Description: You play Jackie Chan's Squirrel, Samuel Jackson's Parrot, Snoop Dogg's Cat, Paris Hilton's Chihuahua, and Gary Busey's Dog. Your human is at some charity event and they abandon you at the hospitality suite. As the world spirals into collapse, you must work together to survive and travel to your wormiest heart of darkness.
Tone: Darkly Humorous (Dale & Tucker vs Evil, Evil Dead 2, Shaun of the Dead, Animal Farm)
Content Tags: Horror Tropes, Apocalyptic, Cannibalism, Harm to Animals, Drug Use (light), Political Satire (definite), Fowl Language (possibly)
The idea came to me for this when I learned about Gunther IV, a German Shepard, the richest animal in the world with $500 million. I also found there were other animals (Olivia Benson, Nala Cat) worth millions of dollars. At first I was going to build a game based on that, but then I realized it's not a big enough hook for roleplaying. (Sadly, it has been revealed that Gunther IV was a hoax created to cheat on taxes.)
So, what if I made a game about Pets of the Rich and Famous instead? Aha!
I scoured the internet for pictures of movie stars and their pets. I also wanted various animals and movies stars. So, I wound up with only two pictures of famous people with their pets: Paris Hilton and Snoop Dogg. I wound up photo-editing the other pictures. I had Wild Thang the ugliest dog in the world and since its been said that married couples start to look like each other (especially in choice of clothing and facial expression), I figured people and their pets would be the same, so Wild Thang reminded me of Gary Busey. I had a picture of a squirrel in a Kung Fu pose, so I immediately thought of Jackie Chan. I wanted a fowl-mouthed parrot (yes, a pun) and I immediately thought of Samuel Jackson. The only real animal names were Wild Thang and Tinkerbell, Paris Hilton's dog. Since Snoop Dogg likes to say D O double-G, I decided his cat was C A double-T.
So this was my line up: Byrd & Samuel Jackson, KFC (Kung Fu Chopstix) & Jackie Chan, Snoop Catt & Snoop Dogg, Tinkerbell & Paris Hilton, Wild Thang & Gary Busey.
By making the PCs the animals, the Players can do whatever they want with the PC, but the owner is just for inspiration. They didn't have to act like their human and it was up to interpretation.
Next up was what did I want to do with these PCs. Since all of the PCs are spoiled animals, conflict must come from adversity. What if the pampered animals are faced with survival? What if their world comes crashing down and they must figure out how to survive? What if it's not just their world, but the WHOLE world is crashing down. An apocalypse.
What challenges do they have to face? I listed them. What skills do they have? What system should I use? Recently, I had been running Alien RPG and Vaesen. Both use the Year Zero Engine (YZE). I decided it would work, system light, easy to learn, hard to kill or injure the PC.
I pared down the skill list and renamed some skills to be more animal-like: Fetch Stuff (gross motor skills), I Know This (figure out human tech), Find Food and Shelter (survival), Lick Wounds (healing).
I didn't want Byrd to just fly away and leave the party, so I clipped Byrd's wings. I thought it would be funny if Tinkerbell had access to a lot of things, but she wouldn't be able to reach the RFID readers without help. Snoop Catt has through 1st and 2nd hand contact taken a lot of drugs and have seen a lot of real and imaginary things. He's chill. Wild Thang doesn't look like a dog and is fuggly. KFC needed an archnemesis, like all good Kung Fu movies.
I then built out their skills and character sheets: pre-gens here
I wanted the Players to get into the mindset of their PCs, so I added individual questions on their character sheets. After Players picked their PCs, I had them write down answers to their individual questions and then I asked each Player what their answers were at the table, so everyone can hear their answers. This also sets the tone of the game.
Next where do the PCs start, I decided what made sense was a Charity Event where the Rich and Famous attend, but they have to drop off their pets at an animal hospitality suite. This also takes the animal owners out of the picture.
Again, I wanted the Players to get into the head of their PCs, so I had another set of general questions that every PC had to answer about their attitude towards their situation and their owner. This was a great hit amongst the Players as they made up pretty funny stories and lines about their life with the Rich and Famous.
I then needed to get the human help out of the hospitality suite and leave the animals alone, at some point they'll figure out they'll have to work together to escape the hospitality room. Once out, they'll have to face the great outdoors without human help.
I then started listing various obstacles and encounters to test the PCs. I also wanted humans to get out of the way and make this more about the animals. I wanted an apocalypse. What came to mind was "They're eating the dogs, eating the cats, eating pets." What would make people do this? Bingo! Zombie Apocalypse.
I decided to lean into the MAGA-verse.
I put a few NPCs in the hospitality room: Porky Pig (Mike Lindell's) and Butkus (Sylester Stallone's).
Porky and Human
Mike Lindell
Stallone and Butkus
I wanted the NPCs to refuse to leave the hospitality suite because the game is about the PCs. Porky will tell the PCs that the only safe place is in the hospitality suite until his human comes to pick him up as he was told that "They're eating the dogs, eating the cats, eating the pets." Butkus (Butt-Kiss) refuses to leave because he's totally obedient to Stallone. He was told to sit and he obeys until told otherwise. I have Butkus stubbornly refuse to move from the spot Stallone told him to sit at.
I listed various encounters: Sewer Alligator, Cocaine Bear, ALF (eats cats), RFK Jr (eats roadkill), crazy cat lady (Taylor Swift), and of course, Trump at the White House Ballroom, and mind control alien toupees.
I tied it all together with Tail Swift handing out quests to the PCs. She's making the PCs do all the dirty work with minimal effort. She holds the magic wand of can opening inside her court of CostCo warehouse.
In the end, the PCs can rescue their owners from cryostasis in the underground bunker beneath the White House Ballroom.
After I built the game, I titled it A-Paw-Calypse Meow. The original working title was Pets of the Rich and Famous. When I told Sean N about the game, he told me I already won because the title has two puns in it. 😊
Gamelandia is my go to place for Free RPG Day goodness. In addition to letting you pickup Free RPG Day goodies, they also run free RPGs. I was able to signup for two RPGs.
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6/27/2026 - 11am - 1pm (2 hrs)
Kids on Bikes
System: Kids on Bikes 2e
GM: Molly
6 Players, Ages 13+: Morgan Hua (teen bully), kid scout, teen slacker, teen scout, teen worker, teen animal friend.
I just wanted to try this out. We took 1.5 hrs generating the characters and the town we were in. So, we only spent 1/2 hr having an adventure.
I actually liked the character and town generation. You pick an age group (kid, teen, adult), then a template. A majority of the character creation is either answering set questions based on your template or a d20 die roll and table lookup which may lead to another question. PC Stats are dice which range from 1d4 to 1d20.
I wound up with Billy the Teen Bully (template). Afraid of Adults in Suits. Who is Gross (a strength) and Rebellious (a strength), and Obnoxious (a flaw). I had a Black Bike (+1 fight) with a Milk Crate (lets me carry a large item, a tuba). In my backpack was a Jar with a Scorpion in it, Firecrackers, and a Super Soaker water gun. My highest stat was Fight at 1d20+2. My weakest was Charm at 1d4. Most skills require a 8+ to succeed, during our game, we sometimes needed a 20. The good news is that dice explode, if you roll the max on a die, you keep on rolling. If you miss by 5, it's a Failure with Serious Consequences. If you miss by 10, it's a Catastrophic Failure.
We picked Las Vegas as our town. Various round-robin questions created a Ferris wheel, rollercoaster rides, an alcoholic row, a friendly homeless guy with scorpions (where I got the jar from), a radioactive nuclear crater, a church near the crater, fragile powerlines, a Joshua tree forest, a military base, etc. We drew representations on a sheet of craft paper. Some buildings were created when we rolled 1d20s onto the map and dropped buildings onto the map determined by the die roll and where the die landed.
We also created one rumor per Player which may or may not be true: The water tower is full of root beer, there are underground tunnels connecting various buildings, mutants worship under the church, ghost children ride the rollercoaster, etc. GM wrote out the rumors on Post-It notes and slapped them onto the map.
Then we were ready to play. GM asked why we were together. I proposed that since we had two scouts, we were biking to the Joshua tree forest. I wanted to get more scorpions, but lied and told the others we were going to look for a scorpion nest, so I can set my scorpion free. We find some baby scorpions and when the others were looking away, I tried to catch some more, but got stung instead (failed die roll). After some first aid which wrapped up one of my hands like a giant mitt, the kid scout (my little sister) opened the screw top lid of the jar and tried to dump out my scorpion and failed, it clung to the inside of the jar. Then another teen bully showed up. I convinced her to hold out her hand (I rolled 1d4, but got a total of 15, the d4 exploded three times which was a minor miracle) and I upended the open jar onto her palm. She fled, leaving her orange bike (10 speed) behind. We went through her stuff and looted it. The teen slacker tried to pickup my scorpion and had a Catastrophic Failure, it wound up stinging him up and down his arm. So, we had to rush him to emergency care. We had 7 bikes, but only 5 riders. Teen scout upgraded her orange bike to the 10 speed. Teen worker doubled up on teen slacker's bike which had a banana seat which can take two passengers. So we left teen worker's bike and teen scout's bike behind. On the way to the emergency room, kid scout and teen scout crashed their bikes with the teen scout getting road rash and a damaged 10 speed bike. At least we got to the emergency room, three of us needed it. End of adventure.
I enjoyed the process and random tables for the PC and world creation. This was the highlight of the system. Though it takes too much time for a one-shot. And if you skip this process and just hand out pre-gens, you miss out on all the creative fun. The game play was ok, but not great. Some tests required a 20 to succeed. I asked the GM afterwards and her response was, "You're picking up scorpions with your bare hands." Ok, point taken. I guess realistically, we would have put the jar over the scorpion and then slid a sheet of stiff paper underneath, then flipped the jar over. I guess difficulty level is all in the details.
Some other games such as Brindlewood Bay, shorten the PC creation process by having fewer questions which makes it faster to generate a PC for a one-shot. And there's no initial world creation, but details for locations are added when PCs encounter them.
For this game, the table was blessed with imaginative Players. We had an adventure with scorpions and bikes, but that was because we were willing to do risky things. This could have easily become a snore-fest. If the highlight of a game is session 0 (PC and world creation) and not the game play, there's an issue.
On what they thought was a routine task to deliver a message, a group of heroes must protect a budding Radiant from a skilled and powerful foe. Can they get to him first, and can they convince him to embrace a difficult truth?
We actually played the Free RPG Day scenario. GM had played the system before, but wasn't completely familiar with the system. We ran into some problems when we started combat. I skimmed the free Stormlight Starter rules afterwards and found that we didn't follow the combat rules at all.
I only read the first 20 pages of the first book of the Stormlight Archive series. And I had put the book down slightly more than 10 years ago. I let the other two Players pick PCs first. Both had read multiple books, one said she had read the first 4 books.
All the PCs were 3rd level or split class characters. Some PCs had 3 page character sheets. If they did magic, they had another 2 pages explaining their Stormlight abilities.
The world is very rich (though I did feel a little bit lost, not having read any of the books).
I did have fun playing. 3rd level PCs were pretty powerful, so I wonder how unbalanced this becomes at even higher levels.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We're given a message and a magic communications token to give to a runaway rich kid. Basically we're to tell him he's forgiven and he can return home, or do whatever he likes. My fellow Players knew that since the kid was nobility, he had blue eyes. Lower caste people had brown eyes. So, we were looking for a sailor on a ship with blue eyes. We had also tracked the kid through two other ports before reaching our current location.
This is a busy port with hundreds of ships. So, the 3 PCs started making contacts with the locals, trying to figure out which ship the kid is on. We eventually figure out that some smuggler had stolen medical supplies from a close-by port. A notorious Constable was going after the smugglers and he was going to raid a ship that evening. After finding out the name of the ship, I had to sneak into the harbormaster's office and look up the ship's berth, previous port of call, cargo manifest, captain, and estimated departure date (1 week). This helped us verify that ship was probably the one we wanted.
We stake out the ship and spot the blue eyed sailor working on the ship. Using a wind magic, Divira whisks the sailor's straw hat towards us and I catch it on the docks. We use that excuse to speak to the sailor. We deliver the message, the token, and warning that the Constable was coming tonight. He tells us the theft was all him, nothing to do with the ship. He wanted to give medical supplies to the unfortunate. We gave the kid several choices: come with us (he likes his crewmates), smuggle the remaining medical supplies off ship (remove the evidence, but my cartel gets a small cut), get the captain to leave the port (as the Constable's authority ends outside of the port. Rasla's law told us this.) I also told the kid to lie to the captain as to why the ship should leave the port ASAP. But he tells the truth. Luckily, the captain agrees to leave the port.
And yes, as the ship is preparing to leave, the Constable shows up (with two lieutenants, I assume scaled to # of PCs) and we have to take care of them.
The Constable confronts the Captain. I pry up the gangplank to dump the two lieutenants into the water, but one manages to grab the ship's railing. I smash his fingers with my crowbar and dump him into the water. The Constable stabs me. Rasla loads his inkwell into his sling and gets the Constable in the face with it. Divira misses with her two-handed blade. I throw a net over the Constable. Rasla, using magic, launches the Constable off the boat and glues the netting to the pier. This gives us enough time to leave port.
We stay onboard to the next port. We got paid (pay was 200 marks, this doubles what we had on hand). We gain the kid as a contact.
A free online convention. There's a shuffler where you set the priorities for all the games you're interested in. I got into 3 games through the shuffler, then as people dropped out before the convention started, I got notified if my name comes up on the waitlist. I got into 2 more games via the waitlist. Then as the convention wound down, I got into another game via the Discord waitlist channel where they announce last minute dropouts and open seats that's available to anyone - first-come, first-served.
Lots of gaming goodness. The quality of games varied. My favorite game was the Vaesen game I played in.
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Slot 5 - Friday, June 12, 2026 at 12:00 PM (4 hrs scheduled, took 3 hrs)
Now you really ARE a person of prime import. The world around you won't function without your guidance, will it? Why then, the insolence...
"De bello mundo" is the new scenario by Carsten Pohl ("Ultima ratio", "Movie Night"). It's heavy on roleplaying and fun with a nice touch of the Cthulhu Mythos. We'll be playing an abridged version. The title is Latin and translates as "About the World War". It is definitely not a wartime scenario, though. Once play starts, you will understand why there is so little content revealed beforehand.
Pregenerated characters will be handed out beforehand. It doesn't harm if you're interested in history.
To play Cthulhu Dark, you should have 3d6 of different colours at hand.
Using the webcam is mandatory for this game because of the strong roleplaying aspect of the game.
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Characters were secret until start of play.
I enjoyed this and the twists that were presented. I think this game is probably better face-to-face where people can act out things more.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Surprise PCs: Emma as Cleopatra VII (she put on great eye shadow makeup and didn't turn on her camera until our characters saw her), Veronica as Julius Caesar, Trish as Joan d'Arc, Morgan as Genghis Kahn.
It's the standard setup where you wake up individually in a strange institution-like room. And it is, but we're all famous generals. We're all awoken and summoned to breakfast, where we get to act out and in-character, we have no idea what's going on. out-of-character, I peg Cleopatra (due to the eye shadow) and Joan d'Arc early on (which is due to good roleplaying) as we didn't tell others who we were. Part of the fun was trying to figure out who was who and trying to keep our identities partially veiled as part of the fun.
We finally realize who the others are, but we're in 1920's bodies, not our own. So, are we insane people in an institution or did something else happen. In character, I posited Reincarnation. Out of game, I was suspecting Mi-Go brain swaps.
At one point, I held a caretaker hostage with a spoon, in an effort to escape. In the end, we're told our brains were needed for a great battle to save the earth. I only agreed if I was made Khan of the earth after the battle was won and I was told it would happen (yeah, right).
We skipped the combat subsystem of leading large armies for the Mi-Go against the Shoggoths. In the end we saved earth. Khan isn't named ruler of earth and pretends he's actually a mild mannered archeologist, and escapes into the wild.
The PCs were actually various 1920s people with the brain wave patterns of famous generals imprinted over them. So, there was a chance they would revert back to their original 1920 host.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 6 - Friday, June 12, 2026 at 04:30 PM (4 hrs)
Wrestling Action Wrestling: Viva La Vengaza System: World Wide Wrestling 2e (PBTA) GM: hellogold (Gold) 3-6 Players, ages 16+: geolore_ (Lore as Mr Calhoun the Manager), MrMerillat (Charles as Multilator the Hardcore), Sharkzillaa (Elliot as Sharkzilla the Call Up), Morgan Hua (as Sas-Squash the Monster)
“Wrestling is real. People are fake.” —The Silicon Valleygirl.
Step into the ring with pyrotechnics and spectacle. Create an amazing superstar, then navigate feuds in front of the camera and behind it at a star studded venue where not even the GM knows what’s gonna happen! Powered by the apocalypse.
Wrestling fandom not required.
Characters will be created during or before play by the players.
Content Warnings: Blood
I heard that this was a good system. It actually is. You play two aspects of a PC, the public facing wrestler personae and the non-public facing regular person. You deal with rising popularity (Audience), Injury, and creating fake drama to bump up your Audience. It really does a good job simulating WWE and behind the scenes. You can request matches, run into the ring, use weapons, cheat at tag team, etc.
My only issue is when a Player (or GM) really knows the wrestling moves and describes them by name, I got lost, not knowing how to visualize what was happening. What's a German Suplex? A Top Rope Shining Wizard? A Moonsault?
My PC was big, but wasn't good at real wresting moves, so it was a bit hard to describe interesting moves that weren't wresting moves. My bit was I would squash various objects like pumpkins and watermelons.
I had a good time, but there was one Player who was very intent on playing his character the same way and wasn't good at reading the room.
I made a beginner mistake of picking A Championship Title as a WANT because if you fulfill that at the end of an episode, you advance. Well, you can't win a Championship title early, but only near the end of a series. It's better to pick Adulation of the Crowd! You can actually get that and get a new Move in order to win a title later. At one point, I was scripted to win, but a PC broke the script and won, and took the title instead.
I think this is a great game if you love WWE. GM did a great job of presenting various aspects of the game.
Slot 9 - Saturday, June 13, 2026 at 07:00 AM (4 hrs)
Scent of a Killer
System: Vaesen
GM: darealju (Jubilee)
2-4 Players, ages 18+: .dmoe (Psychiatrist), JohnTyler (Academic), BryBearian (Butler), Morgan Hua (as Dagmar the Day Laborer)
A series of grisly murders have shocked Stockholm. The capital is in turmoil, the police are overwhelmed, and the hunt for the killer has been unsuccessful so far. With nowhere left to turn, Police Commissioner Gabriel Utterson has contacted The Society, a mysterious group whose members are rumored to be able to see the twisted creatures lurking in the shadows. Is the killer flesh and blood? Or is it something more sinister?
This was actually the first scenario in the City of My Nightmares campaign, modified and shortened to fit into a 4 hour one-shot.
This was my favorite game of the 6 games I played in.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
There's a series of savage murders, men torn limb from limb, all low level criminals, except for a famous Opera star (the last murder which kicks off our investigation). I pegged early that the murders were monthly and cross checked the dates with full moons. Yep. So, an early candidate was a werewolf. There were also a series of missing maids from the poor side of town. A maid's body shows up, but it is strangled with large hands.
We eventually figure out the coroner is a werewolf (one of the PCs called this out early, but we still have to find proof as we had lots of potential theories) using her sense of smell to hunt down various criminals that hadn't been caught.
We also narrow down the maid strangler as a well-dressed blond man with a doctor's bag. He gets attacked by a werewolf, and a PC actually saves his life, but he is sent to the hospital. To be tried for the strangulation murders.
We confront the coroner and find out she suspected that she was a werewolf, but didn't know. When we tell her that we saved the strangler, she's taken aback. The penny drops when we suddenly realize that the strangler is going to turn into a werewolf. We rush to the hospital, but too late, he has turned and murdered a nurse.
The coroner turns into a werewolf and chases the other werewolf. In the middle of a werewolf fight, we help take down the male werewolf. The next day, the coroner has vanished to points unknown.
One of the PCs did get infected during the fight.
As a side note, which was cool, we were told that calling someone by their true name would revert them back to their original form, we tried that with the coroner and it didn't work. So, we thought it wouldn't work. When the PC turned, I called out her name and she reverted. That's when we learned it only worked if someone close to you called you by your true name. Neat-O.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 11 - Saturday, June 13, 2026 at 04:30 PM (4 hrs)
Eclipse of the Heart - A 1980s Call of Cthulhu Scenario
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: jedi.girl (Morgan Lind)
4-6 Players: bee_four (Bill as Luke the Jock), daupo (as Marlowe the Theatre kid), RailEuropeGroups (David B as Dex Ronson the Nerd), danika.12 (Max as Zane the Burnout), EerieLunarose (as Veronica Libby the Diva), Morgan Hua (as Brian Locke the Prep)
May 11, 1985: It's prom night, Hamilton High seniors! Bring your dates, your big hair, and your corsages, and be prepared to have the time of your life! Nothing bad *ever* happens on prom night? Right
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Content Warnings: Content Warnings are harm to teenagers, blood/gore, death, 80s hair, teenage angst, possession, and PvP.
This game started a little bit slow as we're just vibbing off of the 1980's. That was the best part, the actual mystery was only ok.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
I don't think anything happened in the first half, it was all 1980's nostalgia and setting up the prom. Fights start breaking out at the prom as various people get aggressive and also make inappropriate advances.
We eventually figure out that Jamie Spink, ex-girlfriend of Luke (Luke is now back with Veronica), summoned a Wraith (Cupid) which possessed her and used its supernatural powers to lockdown the school and cause mayhem.
We learn the spell to bind and banish the Wraith from the library. Get salt from the cafeteria and an artifact arrowhead from the library. We cast the two spells as Jamie floats up in the air, suffer various telekinetic attacks, and banish the Wraith.
My PC went from 40 SAN to 51, after the SAN rewards for saving the day.
Highlights:
Luke and Veronica look for Jamie, but stop in the cafeteria, and windup making out instead. Luke's Player quips, we deserve to die. They do discover the salt, but pick up some kitchen knives instead.
Luke tries to talk to Jamie, and he gets telekinetically thrown across the hall. Well, that didn't work.
In passive-aggressive fashion, I took the 3rd place runner up for prom queen as my date and dress her up to the nines to outshine Veronica who's the prom queen. (Selecting the 2nd place girl would have been too obvious, and making the 3rd place winner outshine Veronica is a power move). Veronica quips, that's why I hate you.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 14 - Sunday, June 14, 2026 at 07:00 AM (4 hrs, took 3 hrs)
The Dunwich Horror
System: The Cthulhu Conspiracy
GM: grahamwalmsley (Graham)
2-4 Players, ages 18+: hilmar_firestarter (Hilmar as Dr Avery Pickman - archivist), JimOphee (Jim as Reese Wade - chief reporter), dolphhinhat (Paul Fitz as Red Brown - tech wizard), Morgan Hua (as Kim Danforth - editor)
Back in February, there was a break-in at the Sussex Archives. The burglar, who was caught on CCTV, was a local man identified as Will Whately. He was attacked by a guard dog, which, for some reason, went straight for his throat. Will Whately died at the scene.
But it gets stranger. The Sussex Archives is in Dunwich, where an occult book called the Necronomicon is rumoured to have entered the UK.
What was Whately after in the archive? And why did a highly-trained guard dog kill him so ferociously?
The Cthulhu Conspiracy is a game of modern day investigative horror. We’ll create the story collaboratively and, although it’ll be loosely inspired by The Dunwich Horror by HP Lovecraft, it’ll go much deeper and stranger.
This is a playtest. We've played before and had fun, but there's always the risk it won't work this time or won't fill the whole slot!
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Content Warnings: It's collaborative, so it's hard to know what'll come up, but the X-card will be in play
The system isn't quite baked yet as the endgame wasn't quite there, but it was a playtest. This was a good game because we had a really good table of Players. Graham wanted to just observe (and take notes) for the playtest and tried to make minimal intrusions.
I enjoyed it because the Players created/forced a satisfying story and ending. Which Graham told us was unique for the playtests that he had run. Most of the time, they just sort of end without a full story arc.
Graham acknowledged we gave him good feedback.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Roll 2d6 or 3d6 (if it can be dangerous), look at max, if you get a 5 or 6, get a new lead; 1-4, learn something new about an existing lead. If you rolled a 1 or 2, look up a Pushback based on the dice rolled. Use these to build out a conspiracy diagram.
GM and designer said of our game: "One of the best conspiracy diagrams I've seen in The Cthulhu Conspiracy."
In the end, we discovered there's competing branches of the Whateley family: one that wants to turtle every 188 years, one that wants to prevent the cometary disaster.
The PCs are posting articles, videos, and livestream the final event. The goal: get enough clicks to afford an espresso machine for the office. Before the PCs leave for the ritual of prevention, the editor orders an espresso machine, we've reached 1M viewers and Patreon subscribers. Join now before the end of the world!
In the end, a fragment of the comet arrives, heading toward the Great Stone of Fourstones (soon to be five). PCs are handed robes and join the ritual. Signs of Apophis glow at the site. The Skriker appears circling the ritual (it had previously killed Will Whateley and attacked the Cubic Arch Lodge). Giant teeth come out of the ground to encircle the cultists. The cult leader speaks of swallowing the offerings, and shedding its skin for renewal for another 188 years. A bright glowing light grows in size, heading towards the Great Stone, filling the camera's view. White out.
Credits roll.
In the Dunwich After Dark's offices (our HQ), there's a layer of dust on the old dining room table, a laptop pings as clicks reach 2 million hits. Outside is a battered and weathered Amazon delivery box, a damaged corner reveals an espresso machine. Fade to black.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 15 - Sunday, June 14, 2026 at 12:00 PM (4 hrs)
Miles to Go
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: highsummer (Erasmus)
3-5 Players, ages 16+: benji04202 (Benji as Philip Riddle - accountant), balrog_aca71 (as Hank Crozier - HR consultant), lecoco (Elizabeth as Rose Bennich - jr exec), viralload (as Brock Rhodes - corp burnout), Morgan Hua (as Tyler Park - corp tiger)
April 2022. The Caldecott Convention Center squats in the vacant downtown of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The hustle and bustle of the PERMIT 2022 event brought an artificial bloom of pop up booths and hype men across the sea of cracking cement over the last few days. Yesterday morning they were gone like a mirage, only fast food wrappers and crumpled fliers left littered in their wake. The attached hotel was the last to go still, catering the waves of security professionals and insurers checking out with their heads stuffed full of seminar talks and management secrets.
Everyone’s gone. Well everyone except you. The unlucky members of the NexRel Corporation’s mid Atlantic division have been stranded without answers for days as corporate fights the airline over overflow seating. Watching the hours tick by in the empty lobby is infuriating, yet you’ve been forced to do nothing but wait as the issue is ‘negotiated’. Amidst the boredom and empty platitudes, a rumor has spread of an ‘alternative travel solution’. It’ll have to be a good one, because to get home you still have many ‘MILES TO GO’
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Content Warnings: Claustrophobia, Vehicle Accidents, Gore, Suffocation, Physical Violence, Corporate Culture, Survivor's Guilt, Chemical Warfare, Mass Casualty Event
This game started a bit slow, but then it gained momentum and got better as we searched for a unique solution.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
PCs are told in order to get to our HQ in Washington DC, we had to take a chartered bus. Of course, it also has other passengers including our corporate rivals, college kids, and several old ladies.
On our way home, we stop at a rest stop and pickup a new passenger, Mr Craig Black, self professed member of NexRel's Acquisitions Dept. Rose convinces Mr Black to show her the contents of his briefcase which contains a handgun and a jug of liquid. We see a stream of police vehicles go in the opposite direction of our travel. A PC looks up news reports and finds out that where we're heading there's been a chemical accident / release / disaster. We tell the bus driver to take an alternate route.
Eventually, the red cloud of chemicals reach our bus. Mr Black gives us duct tape and tells us to seal the windows and doors (including the bathroom). The chemical will kill us. He also tells us the fog lasts for 5 hrs. We have 3 hrs of oxygen in our bus, we'll be CO2 suffocated in 1.5 hrs. The only solution is to kill 14 passengers now. He hands Rose the gun. The PCs refuse to kill.
Yeah, I think all the Players sort of figured out what was happening and we didn't want to just be murder hoboes. We wanted to go as far as we could without killing people. At one point, we created a dry suit from raincoats and duct tape. A PC rigged a blower from the air condition unit, to blow the fog out the door when I exited. I had to refuel the bus. I got it done, but when I got back into the bus, some of the fog got inside.
Hank, affected by the gas, fell unconscious and swam up out of the darkness to the surface, had a vision of people at an old-timey picnic on grass and trees, right before he was dragged back down into his body.
A PC saw creatures in the gas watching us. Mr Black tells us they want to watch us for entertainment. That PC cut a deal with them. Their voice came out of the bus radio, made of snippets of dialog and song from random radio stations. It offered 1 life for 1 life. If you kill someone, you were saved. This started off violence from the other passengers. One of the old ladies fired a gun, trying to save her granddaughter and missed and shattered one of the bus windows.
This time, 3 of the PCs, the bus driver, and some of the other passengers fell unconscious. One PC got control of the bus. Another fought the leader of the competing corporation who was executing unconscious people with the old lady's gun.
Meanwhile, the 3 PCs who fell unconscious ended up at the picnic and at the picnic are the same creatures who now have pinned down the PCs. Rose recognizes the people picnicking is the family of the founder of NexRel in 1890. This is when I cut a deal with Worthy Mycroft, the founder. If I could stay with him, I'd help him with my future knowledge, companies to buy, technology of the future. I convince Hank to stay too. Rose cuts a different deal, she wants to go back and run the company, telling Worthy to take over the media (newspapers, magazines, and radio) to shape the future. Worthy agrees. I tell Worthy I don't want to be CEO, just head of Acquisitions.
In the end, NexRel rescues the bus, recovering Rose (now CEO), Philip, and Brock (and Mr Black). Hank and Tyler are missing. The world has changed, NexRel runs most of the world. Rose et al are brought to the HQ and meet 100+ yr old Hank and Tyler in high tech life support who congratulate them for a job well done.
In the epilogue, Tyler praises Mr Black for another completed mission, told him to take 2 weeks of well deserved vacation and to be ready for his next task.
GM said one group, went murder hobo, killing people and as obstacles showed up, continued to kill and kill and kill. Another group decided to kill Worthy, which changed the timeline and saved them from the bus trip. We were the first to cut a deal and made the world a NexRel paradise. We were cut throat sales people. 😊
