[SPOILER] Cleaning up and looking for a title: “A Time For Ice” “Icy Errand”
“Ship” “Pyramid cap” “Mummy” “Spacegirl” “Fungi” “Race” “Glacier”?
-I am working on a scenario design that I thought of [’20 during convalescence]: mystery based on a glacier, The team must a) stop a madman; b) secure the macguffin; c) collect items from the madman; d) try not to go mad [like him].
-Plotting: a) where to start – playtesting indicates start close to site; b) magic objects – macguffin and surrounding bits, “watcher’s watch & fob”, “enchanted ring”, “tome/diary”. c) what do I do if they ignore items and just go murderhobo with dynamite [whoopsie]?
-Group: should I just set pre-generated characters? Skill sets need to be looked at. Chemistry. Riflery. Mechanics. Breaking and Entering. Disguise. Persuasion. Occult/Anthropology. We ran it with a “hunter”, a “criminal”, professor & “photographer”. The photographer dropped and her replacement no-showed. The professor only lasted a session [balance issue? bad luck?].
-Madman: is mad through contact with mythos [and the core object, a time traveller], has murdered several people to acquire power [his backstory is in his diary], to re-unite with the macguffin. He’s been on a long quest and quite mad by now.
-The storyline: a powerful ‘cultist’ leader is headed to Alaska where the team has also been assigned by ‘Orion’ group [my anti-cult sect]. [There, missing pieces from an archeological pyramid have been ‘found’] The cultist has a small team gathered to travel across the icy wilderness. His diary outlines two more sites to examine [hooks]. It is possible to RP this into a race, a fight in-town, an onsite battle, retreating win.
-Playtesting: players wanted ‘faster’, used dynamite, not flashpowder [camera], they had microphone issues and they weren’t getting their ideas across. One lgs read-through player spent time ‘trying to summon a monster to eat BBEG’ which seemed entirely the opposite of their intent…