Wraith Form
Explorer
God, I love Cthulhu.
[/shuddering with hideous joy]
[/shuddering with hideous joy]
Call of Cthulhu, Greyhound style
- Thread starter kipling
- Start date
Wraith Form
Explorer
AAAAAAW, hell yeah! Great idea!Tom Cashel said:
Is it creepier to have the entire screen distort with grey snow/static--remember, show vs. tell, or just have the....Thing....blur in the foreground but everything else around the "manifestation," including the background and peripheral objects, stay in focus? To wit:
I like the idea of the video recording of a summoning ritual, the chanting and dagger brandishing, a building crescendo of yelling and wailing, the handheld camera bobbing, blurring and focusing on a victim strapped with bungie cords to a tabletop in some suburban home, and then at the very height of the ritual as the cult leader plunges his ancient blade into the futilely struggling victim's chest, when the investigators are fairly certain Something is going to make an appearance on screen From Beyond...
Nothing. All dead air, silence and grey digital snow.
(hisssssssssssssssssssssss)
Just as the investigators are about to turn off the video, suddenly the images flash back on, volume at full blast, with chaos, screaming and yelling blaring from the speakers. Shrieks of fear and agony, blurs of motion as running figures scream, "It's free!" and run beyond camera range. The video shows jerking, abrupt pans to the left & right and bizarre lens angles, the cameraman howling in pain and terror, with flashing glimpses of the cameraman's legs between the jaws of Something Big as the Thing tries to tear the poor man in half....
Then abrupt, terminal, fatal silence again as the screen goes fuzzy........
(hisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss)
Imagine the stunned look on your players' faces as you describe the above scene. (Or even better, if you can show them with a homemade video...no, not a REAL ritual, a fake one--silly rabbit!)
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Wraith Form
Explorer
Mmm, baby....I'm liking this one, too. Especially when the investigators found out that the meat hanging from those hooks ain't beef......kipling said:
More threads to tie it together
Ghouls would work in a meat-packing plant, and they have masks on so nobody can tell they're ghouls, but they all have that vaguely slumped dispirited look.
Or Tcho-Tchos. Because I read somewhere that too much refined sugar has ruined the taste of long pork (from the viewpoint of cannibals), so they have a specialized plant to get health food afficionados, for the primo cuts. People who have sworn off refined meats. And the Tcho-Tcho people are associated with Hastur, which ties into another thought I had last night...
Suppose someone on the bus has a copy of the King In Yellow? And during that long stretch in the Midwest where (to eastern eyes, anyway) every town looks pretty much like another, the town they're starting to resemble is Carcosa? Every set of city boundaries is that much closer to Carcosa... But, darnit, I can't find the Carcosa references in the d20 rule book right now. It's okay, there's no rush, but it irritates me that I can't find them.
And then suppose that there's someone else who gets on the bus who has taken the Unspeakable Oath, kind of like the sample Chosen of Hastur template. At any time, if necessary, he can burst forth with terrible tentacles and all, if Hastur (or the gamemaster) deems it appropriate.
Which is about the time they find out that the bus driver has been dead for some time, even though he's still driving the bus....
And when they recover from that, they think the adventure is over, but they still haven't arrived at the destination city.
Okay, I was never a big Hastur fan, but I'm seeing a lot of possibilities here, along with having a kid do the Name Game using Hastur's name...
Hastur Hastur bo-bastur, banana fanna fo fastur, fee fie mo master, Hastur.
Edit: And doesn't the name Yahweh mean something like "He Who Is Not To Be Named"? I like the idea of the cultist hiding in plain sight as a fringe Christian cult...though of course the idea might be repugnant to some, it won't offend my players. (Not quite...the belief is that the name of Yahweh was too sacred to be pronounced, so the Bible substitutes "the LORD" or Adoni in the Hebrew. But close enough for crazy cultists; they're like Mikey: they'll eat anything.)
Wraith Form said:Mmm, baby....I'm liking this one, too. Especially when the investigators found out that the meat hanging from those hooks ain't beef......
Ghouls would work in a meat-packing plant, and they have masks on so nobody can tell they're ghouls, but they all have that vaguely slumped dispirited look.
Or Tcho-Tchos. Because I read somewhere that too much refined sugar has ruined the taste of long pork (from the viewpoint of cannibals), so they have a specialized plant to get health food afficionados, for the primo cuts. People who have sworn off refined meats. And the Tcho-Tcho people are associated with Hastur, which ties into another thought I had last night...
Suppose someone on the bus has a copy of the King In Yellow? And during that long stretch in the Midwest where (to eastern eyes, anyway) every town looks pretty much like another, the town they're starting to resemble is Carcosa? Every set of city boundaries is that much closer to Carcosa... But, darnit, I can't find the Carcosa references in the d20 rule book right now. It's okay, there's no rush, but it irritates me that I can't find them.
And then suppose that there's someone else who gets on the bus who has taken the Unspeakable Oath, kind of like the sample Chosen of Hastur template. At any time, if necessary, he can burst forth with terrible tentacles and all, if Hastur (or the gamemaster) deems it appropriate.
Which is about the time they find out that the bus driver has been dead for some time, even though he's still driving the bus....
And when they recover from that, they think the adventure is over, but they still haven't arrived at the destination city.
Okay, I was never a big Hastur fan, but I'm seeing a lot of possibilities here, along with having a kid do the Name Game using Hastur's name...
Hastur Hastur bo-bastur, banana fanna fo fastur, fee fie mo master, Hastur.
Edit: And doesn't the name Yahweh mean something like "He Who Is Not To Be Named"? I like the idea of the cultist hiding in plain sight as a fringe Christian cult...though of course the idea might be repugnant to some, it won't offend my players. (Not quite...the belief is that the name of Yahweh was too sacred to be pronounced, so the Bible substitutes "the LORD" or Adoni in the Hebrew. But close enough for crazy cultists; they're like Mikey: they'll eat anything.)
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RangerWickett
Legend
You are scary folks. I wish I'd come up with the idea first. 
Just call it "Brigadoom"...
You are of course allowed to steal.
A new one popped into my head today--I can see that I'm already plotting out the whole thing; as long as our target got an unrestricted Greyhound ticket she's allowed to make as many stopovers as possible, so long as she gets the driver's signature on the ticket.
A ghost town that is literally a ghost town. It's the anti-Brigadoon, an old mining town that only exists for one day every fifty years (or every century). Kind of like the HPL story "Festival"--and our girl got to go to it.
You might figure that leaves our investigators out of it, but they find some man dressed in old-fashioned clothes worried about his coins--someone has stolen his coins--and it turns out he was on the bus, too, and decided to get back on the bus before the festival. He wants back--he thinks he's found true love with a young woman there--and so he's dressed in handmade clothes of the period and is carrying legitimate coins from the time. With him on the bus (and the PCs), it goes there in time for the Festival again.
He went there originally because he had an ancestor in that town, I'm sure; he wanted to see if there was anything left of it, the town that disappeared.
Of course, it's not a pleasant Festival, and once reunited with his blood kin, he begins to change. Not well for the PCs, I'm afraid...because they all look tasty.
Heh-heh-heh.
And somebody has slashed the tires on the bus, because wouldn't it be nice if they stayed for a while?
RangerWickett said:You are scary folks. I wish I'd come up with the idea first.
You are of course allowed to steal.
A new one popped into my head today--I can see that I'm already plotting out the whole thing; as long as our target got an unrestricted Greyhound ticket she's allowed to make as many stopovers as possible, so long as she gets the driver's signature on the ticket.
A ghost town that is literally a ghost town. It's the anti-Brigadoon, an old mining town that only exists for one day every fifty years (or every century). Kind of like the HPL story "Festival"--and our girl got to go to it.
You might figure that leaves our investigators out of it, but they find some man dressed in old-fashioned clothes worried about his coins--someone has stolen his coins--and it turns out he was on the bus, too, and decided to get back on the bus before the festival. He wants back--he thinks he's found true love with a young woman there--and so he's dressed in handmade clothes of the period and is carrying legitimate coins from the time. With him on the bus (and the PCs), it goes there in time for the Festival again.
He went there originally because he had an ancestor in that town, I'm sure; he wanted to see if there was anything left of it, the town that disappeared.
Of course, it's not a pleasant Festival, and once reunited with his blood kin, he begins to change. Not well for the PCs, I'm afraid...because they all look tasty.
Heh-heh-heh.
And somebody has slashed the tires on the bus, because wouldn't it be nice if they stayed for a while?
RangerWickett
Legend
Better than tire-slashing, what if the bus is a ghost, too? So when they get off, it seems fine, and when they go back to leave, it's a husk, a bus from the 40s, with a rusted out engine that won't run, and tires that have long-since mired into the soil.
arwink
Clockwork Golem
Why not make the reasons for being on the bus part of the mystery itself - No matter what they do to get off the bus and get away from it, they end up back on it by the time it leaves town. Something about the bus calls them back, and they find themselves sitting in exactly the same seats again and again.
This works better if they don't realise this at the beginning - everyone thinks they're on the bus for a legitimate reason at the beginning of the first session, and are quite likely to do so for a few sessions to come. It isn't until someone tries leaving town on another vehicle, or people should have gotten off the bus, that it becomes apparent that they're trapped ("Hey, Joe, didn't you get off at Pheonix? Where you going now?" "Er, I'm not entirely sure, I was sleeping on my cousins couch last I remember...")
Even more fun is if this happens one by one, and they originally think that this is somehow a curse related to the first PC it happens to (it's not like they know one anothers backgrounds, and this has been one strange journey so far). Run a session where they try to break the curse, let the PC leave and give them an NPC to run for the session between breaking the curse and leaving the next town, then bring him back.
This also gives you the added advantage of having a time-limit on all scenarios - things have to be solved before the Greyhound leaves town or everyone is called back to their seats. Also handy if you need to pull everyone's butt out of the fire, although it's only likely to work once or twice.
This works better if they don't realise this at the beginning - everyone thinks they're on the bus for a legitimate reason at the beginning of the first session, and are quite likely to do so for a few sessions to come. It isn't until someone tries leaving town on another vehicle, or people should have gotten off the bus, that it becomes apparent that they're trapped ("Hey, Joe, didn't you get off at Pheonix? Where you going now?" "Er, I'm not entirely sure, I was sleeping on my cousins couch last I remember...")
Even more fun is if this happens one by one, and they originally think that this is somehow a curse related to the first PC it happens to (it's not like they know one anothers backgrounds, and this has been one strange journey so far). Run a session where they try to break the curse, let the PC leave and give them an NPC to run for the session between breaking the curse and leaving the next town, then bring him back.
This also gives you the added advantage of having a time-limit on all scenarios - things have to be solved before the Greyhound leaves town or everyone is called back to their seats. Also handy if you need to pull everyone's butt out of the fire, although it's only likely to work once or twice.
You know, all this reminds ever so slightly of Galaxy Express 99, so may I make a couple of suggestions for characters...
The driver: He doesn't strike you as a bad fellow--not really--in fact he seems to be a folksy pleasant man with a ready smile and earthy, slightly rural sense of humor.
But nothing phases him. Ghosts, ghouls, hideous unmentionable crawly things--he justs takes it in its stride. He never gets attacked, he never gets killed--he's always there to drive the bus. As the trip goes along it should become clear that he has no ethical repugnance to the horrific entities either. ("Mornin' Ftharlat! How's the thr and loitrn?") He simply drives the bus. He's never late--he's never early. He simply drives the bus.
I suppose you might want to make him "Neil O'Tip", or something on those lines, but that's a bit too easy to my mind...
The femme mystérieux: A beautiful woman, who always seems to know what's going on, and never leaves the bus...
The driver: He doesn't strike you as a bad fellow--not really--in fact he seems to be a folksy pleasant man with a ready smile and earthy, slightly rural sense of humor.
But nothing phases him. Ghosts, ghouls, hideous unmentionable crawly things--he justs takes it in its stride. He never gets attacked, he never gets killed--he's always there to drive the bus. As the trip goes along it should become clear that he has no ethical repugnance to the horrific entities either. ("Mornin' Ftharlat! How's the thr and loitrn?") He simply drives the bus. He's never late--he's never early. He simply drives the bus.
I suppose you might want to make him "Neil O'Tip", or something on those lines, but that's a bit too easy to my mind...
The femme mystérieux: A beautiful woman, who always seems to know what's going on, and never leaves the bus...
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Byrons_Ghost
First Post
First off, the last post reminds me of one of my favorite places to rip off creepy moments: old "Twilight Zone" episodes- the original b&w ones. I'm thinking of an episode (can't remember the name) which essentially postulated that everyone has a doppelganger- an evil double from nearby dimension, that sometimes can slip through and make a person's life hell.
I'm reminded of this because the episode takes place in a bus station, with a woman waiting for the next bus. People accuse her of doing strange things- she'll go to the bathroom, then come back and find her luggage has been rearranged. Everyone else swears it was her that did it. One of the other passengers tries to help her out, figure out what's going on, but eventually the woman goes hysterical and gets carted away (or runs into traffic, or something). As the passenger is boarding the bus that's just arrived, he sees the woman's double sitting in the back with a wicked grin on her face.
Or there's "The Hitchhiker"- a woman driving through a storm passes a hitchiker. Then she passes him again several hours later- and she keeps seeing him as she drives across country. And at every stop, regardless of the weather, he looks as if he's just come out of a heavy rain.
Kipling- you may want to look at http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/newsdesk_info.php?newsPath=25&newsdesk_id=132
for some free short scenarios that could fit in to your side-treks. I'm pretty sure there's even a couple that start on buses. Also, if you can find an old copy of the modern adventure book "The Stars Are Right", I think there's a lot in there you could use. Such as a scenario in which a computer graphic artist creates an alignment of vectors to pierce the veil to another dimension. Or a radio telescope array that has picked up a signal from the star that will herald the End Times- and the reception is fast-forwarding the process.
There's other alternatives besides the bus trip, too- the party could be some sort of group that travels a lot, such as entertainers. If you have access to HBO, try to check out the show "Carnivale", about a Depression-era travelling carnival that's involved in all sorts of unsavory supernatural events. They even have an episode with the ghost-town idea. Babylon, Texas was mysteriously deserted during the day, but when they set up the carnival mine workers still showed up- after sundown.
Although it would take some adapting to work for Call of Cthulhu, the Second World website had an article called "Hitchikers" which was intened to keep the players moving around pretty much all the time. Check it out: http://www.second-world-simulations.com/WanderingDamage.htm
I love the ideas with the ghouls and the rituals. Also the tcho-tchos- they could be behind a lot of the health or organic food drives, trying to "season" the populace...
I'm reminded of this because the episode takes place in a bus station, with a woman waiting for the next bus. People accuse her of doing strange things- she'll go to the bathroom, then come back and find her luggage has been rearranged. Everyone else swears it was her that did it. One of the other passengers tries to help her out, figure out what's going on, but eventually the woman goes hysterical and gets carted away (or runs into traffic, or something). As the passenger is boarding the bus that's just arrived, he sees the woman's double sitting in the back with a wicked grin on her face.
Or there's "The Hitchhiker"- a woman driving through a storm passes a hitchiker. Then she passes him again several hours later- and she keeps seeing him as she drives across country. And at every stop, regardless of the weather, he looks as if he's just come out of a heavy rain.
Kipling- you may want to look at http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/newsdesk_info.php?newsPath=25&newsdesk_id=132
for some free short scenarios that could fit in to your side-treks. I'm pretty sure there's even a couple that start on buses. Also, if you can find an old copy of the modern adventure book "The Stars Are Right", I think there's a lot in there you could use. Such as a scenario in which a computer graphic artist creates an alignment of vectors to pierce the veil to another dimension. Or a radio telescope array that has picked up a signal from the star that will herald the End Times- and the reception is fast-forwarding the process.
There's other alternatives besides the bus trip, too- the party could be some sort of group that travels a lot, such as entertainers. If you have access to HBO, try to check out the show "Carnivale", about a Depression-era travelling carnival that's involved in all sorts of unsavory supernatural events. They even have an episode with the ghost-town idea. Babylon, Texas was mysteriously deserted during the day, but when they set up the carnival mine workers still showed up- after sundown.
Although it would take some adapting to work for Call of Cthulhu, the Second World website had an article called "Hitchikers" which was intened to keep the players moving around pretty much all the time. Check it out: http://www.second-world-simulations.com/WanderingDamage.htm
I love the ideas with the ghouls and the rituals. Also the tcho-tchos- they could be behind a lot of the health or organic food drives, trying to "season" the populace...
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