Morgan's Pelicon 2024 Adventures

All GUMSHOE all the time.

This online convention limited you to 3 games per person and only lifted the restriction closer to when the convention started. The only issue is that games started exactly after another one ended without a gap, so there was no way I was going to signup for back-to-back games, instead I signed up for games on different days. In my second game, one of the players had to leave for another game and missed 10 mins of the ending (we ran slightly over time).

There were a lot of dropouts and adds. In my first game, it was originally full, then multiple people dropped out and added and we wound up one Player short.

Overall, the games highlighted why Gumshoe is great for investigative games.

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Fri Aug 2, 2-6pm (4 hrs)

A Suffolk Haunting

System: Casting the Runes

GM: CJ Romer

4 of 5 Players: Morgan Hua (Lady Prudence Whitterly), Kitty (Jemima Greene, librarian), Shannon L (Daisy Blenkinsop, schoolmistress), Philip K (Tom Garrick, photographer)

It's the heatwave of 1904 and as temperatures soar the St Edmundsbury Ghost Society set up out to solve the mysterious haunting of the Sicklesmere Eagle; soon they will have more than heat to contend with...

Beginners welcome. Age 13 and above.

This was a lot of fun.

The GM told us that he's a local of the area and wrote a book on Suffolk hauntings and all the ghost stories he told us were true accountings. It was clear from his descriptions and the pictures he showed us that he had a real love of the area.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

This game is based on The Sicklesmere Eagle haunting and The Rougham Timeslip. The GM also brought in many authentic ghost stories and sightings in the local area which kept us guessing as to what was really going on.

Tom almost runs over Laura (NPC) on his bicycle and agrees to see her later that night at a specific tree. Laura's uncle calls out for Abigail and Laura tells Tom she has to leave. In the distance is a mansion.

At the Sicklemere Eagle Pub/Inn, there's mysterious charcoal dust writing on the fireplace: "Isiah Hooke is Innocent." The PCs check out Isiah's residence (talk to his grandson) and try to find Laura's tree and the mansion. The area where Tom ran into Laura is now overgrown and there's no mansion. After much Ouija board and automatic writing tests, and the appearance of foul water, the PCs scare away a fake ghost and discover a real ghost that was doing the writing.

We ask the pub goers if anybody knows a ghost story about Laura. One of the guests tells of running into a Laura a year ago, who gave him a letter to mail, but no one had heard of a Tom Garrick, so that letter went to the dead letter office. That Laura didn't seem like a ghost.

Late at night, a strange man also shows up with heavy bags at the Inn. We figure out he's Laura's uncle and he's some sort of timepiece specialist. The PCs decide to investigate the "ruins" of his mansion while he's at the Inn.

When the PCs arrive, the mansion is there. There's also a dead woman's body with her heart torn out (we find out later it was Abigail). Two thug servants show up and chase the PCs away. The PCs notice a woman's shadow in a 3rd story window. Several PCs, including Tom, sneak into the house to rescue her. It's Laura chained down, and out of her reach is an Orrery machine powered by the heart of young girls. 

While this is going on, a mob has reached the house intending to burn it down. My PC convinced them to help rescue her compatriots in the house, so they storm the house, kill the servants, and set the house on fire.

The PCs are stuck in 1804, one hundred years in the past. But they notice a weird shimmering, a barrier between the times. The PCs get into their car and race down the hill to get through the barrier, at 88 mph they hit the barrier and get back to the future.

Laura and Tom get married.

The End.  

GM told us there's really two mysteries: the ghost and the time travel. The PCs' focus determined which mystery would be prominent, but we actually solved both. Well, sort of kind of, we figured out about the ghost, but not who it was (GM told us later). We did rescue Laura, but didn't apprehend the evil time travel dude who probably becomes Jack the Ripper. So, I think we solved 80% of both mysteries and got a 160% success. 😀

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sat, Aug 3 10am-2pm (4 hrs)

Dying in the Name

System: The Esoterrorists

GM: Steve Dempsey

5 Players: Morgan Hua (Alex Sumerset, TV Producer/CIA), Theo R (Walter Smith, Olympic Marathon Runner), Dave S (Sam Prekowski, SWAT), Deathmetalbard (Buzz Bazoli, ex-gangster), George S (Andy Widecombe, FBI forensics)

The Black Metal band GoreShrine all died supposedly in a plane crash whilst on tour in the Mid-West before recording any albums. Their bootlegs recordings have become pretty popular on Torrent sites, in particular Dread > Dead and Tear Down the Cathedral. However some new tracks have surfaced, and these have studio sound quality. Your organisation, Ordo Veritatis suspects these might be related to a spate of teen deaths and whilst the techies keep taking down the tracks from the internet, the team must find the source of the problem before it goes viral.

Pre-gens available, suitable for beginners, adult themes, 18+

I enjoyed the scenario. One Player, yeah that one guy, had all these weird approaches to things and there was a bit of over thinking without enough information. We should really go to a location and take a look-see before making weird assumptions. We spent too much time talking about what to do vs just doing.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The game was literally a game about an Earworm.

PCs took noise cancelling headphones from our handler.

The PCs went to the last known address of the surviving band manager, a bar. That lead to her home address. Talking to her, we found that the band did a ritual on the ground and air. The plane crashed into their ground ritual site. The manager was the only survivor, but they had made those tracks in a studio, so it wasn't band members coming back from the dead.

Survivalists had helped her at the crash site and and helped pick up her stuff. What was missing was a MP3 player with their tracks.

We hunted down the survivalist's campsite. They were all entranced listening to GoreShrine. We only had to shoot one person who used a machete on Andy. It became clear all the people there became cultists and can sing the praises of Tultu. We collect their PC and call in our organization to grab all these people.

Only one person is missing, Thorvald Madsen, a reverend who specialized in music. We went to his seminary disguised as ER medics with an ambulance. We break into his recording studio, a fight breaks out, and there's a horrible tongue worm in his mouth whose screams shatters glass. After a tackle by Buzz, a clarinet shoved down his throat by Alex, and two gunshots to the head by Andy, did Madsen go down. We clear his studio of all materials, cleanse his online drives, and call it a day.

Only Andy got affected by the earworm. Yeah, you gotta keep those sound cancelling headphones on. Listen to too much of that ritual music and a worm sprouts out from your tongue.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sun, Aug 4 2-6pm (4 hrs)

On a Bank, by Moonlight

System: The Fall of Delta Green

GM: Zack H.

5 Players: Morgan Hua (Daniel Blackburn, FBI Special Agent), Lorraine D (Celia Taka, Archivist), Marcy (Virginia Fortini, Dept Vet Affairs Surgeon), SeanH (Dana Palmer, Treasury Dept Investigator), Toby B (Pete Bluestone, USMC Master Gunnery Sgt)

Two people in the small town of Milltown, NY die on the same night. One was a tragic car accident; the other, shot in self-defence by the police. Both were members of the same commune of hippies and drop-outs that’s taken over a farm just outside town.

1968. Police reports contain references to chanting. To carven idols. To strange ceremonies by moonlight.

As Agents of DELTA GREEN, a top-secret branch of the US Government, your mission is to investigate those deaths, find out the truth – and take whatever action is necessary to eradicate any unnatural influence. When your predecessors raided Innsmouth in 1928, DELTA GREEN saw what the unnatural can do if it takes root in America.

It cannot be allowed to happen again.

Pre-gens/CW TBD/Beginners welcome

Age 18 and above.

This scenario totally leveraged the 1960s setting.

Lots of investigation which I love. And we had a really good table of Players. Of the 3 games, this one had the best pacing and party cohesiveness.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Things seem pretty straight forward, but as we got more and more information, things weren't as they seem.

The car accident had paint transfer from a black vehicle that pushed a vehicle off a bridge and into the water, but the dead woman, Rose, didn't die of the accident or drowning. She had a syringe mark in her neck and it looked like poison. She wore an ad-hoc earplug made of wet clay. She had photos of an odd orgy outdoors near a lake with a statue. Items were packed in her car as if she was fleeing. She had the phone number of the local newspaper office. It was clear she was leaving the commune and had some sort of evidence she was going to give to the newspaper.

Tony, the shooting victim attacked the local sheriff. Was ranting, and the first shot should have paralyzed him, but the sheriff had to shoot him several more times to put the attacker down. He had weird cult tattoos and stress fractures exactly where the tattoos were located. There were rumors that the sheriff's daughter was seduced by Tony and lured into the commune. Tony was also half drowned, water was found in his lungs.

Both Rose's and Tony's death happened near the same time.

At the commune where it was freedom and there were no rules, Celia wandered around and was told she couldn't see the pond until she saw the commune leader, so much for no rules. The members were oddly in tune and making similar art. The pond was very, very spooky with lots of Cthulhu-ish statuettes.

PCs surveilling the compound saw a black van arrive outside at night. PCs got the drop on the van, disarmed and handcuffed the 3 occupants. Found damage and paint transfer on the van. Found a syringe with poison. PCs turned off the transmitter in the van. Questioned the occupants and found they worked for the DoD (MJ-12).

PCs drove further down the road and met up with Celia. Then one of the VW vans from the commune drives by and tells Celia that shit was going down at the commune.

PCs put in earplugs and go to the commune and found all sorts of horrible stuff going on. At the pond, a circle of people were chanting and things didn't seem right, glowing blue lights and such. So, the PCs knocked them all out. But a portal had opened and a creature came out, so the PCs whipped out guns. After 2 rounds of shooting, Pete finally put down the creature (and survived the creature's attack). The PCs then helped Pete push the dead creature back into its extra-dimensional portal as it shrunk into nothingness.

Side things that worried us was the commune leader was a professor on sabbatical from Brown University doing experiments on creative synergistic superorganism higher consciousness. His lieutenant is an ex-Black Panther and we saw her prep cult members for a possible assault on their commune.

Overall, the scenario had lots of things that kept us worried about things going wrong. Surprisingly, we didn't shoot or kill anyone. The only thing we shot and killed was the creature from beyond. What was interesting was if we had shot the cultists, we would have spent all our firearms skill on them and would have had nothing left for the creature. But we luckily used unarmed to knock out all the cultists, so our firearms pool was completely fresh.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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