So I treated myself to the seventh edition Keeper’s Tome for Call of Cthulhu, the legendary OG of horror-mystery TTRPGS. Quick review: there are too many rules for machine guns and I have no idea what the monsters want.
But let’s only unpack that second one.
So here’s the thing; my girlfriend doesn’t like my dungeoncrawls. She’s a very story-first, listens-to-podcasts kind of chick, and I don’t think it need to be beleaborored that she’s much smarter and more responsible than me and I’m quite into her.
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| Pictured: Me |
But I’ve been on a crusade of ideological purity ever since discovering the glories of old-school, game-first gaming and so it’s been a hot and surly minute since I’ve written anything like a plot for a game. I used to do this shit all the time, to my endless frustration and the chagrin of my players. It feels like regression going back to doing what I already mastered by learning how to hate it.
Unless of course, I do the stupidest thing imaginable and un-learn ALL of my old style and re-build it from the fucking ground up OOPS I DID THAT THANKS JUSTIN
(No but for real everything in my current design-thinking is Justin Alexander’s fault, blame him also read his blog)
The basics is that you have two kinda prongs;
1. The mystery. This is just a brief outline of the actual mystery and revelations, NPCs, places, and other stuff that I will reference in play
2. A timeline of the badguys getting what they want in stages that the whole scenario into a pressure-cooker, complete with ways that is telegraphed to the investigators.
Where I’m struggling is point 2; but first, let’s talk about my Cthulhu plot.
The idea came to me in a dream (after watching a bunch of Twin Peaks); “what if somebody was wanted for their own murder?” Naturally my rational mind clung onto that bit of subconscious flotsam and tried to pin it down into a sensible waking-world explanation (this by the way is an outstanding process for coming up with really cool ideas).
So here’s my premise; an eccentric scientist (does Lovecraft have another variety?) is snet a mysterious artifact from an even more mysterious benefactor. Using the device and his fathomless brilliance, he creates a clone of himself. Turns out its evil because of fucking course it is, and it makes another clone and escapes from the lab. He pursues, shoots, and kills clone 2, but clone 1 is still on the loose. To muddy the trail, clone 1 creates clone 3 and leaves him naked and amnesiac’d in an alleyway.
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| Because god knows *this* is way too straightforward |
Enter the players, of course. The scientist has been pegged as the killer, but the body is a john doe. During the investigation, one of the revelations is that the john doe of course… Is the scientist. Who at this point they’ve encountered a minimum of one time (as either him or one of the clones) and possibly several times. The evil clone knows enough mythos magic to pull a Houdini and vanish from custody if caught early, making him a formidable villain. And the original scientist’s hands aren’t exactly clean either, further muddying the situation and blurring the allies with enemies in a wonderful stroke of noir-ism.
Here’s my issue; I was original gonna have the mi-go behind this whole thing, since fucking with human physiology is kinda their thing, but… Their entry doesn’t really give one much to work with. It says they sometimes reformat favored human servants into brains in jars so they can traverse the gulfs between worlds, which is wonderful, and it says they mine rare metals on earth which is a…. Serviceable, motive, I guess. But I really don’t get an otherworldly vibe out of that second motive. It’s lame, reducing them to outer-space prospectors is so wretchedly mundane and just. Dull. It’s boring.
And what does evil clone want, anyway? I originally thought to give him a truncated lifespan like the replicants in blade runner (“I want more life, fucker!”) but that doesn’t actually strike me an “evil” motive, really; wanting to not die is pretty relatable, after all. And it also has the problem of being just a smidge too…. Comprehensible? There’s simply nothing otherwordly or uncanny about it. “I want some metal!” or “I don’t want to die!” are just too human, too tidy to work.
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| Fuckin’…. Cliche. Get back to me when you’re original! |
I guess my problem isn’t “what motivates these strange beings” its… That I don’t want to really know what motivates them. I want their actions to appear to be leading to…. Something. But I want that something to be vast, thematic rather than concrete. I don’t want to reduce something as truly otherwordly as the mi-go or a doppelganger to sci-fi bad-guy dreck.
I guess that’s the line, scifi. In scifi, the fantastic is made mundane, and we grapple with it in literal terms. In a horror mystery, even the mundane is often rendered strange, and our battles are more abstract and psychological. The mi-go of stargate would want to mine metals; I want the mi-go of the mythos to abduct people and do unspeakable things to them for no clear or comprehensible purpose.
So, what motivates this doppelganger? Certainly the pasty-clone just thinks he’s the original, so he can be kinda comprehensible. But what about the twisted enlightenment of the alter-ego? What’s his plan, what doe she want? For that matter, what the hell is motivating the original, what does he want with his newfound powers of self-multiplication?
Here’s what I think; I think the good doctor and his evil clone both want the same thing; they want to become sorcerers and bend the universe to their whims.
There should be a difference of outlook and method; the original ostensibly wants forbidden power to do good, while his twin wants it to do evil. Original is all about obsessive research, while clone is a sadistic serial killer. But if you strip away the courtesy and social acceptability, you have two men forged from the same raw nerve, who are brilliant and vain and ultimately want a power than people should not have.
Fuck yeah, that’ll do. Okay, I’m going to go prep a campaign with a nonzero chance of getting me laid.
