Kickstarter - The Things We Leave Behind
The Things We Leave Behind is an anthology of five dark scenarios for the table top RPG Call of Cthulhu. Taking its inspirational cues from Delta Green, Fargo, Blood Simple, and True Detective, the book takes a mature look at the horror of human nature and its ability to be just as disturbing as anything from the Mythos. The Things We Leave Behind scenario book is being produced by Stygian Fox, with five scenarios that are set in the world of the Call of Cthulhu game, but highlighting the fact that humans are just as capable of doing horrible things as the creatures of The Cthulhu Mythos.
The Scenarios
Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home by Jeff Moeller. The investigators search for an abducted child in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, where time becomes a serious concern.
Forget Me Not by Brian M. Sammons. An accident in a TV truck in rural Michigan sees the investigators awake in a ditch with no recollection of how they got there.
Roots by Simon Brake. Inquiries into a missing teen will teach the investigators that some mid-west communities prefer to be left alone.
Hell in Texas by Scott Dorward. After a suicide at a church's east Texas Halloween haunted house, strange events threaten the lives and sanity of all those in the vicinity, including the investigators.
The Night Season by Jeff Moeller shows that fandom in Anchorage, Alaska, can go too far when reality begins to shift.
We talked to Simon Brake, the author of the Roots scenario, and asked him to tell us more about his part in the game.
"I can't say too much about it without spoiling the game for potential players, but the premise of the scenario is that a teenaged girl, probably related to one of the player characters, goes missing during a camping trip with friends in the woods. The characters are contacted by her desperate mother to go out and find her. It's a horror story, a mystery... I'm sure you can imagine the sorts of dark places that this story could go.
It does tap slightly into my love of fairy-tales, one in particular, but it eschews the happy ever afters. It also had a little inspiration from a number of horror films which I can't name here, again for fear of spoiling the investigation (which, in part, resembles the remake of one of those films, though I hadn't seen it at the time of writing). When the first season of True Detective came out soon after I'd finished writing it I did wonder if they might follow a similar trajectory... again, I can't say too much but there is a similar off-the-beaten-track' vibe to it. The town in the scenario is named after a rock song I'm a fan of, and which has since been the song played for the first dance at my wedding, and there's at least one other joke name in the story for anyone who likes a bit of word play.
I pushed myself well out of my comfort zone to write the piece, to imagine something that would make me feel uncomfortable if I were to witness it in a film, read it in a book or stumble across it in a game where I was playing an investigator. So if some of it comes across as being creepy then rest assured, I found it creepy too. I'd recommend anyone thinking of running the scenario to carefully consider how it might affect certain players. The bad guys in the story have screwed up moral compasses, and will tend to be more predatory towards certain investigators. It might be kind to 'draw a veil' over their eventual fates."
You can support the crowdfunder and pre-order the book itself from the Kickstarter page at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stephaniemcalea/the-things-we-leave-behind-for-call-of-cthulhu/description
Image - Davide Como, Stygian Fox
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