Miscellany: Running a "Call of Cthulhu" campaign, part 8

Yesterday night, I took the investigators through a prison adventure in Georgia, and a lot of it just didn't work. I didn't sense that my friends were really into the setting, and it seemed like all the content I created was going to waste. It was really frustrating for me to watch them sail through one mystery after another, without delving into anything. The combat, due to a series of lucky rolls and good decisions from the investigators, was fairly skewed in their favor, and I had to hit the "reset button" just to keep them in the prison.

As a GM, it's common to have an "off" night. Not every session can be a paragon of dramatic roleplaying, just as not every movie can be a "Casablanca." I think it's important to treat these instances of subpar performance as learning experiences. For example, in this particular adventure, I failed to prod the investigators hard enough to find out what was going on in the plot.

It's one thing to lead players by the nose, but most people won't have enough intuition or cleverness to instantly figure out the labyrinthine plot you've developed. The clever alien rod that you gave them might be used as a knuckle duster, the mysterious excavation they're supposed to enter is ignored, and the interesting spell you gave them remains unused. When this happens in the future, I'm going to hint at the solution more plainly.