I’ve ran the scenario Separation Anxiety, from Fear’s Sharp Little Needles, for three players using Cthulhu Dark. I will break down my prep process, my decisions during running the game, and my conclusions. Get this collection if you can, by the way.
Prepping a Horror Scenario
There’s difficulties in prepping traditional scenarios written such as those for Call of Cthulhu, and different GMs may have found their own personal ways of turning railroads into something overall playable. While Fear’s… scenarios are so short they’re easier to run and improv, I still use the same process for prepping them. Therefore, a plot must become a situation and the expected events must become possibilities that can be inferred from a set of behaviors, motivations and circumstances. This method works for scenarios in general, even if they are much less flexible than Separation Anxiety.
To prep a Cthulhu scenario, my first move is noting down Motifs, keywords that evoke themes I should be hammering down through description, NPCs and that will guide me whenever I need to improvise clues or events. The players’ agency inside the simulation trump any need for a coherent horror story, so the best I can do is keep the horrific themes and symbols as my tool to lend the game some cohesion that doesn’t demand violating that agency. Motifs are generated from the Background of the mystery, slightly tuned if anything else shows up in other sections.
The plot of the scenario concerns the disappearance of a biologist (called B.B.) who was investigating her own family tree, an ancient sorcerer who’s her father, and weird fertility rites in a farm owned by him and his respected, rich family. I drew the following Motifs: Family, Whiteness (the family has a syndrome that makes them a very particular shade of white), American Dream (due to the idyllic farm, apples, and the narrative of an evil family reconstructing themselves to build a successful business), Vigilance (the family stalks and kidnaps people that share their bloodline through following the news), The Mother of a Thousand Young (the deity is mentioned and relates to the other Motifs), Fertility (the whole scenario is ripe with the idea of fertility and ownership of fertile bodies).
Once that’s done, I note down the locations. Many modules presume play is a temporal structure, moving from determined events in order to guarantee the dramatic pacing and emotional engagement of mystery and horror fiction. I dislike those standards for RPGs. Traditional roleplaying is a spatial simulation and determining what happens and may happen inside certain locations is the GM’s major job, not specific set pieces. So I ignore any imagined plot in a module and note down locations in the following way:
- Short description.
- NPCs tied to it. NPCs are noted down concerning occupation, important relationships that may influence actions, and motivation.
- Clues. Include a specific object or person tied to it.
By the end, I have a location based mystery. Clues are flexible and some might not be location tied. I add them to the places they are most likely to be encountered through interaction with objects and people.
In many scenarios, I set up a Clock. By adding a temporal axis to the situation, I now have an important event or consequence happening in the background that the players can only stop if they skillfully gather and act on the information. This lends appropriate dramatic gravitas without needing resources like railroading, and puts player skill as the most important aspect of horror gaming.
Separation Anxiety includes a small note that the Keeper decides B.B.’s state when she’s found. I set up a Clock to decide for me.
By the end of this process, ignoring the order clues should be found or suggested events as railroad, I have the mystery as a simulation, and my function is presenting the choices of going to these locations, giving information and describing the consequences of actions.
The Game
I always strive to open my sessions in any game with the following:
- Very fast mood setting through the environment the players will have to make their first meaningful choice on, not far from it.
- Giving them in narration all the information they will actually need to make the first meaningful choice.
- Lay down a few obvious options they have for that choice, and finish with a version of “or whatever else you feel like. What do you do?”.
That’s how it went this time. In detail, I made the mood setting with them sitting in a car (so they could drive to any location to investigate). I laid down the theme of Whiteness and societal corruption mentioning that the police searched for B.B. with some attention at first because she’s a beautiful white woman, but they eventually stepped back. That set enough of a bleak mood together with a brief mention of the climate.
The rest of the mood setting was by summarizing the police having interrogated them (as all were friends of B.B.), and I relay the information they needed to know to start the mystery with that by excluding distracting leads and giving them a list of locations and people they could go after. I know some GMs would prefer to start at the interrogation and give some roleplaying right off the bat, but I find that such starts are fine in fiction but don’t offer much meaningful choice for the players. So a fast infodump that gives them the information for making choices feels more practical than a rather linear and non-impactful opportunity for improv, even if it’s more flavorful.
They established their characters and personalities in the car and through their grief over their lost friend. One of the players decided her character, Dahlia (interestingly enough considering the themes of Whiteness as symbol and societal force, her character was Latina), was in fact B.B’s girlfriend, which I gave the okay in (the text briefly mentions ex-boyfriends of B.B., but her sexual orientation isn’t particularly important in the scenario, and in fact the focus of social forces and white patriarchy that I chose for our game actually makes that information more relevant, so I was glad to indulge). I also allowed them to declare which were their relationships with B.B.’s mother, colleagues and such. My rule is that I’m the authority on the world and NPCs’ relationships with each other, but I don’t care if players suggest relationships they previously have with a few NPCs as long as it doesn’t contradict the world, nor bypass challenges and choices.
They interviewed her mother. The scenario suggests the mother will admit she had a fling with the sorcerer in the interview, but that came up later through a tense phone call as the confirmation of what they already knew, which worked much better atmosphere-wise. They also had a talk with B.B.’s teacher (which led to a tearful exchange between Dahlia and her over grief), messed around with her computer, read some history, researched the family’s property, did a road trip, and had a few Insight rolls along the way, as is standard. The negative effects of the Investigation rolls turning up 6 would take the form of feeling presences (the motif of Vigilance) which recall The Mother of a Thousand Young and the sorcerer. Those were heavily improvised because figuring ways to represent that in a 6 is tricky, so of course I returned to the Motifs again and again for inspiration.
A lot of improvisation for information, or how to give the clues outside the text’s expected events, was done, and that’s why I do the prep the way I do. The road trip is where problems started, since instead of approaching the farm they decided to tour the nearby town for extra clues (this is what made them lose time in a way that sealed B.B.’s fate). Everything in the town had to be improvised, of course. They hit up a diner (one of the PCs, Kelly was obsessed with eating and diners were a frequent occurrence in description) and a Bizarro version of Twin Peaks’ Norma filled them in with information, because that was the best way I could figure out in short notice. Things got more complicated when they split to cover more terrain.
Two players (Kelly and Jane) went to see records, and Dahlia decided she desperately needed to see an occult shop. Very well. I had the players check the records (they failed to find anything) while I sketched in seconds what Dahlia was after. The Motif list had American Dream, so I decided the shop would be a failing, ugly thing, owned by a man who was the complete opposite of the suave sorcerer antagonist, and who was quite disturbed by the town’s superstition. They had a brief conversation, and I needed to give her a meaningful choice. Recalling the Fertility Motif, and that the shop is a failed wreck, I had children throwing stuff on his window until he ran after them with murderous rage, and the player had the option of checking shit at the back, running the risk of an arrest if she was found. She succeeded with a 6 and had a terrifying experience, after finding a journal where the owner discusses the fertility rites.
After that, they finally hit the farm, did the tour (lots of opportunities to reinforce American Dream in the descriptions and entitled families that were also visiting), collected information and I reinforced some clues. They went back to town to get a guard dog (the family disliked dogs), a gun and oil to start a fire, “just in case”. They entered during the night, and found B.B.’s dismembered body still alive and regenerating (the family bloodline is tainted by an anomaly that gives them regeneration). They tried to escape, crashed the car in a ditch, and had to put fire in the farm to escape the ravenous farmers ready to kill them, as the manifestation of the Mother of a Thousand Young raised from the smoke into an abomination that marked the sky. Adjudicating the chase and the fight was rather amusing, having overall binary results and having to make calls based on what the objective was. On a failure, they actually had the opportunity of leaving B.B. behind and escaping.
They refused. That would later prove to be a bad choice.
Having burned everything, they met the cops. I did the call that it would be rather uninteresting if the cops simply shot them, especially because the situation was so deeply bizarre. They were arrested, B.B. went to the hospital, and the police later got involved in a shootout with the family. All is well.
I fast-forwarded most of the interactions between players and cops, because there was no meaningful choice. B.B. was in the hospital, and the players were sent back to their homes. This was, all in all, a good point to stop. The scenario was pretty much over, everyone had fun and the whole chase and fight with 40 (!) monstrous farmers was a great climax. All it needed was a final statement. So of course I checked my prep, as one should always do. I crossed the Clock with the Motifs and, of course, all that I had described.
I said that the PCs, later, were all reunited in someone’s house just trying to process the experience when B.B. threw a rock at the window and asked to be let in. She obviously had run away from the hospital. She climbed, looking through the window in paranoia (Vigilance) and asked to hide. One of the players suggested the closet. That was a mistake. B.B. and Dahlia got into the closet (yes, it was funny) while Kelly and Jane listened through the door.
B.B. started to explain how she was running from the sorcerer, and how she came to say goodbye. How he would never stop pursuing her (Vigilance, Fertility). The players, naturally, asked what they could do to help her. She answered that she would have to live on the run, but that there was one way for her to be helped: they had to solve a newfound craving for human flesh, that was tantalized through symbols and such in the scenario as I ran it but it was barely there on paper.
Everyone stood up and took notice. They asked how much flesh, and if a finger would suffice. My answer was succinct:
“It starts with a finger…”
Unfortunately I didn’t screenshot the players’ reactions to that single quiet line.
Jane heard that and decided to get the fuck out, and so she did. Dahlia opened the closet and asked Kelly to get a knife, suggesting she would sacrifice herself for her love. When Kelly turned, Dahlia decided to smack her upside the head so B.B. could eat her instead. Both players rolled, and Dahlia lost, so I had B.B. hug her, tell her “how much she missed her” and rip her throat off in a gesture of love so they could be together as one.
Kelly started shooting at B.B. in panic, while Jane returned with gas to burn the whole building and end that nightmare at once (no, she didn’t care she would kill her other friends, she just wanted to clean the world from that shit). I had the player roll to see if she would escape her own fire or not. The player failed, and I said Jane managed to escape regardless. She was met outside by the sorcerer (Vigilance) while the other PCs and B.B. burned to death.
Conclusions
Everyone had fun. A few commentaries were given over the foreshadowing (a result of using the Motifs list) and how themes of trauma, queerness and such were presented. Which was interesting. One criticism was over me being lenient during the chase. I understand that declaring they were not locked into the car after crashing may have been lenient, but I was interested in giving them interesting choices than being all tragic. And if they had not burned the crops to distract the farmers, they would have lost anyway, so their problem-solving shined through.
One set of mismatched expectations was about taking notes about clues. We agreed next time it’s explicit that players should take notes of the clues.
Regarding rules, I keep enjoying Cthulhu Dark and tend more and more to use binary results through the Failure Roll to solve situations, as I deal better with those than the graduations of effect described in Investigation Rolls and Doing Other Things.
Some of the Motifs weren’t used or much developed but that’s perfectly fine by me. I would hate to be forced to use all of them, because that would imply a role as storyteller beyond the simulation, and I rather have no expectations. A lot of the social aspects, such as possession of daughters as property by fathers, corruption at the heart of nuclear family and others, were very clear to everyone (it helps that it’s a table of queer leftists). One of the players noted how B.B. being made non-heterossexual led to interesting symbolism of a traditional family trying to reclaim through violence their queer daughter. This was of course not intentional, which is why I insist Keepers should just trust things will fall into place and meaning will be created in retrospect. The motif of Family, in a certain way, was fulfilled by the very nature of play, since the PCs may be understood as B.B.’s “found family”.
Roll to Doubt 