[NWoD] Chronicle panic! [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

drakir_nosslin

2011-02-25, 02:28 PM

So, I've finally found a gaming group, and I've started DM:ing D&D 3.5 with a group of 4 players. It's moving along quite nicely, we meet once a week and have loads of fun. None of them have ever played any P&P before, but it works out fine with me dumbing down the rules to get everything running smoothly.

Anyway, this weekend one of the players is absent, and his character is at the moment quite important for the plot, and we ended last session with a cliffhanger, so we can't really continue without this player.

I found out this today, along with the fact that the group wants to try out nWoD, which I own, but I've never ST:d before, and I've only played it twice, many years ago...

So, now I need to come up with a chronicle that I can at least start with tomorrow afternoon! :smalleek:
I think that it would be awesome to try it out, but I feel that I really need to do something cool in the beginning to get the rest hooked, and I've got no experience at all with this... We've already done two characters, while we were waiting for the other two last session, one is a retired, divorced fireman with a dead child (fire accident, yes he has issues), the other's a bitchy lawyer who works for the mob and is a drug addict.

Now, I found this (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=532971) while googling a little, and shamelessly stole the idea of a man who revived his dead daughter and now has to steal organs to make sure that she doesn't rot away. A creepy dead child on a tricycle could work very well I think, especially with the fireman's player.
Now, my question is this: How do I get all this to work until tomorrow afternoon? Any tips on how to be a good ST? Anything that can help is appreciated!

TL;DR: I have to fix the beginning of a chronicle until tomorrow, and I have no idea of how to do it! HELP! :smalleek:

SurlySeraph

2011-02-25, 06:12 PM

I can't give you STing advice, but I can give you a rudimentary plot.

OK, dead-daughter-reviving guy clearly has a lab. Perhaps he sells drugs as well to finance whatever materials the organ-replacing requires. That links the lawyer in. The fireman... clearly the little girl should resemble his daughter, and perhaps he can have dreams or something drawing him towards the lab. I'm sure you can think of ways to link the other characters in once you get them. Anyway, all of them are around there, and talk to him and a couple other low-life characters briefly.

The characters meet a women near or at Daughter Reviver's lair who mentions that she's looking for her own child, and seems kinda scared; she doesn't want to go to the police because she's a drug addict.
If the players agree to help look for the kid, great! If not, the police visit each of them the next day with search warrants and take them in for questioning. Because witnesses mentioned seeing them talking to Druggie Woman last evening, and they're the last people who saw her alive. Druggie Woman has been found gutted and dismembered in a dumpster.
The police decide they don't have enough evidence to hold the PCs, for now, and let them go.
If the lawyer doesn't seem to want to investigate, one of the police hints that he'll hand the case over to a DA that the lawyer knows, who is definitely biased against her.
Either by talking with contacts in the emergency services, investigating the scene themselves, etc. the characters get clues about where Druggie Woman's daughter could be. A scrap of her clothing that when tested was saturated with unusual amounts of some chemical that's made in a factory nearby, a picture book with certain words and parts of pictures circled in crayon (forming an address and hinting at which of the buildings at that address it is), etc.
They go to a warehouse. It is creepy. They see the kid riding across an upper walkway on a tricycle singing to herself, completely unresponsive to any noise they make, and by the time they get up there she's gone.

Further into the warehouse, they find a mannequin's arm on the floor. If they examine it, it seems completely unremarkable. When they stop paying attention to it, one of them sees movement in the corner of his eye; the hand has clenched into a fist. Or, if one of them picks it up, they feel it move.
If the party tries to leave, the doors are now locked from the inside and windows are too high.

If your players are antsy for combat, you can have a disheveled, bloodshot-eyed guy who also broke into the warehouse and attacks them in terror. If they kill him, he'll have notes relating to Daughter Reviver and drugs, and on the topic of the next couple sentences.
If they subdue him, he'll be willing to lead them to where he thinks there's a stash of chemicals in the warehouse. Finding a heap of something that he believes is heroin on a counter amidst various other chemicals and lab equipment, he'll gleefully take a syringe from a drawer.
It will not be heroin. Insert horrific description of whatever happens to him here. Scooping up foam from his mouth or whatever he emits using one of the numerous test tubes around so the group test it and can figure out what happened may be a good idea. Taking some of the chemical would also be a good idea.
In the lab equipment room, the players will find a little girl's left shoe, and what looks like a trail through the dust towards a door into the warehouse's basement, indicating that something small was dragged along the ground through there.
On the stairs, they'll find another little left shoe.
The first room they get to in the basement is full of shelves of mannequins, blocking their ability to see much of where they're going . They hear the of a tricycle and quiet giggling. If they call out, the squeaking wheels stop immediately and the laughter gets a lot louder and deeper in tone before suddenly cutting off. Then they hear rapid, light footsteps.

If they're combat-oriented, something that resembles a mannequin will attack them. It will turn out to be a guy wearing a hollow mannequin's head like a mask one they take him down (killing will be necessary), and it'll seem like physical features fill in and appear on his body the more they look at it. Perhaps a limb gets bloodlessly severed during the fight, and suddenly starts gushing blood when they take a closer look at it.

Oh, and of course a the mannequins seem to be in slightly different positions after the fight than they were before.

The next room they go into is smaller, and has nothing but a big filing cabinet shoved against the wall. The cabinet is rusty and smells weird, sort of metallic like blood. It appears to be a dead end. They'll probably figure out that the filing cabinet is blocking a passageway; if not, drop hints. It'll be too heavy to push, so they need to open drawers.
The first drawer they open has files. The second has jars of something cloudy and sickly yellow. The third has files. The fourth has jars of something dark red. The fifth has bones - if one of them is willing to inspect and pull them out, it'll appear to be a complete child's skeleton. The sixth through ninth have mannequin parts.The tenth has human arms and legs, and they look a lot like Druggie Woman's. Maybe the legs still have her jeans on them.

Anyway, they can move the file cabinet now. Behind it is a long and claustrophobic tunnel, where they have to hunch their heads to get through. They see the little girl with her tricycle in it; she smiles and waves at them, then gets on her trike and rides off, going faster than they can follow even if they sprint.

The tunnel rises, and goes up into a lab. The girl's waiting for them there and talks, acting like a relatively normal little girl, acting like she's barely seen them, not revealing much, etc. If you want this to be a one-shot, Daughter Reviver comes down the stairs, confrontation ensues, he tempts the fireman with the possibility of returning his daughter to life, etc. If not, they just find clues and an icebox full of organs.