Casting Shadows

For #RPGaDAY2025 I have decided to go with the flow of the single-word prompts as a means to conceptualize a pitch for a cosmic horror campaign set in the 1890s. The last time David and I took this approach with the prompts was in 2020. For that year, I used the groundbreaking Ghostbusters RPG to play through the provided site map with each prompt informing what the characters could encounter. This time, I think it will be more satisfying to build a campaign framework piece by piece which will be ready to use as soon as we reach Day 31 on August 31^st.

While my campaign concept will of course be transferable to the system of your choice, I will be conceiving of it in terms of Triple Ace Games’ Leagues of Cthulhu which makes all the moving parts of the idea, both creepy and mundane, easy to use. Leagues of Cthulhu arose from the author’s careful examination of the works of Cthulhu’s creator to suggest a world true to Lovecraft’s descriptions and cosmic lore, but placed in a world in which those tales had not yet happened, and where the very human horrors of the twentieth century had not yet begun. It’s a reinvention rather than a remix of Call of Cthulhu and it does not include the works of authors who joined in with their own contributions to the Mythos. Built into the system, the Ubiquity Roleplaying System, are adjustments to make the game as dark, dangerous, and difficult as you like, or as adventurous, exciting, and heroic as you like.

Watch a 1-minute short about this plan~

Each day of the #RPGaDAY event, I will post a short blog entry detailing how that day’s prompt informs the campaign pitch and sets the GM on the path of preparation for improvisation. This means that I will be addressing each prompt from the perspective of knowing what prompts are ahead of us rather than my usual mode of taking each prompt on its own as it comes. This is a model of what I think of as enjoyable preparation for the framework of what I want to contribute to campaign play as the GM. Once a week, seven entries will be compiled into a video for YouTube putting those seven pieces of the pitch into context for the pitch as a whole. That’s the plan at this point anyway.

Let’s get into it!

DAY 1: Patron

The Ubiquity Roleplaying System makes it a quick matter to conceive of and then as necessary stat out NPCs knowing their relative competence in relation to the PCs – and that includes observable and noteworthy aspects of their personalities. It’s a cinch to come up with and complete a patron on the fly as circumstances dictate. In an era as conscious of reputation as the Victorian, where bold individuals might rise and fall in fortune in the blink of an eye, this can be handy. One can never be sure when a patron might withdraw their support or when another one might step into the role. A core part of having a patron is the relationship this creates. Much more than an assigner of missions, the patron is an important figure in the life of the character and it is expected that the two (or more) stay in contact, through meetings, letters, telegrams, mystic means, flashbacks and memories, and the like. The patron is in a position not just to supply the character with items, but with life lessons, instruction, and preparation for certain challenges that patron fears the character might have to face. It’s rich, nuanced, dynamic, and fantastic~

Patron Characters are typically individuals who possess the knowledge and resources needed to accomplish important tasks, but lack the freedom, health, youth, or skills to carry them out. They seek or are sought out by the Player Characters to make some sort of goal possible. That might be something like an expedition to a dangerous and distant location, funding an innovative new process to revolutionize medical practice, preventing a war, or tracking a cruel felon to bring them to justice. It is possible to conceive of patrons as being several individuals representing a family or organization who combined present the necessary traits for the role, but I tend to stick with portraying individuals.

What I appreciate about a framework which involves a patron or patrons is the greater opportunities that affords the players to maintain continuity of action despite the life-ending circumstances which might arise from acts of derring-do and forays into peril by the characters. Whether the patron is an organization like the titular leagues in Leagues of Adventure, a wealthy recluce, an ingenious aunt, or even a haunted mastermind fearful of the future we are stumbling toward, the loss of a character or even all of the characters can be overcome and the work continued by others in a natural and believable way through the concern, interest, and actions of the patron.

In context of the 31 prompts being used as considerations for a campaign pitch for Leagues of Cthulhu’s cosmic horror expression of TAG’s Leagues of Adventure, I would like to begin with an idea for a patron who has sought out and recruited specific characters to accomplish a task that he cannot. In practical terms, this means offering the players a focused list of capabilities to shape their characters around, and making sure that each player is aware of having been recruited and paid or promised reward for accomplishing that specific task so that useful motivations and personal goals can be considered. For open-ended campaign play, I would start with the characters and make the patron in response to a common theme between them, but for an exercise like this it is the reverse: patron first. So, once the group and I settle on the theme, mood, level of intensity, degree of physical and moral danger, as well as the chosen genre of cosmic horror, the pieces of the patron more easily present themselves.

I am not going to hold myself to a set character sheet at this point, but I do want to have a persona in mind to govern my thoughts and choices moving forward, so I will go with a patron I have used before in a campaign we shared on the channel for Leagues of Adventure called, The Sky is No Limit! This patron, a very particular and reclusive inventor and Dreamer with a capital D, has pursued the creation of automata to a great degree of success. In so doing, however, he has become aware of a bloody, muddy, moldering, and conniving initiative among other seekers and inventors to reach the same ends, not by the construction of thinking machines, but by the re-animation of the dead. For Roald Ulysses Neslinger, this blasphemy cannot be allowed to stand. We will dive into that prompt to action, and how that might tie into character motivations for the players later in the week.

For now, let’s close out this already too long entry with a sense of who the patron is as a person. Not all of this would be shared with the players at the start, but as the GM it is important to have a grip on the boundaries and capabilities of this patron in order to envision what they can and cannot provide as a patron and how their presence has influenced the game world before play starts.

As we have mentioned the patron is a reclusive inventor in this world and scholar in the land of dreams beyond the veil of sleep. Roald U. Neslinger spends his time in the waking world surrounded by books and intelligent, self-aware automatons. In the dreamlands, he spends his time among shelves of thought-lost volumes penned by travelers, thinkers, sorcerers, and dreamers from all ages and cultures. His days of wandering are over, but his days if wondering have only just begun. The serenity of his estate in the city of Ulthar is in stark counter-point to the chaos of ruined, unfinished, and abandoned projects which rust or roam across the grounds of his scattered estates, one near Sydney, Nova Scotia and another near the village of Luss in Argyll and Bust, Scotland by Loch Lomond. Caught between the youthful fire of idealism, and the cooler passions of aging responsibility, Roald sees the need to prevent the wickedness of greedy men from corroding the spirit of humanity from within and eroding their morality from without, but has to accept that it is time for him to pass the torch of fighting for that need to others. He is not without humor, but has a distant and analytical demeanor which helps him stay at arms length from people. This almost ensures that acquaintance rarely festers into friendship. It also helps give him a good eye for the quality of a person and the willingness to let people know where they stand.

Roald is in a position to offer information, introductions to Contacts and Allies, and helpful Artifacts of his own devising to his recruits, but very little in the way of money. As a result, he needs a certain financial independence in those recruits, with motivations which will push them on for idealistic or personal reasons, not monetary ones.

Ok, we have made a good start. From this point on we can take the perspective of a retired and reclusive man of means who, late in life, realizes a growing threat which must be opposed with the force and fire of a youthful cadre of brave and ethical adventurers – all he has to do is find and recruit them.

What could possibly go wrong?

See you tomorrow for Day 2: Prompt!