Players: Chris, Eric, Justin, Kevin, Tierney & Shiloh

Man, this game! We totally played it wrong; the whole thing flew right over our heads, and then we got to the end and all went: We did that wrong, but – man - next time it will be Amazing!

Since this is the first time I’ve seen this game mentioned on SGS let’s give a quick summary: Lovecraftesque is a story game about brooding horror, where you take one character and push them slowly on the descent into madness. Mechanically the game is structured into a series of 4 parts: Set Up, which focuses on setting up your character (witness) and some in-game locations; Phase 1, which is a series of 5 scenes where you rotate control roles as Narrator, Witness, and additional contributors; Phase 2, which is a short continuation of Phase 1 of varying number and ends with a “tilt”; and the Descent into Madness, which is a series of up to 16 very brief snippets where you can pick whatever role you want. At the end of each scene in Phases 1 and 2 you introduce a “clue,” which you use to deduce what you think the “final” horror/revelation of the game will be. Lastly there’s a card mechanic, which let’s you override the general prerogative of the game, which is “everything weird could be explainable or dismissed by a non-supernatural means; the cards let you interject some direct weirdness and what they do often changes between Phase 1 and Phase 2, notching up the weirdness.

At first it seemed like a great idea to play the cards early and often.

DON’T!

It also seemed like a great idea to start throwing the weird and the strange in early.

DON’T!

Be patient. Resist the Temptation.

I know you want to get to all the weird Shaggoth inspired horrors, and you will, because that’s built into the game, so instead take your time and make it almost painfully mundane.

If anything that’s the biggest sticking point for Lovecraftesque: the first time you play it’s really hard to “get” the intended pacing, but (for us at least) it clicked as soon as the game had ended. I’m not quite sure what Josh and Becky could do to smooth that out as they try their best to keep saying, keep mundane and reasonably explainable. Perhaps the cards shouldn’t be included until Phase 2, because that’s kind of what kicked things off in the wrong direction: We played two cards in the first two scenes, so by the time we got to scene 3 we already had a bit too much weird going on.

I have a second minor quibble around the amount Players get to contribute, but it isn't a huge issue if you're more interested in what's going on rather than how much you're contributing.

Tl;dr – Go slow. Really almost painfully slow. The horror will kick off at the end; the game is designed to do just that.

Good tip! I've been looking forward to playing this and having that info sounds like it will make it go smoother.