It’s October and spooky season is upon us! Ever since I picked up Monster of the Week, I’ve been itching to run it. It’s a Powered by the Apocalypse TTRPG published by Evil Hat. MotW is made for telling episodic urban fantasy tales of monster hunters à la The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, The Adventure Zonepodcast ran their Amnesty season using MotW which is where I first heard about the system.
For Halloween, I’d like to run my group through a spooky MotW one-shot. In this post I’ll first sketch out the situation and then develop the adventure using MotW’s templates. Are you a Monster of the Week GM? If I swerve into a proverbial ditch during my prep, please put me back on the road to adventure over on Mastodon @[email protected]
Please be forewarned: this is a macabre Halloween adventure! It features themes of human sacrifice and cannibalism.
Synopsis
A group of cultists practice ritualized cannibalism to transform themselves into ghouls. The cultists believe their rituals preserve their rationality as they transform, thus gaining ghoulish immortality without losing their humanity. The cult leader knows the only way to avoid mental degeneration as a ghoul is to eat other ghouls. The leader plans to devour the other cultists to become, for lack of a better term, a “super ghoul.”
Last night, the cult’s plans hit a complication. One of the recently transformed ghouls went berserk, stalked the night, and claimed two victims. Our heroes enter the story here. They must prevent the cult leader from becoming a super ghoul and escaping into the world.
We’ll name this adventure “Ghouls’ Night Out.”
The Mystery Worksheet
Monster of the Week’s publisher provides GMs a mystery worksheet to guide session preparation. Let’s put what we have into the worksheet. So far, we have a concept and a hook. Plus, we can fill out the countdown.
I like how the worksheet requires me to distill my thoughts into one or two sentences. It seems like the worksheet will make a great reference during the session.
The Monster
I spoke with another MotW GM (credit to Devon from the DM of None Discord server) about preparing my session. He gave me a great tip that focused my thinking. The monster isn’t trying to defeat the players; it’s trying to finish the countdown.
In that light, the monster of this adventure isn’t the ghoul(s). The monster is the cult leader, and the ghouls are minions.
Why ghouls? I went with ghouls because they are detailed in the MotW book. I didn’t want to make a brand-new monster for my first time running the game. If the leader becomes a super ghoul, I’ll boost harm capacity 50% and double attack damage.
Now we can fill out some of the threats on the worksheet:
I printed a copy of the ghoul’s page from the MotW book PDF to reference during the session. As an aside, I love how Evil Hat guarantees a PDF copy of any book of theirs you buy. I prefer the print copy for general reading, but the PDF is great when I look up something specific.
NPCs
As far as NPCs go, we have some minions and some bystanders already baked into the adventure. There’s a police detective who works for the cult and is misleading the murder investigation. That person is a minion with the traitor motivation. There are the police writ large who are bystanders with the detective motivation. The people who the cult captures for the final ritual are bystanders/victims.
Looking at the list of types of bystanders, a couple more jump out at me. Let’s make the medical examiner at the morgue a skeptic who adamantly refuses to believe a supernatural monster killed the first victims. A real Dana Scully-type. Then there’s a witness who saw the ghoul attack. Let’s make another witness who sees the abduction, too.
A couple random names later and we more to add to the worksheet.
I also threw in a cultist who gets cold feet–an innocent who is motivated to do the right thing. If the players get stuck, I can use the ex-cultist to give them more information.
Locations
In MotW, the monster, minions, bystanders, and locations are all lumped together under threats. MotW asks GMs to assign motivations to locations. When I first read in the MotW book that I should give motivations to my locations, I thrilled. It’s tips like that which give me the handholds I need to create a horror-themed adventure. So, let’s think of a few.
Like our NPCs, some locations are already baked into the adventure. There’s the town, it’s a hub with the motivation to reveal information. Notable hub locations in the town are the police station, the morgue, and the initial murder scene. Evelynn Dekker’s house is a den because it’s used to harbor a monster.
The players need to find the bystanders someplace, too. We’ll make crossroads locations for them. Crossroads locations have the motivation to bring people and things together. Once the police release Raymond, they can find him at a homeless encampment near the first murder scene. The players can meet Winter the ex-cultist at a bar. Just for fun, why don’t we call the bar Crossroads. The players find the other witness, Layne at her house overlooking a cemetery.
The cult hideout will either be a den (harbor monsters) or a fortress (deny entry). It should be underground to protect from the sunlight and only have a few entrances.
We add those notes and now we’ve got something ready to use!
And there we have it! I’ve outlined my session using the MotW tools. I’ll make a series of props for the session: map, mysterious letters, arcane symbols, etc. If you have a suggestion for an NPC or location that would fit this story, please send it my way! If you have experience running MotW and have any tips for me, shoot me a message. You can find me on Mastodon @[email protected]
Feature Image “Field Creeper” by Anthony Palumbo copyright 2016 Wizards of the Coast