"Escape From Innsmouth" 6/25/23

Our intrepid team were asked to investigate the disappearance of Brian Burnham, a young man who had taken a job in infamous Innsmouth, MA, but supposedly turned to crime before escaping police and fleeing to parts unknown.  After some questioning of local sources and leads, the group reluctantly made their way to the ill-regarded town, where things turned out to be just as bad as they expected...

This went really well given the players were all quite familiar with Lovecraft's story.  They managed to play ignorant and get themselves into the correct mindset.  I think Innsmouth is well-presented in the sadly out-of-print Escape From Innsmouth supplement, and it gave me a wealth of material to draw from.  Mr. Waite's wife was an especially effective surprise.  

I have to note our group is a very practical one.  There was no truck with rescuing Ruthie ... her boyfriend's protestations were silenced (twice!) with a well-placed punch in the face.  As for the Innsmouth police, although they've always been careful about dusting mere mortals, I guess hybrid deep ones don't count.  To get to the prisoner's cells, they just locked the door to the police station and killed the cop on duty!  Yow!

It ended with a quite literal escape, with a carful of Innsmouthers in pursuit, finally derailed by a good shot from Judge Plamondon.  I downplayed the number of pursuing vehicles, not seeing how enough time would have been available to stir up the whole town, but spiced up the final chase by throwing in a last-minute attack by full-on deep ones (one of whom jumped onto the car and started clawing away before getting dispatched by a pistol shot), and something else which the team was fortunate to escape and not get a good look at.

A lot of fun with this one, and even the endless fish jokes didn't quite take the edge off it.

"Th Mystery of Loch Feinn" 8/27/23

In which our intrepid band of 1890's investigators - twins Emily and Quentin Harwood, espionage agent Mirela Baptista, and occult researcher Thodosia Throckmorton, are engaged to investigate the death of Prof. Gibson in a remote village in rural Scotland.

It seems the good Prof's researches, which centered on what he believed to be a prehistoric survival in the local loch, led him to a bad end.  The local authorities claimed he must have gotten too drunk at the pub one night, accidentally set himself on fire while lighting his pipe, and drowned in the loch.  But his diaries suggest something different - run-ins with an extensive local clan, a mystery involving standing stones around the loch, and the sinister legend of a kelpie, or "water horse" inhabiting the loch.

For those not familiar, "Loch Feinn" goes all the way back to 1983's Cthulhu Companion, and is a very sketchy scenario. containing some effective atmospheric set pieces, but leaving a lot to the keeper to work up.  This especially meant fleshing out the NPCs, generating stats for a shitload of MacAllans (aforementioned local clan), and deciding how to build up atmosphere and mystery and events in the tiny village to direct and misdirect the investigators.  I conceived a creepy dream sequence that I think added a lot of atmosphere.  I also had fun channeling Amybeth McNulty's performance in Anne With An E as a local girl who's gotten herself.  The monster of this scenario, the nature of which I will not give away, is a difficult one but full of spooky potential.

I think if I were to run this again I'd expand the NPC's and the local color a bit further, but this apparently worked well.  It's also our first scenario to take more than one session to play out, so based on that I'd say there was enough material to satisfy.  The investigators took many unexpected turns here and I had to improv quite a bit - all of which I think is good.  Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves a lot.  

Since I found the illustration of the "water horse" from the Companion unappealing, I used an illustration from The Sea Serpents Around Us, a beloved children's book by Lois and Louis Darling:

"Dead Lights" 5/25/23

 We're back!

After being sidelined by pandemic surges for close to two years, we finally started up again.  

Driving back from a small town in Massachusetts, on their way to Arkham, our intrepid band - Judge Plamondon, Vlad, Dr. John Silence and Maeve MacCullagh are caught in a terrible storm when they nearly run down a lost young woman, running from something...

This leads to a wild night at a diner full of more-and-more crazed people, and then a long night stuck in a cottage in the middle of nowhere while an ultra-terrestrial whatsit from beyond stalks the night.

This tense, claustrophobic scenario played out very well, and kudos to the players who came up with a number of solutions and pulled off the Best Case Scenario.

Session #3 "Night of the Jackal"

London, 1890s. Retired members of British military regiments the Buffs are dropping like flies.  First in what seem like accidents, then what are clearly brutal murders.

Our intrepid investigators - wealthy twins Quentin and Emily Harwood - hardy adventurers though constantly feuding; Mirela Babtista, a Russian gypsy and sometimes spy, and Theodosia Throckmorton, a young Egyptologist and occultist, find themselves drawn in ever deeper when they become almost-witnesses to the murder themselves, and the Harwoods cousin, Alan Paice, finds himself threatened by the dark forces gathering around them.  

All roads lead to a retired army colonel with a dark secret, and a showdown with cultists, zombies, and thing with the head of a jackal...

This was our first Gaslight session and it seems to have been a big hit.  Players took some very unexpected turns with their characters (yay!) and had a real close call with the Child of the Sphinx and the cultists at the end.  Doesn't hurt that this was a well-written and inspiring scenario.  I made minimal changes to the thing.  We ended up going way past our intended 3-hour mark (5 hours all told!), and that seems to be a good sign that people were into it.

Session #2: Dead in the Water

 

Our heroes are taking some r&r in the charming seaport town of Kingsport.  There they find themselves drawn into the mystery involving a rash of disappearances of fishermen and boaters.  Via a twisted path with several blind alleys, they find themselves delving into scandalous events in the town's remote past, and a ghost ship terrorizing the seas, ending in a confrontation with the ghost ship, its crew, and the coast guard.  

Session #2 went pretty well insofar as everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  Despite a lot of prep though, I don't think I handled the scenario as well as I could.  I was unprepared for some of the paths the team went down, and didn't have anything to offer them (oops!  major GM fail).  I also didn't exploit the setting nearly enough.  If I run it again I definitely think it deserves two sessions, and more immersion in weirdness that is Kingsport, including some red herrings which wouldn't have helped them solve the mystery but would have been fun to play out!

Session #1(!): The Haunting (aka The Corbitt House)

 After lo these many years, it has begun…

Though I’d wanted to return to rpg’s for many years, and started developing some potential campaigns in 2008 with the release of Chaosium’s Basic Role Playing, life continued to intervene for another decade-plus.  

Then, just as I was almost ready to start again, the pandemic arrived, and put all my plans (for games and everything else) on hold for another 20 months.

But, on August 15, it finally happened, and I again sat around a table with some friends for a few hours of dice-rolling and imagination.  

And, it seems, it was a success!  

So now, with this long-overdue campaign at last underway, let us begin following the adventures of our intrepid investigators.

Case # 1 – The Haunting aka The Corbitt House

Dramatis Personae:

Judge Samuel Prescott Plamondon, retired judge

Dr. John Silence, theologian and occultist

Vlad, man of mystery

Our tale began at a private (ahem) cocktail party, where a late-evening conversation with a local acquaintance led to a request to investigate a possibly “haunted” property in Winthrop, MA.  

Accepting the job, our intrepid investigators* went to work, with Vlad checking out the neighborhood and the outside of the Corbitt house (unrevealing) , while Dr. Silence attempted to communicate with the unfortunate former occupants (a somewhat inconclusive but hopefully creepy affair), and Judge Plamondon dug through public records to learn the house’s unsavory history – short-term tenants, rumors of hauntings, and a former occupant with sinister occult connections.

This led to a trip to the ruins of the Church of Our Lord, Keeper of Secrets (that name drew a collective exclamation of enthusiasm), a burned-out crypt of creepiness, wherein our heroes scored themselves a full-on copy of De Vermis Mysteriis (I wanted them to have access to some good magic and potential Cthulhoid knowledge right out of the gate – we’ll see what they do with it).

Finally, it was time to pay a formal visit to the Corbitt house.  After a close call with some very dangerous poltergeist activity, and a thorough investigation by the still very skeptical Judge P, it was time for a full-on assault on the house’s deepest, darkest secret – predicated by some serious debate about whether it was even worth the risk!  

The denouement, as the team faced off with the final menace of the Corbitt house, was one tense affair.  Only some quick-action and good educated guess saved Vlad from being torn to shreds.

With the Corbitt house destroyed, our heroes returned to Arkham … with some reading material…

*We have committed the heresy of not concerning ourselves with how these characters came together, or (gasp!) what their motivation is to pursue sinister mysteries.  Suffice it to say that (1) the already know each other and (2) it wouldn’t be much of a gaming session if they didn’t choose to investigate. To paraphrase Dickens, we must accept that these characters would go adventuring, or nothing wonderful will come of it.

Comment: After all these years, the hoariest of all Call of Cthulhu scenarios still works!  It seems the scenario was a hit (I know I had a good time) and the game is at last, afoot!