Saturday, September 7, 2019

D100: Forget Me Not



Our regular DM wasn't available this week, so I volunteered to run a one-shot. Most of the week I was torn between a Cypher System Supers game or using an adventure for Call of Cthulhu with my homebrewed d100 game.

I chose the D100 game.

I had four players and character creation took 10-15 minutes. I ended up using a Vampire: the Masquerade character sheet for it's Abilities list and for three Attributes (Physical, Mental, Social).

The core mechanic is that the Game Master sets a Difficulty for a task, anywhere from 1% to 99% (a roll of 100 is always a failure), then the Player adds the appropriate Ability bonus, if any, and they must roll that amount or lowers on percentile dice. If Lee is researching folklore of Michigan the Difficulty is set at 30% and if he has a Academics bonus of +15% then he has a 45% to succeed.
If doubles are rolled on a success, it becomes a critical success. And if doubles are rolled on a failure, it becomes a critical failure.

Each player assigned one Ability at +30%, two Abilities at +25%, three Abilities at +20%, four Abilities at +15%, and five Abilities at +10%.

Then three points were assigned between the three Attributes however the player preferred. Each point could be used for an automatic success of the appropriate type, a player is trying to fast-talk a security guard, they would normally have to make a Subterfuge roll, but if they had unspent points in Social, they could spend one point to automatically succeed. They are designed to refresh after 7 hours of sleep.

Finally each player started with 12+1d6 Hit Points and 40+4d10 Sanity.

That's it.

I was running an adventure that was recommended to me by the Call of Cthulhu Facebook Group, Forget Me Not within the pages of The Thing We Leave Behind supplement.

The players were fantastic and the adventure is excellent. The rundown is that they all wake up, coated in mud, in a van that has run off the road, in a raging thunderstorm. They figure out who they are by their I.D.s and determine they are part of a TV show called the The Supernatural Files. By using Google, they find some episodes for Season 3 and learn that Lee is a Researcher, Agnela is the Producer and married to the Lead Investigator, Peter. The Director is a man named Clint and they realize they have a Tech Specialist named Susan who is not among them. Additionally, each has a key from the nearby Hathaway Inn, Peter and Angela have Room1, Clint has Room 3, Lee has Room 4. They search their equipment and some of it is missing and they find out they were filming Episode 6 of Season 4, A Creepy Thing Happened at the Cooper House in Clio, MI. 

A married couple driving by find them, after the group has called AAA, and offer for them to stay with them at their house just down the road. After arriving there and drying off, eating, and warming up, the AAA tow truck driver calls and says a nearby bridge is washed out and he doesn't know how long it will take him to arrive. 
They then call the Hathaway Inn and find out that a blond woman did arrive with them and she left with them and has not returned.

Angela asks the couple if they know anything about the Cooper house and notices that Aarron says "No", but his body language says "Yes".  The team split the couple up and Peter gets Aarron to reveal that as a young teenager he and some of his buddies went there on a dare. They moved through the bottom floor of the old home and while they were in the kitchen, Aarron says a mouth literally opened out of nowhere and a giant, horned silhouette stepped out of it. All of the kids booked it out of the kitchen door, but Aarron fell down and saw that the monster had six red eyes.

After a bit, the group decides to call the Sheriff and report that Susan is missing. The Sheriff says they have to wait 48 hours, but Clint points out that isn't true and they force the Sheriff to open an investigation and he promises to send over his Deputy.

Deputy Sharon Brooks arrives and reveals she's amateur cryptozoologist and a huge fan of the show. Since the rain has abated Clint steps outside and Angela follows him. He reveals that he has some intimate texts and photos of Susan and assumes they were in a relationship. He then notices a strange shape about 200 yards away on a low hill. Angela gets a video camera and zooms into see it using the ultraviolet setting. She clearly sees a large figure with cloven hooves, a muscular body with dark fur and the head of stag with a huge rack of antlers and six red eyes. At this point her camera catches fire and she burns her hand saving it's SD card. When she and Clint look again it is gone.

The go inside and are glad the couple has an SD card reader and show the footage off to the rest of the group. Angela goes to treat her burns while Lee plays the footage. When it zooms in on the creature's face, all six eyes glow red even though the footage is in the green of the UV mode.

It's at this point that everyone in the room is filled with a sour, rotting stench and a strange sound of something scraping on the ceiling. Everyone turns around and the six-eyed monster is amongst them and immediately grabs Deputy Brooks and rips her head from her body with blood fountaining everywhere.  Aarron confronted by his worst fear faints. Clint and Lee, who have handguns, open up and while their bullets stagger the monster, it doesn't leave any visible wounds. Peter just loses it and runs out of the room. Angel, hearing the screams runs to the doorway and uses a protective rite she had learned and is amazed to see the monster disappear from the room after its use.

The group is stunned and Lee has the good sense to call the Sheriff and report Brooks' murder and request more law enforcement and an ambulance. The Sheriff says he'll be right there, but the local Hospital is 35 miles away and it will take some time.

And that's where we left things for the evening. Unfortunately, my one-shots seem to take two sessions and hopefully our DM won't mind me finishing the adventure next week.




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