Over the last few months the 7th annual r/nightattheopera scenario contest took place. SirLordBaron's All Good Things won the people's choice vote, whereas my submission won the judges' vote!
My scenario is called The Sound of Doom, after a line in Gojira's The Chant. You can find the scenario here. Also, check out the other submissions in the contest document, they were all great.
Like every year a number of prompts were provided. Every submitter has to choose three prompts and base their scenario on them. I wanted to write a scenario that, if possible, ties into the modern day Karotechia campaign that I am working on. The provided prompts made this quite easy for me, e.g. the Witness Alliance as a Labyrinth group was a very natural fit.
I thought about centering the scenario around the Wolves of Erik, but then decided to make the NSBM band Wotans Reich the main antagonist, to satisfy the prompt about non-traditional cults. However, the Wolves of Erik still play an important role in the scenario and will become the focus of investigation in a follow-up scenario.
As a third prompt I chose "Lesser-used Great Old Ones". I stumbled upon Tru'nembra while browsing the Mythos deities Wikipedia page, which is the name that Chaosium gave to the entity that appeared in the Lovecraft story The Music of Erich Zann. A Great Old One that is related to music is perfect for a scenario about a Nazi metal band, so that was another natural choice.
With these elements in place it was easy to come up with a basic plot for the scenario: somehow Wotans Reich came into possession of Erich Zann's compositions, they become obsessed with it and are about to summon Tru'nembra during a concert.
I struggled a bit with the details of the scenario. E.g., Wotans Reich was initially called Odin's Reich and it was a Polish band with four members (inspired by Graveland). However, four band members is a lot of moving pieces, so I cut down that number. I also changed their nationality because then it fits better with the rest of my campaign.
Another thing that I'm not quite satisfied with is the involvement of the Witness Alliance. In the scenario they can give some useful information, but they are as essential as I would like them to be.
It was fun to come up with the hypergeometric effects that listening to the music has and writing up the people and locations that are already affected. I think the concert that turns into a Tru'nembra summoning is a neat set piece. However, I was unable to playtest the scenario so I don't know how likely it is that the Agents end up at the concert. If they investigate well they might find the band relatively quickly.
Since this scenario is intended to be the opener of my Karotechia campaign I will definitely update it, so keep an eye out for that. And if you end up running this scenario feel free to leave a comment and tell me how it went.
Hey blablorb! Really enjoyed reading your scenario. I think "Sound of Doom" has a lot of really dramatic set pieces. In particular the opening scene with the musician and the police. I was caught by one of your descriptions under the Melissa Young paragraph, in that the players having to encounter two metalheads having a heated personal argument at a loud concert is a really neat set piece too.
ReplyDeleteIf I was running "Sound of Doom" in a more comedic/pulp manner I could see Delta Green agents challenging the adversaries to a Battle of the Bands. In particular if any of the agents are Nodens cultists, for example the Dog Soldiers written by Adam Scott Glancy.
Thanks for the kind words! A Battle of the Bands would be fun. I think you would need to develop some bespoke mechanics for that, though I currently can't think of any. Maybe each Agent would have to do something different depending on their instrument, e.g. roll STRx5 to play drums, DEXx5 to play guitar...
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