We spent so long roleplaying and preparing and researching for the auction itself that we forgot that we were playing Call of Cthulhu...until the monster showed up. it was actually pretty great.

One thing to point out as an Austrian lawyer: Austria weirdly has had quite permissive and "the authorities can figure it out on their own" gun laws for long stretches of time, especially compared to Germany. At the time of the scenario, foreign travelers - at least if they are ready to invest a bit of money and potentially some bribes - should have a reasonable time securing temporary carry and possession licenses for most weapons that don't seem particularly "threatening", e.g. military rifles, concealed guns (like guncanes), or grenades. Probably only an option for at least middle class PCs with Fast Talk or Law as skills tho. Edit: Fun fact, the law that was applicable back then instructs authorities to respect national customs of foreigners if it is normal and usual for them to be armed back at home - might be something for American investigators to mention in their favor.

I ran this... players had the following: 20 gauge shotgun cane with a spare cartridge in the cross piece. .. hat pistol... .25 cal ... belt buckle criss blade ..... cyanide loaded hat pins..... instrument wire garrot. .....

A lot of people would love for Chaosium to reprint (and possibly update) their back catalogue. Personally, I want the Lovecraft Country books-specifically Innsmouth and Kingsport. They are waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy too expensive to buy second hand... plus I prefer PDFs :)

About the last bit, when you react to the concerns about the players getting their dirty little mitts on too powerful artifacts... Yknow... it's not that they get powerful magic artifacts, that can instantly destroy any further adventure... The items itself might be the next adventure. CoC is notorious for its artifacts being less of a boon and more of a handgranade without a pin. A nuclear handgranade without a pin...

CoC modules really love ghouls.

This is probably extremely nitpicky, but it seems weird that Austria would use the British Pound, so I checked that on Wikipedia. At no time Austria officially used the Pound. Assuming this adventure is set in the 1920s, it would be either the Krone (translates to Crown; early 20s) or Schilling (translates to Shilling; late 20s). Might be an interesting fun fact for others to use if they want to run this adventure. EDIT: I am aware that paying in a foreign currency would likely be possible, but local flair is local flair. :)

I've done a lot of research on Vienna in the 1920s and created a lot of new handouts, including a city map, hotel options, npc character photos, etc. If you want pdfs of these things let me know and I can send them your way.

QUESTION: Do you have sessions between horrors where the group just goofs around roleplaying normal things? This would be a great follow-up to a game that has the players inherit a lot of money, land, etc.

BTW, those newspaper clippings are no good if the adventure is set in Vienna (Wien). They are all written as if the cemetery is set in London. I recreated and revised them slightly as clippings of the Vienna Times, an English language newspaper in Vienna. Unfortunately I don't think it was around in the 1920s, but that will be our little secret...🤫

Austria used the austrian Krone (Crown) and then the austrian Schilling from 1925 to 1938. Considering that the countries economy was in a rather bad state after the first world war the auction itself might have only allowed for payment in pound sterling.

Okay, as a former Australian now living in the USA. I laughed at your opening skit quite hard.

I think I played this about 20 years ago. The reason why I say "I think" is that we did play a game in Vienna, and there was an auction, but if it was that adventure our Keeper modified it HEAVILY. For 2 reasons: 1. We were in Vienna, so he did go into details of the places that we knew currently, and it was quite interesting to see how it all changed in almost a century. 2. He was a history major, specializing in Austria between the world wars. And he went nuts in this game. Our group was nominally British (with IIRC an American in the fold), so we kinda stood out like a sore thumb in a country on the brink of civil war, with the socialists and the fascists both pretending to nominally be democratic but at the same time having outright open street fights between their paramilitary organizations, with Nazis (who were illegal back then in Austria) mixing the whole thing up even more when our group tried to buy weapons and they thought we're sympathizers because we obviously didn't belong to either the Schutzbund or the Heimwehr, and tried to get ties with the "British Nazis" who we eventually posed as so they'd get us the guns we desired, which then in turn meant that the secret police got interested in those foreigners, which eventually turned out to be rather fortunate because since they were observing the player characters, when the brown mess hit the fan we had a few extra guns on our side... as least as soon as they noticed that the other side wasn't too human looking... and of course only from the ones that remained sane. It was a lot like being pitted into the middle of some weird twisted kind of Indiana Jones meets Cthulhuh game. Sure one of the more memorable adventures, not only because it was the only time we played in the town that we actually played in (usually we were somewhere back in ol' England).

The Asylum was part of the material for the classic boxed set reissue kickstarter from summer 2021. After watching this I remembered that I'd backed at that level. I recall playing some of those scenarios back in the 80s. Ah, the brazen head, good times!

Nicely done, as usual. Your reviews make me want to run these old scenarios. I have pretty much all of them both as hard copies and pdfs. I especially like the idea of using an npc to get them to Vienna, as most of my players tend to lean towards the poor types of investigators.

I was considering running this for our next session, thank you Seth good job. By the way, I finally run In media res Larp and it was great fun, give it a try.

Chill T-shirt Chomba ;-P. There's a lot of handy hints in this video (Investigator Weapons & the fan made handouts), these are much appreciated so please keep them coming in the future. One difficulty I sometimes find with the otherwise excellent CoC is that the players *know* something awful & Mythos related is going to happen. As such it can be really hard to bait the players, do you ever have this problem? I can imagine my players would spend hours investigating the auction & the various attendants before departing for Austria since they'd smell a rat.

looks fun!!

My Exorcist got beat up in a bar in this one... the cops showed up... we all had illegal guns ... what a night

As an Austrian myself I enjoy seeing an adventure set in Austria! However, I really wonder why the module says that Austria uses British Pounds and not krone or schilling

😃👍 Going through all the call of Cthulhu scenarios again to see what's the next adventure is for my Call of Cthulhu group is going to play next. Sometimes i'm just not sure if i should buy another or use one i have , but have not used yet.

Fun, SOoo fun!

So, normally I'm with you on the whole "don't kidnap a PC 'cause then they just sit around bored" issue, but if you've got NPCs with conflicting motives who can get in on the investigation anyway? Oh man, kidnap a PC, take them aside, and give them the NPC sheet. Maximum stakes, and someone gets to play the guy who's help they need, but who's goals maybe don't line up with the party.

Is the auction in 'The Asylum and other tales' the same as the one in 'Cthulhu casebook'? If not which one did you run?

Is there a publicly available version of that pdf catalogue?

How close is this auction to the Orient Express?

Do you have a link for the yog sothoth catalogue pdf?

You can find a pdf of this on the trove, normally I'd say support the authors but given its out of print id say its justified.

So Jack the NPC now has a pseudonym... Jack the mighty pissed off... Jack the MPO to nis friends

How do you get your games to run so quickly? This scenario lasted four months of weekly three hour games run for my four players.

I'm confused. Why is Klaus any more suspicious than say Lady Margaret or M.de Borsavin, both of whom also want the head?

Seth, do you happen to have a pdf of the black market weapons list/$$ You made for your game? And might you be willing to share?

Here’s a recent short live-play: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qauaaa6j3de2qWg.html

Eh Seth, the download does not work anymore.

great job. if you can try ad mor detals :)

It's a rule of my that in all games unless it's important for some reason guns law work like in america like In my state of west virginia, where you can get guns and take them everywhere -places like schools and you need a license for concealed carry. And before someone says that would make the players too powerful in call of cthulhu, remember if the players has normal people have guns so can the bad guys.

Am i the only one annoyed by Austria using Brittish pounds, instead of the period appropriate coinage (Kronen pre 1924, shilling 1924-1936, German Marks 1936-1945, shilling 1945-2002, euro 2002-present)

Be safe in Texas bud