I've had fun running cliche's. They're well known, so setting the stage is easy
I ran a Halloween game that started with a member of the party receiving a message. An obscure relative, a great uncle who he hardly remembered, was dying and, to the surprise of many, had named the character in his will.
The old coot had founded the family business and still controlled most of the wealth.
By the time the party arrives, he has passed. Now we pull out the cheese grater.
The house is a grand one, but slightly run down. It's on a point of land by the harbor mouth. To get to it you have to come by a road that winds through the moors, and looks like it will wash out with a heavy dew. Did I mention the impending storm?
By tradition, the will must be presented and read during the month after the death. To allow for stragglers, they're delaying it as long as they can, which means it will be read at midnight, the 31st of October.
The old man was cheap, and his instructions said that all of the servants should be released upon his death, except for the head of the household staff, an old retainer who's been with him forever. Uncle didn't see any reason why he should pay for servants if he's not there to be served, so old Grimsby is there alone to care for all of the guests. And yes, he's hunch backed.
The Uncle was quite strange, and for the last several months had taken to sleeping with a coffin in his bedroom. He said he wanted to be buried beside his one true love, but truth be told nobody knew he had ever loved anyone but himself.
He informs the guests as they arrive that the east wing of the house has been closed for years, and he asks them to stay out. Rumors among the rest of the family suggest that it's haunted.
Grimsby does his best to accommodate everyone, playing bell hop, cook, butler and cleaning staff. Dinner will be a buffet in the drawing room, where the reading will take place. He asks to leave early, before the storm breaks, because he has family in town. His personal belongings have already been removed from the house, as this is his last night.
The family is the usual assortment of relatives, hoping for a chunk of the estate. Greedy women and henpecked husbands, business partners who would give a shark a run for his money, ne'er do well grand children, etc.
The reading begins upon the first stroke of 12. To the surprise of everyone, the obscure relative (the PC) that nobody else ever heard of is left the estate and grounds. Most of the others named receive things they were already in charge of, as parts of the family business. Some were well thought out insults, etc.
As the storm rages outside, suddenly a beast comes crashing in through the drawing room window, attacking anyone in sight. He kills one of the greedy women with his first stroke. It's a Werewolf (or Werewolf Lord, depending on your party level), and he'll go after civilians first, then flee into the night when the damage starts to pile up.
Does the party want to hunt a Werewolf, in the moors that he knows and they don't, on a dark and stormy night?
One time when I ran this, the party took him down and discovered that it was Grimsby. He survived and begged forgiveness, claiming that this was the reason he'd had to leave: He can't control the beast on the nights of the full moon. One of the PCs ended up hiring him, out of sympathy.
Yes, there is a ghost in the east wing, a girl who had been hired as a book binder, to repair some old volumes. She'd been killed, suddenly, before she could finish, and couldn't have peace until the work was done.
The book in question was an extensive volume on Alchemy.
One more twist, of course: Nobody knows where the family fortune is. It's missing.
The party found the secret doors, of course. Servant's passages that ran behind the walls, so no one would ever encounter a servant in the halls, particularly when they were attending to duties like emptying chamber pots. (Hey, guess what, no flush facilities in a semi-medieval setting!).
The secret door in Uncle's chambers was the same, but there was a second one behind the fireplace. It lead down to a similar door in the drawing room fireplace. One is directly over he other. And yes, it's activated by moving the candle sconce. (Shades of Young Frankenstein!)
From there it leads down to a secret chamber. The stairs are remarkably broad and gentle, for a secret passage.
The chamber holds a full magic/alchemy lab, and a large marble table with restraints on the corners. There's a carved pattern in the table, like a tree. Examination will show that it's to collect blood from who or what ever is strapped down.
Notes comment on how to extract the maximum amount of blood from an Elf while they're still alive. A certain amount of wine thins the blood and makes it flow without clotting, but too much spoils it.
It turns out that the old coot has been having Elves kidnapped so he could bleed them dry, to brew Longevity potions.
There is, of course, a family crypt, in the graveyard on the estate. And yes, he charged family members for good spaces. His own burial plot is a plane one, off in an obscure corner of the grave yard. He didn't want to wast a prime piece on himself when he could get good money for it from a family member.
And yes, there are skeletons, armed with shovels, rakes and picks.
Uncle's final plan, by the way, was to return as a Lich. His wealth is buried in that second coffin. He planned to murder and impersonate, or possess via Magic Jar, the PC, that obscure relative that nobody else in the family knew. You see, because nobody in the family knws the PC, they won't be able to spot the change in behavior.
So who was supposed to apply the final treatment to Uncle? The same one who drugged and kidnapped Elves for the Uncle's lab, who murdered a servant girl when she realized what that alchemical volume was actually about, and who had murdered at least one relative that Uncle really didn't like. Grimsby.
In short, the butler did it.
I threw in every cliche I could except the old Gypsy fortune teller and the mysterious, driverless coach pulled by midnight black horses.
