Horror in the Hebrides: post game analysis from UK Games Expo '22

I attended UK Games Expo last weekend and was favourably impressed, both the by the NEC in Birmingham, which is obviously well organised to host large exhibitions, and by the generally positive atmosphere and bonhomie generated by the legions of games attending. I have no idea what the final headcount was over three days of intensive gaming, but it must have been well north of 10,000. It certainly seemed like it. I had plenty of opportunities to chat with game designers at their booths over the weekend and also to pester the team at Pelgrane Press about the ETA for Swords of the Serpentine (September, if you are interested).

I ran two adventures I have created over the weekend. I managed to book myself into one game as well, but following a seeming dearth of other games I wanted to play in, I offered to host a couple of RPGs. I ran Horror in the Hebrides on the Saturday, a game I originally wrote for Achtung Cthulhu, but have ported it over to run using Call of Cthulhu 7.0.

Unlike the first time I ran the game, I added two extra sailors to the mix, allowing for six players. What follows are really my thoughts on how the scenario developed and whether it required any tweaks, so reading my first account of the game is recommended, otherwise the rest of this will make no sense whatsoever. I may run this again at Dragonmeet in December.

The game largely progressed like the first, although the sailors elected to land on one of the southern beaches on the island. They didn't like the look of the old castle initially, but worsening weather conditions and the fact that they could be hidden from the mainland by the crags of Lesser Morr while getting there, eventually convinced them to enter the castle. The grill in the floor was easy to see and as before, prompted investigation of the basement level and eventually the discovery of the corpse under the flagstones (and the belongings of the missing archaeologists).

From the start the sailors were suspicious of Hauptmann Steinmeyer, but this time he managed to get his hands on the book on Pictish rituals before the PC sailors could, and began reading it. This focused the PCs on plotting how they could get a look at the book. One of the sailors managed to retrieve the investigator's journal which notified them of the presence of the stone circle. They didn't tell Steinmeyer about it though.

During the first night on the island Steinmeyer headed off about 0200 for his secret rendezvous with Boskell (leaving the book behind, luckily for the PCs). This time the sailors failed to notice how he communicated with Boskell, but one of the two German officers (Van Der Leyen) bravely tailed Steinmeyer into the snowstorm and stayed on his heels. A couple of others followed after, but fluffed Navigation rolls and got lost in the snow storm. Future exploration in poor weather conditions on the island would make use of a compass!

The sailors became increasingly nervous as various supernatural manifestations occurred in the castle. We had one great scene where a sailor on sentry duty on the battlements - Ernst Lehmann - started humming an old German nursery rhyme to keep his courage up, only to hear an invisible presence start humming along with him. Sanity started to erode and the youngest sailor - Halbeck - lost 6 SAN at one stage, but luckily failed his INT check. Still, his nervous condition caused the officer in charge (Rattenhuber) to remove his MP 38 SMG from his possession. Another scene involved Scholz communicating with one of the ghosts, who wrote in the snow outside the castle.

Van Der Leyen managed to tail Steinmeyer to his meeting with Boskell and approached the officer who briefed him - partially - on his secret mission. This led to the discovery of the stone circle. Van Der Leyen then decided to 'go to ground' leaving Steinmeyer and Boskell to row over to the village on Greater Morr.

Interaction with the crofter on the island was minimal this time. The Germans did scout out his hut, rolling a 01 Stealth check which let them ascertain he was relatively harmless. The flying boat encounter was a little different though. Firstly, it did manage to spot one of the sailors during its fly past and radio the sighting in, but more importantly, the sailors broke radio silence with U51 to discuss a possible early extraction. This was successfully intercepted by a Royal Navy radio station in Stornoway, which dispatched a naval patrol boat. I gave this eight hours to reach the island. I was probably being generous.

Marco Halbeck

The inevitable confrontation with Steinmeyer and Boskell occurred when the duo returned from the village with cement to repair the damaged stone. This was again dramatic, with Steinmeyer ordering the sailors to help him get the circle up and running. This time Boskell had a chance to explain he was trying to rescue his trapped friends. It was young Halbeck who threw a stick grenade at the stone to try to damage it again, only to critical fail his roll, with the grenade bouncing off and land between them. A Dodge roll was called for, and Halbeck was the only one to fail, and took enough damage to kill him outright.

Steinmeyer was shot and killed by the sailors (another critical here), and Boskell, running away, was skilfully shot in the leg (Hard success). A number of cultists including Boskell's friend, managed to flee while the time gate was open. The stone was just destroyed again in time before a Hound of Tindalos could pursue them, and I mean just. One unlucky cultist who failed to get out was 'eaten' by a Hound within sight of the sailors (SAN checks all round here)

Interestingly, two sailors - Lehmann and Hagedorn - who had been left in the castle to keep an eye on the radio equipment, decided on hearing the explosions and shooting, to desert. They destroyed the radio equipment and code books, changed into the clothes of the missing investigators, contained in knapsacks in the basement of the castle, and managed to steal Boskell's rowing boat, rowing to the mainland. Here I let them make a roll to see if they could get to a ferry in Glasgow which could in turn take them to neutral Ireland. They succeeded.

Two sailors escaped the island - Von Der Leyen and Scholz. A radio message had been sent to U51 to deliver explosives by rubber dinghy (for the purpose of blowing up the stone circle). As it happened, the dinghy turned up just in time for them to simply jump into it and tell the sailors to row back to the submarine. They claimed - falsely - everyone else had been killed by the British. I should have asked for Hard Persuade checks here but hey, we were wrapping up...

Very nobly, Rattenhuber chose to help the wounded Boskell to the crofter's cottage where he surrendered, to be taken into Royal Navy custody a couple of hours later. To avoid being shot as a spy, he agreed to cooperate with the British and was assigned - under guard - to Bletchley Park.

I think the scenario needs a little bit of tweaking still, but I thought it worked very well on its second run out, with minimal prep on my part this time. It managed to take an extra two sailors with no major need for an upgrade. It helps running adventures at cons which you have written yourself.