esotErik
2015-02-05, 08:15 PM
So I Gm'd my second roleplaying session with some friends and it went... less than swimmingly. Everyone had fun, but we all agreed that it was sort of a mess. If you don't want to read a whole summary of the session, please skip to the TL;DR where I ask how I can make things run better in the future. As for system, we used Fate Core (as opposed to Accelerated, which we had used previously).
The Scenario
After the seemingly simple nature of the "I Want You to Kill the Ice Cream Man" scenario, I figured I'd just whip one up myself.How hard could it be, right?
In 1950s Corgiton, USA, a new, avant garde version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is to be performed at the Grand Theater. During the last two weeks of the preparation, however, a worker has gone missing every night and there have been sightings of strange creatures flying around the Theater. Our heroes arrive a mere 3 days before the premiere of the play, hoping to solve the mystery of the disappearances.
The Characters
Abraham Lincoln (Will Spain): “Renowned method actor Will Spain worked long and hard on his realistic portrayal of Abraham Lincoln only to discover at the last moment the play was to be a Shakespeare adaptation instead. He did not get the memo because he was out in the wilderness during most of production, living in a log cabin and chopping wood with his trusty axe. Now he wanders the halls of the theatre, without a play to act in and unable to break character until he's gotten it all out of his system.” Because Will is accurate to a fault, his portrayal of Honest Abe is bad at lying. He is recovering from smallpox, which he purposefully contracted over the summer. Same player as Chad Bradley.
Betty Bloodborne: A 200 year old vampire. Perpetually looks 30ish because immortality and whatnot. Used to be “a famous alcohol person” during Prohibition, and thus has connections with criminals. Currently working as bartender. Betty possesses several vampiric abilities from a Wikipedia list, including the creation of illusions after nightfall and Count Chocula’s ability to make any liquid chocolate flavored. Same player as Margaret.
Millie Sweets: Were-corgi soda shop waitress. “The Sweets' bloodline is cursed. Long ago they crossed a wicked witch with a strong love of cute cuddly dogs. Millie is just an average twenty something living with this curse.” Millie can't swim, only doggy paddle. After midnight, Millie becomes a Fey Corgi (an anthropomorphic corgi from a D&D homebrew) granting her increased investigative skills, claw attacks, and increased agility, but removing her opposable thumbs and ability to open doors. New player.
What Happened
Millie and Betty, friends (and maybe someday something more?) are curious about the disappearances for their own respective supernatural reasons and decide to pay a visit. There they encounter Will/Abe, who, left without a play to act in, has decided to emancipate the possibly kidnapped or even enslaved missing crewmembers. The three decide to cooperate.
Entering the theater, the trio talks to the producers, Fred Zoeller and James Carver. Millie Sweets talks to Fred, who is very dismissive about the disappearances and fails to remember any of the missing crewmembers’ names. He recommends they talk to Bob the crewman, head crewman, with whom Betty bonds over a mutual acquaintance from her bar. Bob informs them that the only witness to any of the disappearances, Thomas Thompson, is currently in a local hospital.
Before investigating this leade, Millie makes an investigative sniff of her surroundings and smells poison backstage. Betty speaks French with the Avant Garde French Director, Gaspard Tomas, who says several interesting facts about the production which our heroes totally ignore. Millie and Abe use this distraction to sneak backstage, where they are stopped in front of the poison-smelling dressing room by the very nervous actress Brenda Brisby. Millie convinces Brisby that they are fans looking for an autograph, but Brisby escorts them out anyway. Betty, meanwhile, sneaks away from the director and past Brisby into the dressing room where she discovers a locked cabinet. Breaking into the cabinet, she discovers poisons, guns, knives, and an axe. She takes a gun and the poisons, which she turns chocolate-flavored for no reason. Once the group reunites, Millie detects the change in scent, casting suspicion on Betty’s true nature. But she simply accuses Brisby of being a witch and they all forget about it.
They then decide to make the trip to the hospital, but Abe demands they go in his period horse-drawn carriage. Miraculously, this wastes not extra time and they make it to the hospital without incident. Betty fails to deceive the clerk, who has in front of her a paper listing all of Thomas Thompson’s family relations, into thinking she is Thomas Thompson’s wife, then fails to recover by saying she is just his fiance. Betty is kicked out of the hospital.
Abe successfully claims to be a fellow actor visiting Thompson and is allowed in, sneaking Millie in with him. Betty vampire stealths her way in after them. Thompson’s sister refuses to let them see him, even after being convinced that Abe is a fellow actor and Millie is a candygram. Betty steals a doctor’s coat and, posing as a doctor, gets past the sister to talk to Thompson. Abe and Milly distract her, Abe patting the axe under his coat threateningly while glaring at her, while Betty talks to Thompson, who describes how he saw a fellow crew member ripped apart by flying monsters that then stared into his soul. Betty prevents him from descending into a shrieking mess by sharing her flask with him and then hears how he always wanted to be an actor himself. The woman frustratedly leaves, so Millie goes into the room while Abe stays out to keep watch.
“So, Millie, it’s just us too, alone in this room…”
“Actually, I’m still here. You know, I bet I could’ve been a director, too…”
“Oh, yes Betty, its so nice to get a little time alone. You know, just us girls…”
“Did I tell you about the creatures? They were horrible, terrifying things!”
“Tee-hee”
Abe fails to notice the woman peeking around the corner to see if they are still there. After spending far too much time there, the group decides to leave, but not before Betty vampirizes Thompson in the hopes that he will recover his senses as a creature of the night. As the sun has now gone down, she casts an illusion to make him appear to have died of a heart attack. The group travels by carriage back to the theater, hoping to prevent another crewmember disappearance tonight, but fail to see a car accelerating towards them before it plows into their carriage, smashing it to pieces and sending them all, moderately injured, into the park they had been driving past.
Abe and Millie take cover behind some trees while Betty fires several ineffectual shots at the car before being hit again, leaving her with a limp and a broken arm. The driver then emerges, gun in hand, and it is none other than Thompson’s “sister.” Millie’s sensitive ears then detect the sound of wings on the wind and she looks up to see a horrible, bat-like monster flying down upon them. Despite the fearsome nature of the beast, Abe easily swats it out of the air and then hacks off both its wings, sustaining only a few scratches in the process. Betty is lucky enough to find a child’s plastic bat which she swings at the creature, miraculously hitting it directly in its open wound and inflicting enough trauma to kill it. It dissolves into a black puddle.
Betty, meanwhile, has used her vampire stealth to sneak up behind the woman and shoots her in both arms, disabling her. The trio toss the woman in the back seat and drive off in her car, parking in the theater alleyway. Though oddly charmed by Millie, the woman reveals only that “something” is coming to destroy them all, before breaking a cyanide capsule in her mouth and dying. Checking her body, our heroes discover a strange symbol tattooed on the back of her shoulder, but nothing else of note.
Leaving the corpse in the stolen car in the barely concealed alleyway, the group sees Bob the crewman, head crewman, again, and Betty strikes up another conversation. Bob very conspicuously mentions how weird the play’s script is and then very conspicuously rants about how the producers have been making them work late and on weekends; which almost, in a way, if you really think about it, makes the producers responsible for the disappearances which only happen at night and sometimes on weekends. The group immediately and unanimously decides to murder both producers the next day.
Using a vampire illusion to sneak the group backstage and steal the rest of the weapons out of Brenda Brisby’s cabinet, the group finds the dressing room locked again. After Betty fails to unlock the door, Abe chops it to pieces with his axe, which breaks in the process. The surprised Brenda Brisby (who had been holed up in her room, hoping to secure it against any intruders after the theft earlier in the day) shoots at the splintering door, missing Abe. Betty returns fire, first shooting off Brenda’s ear, then shooting her again in the head. As the theater devolves into chaos with crewmembers running around trying to find the source of the gunshots, the trio steal the rest of Brisby's weapons (including an extra gun for Millie and a replacement axe for Abe), find a copy of the play’s script, and trip a fire alarm to get everyone out of the building in hopes of saving them from flying monster attack.
Outside the theater, surrounded by crew, police, and firefighters, they spot one of the flying creatures circling overhead before it flies away, disappointed and hungry. Standing invisibly in the midst of all these people, Millie reads over the script and notices a couple of oddities. Unlike in the actual “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the love quadrangle in the forest between Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius ends in a violent bloodbath. And when the play with the play as supposed to be begin, the script is simply blank for 20 pages.
Millie then wants to call it a night to prevent the revelation of her secret at midnight, but Betty finally convinces her to reveal herself. The clock strikes midnight, Millie becomes a were-corgi, and then they all go home anyway.
The next day, the three meet back up outside the theater, where the producers are arguing with a cop on the street about closing the theater for the investigation of Brenda Brisby’s murder. Betty tries numerous times of things to persuade the cops to help them out in some way, but fails repeatedly and is asked to leave. The cop does, however, mention that a note was found revealing that Brenda Brisby had been plotting to murder the producer Fred Zoeller, who had been mistreating her. Abe and Betty seriously consider killing both Zoeller and the two police officers right there in the street, but Millie refuses to help. They then wait an hour for the police to leave and follow the producers back inside the theater.
In the theater proper, they see the full cast of the play in attendance: Wellington Crumplepot, Craig Black, Damien Badguy, Jon Smith, Jack Jackson, and Natalie Former. (I went to the trouble of making up these names, dammit, I’m going to list them somewhere!) Betty begins chatting up Natalie Former, much to Millie’s chagrin, while Honest Abe concocts another brilliant plan: he will stand behind the clearly drunk Jack Jackson, shoot Fred Zoeller, and then put the gun in Jack’s hand to frame him. Abe successfully headshots Zoeller, killing him instantly, but everyone in the room clearly sees him try to put the gun in Jack’s hand.
Just to be safe, Betty then shoots the other producer, James Carver, in the head, instead of blood, though, tentacles burst forth from the wound and Carver mutates into a horrible writhing mass of tentacles. All but two of the actors, Wellington Crumplepot and Craig Black, flee the theater, the two remaining drawing handguns and aiming them at our heroes.
Bullets fly everywhere, Carver’s strong tentacles pummel all of our heroes nearly to death befoer he loses several of them, Millie attempts to charm Crumplepot who merely shuckles and shoots her in the gut, and Abe finally manages to hack off Craig’s head, followed by Crumplepot’s. Concerned that she and her allies are about to die, Betty attempts to run across the room and vampirize them so that they can all try again the next night as vampires, but Carver grabs her with his tentacles and smashes her into the ground until she is barely more than a head and some paste on the ground. Abe manage to land a hefty blow on the center of Carver’s mass, lodging his axe blade into the monstrosity, and Millie swings her plastic bat, luckily connecting with the same axe blade and driving it deeper. Severely injured and missing more than half of his tentacles, Carver makes a break for the door.
Millie pursues the flopping tentacles out into the street while Abe scratches his head trying to figure out a way to administer first aid to the nearly liquified Betty. Carver drops down a manhole and Millie attempts to drop down directly on top of him for a finishing blow, but misses. She takes a swing with her bat, which Carver deflects and sends flying. She attempts to pistol whip him him and her gun is also sent flying. Abe just then catches up and attempts a dropping body slam but is, himself, sent flying. Millie, mustering her inner were-corgi strength, finally manages to wrestle Carver down and hold him in place while Abe curbstomps him to death.
The final battle is won. Despite having never actually learned what the heck was going on, our heroes actually did save the day. The play is canceled and nothing else bad happens.
Milly sneaks back to the theater, where Betty has chocolate-flavored her own innards, and collects her up in an empty garbage bin.
“Milly, I have something to confess. I’m actually a vampire.”
“Well yeah, I think that’s kinda clear at this point, since you’re still alive.”
Natalie Former sees Millie dragging the flesh filled garbage can and faints. Millie drops Betty off in the backroom of her bar, rejects her romantic advances, and goes to work.
Abe, meanwhile, symbolically shaves off his beard with a piece of axe pulled from Carver’s carcass. Having seen enough of the 20th century, he decides to stay and live in the sewers for the rest of his life.
That night, Thomas Thompson rises as a very confused vampire.
What Was Supposed to Happen
The play was an obvious ripoff of "The Yellow King," a play which, in the Cthulhu mythos, summons Hastur the Unspeakable. The woman with the tattoo, the two villainous actors, and a bookstore owner the players never encountered were all members of cult (each with their own matching tattoo) led by Carver that worshipped an obvious ripoff of Hastur, whom they hoped to summon with the play. The flying creatures were part of the summoning ritual, arriving and feeding on a different crewmember each other night for two weeks before the conclusion with the performance.
Brenda's plan to murder Fred Zoeller was supposed to be a red herring and Zoeller was just an ordinary jerk being manipulated by Carver; neither was related to the cult or the ritual, and neither really deserved to be murdered by the players.
The man in the hospital was an afterthought in my creation of the scenario; I had intended them to go around the theater, questioning the crew, possibly discovering that the two cultists on the cast were not who they purported to be, or discovering the eldritch tome in the producers' office upon which the play was based. Instead, the players identified the most obvious candidates to be the bad guys and killed them without doing much investigation at all, successfully saving the day regardless.
TL;DR: My players invariably consider violence as their first resort in every situation and are more concerned with behaving absurdly than realistically or in character. The scenario I wrote up was supposed to be a big investigation but they successfully brute forced their way through it, murdering the big bad on very thing suspicions and succeeding in spite of themselves. It was frustrating for me as GM, but also not terribly entertaining for them. How do I prevent wanton murder at every turn?
The Scenario
After the seemingly simple nature of the "I Want You to Kill the Ice Cream Man" scenario, I figured I'd just whip one up myself.How hard could it be, right?
In 1950s Corgiton, USA, a new, avant garde version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is to be performed at the Grand Theater. During the last two weeks of the preparation, however, a worker has gone missing every night and there have been sightings of strange creatures flying around the Theater. Our heroes arrive a mere 3 days before the premiere of the play, hoping to solve the mystery of the disappearances.
The Characters
Abraham Lincoln (Will Spain): “Renowned method actor Will Spain worked long and hard on his realistic portrayal of Abraham Lincoln only to discover at the last moment the play was to be a Shakespeare adaptation instead. He did not get the memo because he was out in the wilderness during most of production, living in a log cabin and chopping wood with his trusty axe. Now he wanders the halls of the theatre, without a play to act in and unable to break character until he's gotten it all out of his system.” Because Will is accurate to a fault, his portrayal of Honest Abe is bad at lying. He is recovering from smallpox, which he purposefully contracted over the summer. Same player as Chad Bradley.
Betty Bloodborne: A 200 year old vampire. Perpetually looks 30ish because immortality and whatnot. Used to be “a famous alcohol person” during Prohibition, and thus has connections with criminals. Currently working as bartender. Betty possesses several vampiric abilities from a Wikipedia list, including the creation of illusions after nightfall and Count Chocula’s ability to make any liquid chocolate flavored. Same player as Margaret.
Millie Sweets: Were-corgi soda shop waitress. “The Sweets' bloodline is cursed. Long ago they crossed a wicked witch with a strong love of cute cuddly dogs. Millie is just an average twenty something living with this curse.” Millie can't swim, only doggy paddle. After midnight, Millie becomes a Fey Corgi (an anthropomorphic corgi from a D&D homebrew) granting her increased investigative skills, claw attacks, and increased agility, but removing her opposable thumbs and ability to open doors. New player.
What Happened
Millie and Betty, friends (and maybe someday something more?) are curious about the disappearances for their own respective supernatural reasons and decide to pay a visit. There they encounter Will/Abe, who, left without a play to act in, has decided to emancipate the possibly kidnapped or even enslaved missing crewmembers. The three decide to cooperate.
Entering the theater, the trio talks to the producers, Fred Zoeller and James Carver. Millie Sweets talks to Fred, who is very dismissive about the disappearances and fails to remember any of the missing crewmembers’ names. He recommends they talk to Bob the crewman, head crewman, with whom Betty bonds over a mutual acquaintance from her bar. Bob informs them that the only witness to any of the disappearances, Thomas Thompson, is currently in a local hospital.
Before investigating this leade, Millie makes an investigative sniff of her surroundings and smells poison backstage. Betty speaks French with the Avant Garde French Director, Gaspard Tomas, who says several interesting facts about the production which our heroes totally ignore. Millie and Abe use this distraction to sneak backstage, where they are stopped in front of the poison-smelling dressing room by the very nervous actress Brenda Brisby. Millie convinces Brisby that they are fans looking for an autograph, but Brisby escorts them out anyway. Betty, meanwhile, sneaks away from the director and past Brisby into the dressing room where she discovers a locked cabinet. Breaking into the cabinet, she discovers poisons, guns, knives, and an axe. She takes a gun and the poisons, which she turns chocolate-flavored for no reason. Once the group reunites, Millie detects the change in scent, casting suspicion on Betty’s true nature. But she simply accuses Brisby of being a witch and they all forget about it.
They then decide to make the trip to the hospital, but Abe demands they go in his period horse-drawn carriage. Miraculously, this wastes not extra time and they make it to the hospital without incident. Betty fails to deceive the clerk, who has in front of her a paper listing all of Thomas Thompson’s family relations, into thinking she is Thomas Thompson’s wife, then fails to recover by saying she is just his fiance. Betty is kicked out of the hospital.
Abe successfully claims to be a fellow actor visiting Thompson and is allowed in, sneaking Millie in with him. Betty vampire stealths her way in after them. Thompson’s sister refuses to let them see him, even after being convinced that Abe is a fellow actor and Millie is a candygram. Betty steals a doctor’s coat and, posing as a doctor, gets past the sister to talk to Thompson. Abe and Milly distract her, Abe patting the axe under his coat threateningly while glaring at her, while Betty talks to Thompson, who describes how he saw a fellow crew member ripped apart by flying monsters that then stared into his soul. Betty prevents him from descending into a shrieking mess by sharing her flask with him and then hears how he always wanted to be an actor himself. The woman frustratedly leaves, so Millie goes into the room while Abe stays out to keep watch.
“So, Millie, it’s just us too, alone in this room…”
“Actually, I’m still here. You know, I bet I could’ve been a director, too…”
“Oh, yes Betty, its so nice to get a little time alone. You know, just us girls…”
“Did I tell you about the creatures? They were horrible, terrifying things!”
“Tee-hee”
Abe fails to notice the woman peeking around the corner to see if they are still there. After spending far too much time there, the group decides to leave, but not before Betty vampirizes Thompson in the hopes that he will recover his senses as a creature of the night. As the sun has now gone down, she casts an illusion to make him appear to have died of a heart attack. The group travels by carriage back to the theater, hoping to prevent another crewmember disappearance tonight, but fail to see a car accelerating towards them before it plows into their carriage, smashing it to pieces and sending them all, moderately injured, into the park they had been driving past.
Abe and Millie take cover behind some trees while Betty fires several ineffectual shots at the car before being hit again, leaving her with a limp and a broken arm. The driver then emerges, gun in hand, and it is none other than Thompson’s “sister.” Millie’s sensitive ears then detect the sound of wings on the wind and she looks up to see a horrible, bat-like monster flying down upon them. Despite the fearsome nature of the beast, Abe easily swats it out of the air and then hacks off both its wings, sustaining only a few scratches in the process. Betty is lucky enough to find a child’s plastic bat which she swings at the creature, miraculously hitting it directly in its open wound and inflicting enough trauma to kill it. It dissolves into a black puddle.
Betty, meanwhile, has used her vampire stealth to sneak up behind the woman and shoots her in both arms, disabling her. The trio toss the woman in the back seat and drive off in her car, parking in the theater alleyway. Though oddly charmed by Millie, the woman reveals only that “something” is coming to destroy them all, before breaking a cyanide capsule in her mouth and dying. Checking her body, our heroes discover a strange symbol tattooed on the back of her shoulder, but nothing else of note.
Leaving the corpse in the stolen car in the barely concealed alleyway, the group sees Bob the crewman, head crewman, again, and Betty strikes up another conversation. Bob very conspicuously mentions how weird the play’s script is and then very conspicuously rants about how the producers have been making them work late and on weekends; which almost, in a way, if you really think about it, makes the producers responsible for the disappearances which only happen at night and sometimes on weekends. The group immediately and unanimously decides to murder both producers the next day.
Using a vampire illusion to sneak the group backstage and steal the rest of the weapons out of Brenda Brisby’s cabinet, the group finds the dressing room locked again. After Betty fails to unlock the door, Abe chops it to pieces with his axe, which breaks in the process. The surprised Brenda Brisby (who had been holed up in her room, hoping to secure it against any intruders after the theft earlier in the day) shoots at the splintering door, missing Abe. Betty returns fire, first shooting off Brenda’s ear, then shooting her again in the head. As the theater devolves into chaos with crewmembers running around trying to find the source of the gunshots, the trio steal the rest of Brisby's weapons (including an extra gun for Millie and a replacement axe for Abe), find a copy of the play’s script, and trip a fire alarm to get everyone out of the building in hopes of saving them from flying monster attack.
Outside the theater, surrounded by crew, police, and firefighters, they spot one of the flying creatures circling overhead before it flies away, disappointed and hungry. Standing invisibly in the midst of all these people, Millie reads over the script and notices a couple of oddities. Unlike in the actual “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the love quadrangle in the forest between Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius ends in a violent bloodbath. And when the play with the play as supposed to be begin, the script is simply blank for 20 pages.
Millie then wants to call it a night to prevent the revelation of her secret at midnight, but Betty finally convinces her to reveal herself. The clock strikes midnight, Millie becomes a were-corgi, and then they all go home anyway.
The next day, the three meet back up outside the theater, where the producers are arguing with a cop on the street about closing the theater for the investigation of Brenda Brisby’s murder. Betty tries numerous times of things to persuade the cops to help them out in some way, but fails repeatedly and is asked to leave. The cop does, however, mention that a note was found revealing that Brenda Brisby had been plotting to murder the producer Fred Zoeller, who had been mistreating her. Abe and Betty seriously consider killing both Zoeller and the two police officers right there in the street, but Millie refuses to help. They then wait an hour for the police to leave and follow the producers back inside the theater.
In the theater proper, they see the full cast of the play in attendance: Wellington Crumplepot, Craig Black, Damien Badguy, Jon Smith, Jack Jackson, and Natalie Former. (I went to the trouble of making up these names, dammit, I’m going to list them somewhere!) Betty begins chatting up Natalie Former, much to Millie’s chagrin, while Honest Abe concocts another brilliant plan: he will stand behind the clearly drunk Jack Jackson, shoot Fred Zoeller, and then put the gun in Jack’s hand to frame him. Abe successfully headshots Zoeller, killing him instantly, but everyone in the room clearly sees him try to put the gun in Jack’s hand.
Just to be safe, Betty then shoots the other producer, James Carver, in the head, instead of blood, though, tentacles burst forth from the wound and Carver mutates into a horrible writhing mass of tentacles. All but two of the actors, Wellington Crumplepot and Craig Black, flee the theater, the two remaining drawing handguns and aiming them at our heroes.
Bullets fly everywhere, Carver’s strong tentacles pummel all of our heroes nearly to death befoer he loses several of them, Millie attempts to charm Crumplepot who merely shuckles and shoots her in the gut, and Abe finally manages to hack off Craig’s head, followed by Crumplepot’s. Concerned that she and her allies are about to die, Betty attempts to run across the room and vampirize them so that they can all try again the next night as vampires, but Carver grabs her with his tentacles and smashes her into the ground until she is barely more than a head and some paste on the ground. Abe manage to land a hefty blow on the center of Carver’s mass, lodging his axe blade into the monstrosity, and Millie swings her plastic bat, luckily connecting with the same axe blade and driving it deeper. Severely injured and missing more than half of his tentacles, Carver makes a break for the door.
Millie pursues the flopping tentacles out into the street while Abe scratches his head trying to figure out a way to administer first aid to the nearly liquified Betty. Carver drops down a manhole and Millie attempts to drop down directly on top of him for a finishing blow, but misses. She takes a swing with her bat, which Carver deflects and sends flying. She attempts to pistol whip him him and her gun is also sent flying. Abe just then catches up and attempts a dropping body slam but is, himself, sent flying. Millie, mustering her inner were-corgi strength, finally manages to wrestle Carver down and hold him in place while Abe curbstomps him to death.
The final battle is won. Despite having never actually learned what the heck was going on, our heroes actually did save the day. The play is canceled and nothing else bad happens.
Milly sneaks back to the theater, where Betty has chocolate-flavored her own innards, and collects her up in an empty garbage bin.
“Milly, I have something to confess. I’m actually a vampire.”
“Well yeah, I think that’s kinda clear at this point, since you’re still alive.”
Natalie Former sees Millie dragging the flesh filled garbage can and faints. Millie drops Betty off in the backroom of her bar, rejects her romantic advances, and goes to work.
Abe, meanwhile, symbolically shaves off his beard with a piece of axe pulled from Carver’s carcass. Having seen enough of the 20th century, he decides to stay and live in the sewers for the rest of his life.
That night, Thomas Thompson rises as a very confused vampire.
What Was Supposed to Happen
The play was an obvious ripoff of "The Yellow King," a play which, in the Cthulhu mythos, summons Hastur the Unspeakable. The woman with the tattoo, the two villainous actors, and a bookstore owner the players never encountered were all members of cult (each with their own matching tattoo) led by Carver that worshipped an obvious ripoff of Hastur, whom they hoped to summon with the play. The flying creatures were part of the summoning ritual, arriving and feeding on a different crewmember each other night for two weeks before the conclusion with the performance.
Brenda's plan to murder Fred Zoeller was supposed to be a red herring and Zoeller was just an ordinary jerk being manipulated by Carver; neither was related to the cult or the ritual, and neither really deserved to be murdered by the players.
The man in the hospital was an afterthought in my creation of the scenario; I had intended them to go around the theater, questioning the crew, possibly discovering that the two cultists on the cast were not who they purported to be, or discovering the eldritch tome in the producers' office upon which the play was based. Instead, the players identified the most obvious candidates to be the bad guys and killed them without doing much investigation at all, successfully saving the day regardless.
TL;DR: My players invariably consider violence as their first resort in every situation and are more concerned with behaving absurdly than realistically or in character. The scenario I wrote up was supposed to be a big investigation but they successfully brute forced their way through it, murdering the big bad on very thing suspicions and succeeding in spite of themselves. It was frustrating for me as GM, but also not terribly entertaining for them. How do I prevent wanton murder at every turn?