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Adaptive_Radiation5 days ago

Again, I don't think the nature of the secret drone intelligence is conveyed very well in this draft of the scenario. I run and play a lot of investigative horror scenarios and a "Here's what's going on" paragraph is crucial for the GM to understand the scenario. Putting in your explanation of the drone network and how it works in an early paragraph would fix a lot of my issues. 

The point of a mystery is the clue hunt and eventually piecing together the story of the crime, haunting, or whatever. You need to at least answer the core question of "Why is this place abandoned?" You do have an answer in the drone intelligence. Not having an explicit answer is fine for tangential stuff that can just be eerie, but you should have an answer to that core question and clues for PCs to get a good approximation of what happened here. 

If you are releasing a scenario for wide release, it needs to be written for other people to be able to run. I think the scenario has a lot of potential, but it needs some revisions.

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Leon5 days ago

To me some of the point of horror is that you don't know what's going on. To have the normal rules of the situation not apply. 

Alien to me works because the monster is so rarely shown. Event Horizon works for me because the rules are subverted and nothing is really explained. There's suggestion to be sure, it's still never expressly said either way. Hellraiser from 2022, stands on its own for me for the difference between the people who know and the people who don't. The more you know, the less you you want anything to do with. 

You take out most of the tension in something once you know there's the trap and that there the trigger. At least my PTSD brain goes from threat recognition to threat response. You've lost me in that moment.

Some of the better introductions to Trail of Cthulhu I've run, my own system have been more horror based and they've never expressly answered the question. The Antithesis is something that you can see the actions and the reactions to. Yet it's also selective. It simply is. 

Here, the station has been evacuated, not abandoned. Some attempts at sabotage done. Why? The people here felt the need to leave and stop people getting in. Let the uncertainty drive some of the horror. Give the people who run it a chance to fill elements in of their own, as well. 

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