YOU WAKE UP.
You sit among trees, lying on soft pine needles.
Your clothes are torn, your hands are scratched. You’re in pain. You don’t know how you got here.
And you don’t know who you are.
There’s a dim, pulsing yellow light at the top of the hill, nearby.
Something is very wrong.
Will you figure out what happened in time to avoid what is coming?
“Kane’s Tone” is a modern cosmic horror scenario.
Pre-generated characters provided.
Content Warning - intense roleplay, horror, violence.
One year ago Kyle disappeared and you thought he was dead. Now he's dropped a message into the group chat: meet me tonight at Wakefield House. Sneak into the abandoned house that Kyle used to say was haunted to find out if Kyle is alive? What could go wrong?
Wakefield House is a scenario for FiveEvil, a game of unnerving horror that takes the basics of D&D 5E and turns them inside out. It will hit crowdfunding later this year from Handiwork Games.
Transhumanity stands on the edge of evolution and extinction. With the ability to upload our minds and nanofabricate almost anything, death and scarcity were nearly defeated. Then a war against super-intelligent AIs infected with an alien virus wiped out 95% of the population. Earth is a ruined wasteland, overrun by machines. The remnants of transhumanity—bio-engineered humans, uplifted animals, and infolife—expanded throughout the Solar System.
It's one of those months where there's so much to do and learn that you feel like you need to be in than one place at the same time. That's no problem! Upload your mindstate, fork it into copies each for its own chore, use standard tools to clip away their unnecessary memories and cut down that file size, and transmit them far afield - and when they come home, merge yourself together again. Nothing to worry about, perfectly routine.
But today you're back at home on Mars, along with your other forks - and your original self's gone missing. That's bad.
(This is a published scenario for Eclipse Phase, a game of transhumanism and horror)
You were born a slave, one of hundreds owned by the Warlock Ulmaator. You were raised in the child-pens by ghost-eyed caretakers, and when you were strong enough to move stones, you were set to work.
The years passed. You watched men and women hauled off as sacrifices to the Warlock’s whims. You waited. You found others, like-minded, unwilling to accept a life of bondage. One night a group of you escaped. You stole a small boat and struck out across the seas.
But Ulmaator summoned something, and it pursued you. A dæmon. It is implacable. Stones bounce from its hide. The foamy saliva that drips from the holes in its tongue melts skin, leather, iron. Its teeth can shear through solid steel. Its rolling eyes are lambent. It feeds on human flesh. It pursued you, caught you, and its strange limbs destroyed your boat.
You washed up here on the shore of this strange land, but you can feel, and you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt: it is coming.
Old Garathol died beneath the waves, but on the journey, they had told you of a ritual to Banish Demons. You must discover that ritual, or be devoured.
Outcast Silver Raiders is a blood-drenched occult medieval roleplaying game in the OSR tradition. It is what the televangelists, the hack investigative journalists, and the grasping Hollywood producers imagined when they caused a satanic panic around RPGs in the eighties. Daemons. Darkness. Sacrifice. Blood spilling over cracked altars in desecrated chapels. Players portray brutal warriors, clever rogues, and conniving sorcerers who reject the barbaric theocracy of medieval society to seek fortune and glory as outcasts beyond the reach of lords or God.
Boston, Massachusetts, 1920. A team of professional and amateur detectives have volunteered for the task of looking into a 'haunted' house. The pay is good, $20 a day each, and well, it'll all be sorted out with something simple.
Or so we all hope.
Call of Cthulhu is the Cosmic Horror role playing game placing players as normal people in a normal world with small, local problems. But investigation leads to discovery, and discovery leads to more mystery, as stranger and more difficult to reconcile things are experienced, the investigators question their beliefs and their very sanity.
The Haunting is the senario included with the quick start rules for 7th ed Call of Cthulhu, but no game knowledge is needed, as it's explicitly for new players.
You will need a set of roleplaying dice, pencils and notepaper. As a horror game we will be using safety tools of Lines and Veils and X Card.
The Brindlewood Charity Poker Tournament is a popular annual event in the Brindlewood Bay calendar. Members of the community are sponsored to play poker with the winnings going to the charity of their choice. However, little does anyone realise how high the stakes they will be playing for will go...
Brindlewood Bay is a roleplaying game about a group of elderly women—members of the local Murder Mavens mystery book club—who frequently find themselves investigating (and solving!) real-life murder mysteries. They become increasingly aware that there are supernatural forces that connect the cases they are working on.
The game is directly inspired by the television show Murder, She Wrote, but also takes inspiration from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, “cozy” crime dramas, and American TV shows from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Rather than a straight investigation, the players will collaborate to create many of the details of the mystery.
Everyone here had their own reasons for joining the cult. Everyone had something they wanted to escape. Everyone listened when the leaders said that all the signs had come, and the end of the world was imminent. Everyone here believed.
Now that you're in the Hollows, the closed-in cave beneath the cult compound where the leaders have promised you'll be safe, things seem a little less clear.
Everyone in the Hollows has something to hide.
It's not safe outside. Trouble is, it's becoming increasingly clear that it's not safe in the Hollows, either.
Written by David Morrison
Snowdrop House is a newly established B&B, which boasts the finest afternoon tea in all of Brindlewood Bay. So naturally, when an old friend invites you to tea you are quick to accept. However, Snowdrop House used to be the old Stockton Farm, rumoured to be the site of many dark secrets. Secrets some people might kill to protect...
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Brindlewood Bay is a roleplaying game about a group of elderly women—members of the local Murder Mavens mystery book club—who frequently find themselves investigating (and solving!) real-life murder mysteries. They become increasingly aware that there are supernatural forces that connect the cases they are working on and, in particular, a cult dedicated to the dark, monstrous aspect of the goddess Persephone will come to vex them.
The game is directly inspired by the television show Murder, She Wrote, but also takes inspiration from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, “cozy” crime dramas, and American TV shows from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s.
A group of strangers compete for fabulous prizes on a reality TV show. Alliances will form, tensions will flare, bonds will be broken, heads will roll - Wait, what?
A modern fantasy/horror game that leans into the tropes. Plenty of room for comedy too. The object isn't to win the game so much as to play out the shenanigans, try to survive, or die amusingly trying.
In the coastal port town of Balance, Ballentia horror lurks nearby in the creeping fog. Ships go to sea never to return and creatures slither silently by in the ocean.
The Wistal Whistles have been called in by Benedict Orez, young mayor of the town. He was recently appointed by his Grandfather and former Mayor Sirap Orez. He is determined to solve the mystery surrounding the fishing boats of Balance that don't always come back home as the town is now in big trouble.
Will the Wistal Whistles, an extraordinary mystery solving team, be able to figure out what's going on and put the town back to the bustling port town it always used to be?
A tale of curses, lost love and high seas treachery. Come aboard, me hearties as we take to the sea! Yo ho, yo ho, a pirates life .... and death ....
'Adrift on Ruined Seas' is a homebrewed one shot pirate mystery horror adventure based in The World of Isen created by Brad Zimmerman. The one shot is played over 3 to 4 hours with pre-generated level 7 characters featuring characters previously seen in another horror home brew one shot set in Isen, "The Hallowed Festival of Frights" with some new friends also in tow.
Warnings: This session is fairly fun and super welcoming of all ages, abilities and who folx are or want to be, there are one or two moments of scary. Just the usual mystery solving with monsters stuff but I like to be upfront and keep my players safety in mind at all times. Any questions regarding this, please ask. Also this session, being with level 7 characters is a bit more advanced so some basic prior knowledge is advised.
'Adrift on Ruined Seas' is set in the homebrewed World of Isen, created by Brad Zimmerman. Session DM’d by Julz Burgisser who plays Marley Kraff in the D&D 5e actual play podcast ‘Fate of Isen’ available for download on iTunes, Spotify and all good podcasting apps. See www.fateofisen.com for more details on Isen.