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Shoot Da Moon
2013-06-11, 11:31 AM
I'm thinking of preparing a GURPS campaign where the PCs are ordinary modern day people who got mysteriously kidnapped and find themselves waking up in a completely deserted prison house, on a strangely abandoned island town, although there are signs of recent normal life going on.

They find that traps, puzzle locks, ominous warnings on the walls and evidence of some bizarre creature infest the place.

Think Receiver meets 999 meets Silent Hill meets the earlier parts of Resident 4 & 5?

Problem is, I can't think of a good "twist" or explanation for the story. Nor a suitable horrific monster. Not even some clever puzzles and traps to throw at the party.

Kami2awa
2013-06-11, 01:09 PM
- They're dead and this is the afterlife (not very original, sorry).
- This is some kind of training course for a monster-hunting organisation.
- The house itself brought them here; it's a living thing in its own right.
- The whole thing's a social experiment by aliens/mad scientists/a shadowy government organisation.
- They are, unknowingly, monsters of various kinds (World of Darkness would work for this). The house and monsters are someone's idea of effective containment.
- Their previous lives are false memories. The island is the "real world".

TheStranger
2013-06-11, 01:35 PM
Option 1 (my personal favorite): "You were not aware you were stealing from Keyser Soze." The PCs, through sheer coincidence, have managed to release the Sealed Evil in a Can (link omitted,thank me later) by doing relatively everyday things. For instance, the weathered driftwood Joe used for his campfire last weekend was in fact a guardian totem. Alice, inspired by her research into indigenous beliefs and some strange dreams, performed some beat poetry on open mic night that happened to be a minor invocation. Anyway, it all adds up to the end of the world. The Freemasons/Illuminati/doomsday cultists/whatever have brought them to the island (where the Evil was imprisoned) either as a sacrifice or because there's something they can do to make things better (not mutually exclusive options).

What's the evil? Some sort of Native American nature/apocalypse spirit, maybe. Obviously, the native people knew the island was cursed, but since they were wiped out by smallpox, nobody explained why building a fishing/vacation village there was a bad idea. Maybe their descendants are the ones who kidnapped the PCs, but do they want the spirit to be contained, or to cleanse their ancestral land of the European intruders?

Option 2: "The Big Lebowski." The mess the PCs are in would make perfect sense to some other group of (less-ordinary) people. People who owe money to the paranormal mafia, for instance. Or people who did strange summoning rituals they found on the internet. The PCs aren't those people, but good luck convincing their captors of that.

Option 3: "Unto the seventh generation." The PCs' great-great-great grandparents may have done something stupid.

smoke prism
2013-06-11, 03:48 PM
Trap 1: A room scattered bones (Arms, legs, skulls). Unless they specifically say they avoid walking on the bones one unlucky sod stands on the one of the bones. So lets say it's a skull you say: " As player A foot starts to apply pressure to the skull, player B feels sharp pain there skull.

A smart party will realise the conection and avoid the rest of the bones, but if they don't you can start dealing damage to them.

Good if this place has a supernatural bent. For added fun have this trap in a pitch black room.

Trap 2: A regular sized room, that has a pressure plate in the middle. When said plate is stood on a copartment in the roof opens, a lode of ash falls into the room. This plate also activates a needel trap. This is most likely to cause a lot of confusion.

Use this if you think the players are getting conplasment, it should het them in line (If it doesn't replace the darts with fire jets).


Trap 3: The classic gun wired to the door. Player opens the door gun gose of (I find shotguns are the most effective).



I hope these help. I can think of more if you want.

Nepenthe
2013-06-11, 03:51 PM
Every [some period of time], there is a Cosmic Lottery to choose sacrifices for [eldritch horror]. However, [another eldritch horror] was able to demand one stipulation. The sacrifices have to be people whose loss would not damage the plot of the universe. They have to be people who don't matter and will never matter. People who can't change the course of mankind or be of any real significance to humanity.

It's now up to the PC's to prove that they do matter -- that each of them has something to offer the universe that could not be replicated by any other human being. Ever. Good luck!

(Pro Tip: Escaping [eldritch horror] is something no other humans can do.)