Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

[Captain Emu]

Hello all,

 

Thanks again to everyone who helped with the Cthulu stuff a bit back. Since then I have formulated an outline for the openign game. My players (my wife and her sister) have decided they wanted to play a sort of Old West Pulp Horror setting.

 

The characters are both female, and interesting set of problems in such a setting in itself. One of them is a sort of con-artist who maquerades as a soiled dove. The other is a lady cowboy, a sort of rough and tumble "I'm as good as the the boys" sort.

 

Anyhow, my idea for the first adventure and how to get them into the mythos is to use the old "mysterious gift" idea with a bit of a twist. The game opens with them travelling by stage coach when the coach colides with a stranger who stumbles from the treeline and is killed.

 

The man looks to be afflicted with some sort of disfiguring pox, but none that any can identify. On the man they find a strange parcel that is bound in ancient cloth and chained closed. There is a letter with it, addressed to a man in San Fran. The body is loaded to the top of the coach at the insistance of of an NPC preacher and the parcel is held onto by the same.

 

The game continues until the coach lurches as somethign shifts up top. They stop the coach and climb atop to find the enshrouded corpse of the stranger is perhaps not dead - it moves. As they try to look closer, strange things happen and a creature emerges from within the corpse and flies off into the quiet of the night...

 

This is just an intorduction. I have a series of outlined events in mind, but was curious what some of the other "mythos" players might have to auggest as posible routes to take this. I have to admit, this is my first time running anythign that uses the mythos specifcally.

[Cold Steel]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

Being a paranoid with regards to Lovecraft, as a player i might watch the preacher's reaction to the thing coming out the body. If the group were to continue on, they might have a gut feeling that something was following them to whatever destination the women are going.

[Captain Emu]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

The plan is for the creature to show up later. The paranoia should be built by the fact that the thing doesn't bother to fight or anything, but goes off like it has better things to do.

 

The overall story includes a scene on a train ride to SF with an encounter with more mythos denizens and the discovery of a conspiracy against a wealthy debutante in the city.

[Midas]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

Here's a curious coincidence: We watched the Firefly ep "Our Mrs. Reynolds" last night, speaking of working girl/con artists.

 

Something I wanted to bring up in the other thread, are you doing Peterson Lovecraft, or Lumley Lovecraft? Peterson Lovecraft has been described as "Paranoia without the laughs," while Lumley could be described as "Randolph Carter meets John Carter."

 

IOW are you going for body count (horror), or Victory Against The Unstopable?

 

Even if it's a MacGuffin, it's still important because somebody somewhere is going to be mightily interested in the package. One of the tropes of the subgenre is that opening the Mysterious Package only makes things worse; But either nobody suspects that, or it is the better of the alternatives. Also, when the Knowledgeable Source shows up and insists that the package be opened, he is either one of the bad guys or doesn't know as much as he thinks.

 

Have you decided on using a particular Mythos greater being as your...villian isn't the word. Thing which put the events in motion? Typically "defeat" of one of the Great Old Ones isn't possible; merely foiling their plan, whacking their pawn, etc is all that is available. Afterwards, the GOO might take a personal interest in heroes extinction, or will shrug, call it a learning experience, and try again soon, say in the next ten centuries or so.

 

"Spawn hatching from a corpse" is a common concept in the Mythos. I can't guess which -if any- of the established GOO is responsible. Nyarlathotep is always a good (if overused) choice, since his personal quirk is messing with humans. A seldom used but viable choice in this story is Yhidra, a kind of Mother Goddess figure, but vary different from Shub Niggurath. She has a mutagenic power; she can transform creatures into whatever she feels like sculpting. In the American Southwest, Yig, Lord of Serpents is powerful. Could the exiting NPC be a "Feathered Serpent"? Disfigured by multitudes of swelling snake bites...hmnn...

 

Midas

[Captain Emu]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

Wow,

 

That is a lot of stuff. I have to say that my knowledge of the Mythos is a bit pathetic. I am more familiar with the theme and tone of the genre than actual names and such. You have given me some serious food for thought, Midas.

 

The current game is designed as an intro. The characters are entangled in a plot by powers most mortal who wish to use the powers of the GOO for their own purposes. This allows me to ease them into the setting and also keeps the badguys on the lower level for now. I can build from here into any direction.

[Midas]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

Wow,

 

That is a lot of stuff. I have to say that my knowledge of the Mythos is a bit pathetic. I am more familiar with the theme and tone of the genre than actual names and such. You have given me some serious food for thought, Midas.

 

The current game is designed as an intro. The characters are entangled in a plot by powers most mortal who wish to use the powers of the GOO for their own purposes. This allows me to ease them into the setting and also keeps the badguys on the lower level for now. I can build from here into any direction.

 

Me knowledgeable about the mythos? Wait 'til Thoth Amon shows up. He'll straighten that misconception out immediately. I'm just a gamer standed for decades in rural Appalachia. It's not that bad, more Mayberry than Deliverance. However, For local reading, if you aren't interested in Field & Stream or four wheeling magazines, you won't find much in the local stores. So I amuse myself by reading scenarios for Hero and CofC.

 

Your relative ignorance of the Mythos is -in this case:D - a good thing. The Cthuhlu Mythos has gotten a bit fossilized over the last couple of decades: The Mythos has far fewer monsters, but everybody has memorized the equiv of the D&D monster manual, and there are certain problems with "canon" use of this that or the other monster.

 

Having the villian be a human using the GOOs is great. IMHO leave it at that, with maybe some minor monsters and spells, and never have the GOOs appear at all.

 

Can't wait to read the write up,

Midas

[Captain Emu]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

I have to say that I like the feel of the Mythos and have always felt a little hemmed in by trying to stick to the published beasties. The genre has so much to offer, and I'm sure if anyone was actively writing/publishing in this genre we'd have seen a slew of new creatures.

 

The plot pretty much develops with the parcel being an idol with a strange power - it slowly leeches power from other realms into the space immediately around it thus it can corrupt things in our world with enough exposure or even allow lesser creatures to slip between worlds. The cloth it's wrapped in is actually a piece of blessed cloth that shields it. The stranger had made the mistake of tampering with the shroud.

 

I like the idea of it being Yig, that would work well with the Southwestern setting and then I can send the heroes into the New Mexico desert and have some trippy American Indian shaman NPCs and such.

 

Also planning on a brief encounter with some Chinese NPCs while in SF, perhaps a grungy shop for some exposition.

[Curufea]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

Here's a curious coincidence: We watched the Firefly ep "Our Mrs. Reynolds" last night, speaking of working girl/con artists.

 

Something I wanted to bring up in the other thread, are you doing Peterson Lovecraft, or Lumley Lovecraft? Peterson Lovecraft has been described as "Paranoia without the laughs," while Lumley could be described as "Randolph Carter meets John Carter."

 

Lumley is a Mary Sue fanfiction writer that likes to use the names of characters and creatures he's read in Lovecraft and other Cthulhu Mythos stories.

He doesn't actually write anything close to Cthulhu Mythos.

[Cold Steel]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

What's a Mary Sue fan fic writer?

[Curufea]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

Mary Sue

 

The rest of the rant I've moved to the NGD as it's off topic.

[Cold Steel]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

wikipedia is one good teaching tool.

[Curufea]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

wikipedia is one good teaching tool.

Another threadjack here.

 

Because of it's regulating nature - where internet folk can correct the information - wikipedia is the equivalent of "anti-fanfiction"

[Captain Emu]

Re: Pulp Horror Adventure Idea

 

A bit of an update -

 

First game went down alright. Character got ahold of the parcel and resisted the urge to look inside, especially after seeing what happened to the drifter. They did read the letter and got the connection between the parcel and a rich heiress in San Francisco. So it was off to the train.

 

While on the train there was a dream sequence in which the "soiled dove" wandered from the main coach cars onto a "mysterious" car at the rear of the train. While there she was treated to a rather surreal scene with a table where animals were playing poker and were making their bets with human finger bones. At the head of the table was a large rattlesnake (with hands, but hey, it was a dream). The dream culminated in an eye to eye meeting of gazes between the soiled dove and the snake man against a backdrop of tribal drums. She was roused from the dream by the haulting of the train.

 

The players decided to take a bit of a stroll in the night air as the train took on supplies and fuel, being cautious of several "colorful" character millign about the station as well as a small group of ragged and rowdy Army troopers who had made a few incidental appearances on the train.

 

Just as the players (and their characters) had had time to settle themselves after the exposition of the dream there was a shirek from the sky and the sound of flapping as the thing that had sprung from the stranger body back in the mountains came diving out of the dark. Terrified and a bit under-gunned to deal with this fiend, the girls (the PCs) retreated toward the train. The Army troopers came to their rescue and there was a bit of a rowsing fight scene as the train pulled away, leaving the hapless troopers to their fate. The PCs got away as one burley Sergeant spattered mos of the creature's head with a shotgun just as the last of his life drained from him.

 

We had to end the session there, but it seemed a good place to end as the train chugged into the night, leaving the characters shaken and the players a bit rattled.