Adventure brewing

Role-playing games
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Depending how things go, this might end up as a category. I’ve made a tag for now, so people can use that if they start a new topic on the same lines. If that happens, I’ll rename this one.

I do a lot of scenario writing, and a lot less scenario finishing. Adventures tend to get some way in before I hit some sort of block, ranging from “what is the weird thing in the crypt” to “how do players interact with this at all” to the classic “that is a sentence, Shim, not a scenario”.

Often I feel like bouncing the ideas around with a few friends would unstick the creative juices, but I have zero in-person gaming pals and the people I game with are also who I’m mostly writing scenarios for. So I thought, why not start a topic on here and see if that gets some conversation going?

The general idea is to share our half-baked adventure ideas and see if we can help each other get them fully-baked, or at least microwaved to edibility. This metaphor is breaking down rapidly.

I’ll start, then.

Snapshot (working title). An NPC photographer has been taking nighttime photos of various shops or workshops or similar. Something she’s seen in these experimental photos has fascinated her enough to keep returning and hanging round in the hopes of getting more/better photos of whatever it is. Her hanging around is what gets somebody suspicious and leads to the PCs getting asked to investigate, but she’s a harmless lead.

What I’m trying to decide here is:

  1. what exactly is she seeing that’s got her so intrigued?
  2. what causes it?
  3. what’s the gameable intervention for the PCs?

I was thinking of having her doing infrared photography (like this) and perhaps ice-cold ghostly figures showed up on her photographs. Maybe a ghost crawling out of a picture (either Ringu or The Mezzotint, take your pick) in one of the shops/workshops? I really like this concept, but I couldn’t decide why that’s happening, why the PCs need to do something about it now*, or how it turns into a bigger adventure than simply “okay, we burn the painting”, “we catch the creature”, etc. There’s currently no active opposition to the PCs, which could come from the weird photograph phenomenon, but could be elsewhere - maybe somebody else is looking for the haunted MacGuffin for some reason, but then why is it bad for the PCs to let them have it?

*I’m aiming for a supernatural mystery that they want to resolve because it’s weird and wrong, rather than a fascinating supernatural research opportunity for empirical testing under controlled conditions. So some kind of progression or ticking clock would be good.

Feel free to throw in your own incomplete adventures or to tell me the obvious ideas I’ve missed!

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First impressions are to lock in if it’s the person, the camera, or the place that’s haunted

PCs can then care about saving the person, destroying or dealing with the camera, or saving the place because of whatever connection they have to the place

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Option 1

There are two (or more) paintings in this series (which, perhaps, has just got fashionable in particular circles, maybe it’s a local artist). They are portals to somewhere Very Cold. So if you know what you’re doing, and somebody does, you can put up one in your garage, open it, go through, go through to the other one, steal stuff, come back and close them all. But it will leave a fair old cold footprint behind it.

But something else lives in that Very Cold place.

Option 2

The camera is what’s weird. There was a large and unsuspected (or at least un-prosecuted) crime, and when pictures are taken in the places where relevant bits of it happened, it shows them.

I like The Mezzotint. (Actually I like The Haunted Doll’s House better, because I met it first, read by Michael Hordern.)

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Or present the opportunities from each of those. “Lock in” may be too strong a term

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OK here’s one of mine.

Hepatic Portal

which I have just uploaded a recording of to the Whartson Hall feed. The key missing plank is: for what reason would a British minor nobleman take a deep personal dislike to a player character, in London in 1868? (It’s not tied hard to that date, but some details of geography would need to change if it were moved.) For the recorded run, I could take advantage of one specific PC’s known habits, and reveal the details near the end; but obviously that doesn’t work if the adventure is to be published and run by other people. (My intention is to supply pre-gen characters, but also to let people drop it into their own campaigns if they want to, especially if they’re also running Shim’s Gaslight Lincolnshire adventures.)

So what I’m after I think is a range of possible reasons, such that the GM could find one to attach to one of their own party’s PCs.

(In the recorded run,

he had had an affair with the nobleman’s young, pretty and rather bored wife.

)

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Perhaps the PC called the nobleman’s wife a bloated warthog?

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Nobleman is land rich but cash poor and stands to inherit cash or has taken insurance policies out against the PC. PC could be kin to nobleman’s spouse

Nobleman has come to the conclusion (true or mad) that the PC’s blood or life force or birth chart make them a needful sacrifice

PC blackballed nobleman from a club

PC reported a news story that caused nobleman significance financial problems

PC supports political changes that will hurt the nobleman’s position

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With the right sort of NPC, you could lean on astrology: one or other of the PCs has caught their attention somehow and also has the right birth chart to ensure compatability. They’d need a way to know the PC’s birth chart, of course, so they do need to have done something - unless the NPCs are bribing doctors and midwives for details of potential candidates. Any PC who’s involved with an occult society might have had their birth chart drawn up at some point in society activities. This isn’t a personal dislike, though, so it’s not very strong for your scenario as played.

Politics works if the NPC is active. The right sort of PC might have humiliated them in the House of Lords, or in the pub or coffee shops where the NPC’s faction hangs out. A more humble PC might have published a particularly effective broadside or revealed damaging information about their financial status.

The PC stole the NPC’s prized butler (a Wodehouse classic).

The PC somehow ruined the NPC’s wedding reception, and they’ve been brooding about it ever since.

The PC published a book with a repulsive character who everyone immediately assumed was a blatant caricature of the NPC, even if they’ve never met (see: Heyer’s Sylvester).

The PC got the sinecure (secretaryship, captaincy…) that the NPC had been manoeuvring for their own protege to get, or had boasted about easily being able to secure in order to impress somebody, or offered in exchange for a different favour.

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School rivalry could work

Beat someone out for first colours or was proximate to them being sent away to a worse school

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I’ve added the tag “scenario doctors”, which is the one that I have used for this purpose in the past.

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That’s a really good one for the kind of fanatical, vengeful person who goes to extreme measures.

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He’s probably a bit older than most PCs, but yes, I’ll put all these on the list!

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OK here’s another one that’s very minimal. I wrote it up for a scenario contest and didn’t get anywhere, so I’ve let it sit since. The contest organisers asked for wanted a short treatment with specific “scenes” but I want to make it a bit more clue-webby. Obviously I’m trying for a post-war noir private eye sort of feel. My feeling right now is that it’s a skeleton in need of connective tissue.

Chump Change

(thanks to @Lordof1 for the title)

Player character requirements: One hard-boiled private eye Cormac MacDougal, some part-time assistants (a librarian, a detective, a reporter).

Setting information: Los Angeles, 1948

Keeper Info: “David Carlson”, the current body of an ancient sorcerer, is moving low-ranking gangsters’ minds into rich men’s bodies as a bid to control and legitimise Los Angeles’ organised crime (giving him an easy life and access to sacrificial victims). Susan Penforth’s husband Harland is about to be the latest victim.

Player Info: Harland has gone missing. Susan knows what’s happened, and knows he’ll be coming back, but “not as himself”, because it’s happened to his friends.

Story Details: Scene 1: The assignment. Susan calls on Cormac and says that her husband’s missing… and she wants him to stay that way. She says that several of her husband’s friends have* changed* recently, “as if it weren’t them at all”, after they went on “retreats” in the mountains, and she’s scared it will happen to him too. Harland has recently been running with a wild crowd.

S2: Investigation: newspaper morgue or knowledge of high society. Two of that crowd, which is centred on David Carlson, have recently been widowed, and two more wives have gone into private sanatoria. The papers are cagey about details but the clear implication is too much alcohol and cocaine.

S3: Susan visits the office, this time with her husband’s chauffeur, and cancels the job: her husband’s home again. She’s still red-eyed, and now terrified. But everything is fine. Just fine. She manages to drop an envelope full of cash as she leaves. The chauffeur only knows that Harland pays his wages and doesn’t want scandal.

S4: More digging, property records? Carlson has a luxurious cabin in the San Gabriel Mountains that he and his friends go to for week-long “hunting trips” (widely assumed to be mostly drugs and women).

S5: Susan dies in a car accident, coming off a twisty seaside road. “She must have downed most of a bottle of whiskey.” (Police.autopsy contacts: she wouldn’t have been conscious enough to drive the car as far as she apparently did.) Harland does a poor job of pretending grief, but nobody expects it of a society man.

S6: If word has got back to Carlson, he’ll try to buy them off as if they were society reporters: invitations to parties (to set up blackmail), maybe even an invitation to the cabin if he feels they’re getting too close.

S7: At the cabin, over a few days, Carlson/Flint takes over a new victim, then swaps to his henchman, then swaps back into the Carlson body. The victim (in the henchman’s drugged body) is taken downtown to be shot in a “gang battle” which the police will assume to have been between the forces of Jack Dragna and Mickey Cohen.

Locations and NPCs

Susan Penforth: the client. She knows nothing of magic or the Mythos, but something scary has been happening to her husband’s friends.

Harland Penforth: the original was a second son who didn’t expect to inherit; his elder brother George was killed in the war; not naturally crooked but greedy and easily tempted. His new mind, a minor gangster named “Blackie” Mulroney, is more callous.

David Carlson*:*** a failson who came back from the war with a new drive and vigour. His body is occupied by Elihu Flint, an unnaturally long-lived sorcerer thanks to Mind Transfer. Most recently before Carlson, Flint was Klemens Dietrich, a Nazi torturer, who took over Carlson during the liberation of Germany-- and Cormac may recognise some of his mannerisms from the war.

Carlson’s house: flashy bad taste, but serious money backing it Minor magical items to be found

Carlson’s cabin: isolated, long winding road or hard climbing to get there. Luxurious, has its own generator and well, barely feels rural at all. Carlson brings in staff a few days before a visit, but they aren’t allowed into the “sweat lodge” where the rituals happen.

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My first question has to be ‘who are the characters?’

It very much depends on the style of game you run, but I tend not to plot things out too much in advance. For one thing, the game I run most is Blades in the Dark which is specifically player driven and meant to be largely improvised by the GM. But the second is, in any game, the characters have to be interested enough to engage.

So I think your question 3 is the most important one, though I’d change it to ‘why might the characters care?’.

If it’s Delta Green - play up the mythos likelihood.
If it’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer - who do they know who is being affected
etc.

I love the idea of the infrared photography - have you seen Kirlian Photography? (Kirlian photography - Wikipedia) - perhaps the infrared camera is picking up things electromagnetic aura - but if so - why only certain things?

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Profitable research items could be a re-read of Farewell My Lovely and considering Jules Amthor for a period representation of psychic fraud

Checking around a bit on that and I found The Kept Girl by Kim Cooper that I may be picking up for a read soon

This Batman Animated Episode may also provide some visual cues and an orrery always makes for a fun prop

Mexico could also provide a connection for setting this in the interwar period if you wanted an imperial German villain who used the Zimmerman telegram stuff as an opportunity to get out of Europe and then effervesce from south of the border criminal networks to north of the border and stretch that trail. A trip south of the border for clues is not an uncommon trope in SoCal mysteries

Rat line stuff through South America stretches it a bit but could work similar

On the financial side you could have him involved in expropriation of Japanese internee property as part of his financing through a corrupt law enforcement or state government apparatus connection for extra loathesomness. Get a mixture of Chinatown and Perfidia that way

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I think a key branch here is what happens if the PCs intervene before S4. For example, they might decide to get Susan out of there (by fair means or foul) after the suspicious payoff. How the gang responds to that would depend on why specifically they want her dead - is it purely silencing her because she’s got suspicious, or is there a financial or other motive? In the former case, perhaps they try to spread scandal about her to get her discredited, but they might also try for an assassination. They’re getting rid of other wives, which suggests they’re worried about discovery - otherwise some of the gangsters might appreciate having new glamorous wives.

The response also depends whether they know the PCs are involved in her disappearance. Oh, and it depends whether Carlson knows about it, or the mooks who were meant to deal with her are desperately trying to repair matters before he finds out.

S4 seems like the weak link. I’m wondering if we want a secondary hook that seems to be tied into the same circumstances to encourage digging.

Maybe another reporter’s trying to write up a story about the parties at Carlson’s lodge - they might bump into the PCs at a bar, or get bumped off under circumstances that lead to the PCs being asked to investigate. The reporter PC might even be asked to look into the story.

One of Carlson’s circle might start trying to obtain weird books (on Carlson’s behalf) in a way that comes to the librarian PC’s attention. Why is this playboy suddenly after those books?

Maybe the gang weren’t originally getting rid of the wives, but there was a public scene that got them worried and led to a change of plan. The first wife to be disappeared complained to a group of friends about some quite specific weird changes. Maybe she even reported a conversation between her “husband” and Carlson where one or both had identifiable personality quirks that the PCs could match up to know criminals.

The reporter could be asked to do a story on the social menace of cocaine, or some such, pushing them to get an interview with the two wives who’ve been locked up.

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This is a good thought

Maybe the gang had some women to shift into possession of the wives but had an eventual mismatch

Could have a dissipated jerk NPC or a friendly contact of the PCs who’s been written out of a will recently as part of the clue web

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As I see it (subject to amendment) Carlson/Flint realises that the wives can’t be allowed to cause trouble or, particularly, compare notes. He’s been run out of town before. (And the body swap takes preparation, he can’t just swap with the chief witch hunter while the faggots are being lit.) There are all sorts of little things that a wife would notice and question where a business associate could be put off. So intimidation, then driving mad or killing if needed.

They may be young attractive wives in some cases, but someone in the kind of position that makes him a target for replacement has plenty of access to young attractive women who don’t know intimate details about them.

This clearly isn’t sustainable in the long term. There must be some big plot to rob the city blind, in a way that needs the cooperation of its top business leaders. At which point Carson/Flint plans to take the money and run before it all falls apart and/or the others can take their share.

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The wife-handling situation makes sense from what you described.

That finale sounds like a big infrastructure contract to me. Organised crime is usually heavily involved in construction in particular, as I understand it. Contract to rebuild all the city’s slum housing stock, with a downpayment of millions, to be made in cash (or gold!) via some key city banks.

With a major contract, there are probably going to be some early warning signs for competitors that something’s up, whether directly or because their contact in the city offices has heard something. Or even because the banks were tipped off to get large amounts of hard currency in for the downpayment. That might be another angle to get the PCs looking into things.

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This one works best for me. I wanted the photographer to be the clue rather than the source of the problem. I do like #2 though and I might steal it for something else.

Fun fact: I have been that person hanging around a place and probably making people anxious, which I realised much later. I was badly insomniac at the time and going for 3am walks, and there was this one house where hundreds of snails would congregate outside for no obvious reason, which fascinated me.

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