The Adventure Continues!

Prop-making for Horror on the Orient Express is finished (for now!) for us, but I’ve recently begun prop-making and blogging again.

My partner (the Keeper’s) original group all graduated college, and the group ultimately disbanded. But a new group is currently in the process of being formed, and thus, new scenarios/one-shots, and new props!

I didn’t want to add more content to this blog, because Horror on the Orient Express is long enough with SO much to cover, and I didn’t want to muddy up the waters or make anything confusing. Instead, I started a new blog, just for one-shots and scenarios.

Feel free to check out the (brand new!) blog at tessa33blog.wordpress.com and drop a comment to say hi!

John Milton Website Back Up

Someone sent me an email and let me know that the http://www.john-milton.gq website was down – evidently my “hold” on the domain had expired, and besides, the InfinityFree website hosting service no longer used Site Pro. What a bummer.

So I spent some time this week trying to figure out how to renew the domain and migrate the site over to Site Pro, and wonder of wonders! it worked and the website is back up and running! (for another year at least, but this time, thanks to handful of folks who sent me Ko-fi this past year, I paid the fee for the annual auto-renewal so hopefully next year we won’t have this issue again. And the folks who sent Ko-fi can know that you’re doing your part to help keep the props going for other Orient Express keepers)

Hopefully those of you who run the Modern scenario can make use of it!

All the best,

Tessa

Officially Finished with Props!

*Edit 3/23/18: Thanks to a lovely comment and suggestion, I’ve added a Ko-fi button to the blog. I don’t want to charge people for the PDFs because I want to contribute to the community, but I will very gratefully take donations.

Also – there was a request to create a .zip file of the PDFs, so folks don’t have to painstakingly go through the blog and download everything individually. I know how much of a pain that can be, so here’s the link to my Dropbox where you can download a zipped file with all the prop PDFs. Enjoy!

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When I purchased Horror on the Orient Express for my boyfriend for Christmas 2016 (and proposed creating actual handouts and props for the game), I had no idea how far into the rabbit hole we would go.

Between creating the actual simulacrum and some of the Zagreb props, I seriously considered giving up a bunch of times and telling the boyfriend to just describe/photocopy the handouts of of the book.

But – I ain’t no quitter! And leaving the project unfinished just felt…wrong.

How do you eat an elephant? A bit (and a bite) at a time. So – I took a deep breath, and took it a scenario, and location, and – at some points – a handout at a time. And item by item, we got through it.

If you’re reading this, chances are, you’ve come along this journey with us. So thank you – for the site visits, enthusiasm, encouragement, and comments.

@henrikripa.se suggested putting the PDFs on the Miskatonic Repository – DriveThruRPG, and I thought hard about it. It would be SO nice to make a little money from all this hard work! But – ultimately, I decided to leave my blog up, and leave the PDFs available and free to everyone to use, and I’ll continue to do so for as long as I’m able.

I love the sense of community and camaraderie Call of Cthulhu players have. I love the debate and analysis of abilities, and readiness of others to help others out. And at the end of the day, I don’t want to take away from that – I want to contribute.

So here’s our contribution to the community. May all your investigators stay alive and (relatively) sane. Cheers!

-Tessa & George

 

Modern Handout #5 – John Milton’s Journal

This handout was a little bit tricky to do, since I already had the journal stationery paper (ripped out of an actual journal) and the lines were already printed on the paper. So I had to fiddle a little bit with the sentence spacing to fill the lines on the paper properly. I used a font called Victor Handwriting which I really loved as a font for John Milton (the book describes it as the tight cramped handwriting of a madman). The only problem with the font is that it has a small glitch in the way the capital W shows up on paper – it overlaps the next letter in the word.

By the time I realized that, I had already figured out the spacing and didn’t want to start all over again with a brand new font. So whenever I needed to use a capital W – I didn’t, and just went with a lower case one instead. LoL.

So maybe John Milton doesn’t “yell” as much on my handout  – but I thought it was a fairly minor issue, and the actual content of the handout is still there. So no (major) harm done!

The PDF for the journal handout can be found here.

Modern Handout #4 & #5 – Stalker Notes

These notes were written using Eager Naturalist font (no pun intended). It was just a very straightforward easy prop to create in Microsoft Word. I had to consult with the Keeper to find out where/when he wanted the meeting to take place, and he decided upon the Fourgon at 5pm.

Since I didn’t want to waste paper (and just used regular computer paper), I just put both handouts on the same sheet and trimmed them down to size, then folded them in half.

The PDF handout for the stalker notes can be found here.

Modern Handout #3 – Orient Express Itinerary

The Orient Express Itinerary handout was ridiculously easy to do in Microsoft Word – mostly because I’m a Type A planner to the Nth degree when going on vacation or out-of-town trips, and I always type up an itinerary for myself.

So it was just a matter of using my own usual template and replacing the relevant information and formatting it to look prettier. All of the font was Copperplate Gothic Light/Bold (native to Microsoft).

I printed it out on some glossy brochure-like paper that I had leftover from the HP Business Sample Pack I’ve mentioned before, mostly because I had it leftover and wanted to use it. But I’m glad I did – it printed out very nice and official and fancy-looking because of the glossy paper.

The PDF to the itinerary handout can be found here.

Game Play Pics

…unfortunately our dear Ms. Florence Kelly was the hapless investigator who rolled a critical fail and lost an eye in Sofia…

Modern Handout #2 – Orient Express Menu

Perhaps I got a little lazy (or just wasn’t inspired) but I figured that the menus wouldn’t change too much. I replaced the logo at the top with the ‘new’ Orient Express logo, but left the menu format pretty much the same as the 1920’s – just with an updated fancier, more elegant font called Fontleroy Brown which I really like. Printed it out on a tan cardstock and trimmed down the left and right sides a bit.

Quick, easy, and basic!

The PDF for this handout can be found here.

Modern Handout #1.5 – Envelope with Chocolate

Luckily, it’s almost Easter right now, which means there’s lots of chocolate for sale at the grocery store. It’s almost as good as Valentine’s day.

The scenario beings with the investigators being welcomed on-board the modern Orient Express. Chaosium’s book reads:

“The player characters will be directed to Sleeper Carriages F and G (see diagram). Inside each of their sleeping compartments they find soap, toothbrushes, robes, slippers, an umbrella, and drink coasters all emblazoned with the Orient Express logo, as well as an expensive looking box of chocolates and an envelope inscribed with their name. The envelope holds an elegantly embossed card from Lux-Vista wishing them a fabulous vacation and inviting them to join Lux-Vista’s founder, John Milton, in the salon car at 16.30 for a welcoming reception.”

Since we have four investigators, I got four small sampler boxes of chocolate for pretty cheap at the grocery store. While I was there, I also snagged a few more florists envelopes for this handout.

I (finally) figured out a way to print on the outside of these tiny envelopes, so I printed the logo on them – it was all about printer settings. Pictured below is the outside of the mini florist envelope, and the back of the card:

Then, I used a ‘business card template’ in Publisher to create my handout. I decided to go this route and print out on cardstock instead of using the ‘Avery business cards’ because – simply put – the Avery business cards are a huge pain in the ass to line up properly, and their online templates straight up suck. At least this way, I can print out a bunch on cardstock and just use scissors or my paper trimmer to trim them down to the proper size. SO much easier than fiddling with the Avery template.

Pictured below is the back of the card and the front of the card:

Not super hard once I figured out that I could easily design/print out business cards using Publisher and just forget about the whole Avery business card thing.

The PDF to the cards can be found here. There are 10 per page, but I only needed 4 since we only have 4 investigators.

Orient Express Tickets – Modern Day

Going on a modern-day Orient Express means modernized train tickets, right? The Keeper plans on running this scenario well after the 1920s Orient Express adventure concludes. Probably in a few months, if not next semester, when the Orient Express will be a distant memory and he can spring it on them as a horrible surprise (lol!)

I found some nice half-size Gartner foil certificates at Staples, and thought it would make a nice base for train tickets. You can find it cheaper directly from Gartner though. If I did it again, I’d probably check and see if Staples price matches.

I had this vague idea originally that I’d make it look a little bit like a ‘Golden Ticket’ since the investigators will have won seats on the modern Orient Express as part of an ‘Anyone Can Go’ sweepstakes. But the more I looked up ‘Willy Wonka’ images, I decided that just wasn’t classy enough, and I wanted the Orient Express tickets to be reminiscent of the original ones, but just updated and modernized.

So I used the same basic design as the original 1920s Orient Express Tickets, but added a few new touches – a barcode, for example, and the logo for “Lux-Vista” the company sponsoring the sweepstakes.

I wanted the whole thing to have a very luxurious feel to them, so I splurged a bit on gold-foiled envelopes from Amazon, and gold stickers to seal the envelopes.

Super fancy-looking, and I’m really happy with how they came out. I used a variety of fonts to create the tickets, English Vivace for the ‘Congratulations’ and ‘Orient Express’, and Edwardian Script ITC (native to Microsoft) for the other scripting. Copperplate Gothic Light (native to Microsoft) for a lot of the other wording, and Caslon OpenFace for the date/time.

I have no idea what the bar code says – I just grabbed a quick one from a bar code generator site

I don’t have a picture of the back of the ticket, but it’s basically the logo with the crown for the Orient Express in blue font.

The PDF for the ticket can be found here.