Lighthouses

On the subject of timers, is it better to have a real-world clock counting down, to have a limited number of turns, or for the GM to arbitrarily mention how much time has passed?

I'm leaning towards a real-time clock that gets paused by the GM as needed. Turn-based clocks don't count discussion time after all.

Lighthouse you say?

It was all a dream.

The problem is that lighthouses don't really have anything interesting in them except of the top and bottom.

You can't forget about the nuclear lighthouses Russia built on the Arctic sea.

Why should I give it to you?

Make your own good adventure set in a lighthouse.

Read the southern reach.

THE LIGHTHOUSE IS A TOP-SECRET MILITARY LASER DESIGNED TO KILL ALIENS.

I think lighthouses are plenty interesting.
Many many floors that are small in area but stacked high. Or maybe a winding staircase in a hollow mid section. Not to mention harrowing ladders on the outside. Or why not a crazy winding stair on the outside, spiraling up to the top and ofc lacking any railing.

>The problem is that lighthouses don't really have anything interesting in them except of the top and bottom.

Disagree. That's only common on a lighthouse with a surplus of land.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Rock_Lighthouse

There's also the option of where it's not just a lighthouse, but possibly a lighthouse with subterranean or sub-oceanic areas. Suppose it was a lighthouse that was found to be in an oil rich area, and a semi-permanent diving bell was added, accessed by a mechanical elevator attached to the island.

Would it be a good place for a Wizard's Tower?

True, the lighthouse near me is a screwpile lighthouse in the middle of a bay.

I have high hopes for this thread.

>The moon is swallowed up, all the stars wink out of the sky, one by one, and the sun never rises. As even the glimmer of passing ships disappear, lighthouse's lights become the only ones left in the hungry darkness.

>There are things, below the water. Tremendous, titanic shapes that slowly circle the lighthouse as the waters rise. The things sing mournful, terrible songs to each other in the depths, filling the PCs minds with horrible, unsettling imaginings.

I'm stealing this idea for an urban fantasy game. The wizard is homeless and squatting in an automated lighthouse.

>After spending a long shift up at the top, tending to a mysteriously cracked lens, the PCs discover that the spiral staircase they must descend to reach the keepers' cottage has become, somehow, infinitely long.

There was that one quest in Skyrim where you go to a lighthouse and find the owners dead and there's this huge Falmer tunnel beneath it. Do something like that but make the monsters Deep Ones or whatever other Mythos monster of your choice. If it's Deep Ones maybe the lighthouse owners are in league with them, kidnapping people from crashed ships (easy to come across when you own a lighthouse) to give to the Deep Ones as sacrifices or breeders.

>subterranean areas
Is there any known way or reason to have a little cave under the lighthouse that a fresh water spring trickles into? It shouldn't work at all given the surrounding ocean, but I wonder if there's some mineral that would strip the salt out of the water.

>rising waters are first hinted at by increased salinity in the fresh water
>eventually more and more water is seeping into the cave until it's just a steadily rising pool of salt water

a fresh water source means a minimum of stored water. now the party needs to improvise some way of boiling the water and collecting the vapor for condensation.

Ghouls would work better.

You could set the lighthouse on a small, rocky island with a deserted fishing village or some other unsettling point of interest on it.

You could allow the PCs to maintain radio communication with passing ship traffic as they also struggle with supernaturally strange seas.

You could have anomalous islands, vessels or even another lighthouse show up in the distance, observable by telescope but unreachable.

You could play with the PCs' perceptions of time and space, changing things around them in weird and worrying ways.

>you wake up from a long sleep and see the sun rising in the east
>you light a candle inside the dark kitchen to prepare breakfast
>by the time your eggs are finished, the only light comes from the small flickering candle

It doesn't have to be Ocean; there are lighthouses in the Great Lakes.

Or if the island itself is tall enough to have dry caves, then rainwater would get into them and be preserved. There would also very likely be a freshwater lens above the ocean water. A lot of coastal cities rely on these for their supply.

>The Great Lakes are fresh water
Well fuck me. Time to go read up on why oceans are salty.

Cheers.

No one posted this yet? Seems like my solitude is indeed true.
youtube.com/watch?v=Ycgdj74oNwc

The days pass by too quickly and the nights never end, or the nights rush past and the days are endless. A bottle of fine old spirits somehow replenishes itself while the islet's only boat falls to rust and ruin when no one is looking. Clocks and watches are inaccurate and inconsistent, and even the passage of the sun and moon in the skies has grown erratic and eerie.

Have you ever, ever felt like this?
youtube.com/watch?v=KPxJ6RR40ZU

>When you see the skeletons
>of sailing-ship spars sinking low
>You'll begin to wonder if the points
>of all the ancients myths
>are solemnly directed straight at you...

I never was into art rock but daaamn

>It's the 14th night in a row
>Nothing but endless blackness exists outside the lighthouse beam
>The seas are black and wide
>The sky is dark and empty
>The radio plays only static, punctuated occasionally by a bit of song
>Help is not coming

Read Schrodinger's Cat by Ursala K. Le Guin. Here's a reading of it:

youtube.com/watch?v=gY4CTN31iyc

>There was a ship in the distance
>We shined the light on it and it shined a light back
>No response came from our hails
>Then it sailed on

>The sea has grown still. The sea has grown perfectly, unnaturally still. The sea is a dark mirror reflecting the lighthouse and its beam and its keepers' haggard faces.

There needs to be a mystery. Not the mystery of how mail keeps arriving. Or how there seems to be bright noon with sunlight through the windows when opening the front door only ever reveals the pitch dark of the night. No real human mystery, solvable. Understandable mystery. A mystery to keep you sane.
Like the mystery of the previous light house keeper. Diaries need to be sifted through. Clues looked for in the supplies in the cupboard. Hints found in the toolshed about the tools that are there and the tools that aren't. Can something be gleaned from the sketches and paintings in the recreation room?
Haha I must be delusional, what can be read from these simple portraits of landscapes? Cats, cute children, architecture. Simple work from an amateur's hand.
Yet I stare at them, hoping for insight to strike me.
I stare at them to gather courage.
For looking out the windows is draining my sanity. Working the light and moving outside is draining my sanity.
And noticing the minute changes made to the paintings every day is draining my sanity.

First thing I thought of seeing this thread.

Oh I missed this in my first reply:
>>rising waters are first hinted at by increased salinity in the fresh water
>>eventually more and more water is seeping into the cave until it's just a steadily rising pool of salt water

This really happens to freshwater lenses. A lot of islands and coastal cities' water supplies are becoming brackish or disappearing. Sea level rise makes the lens shrink and so a well that tapped drinkable water will start drawing ocean water. It affects millions of people.

So good job thinking of horror plots.

forever dm here. this will start ,my next campaign.
>party will be a group of orphans who moved to a lighthouse on the middle of the sea.
>as they grow up in session 0, we will design a level for each pc at the top of the lighthouse and live some episodes of them growing up.

> as they grow closer to maturity they notice that many children come and get adopted, but they never did.
> at session 1 they will find out that their father orphanguy did some fucked up shit to the adopted children and created some fleshgolemmeatgod type of thing that drains the ocean.
>dungeon appears in the lighthousemountain.
>when they reach down the god will flood the sea and lighthouse again.
it will be pure pandemonium in there.

edit.
>level as in an own room for each pc, should help with rp

>Francis is obsessed with the song that can sometimes be heard over the static on the radio.

>He's trying to piece together the whole thing from the snippets we catch every so often.

>He doesn't do much of anything else now but eat, sleep, keep watch and listen to that radio and try to complete that song.

>We had to bar him from the radio room and force him to keep his last watch.

>Joseph wants to try to call for help on the radio again, but Francis won't let him.

>We're starting to worry about Francis...

>Cutter spotted the ship first and alerted us
>He made himself hoarse from yelling
>He didn't want to leave the balcony for fear the ship might not be there when he arrived
>It drifted closer in silence
>Its hull scarred and slashed
>Something drifted off its railings and into the black sea
>Something long and ropey that we could not identify from such a distance
>We hailed them, to no response
>The ship sailed past us, unpowered, unguided, unmanned

Also, wasn't there a post similar to this about guards at a lonely isolated outpost?

PCs try to shut down the lighthouse so a ship approaching the coast sinks:
-ship may carry valuable treasure they want to salvage
-it's an spy ship carrying dangeous cargo
-ship carries the plage

Problem is lighthouse keeper is:
-an ex adventurer gone mad
-a recluse werewolf
-a mad scientist/wizard

I'm not sure if this is what you're thinking of, but I'm reminded of this early Veeky Forums thread describing a manned outpost atop a long wall stretching across a lonely frontier:

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1034444

>Margo says there's enough fuel to keep the generator running and the lamp lit for another month and a half or so.

>She says there's food, water and medical supplies enough to last longer than that.

>No one asked how much longer that might be.

>No one wants to talk about what we're going to do after we run out of fuel.

>No one wants to think about what will happen when the light goes out.

...

Why do we limit ourselves to just regular oceans?

>Lighthouses are celestial beacons used by ships to help them triangulate their position in known space
>Over the centuries many light houses have been risen and just as many have been abandonded and yet they still shine their lights
>Sometimes squatters will take refuge in Lighthouses and jury rig all manner of repairs to the delapitated structures to keep them going and some even receive funding from mercahnt captains and Corporate ships for doing so.
>There are some light houses that people absolutely refuse to go near believing them to be haunted, or worst.

So now you have the haunted lighthouse scenario, only now it's in space.

>the stars are lighthouses
eyy what up Anya?

Wut?

Congratulations, I have been terrified. Good job Veeky Forums

>Joseph took the motorboat and sailed off with it. He said that he was tired of sitting around, doing nothing to try and save everyone while waiting for the light to go out.

For some reason in imagining this all taking place in the 1960s or 1970s, before most lighthouses were automated and telecommunications were as robust as they were.

I thought you were alluding to To the Moon. Never mind.

Or the other way.

No worries. The idea is the Lighthouses are like space stations who purpose is to help guide ships but more or less take the haunted lighthouse scenario into hardmode where you litterally can't leave under normal circumstances because of the vaccuum that surrounds you while dealing with ghost and other paranormal shit

>Players solve the puzzle
youtube.com/watch?v=l_u18_BKczg

waidaminute, that card.

God, that fucking light house. Those poor people.

No matter what the actual storyline is, the main thing to remember when setting a game in a location with a lighthouse is to find a way to properly convey the overwhelming sense of isolation these places have become infamous for.

>Your boat becomes under attack from a massive sea monster, you steer for the lighthouse while the monster ravages your ship.

>It sinks/crashes into the lighthouse and you crawl onto the island.

>The lighthouse is completely deserted but still shining.

>Players fuck around with diaries etc
>Discover underground catacombs

>They were originally Wizards Towers for Aquamancers. The red fire typically found was a warning to stay away from them, rather then rocks and reefs they tended to gather around.

>Lighthouses are actually all connected and are used as means of traversing the oceans they stand by.

>After a war with the Ocean Gods, the Lighthouses were erected to cage the sea and prevent it flooding the planet.

Boom, your welcome.

The only copy I could find online was this English class book, but this story freaked me out as a child.

>>After a war with the Ocean Gods, the Lighthouses were erected to cage the sea and prevent it flooding the planet.

...

The sea is patient.
The sea gods can wait.
Year by year, inch by inch, the sea rises.
Stone crumbles, sand washes away.
And when the lighthouses are all washed away,
When the people forget,
They will return.

...

They make a pretty good setup for a low level under siege or murder mystery type of adventure. Nowhere to run, a small, enclosed environment where death could be lurking in any corner or hiding among the NPCS, and the monster can have an easier time in the water than the PCs, giving them an environment advantage over the PCs and forcing them to be clever.

...

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>The sea is patient.The sea gods can wait. Year by year, inch by inch, the sea rises.Stone crumbles, sand washes away.And when the lighthouses are all washed away, When the people forget,They will return.

>The world is slowly flooding and the players need to make themselves a boat before the lighthouse goes under.

>There are things, below the water. Tremendous, titanic shapes that slowly circle the lighthouse as the waters rise. The things sing mournful, terrible songs to each other in the depths, filling the PCs minds with horrible, unsettling imaginings.

>millions of miles away
Is the lighthouse in space?

Which makes it all the more disconcerning when the airlock starts flooding.

Brilliant

I'm still fond of the idea of running something like this in a traditional, maritime lighthouse.

What about the undead angle? Thd lighthouse was originally for ships but after being decommissioned local evil wizards (or very irresponsible teenagers) used it to perform rites to raise the dead (the spiritual crossroads of land and sea allowed powerful chaotic forces to be tapped). Due to abuse of the local energy well a planar rift has been created to an evil dimension that fluctuates with the tides and lical moons. The local "light house keepers" were actually a secret society of clerics who were keeping the rift closed. When the local fishing village starts seeing abandoned ships with tattered sails on foggy moonlit nights off the coast the adventuring party is sent to investigate. All theyre told is they need to replace the bulb at the top and the lighthouse is far out to sea and only accessible at low tide. Many derelict ships crowd the long beach.....

Undead are overdone. As a player, they have no interesting motivations or interactions with me. If you want unnatural forces, take a gander at or just read some Lovecraft. The Colour Out of Space is good.

This would give backstory to all the sanity draining mysteries and also provide a timed run to beat tides past zombie undead squid whatevers. I think it would also be cool if there were a cave or secret entrance (one of the derelict ships is blocking the only door and must be travelled through to get into the lighthouse). Finally, blatant rip off of the Amber series, but make a section of the lighthouse only visible/traversable/existant when moonlight shines on it, and otherwise the lighthouse looks like a ruin. For extra creep factor make it the middle part so the top part is floating independently of the base. And the party thought they just had to screw a lightbulb in.....duh duh DUH

Listen to the Lore podcast episodes with lighthouses. Shit's fucked up.

Well it doesnt have to be undead but im not a huge fan of Lovecraft as ive seen it a lot. Sort of the edgy lolrandom alternative to undead. What you need is something weird enough to provide a cool play environment, justify the mysteries and scare the crap out of the villagers. One cool alternative is that extra-dimensional beings from a chaos dimension are getting trapped by the lighthouse but arent inherently evil - maybe theyre as terrified of us. You free them and go back and inform the village to stop fucking about with forces beyond their ken.

...

Fuck yeah nothing beats reality when it comes to messed up shit.
>having the corpse of your comrade stare acusingly at you from the cliffs for months without you able to do shit about it

Came here to post this.

Which podcast?

The best DM aide I have found in years.

What's with that metal gantry that extends off the top of the tower? Makes me think airship dock.

Because there's no actual place to dock a boat, that crane was likely used to unload supplies.

The lighthouse goes as far below ground as it does above. It serves a similar purpose as well....

I like it!

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>Food, water an spirits are running low. Suddenly an ice storm hits. Temperature rapidly drops and you scramble to find something to burn.
What do, Veeky Forums?

Huddle together for warmth.

A Darkest Dungeon mod with a light house sounds pretty friggin sweet, now

the lighthouse represents order among the chaos, safe passage between Scylla and Charybdis. to the deeper things that live beneath those waves, this order is anathema. they slink out at high tide with cold, flabby, webbed hands and long neck-snapping fingers, with huge eyes like distant moons, and they beat upon the great wooden door of the lighthouse. man's racial memory has not yet forgotten the sound of slimy skin scraping against wet timber, of deeper things nudging up against us from the insane bottom-places hidden from the rational sun. the lighthouse-keeper has kept them at bay for years, for should they succeed, should they turn off that narrow beacon of sanity, they would slither out of the lunatic mud and turn their dead, blind gaze up toward the light of the sun--and the light of man.

only the lighthouse-keeper has known these things, and he has borne this terrible burden of knowledge alone for many years. now that lighthouse-keeper has not answered radio calls from the mainland for some days. a ship has been lost. the beacon lies dark. you have been sent to find the truth. the truth is the lighthouse-keeper lies dead. the truth is the sun is going down for maybe the last time. the truth is deeper things are coming with squelching footsteps on the jagged island rock. drink of the black sea and touch the dead star fires that ships wreck upon.

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