[Grim Tales] Help me write an adventure

[Wulf Ratbane]

I'm going to run my regular group through this LXG adventure as well as during the con (why not get maximum return on your investment, right?), so I might develop it into a multi-session adventure for them.

Great idea, but it sort of puts a bullet through the Thing concept-- unless one of your players is going to make a new character. The Thing works, if not exclusively, at least best in a Con setting. Nobody knows each other, everybody wants to score "points," and nobody is attached to their character beyond the 4 hour time limit.

True, true. I just don't want it to turn into a CoC esque game. Kinda like the feel of Hellboy, there are things that go bump in the night, and the LXG are the ones who bump back!

Maybe it's just me but that's how every CoC game I've ever played has felt, anyhow...

I really like this idea. I need a way to create some tension in a very short time. This seems like an excellent way to do it.

It has merits but drawbacks.

I think we need to settle on a time period. We're getting suggestions that are all over the place time wise, so I think it would be helpful to narrow it down a bit. Wulf, suggestions?

Well, if you're fixed on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, anytime between 1880 and 1905 would work.

Personally, I don't think the LXG are a good cast of characters for a "Thing" plotline, though.

My friends and I have often semi-joked about The Kurt Russell Multi-Genre Roleplaying Game. You could have the entire cast be iterations of Kurt Russell from his various movies. (Snake Plissken, Sgt. Todd, Wyatt Earp, Jack Burton, R.J. MacReady... really, I could go on).

That would really make it difficult for the players to find the doppleganger, huh?

You may be reaching a fork where you have to decide between The Thing or LXG. They both have strengths.

 

[ragboy]

I think we need to settle on a time period. We're getting suggestions that are all over the place time wise, so I think it would be helpful to narrow it down a bit. Wulf, suggestions?

I like the late 19th - early 20th century. You get guns, but people still fight with swords and spears. Kind of a grab bag of genres and settings. And the characters can't expect/rely on technology to save them. If you're doing LXG, this is probably the time period you want...

Besides 'technological level,' the time period can serve to give you an interesting backdrop, including political tensions or all out wars. So, what's your poison?

 

[Munin]

Well, if you're fixed on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, anytime between 1880 and 1905 would work.

Sounds good, that's what we'll stick with. The Tunguska event occured in 1908, but it's close enough that we can use it if we choose to.

You may be reaching a fork where you have to decide between The Thing or LXG. They both have strengths.

LXG, no question. I like The Thing idea, but I want to do LXG. I wouldn't mind incorporating that remote artic station though. That's just creepy. Maybe instead of The Thing we could have a crashed Martian ufo or something.

Maybe it's just me but that's how every CoC game I've ever played has felt, anyhow...

Hehe, not the games I played in. In those games you spent half the time running for your life and the other half recovering from insanity.


So, what we've decided on so far is a game that is solidly LXG and set in the roughly 1880 to 1905ish period.

 

[Fenris]

My friends and I have often semi-joked about The Kurt Russell Multi-Genre Roleplaying Game. You could have the entire cast be iterations of Kurt Russell from his various movies. (Snake Plissken, Sgt. Todd, Wyatt Earp, Jack Burton, R.J. MacReady... really, I could go on).

Dexter Riley
Rudy Russo
Sidney Bower

 

[Ed Cha]

Don't forget you can get both Grim Tales and Slavelords of Cydonia at Indie Press Revolution.

 

[Munin]

Don't forget you can get both Grim Tales and Slavelords of Cydonia at Indie Press Revolution.

You gotta love the shamless plug!

I can't wait to fit SoC into my gaming schedule. It's so different from anything I've run my group through that I think it's really going to blow them away.

Now that I've hijacked my own thread...

 

[Munin]

Ok, for review, these are the plot elements we have so far:

Martians, not necessarily as the main antagonists, but still relevant and a concern to the LXG.

Recovered alien technology, canisters of antimatter or some such that could cause damage on a massive scale.

Tunguska, this is just cool.

So the next question is...who is our antagonist?

 

[Yuan-Ti]

So the next question is...who is our antagonist?

Let's brainstorm...

- Russian nihilists seeking to bring down the Imperial government got their hands on one or more of the canisters (Tunguska result?)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

So the next question is...who is our antagonist?

It is?

What about your scene building? Let your antagonist grow from the story you want to tell.

 

[Yuan-Ti]

Okay scenes...

Research:
Lots of talk about a remote research station in the arctic. Given the Tunguska idea, maybe it should be in the tundra of Siberia. What is going on at the research station... we have a lot going on with aliens and explosive devices. What is the purpose of the station? Maybe it was there to dig up a crashed UFO. They found the device which set off explosion of Tunguska. (The traditional UFO-conspiracy is that Tunguska was the result of a UFO crashing, IIRC.) I can think of two ways to do this part -- the LXG shows up and everyone is missing/dead. Or the LXG shows up and everyone has something to hide.

Chase:
It would be cool if the characters set off chasing someone they discover during the research phase or someone who interrupts their research phase. Preferably just as they have discovered something big but before they have time to fully digest it. If it is in the arctic, this opens up some chasing through a glacier-like setting, across ice full of ridges and ravines which create obstacles to the chase itself. Whether the arctic or the tundra, the chase should DEFINITELY involve sled dogs.


This seems kinda vague, but I think we haven't gotten to the stage of filling in details just yet.