Hi there,
here's the deal: I have huge problems running scenarios as they are. I can wrap my head around games with an emergent mystery and I am a decent an improv GM, but when I set out to run one that has been written down by someone else, I rarely understand how I am suppose to do that by the book. Still, I feel like that I am missing out, with scenario written with good ideas for a lot of good games out there. I ran Cthulhu Dark recently, using a scenario for a change, and I feel I didn't do a great job.
Which means that I decided to jump into the first jam of my life with the idea of writing a scenario in order to understand better how a scenario should be run in the first place (go ahead, read that again, it still makes little sense to me as well).
Anyway, I have this idea for a scenario called Bologna la Grassa, dealing with insatiable hunger, physical and otherwise, in a town that I feel it's consuming itself, and what would people do to sate it, with delicious brooding cosmic horror powering it. I feel like a strong framing of the setup would do half of the job in having the players propelling themselves forward (and would take that bad aftertaste of railroading out of my mouth), so I am still a bit struggling with imaging who the investigators might be. I'm going for a disappeared person as the MacGufffin (a brilliant researcher at the uni) is what so a desperate colleague and maybe friends/family might still work, if a bit unoriginal.
The other idea is having the last part of the investigation in a place from which the investigator cannot escape easily. I like the idea of seeing the horror and not being able to do anything for it, but running away should still feel like an achievement. And maybe there should still be some reasons for investigators to stay, to face the horror for a bit longer. Which drops me back at square one with the setup, maybe?
I have a story-line, bits and pieces written for a few locations, but I think I need to crack these two first. Let's see where I land.