I did the vacation setting for my group, after failing several rolls one player went crazy at the sight of Ithaqua and shot himself. I recommend this module!

I have an idea on how to approve the mystery angle of the adventure. They may know Steward's name and that he's the bad guy, but they wouldn't necessarily know what he looks like. Upon arriving to the resort, Steward could put on a fake name and they'd have to figure out who he is. Or you could even have it that Steward arrived at the resort before any of the guests got there, murder the groundskeeper, and assume his identity.

I just finished this and used the vacation-opening. It took two 8hr sessions because of that build-up (I took my time to flesh out those npcs more) and it turned out great! My players (they're no CoC-veterans, but aren't newbies to the genre either) didn't expect any of the surprises and twists, so thanks a lot die the idea

Maybe it's because I run a campaign with a Pathfinder group who obsesses over every detail that drops out of my mouth, but for this module I might got with the vacation at the lodge idea but instead of having a mysterious guest cabin that is ominously off-limits, instead integrate Stuart and the pregnant woman into the normal guests at the lodge. Don't throw a spotlight on them as being strange or otherwise weird, or the players may instantly be crawling all over the guest cabin (and if they see a pregnant woman, will be wary of alien spawn). Then, insert a red herring of some sort that actually calls for Stuart and the players to work together--maybe something that involves saving the pregnant woman to earn the players' sympathy--making his eventual reveal as a Wendigo-loving SOB more of a shock.

Of course the party figured it out ahead of time. Joseph and his pregnant young wife Marilyn? Dr. Herod? Winter time? A setting where supernatural entities incarnate themselves through humans? I'm not Christian, and I can smell Baby Jeebus Cthulhu Christmas a mile away.

I don't plan to play it, but I can certainly GM it now

I just ran this with the vacation opener, two of my players were complete newbies and they loved it! One of them actually made a deal with Ithaqua to become his new servant and killed Stuart and Marylin Sutton. The other three ran for it when they saw their buddy standing in the Wind Walker’s palm. Everyone’s sanity was plummeting and oddly enough they were all compelled to seek out their most important person, which by a weird coincidence everyone had made their father. Excellent module thanks to this excellent video!

"The only flaw of call of Cthulhu is that you know you are playing call of Cthulhu." -The Spoony One A lot of the horror is lost when you know the beasties are coming for you at any moment, so relaxation time is hard for the pcs to really believe they are safe. Good angle to go at it though if you play investigation then rp recoup consistently. Just something I wanted to add.

I gotta thank you Seth for recommending this. I ran this for some of my Curse of Strahd players between sessions and it was a total blast. One of my players went totally insane after witnessing Ithaqua, it was great!

Hey Seth, As always another outstanding and awesome review. Keep up the great work. Really appriciate your reviews, looking forward to getting my hands on this scenario once it drops.

Great video! I’m looking forward to the character creation part to compare with my own way of going through it. Much appreciated you take the time to explain your way of playing the game, very useful to us beginner keepers.

Even though this video is a little over a year old I've still watched this countless times. One of the best things about for reviews is that they're so entertaining and interesting that I can watch them repeatedly and still be entertained. One of your best videos in my opinion. Thank you for all the great work.

Thank you for a great video Mr. Skorkowsky! It was extremely helpful for me to run for my playgroup.

I just recently found your channel and love it, thank you for putting such effort into something that we can all enjoy and learn from at the same time. (your channel in general... Not just this video, but also this video)

Your review made me want to purchase this adventure and convert it to run in my Deadlands game. Many years ago my players chose a Deadlands campaign, which we've been very happy with, over a Call of Cthulhu campaign and I've taken a few of the modules over the years and converted them over. This is the first one in about 7 years that's called out to me for the treatment. Thanks for the review. Keep up the amazing work.

His reviews are all so damn good. I've run D&D for years and thought for the longest time that CoC was way over my head. But now, I'm so pumped to run my first game very soon and I've become obsessed thanks to Seth's videos. You rock my man.

When you said playable in a single session I laughed. I've been blessed with a group that loves to hardcore roleplay, we just finished a six-hour session today of Edge of Darkness from the starter kit and still haven't completed it

I like to watch these just to see the spooky lovecraftian stories

My usual response to any pre-made adventures is to expand, expand, expand. Also, a lot of these can be introduced by planning out your campaign a bit, and plant some seeds in previous adventures. I did the 'A Resection of Time' campaign, and (spoilers) I set it up by having the guys actually play the prolog disaster. We played for more than a year before getting the call from Kyle Woodson. It made everything very real for them...it was great.

Marylin, Joseph, Harrod...no NPCs named Shepherd?

I'll try to GM it for my Pathfinder group to give my DM a little pause. Very great content, Seth !

The vacation idea hook is perfect. I haven't run this, but I would imagine moving it to a Montana ski lodge be a different and isolated location versus Maine.

The main issue I run into is the fact that everyone kinda assumes the baby is something horrible from the get go We also had the mafia campaign to So I had the gangster be from that gang I also had that doctor save one of the pcs earlier so they had some slight connection to him The two more dark characters tried to kill the pregnant lady so I had the husband and the wife hid in the ritual area They did find it though so I had him turn into a nice little monster to drive them away

Nicely done. I also backed the kickstarter for this and was not disappointed. I like your idea of a vacation for the pcs that turns into terror. My own players might be onto me with the old bait-and-switch though. I recently ran Dog Will Hunt from the Unspeakable Oath Magazine but first they had to go through Blood on the Tracks from The Resurrected III: From the Vault, which took place on the non-stop train ride from Boston to New Orleans. Once they realized we were going to play out the train ride, they guessed (correctly) that THAT was the adventure for the night. Good times.

My Keeper ran this and did it your way he added tons of NPC , my favoriting being the NPC bartender named Bert what a legend ! And I was totally convinced the game was over after we killed the first wendigo (that was what I though the mission was) and then BAM ! It goes off the rails

I'm considering running a campaign where all the players are Gangsters/Bootleggers, working for Danny O'Bannion. The Irish Mob Boss in Arkham. I would change Strollo from being a mobster on the lam from New York to being a Lieutenant of Portrello. O'Bannion's Italian competition in Arkham. The players have orders to go to Maine and whack Strollo, at which point all the weird stuff starts happening. It's kind of like the Vacation opening, but different.

(SPOILER WARNING: THIS IS A STORY ABOUT MY PLAY THROUGH OF COLD WARNING) I recently ran Cold Warning and really enjoyed it, allow me to tell my story. I ran this adventure with just me as the keeper and one other player. My other player had a nurse named Nox, I played a big game hunter named William, and we have a npc companion named Henry. I used the starter scenario you suggested where the characters just show up at the lodge on vacation. William was meeting five other hunters up at the lodge, one of the hunter npc's was named whimbly and is William's old friend. Our characters arrived at the lodge and settled in after an uneventful drive up the mountain. They talked with all the npc's, and got a bit of interesting information from Arthur. Nox saw a few strange shadows and large hairy figures disappearing into the woods which made the character a bit paranoid, plus William is a solid believer in bigfoot, constantly talking about how they are going to hunt down a bigfoot which added to Nox's paranoia. Arthur was killed that night during one of his walks. A search party was organized to look for him the next morning when he was missing. It had all the player characters, the 5 hunter npc's I added to the story, and achak. They searched the trails for an hour before finding Arthur's mutilated corpse. This drove William mad with temporary insanity, he rolled the violence insanity and had it for 10 rounds. He pulled out his revolver and started to gun down the other members of the search party. Luckily he rolled low on his damage and the 4 people who were shot survived with only minor wounds. The other hunters tackled William once his revolver was empty and held him down. William headbutted one of the hunters so hard it gave them a major wound and they passed out from a concussion. Nox managed to talk down the hunters and used his knowledge of psychology and medicine to explain psychotic breaks. The npc's were now very suspicious of William.(during William's insanity he had a vision of the sky growing dark, and then saw his, nox, and henry's face looking up at the sky and saw them being all driven mad. This was his insanity clue, which was a vision of a possible future where the characters see ithica.) Back at the lodge two of the more injured hunters are given medical attention and then left to rest in one of the upstairs rooms, one of them is still unconscious from William's headbutt. Stuart Sutton sneaks outside and casts Cold Warning of Ithica on both the already injured hunters, killing them. This is discovered later when Nox goes to check on the injured hunters. Fast forward a few days, People are disappearing every day as Stuart Sutton picks people off one by one. Nox has been investigating and finding clues, He has questioned Stuart Sutton a few times and suspects that he killed his brother as well as some of the missing npcs. I played Sutton as a cunning villain who would fast talk npc's into coming on walks with him and then kill them, as well as trying to make Nox unsure of the idea that murder's were happening at all, suggesting that people were just getting lost out in the woods or a freak storm had killed the wounded hunters when really Sutton had used magic to kill the hunters. Nox has made friends with Tony the gangster and Achak. Nox finally decides to investigate Achak's bedroom and finds the The Michabo Mask, and puts it on, gaining the magic. A few minutes after this happens the wendigo raid on the lodge happens. All the npc hunters I added have been killed by Sutton except for Whimbly who has been helping us look for clues. Everyone manages to survive the wendigo attack. Nox use's the mask's magic to dismiss some of the wendigo. A few people are badly hurt but everyone manages to survive. A rag tag band of William, Nox, Henry, Achak, and Whimbly follow the path where Marilyn was taken by the wendigo. (Tony was bitten by a wendigo during the raid and has locked himself in his room in terror, refusing to come out.) They find Stuart Sutton standing over Marilyn who is giving birth. four more wendigo are watching as the birth happens. My player who was playing nox decided to stand back and watch what happens, since our group was on low health and didn't want to have to fight more wendigo who were between them and Stuart Sutton. The birth took place and Sutton cursed Ithica for the human baby he was given. The storm kicked up as Ithica approached. Our characters had already been avoiding looking at the sky due to a few vague clues that lead them to believe that looking up at the sky at any time might drive them insane. Ithica's roar echoed through the clearing, causing our characters to decide to run, they didn't want to see what made the roar and they were terrified of what might be about to happen. The baby was taken by Ithica and Sutton was killed by Ithica. Our characters took shelter back in the partly destroyed lodge. Hurit (Achak's wife) had been at the birth and had looked up, seeing Ithica as he took the baby and Sutton away. She was driven indefinitely insane with a phobia of the night sky and ended up wanderering back to the lodge where our characters were fearfully hiding, hoping ithica wasn't coming for them next. Hurit cried in her husbands arms and our player characters over heard her babbling and crying about some giant skeletal creature in the sky that took away the baby and Mr. Sutton. The storm cleared up that night and our characters and the surviving npcs left to make their way back to the near by town. We had a lot of fun playing this adventure, lots of paranoia and a terrifying conclusion that literally had our characters running in fear and not looking back. A few notes about my play through of this adventure: Doctor Wentworth never had a heart attack due to him rolling well on stress and dodging attacks in combat, and our characters never decided to follow Sutton even though they knew about his night time walks. Adding more npc's for sutton to kill off was lots of fun and allowed the player characters to get more time to interact with the main cast. Well worth the money for the module. Thank you seth for this review that introduced me to this wonderful module.

"There's gonna be no suvivahs..." LOL

Another Fantastic review Seth! I really want to get this module (and run your fourth option hook! My PC's really do need some R&R anyways.....

I was able to guess the Mythos threat from the adventure's name, so yeah, I don't see much in the way of surprises here. Of course, creeping inevitability can be a source of horror too, though it's harder to make it stick.

This module is perfectly what i wanted with the vacation

I just ran this for some friends of mine (this was their and my first time playing CoC), and it went great. I used an opening similar to the vacation opening too. I just told my players to have a reason why they would be at the lodge. Only two players ended up surviving in the end, but everybody said that had a fantastic time playing this. I would strongly recommend this if anybody is looking to play it!

Just ran this with a variation of the vacation opening as a Halloween one shot. I ran it in Pathfinder 2e and had the players traveling across a mountain range in a merchant caravan when an early snow closed the pass trapping everyone in town. Since the only inn was full of trapped merchants, the players made arrangements to stay in the lodge. It ran very well and we finished on time though I didn’t add any additional characters to the lodge as I was trying to keep it less than five hours and combats in pf2e can be a little longer than CoC but if I wasn’t limited by time I would definitely add a couple more guests.

I glad they brought back Dweebles wanting to know his real name.

Hey! I’m from Maine. And Bangor is pronounced bang-gore, weird I know, Saco is sock-o and I live across the street from Range Pond pronounced Rang.

Currently trying to combine this and Black Devil Mountain... The Lodge having been built over a mound, I'm using reskinned Gnophkehs as "wendigos" which using their ability to summon snowstorms have caused the blizzards, while they work with a shaman/cultist to try to kill/sacrifice everyone at the property, using the Consume Likeness spell to infiltrate the Lodge, intending to cause paranoia among the survivirs and try to excavate a tunnel into the mound from the cellar...

Wonderful review. To tag on to the Bigfoot thing, a possible npc who's there and can engage them in the forest might be fun. :)

Good to know there's more well done 7th edition modules out there.

So I was thinking about the Vacation opening, and I had one tweak. Players are curious assholes and they’ll assume that being told to avoid the cabin so they check it and drive the plot forward. So ban a few areas, and call them “Employee only”, that way, they’ll think it’s only a maintenance shed or something, along with other areas that aren’t important. The only problem with this idea is that when the time finally comes for the PCs to find out exactly what’s so forbidden about that cabin, they’ll think it’s nothing special so you would probably have to leave something to encourage them to go for it.

I will comment on my game running the vacation set up so far(i will update once done) So i started with experienced investigators/npcs. I am playing up others calling them paranoid, and needing to relax, driving them further into the woods. Now i just hit my crew with the snow storm to get back, after three days of snow filled fun. Some seeing horrors. And having to show the others they are not crazy. It is a good set up

Excellent Adventure!

Perhaps the 50% bonus on the mask came out of the play testing process. I don't know the details of this particular spell but if you're down to one investigator that bonus could be game saver.

I would say that the key to the vacation opening is prep work. If you run nothing but unrelenting horror and suddenly spring a vacation on your players, they are going to feel justifiably suspicious. I haven't run the vacation opening but I have run two R&R sessions to get the players used to the idea of vacations being light hearted roleplaying sessions. Once they get there, I'll spring Cold Warning on them.

If you do the vacation idea and want inspiration for additional NPCs to stack the body count, there was an old episode of Tales from the Crypt; "Werewolf Concerto" which im sure you could find on KZfaq. The plot would be of no use but i recall a colorful cast of characters trapped in a forested resort lodge.

hm i am thinking about converting this into a 2nd ed dnd plug into campain adventure. Might be quite fun.

As someone who GMs for experienced players, I would personally use this module to set up a survival horror situation. I love the idea of using the pregnancy as a red herring to set up the windegos (or however you spell it) as the real villain. This whole scenario reminds me of the game Until Dawn, so I would personally take things from that game and use them in order to spice up this module. Instead of a God being born, I'd actually have it be a miscarriage due to faults in the ritual to impregnate Marilyn. I would introduce a few new NPCs, and I would have them all killed off by the monsters out in the woods, and eventually the PCs would encounter them in different ways. This module seems like something I would have loads of fun playing around with, so I do hope to get my hands on it at some point. Either way, great video and keep up the good work.

Tried it with the vacation opening; worked great. I made the mobster and his wife there hiding out from the law and added an unrelated medium (con man) who did readings and such to make and a big game hunter who was excited to shoot some yetti till the weird stuff started (gave him low sanity) but included him because I wanted the pc's to get some survival/tracking rolls to ensure they got certain clues.

Me @ 7:20 due many many episodes of Case Closed 'oh no, its a closed circle, there is going to be like 5 dismembered bodies by the end of this'

Love your channel, Seth! Where did you get that killer shirt!? Also, what’s up with all of these CoC scenarios with demon pregnancies? 🤣

Stay Frosty is also a very good gaming system. =) Fun, crunchy, and suspenseful.

Funnily enough, when I heard “Remote Mountain Lodge with no access to the outside world, a colorful cast of characters and some Wendigo,” my first thought was Until Dawn.

That mask is one hell of a powerful Mcguffin.

A variation of alternative four would be the characters are at the lodge looking for the gangster. The actual adventure would be totally accidental. Then it is less Agatha Christie and more Quentin Tarantino.

I wonder if this module would be at all viable for an old west setting? using your alternate setup of course.

Thanks man

My dm did it with the vacation opening, and we were there to recuperate lost sanity, from Tutoth's dagger thingy. My character survived through both by the skinn of their teeth, since he ended the forst with 15 san, and the other failed my sanity roll for the eldrich being, but rolled the lowest sanity loss I could have hahahah, and went on to survive another story after, until he said he had anough before I lost him through suicide

Can confirm. Maine has mosquitos the size of Shetland ponies.

Giant lodge/resort? Trapped in snow? I thought Jack was going to say The Shining instead of Agatha Christie!

First!!! Thanks for the Quality Reviews!

"We're in an Agatha Christy Novel!" Shut up and take my money!

After watching the review and reading the module - I 100% agree with you that there is not much mystery. And, I know my players. They will arrive at the lodge and say "Hello, where are Marilyn and Stuart? The Guest Lodge? Perfect, Be right back." Pull out their weapons and march right on over to murder the crap out of Stuart and the demon baby. There isn't really anything here to keep them from doing that. I am going to have to tweak things a bit - perhaps make Dominick have a background in boxing and be extra suspicious of the characters - thus making the party wary of his combat ability, and immediately wondering if he may be in on it. I might also change it from a guest lodge to a cabin that is a mile or two away...meaning they have to wait for the snowstorm to abate before they can make that trek.

This scenario and your idea came back to me as I am working on writing my own modern day scenario set in Northern Canada. And boy am I gonna do some research with this scenario. I do love the vacation idea as an opening hook. But there's gonna be twists like you wouldn't believe. I'll give you a tease. Thule Society survivors attempt to summon Ithaqua and wendigo to attack serpent people home in order to steal magic/tech to arm their fourth reich.

i played this with the investigators being there for a different case and our group of paranoid criminal types up and killed everyone at the lodge after people started going missing thinking they were serpent people

I used this module for Delta Green yesterday. They went to a seminar about Symbols of the occult, paid by DG to new agents. They lost a lot of sanity and almost died, and said they will never go to a seminar ever again.

Watching this while it's -57° F outside. Cold warning indeed

From Manaus, in the state of Amazonas! Great channel! Helped me a lot to become a master to Call of Cthulhu! Even tho it was my first time

I'm going to use this in the campaign, but my thought on introducing it is to have the PCs there for one of the other guests, not Sutton. The Sutton angle will be revealed slowly...maybe he will be the sort of bland, flavorless NPC that can look like some sort of info dump. Or a pretend victim a la 'And Then There Were None' (thanks for the idea, Jack). I'm kind of looking forward to seeing their faces when they realize what's actually happening.

Minor point but a football field is 120 yards long, 360 foot

Why does Stuart look like Martin Shkreli in the cast lineup

when Seth says "a session" how long does he mean? 3 hours? 4 hours? 8 hours?

You could have had him run out of the woods make it to cabin and have a heart attack as hes yelling and running. Maybe he babbles a bit before he passes out.

Seth, do you have any experience with Shadowrun?

So is the monster baby just killed?

... Yeah, that Plus 50% to banish the big old one sounds less like straight CoC and more like a Tim Crow story (from what little I know OF those) honestly. Not bad, just... lacking the terror as much.

hi i what to run a call of Cthulhu campian where I run at least 4 different modluse or adevnture to last over 5 mouths of weekly games (each game 4 hour) whitch once do yo reconded you member in a cupple of them to introduce character before hand os I'm interested in what order you would play your favorite 4

didnt know until dawn was a CoC module before being a video game

I know imagine Jack with his Boston accent saying When-deh-go as When-deee-go. :P

Cheimaphobia or Cheimatophobia: Fear of cold (Frigophobia, Psychophobia)

OOh, sounds good, must grab it.

The scientist freeze died

Wouldn't seeing Bigfoot cause Sanity loss?

Where can one purchase this Module?

Sounds quite similar in a way to MM3 01031 Nightmare in Norway by Games Workshop.

Marilyn and Joseph I see what u did there

Wentworth is 100% Nigel Bruce! Elementary!

More AD&D! There's just so little quality old school content out there.

The lodge needs needs some bathrooms, or at least washrooms. There is plumbing in the kitchen, so why no where else? There has to at least be outhouses, but why is there no back door? Good thing the players are not facing off against Fthaggua, or a fire marshal. Also, Dr. Sprague is a complete quack. No one would think Mrs. Sutton’s symptoms were related to a new plague even if they didn’t have medical training. Is this why he is breaking patient confidentiality? And with a group of strangers? This guy chewed through all his SAN in medical school.

I feel bad for seth’s players, with this guy they can’t catch a break from freaky lovecraft stuff happening.

The anachronism of the recording from the alienist bothers me.

Good video, but just so you know its pronounced win-da-go not wen-de-go

Still waiting for any Mpreg adventures, am tired of "lets put rape and forced alien pregnancy in the adventure, because that's so creepy and triggering... but ofc its never men who are raped and impregnated... and don't tell me that's impossible, we are talking about mf'in cthulhu, it being impossible would make it far more disturbing & also should be interesting because it will confront mwle players with a situation they'd never(or extremely rare) be in. (not rape, ofc men can be raped, but I mean forced alien pregnancies...) So yeah, I 'm not a fan of this cheap trope, its not really a sign of a good writer, but one who idk, didn't talk enough with survivors and those forced into pregnancy.. well they can visit Alabama, they should find enough people fucked by religious extremists

I'm guessing the guy who chose Joseph and Marilyn isn't Christian or is counting on christians being mostly nice chaps to avoid a kicking... I'm Christian and I like a bit of horror and such.. but I wouldn't write a module designed to insult any religion let alone a mainstream one... that's just stupid. . I mean why ps off potential players... if you ran this at a table you would likely make someone very angry..