Need a good Opening for my Urban Arcana Campaign

[Labmonkey-XL]

So I have a decent sized player group, and an Idea of how I want to run the campaign, but I dont have any good first scenario's.

The opening of the campaign will be the PC's responding to an add in the paper for a small time paranormal investigator. They are under the impression that they will be detectives of the occult. Thing is, the guy they work for is such a scam artist, he really doesn't care if the job is real or not as long as he keeps getting money from the clients.

The tone of this campaign is more geared towards black comedy, but I want it to become more horrific as the campaign continues.

Major influences for this campaign are: Chuck Palahniuk (author of fight club, survivor, lullaby, etc..), H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Quentin Tarantino's version of a Ghostbusters movie. (hope it's not too hard to picture)

PC's will start to investigate clients and their paranormal dilemmas, bla bla bla...

Basically, I need a good introduction story/scenario to introduce the players to this campaign.

Sample Character Occupations:
-B Movie Actor
-Tabloid Journalist
-Ex Cultist
-Conspiracy theorist


Hope you guys can help me brainstorm! Thanx in Advance.

 

[takyris]

What starting level are you working at? I've got a few scenarios that might work, stuff from my own game (it's less dark, but you can make it darker without trouble), but it's geared for 6-7th level, which is where I started people (started at 6th, now in 7th). Let me know where you're going, and I'll post something.

 

[Labmonkey-XL]

What starting level are you working at? I've got a few scenarios that might work, stuff from my own game (it's less dark, but you can make it darker without trouble), but it's geared for 6-7th level, which is where I started people (started at 6th, now in 7th). Let me know where you're going, and I'll post something.

I'm going to start them off at level 5. Although I wont introduce them to magic just yet, they dont know *that* kind of world exists just yet.

The beginning should give them a hint that something sinister is at work, maybe some sort of Illuminati, or Freemasons or whatever. Thanks for the quick response!

 

[takyris]

Okay, 5th level is great. Strong enough to take on some nasty stuff, but still capable of being trounced by something nasty. As an introductory adventure with a mystery angle, here's the adventure I got my team started with:

http://patrick.wuut.net/snoqualmie/

I'll qualify that hugely by noting that it was made a) for 6th level characters, b) without a huge focus on combat, and c) for my characters. The latter is important because, at the time, I didn't have any stealthy party members, so I didn't put in any areas that would require stealth. On the other hand, I had some huge Arcane Lore, Search, and Investigate people, so I made it pretty difficult to get all the evidence to pull things together. Definitely use the skill DCs as a guide rather than as a hard ruling, and be generous in giving out synergy bonuses and Aid Another bonuses (I even let people Aid Another in different ways, like letting a person with Knowledge:Arcane use that to aid somebody on an Investigate check).

In order to make it playable for 5th level people, you might want to give the players a permanent +1 on all skill-type rolls or something (mentally -- don't tell THEM that).

You'd also have to modify the background a bit -- my players work in a crime-solving unit of the government (X-Files-ish, basically), so that's how I got them there. You might be able to get them there as investigative reporters, and have the sheriff be friendly to them nevertheless.

The adventure is also laid out so that people can definitely solve it without getting all the introductory clues and such -- I tried to note easy, medium, and hard ways to solve things.

And finally, I suck at maps, so I just sketched them, and they never made it into the HTML pages. Just make stuff up.

If that doesn't work for you, lemme know, and I'll see what else I have lying around.

 

[takyris]

Also. looking at that page, there's a lot of stuff that didn't make it onto the page -- this was sort of my cheat sheet, more than anything else.

Info:

Spoiler

Leafghosts are Washington state's equivalent of the mothmen, mysterious creatures that are sometimes glimpsed but never really understood. There's easily researchable information about them in the public library. The two hired killers are impersonating Leafghosts, but one of their victims was a Leafghost worshipper, and while the Leafghosts didn't love the kid, they're really angry about him being murdered, and now they're killing people, too.

The Leafghosts, not the smartest tools in the shed, are killing people who the victim listed as ticking him off in his blog.

And the plot points thing is to inject some randomness. When specific events happen, you add points, and when you reach a certain number, "random" things happen. It's a bit messier than a simple "if-then" kind of deal.