Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

its a good thread allright

 

Hence the organising of it onto a wiki for easy reference

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

I've been beating myself over the head trying to figure out what to do with the hotel's basement. I haven't gotten any good ideas so far.

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Tesseract

There is no basement, there is no roof.

Anyone exiting the stairs to the basement finds themselves coming down the stairs to the roof.

Anyone climbing the stairs to the roof, finds themselves climbing the stairs out of the basement.

 

Variant #1

Each version up or down is slightly different. Slightly redder in colour, or slightly bluer in colour.

 

Variant #2

Each version up or down is slightly different. Slightly brighter, or slightly darker.

 

Variant #3

As 1 or 2, but the world outside changes as well.

[Susano]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Some ideas:

The creepy maintenance man, who has his shop/apartment down there.

 

Storerooms that no one uses anymore, full of abandoned items.

 

Part of the basement has been walled off. On the other side -- a vault, a crypt, an old murder site, an old cultists meeting place (complete with altar), or an old speakeasy.

 

The furnace acts erratically, and might seem to have some sort of malign intelligence. Or, rumor has it, someone was murdered by being stuffed in it.

 

Crates that no one can recall who they belong to. All sorts of things could be in there -- artifacts, idols, treasure(s), or the old favorite of some (still living) animal specimen.

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Backstage

 

The basement of the hotel is the backstage area. It's where all the parts needed to portray the hotel are stored when not in use, or where replacement parts are located. It is full of bits of furniture, fittings and people that are duplicates of items found elsewhere in the hotel. You can find four dimensional backdrops, unused psychic powers and fractured splinters of time.

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Great ideas on the basement. The best I could come up with was having the wine cellars there, and having the wine be fortified with the blood of rats.

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Ubiquitous Rats

 

The rats in the basement are everywhere, but never seen. They can be heard scuttling, gnawing and breathing - occasionally squeeking. They can never be seen directly, only in your peripheral vision. No matter where you look, or how full or empty the basement is, there will always be at least one or two (usually more) rats moving in your peripheral vision.

 

Occasionally there will be a rat staying perfectly still directly in your field of vision - but you do not recognise it as such. As soon as you do realise what it is, and blink, it's no longer there.

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Buried Secrets

 

The basement is a large empty room except for the occasional supporting column for the rooms above. The most interesting part of the room is the dirt floor.

Buried six feet down are bodies. Any unsolved murder case anywhere, any time, ends up here. The dirt is bottomless - even more disturbing, the walls of the basement and the support columns are also bottomless.

If you dug forever, you would find bodies forever.

[Susano]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Ubiquitous Rats

 

The rats in the basement are everywhere, but never seen. They can be heard scuttling, gnawing and breathing - occasionally squeeking. They can never be seen directly, only in your peripheral vision. No matter where you look, or how full or empty the basement is, there will always be at least one or two (usually more) rats moving in your peripheral vision.

 

Occasionally there will be a rat staying perfectly still directly in your field of vision - but you do not recognise it as such. As soon as you do realise what it is, and blink, it's no longer there.

 

Someone in the hotel has to have made friends with the rats. Either the (old) caretaker/maintenance man who lives down in the basement next to furnace or a young child. In either case, the person talks to the rats, feeds them, looks after them (not that the rats need much looking after), and either doesn't set the requested traps or removes the ones that are there. In return? The rats bring the friend interesting things.

[Cancer]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Laundry

 

Down in the basement, down a long poorly-lit corridor with beat-up old laundry carts standing to one side, is the hotel's laundry. Hot, steamy, reeking of chlorine bleach, echoing the groans of the machines, it's a bit of a trek to get there. Once inside the temperature is hellishly warm, you're confronted with a staff of wizened old laundresses, none of whom seem to speak your language, and all would make perfectly plausible extras in a movie about Victorian era explorers encountering a tribe of head-hunters for the first time, down to the teeth filed to points. A double row of washing machines and dryers are a couple of dry-cleaning units blocks the view of much of the room, though you can see folding tables and an assortment of ironing boards and the biggest, oldest irons you've ever seen still used, a tie press, and a couple of mangles, one of which seems large enough to press a full banquet tablecloth in one go. Off in the far corner is a tailor, sewing buttons back onto shirts. None of the equipment looks newer than the 1930's, so there are exposed belts and wheels moving all over, and a few missing fingers and eyes among the staff suggest that's taken its toll over time, and every minute or so there is a deafening blast of steam as the big mangle releases one piece of linen.

[Susano]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Oh great, shades of a certain Stephen King short story....

[AlHazred]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

I need to prove to people I'm still around...

 

The cellar has been spoken about before but there's still plenty of room down there. Maybe the Rats in the Walls live down there.

 

Maybe it's time to add something as well. *roots around in the books scattered on the bed, comes across the short story "Pickman's Modem" in Cthulhu 2000* Hmmm...

 

The Wi-Fi from Hell

 

The hotel has wi-fi; it has to, in order to compete in the competitive temporary residence market. That doesn't mean they've gone with the most modern and expensive system, however. They seem to have used some equipment they bought cheap from some "crime scene cleaner." Anyway, the whole system's twitchy (hence the Dead Zone).

 

Maybe it's the fact that the hotel's connection is wonky, but everything the users send to the Internet seems subtly off. Most of the time, the intent of the post/email/IM is a little darker or meaner than intended; on rare occasions, something significant is removed from a virtual conversation ("dropped" might be a more technical term).

 

The most obvious is any mention of strange supernatural manifestations at the hotel. Such comments or posts become fragmented, making the information seem less compelling, more apparently inconsistent or false. In extreme cases, people find whole records deleted or corrupted.

 

The more rare and disturbing effect is when new content appears. More technically-inclined (or cynical) investigators might theorize that new content is random fragments of other content that was previously deleted. But some of the new information seems oddly specific to the current circumstances involving the party. If it is information from beyond, who provided it, and what do they get in return?

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Hotel 626-

http://hotel626.com/

You may need to change the time on your computer to after 6pm.

 

I found out about the game here-

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/12/hotel_626.php

[Lucius]

The Man Who Wasn't There

 

The Man Who Wasn't There

 

This encounter takes place in a stairway - preferably an out of the way or seldom used one where the character is apt to be alone when going up or down. The phenomenon may be associated with all stairways or only with a single landing.

 

The first time, the character - or all player character's present and maybe NPCs too - will simply have the feeling of a "presence" there with no visible person. Intuitional powers like Danger Sense will go off, and even the dullest and least alert character will be aware of something there.

 

The second time, the feeling is so powerful that a PRE attack must be rolled against the character(s). Assign the phenomenon a high enough PRE to make it more than likely to roll high enough to overcome the character's PRE, but go by whatever the roll determines - if you roll lucky a character may find themself tumbling down the stairs in a panic. A low roll will still rattle the players, who will be wondering how they can be PREsence attacked by something they can't even see. Be sure to mention the bonus for "exhibiting a power" (Invisibility, if they insist on knowing what power.) On subsequent encounters use fewer dice, but keep rolling the PRE attacks.

 

If the character recites aloud (it can be whispered, but so someone standing right next to them can hear) the lines

 

 

 

As I was going up (or down) the stair

I met (or saw) a man who wasn't there

 

 

 

while going up or down the stair, they can roll a PRE attack at the same time as the phenomenon, with a 2d6 bonus for soliloquy (saying the exact right thing) and 1d6 bonus for an effective threat. (These are minimum bonuses, you may assign more dice - they are after all saying its True Name even if they don't realize it.) If they beat the thing's PRE they will be rewarded by feeling it withdraw, even if it's own PRE attack left them shaking or retreating.

 

If they go on to repeat the next lines

 

 

 

He wasn't there again today

I wish, I wish he'd go away

(or Oh how I wish he'd go away)

 

 

 

then the presence will finally become visible as

 

 

 

a short bald or shavenheaded man with a broad face, darkly clad, with an expression of mingled pain, anger, and shock. He looks like he's just been betrayed by his best friend. There may or may not be an inarticulate cry. The vision will fade at once leaving behind a lingering sense of irrational guilt, and

 

 

 

the character(s) will never again meet The Man Who Wasn't There.

 

Try to arrange it so that the players learn the first part of the secret, and then have at least a few encounters, before learning the second half and banishing it for good.

 

How can the characters learn how to battle and/or exorcise this thing?

 

Physical investigation of the landing is unlikely to discover anything. There are no peepholes or hidden cameras to explain that "being watched" feeling, no hidden devices emitting "nervous gas" or subsonic sounds or vibrations that could induce panic. Groping around won't discover an invisible but physical lurker.

 

Investigation with video cameras etc. won't catch anything, but if a sound recording is made, the first two lines may show up when it's played back - very faint. If you don't want the characters to learn the secret this way, all they hear is mocking laughter - very faint.

 

Undirected senses or powers will get nothing definite. Psychic or occultly inclined characters, even if their powers are usually reliable, are apt to find that one minute they have a sense of complete absence - "as if someone sucked all the psychic energy out of the stairwell" - and the next an overwhelming but still shadowy presence - "I caught a glimpse of something's aura but it vanished before I could focus on it. It looked big...."

 

Questioning the staff and other guests will reveal that most of them don't know what the characters are talking about. Those who are in some way themselves uncanny, or who have been here a long time, or who you have determined will be sources of reliable knowledge, may know about the phenomenon and may even know that it can be fought back with the first two lines. Those who are perfectly mundane, ordinary people, are immune to the effect; if a player character goes up the stairs with one of the maids, the character will be PRE attacked but the maid will be freaked out only by the character's behavior. Children, however, will always sense it. Children who recite the first two lines (either because a player character taught them or because you decide that's where the player characters will learn it) in a loud, clear voice will get an extra +2d6 to their PRE attack and also an extra +15 to their own PRE or EGO for purposes of defending against the phenomenon's attack.

 

Some people may drive the presence away every time they go up or down the stairs, so that going in their company means no encounter. The player characters won't know, but

 

 

 

These are people who you have decided have already learned the second secret and thus can never again encounter The Man Who Wasn't There. If a player figures this out, this may be where they can learn the second half of the mystery.

 

Or they could just be Something so powerful or mysterious that this phenomenon just withdraws before them. There are things staying in this hotel that make The Man Who Wasn't There seem a very weak bogey indeed....

 

 

 

Someone who's already discovered the first secret may mutter the lines as they go up the stairs, trying (out of embarrassment) not to be overheard and possibly saying if asked "oh, I just always say that old rhyme when going up stairs....doesn't mean anything."

 

Characters with appropriate PS or KS skills may know or learn of other similar cases where the rhyme proved effective. Contacts may also have had a similar experience.

 

Sceances, divinations, etc are unlikely to learn much unless actually performed on the landing. If the ritual is such that information often comes in the form of voices or sounds, then the first two lines will be heard. Visually oriented scrying, such as a mirror or crystal ball, will either come up blank or show frustrating shadows or possibly show some clue that will lead the characters to look in the right place (such as: shows the face of a character's grandmother, whose diary is in the character's possession, and who once met The Man Who Wasn't There decades ago.) If a Ouija board is used, it will spell

 

 

 

ASIWASGOINGUPTHESTAIRIMETAMANWHOWASNTTH

 

 

 

before the planchette is seized and thrown downstairs (probably the only time the phenomenon will include telekinesis.)

 

If a character with Telepathy attempts to read the Mind That Isn't There, treat it as having an EGO equal to its PRE.

 

1X EGO : The first two lines may be revealed. They are the only "surface thoughts" that seem to be there, and they're constantly running through the Mind That Isn't Here. Note, this just means the lines are "heard"; how to use them isn't obvious. Or maybe there's other doggeral verse or nursery rhymes detected, just to make it harder to figure out which lines are meaningful. If there are children around, it may be detectably afraid.

 

2X EGO : An overwhelming sense of mutual awareness. "You sense now that it's aware of being read, and it's reading YOU." Make another PRE attack. Don't give out the second secret unless the character does something exceptional or clever, such as

pushing and getting a good roll, or trying to work in tandem with another gifted character to combine powers, or combining the Telepathy scan with a PRE attack using the first two lines.

But see "trying to converse with it" below. One may sense that it's motivation is to keep people from using the stairs - but there's no clue as to why, and that motivation is pretty obvious anyway.

 

3X EGO : In this unlikely event (and possibly even at 2X EGO) it becomes simply The Mind That Really Isn't There. That is, the mind being probed just seems to vanish as if it never was really there at all. Drop hints that it's possible, after all, to construct Image to Mental Senses.

 

Trying to converse with The Man Who Wasn't There - Telepathically or any other way - will probably be futile. At best, if a Telepath establishes rapport at the 2X Ego level or higher, it may condescend to send one message: "I just wish you'd GO AWAY!"

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary credits Hughes Mearns, without whom The Man Who Wasn't There wouldn't not be there.

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

How is my mother doing?

 

A young woman carrying a bag of medicines approaches the front desk and asks the clerk if her mother is feeling better. The clerk is surprised and answers he didn't know the woman's mother was in the hotel. The young lady insists she and her mother checked in together, and her mother fell ill. She remembers the doctor who prescribed the medicines she bought.

 

An inspection of the room shows no sign of the mother or any of her personal items; the only personal items in the room belong to the young woman. The registry shows that the young lady entered alone. If the doctor is summoned, he will deny ever having met the young lady or her mother.

 

Note: This is supposed to be a true story; I forget the name of the book where it appeared. The young woman in question was eventually committed to an asylum.

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Cabal

 

This group of people meets in the hotel once a month to talk about a variety of topics ranging from UFOs to psychic abilities to the Apocalypse. They rent a room so that they may discuss such matters in privacy, but sometimes passers-by hear snippets of the conversation when someone gets excited or agitated. Do these people actually know something or are they just having a bit of fun?

[Lucius]

The Man Who Wasn't There

 

It may be interesting to combine The Man Who Wasn't There with this....

 

Here's a recurring dream I had years ago (yes, recurring; I had a few dreams like this)

 

There's a secret door in the hotel that nobody seems to notice. If you go through the door, you will go step upon a landing on a staircase. You can go up and down the staircase. If you go up, you will eventually find yourself in a white room. The room has no furniture, but there is a large window. If you look out the window, you'll see a beach near blue water under a clear sky. In the distance, you see people seated in what appears to be an outdoor restaurant. Many people are there, and it appears to be a picnic or a party going on. This is a glimpse of heaven. The room has no door, so you cannot reach heaven in this manner.

 

I wouldn't recommend going down the stairs. It obviously leads to hell. I've never gone down of course, but I've often seen two unsavory characters coming up to the landing as I went up to view heaven. One fellow was tall and thin, looking somewhat "elvish." He wasn't ugly, but you could see the malice in his eyes. The other was a dwarf, bald and misshapen. I never found out what they did in the mortal world, but I knew they were up to no good....

 

....or other stair-related phenomena. After all, it does seem as if he's gaurding SOMETHING doesn't it?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary who isn't here

[tkdguy]

Re: The Man Who Wasn't There

 

It may be interesting to combine The Man Who Wasn't There with this....

 

 

 

....or other stair-related phenomena. After all, it does seem as if he's gaurding SOMETHING doesn't it?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary who isn't here

That would be a good plot. Leave it to the PCs to open up a door to let the demons come to earth.

[bschrempp]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Psychic Desk Worker

He/She always knows what you want or what you are going to ask before you ask. You walk to the desk and they answer the question before you ask for it. If you are registering for a room, they will have the key in hand before you ask. If you pay by cash, they will have the exact change in hand before you pay.

The Lobby guy

He never leaves the lobby, never goes outside, never upstairs. He is in the lobby, lounge or some other public place in the entry area. He never eats or sleeps. He never talks to anyone. He ignores all others. Never makes a noise. If a PC asks the clerk, he will not know who you are talking about. Is he really a ghost of a guest that got killed in the lobby? The PCs might find him in an old painting or picture

Where does he live?

Everyone “knows” he lives in the building, but no one can tell you what room or even what floor he lives on. He enters the lobby gets into the elevator, but no one ever sees him get off on any floor but the lobby floor. If a PC get into the elevator with him, he will ride to the top floor and back to the bottom and get off and leave the building. If asked what room he lives in, he will either change the subject or remember he has an appointment and leave.

The Hermit

He never leaves his room. The bag boy from the corner market brings him groceries. His bills are paid on time by mail. He never leaves his room and nobody ever comes to visit him. He has lived in that same room for as long as anyone can remember. He has lived in the hotel longer than anyone else. He never seems to get older. No one even knows his name, he is just referred to as the guy in room 201.

[Burrito Boy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The One-armed Man

 

A man in his mid-forties, average height, thick build, dark hair and full beard. Wears a blue long-sleeved shirt, with the name Dwayne on a patch above the left pocket, and a pair of jeans. He looks perfectly normal except for his missing right arm. The sleeve on that side is folded up and pinned to the shoulder. If asked, he tells the PCs that a car he was working on fell off its jack and crushed his arm. The arm had to be amputated and he never worked as a mechanic again.

 

The next time the PCs see him, his right arm is fine and the left is missing. Nobody around seems to notice and if confronted the man will say he's "always been like this". When the PCs see him in the hotel bar - and only in the bar - the man has both arms, holding a beer in one hand and eating peanuts with the other. At these times, he's extremely jovial and will offer to buy a round for the PCs but becomes surly if any of them mention his arms. Other times, he wears a prosthetic arm - sometimes a realistic one with a hand and sometimes one with a hook - but these keep switching sides depending on which arm is missing that time.

 

 

 

The Veteran

 

An eccentric old man in his late sixties wearing what looks to be an army uniform from the turn of the century. Whenever the PCs see him, he's always reading a newspaper in the hotel lobby. If examined while the man is reading it, the paper looks old, like something that belongs in a museum. However, when he sets it down and walks away or if he hands it to a PC who asks to borrow it, it's just a copy of the local paper with the current date. The only way to learn what the old man is reading about is to ask him. And he's only too happy to answer, going on for hours about the latest developments in the Great War, praising the Brits and damning the Boche. Each day he'll have different news as the war progresses.

 

Every day, he also looks younger. Nobody but the PCs seem to notice as the old man becomes middle-aged and then young. When the man starts looking like he's around twenty, his stories about the war grow in intensity. He starts raving about the Hun and how God-fearing men won't let them spread their poison throughout the world. He tells anybody who'll listen that it's every man's responsibilty to do something to help the war effort. In fact, he's going to join the army tomorrow. The characters don't see him the next day. The day after that, he's found dead in his room, a bullet in his head. Nobody ever heard any gunshots and everything in the room looks undisturbed, suggesting the man was killed elsewhere.

 

A few days later, the PCs find the old man in the lobby, reading his paper as usual. Only this time the uniform he's wearing looks a slight bit more modern. He'll deny having ever met the PCs before and when asked what he's reading, he'll tell them the latest news about the war in Europe. The reverse aging continues until the man begins ranting about Hitler and promises to join the army the next day. When the man's body is found this time, it looks like he was killed by a grenade. But he reappears a few days later, talking about Korea. The time after that, Vietnam. After that...

 

 

 

The Ventriloquist

 

The ventriloquist looks normal until you start talking to him and realize that his lips don't move. He claims that he learned to talk like this after having a stroke that paralyzed his face. It was the only way he could continue to communicate with people. But why does he speak with several different voices? It could be that he's a performer who considers himself "always on". But nobody has ever seen a dummy with him or in his room.

[bubba smith]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

bump

[Lucius]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

bump

 

In the night?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary bumps back. Or is that, the palindromedary has a humped back?

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

In the night?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary bumps back. Or is that, the palindromedary has a humped back?

Of course! What other time should things go bump in this hotel?

[bubba smith]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

not what i had in mind but a good point

[Revenant]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

a warning meant

 

After a PC does something impolite, regardless of whether intentional or not, to anyone be it guest or staff and goes to his room, he/she is awakened in the night by a gentle tapping sound next to the room's mirror. The tapping by itself isn't loud enough to have awakened them, but at first it's the only strange event happening.

 

The tapping becomes more and more insistent until eventually the PC gets up and walks over to see what is making the noise. Upon nearing the spot, the mirror is obviously fogged over with two words written upon it, "Never more".

 

The next day, if the PC mentions the occurrence to anyone that's been in the hotel for any real length of time, the person grows pale and mentions people talking about it before and eventually disappearing.

 

Upon further investigation, the PC finds out that the people who have disappeared have repeated the mistake that happened before the message before their disappearance.

 

If the PC continues to investigate, they discover this has been going on for hundreds of years and has been documented by an aspiring poet in one of his poems a long time ago.