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馃嚞馃嚙 Bologna la Grassa

A topic by giant_kumquat created Jun 11, 2020 Views: 150 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 2
Submitted (1 edit)


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.

HostSubmitted

I鈥檓 very glad you decided to try your hand at this jam, too. I, too, usually have problems conducting adventures by the book, and I admit that in this jam I decided to try to exceed my limits, just as you are doing. It has to be said, though, that Cthulhu Dark helps us a lot in this: the structure of the mysteries is not really a railroad, and it plans to be freely explored in all their parts.

Your idea sounds very interesting to me and I can鈥檛 wait to see what you鈥檙e going to bring out of that premise. Remember that investigators should be people with little power (for example, university students) and that the place of the final horror should be, literally or figuratively, the endpoint of a descent (for example, an underground laboratory). The best of luck!

Submitted

Balancing between giving a solid mystery and not  forcing my idea of the game on others has been as challenging as I expected. There is a fine line between describing key locations and charters, and those same locations and characters taking all the space in the game. I am not sure I succeeded, but I have definitely a better understanding of the craft going into that now.

Anyway, I think I am done with the bulk of the writing, but I still want to polish the wording in  the "creeping horrors", "themes", and "on a 6" to help bring out a certain flavour of horror. I bet it's the most difficult part, but the most interesting, too.  I am positive I should be able to wrap up something somewhat usable before the deadline, and hopefully an Italian translation to go along with it.

HostSubmitted (1 edit)

Very good! I鈥檓 still busy with the writing of the places and the central flow of the mystery.