RPGaDay 2019: 19 Scary

I love horror movies, horror stories, monsters, aliens and all that kind of thing. In Internet Parlance, I’m what is known as a “Monster Kid.” Make of that what you will.

It follows, then, that I would be an early and avid adopter of games like GURPS Horror, CHILL, and my first-love, go-to horror game, Call of Cthulhu.

My games were always well-attended and with good reason: I was a great Call of Cthulhu game master. I wrote many of my own C of C scenarios and they were always a hit. I tried to keep the eldritch vibe but I also wanted “traditional” scares; zombies are a great palette cleanser when you stare too long into the Abyss and the Abyss stares back.

The first scary encounter I ever used was, it turned out, my best one. I re-used it with different groups, and even ‘ported it over into other games. It never failed me. I am now going to release it into the wild for your edification and/or swipe file.

The Set Up

This needs to be under ground, either in a sewer, or a partially flooded dungeon, or both. You need some water for this. You also need some holding cells. The players are looking for someone who has disappeared and their quest has led them to here, where it’s clear that something sinister is going on.

They walk down the hallway, peering into the cells. Iron bar gate, and every cell is sunken. Water from somewhere has gotten into the cells and there is about a foot of brackish water that comes right to the top edge of the gate. It’s easy to spot, as long as someone asks. Anyone rushing in would make a Dex save to avoid tripping down the stone step and crashing into the stinky water on the floor. That would seem to be the gag and should be played that way, i.e. "Okay, now that you know there's water in the cells you can easily avoid falling in and you can even see the step leading down into the cells."

The Hook

In the first cell, there’s a skeleton, in chains, sitting in the water.

In the second cell, there’s another skeleton, half-slipped out of the chains, also in the water.

In the third cell, there’s a man in a brown tweed suit, in chains, and he’s hanging upside down, his head completely underwater, his legs and body struggling furiously, and there’s a mass of bubbles around him. He’s panicked…

It’s usually about now that someone screams “I run in and save him!”

What do you do? Do you pick the lock on the chains? Or do you want to pull his head up so he can breathe?

“That’s it! I pull his head up!”

The Reveal

The character grabs the man by the shoulders and lifts…and he’s got no head. The neck is a gaping wound, and even as you let go of the corpse, you realize what was bringing the body to life as a horde of rats swarm out from the neck, running all down your chest and your arms and your back and, well, make a sanity roll now.

Sometimes they end up with a phobia. They always pick “fear of rats.” The swarm does little to no damage. The rats hit the water and swim out of the room. The corpse is actually a few weeks old. It's not who they are looking for. But whoever took their friend also did this, so this missing person's case just got a lot more urgent. And now  you’ve set the tone for the rest of the evening.

RPGaDay 2019: 2 Unique

Weird Tales Magazine called itself “The Unique Magazine” and it wasn’t an idle boast, either. Widely considered one of the greatest pulp magazines of all time, it premiered in 1922 as a ghost and supernatural pulp and quickly went into debt, as it was unable to find its audience. When a Shakespearean scholar named Farnsworth Wright took the editorial reins in late 1924 (himself installed by the magazine’s new owners), he heralded the Golden Age of Weird Tales by introducing the small but dedicated readers to some of the most important fantasy writers of the twentieth century.

REH's Conan was one of the most
popular series in the magazine.

Of singular note are the Three Musketeers of Weird Tales: H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard; Other less distinguished but no less important authors included: C.L. Moore, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Seabury Quinn, Frank Belknap Long, August Derleth, A. Merritt, Fritz Lieber, Manly Wade Wellman, and so many others, just to name a few.

Why should you care? Well, if you are an Appendix N Junkie (or Appendix E for you fifth edition folks), or maybe you’re merely interested in the history and development of the game, then Weird Tales Magazine is the Dead Sea Scrolls of D&D. You probably already recognized those names above as a significant who’s who for the original Appendix N.

Reading is not only fundamental, it’s required to play Dungeons & Dragons, and the experience of play was always intended to be akin to, if not adjacent to, a literary experience. Modern movies and television and increasingly-sophisticated video games tend to blur and conflate the chain of custody between gaming and literature, to our detriment, I think. Case in point; my current players relate all of their commentary in meta-game to playing Skyrim.

Sahuagin! No, Kuo Toa! Wait a minute...

This has an advantage in that you can play off of those expectations; my thieves’ guild is so much more vast, intricate, and interesting than the little gang of ne’er-do-wells in Skyrim that it blew the players’ minds when they discovered it, and just how vast and sprawling it really was. But that’s not hard to do. I mean, as cool as Skyrim is (I guess), nothing beats me at the table, doing my thing, and creating worlds that these guys live in.

Now, I told you that to tell you this: at least half, if not more, of my long-running campaign world is admiringly appropriated from much better writers than me. That was one of the dirty little secrets of the Old School Renaissance; players and DMs would gleefully steal any idea not nailed down, and even then, some of them brought a crowbar, just in case. I mentioned this previously when talking about the movie Beastmaster.

But the real stuff, the books and stories from Weird Tales magazine? Those decorated authors? That’s uncut, high end, mainline good shit, right there. What makes this so ironic is that, over time, Dungeons and Dragons had drifted—some would say by necessity, and others would say by design—away from being derivative of Conan, Elric, Lord of the Rings, etc. and into its own world that is ultimately unique unto itself…but also, and this is strictly my opinion here, very vanilla. D&D has, over forty years, become a kind of default setting catch-all fantasy world that is not bad, not at all, but it’s lacking some of the bumps and scrapes and dents and dings that first edition D&D had. Scars are sexy, and the early D&D was a Frankenstein’s monster that wore all of its influences on its sleeves…and its arms…and its face…and its body…

The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. For this reason, and for the hours of  reading enjoyment, I heartily recommend the works of these fine authors to you.
 - E. Gary Gygax, from the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide