Dark Dreams of Dagon - New Arkahm Investigations Case Book

[OldManWhateley 0]

Wow! When I began thinking of writing a case book for Arkham Investigations, I never thought how time-consuming it would end up being! However, I have finally completed my first draft of the case book. Here are the following files for the case book - they include the case book, 2 special Monsters, 2 special items and 4 handouts in pdf.

 - WARNING - These files were created in Strange Eons! You must have this program to view all but the pdf files! You can download Strange Eons here: www.sfu.ca/~cjenning/eons/index.html

I would highly recommend this program - not only is it free,  but its simply the best add-on for the Arkham Horror game.

 EDIT-EDIT-EDIT-EDIT

Here's revision 2 of the case, with some added items. For easier dowload, I compiled the files into a single zip folder using the following link:

www.megaupload.com/

The case book is of similar length to that of Whispers in the Dark by Jocularis. I would greatly appreciate feed back on this case, especially the length and duration of play, as  well as overall playability, fun and any mistakes that you may come across. Any advise on making the case book better or more enjoyable - including additons - is much apprieciated also. This is my first case book, so understand the shortness of it as well as any mistakes or the like. I am unsure as to whether of not I made it long enough or with enough action, but I think that it could be played in a couple of hours or so. I have not had the chance to play it myself - probably this weekend - and will post my results here in this thread.

I would like to keep this thread open for future revisions of the case book, if there are changes, additions, or mistakes to be fixed and/or added, so I will post such discussions as SPOILERS so that people who have not yet played through the case do not have the plot spoiled for them. Please do likewise.

Beyond any needed revisionsof the casebook, I am also working on two more casebooks to be added in the future. Now that I have completed the first draft of Dark Dreams of Dagon, I am more comfortable in writing a casebook, and the next one is going to be much longer, along the lines of Cthulhu: Dread Sleep in R'lyeh. I can't give a time as to the completion of the other case books but, as my desire to write them is as much a desire to add to the Arkham Investigations mod overall is as wellas a desire to prompt others to get on board and write some cases, it should not be long.

[Abdul Alhazred 1]

Thank you very much, OldManWhateley!!!!

[OldManWhateley 0]

Your thanks makes writing the case all the more worthwhile! Enjoy and please respond with any criticism and/or comments on it after you have a chance to play it. It will hekp me out with writing the other case books that I mentioned.

[OldManWhateley 0]

Oh, one more thing of note, if Nephilim is lurking about. Once the bugs for this (and future case books I write) are worked out I would love it if you would be so kind as to add it to your Arkham Investigations web page.

[OldManWhateley 0]

While I await feedback on this casebook, I have begun to work on the next installment of case books planned, called The Schemes of Nyarlathotep. It promises to be a much longer and involved case with lots of activity and new monsters.

After that, I have the rough outline for two more case books to write, one using the Dunwich Horror expansion and another using the unofficial Cult of the Golden Scarab expansion set.

[lemmingsunday 0]

More CASE BOOKS!  Excellent!  Looking forward to this.  Will be downloading later.  Thanks for putting the effort into making another.  They are not easy. 

It cracks me up in a good way that your doing a case book, for the Cult of the Golden Scarab.  That expansion isn't even done, and it has so much coolness radiating from it that it is helping generate new ideas. 

 

Good work!

[Razrael 0]

Are the files available as a single zip compilation?

[lishai 0]

Oh great!I will certanly download this one.Thank you.

[OldManWhateley 0]

Razrael said:

 

Are the files available as a single zip compilation?

 

 

I guess I never thought to simply put them into a zip file. It would make more sense to do - I will reload the files today and add them all to a single zip file, then re-do the download links.

[OldManWhateley 0]

I have played the case tonight and discovered several problems with the case book. I must rewrite parts of it as well as add in several things that I had forgotten to add to the zip file. I especially forgot to add in the Special Location cards. I also forgot a handout, #4. Another problem that I found was that the Vignette Index did not list the Vignette locations, making it very difficult to remember what Vignettes were tied to which locations.  Until I post the new zip folder the above file is not to be used juntil i can add the forgotten items and stuff.

Other than adding the stuff I forgot to the file and so spell-checking,  or minor writing changes, my friends thought the story was great, enjoying as well as challenging, and loved some twists I had added. I promise a revision in a day or two. Sorry, but I figured that I would find some bugs after playing it once. Theya re nothing major but do need to be fixed right away.

[OldManWhateley 0]

 

 

I have finished the revision for the case and uplaoded the new zip file at the top. This revision takes care of several porblems that I spotted when I played it, as well as adding several Word docs to help printing the special item cards as well as the monsters. Simly print the Word docs and remember to re-insert the printed page correctly into your printer so the back and front of the cards line up properly.

[Thelric 4]

 

Note: Some possible spoilers.

I haven't tried playing through the case but I did have a quick glance at the case book file looking for indications that I should explain certain things more clearly or improve the interface design. Here a couple of little things I noticed (hopefully the angle brackets make it through the forum software):

You've written "read paragraph <#label>" in several places, which will print, e.g., "read paragraph paragraph 6" because <#label> prints the word paragraph for you. If you want to clean these up, you should be able to find most of them by searching for "paragraph <#" in the Find box at the bottom of the Investigations tab.

In paragraph c1, you have two <b> tags and no </b> tag.

In paragraph mu-revisit, you have the link "Move to <#mu-cell>". But mu-cell is a subparagraph, so it is part of the same location as mu-asylum ([A1]). I think you just want "Read" here, not "Move to".

I think that for the timeline events you meant to write, e.g., "<proceedon 5--6>" instead of "proceed on 5--6".

I noticed you have what appears to be a bullet list that uses . as the bullet. You might try pasting the following into the "User Library" box on the publish page:

<define bullet "<nbsp><nbsp><nbsp><u+00b7>">

You could then write, e.g.,:

<bullet> Innsmouth was...
<bullet> Nobody has...

and so on.

I also noticed that you use hyphens for dashes in various places. If you want a proper em dash, you can insert one with three hypens---like this.

This case book uses the older 1.80 library. For the new case books you are working on, you might find it useful to upgrade to the 2.00 case book library if you have not done so already. The 2.00 library contains many new definitions, more consistent syntax, and is more useful thanks to the addition of <action>. If you want to upgrade, open the existing case book in SE 2.00 RC1, go to the Publish tab, and click "Upgrade This Library to the Current Version". (The 2.00 RC1 version of the library doesn't define <complete> and <failed> correctly. This will be fixed before the final release. Let me know if you encounter any other bugs.)

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Razrael 0]

Thanks for this. I really appreciate the word docuemnts for items

[OldManWhateley 0]

Ahh, thanks for the feedback, Chris! I knew there would be things that would have to be fixed in my first casebook - that's why I choose to write a shorter one to start with. What I didn;t realize at first was the Eon program basically uses html tags. I also did not have the paragraph pathways in any sensible order. That is one thing I have been maintaining in the second case I am writing right now. Thanks again for the proof-read! I will fix the above-mentioned problems and reload the file.

[OldManWhateley 0]

With Thelric's feedback, I have finished another revision, V2 in fact, to the casebook. I believe that should do it for fixing mistakes. The new zip folder contains revision 2version 3. Now the question is, did anyone enjoy it?

[makken123 0]

Hi, how does megaupload work? The link takes me to megaupload but to an empty box (with DDofD in a blue box at the bottom).

[OldManWhateley 0]

makken123 said:

 

Hi, how does megaupload work? The link takes me to megaupload but to an empty box (with DDofD in a blue box at the bottom).

 

 

You must sign up for a free membership to use it, I think, even for downloading files. A free membership restricts how many downloads per day you can conduct. However, its relative easy to sign up for and the entire case book file is in zip, so its a single download of 1.22 MB - it takes about a minute to complete.

EDIT: Makken123, I checked the megaupload site again and discovered that you do not need a membership to download files. Once you click on the link at the top of this thread, you should see this window:

You must enter the 3-letter code circled in read, than hit the download button to the right. I am unsure what it is that you are seeing :

The link takes me to megaupload but to an empty box (with DDofD in a blue box at the bottom).

[Thelric 4]

OldManWhateley said:

What I didn;t realize at first was the Eon program basically uses html tags.

Yep, the syntax for mark-up is based on HTML, and many of the style tag names are the same. You might find the following useful, especially for writing case books:

Mark-up Tag Table

 

 

[OldManWhateley 0]

Thanks for the link, Thelric! That will come in very handy! O hope that someone has had a chance to play the case and can reply on its playability and whether it was fun.

On another note, I am getting close to completing my next case book. It is vastly different than the first - much longer is scope and length, and alot of fun stuff and extras. I now fully understand the groupings of paragraphs and vignettes and how to not only write them for the case, but how to use them to construct the entire story. I wish I had understood this when writing Dark Dreams, but I had to start somewhere. The next case will require much less revisions than Dark Dreams, perhaps none at all. After that, I have the outline for two more cases to start on.

[makken123 0]

Thanks OldManWhately regarding megaupload, I've successfully downloaded the file. As usual with me the blindingly obvious is what I find hardest to do! There is a lot of material which I'll digest at my leisure. I noted the location Glouchester - I live in Gloucester, UK.

Thanks again, when I get around to playing I will let you know what I think.

[makken123 0]

Regarding the Case Book format, I am unhappy with their appearence and they seem cumbersome to me, e.g. the vignettes. I like Arkham Horror because of the theme and artwork; a Case Book which looked like the AH Rule Book would be something! On a positive note I do like the creativity in DDofD. All of that is IMHO; I have created Investigators and other pieces for AH that have met with silence, so my taste is not shared at all!

 

[Thelric 4]

makken123 said:

Regarding the Case Book format, I am unhappy with their appearence and they seem cumbersome to me, e.g. the vignettes. I like Arkham Horror because of the theme and artwork; a Case Book which looked like the AH Rule Book would be something!

I think everyone involved with Arkham Investigations is interested in seeing it work, so we are all pretty open to criticism. Unfortunately these comments are mostly too vague to do much with. Perhaps you could be specific about what you don't like. I'm not even sure if this is meant to be a critique of Arkham Investigations (AI) as a whole or this specific case book. Overall, it seems to be more about AI as a whole, so I'll address a couple of your points since C.C. doesn't seem to be around on the new forums.

As for the appearance of case books, nothing prevents anyone from formatting it more like the AH manual (by which I assume you mean more polished and with more illustrations), except for the amount of work involved. Why don't you take a shot at creating a case book more like what you would like to see? That would set the bar a little higher for everyone else, and inspire others to go that extra distance.

Can you be more specific about what exactly you find cumbersome about vignettes? In terms of game play mechanics, they are not much different than any other space on the board, so I'm not sure what you mean. The only thing I've found a bit cumbersome about playing with case books, is flipping around through the book to find the right paragraph. If you find that part cumbersome, try using the Case Book Player plug-in, which eliminates page flipping altogether.

Cheers,
Chris

[OldManWhateley 0]

makken123 said:

Regarding the Case Book format, I am unhappy with their appearence and they seem cumbersome to me, e.g. the vignettes. I like Arkham Horror because of the theme and artwork; a Case Book which looked like the AH Rule Book would be something! On a positive note I do like the creativity in DDofD. All of that is IMHO; I have created Investigators and other pieces for AH that have met with silence, so my taste is not shared at all!

I think I understand what you mean as far as the look of the case book itself. I considered releasing the casebook in pdf format so that I could add photos and artwork relevant to the scenario. Basically to try to give it some flair. However, people also so seem to like new casebooks put out in the Strange Eons format. Thus, I decided, that the next one will be available in pdf (with some artwork and the like) and in a .eon format.

However, I am in agreement with Thelric as to not understanding your point about the vignettes in general. What exctly makes them cumbersome?

[makken123 0]

Cumbersome now sounds like a sledgehammer word, I meant that a Case Book seems - to me - a complicated way to add a story to AH. My wish would be as OldManWhately describes: pictures, attractive layout, etc.

Strange Eons is so good at everything else, the look of cards and tokens and the flexibility in exporting and printing is spot on; I wanted to put forward my view on Case Books which I felt were not so good.

 

makken123

 

[OldManWhateley 0]

makken123 said:

Cumbersome now sounds like a sledgehammer word, I meant that a Case Book seems - to me - a complicated way to add a story to AH. My wish would be as OldManWhately describes: pictures, attractive layout, etc.

Strange Eons is so good at everything else, the look of cards and tokens and the flexibility in exporting and printing is spot on; I wanted to put forward my view on Case Books which I felt were not so good.

makken123

No worries on my end about criticism, makken. I have worked on mods for several pc games and criticism comes with fine-tuning anything, IMO. I definitely think that added flavor to a casebook (meaning some artwork and an attractive layout as you said above) would greatly increase the appeal of case books overall. It is something I am going to embellish on the next case I am working on presently. I think it would add to the physical look of the case when it sbeing used in the game. The SE program can both export the file in .eon form (the most basic format to recieve it in) or you can export it to a Word or html format. From there, you can add whatever graphics, such as artwork or the like - even using some type of watercolor background for the pages to make it more visually appealing.Them simply, using a pdf write program, convert it to pdf. The only problem I can see with this is the heavy use of a person's color printer cartridges to print out a 30 page case book full of art and color.

Thus, as I mentioned before, with the next case book (entitled, "The Schemes of Nyarlathotep"), I am going to include a pdf version of the case book in the zip file (which will have added flavor and artwork) as well as the standard ,eon file for those who prefer that.

As far as cases being complicated in adding a story to the game, (and hopefully I am understanding what you mean by them being complicated) I must agree once again with Thelric. Its a simple matter of reading various paragraphs - I guess, for me, I have run alot of rpg games as a GM so am used to such added material for a game. Others that are unfamiliar with rpg's might find case books a bit intimidating at first.

Again, I believe that criticsm is most important for mods of any kind, if for nothing more than to find out what people like or dislike about it. I certainly appreciate the desire to see artwork in the case books, as I considered it but was unsure whether or not it would be wanted.

BTW, have you had a chance to play through the case book and , if so, what was your overall opinion? It is quite short, I agree, but I am more concerned about the enjoyment of it as well as if the overall plot was understood.