciao Andrea, grazie per il tuo messaggio! Eccoti il link per scaricare lo scenario da me tradotto: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IafZxl2KDwG6iX1NunVNiJRMGBzfHGqq

All'interno del pacchetto trovi anche una mia dichiarazione che ti autorizza a farne qualunque uso purché non commerciale (facendo il traduttore di lavoro, mi sono dovuto tutelare...).

A me piacerebbe tradurre lo scenario "Bread and Circuses" ma a quanto pare l'autore ha usato Photoshop, per cui non so come recuperare le immagini delle singole carte... In ogni caso, se ti va di collaborare fammi sapere a quali scenari ti piacerebbe lavorare!

Per quanto riguarda il lavoro di editing a livello di immagini non ti preoccupare, ci posso pensare anche io. Le traduzioni che ho fatto dei due scenari le ho fatte con Gimp. Ancora non sapevo dell'esistenza dell'utilissimo StrangeEons! Il grosso del lavoro per me è tradurre dall'inglese, non in quanto non lo sappia ma più che altro perché utilizzano quasi sempre (giustamente) terminologie molto particolari e devo continuamente ricorrere a dei traduttori. Poi tu, facendolo di lavoro, sarai sicuramente più veloce e fluente di me. Quindi se pensi a tradurre il testo delle carte, al layout delle stesse posso pensare anche io. Altrimenti traduciamo insieme, magari un po' di pagine per uno. Dimmi tu come ti troveresti meglio! Possiamo anche iniziare dallo scenario di cui hai scritto tu.

P.s. ecco il link per gli scenari che ho tradotto https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rId_qkjanP3jvfL8lnl17-8DGWxH529h?usp=sharing

Ciao Alessio, è possibile ancora scaricare i moduli da te tradotti? In ogni caso grazie e buon lavoro

Thanks for this wonderful scenario of one of my favorite HP Lovecraft stories. However I need some help.

Spoiler

Act 2b reads: "If the investigators haven't found a seal ring, return to Act 4a". Does it really mean "Act 4a" or is this a mistake? I guess it's "2a" or rather "1a", right?

Thanks!

Hi Manuel - thank you for the kind words and for taking the time to print and play this scenario!

I'm sorry for that misprint. Yes, you are correct, it should read "...return to Act 2a." This error should be corrected in the latest version of the file available here. If you're working with an older version, you will be fine, but there are just some minor quibbles with wording, which I think I address fully here: https://boardgamegeek.com/article/27888556#27888556

Let me know if you have any other questions! Let me know how the experience went!

Printed off your scenario and failed miserably!! Really enjoyed it though and looking forward to giving it another go. It has inspired me to make my own scenario...quick question: how did you create your "front page" card? I cant find a template on Eons, and yours looks great...

Hi Billy - Thanks for giving it a try! Hope it works out better for you on the next go, and do let me know if there is anything that doesn't jive. For the cover page card, I used the "Labyrinths of Lunacy" scenario pack cover and just altered it to suit. Although the result isn't perfect! If you search "Arkham Horror Scenario Cover" you should find a few options. Hope that helps!

Superb looking artwork and lay-out. Once I'm done with the Dunwich cycle, I will definately give it a try!

Stefaan - Thanks for taking a look and for the supportive words! Let me know how the play goes, when you have the time!

Hi,I hope someone here who has a little experience with print and play LCG adventures can help to streamline meh workflow. I am looking to get this adventure professionally printed at card studio. The problem I am running into is all of the images come in several .pdf files and the online design tools require me to design the cards one by one, front and back. The site, printer studio.com won't take the .pdf's and print them as a sheet and then cut them out for me. My question is...

How can I pull individual card images apart in order to make them compatible with the online design templates? If that is even the best option, for example,Is there a reasonably priced online printer who will take a whole adventure and print the sheets on professional card stock and cut them out? I suspect not and so I will most likely have to do it myself, hence the above question.

As a former Magic player, I have tried all manor of proxy methods and there just isn't a substitute for a real, printer created card.

Thank you so much for reading Chris

s

Hi Chris! Thanks for the interest in the scenario. I uploaded all the cards to Printer Studio for this very reason. Here's the link to that: http://www.printerstudio.com/products/playingcard/design/dn_playingcards_front_dynamic.aspx?id=5364AD771EACC4E73DCC5628A806E4C16285B529580C9108D1BE06F26B089977BDFE5ABE1A6E3ACA&ssid=BA6CFF6CE9B741DD9913D6E89D950200

The link to the BGG thread so you can see the result: https://boardgamegeek.com/article/27888556#27888556

Hi,I hope someone here who has a little experience with print and play LCG adventures can help to streamline meh workflow. I am looking to get this adventure professionally printed at card studio. The problem I am running into is all of the images come in several .pdf files and the online design tools require me to design the cards one by one, front and back. The site, printer studio.com won't take the .pdf's and print them as a sheet and then cut them out for me. My question is...

How can I pull individual card images apart in order to make them compatible with the online design templates? If that is even the best option, for example,Is there a reasonably priced online printer who will take a whole adventure and print the sheets on professional card stock and cut them out? I suspect not and so I will most likely have to do it myself, hence the above question.

As a former Magic player, I have tried all manor of proxy methods and there just isn't a substitute for a real, printer created card.

Thank you so much for reading Chris

Which location do you start on?

Orange Point is the starting location.

OK so the first sheet: page 1+2 b2b, 3+4 b2b etc; later sheets have front/backs next to each other; but what about sheet 2 and 3? its not clear to me how to glue these

Hi there. All cards are connected with front and backs adjacent, beginning at the left edge of the page. So, for example, the first sheet: the scenario cover (front) and "The Festival" card #1 (back) go together. And so on, all the way through. Let me know if that clears things up for you.

Hi everyone! I enjoyed this scenario a lot! I’m going to be featuring a playthrough of this on my YouTube channel in a few days. Great times!

For all interested, I have posted the playthrough here...

https://youtu.be/3Mp3Va8RgWA

Thank you so much for taking the time to play it and posting the video. It felt so cool and humbling to watch the playthrough!

Hi Matt and thanks for the good work on this scenario.

Just a dumb question if you let me? The Cultist are generated from out of play, right ? I played a Mandy Thompson and a Tony Morgan with Leo de Luca and usually put one bounty on each cultist when generated. So I had enough actions to take six of them out. Since the limit to advance was 3 cultist at the white church and there were no longer any cultist out of play to generate, I could never reach the limit.

Maybe I would add a condition when you are not able to generate cultist.

Thanks !

Hi Ryson! Thanks for giving the scenario your time, and for the insight. Yes, cultists are spawned from out of play from their own deck. They also return there, once defeated. That way they can continue to 'respawn' and you should never run out of cultists. Of course, when they are all on board, that may present an edge case, and I'll take a look at that if I ever get a chance to revise.

Thank you!

Hello Matthew, I just tried out the scenario, I love the theme and flavour of it, great work overall.

I wanted to point out however that the bland-faced thing references grimoires attached to the old man, when it should be referring to its self. I know the bland-faced man was refereed to as the old man in the story(agenda) text, but I found it a tad confusing considering the card "The terrible old man

Otherwise I had a ton of fun with the scenario, good work!

Hi Dylan! Sorry for the slow reply, but thank you for the kind comments and the useful feedback. That was a detail missed when updating an earlier version, when the "Old Man" was the still name of the "Bland-Faced Man." The change was made to clarify, but I obviously missed correcting this one case. Apologies for the confusion!

Great art. Great story. I feel like a little too punishing and easy to get overwhelmed. We got to a point where we were just stemming the tide for 4 or 5 turns before just getting overrun and then boom, it was over.

Just finished a play-through with Rex and Zoey - wow, just WOW! I'm so impressed with the quality, design, production, and just general awesomeness of this scenario. It was very thematic, and felt like (no spoilers) it peaked in this very appropriate way at the right time with amazing tension! I also loved the overall layout - it felt like exploring a town and ascending a peak - huge thank you for doing this, incredible work!

Hi Sean! Thank you so much for taking the time to play the scenario, and for these very kind words. It's a good kick in the pants that makes me want to get back to the drawing board with a couple of other scenario ideas.

I just finished playing this scenario twice. I agree with commenters who have praised the theming and faithfulness to the Lovecraft story. Regrettably though, my group had pretty bad experiences that we blame on the mechanics. Our first playthrough was actually the better one (albeit stemming tide more than actual forward progress) due to a little bit of luck and a little bit of Mr. Magooing over landmines. Then on our second playthrough we pulled a couple "Hard/Expert" Elder Things and it was immediately game over. But both times, the thing that didn't sit right with us was how much energy we would spend on various seemingly significant actions (such as investigating the High House in the Mist, or attacking and interfering with cultists at various points in the story) just to be undone by Acts, Agendas, or random token pulls making everything we were working on not only pointless but badly counterproductive, despite no story prodding that such radical reversals were waiting. Several treacheries are virtually irrelevant or even situationally beneficial, while others are completed devastating. Nothing more devastating than those "Hard/Expert" tokens though. It brought to mind the complaints of many players about Ancient Evils being so devastating and non-interactive. That card is of course in this scenario, but it's outmatched in both devastation and lack of player agency by several other scenario effects that for my team made the lovely, painstaking story begin to seem irrelevant.

These words are blunt, I know, but I mean to capture my group's experience with the scenario. Again, the problem is not the design or overall concept. The art and tone are pleasantly and creepily "Lovecraftian" to a greater degree than most real FFG scenarios. It's just that the RNG kicks in and subsumes everything. I suspect that Easy/Standard would probably be better.

Anyway, my overall sense of the scenario is that it's kind of a battle royale in which if your team has AoE and/or can dish out chunk damage, you're likely to have unlimited time to complete objectives in what will be a very, very long but certainly successful effort. But the "Hard/Expert" chaos bag, and particularly the Elder Thing, is totally ridiculous and I would advise all players to avoid it. My blind run advice to any player would be 1) clue gatherers are secondary to killers, 2) Hard/Expert is very likely to be a negative play experience, 3) MVP cards: Dynamite Blast, Storm of Spirits, Marksmanship, Get Over Here!, Riot Whistle, Taunt, Roland Banks.

A few technical comments:

1. The High House in the Mist's Victory Points are never earnable. Not sure if this is intended.
2. Blessing of Nodens cannot be activated by any player for any reason. I assume designer intent is for its first ability to be useable by any investigator at the High House while the asset is uncontrolled and the latter two abilities to be useable once an investigator has taken control of the asset. To simulate this, I'd encourage all players to pretend the first ability on Blessing of Nodens is actually printed on High House.
3. If Agenda 3 rolls while players are still on Act 1 or 2, a great deal of the text on both Act 4 and Agenda 4 is either irrelevant or confusing, both in terms of the flavor text and the instructions.

Sorry so much of this is negative, and I hate to offer such faint praise when there is so much to like, but: this is an attractive and painstakingly crafted scenario that makes me want to like it. It's pretty, it's thematic, it's different, it's Lovecraftian. For my group though, it was an endless revolving door of enemies and random events that our ability to deal with was dependent entirely on events outside our control. I have a lot of respect to the designer for the obvious labor that went into it, and I feel like it is very close to being very good. And yet, I would not recommend it, especially on Hard/Expert.

-SPOILERS AHEAD-

I just re-read my long post above and I don't like that it makes it sound like barring RNG the scenario would work. I actually think the scenario's fundamental challenge is broken. Heads-up for spoilers as I describe why.

1. The fundamental challenge of this scenario is that 1 4-health Aloof enemy spawns every turn. (That's right, 1. Regardless of player count. It's as obviously unfair as it sounds.)
2. Players lose if these endless waves of enemies make it from Point A to Point B.
3. Players win if they infinitely guard Point B. (Yes, a single Barricade wins the scenario for certain.)

So if you're thinking of playing this scenario, the only relevant preparatory question is: What is your team's answer to Aloof 4-health enemies?

My 2-player team's answer was I think fairly typical: The main fighter spends 1 turn per (GRAB, SWING, SWING, because his main weapon does less than 4 damage/swing). So this became his job forever, leaving the "cluever" free to try to make forward progress. Looked okay on paper, if a bit dry and repetitive.

But here's where the RNG comes in: The mythos deck has many cards that add additional 4-health Aloof enemies, and at least one chaos token does as well. So on any given turn, the number of 4-health Aloof enemies your team needs to handle can increase from 1 to as high as 8. What is your team's answer to this? Obviously the cluever can come in for spot enemy assistance, but can they also infinitely dispatch 1 4-health Aloof enemy per turn? If so, you might be able to juggle the challenge for a while until the RNG bites you. If not though, you're gonna get rolled fast. Again, certain teams are undoubtedly well-suited to such a peculiar challenge. Luke Robinson springs to mind because movement is another huge problem. (Thought I didn't mention this yet, you actually can't really park in one location, so can your main killer MOVE, GRAB, SWING, SWING every turn?)

Again, a single Barricade wins the scenario and certain movement shenanigans can combine with AoE cards to radically improve your chances. But despite the theming, there really isn't a lot of mystery here. It's a binary question: Does your team's fundamental combat engine infinitely defeat 4-health Aloof enemies? YES = have fun. NO = don't bother.

Very good scenario, thanks for your time writing it ! :) The art is great, the story well-written and engaging and the game design generally good (see spoiler), we kind of succeed and it lasted 3 hours ^^'

SPOILER 1- Nothing incentive you to go for the location that disappears before it does. I'm glad we didn't go there or we would have been frustrated. Not useful to story nor the game design...

2- It's pretty hard to find that ring, we were a bit lost as we didn't go to the right location and were wondering if it has to be a card that we draw or something. Plus difficulty 7 while the fighter was already fighting is harsh, if we would critically fail for example, it's game over (even though the agenda 4 would have activated the act 4)

3- Speaking of it, it feels a bit frustrating. We spent a lot of effort avoiding the agenda and in the end it barely matters because both are synchronised. I understand the game design behind it though so it's acceptable :)

4- As someone said before, you HAVE to be able to kill at least one cultist each round WHILE the other is investigating for clues. We played Blue+Yellow so it was perfect but the blue got lucky, could have ended wayyyy sooner.

In the end, we really enjoyed it, those are just ways to improve this (or, more probably) your next scenario :)

Hi there Matthew! My name is David, writting from Spain. I´d like to ask you if we can translate your scenario to spanish, of course giving you al the credit. TY.

Hi is this the latest version or is the one from https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ev5xtaonjuw6zyx/AAADa012OHwc9f9xz7cOg5eQa?dl=0 more recent?

German translation Matthew kindly gave me permission to produce a German translation of his phantastic scenario. Download links at BGG

My group and I did not enjoy this scenario at all. We did finish it, but then collectively decided that we'd act as if it "just didn't happen" regarding the campaign we were playing. I realize that the work and generosity it takes to create one of these things is enormous, so I'll try to offer a few constructive comments. The positives: The art and theme are great. There is a real sense of place and the experience of being trapped in this knotted town is excellent. The crescendo of intensity in the story was also good – though, I think it may have started too high. We'd have love a shorter first act where we had some time to actually wander around and get to know the place a little before big problems started happening - even if that was only a turn or two. Things that could use more work: The writing is over done and uses 'macabe-style' vocabulay is some rediculous and even literally incorrect ways. Too many goopy adjectives. At more than one moment, it really pulled us out of the story when we got to a description that was just trying way too hard. The maps were convoluted and made it nearly impossible to accomplish much of anything with them time we were given. Lots of one-way connections with noplausible reason why one couldn't turn around on a street and head the other way. Something would show up on the map during the mysthos phase or on another players turn and there was just literally no way for another play to get there to help out or have any effect on what was happening at all. So, if you weren't able to handle a particular thing, awwww, too bad. Things that were, frankly, inexcusable: the story assets and some of the events that happen in the Mythose deck are SO overpowered that bringing them with you after their acquisition into ANY official campaign would just unbalance and completely destroy the game. Luxkily (I suppose) they were basically impossible to get. The only way I imagine this would be even remotely possible is that if you lucked right in to them and threw away any chance of doing well in the scenario, MAYBE you'd pick one of these things up... but then, you'd find yourself later in your campaign just removing and elder god from play because you have a spell that can do such a ridiculous thing. Ugh. Final Thoughts: This scenario has great bones and COULD be made into a really fun and intense evening of play. But, as it is, I cannot reccommend it. I do want to thank the creator and hope he continues to play test it, to make it a do-able thing. In particular, give the players a bit more time and balance the in-game assest and other cards, so we're not saying "woah, are you kidding me?" every other time we see a new card. There are clever ideas here and lots of things that work; but the things that don't just take all the wind out of its sails.

Thank you for this great work!!