Some random thoughts on mysteries in Role Playing Games
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Fear of the Unknown
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After Action Report – Cthulhu: Now – Light of Darkness (Part 2)
The players move around a bit and see that the light is now moving away from them along the fence line. They take the opportunity to go back inside the building. The hallway is now empty and they continue on down it. They find another lab and quickly search it, finding nothing. The next door is locked. Surprsingly, no one has Locksmith and they can’t open it. They discuss breaking it down but someone thinks to check the receptionist’s desk in the lobby and find a set of keys in a drawer, one of which opens the door. Inside they find another body, another student identified by her id as Alicia Fowler. She has a box of candles and matches and a spiral notebook lies beside her. Most of the notebook contains lecture and lab notes but the last page shows the following. Dawson wants to “investigate the scene” and makes a Spot Hidden. He finds a waxy, scorched spot near the body which could have come from a candle burning down. The Keeper also points out that the storage room was locked from the inside. After asking about timing the players realize that the candle shouldn’t have burned completely down in the time since their cars stopped and figure things started going wrong at the facility much earlier. They decide to go see if they can find out what happened to Gabe. The southern part of the area is a relatively recently plowed field. Dawson and Neyland are able
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After Action Report – Cthulhu: Now – Light of Darkness (Part 1)
This was a group of players who (with one exception) had never played Call of Cthulhu before and in fact had only started role-playing in the past few months (Pathfinder, which had been run by the one experienced player). They had played Arkham Horror and so had at least a grasp of the general concept but that was it. With the one exception I don’t think any of them had even read Lovecraft. I had planned to run Crack’d and Crook’d Manse from Mansions of Madness but the group suddenly decided they wanted to run a modern-day campaign. Literally the only modern thing I had with me that the experienced player hadn’t played was a tournament scenario I had run a couple of years previously. I didn’t consider it to be a good introduction to the game but, despite being warned of that, they decided they wanted to go for it. And so, a playthru of… Light of Darkness A Scenario for Cthulhu: Now Introduction: It is late at night. A group of travellers are proceeding north on I-95 from Jacksonville to Savannah and passing through southern Georgia when they encounter a detour. Road construction. They need to detour along a back road for about 25 miles before it intersects the Interstate again. They quickly leave the Interstate behind and find themselves driving through dark, empty countryside; alternating pine forests and stretches of swamp (the Okefenokee swamp occupies this part of Georgia) with an occasional abandoned and overgrown farmhouse. The
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Welcome to The Secret World
For the past few weekends I’ve been playing in the open beta for The Secret World, a new MMO coming out in a month or so from FunCom. The Secret World is different from most MMOs we have seen so far. It isn’t set in some fantasy world or on a distant planet. Instead, it is set here on Earth in the present day. But this is not the Earth most of us are familiar with. This is a world of secrets that have been hidden from the general population. A world of vast conspiracies and creeping evil. A secret world in which all of the myths and legends, all of the stories and tales you hear, everything is true. You become involved in The Secret World when you swallow a bee. No, really. The bees are representations of Gaia and they are returning because “dark days are coming”. They are finding individuals that they can imbue with “anima”, magical energy, that those individuals can then use to fight the growing darkness. You are one of the individuals that have been chosen. But you have no sooner become aware of and begun to control your newfound powers when you are contacted by one of the three organizations which secretly rule the world. The Templar, The Illuminati and The Dragon have been struggling behind the scenes for control of the Earth for centuries but now the “Filth”, an evil from beyond the world as we know it, has broken through. The
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