I'm running a Delta Green game as a sequel to a CoC game which went very, very well last Halloween. We've already gone through two sessions since, completing a pretty awful few days embedded on an island off Vietnam, and now there's only time to wait between missions. But that's not important. What's important is where they're going next.
IF YOU RECOGNIZE ANY OF THIS BEST TO STOP READING HERE FOR NO SPOILERS, YOU HOOLIGANS
Okay, now. I'm sending them to the Isle of Skye, where they'll wander for a while, seeing shapes and shadows in the distance, before finding a small town beside a forest. Their instructions will be vague, as always (I'm not quite certain what they'll be yet), but they'll slowly discover that this town is on the cusp of their winter solstice festival, wherein heinous acts and sacrifices pierce thin the void between this world and others. The catalyst is a wriggling alien which sits in the bottom of a well, guarded by goat-like manservants in the forest.
These people will be mostly benign, but the powers they're etching into the world anything but. I want ideas to flesh out the place so it doesn't feel sparse, general spook and flavor to really give it a personality. I'll be posting several of my ideas below.
The setting, by the way, is December 1965. This will be set immediately after the lunar eclipse on December 8th of that year.
I'm really trying to avoid the standard tropes of Shadow Over Innsmouth and other "town is found to harbor great evil" stories whilst also cultivating that essential abyssal feeling one gets when all is not as it seems. The townsfolk only have the slightest idea that what they're doing is perhaps objectionable, if only to outsiders, but these outsiders have experience they do not.
>A lone shape sits atop a jutting rock in the Scottish hills, crouched yet tall. Before the party can get a good look at it, it turns and shuffles away, in the direction of the town.
>A group of three townsfolk is seen arguing over a basin in a back-alley, a sheep held upright by its feet among them. Eventually, to mild distress, the sheep is silenced and cut open, exposing its liver, the contents of which are pierced open and drained into the basin.
>Children in the town cannot stop talking to their parents about the frightening men in the woods, and will be hushed or tucked away.
>At one point the party will awake and all the town will be empty, save for one or two apprehensive townsfolk. There is a great crackling in the forest, like a bonfire, and light flickers from between the pines. When the scene is approached, it seems there are more people there than had been in the town, and some of them are moving quite strangely.
>Out in the forest a ways are a series of damp and rocky caves, and if the right path is taken through them, it eventually leads to a hole about the size and width of a human. If the party decides to squeeze through it bodily, they'll be lead into the dripping habitat of the alien.
>The alien resembles nothing like a grey, or a little green man, it is instead something like a grotesquely outturned set of organs, like a single cell, mitochondrial strings and inner membranes and all, metamorphosing into an imitation of a blooming lotus.
Have you seen The Wicker Man? THe original one, I mean.
You should, I think it's going to be useful.
Make sure to chuck in a couple of good red herrings
>>44279851
Any suggestions? Like having the goat-men seem like the focus and then throwing in the twist of the alien, or the thought that a small section of the town is involved in the cult, and not everybody like for real?
One of the more fun details is throwing TEM OHP AB in ancient Gaelic on the mantle of the town center. Can't wait to see the look on the player's faces when they read that shit backwards.
>>44279442
Wicker Man was part of my study materials, I haven't had the time to see it yet.
>>44279013
>very, very well
Holy fucking shit how pretentious and shitty can you possibly be? Seriously I can only imagine that this game in question went well as in everyone wasn't like "you're a stupid motherfucking pile of shit" like they usually do based on how you type.
You're a goddamn retard you stupid fuck up.
>>44280067
I uh, guess I could explain that. They all told me later it was one of their favorite RPG sessions they'd been a part of and they'd love to do similar stuff, and I was pretty proud of myself too, after improvising the second half. I'd never run a horror one-shot before (it was sci-fi horror campaigns all before) and I think the use of music impressed them (I spent eight weeks writing and putting together a playlist for the session). One of them called it "inspirational" and I got all warm and fuzzy inside.
Sorry that rubbed you the wrong way, man.
>>44280154
>confirmed for massively autistic
>>44280162
hey dawg it was worth a shot
>eight weeks writing
Dude, get help
>>44280067
>Being this Booty Blasted.
>>44279013
Pick a small town near Detroit. Spend the day there. Should give you plenty of inspiration.
Thanks /v/ for ruining an interesting thread.
Read The Festival by Lovecraft, if you haven't already.
>>44279938
>the thought that a small section of the town is involved in the cult, and not everybody like for real?
Also, this. And maybe what they're doing benefits the town. Jobs are plentiful, weather is often good, crops never suffer.
A while back I threw my Call of Cthuluh group a curve ball in the form of the mythos cult gathering to upkeep a containment spell/magical seal to keep a continent devouring creature asleep for another ten years. The look on their faces when, after charging in Tommy guns blazing, the discovered this face was priceless.
>>44281869
It was off and on, I had university stuff to do in the mainline.
>>44286574
I was thinking of having the crops just now beginning to suffer, after so many years of good fortune. Some of the townspeople might be beginning to wonder whether the lean-to blackout bile harvests have actually been helping things along for real, or if it was just a peak before an inevitable valley.
>>44287569
I had considered making the town totally innocent, but I wanted it to be more in the grey than that. All of the stuff the party has faced so far has been very clearly bad shit, and doubts are only just beginning to surface. The only real danger so far is the things the alien's presence might bring from across the ethers, which may go skittering away into the forests to do God knows what.
>>44285306
I can agree, or try to watch how Pennsylvania dutch do their thing.
