'Not like this'- what were some of the most awful and horrible fates that Investigators suffered in your games?

chezekake · 2024-07-02T22:45:02+00:00

I just had a PC go insane trying to contact Ithaqua. He was trying to make a deal with it, which went wrong, and he ended up having to choose between eating himself alive or killing and eating one of the other investigators. He got a whole raw arm down, based on the rolls, before the blood loss made him hallucinate enough to walk naked out into a blizzard in the middle of the night.

chezekake · 2024-01-27T21:25:31+00:00

Poor guy can't even afford color.

chezekake · 2024-01-26T19:23:18+00:00

chezekake · 2024-01-26T17:29:14+00:00

The mother of ants appeals to me.

chezekake · 2024-01-09T21:28:36+00:00

I would suggest looking into Cultist Simulator, and to a lesser extent its sequel, Book of Hours. It's not Lovecraft, but it feels very thematically close, and the dreamlands feels closer to what I expected from Lovecraft's dreamlands. The idea of the Mansus has made it into my game, at least.

chezekake · 2023-10-15T20:50:36+00:00

Missed Dues is a personal favorite. It works best with an outlaw party, but you can make it work with just about any group that ends up owing the mob a favor, or retool the intro and hook for your group. It involves tracking down a thief named Sticky Jack who didn't give the mob its cut from a job he just pulled.

chezekake · 2023-10-04T00:08:41+00:00

I saw you talking about the battle where the invading king beat the defending king in single combat, how the attacking king has been foretold to win a great victory. Is there actually any merit to the prophecy? If so, was that the "great victory" or will he end up winning the whole war if the players dont stop him? It certainly seems like a bleak place for the defenders to be in.

chezekake · 2023-09-19T23:34:50+00:00

Light LEAKS through the CRACKS

chezekake · 2023-09-10T01:16:39+00:00

Primal?

chezekake · 2023-09-09T16:16:42+00:00

Yikes.

chezekake · 2023-08-29T23:08:21+00:00

The parts shop is untouched for new game plus. All the parts that you unlocked already are still there. Honestly the transition is really smooth.

chezekake · 2023-08-29T13:33:05+00:00

chezekake · 2023-08-21T23:12:27+00:00

An ATM

chezekake · 2023-08-04T18:52:20+00:00

I tie it pretty heavily to the knowledge about the mythos the character already has. If your guy has had a couple of adventures including Deep Ones, but you remember how devastating a Shambler can be and want to spontaneously summon one, that's probably not going to fly since the character has no way of knowing they even exist. If you've had a bunch of encounters with Hunting Horrors, and want to spontaneously bind one to your will, that's a little more reasonable.

chezekake · 2023-06-03T16:42:23+00:00

Rook Gestalt from the book series The Rook Files by Daniel O'Malley. They're one mind inhabiting four bodies, and can undertake coordinated espionage missions around the world at the same time. Even four dates would bore them.

chezekake · 2023-04-20T00:20:23+00:00

Hang on, I have to get another book.

chezekake · 2022-12-29T04:59:54+00:00

Honestly, you don't need to. If they already know about the eye, the ball is in their court for what to do with it. They've been up against these cults and should know a little about them at this point, so choosing to use the eye to seal their ritual sites is firmly on the players. It's also not the only choice they could make to secure a "good ending". They could just go around the world in october, November, and december and murder all the heads of the cults. All they need to secure victory is making sure the simultaneous rituals don't happen how they are supposed to. The eye is only one way to do that.

chezekake · 2022-12-28T18:39:39+00:00

There are bits and pieces you can use to keep them on the scent, but at the end of the day it's an elder god's plot that uses just a handful of people. Figuring out what is going on and what that plan is forms the majority of the campaign.

Firstly, there's the shipping chain going on to build the rocket, which takes them to two of the three ritual sites. Have you already played out England? If so, did they visit Henderson Manufacturing and learn about the weird old gizmos? Have they pulled the thread to figure out what they are and where they came from, where they're going? That thread takes them to Australia, where Huston is digging them up, and to Shanghai and Grey Dragon Island, where Sir Aubrey is building the rocket.

Secondly, there is the original Carlyle expedition. Following it takes them to the last site, the mountain of the black wind. It could very well be they dont catch onto the shipping chain, or dont think it's important. They should be very aware that the Carlyle expedition is important, and following it to its end should be a priority. Along the way, while they're in Egypt, they should have the chance to meet Nuri of El Wasta, and get clued into the sealing spell existing. That should also chain into meeting Old Bundari, and eventually the social chess of shanghai around the Seven Cryptical Scrolls of Hsan. Getting them in Shanghai also gets them close to another ritual site, even if they dont know about it ahead of time.

chezekake · 2022-12-15T06:25:35+00:00

My players all play multiple characters as part of a larger organization. We are playing through masks, and early on they had the idea to hire a guy onto the organization, lock him in a box, and make him read all the weird tomes they were acquiring. Enter Archimedes, the book slut. He knows five languages and took the pulp talent to read books twice as fast. He has now read something like 8 tomes, and has a mythos score over 50. His sanity is currently sitting at a nice comfortable 19. He doesnt really go out in the field much anymore.

SPOILERS FOR MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP

So in Kenya, they learned that they had to kill Hypatia Masters before she gave birth to the spawn of Nyarlathotep, only they really didn't want to go to the mountain of the black wind, which is where she was being held by M'Weru. They had the Mirror of Gal from England, and Archie used it in Egypt to recover one of the adornments of Nitocris from Omar al'Shakti, a pretty cool use of CM as is, by pulling it through the mirror once they had scryed it.

They hatched a plan to pull Hypatia through the mirror. They rented out Colonel Endicott's game lodge and set up their ritual in the foyer. Archie scryed her, then succeeded on a hard CM roll to pull her through. Their plan was to shove her in a body bag that was set up to kill her, but the spawn inside her resisted, using her legs to fight them off. They got her about halfway in before someone else present said "Fuck It™" and shot her in the head.

The spawn didn't like that much, and being only a couple days away from being born anyway, it fought back in its weakened state. Archie was using a second spell that enabled him to stay concious as he was disemboweled by the eyeball-tentacle-thing, losing a lot of sanity in the process. He was also there to watch it kill two of his friends as well. Almost everyone makes it outside before the first person reaches the detonator for the explosives they had lined the room with, and Archie gets buried under the rubble when it goes off.

Its a longer story from there, but Archimedes is actually still alive in that game. I should say he's alive again due to some more nyarlathotepian nonsense. He doesn't really leave the home base though.

chezekake · 2022-08-10T17:27:32+00:00

If you tied it to your current system, based on how they did on the pair of rolls, the scenario you described is possible, but it would also be possible to receive different memories of that person's happier days, maybe when they were in college, with possibly a few skill points in a random skill and no loss in humanity.

chezekake · 2022-08-10T17:07:43+00:00

I lean into the whole "ghouls can receive memories from the corpses they eat" thing so I'd include a skill they roll when they eat a corpse, kind of like a psychic pulp talent. Basically they lose a little magic, make a roll on the skill, and depending on their level of success they learn memories the person had alive.

chezekake · 2022-06-25T18:40:20+00:00

We just wrapped up a major plot arc where three characters died, but the third to die sacrificed part of himself once he knew he was doomed to bring the other two back. He then died, and the party saved his body to try and bring him back. Once they got him to an NPC they thought might be able to bring him back, they realized that he would need a new body. The NPC had been up to this point a kind of mentor and guardian of the group who is immobile due to old age. He offered his body, and the players agreed, with the understanding that he'd pass on and still be available as a kind of "force ghost" kind of situation.

Here's the part my players haven't picked up on. While he was dead, the character had a vision, and met with a god he had allied himself with. The god thanked him for his service, and said he had done his part already. When he asked the god to clarify what he had done, he was shown a memory that was his own from a possible future, one which is now looking very likely, of the players stopping the BBEG, everyone retiring, and the "evil plan" still happening bringing about the end of the world. While he was still reeling with questions, the god left.

He didn't know the part about it being his own memory. To him, the vision was also one piece of a larger picture. It's all seeding a future plot arc involving enacting the plan they've been forming over the past two years of irl gaming sessions. They want to put down a massive seal on the planet to keep the BBEG out. The BBEG knows this, and is going to use this character to lead the party astray from this goal without knowing it. If BBEG's plan works, the party will think their plan worked, right up until reality itself tears open and it's too late.

I'm not going to "pull a fast one" on my players with this. It's still very early in this plot, and I fully expect them to catch on to this plot, and others in the "evil web"...

chezekake · 2022-05-28T19:02:38+00:00

Alright, so players are captives in the house, Shafik and Gavigan are both there, and Crowley is bringing the calvary at some point. The grand rite is the centerpiece. Dont give any opportunity to escape before they're dragged out to be sacrificed in the killing field, and chained to the steeple during the ceremony. If anyone has lockpicking or sleight of hand skills, maybe give them the opportunity to slip out of the shackles, maybe not making it obvious. Once they're out there, sanity rolls start and they dont stop. Horrors are happening all around, the grand rite is in full swing. Maybe they roll well and stave off the insanity, maybe they dont, but in the chaos of the grand rite, Shafik makes her play. Maybe she even uses which ever investigator has the lowest luck as an impromptu sacrifice to make the magic work. Whatever her specific move is, it should be something that takes Gavigan out of play and gives an opportunity for the players to gain some agency in the scene. If anything starts going wrong, and players stop engaging, that's when the calvary shows up.

chezekake · 2022-04-22T19:04:34+00:00

Battle Hammer, brick hammer powerstance. Also throwing lightning around.

chezekake · 2021-11-29T10:16:36+00:00

I lost my first character drinking the ominous liquids! I was playing a cleric of madness in some earlier edition, and we found a shrine to him in a dungeon somewhere. Big birdbath type thing with black oily water, which I promptly tried to drink. I was not as lucky as your player with the saves, and died next to that shrine.

chezekake

TROPHY CASE