VENICE
An excellent section. The trick here is to draw up a large cast of NPCs to flesh out the city. Use these NPCs to embroil the players in a Fascist - Communist war, reflecting the degenerating influence of Fenalik upon the city. Once again, it is important that the Keeper plays even trivial NPCs as three dimensional characters, this allows the aborted love affair to become a subplot relevant to the PCs.
The clock tower is a good section if roleplayed correctly. You should try and gerrymander things so that the players only get to the clock tower after a number of days in Venice. Try and make it late afternoon so that the atmosphere is dark. And it would be a good idea to include those Vatican historians to help keep the players on their toes as there is no branch of The Brothers of The Skin.
Read up on law in Italy, the recent postings to Strange Aeons have been pretty good. In our campaign we had a disaster in Venice. One of the PCs (a shady Sicilian-American) murdered the interfering Fascisti leader. This led to a running gun battle between innocent PCs and the Carabinieri, and a number of PCs were rendered hors de combat. This incident very nearly finished the campaign for everyone and it certainly spoilt the mood for a time.
The biggest problem here is the requirement that the investigators get into the Gremanci archives. Consider planting other clues or making Gremanci the Elder more amenable.
Dark Crusader
“The Dark Crusader” is a Cthulhu Dark Ages scenario set during the 1204 fall of Constantinople. It is a new optional scenario designed to flesh out the background.
TRIESTE
This section is an unfortunate mess. It contains good ideas which are poorly executed. The opposition in Trieste consists of Lloigor cultists and an Ithaqua visitation. In retrospect this was an unnecessary twist. I can offer few suggestions for playing this section as written.
It is important to emphasize the Trieste is, in this day and age, in ITALY. This means that previous activities, such as those in Venice can have an impact. You might consider this as a means of restraining your players there... This historical oddity caused my players no end of headaches as they though Trieste was in Austria.
The Vatican makes its official debut here in the form of Winckelmann's ghost. This idea works well but the PCs only find the Simulacrum by accident, not a satisfactory plot element. Far better to have the well-informed ghost of Winckelmann place a geas on a player to make her seek out the piece of the Simulacrum which he knows is a dangerous evil artefact. The medallion becomes a protective device worn by Winckelmann, in the shape of an Elder Sign, which the PCs are forced to use to seal the caverns at Postumia.
It is important to re-establish the presence of the Brothers of the Skin. The holiday is over at this point. After the death of the cultist leader in Milan, I had Selim Makryat order the deaths of the guilty PCs. To this end he dispatched a right-hand man killer (pun intended) and a bunch of inhuman goons. They were supposed to meet the Express in Trieste.
Postumia itself and the Lloigor cultists may easily be replaced if you don't like them. I don't think the scenario as written benefits from the Lloigor idea. My preference was initially for Flying Polyps but I couldn't come up with a satisfactory cult idea. Eventually I went for an extended family group worshipping Shub Niggurath as a witches' fertility goddess, using the caverns for special ceremonies. There is precedent for this in the Slavic regions and it foreshadows the next sections.
By strange coincidence, my son visited these caves on a school trip, and even saw the pale eyeless critters.
DREAM ZAGREB
[This section had a strong re-write in the 2015 version; the intro is the same weak bottle of wine, but much of the rest has been re-drawn.]
IMHO Dream Zagreb as written was a load of bollocks. The clues it contained were too obscure even for my rapacious group. However it can be made to work really well if you ignore all the dice rolls and present it as a Keeper narrative, allowing the players to experience the off-key feeling of the piece. In our campaign I took pains to ensure that the players had ample opportunity to make an enemy of the Jigsaw Prince in Lausanne. Dream Zagreb then made sense(?) as his attempt to seek a form of vengeance.
There is no way for the players to beat the Prince on his home territory here. The Keeper must justify their escape. If you have decided that The Brothers of The Skin all hate one another then Zagreb becomes an excellent place for the Prince to taunt PCs and drop cryptic clues to the unseen goings-on. I used this section to have the Prince place a post-hypnotic suggestion in the minds of the weaker (low POW) dreamers. The effect was that they had to seek out and kill the Brothers of The Skin to avoid the nightmares sent by the Prince.
Much to my surprise this became one of the most memorable sections of our campaign. Everyone roleplayed out of their skins (heh!). You live and learn.
If you decide to run it as (loosely) written then the "gift" idea is a real problem; no investigator in his right mind (!) will accept a bottle of rather expensive wine from a stranger. I chose to presume that the bottle was substituted in and that my group of lager swilling investigators wouldn't have noticed until later. The best bit about the scenario is the handouts, so have fun with them. I chose to present them in various forms... one was blood spattered, one was sealed with an elder sign, one was torn into confetti, one was reversed etc... You can use the cloaked man to clear up a few mysteries, since his Mythos knowledge is extensive.
VINKOVCI 1923 - Bread or Stone
Another new scenario.
CONSTANTINOPLE 330 - Sanguis Omnia Vincet
Another new scenario.
BELGRADE
'Orient Express' has a number of bad points. For me this section is one of the worst. As a player I would expect a certain amount of fantastic/weird events in a CoC campaign with attendant major risks. However, I would be sorely pissed if my character was killed by Baba Yaga in a fairytale cottage after many weeks of playing an in-depth scenario. I can suspend disbelief under most circumstances but this would be too much for me. I'd urge any competent Keeper to rewrite this section lest she have a mutiny on her hands. The following is a synopsis of my own attempt.
Strangely, Peter and I were thinking along the same lines when we examined this section. I chose to add in a travelling gypsy band who always stayed over in the area. They had the a respect for the villagers and their religion. In return, the villagers acknowledged the gypsies as the keepers of something rather nasty - a bit of the simulacrum. This made the Baba Yaga section optional, and thus the players only had themselves to blame if they went after her.
Even more spookily, I also chose to add some vampire legend to this area, partly to give the Gypsies a lever over the players (you sort out the problem and we'll give you this wretched arm!) but mainly to give them some practice and advice in battling vampires.