Scenario Ideas & Seeds for Call of Cthulhu

Like what? Spoopy Ghosts?

So why are they being kept in the town?

Well, what I had revealed was that there is an eldritch god being that travels through the aurora borealis itself, and it has been using the townspeople's as a food source, nibbling away at their minds and souls and altering their memories so that they forget the experience and are happy little townsfolk. Only a select few know about it, and allow this mess to continue because they're afraid of what will happen if they try to leave. I also had some people who physically and mentally changed into half-mad monster men the more they tried to understand the being and fight against it, and their existence served as a warning to the few townsfolk who knew enough about what was going on to not try anything. The heads of the town attracted the players to the town to help add to the feeding pool and take some of the stress of the experience off of themselves and others, but because the mind altering isn't always perfect, the players wind up forgetting the entire year. The players aren't the only people who don't get cleanly mind wiped, some townsfolk have vague memories that haunt them, but they don't know what to do about it.

I need a good god for a cult to worship that would provide them with powers or something, a god that would possibly summon creatures and stuff.

I know Azathoth, he is my favorite, but these cultists are not mad or zealots, they are trying to achieve something. Any suggestions? Maybe the plot is going to lead into the dream world / wonderland, so that may be pertinent to this.

Your state/country is going through a hard time, lot's of people out of work (including yourselves).

Luckily for you there was an accident at an off-shore oil rig. 20 dead or missing, missing assumed to have been at sea.

Company so desperate they hire anyone, no matter passed job/class and assert you will be trained on the job.

Party will have to figure out: why are people going missing, whats up with the Feds investigating, are the cults behind this, but why has the operation stopped. . . and why won't anyone train you!?

CoC players go larping near a lake, mysteriously disappear. Team investigates, turns out the magic words were magic after all.

fishmen rape babies start showing up at local hospitals, alternatively, fishmen rape fetuses start showing up at local abortion clinics

I always wanted to join a lovecraftian type game.

Anyone making one on roll20?

>Seismic activity has opened up an enormous sinkhole near your homestead. The local government quickly cordoned off the hole to investigate but left just as quickly, leaving the gaping pit apparently un-dealt with.
>There have been numerous complaints about the pungent scent of sulfur in the air and being awakened by unnatural noises whose sources can't be traced.
>Animals avoid the area or are found dead under strange circumstances. Signs on every street corner beg for help in finding beloved pets gone missing
>The neighborhood/town is shaken by the disturbing suicide of a mentally-ill young boy, who around dinnertime, approaches and leaps into the pit without a word. He leaves no suicide note and the family is informed the body cannot be recovered.
>Finally, an investigative team is formed by local citizens and you rappel down the sides of the pit
and into the lair of the spawn of Atlach-Nacha

Why not just make a /ysg/ thread?

Eh, wanted something more specific

Modern version of Orient Express with emphasis on stealth. The pieces of the statue are now in museums, private collections and bank vaults so the party has to travel Europe breaking into these places while running from the police

I tried to run this a couple years ago and it was pretty fun. The first piece (located in that french villa in the original) is now buried under a huge commieblock populated by refugees and drug dealers. The players had to find the right apartment, break in, and hold everyone at gunpoint while digging. A neighbor heard the noises and called the police but they got away just in time.
After that people had to leave so we never got around to finishing it. Id love to run something like this again.

Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon", except the falcon is replaced with a sort of evil statuette (maybe the one of Cthulhu as mentioned in "The Call of Cthulhu"). The investigators may find themselves caught in between factions as is Sam Spade in the story (Gutman wants the statuette due to monetary value, but the cultists he stole it from will stop at nothing to get it back).

I had a dream where I saw two stags fighting in a forest at night. Eventually I realised that one of them wasn't, what I had thought were horns writhed and the liquid coming from the wounds they caused wasn't just blood.

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Someone posted an idea a while ago that I liked a lot.

The PCs are students at an ordinary 2000s high school (modern era but before smartphones), where the social hierarchy is very stratified and clique dynamics make for an interesting intrigue campaign.

The game centers around an attempt to turn the homecoming dance into a mass sacrifice to Shub-Niggurath. The PCs must learn what they can about the plot and who's behind it, and form a plan to stop it.

Sounds pretty fun actually, If you could get the perfect mix of cosmic horror and high school drama vibes

Anything involving time travel or time displacement is easy and exciting to most COC players

I have a bunch, bumping the thread so it doesn't 404 while I line all them up

Encouraging digits

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I like this one in particular, I'm new to call of cthulhu though (haven't read any of the mythos at all, really) Is there a particular creature or old one who would be suitable as an influence on the pharmacist and his notes?

Nyarlathotep is the bringer of knowledge which ultimately destroys the recipient. If you have to tie things in to a "canonical" mythos entity, he's the one.

But for my money, I prefer that there be no "canonical" mythos explanation for how the pharmacist discovered his formulas. Sometimes it's better if the answer is just a smart guy who created something fucked up of his own accord - like in Reanimator, From Beyond or Cool Air.

Gonna second this stuff, but just in general. Having ties into the larger Cthulhu mythos is cool, but Cthulhu mythos themselves kinda harm some of what makes Lovecraftian horror great, and that's the sheer scope of what the players don't know. It's a lot more fun and terrifying to fight "those horrible...things!" than to be fighting a Shoggoth. It's more engaging to be dealing with "a being beyond what humanity can even grasp" than Ialdagorth.

And to add onto this, you can still use creatures and deities from Cthulhu mythos, obviously, but save those name drops for special occasions. Trying to describe these nightmare beings is more spooky than just giving them a recognizable name.

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