How scared should we be?

[Vyrolakos]

It's Boston in the 1920's and your long term friend (a Private Eye, and a former Military buddy) has asked you to join him on a job out of town. He has been hired by a wealthy solicitor to locate a missing client, a millionaire who has disappeared under somewhat mysterious circumstances. It's believed by the solicitor that his client may have either lost his sanity and run off, or has done something silly, like kill himself.

You're a medical doctor with a 1920's understanding of Psychoanalysis and Psychology, and are hopefully going to be able to offer some insight. Possibly even help the missing person if he can be found alive.

When you arrive in the town, you discover that the missing person had placed an order for a truck load of salt (literally). The solicitor and his financial manager had cancelled the order when they couldn't get hold of the client, because they thought the client had lost his mind ordering tons of salt to be delivered to his home.

After initial investigations at the local town hall, library, sheriffs office and church, you get the keys to the missing persons house and head over to investigate his last known whereabouts. Hoping to find some clue as to where he may have gone. Apart from some previous (apparently explained) deaths at the property, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary - apart from the missing persons recent return from South America, and his apparent obsession with keeping slugs at bay ... by putting salt at all the doorways and windows ...

Now sure, As a PC, I've got warning bells going off like air raid sirens in my ears and I'm thinking - must buy SALT! But, as the character, a sane and supernaturally unaware Doctor, I'm just thinking, "this poor bloke must have lost his mind, we need to find him before he does something silly, assuming it's not already too late".

Upon arrival at the house, some strange things happen. A sudden sighting of a man wielding an axe in a clothes cupboard - who upon second look turn out to be just an overcoat on a coat hook, and then parts of the building falling apart around us for no apparent reason. Followed by people wearing strange clothes seen moving in a peculiar manner in the back garden when upon further inspection no one seems to be there or to have ever been there.

Being the helpful Psychoanalyst, after the initial shock has worn off, I point out that these things are probably just consensual figments of our own heightened imaginations caused by the abandoned state of the building and the fact that we have been reading up on all the suspicious events that have occurred at the house over the years. The mind plays tricks.

So far, nothing actually 'supernatural' has occurred.

How scared should we be?

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Pretty scared. Just by watching all those horror movies I can see you're just at the inflection point where things start to head south faster and faster. Oh, and it's Call of Cthulhu so you're all going to die if you're lucky, or worse if you're not.

Oh, did you mean in character? If your PC is superstitious he'd be feeling pretty nervous, otherwise not at all.

Let us know how it turns out.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Nothing there to be worried about yet.
Concerned about the patient, but not afraid for your own lives, and certainly not for the fate of humanity at large.
The creepy, unsettling bit hasn't even started yet.

But I hope your GM has a good collection of soundtracks. "The Resurrected" by Richard Band is ideal.

 

[Janx]

One point to clarify, is your PC a medical doctor, or a psychologist/Psychiatrist. The two ain't really the same, as in the former treats patients with cuts and booboos, and the latter treats patients who think they see dead people.

In terms of what your character knows, this distinction is important when you say "medical doctor with a 1920's understanding of Psychoanalysis and Psychology"

A medical doctor, whose background is mostly physical ailments, will probably have seen a few mental cases, and probably read a few articles on the subject. But that's not the same as being really up on the latest publishings of Freud or some such.

I think an MD will still play up what he knows (MDs are typically big know-it-alls). if nothing else, I'd steer clear of handing out full diagnosis, and your PC is probably "in character"

I think the challenge in the horror RPG is isolating what the player knows (SALT!), from the mindset of the character. Sounds like the OP has done a pretty good job of that, though I like it when the adventure makes that easier (we've all seen Supernatural, we know what the salt is for). I hate having to play stupid, because my PC isn't likely to know what I do as simple "common knowledge"

 

[Vyrolakos]

Yeah, I see what I did there.

My character is a Doctor, the cuts and bruises type, but he has pretty high skills in Psychoanalysis and Psychology (starting character with 45%+ in both of those two skills). Although in the 1920's I'm not sure 'psychiatry' was much of a skill, at least not according to some of the rather disturbing TV documentaries I've seen on the subject.

As a player I'm thinking "must get SALT!!!!", and as the character I'm thinking "poor mentally ill person".

Let us know how it turns out.

Oh, but I haven't finished setting the scene...

We've convinced ourselves that we're jumping at shadows (it's generally dark in there unless we open windows and shuttering... which we've been doing), nothing to worry about and we must find the missing person or at least find out where he may have run off to.

Eventually, we find his bedroom and have a small scary moment with a Raccoon that's somehow got stuck in the house and wants out. After freeing the 'masked terror under the bed', we discover a diary that details the missing persons obvious slow decline into insanity, constant references to people disappearing due to some creature that has followed him back from South America, and a curious reference to how "it" may be vulnerable to such a mundane thing as Sodium Chloride. We also find a jar with some salt in.

For some reason (the specifics elude me), one of the other characters (there is a Professor of Anthropology and a Débutante with us), goes down stairs to get some items out of the back of the car.

Those of us upstairs hear a shout and a kerfuffle, so we rush out to find the Professor being hoisted aloft and grappled by some slimy, slightly translucent tentacles that appear to be coming up out of the floorboards.

Needless to say, a whole bunch of Sanity rolls, useless gun shots, and finally salt throwing commences. Along with much screaming, hoisting aloft, tentacle consumption (bleurgh!) takes place and we eventually drive it back long enough to make our escape from the house .... with two of the four characters now on 2 HP's and being dragged by us to safety.

From 'scary coat in cupboard' and 'jump out of our skin Raccoon' - to - slimy tentacles trying to eat us and barely escaping with our lives.

How scared should we be now?

 

[Janx]

well, you should certainly be scared for your PCs as you are likely bringing a knife to a SkyNet-Kill-All-Humans fight.

Given that the salt trick worked, you should be able to justify salting everything, including your shotgun shells.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Well that depends ... are you using kosher salt?