With OGC over and everyone engaging in reminiscing, feedback, and such, I thought I'd add a little somethiing to my already posted opinions of the con. This time, I'm posting what can best be described as Designer's Notes....giving those who are interested a peek behind the curtain and show how I came up with the three adventures I did for OGC and why I did what I did.

The three adventures were, "Isn't It Romantic?" for Paranoia, "Everybody Dies" for Call of Cthulhu, and "The Pursuit of Justice" for D&D 3.5. I'll take them in that order.

Isn't it Romantic
Well, obviously, everyone was a member of the Romantics, but the further twist was that everyone was actually a spy for a different Secret Society. And hey, why not? Afer all, everyone already has a Mutant Power and is a member of a Secret Society, and naively believes that they are the only one (or at least one of a very small, very elite percentage of the population), so why not add another secret that each Troubleshooter is convinced that he/she is the only one? So yeah, everyone's a spy for elsewhere.

Since The Romantics worship the Old Reckoning culture (as in, our culture today), then it only makes sense that the society has splintered into different factions. DC fans, Marvel fans, Trekkies, X-File enthusiasts, etc. Since the theme of the con was "superheroes", that part of the backstory practically wrote itself. This was going to have to involve superheroes. And since I'm a DC fanboy, guess which one got more coverage? And guess who the eventual enemies were in the Big Battle?

Which brings me to the gear. Research and Development ALWAYS has new technology for the Troubleshooters to field-test. So, I grabbed some of the more logical/popular DC gear or tech that duplicated powers and put it into the game. Some close runners-up that were discarded at the last moment were: the Atom's size/weight control belt, Hawkman's anti-gravity belt and hawk wings, and, God help us, a suit that enabled someone to duplicate the powers of Aquaman! The twist for this equipment was that, the stuff actually WORKED (with a few grotesque exceptions). Granted, some of it worked TOO well (Green Lantern's ring-mounted green laser kept going through its target and punched holes in stuff behind the victim), but it worked. And of course, Green Arrow's trick arrows had to include a thermonuclear warhead arrow; it's NOT Paranoia if there isn't some access to nuclear weapons. One group used it, so that's a job well done!

The Planet of the Apes/Escape from NY cosplay scenario was the last locale I put in, since I needed some more encounters to flesh things out, and figured that another Romantics sub-group with be the Cosplayers.

As for using Sesame Street,well, the show's supposedly an educational tool. So, to the people of Alpha Complex, this is some ancient center of learning. I also really hate Elmo, so I enjoyed placing him in the module as an eventual target.

Everybody Dies
I approached this one asking myself "What would happen if a group of Investigators already STARTED out the adventure insane, but the insanity was subtle?" And so, that was the premise I used....a group of seasoned Investigators are already nuts, as a result of a pyrrhic victory against an Elder God. The insanity? Multiple Personality Disorder. Each Investigator's brain overloaded and created a new persona based on the Investigator's hobbies/interests, in order to cope with the madness. So, the meek accountant who loved reading adventure stories became an Indy Jones-like character. The mundane housewife who loved going to movies became a movie star, etc.

The next thing was the setting. Part of the horror of Lovecraft's stories is the isolation featured in many of them. Gee, how about an island off the coast of Maine with no boat handy? Isolated enough? Ok, check. Graveyards and asylums are prime Cthulhu fodder, so how about an asylum on an island? What else do islands have? A dock and maybe a lighthouse. OK, done.

Next came the antagonist. There's no creature that possesses victims in the way I wanted it to, so I made up my own. It's a minion, a herald of...who? Hmmm...Hastur seems to be big on the whole "stars are right" thing, so let's make it a Herald Of Hastur, who is trying to bring his lord to Earth.

And here's the adventure's deep dirty secret: there was NO timeline to speak of! Sunset would happen around 6pm. The possessed professor who summoned the adventurers needed to sacrifice them around 2 am (which is why I tried to keep a poker face when people suggested "Let's just spend the night here in the asylum's cellar and explore tomorrow when it's light"). That's it. Otherwise, the adventure was completely open-ended. Want to check the lighthouse first? Sure, be my guest. Explore the asylum? Yeah, go for it. Check out the old graveyard? Whoops, that's where the professor is. Do it during the remaining daylight of that first day, and he'll be more or less rational. At night, he's completely possessed by the Herald, and ready to use Mythos spells to summon armies of Byakhee or turn Investigators into beef jerky.

The adventure delivered on its promise, "Everybody Dies", because everyone's fake persona wound up "dying" when an anti-psychotic drug was administered.

The Pursuit of Justice
The con's theme was superheroes, and what D&D class personifies the hero who fights for Truth, Justice, and the Faerunian Way than a Paladin? Paladins are my favorite class, and I feel they end up misunderstood by many players. And that's scarecely surprising, considering how many times I've seen Paladins played as these dour, humorless, milk-drinking, naive, armored tanks that run around screaming "Repent!" while swinging their sword at anything that remotely resembles evil. Unfair, I tell you....unfair!

So, let's do seven paladins (yeah, a nod to "The Magnificent Seven", and "The Seven Samurai"), and make them from as disparate a group of gods as possible. First of all, no Tyr or Torm...those two are done to death, and are more the stereotypical Paladin gods anyway. Desi, the gnome Paladin of Garl, is based on an NPC in my Forgotten Realms campaign. Dark Agnes, the tiefling who follows Siamorphe, goddess of nobility, is based upon the same character in my campaign and is run by my wife Carol. Matthias, the follower of Ilmater is based in part on a similar cleric recently run by my son John. The paladin of Lathander was thrown in to be more of the stereotypical paladin, the Hoar-worshipper was patterned after Wild West bounty hunters, and the paladin of Kelemvor was based on Hugh Jackman's VanHelsing, only without the ludicrousness of the movie. As for the paladin of Sune, I threw her in to be a) an annoyance, b) a possible romance partner with the paladin of Lathander, c) a counter-balance to the grim and gritty paladins, and d) all of the above.

As for the encounters, although there were ample chances for butt-kicking, many of the encounters were tailored for a non-violent, creative resolution. There was no "right" way of doing it. Also, each encounter was meant to highlight one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

And again, like the Cthulhu adventure, the title described things to a T, since the Paladins were pursuing a crazed/possessed cleric of Helm who called himself Justice.

So, in a nutshell, that's how/why I came up with the things that I did.  Which leads us into...

What To Expect Next Year
I've heard that the theme for next year is "Evil Wins". If that's the case, then I'm looking at my D&D 3.5 offering to be a party tentatively consisting of an anti-paladin, an assassin, a cleric of Talona (goddess of disease and poison), a Red Wizard of Thay, a particularly sadistic barbarian, and a sleazy amoral roguish swashbuckler type. Again, that's tentative.

I already know what I'm doing for Paranoia, but sorry, Citizen, you are not cleared for that level of information!

And the less you know about what to expect from a particular Cthulhu adventure, the more fun it is!

Tags: OGC D&D Cthulhu Paranoia DM GM Writing Adventure