Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

[Cancer]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

When you order coffee or tea, either in the restaurant or room service, it is always very, very strong. But there's a tang, or some funny undertaste, in both of them ... you can't be certain, because the stuff is almost black, but ... it reminds you of something, something you can't quite place, but the associations called up out of deep memory make you uncomfortable, for no reason you can quite put your finger on.

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

All deserts ordered in the restaurant, from cheesecake to ice cream, always seem to have a faint hint of almond.

[Cancer]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

... Bitter almond?

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Third Floor

 

There is something odd about the third level. Every third step creaks if on wood. If on tile, every third step is a loose tile. Every third door opened creaks. Every third window opens gets stuck halfway with a small screatching noise.

It doesn't matter which door/window you try - it will always be the third one. Trying the same area/door/window/drawer etc multiple times will not trigger the effect. Only three different areas/doors/windows/drawers...

[Narratio]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Other Elevator Passenger.

 

Tallish, thinish, late 50's, worn down looking. Nondescript brown suit and fedora, circa 1950. Batter brown brief case in one hand, a folded newspaper under one arm. Always looking at his wristwatch, a 1948 Timex and softly sighing. Never speaks, just shrugs. He's always in the elevator when you get in and always there when you get out.

 

Oddly, the newspaper headline is for October 1955 and declares jst one word, "Sputnik". He's had a really long day.

[Lucius]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

How about an event for one of your PCs?

 

The Dream

 

 

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.

 

You know....my contribution was based on a dream I had too. Actually, a dream I had and the subsequent events.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary mulls it over.

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Sometimes dreams come true, but in a twisted way.

 

Sometimes, the outcome of a dream is the opposite in real life. Let's say a PC dreams about meeting people he's never seen before in real life. They seem friendly enough. A few weeks later, he meets people who look like the folks in his dream. But these people aren't very nice in real life. They're actually quite obnoxious, and perhaps hostile.

 

Sometimes, the outcome is the same, but the details are different. Perhaps the PC dreams about tracking down a villain and attacking him. A few weeks later, that villain tracks down and attacks the PC.

 

The dream doesn't even have to come true in real time. Pehaps the PC dreams about certain events, then watches the events occur in the news.

 

Is it clairvoyance, or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? You decide. After all, the PC may subconsciously act in such a way that makes these events occur.

[Lucius]

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.

 

Just so I understand:

 

When you say "they're dead, you see" do you mean the dolls are dead, or the girls they seek are dead?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary suspects that, this being a dream, the answer may be "both - either - who knows?"

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

I meant the dolls themselves. They were thrown away for some reason. Perhaps they were broken. Perhaps the girls outgrew their toys. Or maybe they were lost instead and not discarded. It doesn't matter. They are in limbo for the time being.

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

How about this one?

 

If there is a shop in the hotel, it will include several mannequins or figurines as part of the display. When the PC is alone or wandering through the store unattended, he will hear whispers that sound rather ominous. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees some of the figures huddled together, whispering about evil deeds they plan to commit. When the PC turns toward them, they will appear in positions and locations he originally saw them. Nothing seems amiss. But every so often, whenever he's alone in the store....

[oroborous]

The Dollmaker

 

The Dollmaker

 

A saturnine man dressed all in black, with an Iberian complexion, dark hair and a dark goatee. He is in his mid-50s with white highlights near his temples and at the creases of his mouth. Sometimes he wears dark-rimmed glasses, but his eyesight seems to be keen whether or not he is wearing them. Sometimes his style of dress is slightly old-fashioned, wearing gloves and a cravat that looks Shakespearian. He has an English accent and is well-spoken, obviously intellegent.

 

He seems friendly enough, but in conversation he can be demeaning. It is almost as if he must prove his superiority to anyone he meets. His smile does not seem to reach to his eyes, and could rightly be called a sneer. He has at least one, if not several assistants that are simpering and deferential to a tee, some seem almost afraid of him. You notice that he speaks to all of them with utter contempt, as if he abhors even needing their help.

 

He is always carrying a black leather briefcase. If you ask him what is in it, he is happy to open it and show you his life-like collection of dolls inside, along with what looks like a miniature scepter with a white orb on the end. One of the dolls even looks like one of his former assistants, who you haven't seen around for the past couple of days.

 

Every once in a while he has someone come to his room and model for him. Later he is proud to show you his new doll, which is an eerily accurate reproduction of the model. Right down to the clothes that they were wearing.

 

Asking around, you can discover his name is Doctor Mestre, but that no one knows his first name. Also, you can overhear the cleaning ladies are upset that he brought his own wardrobe into the room, but their baffled because there is no possible way that it could have fit through the door. Even more baffling is the lamp on top of the wardrobe that stays lit, even though there are no electrical cords running from it.

 

Then you're watching CNN one day and there is the latest blurb about a missing young woman, sure to become the next hot topic on Nancy Grace. The picture comes up on the screen and you're thinking, "That girl looks familiar."

[AlHazred]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

This one is based on one particular joke in an old "What's New with Phil and Dixie" comic by Phil Foglio. I'm interested if anyone can place it without checking; I have such an infallible memory for game-related matters (and absolutely nothing else - my memory sucks otherwise) that I can remember the image perfectly. How sad is that?

 

Crosstime War

 

It was a mysterious mailing that first alerted you to the game, Crosstime War. Billed as the "ultimate wargame experience," the ad got you really excited, so much so that you're here, bright and early Thursday morning, at a tiny gaming Con in a strange hotel in the sticks.

 

Nevertheless, you found the out-of-the-way ballroom where the game was being held. Shrouded with black curtains that hang down from the badly-lit ceiling almost twenty feet above you, the room seems to have quite a bit of space, really - only ten people have signed up, yet you see easily twice that many people already here; apparently, the organizers have quite a staff. It looks like they really went all out promoting the proper atmosphere for the game, too - you were given a black robe to put on over your street clothes, before you even got to go through the curtains.

 

The game looks like it will be everything it was advertised to be, though. Beautifully-detailed game surfaces reflect a huge variety of tactical terrains - a futuristic city that actually glows in the dim light, a small village of mud huts in a terrifyingly savage jungle, dangerous-looking back-alley streets in modern New York - airless worlds and untamed wilderlands and mysterious plains, oh my!

 

----------------------------------------------

 

Well, you spent all weekend playing the game, but it was really, really worth it! The vendor in the corner sold his food much cheaper than you expected, and he had a steady supply - brought in by a steady circuit of delivery boys, everyone wearing the same black robes. With the food cheap and in plentiful supply, and the amazing detail of the game, the time just flew by - you think you may very well have been up for the full 96 hours of the Con! You feel that way, anyway.

 

But none of that fatigue can take away from the sense of accomplishment you feel. The game proved to be an intricate contest between rival factions in control of time machines. You were encouraged to participate in diplomacy and espionage between rounds spent directing your imaginary troops in challenging combats. You will always remember the triumph you felt when your squad of medieval knights managed to seize the flying saucers on the English countryside, and the effect they had "centuries later" when you brought their "descendants" in as reinforcements during an interstellar battle near Proxima Centauri. Triumph and cameraderie, as your faction won - these are the things that make wargaming worthwhile.

 

As you emerge, blinking and bleary-eyed, into the corridor, you turn to find a lot of the other Con-goers near you eyeing you strangely.

 

"Well, it took all weekend, but it was worth it! That was a great game!" you mused. "What time is it?"

 

"It's 9 o'clock," a staff member says. "And what do you mean, 'all weekend'? It's Thursday! The Con hasn't even really started yet! And that ballroom's not in use, anyway!"

 

Plot Hooks:

 

1) Mystic: The Crosstime Wars game is actually a moment magically unstuck in time. All sorts of people have participated in it, for the most part generals reliving old glory or youth burning to try themselves on the fields of war. The player might have stood across the table from a black-robed Julius Caesar and not known it, for the magic is such that people communicate on a mental level and never even notice, bypassing language barriers completely. Perhaps the magic was made for a reason, bringing insight to people of different times and places, inspiring great military victories. But to whose benefit? Or it could be inhabited by the ghosts of people who were and people yet to come, a chance to interact with might-have-beens. Perhaps one of the other people in the player's faction is actually his potential descendant, or his ancestor in another timeline. All that is known is that it is a controlled phenomenon: the player received an ad in the mail, after all. Someone's casting the spells - the questions of the day are, "Who? And why?"

 

2) Weird Conspiracy: The game is actually part of a real military operation taking place across space and time. The factions are real, and from the future when time travel technology exists. However, to prevent causality from ruining their efforts and possibly destroying their future, they cloak the war behind this elaborate facade. The different factions recruit people from all walks of life and all times and places, bringing them to a number of sites located in areas protected from time-shifting, all under the auspices of the Chronal Accords (think of the Geneva Convention, but governing crosstime conflict). The player has unwittingly been tapped for his knowledge of tactics and strategies, learned from years of playing wargames. Is this Crosstime War the last? Or will there be future conflicts where the player will again be invited to a "very special wargame."

 

3) Fortean: The "Crosstime Wars" event is actually a being of supernatural power. In but a moment, it draws lifeforce from those it ensnares, draining some of their essence and perhaps memories as well; they experience a period of "extra time," a hallucination which their minds fill with imagined experiences according to their expectations. Some people never emerge, their essences consumed utterly by the creature while they are enslaved to its will - those people reappear in other people's hallucinations as the "organizers" or "staff" of whatever imaginary event is created.

 

The being has grown powerful over the years. Where before it could only feed off of one or two people at a time, now it draws in almost a dozen. It uses its enslaved minions to draw in specific people, chosen for the succulent "flavor" of their life force. Perhaps over time, it becomes greedier, leaving none to emerge from the trap. Will the players realize what's behind the string of strange disappearances of whole classrooms or board meetings? And what will happen if the creature turns out to be "eating for two"?

[Cancer]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Oooooooooooh, a Gaming Con at the Creepy Hotel. That one hadn't occurred to me. Gotta let that percolate.

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Nothing creepier than gamers in an enclosed space ;p

[oroborous]

Re: Crosstime War

 

It would be really interesting if you ran into a silly little mop-top Englishman who liked to play recorder, his Scottish friend, and his cosplay girlfriend in the go-go suit.

 

Once again, you overhear the maids. This time they are complaining about the traveling magician, his magic box and his troupe. One says it must be the other magician’s grandfather, because the other one she saw was much younger, wearing a white suit and his assistants were both ladies and some really snotty red-headed dude they called “Turlough”. Then, another pipes up and insists it was a curly-haired gent and his assistant, Dorothy, who accidentally blew up the mini fridge one year. They all start arguing, and you hear about ten different variations on a theme.

 

The only thing they have in common is the box, but also 50% of the time the magician’s troupes’ visit seems to coincide with that of Doctor Mestre.

[tkdguy]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

I like that last one. The Doctor would fit quite well in this place.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Nothing creepier than gamers in an enclosed space ;p

 

Sad, but true.

[Mike Dean]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Old-ish thread. I'm reviving it. That might be bad. But I thought of one I like.

Linda

 

Linda is a pleasant-looking brunette woman in her early 30's. She is friendly and always sports a big, endearingly goofy smile. She perhaps looks a bit like Jane Adams. However, if she is ever bumped or jostled her head abruptly cants over at a sick, unnatural angle. A low cracking sound might accompany this.

 

If this occurs Linda does not speak or cry out, but quickly slips out of sight. She never loses her grin, though. If Linda is seen again, everything seems back to normal. (If jostled on purpose after the first event nothing happens, although if her skin is touched it may be cold and leathery.)

 

Linda is perhaps best seen only from a distance...across the lobby, on the other side of the hotel restaurant, etc.

 

Mike

[Just Joe]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Cross-posting from "The Lost Room Hero":

 

I'm thinking it could be a great new addition to the Creepy Hotel

 

I thought about this connection right away as well. My version of the hotel, if I ever design it, will include a few doors that go to the "wrong" rooms. There will also be some portals linking non-adjacent rooms, and at least one room reachable only through such a portal.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Part of me wants to go into more detail, but I'm hoping this will be enough to exorcise the demon that wants me to think about my potential future campaign that would borrow substantially from the Creepy Hotel and the Lost Room, rather than working on my new campaign that's supposed to start within the next couple of months.

[Just Joe]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The exorcism is not complete, thanks to my brother, who told me about a guy he knows who raised a baby "pinkie" squirrel to near-adulthood. The guy let the squirrel climb up his arms and onto his (bald) head. The scars and open wounds were, apparently, disturbing.

 

I don't think one would need to modify this guy much to put him in the hotel, though one might change the species of rodent, or change it to a small cat. One must decide whether hotel staff accept it or if he has to hide it (accepting a rodent would be stranger, of course). One could exaggerate the wounds, and maybe the animal would frequently put its mouth to the guy's ear and make quiet little sounds.

[AlHazred]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The exorcism is not complete' date=' thanks to my brother, who told me about a guy he knows who raised a baby "pinkie" squirrel to near-adulthood. The guy let the squirrel climb up his arms and onto his (bald) head. The scars and open wounds were, apparently, disturbing.[/quote']If you combine this with the Rats in the Walls encounter, he could be the mouthpiece or master of the Rats. People probably couldn't tell if it was a different Rat each time. And if the players can't tell who's boss, the Rat or the Man, well, that's even creepier...

[radioKAOS]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Doctor

 

This man is overly tall, with long appendages, and moves very slowly and fluidly, as if moving through heavy water. He has small round spectacles, very thin white hair on top of his large head, and always wears a doctor's white lab coat. He looks at no one, minding his own business until he spies a PC. He'll look at the PC for much longer than would be polite, then nods his head in a knowing manner at the PC, and leaves. He gets into the elevator alone, stopping anyone from entering with a simple hand gesture. The elevator closes but the indicator doesn't show it going anywhere. When it is called back to open, he is gone.

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Time Traveller

 

No one knows his name, or in fact what he really looks like. He wanders around the hotel, carries out his business, almost as if he were a ghost.

The traveller exists in a slightly different time frame, in a slightly different hotel.

He wanders about on a floorplan that isn't consistent with current hotel. He will occasionally open doors or go up stairs that aren't there. Or he may walk through a couch to greet a non-existant person on the other side.

Being slightly out of phase, he appears to be moving in slow motion and his features are blurred.

Occasionally his phase will align with the current reality by about a half an hour (33 minutes to be exact). Something may happen, such as a book being picked up, or a door being opened and a half hour later the Traveller will be seen performing the action.

[Curufea]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

Now uptodate

 

I'm thinking of splitting up events and locations into separate headings/namespaces too, btw.

 

93 guests and counting...

[Basil]

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

 

The Rain Man: a fellow in his early 30's rather ordinary looking. It's just that every time he goes out the hotel's doors, he get hit with water. It can be a suddenly-broken hydrant, a splashed puddle, kids playing with water pistols, --- whatever. He'll get wet. Maybe a sprikle, maybe a drenching. It always happens.

 

Unless it's already raining; in that case, the rain stops until he's no longer visible from the hotel's front windows. Then the rain starts back up.

 

He doesn't seem to care if he gets wet, and if the "coincidence" is pointed out to him, he'll seem surprised but uninterested.

 

BTW, if it's snowing when he goes out the door, the snow suddenly turns to rain. Ditto hail/sleet.