Current Events > I have a little under two weeks to plan this game for my TTRPG group

(+) Yeah! (+)

We just finished our year-long Avatar: The Last Airbender game this weekend, and now I'm back in the GM chair. I'm leaning towards running a Chronicles of Darkness game that's been in my head for a long time now, and when I gave them the elevator pitch, they seemed interested in it, especially since the timing is perfect for the spooky season.

For anybody unfamiliar with Chronicles of Darkness, it's the latest iteration of the World of Darkness games. For anybody unfamiliar with World of Darkness, it's a modern horror tabletop RPG where the concept is that supernatural creatures and urban legends are real, albeit not common knowledge. While the base game is built around the players being ordinary people (commonly referred to simply as "mortals") dealing with monsters and whatnot, it also has about a dozen or more different game lines where the players can take the role of powerful supernatural creatures such as vampires, werewolves, mages, demons, or monster hunters who specialize in taking down one or more types of creature (and may or may not be supernatural themselves).

Anyway, the elevator pitch for the specific game I plan to run is this: The small rural community of Fair Well has attracted some very unwanted national attention; beginning a few months ago, and on a weekly basis, one resident of the town unfailingly vanishes without a trace, never to be seen again. The local authorities are absolutely stumped, and everyone is understandably concerned about their slowly dwindling population. As residents begin to move away out of caution, the void is filled by newcomers to the town intent on solving the mystery, including government officials, private investigators, paranormal/serial killer enthusiasts, documentary crews, or even anybody willing to take the risk of living in Fair Well. As a player in this game, you can choose to be an existing resident of the town or an outsider who has taken up temporary residency. Somebody has to figure out what's going on here, before it's too late.

The intent behind this game is to create an intriguing scenario that allows for a variety of character concepts, and gives the players an immediately identifiable and open-ended goal. I don't want to design it around a single "correct" answer, but instead come up with multiple options or paths that they can go down, so they never feel like they're chasing a false lead or discover that they wasted an entire session without making any progress.

A few ideas I've come up with that they could uncover as the source of the missing people:

Aliens - Of course, with it being a rural community, this will most likely come up as an idea, either by one of the players or by an NPC that they interact with. It's up to them whether they choose to laugh it off or pursue it as an actual answer to the mystery, but it's definitely a route I should put some thought into.
Conspiracy - Maybe there's nothing supernatural going on at all, and it's a conspiracy by some people in town to manufacture a crisis that would draw tourism (and thus money) into Fair Well. I do plan on, regardless of the arc, one of the antagonistic NPCs to be a hotel owner who's definitely taking advantage of the situation -- perhaps they're part of a larger ring of business owners and elected officials who are making a few necessary "sacrifices" for the good of the town.
Cult - Speaking of sacrifices, you can't bring that word up without creating a mental image of a shadowy cabal in hoods circled around an altar. There could very well be a cult at the center of all this, which could possibly tie directly into the Conspiracy option above. No reason the two ideas have to be mutually exclusive.
God-Machine - One of the biggest concepts in Chronicles of Darkness is the existence of the "God-Machine", a literal machine that embeds itself into reality and the Earth and is normally imperceptible, yet also controls just about everything that happens. Fair Well and the disappearances could be part of one of the God-Machine's many indecipherable plans.
Other Planes - The Chronicles of Darkness setting also involves other planes of reality, and two that seem relevant to this idea are the Shadow and the Hedge. The Shadow is a version of the world where animistic spirits representing creatures, objects, and even ideas or emotions hunt each other for sport and power; the Hedge is the thorn-filled land between our world and Arcadia, where the True Fae live. Either one of these could provide a reason for the disappearances -- a townsperson accidentally stumbles into the Shadow when it opens up once a week, or one of the True Fae is harvesting servants from Fair Well. If the players somehow decide to chase either of these as a lead (maybe due to Stranger Things, lol), it could shift directly into a Werewolf or Changeling game as a follow-up.
Serial Killer - Another obvious thought would be "maybe it's a serial killer who's good at covering his/her tracks." And, yeah, that's definitely a possible outcome -- CoD actually has templates in the Hunter core book for a variety of serial killers, or "slashers" as they're called in-universe. Definitely a viable end point of the game.
Vampire - Somebody in town has become a bloodsucker, and they're just trying to stay well-fed. Seems like a fairly straightforward concept, and could lead into a Vampire game.

Lots of options that this could result in, including stuff not outlined above. I can only type so much.

But yeah, I do need to put at least a couple thoughts into all of these outcomes and possibly more if I want to keep the core concept of the game intact. Also need to plan out some important locations to visit and NPCs to interact with. I do plan on keeping this a core book ("mortals") game, because with the exception of myself and one other player, everybody in the group is new to CoD and I don't want to overwhelm them with a supernatural template. But I also want to make sure I at the very least hint at some of the options available.