CoC game ideas (?)

[Illrein]

I have several ideas for a CoC game, and I want to combine all of them into one story. Trouble is that right now I'm bad at synchronism. I'd rather have the PCs be regular people (unique but generally ordinary people) with little to no excitement in their lives than the PCs be cliched private investigators. I know this may sound odd, but I'm curious about how those who may be reading this would relate these ideas:

1) One of the main NPCs (who I'm deciding would be a friend of the PCs) works at a delivery service. Recently a shipment came in from Alaska that is top secret and very important. This NPC's curiosity strikes him and he tries to convince the PCs to help him break in the delivery storage facility and find out what it is.

2) Rumors have been spreading around about a drainage tunnel that has been used for drinking parties and sex gatherings. The tunnel is also said to have spray-painted warnings and black magic ritual symbols, etc.

3) One of the PCs finds out that a local funeral home is letting those who pay an admittance fee sexually interact with the deceased.

4) At a local veterinary office, animals are dying on both operating and exam tables with a recent epidemic of an unknown illness.

5) A series of murders has flooded the city, with the killer leaving notes like, "They will serve me as I have served them" and "We are but mere poker chips in a gambling game of the gods".

 

[Eben]

I suppose you're playing modern day?

Nice start, but I'dd make it Antartica, gives you a tie into Lovecrafts work (read his novella: At the mountains of madness and check out Chaosium's Beyond the mountains of madness.)
Also, give you investigators (thats just a name, its like you refer to PC's in regular D&D) a reason for B&E.

I'll try to bring it together.
One of the investigators recently lost a friend/family member/SO/... Her body was found mutilated. There should be some siginificant clues, the police didn't really follow up. For example: the body was found near this tunnel.
This gives the investigators a reason to go checking out the tunnel.
Another investigator might be a doctor or a psychologist, who has a patient (maybe a friend of another of the investigators) suffering from delusions: telling how he was kidnapped and taken to a tunnel, where he witnessed all sorts af atrocities. (Maybe the murder?)
A third investigator has a friend working at the delivery service. The guy is rellay worked up about htis important parcel they are about to recieve: verry hush hush an all that.
The investigators now have a reason to go looking for the tunnel and a tie to the delivery. They might do some legwork first and you can flood them with rumours significant and other. If they don't want to check out the tunnel, have the patient kidnapped again, this will work better if he's related to one of the investigators.
If they go, you have 2 choices: to cultist or not to cultist. Maybe a ritual could be going on in which a demon is summmoned to perfom all sorts of gruesome acts with the victims supplied by the cultists and with some of the cultists themselves (gods are like that.) thic could be an exiting scene and really the opening move of the campaign.
A second possibility is that the investigators find the remnants of last nights festivities.
Important: have them find some clues at this points: references to the funeral home.

Legwork on the funeral home unearths all sorts of rumours, the most persistent being the one you listed above. The funeral home is actually a front for the same cult. A little B&E learns that al sorts of experiments are going on (you could get soem inspiration from Reanimator!) The goings on in the tunnel provide the raw material needed.
The investigtors should find out that the experiments are entering a final stage and an order book/dairy/whatever states that they are expecting an important shipment, to be delivered by... you guessed.

All this time, points 4 and 5 are going on. The murderen might be one of the victims that managed to escape, but went insane (or he might be one of the more "sussesful" experiments...) The epidemic is a first test by the cult: the want to spread massive death in order to bring back "enter bady's name here" (if you have it, check out Chaosiums Cthulhu companion: you should find an appropriate deity, I lost mine ) The moment the experiment enters a final stage, the epidemic should be able to spread among the human population.

Now the investigators have a reason to intercept the parcel: to save the human population in this region and prevent the return of "enter bady's name here."

At this point, the cult might be aware of the investigators. And if they've been clumsy, maybe the police is keeping an eye on them (maybe some high ranking officers are part of the cult?)So the B&E might prove to be quite a challenge. As to the contenst of the parcel: I'll leave that to your imagination (an idol, chemicals, a tome,...), but make it something unique, something that ends the threath.

The investigators have now saved the world, but there's a cult out there with a vengeance. The price of victory is quite high, as it should be in Coc.

There you go, let me know what you think. It still needs a lot of work, but the events can be made to tie in.
Good luck with your campaign!

 

[DnDChick]

Its usually a bad idea to start off a campaign by having the investigators talked or otherwise coerced into breaking the law. That sets a bad precedent that will only complicate further adventures. This isnt like DnD where you can more or less get away with certain crimes. In a modern settig, its really quite diffuclt to avoid gettig caught either in the act or later on.

A better role-playing session would have the NPC ask the characters to try to help him (or her) talk the administration into letting him have full access to the material. In the absence of good roleplayers, you can substitute Intelligence checks to represent the investigators using their credentials as scientists and academians to convince the admin to allow them access. You might even allow Bluff or Charisma checks.

Then, if that fails, the NPC loses a teeny bit of sanity from frustration, and decides to break into the place on his own. THEN he calls the investigators and tells them his plan, or they run into him on the way, etc. You could even have the NPC go off an try they B&E on his own, get caught, and call the PCs from his cell. That would give the PCs the impetus to wonder why on earth this package is so important!

 

[kengar]

DnDChick wrote:

Its usually a bad idea to start off a campaign by having the investigators talked or otherwise coerced into breaking the law. That sets a bad precedent that will only complicate further adventures. This isnt like DnD where you can more or less get away with certain crimes. In a modern settig, its really quite diffuclt to avoid gettig caught either in the act or later on.

A better role-playing session would have the NPC ask the characters to try to help him (or her) talk the administration into letting him have full access to the material.

I agree. Another option is have the package go missing and the friend in the shipping firm brings the investigators in to "quietly retrieve" it. The company will be badly embarassed if it becomes public knowledge that this super-sensitive parcel was taken.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Its usually a bad idea to start off a campaign by having the investigators talked or otherwise coerced into breaking the law. That sets a bad precedent that will only complicate further adventures. This isnt like DnD where you can more or less get away with certain crimes. In a modern settig, its really quite diffuclt to avoid gettig caught either in the act or later on.

Yes and no. I agree that in most cases, the option proposed by Erica (having the characters talk their way into getting access) is a good one. However, there is actually some story value in having the investigators break the law at the beginning: It undermines their credibility with respect to any subsequent attempts to inform the authorities of cultish goings-on, and takes them from the sunlit world of law-abiding citizens into a shadowy realm of illicit deeds where the investigators essentially are operating beyond the ken of civilized Man in rooting out the dark terrors they find.

 

[Razuur]

Unless your investigators work for a secret intelligence service of dubious intentions....

Then breaking in is status quo.

I suppose it depends on the type of game you play !

 

[Angelsboi]

OMG!!! What About This?

What about the idea of publishing a Mythos book. Imagine a wealthy cultist takes his badly copied tome bastardized from many of the truly hoorendous books by generations of cutlists.

Let's say that the spells the book contains have been garbled to uselessness by many generations of half-assed copying. At this point, all the spells in the book can do is cause headaches and insanity to those who read them. The wealthy cultist takes bits and pieces of his own Mythos knowledge, adds a few dashes of paranoid delusion, and mixes liberaaly with very bad pulp horror. When all this is done. He has a book that dosen't actually DO ANYTHING, but it stiil costs 1d3 points of Sanity to start i and 1d6 on completion. It simply drives the reader a little closer to crazy.

It dosen't seem to be that useful, untill the cultist buys a small bankrupt publishing house and has the damn thing run off by the thousands.

He is rich enough to give them away for free too. Schools, libraries, and so on. He also has agents sticking them in yard sales, flea markets, and secon-hand bookshops to be sold by unsuspecting people. Now what kind of effect do you think this would have? Is this more dangerous than the Necronomicon?

 

[shoplifter]

Pretty good, I think. If played well, it could go over. Might have to make sure the rich villain isn't too over the top depending on how your campaign is run, but nice

 

[Anabstercorian]

Great idea, Angelsboi!

That's really brilliant.

BTW - Idea. How about if everyone here tries something to create a villian - If YOU were corrupted by the Mythos, what sort of villian would YOU be?
I'd start off with me, but it would seriously freak you the hell out. So, um, you go first. I'll come in later.

 

[Angelsboi]

Ill do this tonight and post it tomorrow

and thanks !!! =)