Morgan's MRCon 2025 Adventures

A free online convention, focusing on published or to be published Miskatonic Repository scenarios. All the scenarios I played in had good ideas for settings or good setups, but a few had issues in scenario design: mainly pacing as to when things happen or not enough interactivity with NPCs or the environment.

I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.

---

Oct 17 Friday, 11am-3pm.

Shadows of Sumnerville: Trick r Treat

System: CoC

GM: MinaFane (Mina Fane)

5 Players (one no show):

Vlad D (James Knot - Photographer - Indy Jones costume)

John L (Logan Lomax - Stage Actor - Baseball Player costume)

Brian B B (Nathan Ellis - Woodworker - Skeleton costume)

Morgan Hua (Moe - Athlete - Circus Muscle Man costume)

Halloween 1995. Connecticut. In suburbia, a group of high school freshmen gather to trick or treat even as their peers transition into parties and 'cooler' fare. However it is hard to be completely free from the pressure to impress others. Wouldn't walking up to to the darkness north of the river, into the ruins of old Sumnerville (and on this the scariest night of the year), be a way of proving they aren't little kids anymore? CW: child death, body horror, fire, mutilation, real world religion.

I had a lot of fun in this one. We got to invent our Halloween costumes and pick preset character hooks (family situations and such). This was a pretty well-written scenario. Everything made sense and fit together. Good GM also.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We wandered around town as we headed to the covered Sumnerville bridge. We run into various NPCs (having to do with our character hooks) and we do a couple of Trick-or-Treats picking up not so great candy. Though the Librarian handed out really good candy, but we noticed that there were these pin pricks on each of our candy wrappers. And it didn't smell right where the pin prick was. We notified the Reverend about this and continued on our way. Nathan was able to get a Goth girl (NPC) to go with us.

Across the bridge, Sumnerville is mostly burned down. We find a bust of Ichabod Sumner, a hidden cellar with a well and inside the well, tied to a rope was a strangely glowing multi-sided object. Under a tarp, there's dirt and a skeleton of two people who were merged together. Fearing the glowing object was radioactive, we just dragged it behind us on the rope. Soon, the Librarian's husband showed up in a truck and loaded bottles from a hidden cache inside a still standing chimney. Once he left, we found only empty bottles were left behind, but we sniffed the bottles and smelled the same funny smell as the well water and the doctored candy.

We headed back across the bridge, assuming the Librarian was going to poison the punch at the event at the central park. My PC, Moe, knocked over the punch bowl, pretending it was an accident. He then stole the bucket of doctored candy. The librarian was able to splash me with a glass of punch. I ran for the bridge and dump the doctored candy into the river. Something knocks me out.

Meanwhile, the Goth girl and the other PCs break into the library and find that there's a cult that included the Reverend. That the doctored liquid is highly flammable. That somehow it affects people who either consume it or are baptized in it.

The PCs see the Librarian's husband carrying Moe on his shoulders, he drops Moe, and opens up his shirt, inside are the merged bodies of missing children. The Librarian's husband tries to merge with Moe. The PCs attack and save Moe, but Nathan dies in the effort. The Librarian brings a bucket of poisoned water (for bobbing for apples which is a pretty ingenious way of infecting kids), hoping to splash us. But we used it on the Librarian's husband instead and lit him on fire with the Goth gal's lighter. While he burned, segments of the merged kids tried to pull away from the main body. Moe who had recovered consciousness pushed the old librarian onto her husband's burning body.

The kids are questioned and released, thankfully James took pictures. The Reverend leaves town. The town sweeps everything under the rug.

The best bits were the interaction with potential girlfriends (Logan and Nathan) and bullies (Moe) when we were Trick-or-Treating.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

---

Oct 17 Friday, 4-8pm

Arkham Fire

System: CoC

GM: TallHalfling (Steve Anderson)

5 Players (one no show):

Daniel O'B (Vaughn - Recruit)

Tim H (Pierce - Mechanic)

Eerie P (Thorne - Medic)

Morgan Hua (Ashburn - Military)

A beautiful old Victorian house, up in flames. A frightened little girl, wailing for her mother. And a hundred-year-old mystery of grief, loss, madness... and fractured, fragmented Time. Welcome to the Fire Department in Arkham. Grab your gear. Buddy up. And try not to get lost in the smoke.

The idea of firefighters (instead of setting fires to erase evidence) as PCs was interesting, but the problem was the clues weren't interactive. We mainly wandered around collecting clues until we figured out what to do.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

There are a lot of rooms, each in a different time period that tells the story of Eleanor Barnes and her quest to recover her daughter Sophia.

We go to a house that's burning down and a PC notices a girl on the 2nd floor window. We rescue her via firetruck ladder and take her to an ambulance. She says her mother is still inside. We go inside and find the house is rundown and no one inside. The 3rd floor turret is too hot for anyone to survive. On the way back down to the 1st floor, there's a dinner party and we're in the past. There's a scream and Eleanor rushes upstairs to her daughter's room. The people are ghosts, we just pass through them. This scene repeats in a loop.

We see other looped scenes that describe Eleanor's descent into madness as she tries to recover her daughter via temporal mechanisms. Outside is the far future where there's been a great explosion and the city is a wasteland (this basically keeps the PCs in the house as there's nowhere else to go).

There's a junk closet where we can actually take stuff. I find 50' rope and belaying equipment (02 on a Luck roll).

We find a pentagram with a central crystal in the 3rd floor turret. We set up the belaying ropes for a quick exit. I try to smash the crystal and damage it (10 damage but not enough) and the time creature kills my PC in one blow (16 damage). After a long fight, the other PCs finally demolish the crystal and stop the time loops. As the turret catches fire, the surviving PCs escape. The house burns down with all ghosts in it.

My PC becomes one of the ghosts (time loops) that haunts the house. Spotted in the past before the house burns down in 2025.

The issue is that we're just watching the replay loops to piece together the clues of what had happened. There's really no interaction with anything, except for the supply cabinet. The only two spots of urgency was trying to find Sophia's mother in the burning house and when we had to fight the time creature.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

---

Oct 18 Sat, 11am-3pm

HMS Harbinger

System: CoC

GM: richard0101 (Richard Watt)

5 Players (one no show):

Brian B B (Rosalind Frankland - scientist)

Gray S (Officer Charlie Hopkirk)

Gerald M (Dave Ancell - engineer)

Morgan Hua (Enid Toynbee - WREN Photographer)

Pre-war, 1939. Investigators are among the crew and visiting brass aboard a Royal Navy submarine on its maiden voyage. Difficult decisions may need to be taken to avoid a watery grave. All naval training will be provided.

First half of the game nothing happened. The NPCs were a bit taciturn. Action did pick up in the 2nd half, but pacing was a bit stop and go. The game needed better pacing, more tension, more interaction with the NPCs. The inside of a submarine was interesting though. 

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

PCs are on a short submarine trip with an experimental engine. The engine works, but the submarine scrapes against something unexpected. A pipe breaks, water floods the engine's battery room and chlorine gas comes out. The professor dies. We fix the leak. It looks like sabotage. Meanwhile, at the bow of the ship, there was a scream, a missing crewman, broken lightbulb, and slime in the torpedo tube.

Once the PCs got the speed of the submarine under control, by figuring out the device, we surfaced. A German frigate spots us, and we use the device to get away from the frigate. Then there's another scraping sound. Something has broken into the stern and killed the crewmembers there. Dave sees the creature, gets attacked, and raced towards the control room with the Deep One chasing him. The other PCs helped him seal the bulkhead door. The PCs make it back to port.

The one cool thing was the device we saw was just a fake prop. Some slate/pad controlled whatever hidden device boosted power to the engines. Somehow when the engines run fast, it disturbs the Deep Ones enough to make them want to stop whatever we're doing.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

---

Oct 18 Sat, 4-8pm

The Dreams in the Workhouse (Preview)

System: CoC

GM: DeadWeirdoStudios

6 Players (one no show, one open seat):

Kevin K (Leonard Barnes - coach)

Moran T (Nancy Edison - student)

James C (Percy Winger - antisocial)

Morgan Hua (Nasir Nadir - accountant)

US 1920: Just east of the bank of the Occoquan River in rural Fairfax, Virginia lies the infamous Lorton Workhouse. Since its founding a mere decade prior it has gone from promising progressive institution to a legendarily oppressive prison where political prisoners face torture and hope goes to die. Is simple change in punitive policy all that drives this slide into darkness? Or is something truly sinister responsible for The Dreams in the Workhouse? CW: this scenario is set entirely in prison.

Pacing was a bit slow on this one too, but we actually did do stuff as we got used to prison life.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We get to the low security prison on a bus. First thing that happens is a NPC gets a shotgun butt to the face for not behaving. We immediately get put on kitchen duty and learn that there are an unusual number of accidents. Leonard steals a fork. We notice there's a trap door in the kitchen and learn that there are steam tunnels under the Lorton Workhouse. There are various hatches in each building for easy maintenance and there's one in our barracks.

On the first night, two of the PCs have the same nightmare. It's also clear the other NPCs are having problems sleeping. One of the NPC prisoners had gone down the hatch (sleepwalking?) in our barracks and is missing, but the guards don't seem to notice. I start to think that the accidents are all due to sleep deprivation.

The next night, the PCs go down the hatch into the steam tunnels. They find an illusionary brick wall and discover strange medical experiments. A franken-creature, a stitched up thing looking like 3 merged prisoners shows up. Nasir flees before even seeing it and returns to the barracks. Nancy and Percy flee and exit the first hatch they find and wind up in a barn. Leonard hid until the creature passed him, damaged the machinery, and fled deeper into the tunnels and found another franken-creature, fled even more and got lost in the tunnels, days later, he finds a hatch and escapes. Nasir spends a day to steal some clothing from the tailor shop and is able to take the train out of Lorton.

Overall, I wanted more prison-foo: threatening inmates, bullying, senseless violence, sadistic guards, more accidents. But it was a low security prison.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

---

Oct 19 Sun, 11am-3pm (finished early, took 2 hrs)

The Doom That Came to Winchester

System: CoC

GM: Variorum (Wes Brandenburg)

5 Players:

David C (Sylvester Marchetti - bartender / elephant gun)

Robert F (Lionel Lapierre - horse trainer / boxer)

Joe M (Patricia Munoz - biology professor)

Morgan Hua (Erin Murphy - grandson of farmhouse owner)

The investigators arrive in an old farmhouse outside of 1920's Winchester, KY after one of them receives a telegram from their grandfather telling them that something isn't right on the farm, odd occurrences he can't explain.

The Doom That Came to Winchester is a soon to be released one-shot featuring lots of investigation, roleplay opportunities, potential combat and serious danger, and tons more, but I don't want to spoil the surprises.

I enjoyed this scenario. We had a good group of Players and a good GM. We finished early because we did some smart things and got some good die rolls. The game had good pacing.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

My PC was the grandson, so I gathered some buddies to investigate. Grandpa told me about a patch of hard to mow grass, the family dog with 4 eyes, outhouse wood knot holes turning into eyes.

I first greeted the dog, Lester, and he looked fine except for a healing gash above his brow. The patch of grass was strange and of unknown species. We dug it up, and when we damaged it, pink colored fluid came out. We then back filled the hole. Put the grass in a bucket and threw it in the back of my pickup truck. Nothing else seemed out of place. We had arrived at 5pm, so we stayed for dinner.

We then started to separately see strange things: Patricia heard a woman ask for help., I saw hair from a hairbrush spell out HELP, Lionel and Sylvester saw the grandfather clock turn into a beating heart. We concluded that maybe the plant caused hallucinations. That would explain why grandpa saw weird things too. We ate dinner. Sylvester decided he had a bad stomach (afraid of water contamination) and only drank some alcohol.

Sylvester wanted to test out his elephant gun, so we took some old paint cans to shoot at. We spot a stranger in the woods with a rifle, he claimed he was hunting, but his story seemed a bit off. We sent him away. Sylvester nailed the paint can (extreme success).

Grandma invited us to stay the night. I gladly accepted, but Lionel decided the house was haunted and wanted to sleep in the storm cellar. I suggested that he could sleep outside, in the truck, or in the dog house (a joke). Upstairs, I see someone in my bed, once I pull the bed sheet, there's no one in it. Patricia sees a woman suspended against an earthen wall who asks for help. Sylvester sees nothing. Lionel found the storm cellar locked, so decided to sleep in the truck.

PCs get together to investigate the storm cellar (most earthen walled room we can think of). I unscrew the latch holding the padlock (keys weren't where they normally were). Inside was what Patricia saw in her hallucination. A malformed woman-creature stuck to the ceiling, but I recognize her face, it's my Grandma's friend, Margrett. She asks for our help to free her. She'll just leave and hide in the woods. I reassure her as I step back, and Sylvester closes the door on her. Patricia faints. I put the screws back in on the latch. We carry Patricia back to the house.

I wake up Grandma and she tells us about the Winchester Women's Society and how Margrett got pulled into it and she died and that thing in the storm cellar birthed out of her. It still had Margrett's memories, but it had killed some men that came after both of them. Grandma doesn't know what to do, but she knows that Margrett is getting worse. We decide to arm up and kill Margrett and burn the remains.

On the way to the storm cellar, a car drives up and a man offers to take care of everything. I decline, pointing my shotgun at him. He raises a hand and makes a sign, and we hear shotguns going off (warning shots), we're surrounded by at least 6 men with shotguns, including the man we had caught earlier. I tell everyone, to get back to the house. I douse the lights in the house. I tell Sylvester to shoot Margrett when they bring her out of the storm cellar. He does and blows her away (extreme success). Her body starts foaming and bubbling away. The cultists flee.

We monitor the dog, patch of grass, etc. And things went back to normal after a few days. We tell the sheriff about the trespassing. The cult had fled town suddenly the night of the shooting.

I thought that having a PC be a relative of the people in the house was a great idea for this scenario. It prevented the PCs from becoming murder hoboes. GM said we finished way early because the game either devolves into a chase (going after Margrett) and/or a shoot out with the cultists.

GM tells us the patch of grass and infected dog were offshoots/pieces of Margrett trying to get free. Why she was on the ceiling was that a part of her was boring up through the dirt.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

---