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Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel


AlHazred

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The trick will be to read the wiki page where you have the characters listed and recognise guests from employees. Some kind of marker character should probably be placed next to each guest that actually has a room - I noted that some guests are just hanging around and don't have rooms as such.

 

What do you reckon would be a good marker, an asterisk?

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

We could add a marker that actually means something to the link. For instance, the link The Old Postman could refer to a page called "The Old Postman (Employee)" instead of just "The Old Postman". I know most wikis have a way to migrate pages - don't know how to do that with the pages as they are.

 

I was initially considering naming the pages " [Creepy Hotel]" so that there wouldn't be a problem if someone made another link with any particular character's name, but I didn't think of it soon enough. Would that have helped?

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

We could add a marker that actually means something to the link. For instance' date=' the link The Old Postman could refer to a page called "The Old Postman (Employee)" instead of just "The Old Postman". I know most wikis have a way to migrate pages - don't know how to do that with the pages as they are.

 

I was initially considering naming the pages " [Creepy Hotel]" so that there wouldn't be a problem if someone made another link with any particular character's name, but I didn't think of it soon enough. Would that have helped?

 

In DokuWiki we have namespaces - which basically creates subdirectories. It's a bit tricky though because I don't think I have the file permissions set up correctly for some reason and you can't create namespaces easily.

 

You could break it into [[resources:dark_champions:ch_employ:The Olde Postman]] and [[resources:dark_champions:ch_guest:The All-Seeing Blind Guy]] (ie The All-Seeing Blind Guy

 

Okay, that worked- I'll move the files into different subdirectories and fix the links.

 

Now done.

 

[[.ch_employ:The Olde Postman]]

[[.ch_guest:The All-Seeing Blind Guy]]

[[.ch_event:The Argument]]

 

The . means "off this subdirectory/namespace"

.. = "up one subdirectory/namespace"

: = \

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Twins

Martha and Marcia are identical twins that are never seen apart. Ever. They are middle aged black women of medium build, not unattractive, with hair pulled back in tight braids. They always dress alike in vintage clothing (from the 1950s, 1940s, as far back 1880s) which they sew themselves. They seem friendly enough. They always seem to be giggling.

 

If approached, however, the twins won't respond except to stare and start giggling again. The laughter seems to take an ominous turn as if the twins know a nasty secret, or a rude inside joke. When the twins do speak, to hotel staff or other guests, or very persistent PCs, they speak in perfect unison, glancing at each other out of the corners of their eyes, and laughing in sometimes menacing tones.

The other twins.

 

Miss Ima and Miss Ura are identicle twins, Black women, maybe 5'2" and 98 pounds, they claim to be over 100 and look it. The two are always seen together, dressed the same. They never have a harsh word for anyone, and will offer to buy a meal in the hotel restraunt for anyone who "spare changes" them. One, the other, or both will always have a Bible in their purse, and they walk down the street to church every Sunday morning and Wendsday evening. They will not bring up the subject of religion, but will Witness if anyone else brings it up. They will listen patiently to anyone with a problem, and offer good advice.

 

Rumor has it that they set fire to a crack house a couple blocks away, with the drug dealer inside. If the PC's check out records of the fire, several years ago now, they will find the official cause listed as Spontaneous Human Combustion.

 

The Eternal Game

 

As long as the hotel restraunt is open, two old men, one Black, one Jewish, set at a corner table with a chess board between them. They are both friendly and tolerent of interruptions, but as soon as their opponent moves the board will have their undivided attention. When the restraunt is closed, the board is left set up on the table.

 

No matter how long the PC's watch, they will never see a piece captured or hear the word "checkmate." They have been playing the same game for years if not decades.

 

Wheelchair Cop.

 

A balding Black man, in his 50's, can be seen wheeling his non-powered wheelchair through the lobby every morning. His upper body is well muscled. He goes to the corner newsstand every morning to buy a newspaper. If asked why he does not get it delivered, he will say the exercise is good for him. (However, if a PC offers to go get the paper for him, if it is raining, he will accept with thanks.)

 

He is a medically retired policeman, was quite good at it, and misses "the business." If the PC's are stumped on a case, he will listen, perhapse suggesting a lead to be persued, a test to be run or doublechecked, or, if they are really stumped, that they look up a friend of his still on active duty.

 

But no one is sure where his room is. The hotel is too old and too cheap to have handycapped accessable rooms, there are no guest rooms on the ground floor, and no one remembers ever seeing him on the elevator. The Desk Clerk will confirm that he is a paying guest, but sorry, cannot give out his room mumber. Privacy, you understand.

 

The Officer.

 

One of the guest is active duty military. He will be seen, five days a week, leaving in the morning in uniform, coming back in the same uniform every evening.

 

The weird part is that this is the most inconviently located hotel in the city for active duty military.

 

more later

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

You are the man! I've used wikis for years, and have no idea how to do that. Comes from spending all that time looking at the front end, I guess. Seems straightforward, though, just time-consuming.

 

Sorry!

 

No prob. There are some areas that wikis are not good at, that CMSs are good at - I would like to make a hybrid that can fix those problems.

Mainly- Moving content around and changing links to follow the content.

Joomla does a nice job of keeping content separate, and you can move it to whatever section you like.

I may need to work out a way of attaching metadata to each page to track it.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Rough Trade Writer

 

A man in his 50's, always wears a black tee shirt and blue jeans. Hotel staff will say he gets them mail order, a dozen at a time.If his closet is checked he does own the tradition blue suit, tuxedo, and other elements of the "adult" wardrobe, most of them still in plastic from the last time they came back from the cleaners, years ago. Has a gym membership, goes once a week or so.

 

According to hotel staff, he is load-ed, super wealthy. He rents a suite, two apartments connected by an ajoining door. He pays for them, month to month, with his platinum card. One side has a dedicated high-speed computer line, and a lot of state-of-the-art computer equiptment. He tips the maids to NOT clean this side, explaining he does not like to be disturbed while working.

 

The other side is the shabbyest room in the hotel. In fact, he has a running request of wanting to see any functional furniture the hotel is going to throw out to see if he wants to trade down. Housekeeping does clean and change the linens on this room. If the PC's are passing by while this room is being cleaned, they may note what appears to them to be alarmingly large blood stains, but the housekeeping staff will say is nothing unusual.

 

The strange thing, other than that he obviously has the money to be staying in a better place, is that he has visitors most evenings. One at a time, disreputable looking men in their 20's, White, Black, or Latino, mostly with jailhouse tattoos. They stop by the desk and say they are expected. The clerk gives them the spare key to the shabby room, then calls to say they are on their way up. Some may come once a week for months, others three or four nights in a row then are never seen again, the majority only come by once. They can be seen slinking out sometime between midnight and dawn.

 

If the PC's hack his computer, they will see he writes romance novels under at least five different pen names, banging them out at a rate of better than one a week.

 

The Novelest

 

Unlike the guy above, who never talks about his work, this 30-ish man with no visible means of support is writing a book. It's almost finished, just a little more work and it'll be ready to submit. Two movie studieos are already interested, just based on his outline.

 

The strange thing about him is that if he is in his room you can hear the steady tap-tap-tap of a manual typewriter. Nonstop. Doesn't he ever sleep?

 

The FBI Guy

 

A not unattractive man in his late thirty's, always wears a nice if somewhat rumpled three piece suit. Housekeeping says he has a truely impressive collection of pornographic magazines.

 

Claims to be a retired FBI agent (FBI will neither confirm nor deny). Unlike Wheelchair Cop has no useful contacts. Does have a detailed file on most of the other guest, with an elaborate conspiracy theory for each of them.

 

A very goodlooking young woman, who claims to be his doctor, comes to visit every Friday morning.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Lump In The Carpet

 

From time to time the PCs will spot a large lump in the carpet. Large as in something the size of a cat seems to be hiding under it. And if they watch, carefully, the lump seems to quiver every so often. Watch it long enough and you will realize the lump has slowly drifted across the floor and is now under a different section of the carpet. No one else seems to notice the lump, although everyone does step around it.

 

Once the PCs have gotten used to the lump, similar (albeit smaller lumps) appear under the wallpaper.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Crack in the Plaster

 

One of the PCs sets something down, hard, and it strikes the wall, creating a crack in the plaster. A moment later a fragment of plaster drops away, exposing not wood lathes, but something else. Something... metallic. Something warm to the touch.... That seems to be vibrating faintly....

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Dead Zone (location)

 

It is impossible to get a cell phone signal in one room of the hotel. Or a WiFi signal. Smells and taste are strangely muted there too. Any characters with enhanced senses will find that they do not work from that room, or on anything in the room even if they are trying to see it from outside the room. Almost as if there is a darkness field vs Everything except normal sight, sound and touch covering the room. Characters with Mental Awareness will report that the room feels cold, even though no two thermometers carried into the room will read the same.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Trophy Case: A case hangs above the desk. Inside is a badge, or trophy, or anything else that looks like a reward. Naturally the trophy changes every now and then as new rewards are given to the the hotel.

 

It's just some of the organization names seem weird to the casual inspector.

CES

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Elevator Operator

 

The hotel elevator is so old that is has an operator. His name is Greg, I mean Gregory, um Gordon, maybe it was Jordan, or Jordie, was it Jamie?

No one in the hotel is sure of what his name is, if the PCs are all together and they ask him they will each hear a different, yet similar sounding name.

 

At least they can all agree that he's a short black man, no he's average hight but he's hispanic, no he's tall and white, are you kidding he's very short and brazilian.

 

No one can ever agree on what the elevator operator's name is or what he looks like.

 

Wait...

 

What do you mean "he"?

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

the comfey chair (location)

 

There is an old wingback chair, recently reupolstered in leather, off by itself in a nitch of the lobby. Often someone will be seen napping in the chair.

 

People napping in the chair report the stranges dreams. Highly detailed, often of what the world would be like if they had never been born, or if the had followed "the road not taken," or surrealstic landscapes where familiar people are very, very different.

 

Some reformed criminals have claimed that a nap in that chair was what turned their lives around, seeing what would happen if they remained on their old path.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Mirror

 

This dusty oval mirror is set into an ornate frame. It is in an odd corner of the lobby or hotel bar/cafe (any spot that doesn't get much traffic). Most of the time it reflects the world around it, but occasionally, depending on certain factors (time of day, weather, phases of the moon), it shows something else. Other times (but still of the lobby), alternate times (ditto), or alternate worlds (ditto). Normally it seems to show the past, but at least one report seems to indicate a possible future.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Couple of stray ideas about the grounds:

  1. The disqueting cornerstone: In the oldest part of hotel (which has clearly been added to and remodeled repeatedly), now difficult to get to, is the ceremonial cornerstone of the original structure. Included are its date, the architects, contractors, original owners, and the name of the structure. It's the name that's creepy. It wasn't originally a hotel. Among the options: it was an asylum for the criminally insane; it was a sweatshop factory infamous even in the 1880's for unsafe conditions and worker injuries and deaths; it was a boarding school for some obscure cult which ended in a firey, orgiastic, gruesome bloodbath; it was a leprosarium, or other de facto prison and place-to-die for the medically unfit or physically cast out; or something else quite unsavory.
  2. The old monument: When strolling the gardens surrounding the hotel, there is a decaying, nearly illegible old stone monument among some scraggly dying shrubs. It seems this was the site of of an old "battle" in the Indian Wars, though a little research indicates that in the quaint way of the times the "battle" was really a massacre ... and among the massacre victims was a half-crazed old medicine man who cursed the site and those whites who slaughtered his people.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

You guys are just trying to make more work for me, aren't you?!? :P

 

:D

 

Something's Just Not Right

 

Sure enough, despite the fact that you're in the lobby at a quarter to two in the morning, there're two people ahead of you in line for the night attendant. The guy at the head of the line is in his bathrobe and pajamas, and smiles apologetically at you and the other guy for the delay he's causing you. He offers you both pieces of jerky from his depleted bag of snacks.

 

As you chew thoughtfully on the tough meat, you try to put a finger on whatever it is that's bothering you about the guy ahead of you, the second man in line. He looks like he's lost a lot of weight recently - his skin hangs in folds on his neck - and his suit is probably fits him strangely because of that. Of course, it's really only half a suit, you realize: he's wearing a suit jacket, white business shirt, and silk tie, but also a pair of colorful hawaiian shorts and flip-flops. He carries a briefcase, with papers sticking out of the crack; the briefcase is scraped and banged up like it's been dragged behind a car. Possibly the most strange thing about him is his cigarettes. They're black and smell very strange, and he has three of them, one behind his ear and two in his mouth, all lit and smoking. With a start, you see something white disappear in his mouth, and realize that he's eaten the bag of dessicant instead of jerky. He coughs once, but seems to show no immediate ill effects.

 

You look at the guy in the bathrobe who stares back at you nonplussed, awkwardly pause with your mouth open trying to find the right thing to say, when the odd man smiles so widely you think his head is going to split open, and says, "Very good jerky, yes?"

 

Plot Hooks:

 

1) Mystical: The odd man is a simulacrum, an artificial human created and aged alchemically in a vat. He has the knowledge of human culture you'd expect of someone who was created a year ago - mostly the absolute basics, without any of the common sense stuff you learn by experience. He managed to escape the lab, convinced that he's human enough to pass in regular society.

 

After he checks into the hotel (during which he'll show he has no idea what he's supposed to do), there will be a weird disturbance shortly before dawn. An odd glow-worm-like phenomenon will appear in many hotel rooms, crawling sideways over every surface as it phosphoresces a grayish green. Later, the odd man will appear in the public area, with an odd gray blotch on his face and looking extremely haggard - he knows it's his handler(s) looking for him by alchemical methods. If the players assist him or interact with him in any way, they may become targets as well, as the alchemist(s) try to contain the odd man and any who tumble onto his secret.

 

2) Weird Conspiracy: The odd man is a replicant, a clone of a specific individual. Unfortunately, he was poorly manufactured, and is starting to degrade - he's dropping weight at a prodigious rate, losing parts of his memory, and in general starting to go to pieces. Among his other problems, he's become convinced that he's the original man he was supposed to replace, and that what's happening to him is caused by some toxin introduced into his system by the Conspiracy. He's fled to the hotel to try to escape them. While in the hotel, he'll undergo a psychotic break, losing his hold on reality as his mind unhinges at last. What happens then is up to the GM, but the author has a mental image of a stormy night, with the odd man mutating wildly as his body begins to lose cohesion. He begins to stalk the halls, lashing out at passersby in retaliation for his pain and suffering. As the PCs begin to deal with this problem, three black limousines pull up in front of the hotel, disgorging twelve men in black suits and sunglasses, who turn as one toward the hotel and begin the task of "cleaning" the site and containing the clone, along with anyone else unlucky enough to be caught in their net...

 

3) Fortean: The man is a researcher in unusual phenomena. He investigated a reputed haunted site nearby, where people had reported strange lights rising from the ground and odd animal noises. While there, he was engulfed by one of these lights, which exchanged him for... something else. Something not of this earth. The inhabitant isn't an invader, but rather another victim - just as everyone can tell there's something odd about him, he can tell there seems to be something odd about the world. He continues to do really bizarre things to try to "fit in" with the people around him - the alien's idea of logic doesn't quite match up to regular human thought patterns. Gradually, he'll come to realize that whatever happened started when he was at the haunted site, and he'll make his way there to try to go back. If he does, will the original researcher make it back? Or will something even more bizarre, and malevolent toward mankind, inhabit his body next? Or will the researcher come back with some... improvements... that show just how insane that place was that he went to?

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Actually, they(we) should be adding it straight to the wiki :)

On the plus side, any entry you put in the subdirectly for guests will automatically put it in the random hotel generating program.

 

I may make a graphical version as well, that puts names on a floorplan. It'd have to use a specific floorplan though, so the x,y coordinates for where each room is could be determined beforehand.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

How about an event for one of your PCs?

 

The Dream

 

You are walking down a path. There are large mausoleums a short distance away. As you look at them, you see shadows on the surfaces of the tombs, and they are moving. One appears like an ancient Egyptian burial scene (someone appears to be wearing a costume of Anubis). Another is a flock of birds taking flight. These shadows do not appear to come from any source; they exist in and of themselves.

 

Unnerved, you turn away from this evil place and walk down a new path. On the ground you see two plastic dolls. They appear to be crawling to a destination. Their faces are twisted in sorrow, their tears frozen in their faces. These dolls were lost or cast away by their owners a long time ago. They just want to be reunited with the little girls they've grown to love and are desperately trying to find them. But the dolls will never succeed. They're dead, you see; they just don't know it yet.

 

And in case you're wondering where I got this idea, I'll tell you. I had this dream several years ago. I still find it disturbing.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Allways there bellhop -

Whenever you need something, you turn around & he's there, standing beside you & you never hear him walk up.

 

 

Never there bellhop -

 

They ring for him, you turn your head, your bags are gone. Get to the room, open the door, close it, and when you turn around they are in the middle of the room. And weren't when you opened the door.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Never there bellhop -

 

They ring for him, you turn your head, your bags are gone. Get to the room, open the door, close it, and when you turn around they are in the middle of the room. And weren't when you opened the door.

 

Never Seen Maids --

 

You see the cart, you hear their voices, you hear the sounds of things being cleaned and moved. You never see the maids. And if you go looking for them, you never find them. But your room gets cleaned anyway.

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Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Never Seen Maids --

 

You see the cart, you hear their voices, you hear the sounds of things being cleaned and moved. You never see the maids. And if you go looking for them, you never find them. But your room gets cleaned anyway.

Always Seen Maid

 

No matter where you go in the hotel, there's always this one creepy-looking maid with her cart, looking at you while she unrolls paper towels, or exchanges sheets or something. You're pretty sure you've seen her just around the corner even at the wee hours of the morning. In fact, you could swear she was identical with the waitress at the diner at lunchtime...

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