149 by Scott Woodard

Butter Tarts and Broken Bones - Tenapanguisine, On

152 by Jim Zub and the Danger Dice Gang

The Adventure Modules

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Introduction to the Modules

by Doug & Jon

When we created Kids on Bikes, we were incredibly excited by the collaborative world-building. We’re both creative guys, so we like creating! Some early testers, though, thought the experience could benefit from a few places for newer players to start — or for experienced players to have a more GM-driven experience.

The result of that feedback is these modules: 22 settings created by some of the most creative people we know. The things people have done within the system are weird, chilling, and just plain fun. We’re sure that, as you look through them, you’ll feel the same!

BUT! Talk to your GM before reading. The surprises in some modules might be spoiled if you read them first!

A few words about using the modules:

• Every element in the modules is a suggestion. If there’s an NPC (non-player character) or location that doesn’t fit, don’t include it. If you want to change a detail about something in the module, change it! The decisions you and the other players make with the narrative should still drive the story more than these suggestions, which are just meant to help get you started.

• Instead of the standard town creation questions, each module has its own alternate questions, which fall into four categories:

• Group: These are questions that the group should discuss and answer, agreeing on answers together.

• Individual, Shared: These are questions that each player will answer about their own character, then reveal to the rest of the group. The answers are public knowledge.

• Individual, Shared or Private: These are questions that others might know about your character or might not. Everyone will answer them, but it’s up to you if you want to share your answer with the group.

• Individual, Private: These are questions that each player answers but won’t share with the group. They’re ways for players to frame their characters within the module — but not necessarily to tell the others. However, if a player thinks it should be shared, they can feel free to!

With that, enjoy the modules — we know we did!

– Doug & Jon

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Dads on Mowers - Suburbtopia, USA

by Banana Chan

Content Warnings: body horror, claustrophobia, gaslighting, memory loss, human experimentation, lack of autonomy

Setting information

Welcome to Merrygrove Lane! It’s a beautiful little cul-de-sac in Suburbtopia, a town nestled somewhere in the United States in the early 2000s.

Get comfortable in your new five-bedroom, three-bathroom house, because every one of the 10 houses in this idyllic community is a five-bedroom, three-bathroom house. With a swimming pool, backyard, and garage, you’ll always be busy with home improvement projects. Looking for a night out on the town? Your best buds can paint the town red (figuratively) at Merry Hardware, the local hardware store, or knock back some brewskis at Goodman’s. Or say hi to the Mayor of Coffee Cat and grab a frappuccino!

Every weekday, the residents follow a strict schedule of waking up, getting the kids ready for school, carpooling, working, and finally coming home to loving families, with dinner and a quick drink before bedtime. But it’s now the weekend and that’s when things really get wild! Barbecue? Karaoke at Goodman’s? That new home renovation project? You have all the freedom to do whatever is socially acceptable in this little bubble of a town. Especially yelling at kids to get off your lawn!

The only weird thing about the town is 150 Merrygrove, the house at the end of the cul-de-sac. The residents have only ever seen an 11-year-old kid go in and come out of the house. Weird as that is, the kid has never bothered anyone, so no one really cares!

Setting Touchstones

Dream Daddy (video game), The Good Place (TV series), Herb Ferman (person), No Exit (play), The Sims (video game), Westworld (film) Alternate Town Creation Questions

Group: What do you and your pals have planned for this weekend?

Individual, Shared: What kind of dad are you — a soccer dad, a music dad, a literature dad, another kind of dad? Put your answer on your character sheet.

Individual, Shared: Where is your relationship partner? Business trip? Or are you a single parent? If you have a partner, they must be somewhere else for the duration of the game.

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Individual, Shared: What do you do for a living? Are you retired at the cozy age of 45

or 50? Or maybe you’re working from home for Business Corp doing finance stuff.

Whatever it is, your work is confined to the town of Suburbtopia.

Individual, Shared: How many kids do you have, and what are they like? Is one of them the class clown, the school bully, the popular kid?

Individual, Shared: Who do you trust the most within your community of dad friends?

This will be between you and another player and may not be mutual.

Possible Points of Interest

Establishments in the town

• Merry Hardware, the local hardware store where you can get all the knicks and knacks.

• Goodman’s Sports Bar, every dad’s favorite watering hole. Adults come here to watch the game and cheer for their sports team. Weekends have karaoke nights, open mics, or chili cookoffs.

• Coffee Cat, a coffee shop that serves pastries. Its ragdoll cat logo, the Mayor of Coffee Cat, strolls casually among the shop’s wicker chairs.

• The Grocer, which is where you shop for food. For some strange reason, this is the place where everyone comes to gossip and make small talk.

• Floof Hair Salon and Barber, where you go to keep that hair shiny and healthy!

Places your character wouldn’t really care about, but may have interactions with

• Your kids’ school, a place that you don’t visit much.

• The mall, where the teenagers hang out. It’s kind of scary, but it has everything you need, including a movie theater. Strangely, none of the stores and popups in the mall compete with any of the town’s long-standing establishments.

Other locations

• The park, which has a bunch of trees, a duck pond, and a jogging path.

• Business Corp, where the business people work, doing finance things.

Possible NPCs

• Arthur, manager of the Grocer, who’s been pushing to have more variety at the store. He’s extremely knowledgeable about food, but he can be a little stuck-up and gossipy.

• Ernest, the owner of Merry Hardware and everybody’s best friend. He’s older and has lived in Suburbtopia for as long as you can remember. You and your pals sometimes hang out at Merry Hardware just to chat about your next projects.

• George, one of the bartenders at Goodman’s Sports Bar. George is tall, tattooed, and kind of a goof. If you need that extra shot, George will take care of you. She also keeps most of the town’s secrets.

• Dr. Henson, the town therapist. A lovely middle-aged doctor who has been living in the town for as long as you can remember.

• Morgan Hilcox, CEO of Business Corp. No one’s ever seen or spoken to Morgan, but every year the families in town receive a holiday card from the CEO.

• Jenna, the talkative and fashionable owner of Floof. Whether you need a new style or just a trim, Jenna (or Jenn) can emulate any magazine image.

• Joe, a dad from down the street who hangs out at the park to fish. You say “good morning” to him but don’t know much about him except he’s a passionate angler.

• The Mayor of Coffee Cat, a large tabby cat that is the revered icon of the local coffee shop. She’s quite clumsy and gets into trouble a lot.

• Mr. Wilson, the principal (ugh!) at your kids’ school. Does anyone else find it weird that he makes everyone call him Mr. Wilson? A creepy man who seems to hate children (or people?) in general.

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Possible Adventure Hooks

• A tree in the park has been replaced by a series of moving data sets. It looks like it’s contained within the space where the tree used to be, but no one can be too sure.

The local law enforcement has placed caution tape around it, and they say they’re

“looking into it.” It can’t be a result of Y2K, can it?

• Your kids want to have a sleepover at 150 Merrygrove, but something about it just doesn’t sit right with you. You’ve heard stories about the basement lights flickering and static noises coming from the house… You also don’t want to disappoint your kids. It sounds like almost all the neighborhood kids have decided to go. Even Joe’s kids are going.

• Joe from down the street was seen in his fishing gear during the workday, walking head first into the wall of the house over and over, repeating the word “maze.”

• Jenna walked into her salon to find a garbage bag full of detached arms and legs.

It’s been reported to the local authorities, but someone has to do something!

• Mr. Wilson has invited all of you to a gathering at his house — an address on a street that you weren’t aware of before. The invitation even has an image of the house (assuming you might get lost?), which is a large, dark-grey mansion with no windows.

• All the food has gone rotten at the Grocer, even the canned food. Inside the metal tins, maggots squirm in place of preserved meat, and all the fresh produce stinks of death left unattended for days. It happened overnight, but it looks like the death is slowly seeping to the grass on the premises.

• The Mayor of Coffee Cat has gone missing! Help the coffee shop (and the town) find her again — before the situation is declared a cat-tastrophe!

Possible Threats

• You and the other dads have shared dreams about people dressed in lab coats wandering your town at night, examining you and your friends. You also feel like pieces of your memory are missing.

• You wake up one weekday to go to work and notice how beautiful the sky is — a deep dusk red, mixed with purples and oranges, with clouds painted in. As the day goes by, you notice that the sky hasn’t changed. Clouds haven’t moved, the moon hasn’t come out; it has remained dusk for hours.

• Business Corp wants to create their own cryptocurrency. They are attempting to force all the small businesses to use the new BusiCoin, instead of Suburboleons.

• All roads lead back to Suburbtopia. It looks like, even if you wanted to leave, you couldn’t. But of course, why would you want to leave this perfect little town?

• Your kids’ school is closed until further notice. Now you have to think of ways to keep your kids out of trouble, before you can head on your own adventure.

• There’s some new drug that’s going around called RealiTV. It causes the user to zone out for hours. While users claim to “see the truth,” the news reports that users will “experience false and alternate memories.” Users must be taken to Dr. Henson for therapy. You have to have the drug talk with your kids.

Possible Powered Characters

• The kid at 150 Merrygrove is quiet, mostly. No one’s ever seen their parents. You’ve even tried asking your own kids about this kid, without much luck. They have a secret, you just don’t know what it is — but you’d like to find out.

Possible Monsters

• Tourists come and go, but the worst part is the garbage they leave behind in our beautiful town. Sometimes they get rowdy at the bar and start fights. Tourists cannot be harmed. If you try to hurt a tourist, you will be out of the game.

• What is up with the teenagers’ hair? And why do they act like they know something that you don’t? They hang out at the mall and play their strange music really loud, sitting around with skateboards.

• Mr. Wilson might be the devil, under that human façade.

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ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES

Use the Dad character sheet, available at huntersbooks.com/downloads-kidsonbikes.

Possible Strengths:

• Adorable: Everything you do is cute. You may add +2 to all checks, including those of other players, as long as you are all in the same scene.

• Beard: The Floof Hair Salon and Barber is your playground! Your rolls here automatically succeed.

• Dad Abs: You get +2 to Charm, hottie!

• Lucky: You may spend two Friendship Tokens to reroll a stat check.

• Puns: If you can make a pun out of a situation, you get +1 to any one stat until the end of that scene.

• Resourceful: You may spend two Friendship Tokens to create something out of items sprawled around the scene.

• Vroom Vroom: You know everything about fixing vehicles. You get +2 to Brains when working on a vehicle.

Possible Flaws:

• Awkward: If you choose this flaw, you must choose the Adorable strength. You don’t know where to put your arms sometimes. -2 to your Brains.

• Clumsy: During scenes that require Brawn, even if you succeed at the stat check, something unexpected happens.

• Embarrassing: Any time you are in a scene with your kid, -2 to your Charm.

• Grumpy: Ugh, every day feels like a Monday and your coffee is constantly a gross, lukewarm temperature. -2 to your Brains and Brawn.

• Patronizing: Well, actually… You feel like you need to correct people, even your own pals. Every time you start a sentence with “Well, actually…” you get -1 to your Charm permanently.

• Sweaty: Why is it always warm? You’re just always sweaty.

Adversity & Friendship Tokens: Adversity Tokens do not exist in this module. Any time you would gain an Adversity Token, gain a Friendship Token instead. Friendship Tokens can be used to activate strengths, just like Adversity Tokens, or players can turn in 10 Friendship Tokens to take a Dad Nap.

More Than a Bromance: Dads can flirt with one another, which may lead to romantic relationships. If a player would like to flirt or engage in romance, they will need to first ask the target player if that is okay. If both players agree to the romance, then the initiating player will roll Charm. If it is a 6 or higher, the roll succeeds and the players will give a description of what happens. If the roll fails, the initiating player gains a Friendship Token.

Dad Nap: You’re exhausted! It’s time for a nap. This can happen any time you decide to turn in 10 Friendship Tokens, even in times of danger. During a Dad Nap, you duck out of the action (because you’re asleep), but can aid other players if they need assistance with their rolls or scenes by sharing the 10 Friendship Tokens amongst themselves. Only one dad can be napping at a time and the shared Friendship Tokens must be split amongst all of the other players — they cannot be given to just one.

We’ve Got Each Other: Players can spend the entire game sitting around, watching sports, hanging out on their lawns, romancing one another, and not progressing with adventures or scenarios — and that’s absolutely okay! Just make sure that everyone is comfortable with going this route instead of following the story. If players would like to go this laid-back route but would also like to play out an adventure, the missing Mayor of Coffee Cat adventure is a good choice. Set expectations and the tone of the game beforehand so that everyone is comfortable with the game and having fun.

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Strange Things Afoot at the

Circle Q - Carson Creek, CO

by Matt Colville

Content Warnings: alcoholism, bodysnatching, homelessness, kidnapping, racism, violence against animals, xenophobia

Setting information

Nestled in the shadow of Cheyenne Mountain, just 90 minutes from lovely downtown Colorado Springs, Carson Creek is indistinguishable from a dozen other small towns in Colorado. Flat, dominated by a single main road, the town is home to fewer than 300

people, those without reason or opportunity to move to the city. Unemployment and alcoholism are common — but for a kid, these are distant problems, realities of adult life that serve only to make grown-ups surly and suspicious of a handful of idle kids on bikes.

There’s a bar on the main road, the Kicking Boots (only one of the boots on the ancient neon sign works, so everyone just calls it the Boot), but kids only go there under extreme conditions: when things are so bad that a grown-up is absolutely needed, which is almost never. Surely there’s no problem you can’t solve with your friends!

For a 12-year-old with nothing to do except get in trouble, the only real place to hang out is the local Circle Q convenience store. It has three arcade games in the corner, left over from an earlier era: Space Killers, Galaxinoid, and a 50-cent laserdisc game called Galen’s Quest, which none of the kids in town have ever beaten. Must be rigged!

The owner of the Circle Q is an immigrant, the only immigrant in town so far as the kids know — an older, dark-skinned man who everyone says is from Iraq and who’s been running the Circle Q for their entire lives. Mahmoud Shariari is routinely tormented by the kids, who generally bear him no real malice. He is long-suffering and used to dealing with pre-teens. But something about him gives the impres-sion of a man on the edge, a man capable of doing anything if pushed far enough.

For pre-teens cycling down the dirt roads and trails of Carson Creek, the world is still a wide and exciting place. Entering their teenage years, they soon discover the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth…

Setting Touchstones

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (film), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (film), Firestarter (film), WarGames (film)

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Alternate Town Creation Questions

• Group: Who among you has the highest score in Galaxinoid?

• Group: Which of you got into an argument with Mr. Killian, the history teacher, and was suspended for three days? What was the argument about?

• Group: Whose parents most recently had a visit from Chief Kelly? What had you done to occasion the visit?

• Individual, Shared: Who is your favorite teacher at Questa Verde High? What subject do they teach?

• Individual, Shared or Private: Do you ever think about leaving Carson Creek when you grow up?

• Individual, Shared or Private: Who in town do you go to when things get weird?

• Individual, Private: When desperate, what have you done for arcade money?

Possible Points of Interest

Lighthearted

• The Circle Q, the kids’ hangout and arcade. The owner, Mahmoud Shariari, is extremely grumpy. There are many rumors about his background.

• Carson Creek Ice Palace, an ice skating rink that’s seen better days, but is still in operation. Mostly older kids and families go here.

Serious

• The Kicking Boots, a grown-up place where it seems everyone and everything is openly hostile toward kids — including the sounds and the smells. May have to be braved if the kids need help.

• EnCom Scientific Instruments, the tallest building in town at three stories, and the town’s main employer. When the kids’ parents talk about going to “work,” they mean ESI. Several of the rooms are now empty, and the rest are devoted mostly to packaging centrifuges for the medical industry. It was once famous for developing the microencabulator.

Either

• Questa Verde High, the most elaborate structure in town. Built in the ’50s when the town was larger and growing, the school has a computer lab, a science lab, and a library. It is the nexus of the kids’ daily lives.

• Royal Bridge Mall, a shopping center shaped like a plus sign. Three of the four wings are now abandoned and serve as a source of adventure and danger for the kids.

The other wing is mostly shoe stores.

Possible NPCs

• Rachel Kelly, daughter of “Big Red” Kelly, the town’s previous long-standing police chief. Rachel was elected chief primarily because of her name and famous father.

She is seen by the kids as the town boogeyman, but Chief Kelly is basically on their side when things get weird.

• Grover Killian, history teacher at Questa Verde High School. He is also Colonel Shariari’s minder in Carson Creek. Mr. Killian teaches history as nothing but a series of wars and is known for being tough, teaching a hard class to ace. His status as a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Air Force is unknown to the town, and his friendship with Mahmoud is likewise a secret.

• Mr. King, the abusive, alcoholic father of one of the local kids. Mr. King is on welfare, along with 12% of the rest of the town, and he resents it and everyone. He can be a real terror, but the other adults in town remember when he was a promising writer as a young man, before everything fell apart after a car accident.

• Mr. Lightman, Questa Verde High School’s IT guy is only 23, but to the kids that means he’s an adult and therefore not someone to be confided in. However, when push comes to shove, he is easier to talk to (more of a nerd) than any of the other grown-ups in town and may turn out to know — or strongly suspect — what’s going on more than anyone else that the kids have access to.

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• Colonel Mahmoud Shariari, owner of the Circle Q and agent of the U.S. government. Fished out of Iran prior to the 1979 revolution by then-Captain Grover Killian and spirited back to the United States, Colonel Mahmoud Shariari is responsible for the “Storage Locker” under the Circle Q — where a nearby shadowy government agency stores its mistakes and those discoveries it doesn’t know what to do with.

Possible Adventure Hooks

• A stranger needs help and seems reluctant to ask any of the adults in town. The traveler is either oddly unfamiliar with the town, constantly in awe of simple things like smartphones and microwaves, or strangely familiar with it, noting how the ESI building is still standing — depending on whether he’s from the past or the future.

Of course, the government arrives to bag him and stuff him back in the Storage Locker, but whether they succeed depends on the kids… and whether the Time Traveler is on their side. He could be the hero or the villain.

• Known for haunting the local woods since the ’80s, the Wild Man is described as short, hairless, and dressed in rags. Known for killing and eating small animals, pets, and local game, the Wild Man seems especially interested in the Circle Q. When a local murder is blamed on him, it’s up to the kids to discover the truth and try to get the Wild Man back to his spaceship, hidden in the Storage Locker under the Circle Q, and from there back to his home planet.

• Sudden seismic disturbances around Carson Creek are initially blamed on fracking.

What else could it be, given the state’s history of geological stability? When folks start disappearing, and one of the kids gets her bike eaten from under her by a giant toothed worm that disappears back into the ground, it becomes obvious that the local tremors are not caused by natural gas extraction. Mapping all the incidents, it seems the Circle Q is, both literally and metaphorically, at the center of it all. The mutated, weaponized nematode experiment, abandoned in the ’90s, seems to have decided to become un-abandoned all on its own!

Possible Threats

• A detective arrives in town and grills the kids about the owner of the Circle Q. How much do they know about him? Though he seems fair, he is foul. A Russian spy!

• A new science teacher in town teaches strange hypotheses featuring alien beings from beyond time. Where is he from, and why did he pick Carson Creek of all places to settle down?

• A new agrochemical company, the Advance Combine, buys ESI and lays off all the adults in town. They bring in their own employees, who all wear sunglasses, even at night.

Possible Powered Characters

• A new student seems nice, but refuses to make friends and gets very angry if touched. This pyrokinetic young man escaped the Storage Locker and is hiding in plain sight, living in the abandoned mall.

• When sufficiently inebriated, Mr. Fennel the town drunk mutters and raves. Paying close attention to his drunken ramblings reveals that Mr. Fennel is precognetic, glimpsing visions of the future.

• Sparky, the town mutt, sleeps outside the Circle Q, living off the scraps the store’s owner throws out. Born next to the dumpster, he has spent his whole doggy life absorbing the alien radiations emitted from deep underground. Sparky is quite a bit smarter than the average dog and seems to understand even complex sentences, though he only barks.

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Possible Monsters

• The teachers at Questa Verde, one by one, have been acting strangely, as though they don’t recognize the students, ever since the eclipse last month. What happened to the teachers, and what exactly are these beings that replaced them?

• Reports of a saber-toothed tiger, first one then several, sweep through town. When one of the massive felines — which looks suspiciously like the English teacher’s missing house cat — is seen eating the high school groundskeeper, it’s time for the police chief to act. Meanwhile, the owner of the Circle Q notices the cat food is long past its sell-by date, and quietly throws out all his stock…

• Mrs. Greenwich was over 80 years old, so no one thought anything of it when her new hybrid car rolled over her, killing her. Surely, it was an accident. When other vehicles in town — never more than one at a time — start acting aggressively, and a handful of deaths are linked to them, folk demand the auto companies recall their vehicles, blaming them for manufacturing faulty onboard computers. So far, the AI that escaped from the Storage Locker hasn’t found a way out of town, but it’s only a matter of time…

ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES

All characters in this module should be between the ages of 12 and 15.

Author’s Note: This module is greatly informed by my own experiences, both growing up and even to this day. My local convenience store was run by (as I thought of him at the time) a “foreigner” — someone I knew was from a Middle Eastern country. But, at 13 years old, I had no idea which and if you’d have told me, I’d have confused it and forgotten it quickly.

He seemed, to teenaged me, surly and quick to anger, so of course we delighted in provoking him and testing boundaries, as is the job of all teenaged boys.

As I grew up, I learned more about him, and I realized this was a very complex and interesting person: an educated, prideful man who left his home country after a revolution that he was on the losing side of, a man who now worked like a mule for as many hours as God sent to provide not just a home, but a future for his family here in the States.

And given how demonic we were as teenagers, his attitude toward us was actually quite knowing and indulgent, although we did not perceive that at the time (and it would have ruined the fun if we had, which he probably knew). We saw him as an alien from a foreign land, but he saw us as just a bunch of typical teenagers. – Matt PAGE 89

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Lake Asibikaashi - Lake Asibikaashi, CO

by Eddie Freeman

Content Warnings: dream manipulation, hallucinations, massacre of indigenous peoples, nightmares, sleep deprivation, spiders

Setting information

Nestled in the mountains of Colorado, Lake Asibikaashi is a destination for camping, fishing, and many other outdoor adventures. During the cold season, the Dreamseeker Resort brings skiers and winter thrill-seekers to the region. During the warmer months, Camp Provenance brings scouts and their families, while on the other end of the lake the affluent summer crowd parties and floats their summer away.

Logging, hunting, and the fur trade — as well as the Oneirological Apperception Research (OAR) facility — create year-round viability for local residents. Economically the town is prospering, thanks to the strong, year-round influx of visitors, as well as the construction boom’s unending need for wood, ceramics, and other materials.

Rumors abound of a massacre that took place generations ago at the mouth of the valley, where many Arapaho tribe members were slain in their sleep while escaping a greater conflict. Locals mention witnessing spirits wandering the forest at night.

The town is famous for the legend that the island in the middle of the lake was once the home of the Spider Woman, also known as Asibikaashi, who was said to protect the people of the area by weaving webs of warding, both in the waking world and in the Dreamscape.

Setting Touchstones

Inception (film), “Masterpiece” (short story from Creepypasta), A Nightmare on Elm Street (film)

Alternate Town Creation Questions

• Group: Is the OAR facility still active? If so, what do you know about the work they do there? If not, why was it closed?

• Group: What is a rumor about the town that you have heard?

• Individual, Shared: What does your character do during the off-season?

• Individual, Shared or Private: Have you witnessed the spirits at the massacre site?

If so, how did it affect you? Did you see one of your ancestors?

• Individual, Shared or Private: What is a living thing that you have recently had dreams about?

• Individual, Private: What is a reoccurring dream that you have and why do you keep it secret?

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Possible Points of Interest

• Camp Provenance, a Scout camp that kids have attended and made memories at for generations.

• Dreamseeker Resort, a high-end ski and adventure resort in the mountains, which attracts visitors year round.

• Oneirological Apperception Research (OAR), an ominous facility that little is known about. Occasionally recruits locals for experimentation and “sleep studies.” There are rumors that some have reoccuring nightmares after these studies.

• Dreamcatcher Island, a highly spiritual, forested island in the middle of the lake.

• The Arapaho massacre site, a tragic landmark of local history. The spirits lingering from this can often be found in the woods and around the mouth of the valley.

• Wallace’s Wonderland, the local adventure supply store. Catering to all your climbing, diving, spelunking, and mountaineering needs.

• Sipatu’s cabin, where the shaman can be found. Located high in the mountains on the outskirts of the resort.

Possible NPCs

• Damian Holloway, owner of the Dreamseeker Resort. He also owns the biggest house on the lake (of course).

• Dr. Anna Morse, chief scientist (either current or former) at the OAR Facility. She is fearful that there are layers to dreams far beyond what modern science has discovered, and that discovering them may unlock what she refers to as “Pandora’s Box.”

• Neche ‘Amber’, known by many as “the creepy person in the woods.” A runaway from adoption in her early life, she has lived and survived off the land. She mainly keeps to herself and does not have much contact with the town. But when she does, she is followed by hushed whispers and sideways glances. (Possibly a powered character, a dreamwalker.)

• Devon Sharpe, local hunter and the second most knowledgeable person about the woods surrounding the lake. Devon can often be found leading Scouts and tourists on adventures through the wilderness.

• Sipatu, a local shaman and keeper of the lore of the local tribes. Lives in a cabin high in the mountain range near Dreamseeker Resort. Sipatu is occasionally in conflict with the resort.

• Willoughby Wallace, the owner of Wallace’s Wonderland. The adventures of his younger years have caught up to him, and while he is no longer able to adventure himself, he now runs the local Adventurers League and teaches survival skills. You may also know him as Scoutmaster Wallace.

Possible Adventure Hooks

• During a hike with Devon, the characters encounter the wolf spirit.

• The characters encounter Neche and she reveals that she knows more about them than they know about her.

• The conflict between Sipatu, Holloway Enterprises, and Camp Provenance reaches a boiling point, and the characters need to choose a side.

• The Nottmor is the corruption of the Spider Woman who originally protected dreams. Changed through the locals’ treatment of the indigenous peoples and OAR’s experimentation on the Dreamscape.

• A character with ties to the local tribes goes through a ritual to connect with their ancestors, which reveals that there is some truth to the rumors about the area.

• A character witnesses the spirits of the massacre and is beseeched to release them from their torment.

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Possible Threats

• There’s a secretive cult that worships the Nottmor and wants to bring about an endless slumber.

• Shadowy government agents are connected to OAR — or are looking into it.

• Holloway Enterprises wants to develop more of the town, including the sacred lands of the indigenous peoples.

Possible Powered Characters

• A dreamwalker who, while asleep, can move between people’s dreams. Often knows secrets or untold fantasies of people in town.

• A wolf spirit that has roamed this area since ancient times. Able to shapeshift to hide itself amongst people. Its howl can often be heard throughout the valley as it ushers in the night, during which it patrols the dreamscape for abnormalities. It appears to the characters as something they have recently dreamed about.

• A child that has manifested from the Dreamscape experiments at OAR. Able to temporarily manifest people’s dreams and nightmares.

Possible Monsters

• The Nottmor (Night Mother) is less of a person, and more of a concept that has escaped the Dreamscape experiments at OAR. Manifesting and feeding off the energy generated by dreams (both good and bad), it wants to keep you dreaming as long as possible. The caress of the Night Mother is warm and comforting, as she watches you slumber with her eyeless stare.

• The Night Terrors are creations of the Nottmor, sent to haunt the dreams of the local citizenry.

• The Roaming Nisse are alluring creatures who create fascinations (often illusory) to lure the local citizenry into daydreams so that they can steal trinkets unnoticed.

ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES

Rule Addition: The Dreamscape

Some of the game may take place within the Dreamscape, the shared unconsciousness of all sentient creatures. Most of the time, characters would only see fragments of the Dreamscape, what we think of as simply our dreams. As the Nottmor exerts more and more control over the Dreamscape, though, characters will discover consistent experiences that the Nottmor is creating — and will likely even have shared experiences within the Dreamscape.

Typically, when in the Dreamscape, characters are not able to influence what they do in any meaningful way. However, as the Nottmor influences the Dreamscape, characters will be able to make decisions about what they do in the same way that they can make choices while awake. Her alteration of the fabric of the Dreamscape enables the characters’ wills to influence their own actions — but not the Dreamscape itself.

Night Terrors, extensions of the Nottmor, function in the same way as characters: they are able to control their own actions while in the Dreamscape. Whereas characters will return to reality when they awaken, Night Terrors cannot enter the waking world until they can trap a human in the Dreamscape. To make matters worse, the presence of the Nottmor in the Dreamscape has changed the typical rules of dreams — that when you are badly hurt in a dream, you awaken unharmed. Her presence is causing people who are injured in the Dreamscape to awaken with those injuries in real life.

The Nottmor itself has not found a way to escape into the world, but if she can trap a dreamer with powerful enough magic, she may be able to. Lucid Dreamers are a favorite target of hers, but they alone are not enough. A dreamwalker, a shaman, or a human with an enhanced ability to dream lucidly might do the trick, though…

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Rule Addition: Lucid Dreamer

All teens and adults can take the following strength as one of their two selected strengths: “Lucid Dreamer: Spend two Adversity Tokens to exert control over the Dreamscape for the duration of the current dream. After spending Adversity Tokens, you are able to summon inanimate objects to your possession and disobey the laws of physics while dreaming.”

Rule Addition: Sleep Deprivation

If a character goes without sleep, there will be negative effects, based upon the number of days they have gone without sleep and whether or not they fail a Grit check. Each day that a character goes without sleep, they automatically advance one day along the Sleep Deprivation track. Then, they must make a Grit check. A failed Grit check means that they advance one additional day along the Sleep Deprivation track. Effects along the track are cumulative. It is assumed that characters are consuming caffeine or other stimulants in order to remain awake, so such drugs will not alleviate these effects. When characters do fall asleep, stat checks made in the Dreamscape are without penalty.

• Day 1: Get -2 to all stat checks, including Planned Actions.

• Day 2: Unable to take Planned Actions.

• Day 3: Any time you are not in motion, there is a 20% that you enter a microsleep (two to 30 seconds of unconsciousness followed by five minutes of disorientation, meaning that you automatically fail any stat check during that time). If you are not consuming caffeine or other stimulants every few hours, immediately jump to Day 6.

At this point, you are having trouble keeping a grip on reality, so the effects of

“A Bleeding Reality” (see below) apply whenever you enter a microsleep.

• Day 4: Microsleeps automatically occur any time you are not in motion.

• Day 5: Automatically fail any stat checks.

• Day 6: Involuntarily fall asleep equal to, at minimum, four hours per day (not including failed Grit checks) that you were awake. You cannot be awakened during this time. If left to sleep on your own, you will sleep for eight hours per day that you were awake, up to 24 hours.

After reaching Day 1 or beyond, each six hours of sleep a character gets reduces their position on the Sleep Deprivation track by one day.

Rule Addition: A Bleeding Reality

At some point there may be a scenario in which the Dreamscape and the waking world bleed into each other. This could occur when the Nottmor’s influence grows or when a character (either a player character or an NPC) reaches sleep deprivation levels such that they begin losing the ability to distinguish between the two planes of existence.

When this happens, such characters may experience dream-like qualities in the the waking world, such as the abilities of the Lucid Dreamer and the Night Terrors causing physical harm to their corporeal body.

Other examples could include, but are not limited to, physical manifestations of fantastic creatures, plants, or landscapes that blend with what the character would recognize as the waking world. Some who have undergone profound sleep deprivation (Day 4 or Day 5) tell stories of seeing a doorway surrounded by enchanting flowers, which they reportedly felt might lead somewhere enticing — but such levels of sleep deprivation are so rare that accounts of the benefits or dangers of going through the door are too inconsistent to know for sure.

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Snow Days at Chanky Cheez - Snowsville, NY

by Jonathan Gilmour & Doug Levandowski

(Chanky Cheez suggested by Thomas Robert Beatman)

Content Warnings: claustrophobia, cults, dangerous strangers, freezing, human sacrifice, seasonal affective disorder

Setting information

Author’s Note: This is based on my childhood in northern New York and my love for weird themed places. – Jonathan

Many in northern New York say that there are just two seasons there: Winter and July.

Nestled on the shore of the St. Lawrence River is the aptly named town of Snowsville.

From late spring until early fall, the community is fully geared toward tending the fields and harvesting hay. The rest of the year, it’s a snowbound wasteland. On occasion the snow will shut down travel for weeks at a time, but even when things are running smoothly, the drifts can get waist deep.

Wanting to give people another reason to visit, four years ago, locals constructed the Chanky Cheez Funtime Emporium, an arcade and pizzeria. For two years, it worked.

People from far and wide flooded in as often as they could, and Chanky’s helped the economy boom.

After only two seasons, Chanky’s didn’t open up again when the snow cleared. The owner, who spent her winters in Florida, never came back and was never heard from again. Some nights, people swear they hear sounds coming from inside the abandoned building.

Now, there isn’t much to do in town. Sledding, sure. Winter hikes, sure — but the snow-drifts can be dangerous. Every year, at least one person steps into a drift that formed over a gully in the earth and nearly freezes to death. These victims report seeing strange creatures crawling over them, pulling the heat from their body. But that has to be the hypothermia, right?

Setting Touchstones

Fargo (film), Five Nights at Freddy’s (video game series), The Shining (novel) Alternate Town Creation Questions

• Group: Who was the last person to break into Chanky’s? What did they see?

• Individual, Shared: What rumor about the town interests you the most?

• Individual, Shared: What’s your favorite memory of Chanky’s that only you seem to remember?

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• Individual, Shared: Why do you think Chanky’s was closed?

• Individual, Private: How much does the cold and darkness of the winter months affect you psychologically?

Possible Points of Interest

• Chanky Cheez Funtime Emporium, an abandoned business on the edge of town.

It has been closed for two years, and the most popular dare in town is daring someone to break in. Few have ever actually taken the dare, though.

• Farmer O’Dowl’s Hill, the best place for sledding in town... as long as O’Dowl isn’t screaming at you to get off his hill.

• The Caves, a network of caverns just outside of town. There are impressive stalactites and stalagmites, and rumor has it that the system of caves extends underneath the town.

• Mac’s Tavern, the local bar. The drinks are strong, the pool tables are free, and the jukebox is always on, making it a popular place for everyone over 21 in town.

• St. Eulalia of Mérida Church, the Catholic church in town. Overseen by Father O’Brenner, the church is one of the few places to remain open in the winter months.

• Snowsville Academy, the local K–12 school where the teachers are sometimes adequate, the food never is, and the students have to stay until July because of snow days.

Possible NPCs

• Myrtle Eliot, local fortune teller. Purports to read tarot cards, but is actually just an inveterate gossip.

• Caryn Fraser, former owner/operator of Chanky Cheez Funtime Emporium. Currently living in Florida and aware of the danger that the Funtime Emporium poses.

Might be coaxed back since she does have a conscience.

• Zbigniew Krzysztof, cranky old Polish immigrant who lives just outside of town and distills vodka.

• Mac McKenzie, owner and bartender of Mac’s Tavern. She lost her husband 10 years ago in a blizzard and now only has her work. Lives over the bar. If she’s awake, Mac’s Tavern is open.

• Lester Nicholas, mayor of the town and all-around positive person. He has been an advocate for tearing down the Funtime Emporium.

• Father Patrick O’Brenner, local priest and most loyal customer at Mac’s Tavern.

Except on Sundays, he is mostly quiet and keeps to himself, but the town still talks about the bar fight that he ended the hard way five years ago.

• Reggie Plow, the snow plow driver. No one knows his real last name, but he drives a heck of a snow plow. He’s a very strange person without any friends.

• Vanessa Tran, retired Secret Service agent. She’s tough as nails and takes no guff.

She’s also the crossing guard and brings cookies for the kids.

Possible Adventure Hooks

• The characters are dared to go into the Chanky Cheez Funtime Emporium. To prove their mettle, they decide to take the dare.

• A friend, sibling, or child of one of the characters goes missing, either in the Funtime Emporium or in the snow.

• The characters are sledding with an NPC who disappears beneath the snow. They hear screams for a moment, then an echo.

• During the worst snowstorm in the town’s history, people are freezing to death in their homes. But the heat is on and there’s no sign of forced entry.

• The characters are trapped in a house when a blizzard unexpectedly causes complete whiteout conditions in the town.

• Seasonal affective disorder always hits the town, but this year it seems like it’s even worse. Some people have even shut themselves into their houses and are refusing to come out because of the things that live beneath the snow.

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• The characters find a treasure map that directs them to the caves on the outskirts of town. It hints that they have to go there during a blizzard and that there’s a large treasure inside for those brave enough to venture in.

• During a blizzard so bad that even Reggie Plow can’t get the roads clear, people are returning from the edge of town saying that there’s some sort of strange force keeping people from leaving the town.

Possible Threats

• A cult that believes it can drive the snow away and return Snowsville to an agrarian utopia (that never actually existed) through blood sacrifices.

• Weather itself, which is incredibly dangerous.

Possible Powered Characters

• An arctic fox that is able to communicate telepathically with one of the characters and knows how to defeat the imps.

• Polly Pizza, another animatronic creature from the Funtime Emporium that also came to life but is dedicated to preventing Chanky from hurting any other kids.

Perhaps imbued with the spirit of a child that Chanky killed.

Possible Monsters

• Chanky Cheez, an animatronic block of cheese with a face. The past two years have not been kind to it, and its features are drooping and cracked. It is not yet able to leave the grounds of the Chanky Cheez Funtime Emporium. It believes that, by killing enough children, it can finally get out. Within that building, though, it is able to control machinery and doors.

• Small, imp-like creatures who pull hapless people below the snow and drain the warmth from their bodies. They’re able to burrow through snow and frozen dirt, and they use the network of caves to their advantage.

• A drifter who is able to control the snow and seems immune to the cold. He doesn’t seem to want anything other than to freeze and destroy.

ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES

Rule Addition: Cold Exposure

In Colorado, people are pretty used to the cold, especially this time of year. During the course of their adventure, though, they might find themselves exposed to the elements for long enough that they begin to suffer ill effects. Because the effects of exposure to cold weather depend greatly on what the characters are wearing and just how cold the weather actually is, it’s difficult to create a formula for effects of exposure.

In general, the longer characters stay out in the cold, the worse the effects will be. At first, they should suffer some slight penalty on stat checks. As hypothermia sets in, the penalties should become more extreme, especially for Brains and Charm checks, due to the confusion associated with hypothermia. When hypothermia gets worse, shivering becomes uncontrollable, and any stat checks involving physical action should be assumed to immediately fail. Severe hypothermia causes death, often after “paradoxical undressing” where hypothermia victims start to feel overheated because of the body’s response to changes in blood flow. For more information, Wikipedia has an informative entry on hypothermia.

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Nights at Garuda Lake - Garuda Lake, VT

by Anton Kromoff

Content Warnings: hospitalized children, human experimentation, mind control, teen drug use, violence against animals

Setting information

Welcome to the sleepy New England town of Garuda Lake, founded in 1640 by Jim Malford, who led a group of families to start a colony nestled between the foot of the Appalachian Mountains and Lake Garuda. Originally called Sagnasaw Grove, it was incorporated into the greater Miskatonic Valley in 1671 as Garuda Lake. The town’s current name is in honor of Lake Garuda, the lake that the Trappist monks of Our Lady of the Golden Light who arrived in 1666 credited for exceptional crops and longer than normal growing seasons.

The town has a thriving tech firm as well as a fairly lucrative fishing community. However, it is most known for its lake house community in the summer and its snow lodge community in the winter.

The locals are split between “Old Town” — mostly older, turn-of-the-century houses and small local businesses — and “Royal Meadows,” a modern development community with a shopping district, tech center, modern children’s hospital and research facility, and the most up-to-date modern conveniences.

Setting Touchstones

The Andy Griffith Show (TV series), The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft (book), The Goonies (film), Harrow County (comic series), It (novel), The Sandlot (film), Stranger Things (Netflix series), The Weird Company (book) Alternate Town Creation Questions

• Group: What are some local organizations that are planning events during the current season?

• Individual, Shared: What rumors about the town interest you the most?

• Individual, Shared or Private: Which side of the town are you from — Old Town or Royal Meadows?

• Individual, Private: How do you feel about the other side of town?

• Individual, Private: How do you feel about the town as a whole? Do you want to escape to something new, or are you happy with the life you have?

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Possible Points of Interest

For a map of the surrounding area, visit huntersbooks.com/downloads-kidsonbikes.

Lighthearted

• Amberlock Forest, which sits to the east of town. Many Scout Troops, mountain bikers, and weekend wanderers enjoy the trails and campgrounds.

• Royal Meadows Mega Mall, built by renovating the old steel mill. It has two arcades, a food court, and plenty of hidden passages to explore.

Serious

• The Tiller Company, a tech firm that runs the Royal Meadows community. Owned by Frances J. Tiller, the company has been developing many technologies to advance mass communication — through phone signals, computer-aided digital messaging services, and even advanced light-based communication capable of creating a hive mind.

• Wilford Graveyard, which sits on the dividing line between Old Town and Royal Meadows. It’s rumored to sit over a network of caves that feed out into Garuda Lake. For decades, high school kids have told stories of bodies washing up on the shores of the lake covered in gnaw marks.

Either

• Sagnasaw Forest, to the north of the town. It provides hunting grounds for out-of-towners vacationing at one of the ski lodges on Sharp-Top Mountain.

• Calaveras Island, where local folklore says that you can find ancient ruins of strange stone idols.

• The Capricorn, a steam-powered paddleboat that takes locals and tourists on fishing tours, year round.

• Our Lady of the Golden Light Medical Center and Children’s Hospital, the local hospital in the new part of town. It has recently seen the addition of an extended-stay center, a neurological center, and full pharmaceutical R&D on the premises. It has drawn a surprisingly large and surprisingly reclusive staff, apparently from all over the world.

• Our Lady of the Golden Light Private Academy, the school that the children who live in the new part of town typically attend, especially if their parents work for the Tiller Company. Their team, the Bruising Bees, are all incredibly gifted athletes.

Possible NPCs

• Goran Hill, a local artist who found success early on with comics about ghouls. It is rumored that he drew inspiration from the local folklore about the network of caves under the Wilford Graveyard. Although he is hardly seen outside his gated mountainside mansion, those who have crossed his path say he is quite friendly and happy to chat about his work and the inspirations for it.

• Thadius Hingle, captain of the paddleboat Capricorn. Thadius has been living in Garuda Lake all his life and is a font of knowledge about folklore, rumors, and the mysteries of the lake — although separating truth from tall tale can be difficult.

• Jacob and Avery Lambstrad, who breathed new life back into the fishing community that most of the inhabitants of the old part of town call home.

• Frances J. Tiller, the daughter of Miriam B. Sagnasaw and a descendant of one of the original families who founded the town. Unlike her mother, Miriam the skin cream mogul, Frances has dedicated the majority of her professional life to cultivating a thriving community of well educated, highly motivated, forward-thinking technophiles.

Possible Adventure Hooks

• There have always been rumors that Amberlock Forest is “witch haunted.” However, most of these rumors are spread by those under the age of 14. It seems anyone older simply forgets about the stories of the Whitefaced Watchers and their brooms made of bone — even after they are reminded by children who swear they have seen them coast along the surface of Garuda Lake when the moon is full.

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• The rumors of a performance-enhancing drug known as “Royal Jelly” have been greatly downplayed by both state and local papers, even after the small rash of drug-related incidents involving people from Royal Meadows. Folks from the Bruising Bees sports community were admitted to the local hospital with strange, hive-like holes dotting their skin.

• Many hunters frequent the Sagnasaw Forest. However, there are rumors of wolf animals deep in the Sagnasaw that fear no man and never forget slights perpetrated in their snow-dusted woods.

• At the Children’s Hospital, the world-renowned staff has gathered to explore the old growth Sagnasaw Forest to seek undiscovered plants and animals that may have medical applications. Occasionally, members of the exploratory groups go missing and are never found again.

Possible Threats

• The hive-mind adult community of Royal Meadows suddenly begins to work in unison. Half the town is now under the control of a shadowy Queen Bee figure.

• Jacob and Avery Lambstrad have breathed life back into the fishing community.

However, they have done this through dark deals with otherworldly beings who call the islands of Garuda Lake home — and such deals come with a price.

• A group of wealthy businessmen have come to town to hunt local game, although what they are actually after are the less well known — and far more supernatural —

beings that live in Sagnasaw Forest.

Possible Powered Characters

• A homeless man who roams the Amberlock Forest carving strange symbols into trees — symbols that resemble the runes found on the stone structures dotting the islands of Garuda Lake. He is fascinated by music.

• A child from the Children’s Hospital who was experimented on and now has a honeycomb-like tattoo on his face and possesses the ability to influence bees. If the characters befriend this child, they’ll be a powerful ally. But if they mirror the cruelty shown by the hospital’s doctors, it could go very poorly.

• Old Luca, the major draw to the Nature Walk Living Museum. Old Luca is an albino timber wolf, a strange sight to see in these parts. Many stop for a picture with the lovable old wolf, who watches visitors inquisitively and seems to respond with grunts and yips when asked questions. But no one, not even the local papers, seems to be able to capture a good photo of Old Luca; they always come out blurry.

Possible Monsters

• Feral ghouls that live in the tunnels under Wilford Graveyard and make Calaveras Island their home.

• Strange, wolf-like creatures that roam the Sagnasaw Forest and never forget trespasses against them.

• The Whitefaced Watchers, a group of ancient witches. They call the Amberlock Forest home and ride on bone broomsticks. Dressed in all black except for faces as pale as moonlight, they are said to play haunting melodies on bone instruments to lure children away to the woods. Though all children under 14 seem to know them, most people older than that dismiss any such stories — or forget them altogether within minutes of hearing them.

ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES

Rule Addition: Hive Mind

In the Royal Meadows community, there are myriad technological and supernatural happenings. A large majority of the town who spends prolonged amounts of time orking or playing at the various Royal Meadows properties (Private School, Mega Mall, Golf Course, Children’s Hospital) may be subjected to the Hive Mind, which can be either beneficial or disastrous.

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While it may give some players insight into the moods and feelings of other members of the community, it can also lead to players being caught up in the mob mentality of the

“hive.” It would be beneficial for the DM to weigh both the pros and cons of this before allowing a player character to be engage with the Hive Mind.

Children and teens will not be as affected, as the primary focus of the Hive Mind is adults. The difference in how these groups are affected is noticeable.

When engaging with the Hive Mind, make a Charm check as a Snap Decision. You may spend Adversity Tokens as normal on this roll.

Child / Teen

Adult

Charm check

20: You understand the thought

20: You understand the thought

results when

process and motivations of the

process and motivations of the

engaging with

person you are focused on.

person you are focused on.

the Hive Mind.

17-19: You understand the basic

17-19: You have a rough idea of the

idea of the thoughts and feelings

basic emotions of the person you

of the person you are focused on.

are focused on.

13-16: You have a rough idea of

13-16: You get a faint idea of two

the basic emotions of the person

goals that may be driving the per-

you are focused on.

son you are focused on.

10-12: You get a faint idea of two

10-12: You have a headache and

goals that may be driving the per-

gain no information from the en-

son you are focused on.

counter.

7-9: You have a headache and

5-9: You feel compelled to agree

gain no information from the

and see the side of the person you

encounter.

are focused on.

4-6: You feel compelled to agree

3-4: You feel overwhelmed by a

and see the side of the person you deep desire to help fulfill whatever are focused on.

goal is desired by the person you

are focused on.

2-3: You feel overwhelmed by a

deep desire to help fulfill whatever 1-2: You become part of the Hive goal is desired by the person you

Mind and are in the control of the

are focused on.

DM until an event occurs to break

you free.

1: You become part of the Hive

Mind and are in the control of the

DM until an event occurs to break

you free.

It is the GM’s call when an event occurs to break a player free from the more disastrous Hive Mind effects. A few possible ways to break free from the Hive Mind are being powerfully reminded of a friendship, eating a favorite food, seeing a truly cherished belonging, and being taken far enough away from the source of the Hive Mind to break the connection.

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Talkeetna of Troubles - Talkeetna, AK

by Kevin Kulp

Content Warnings: bullying, claustrophobia, freezing, human sacrifice, wilderness survival

Setting information

When you think of Talkeetna, Alaska (which is a real place without any Bigfoot, or so we’re told; we’ve taken some liberties describing it here), think isolation. Think gorgeous natural beauty, harsh and unforgiving weather, and a tiny, close-knit population of locals, kept afloat mostly by tourism. Summers are easy, but it’s hard not to be superstitious when the snow falls deep into the long night, and flickering green auroras light the sky overhead.

Talkeetna is not a large town. It tried to be, once; at the turn of the 20th century there were almost a thousand people living here, building the Alaska Railroad and mining for gold. But the Great War came, the railroad was completed, the gold ran out, and empty homes and abandoned factories were left to molder in the long summer days and frigid winter nights.

The town of Talkeetna is nestled 114 miles north of Anchorage, at the confluence of the Susitna, Chulitna, and Talkeetna Rivers. It may have been founded in 1916 — and three of the original buildings are still in use today, including the Talkeetna Roadhouse, Nagley’s General Store, and the Fairview Inn — but there used to be an Athabascan village here long before the 1905 gold rush. There’s history here that most people have forgotten. The river is huge, the forest is vast, and the town is isolated; if secrets got left behind, they may well be hidden there still.

The town of Cicely in the TV series Northern Exposure is reputedly patterned after Talkeetna, and until recently Talkeetna was famous for having a cat named Stubbs as its unofficial mayor. Nowadays, most of the work in Talkeetna comes from fishing, hunting, hiking, skiing, and rafting. The town gets used as a base for ascents of Denali (Mt. McKinley), so there’s more than your average number of artists and crafters.

But except for tourist skiers, when winter comes the town empties out and turns in on itself. It’s easy to go a little stir-crazy when the temperature drops to zero degrees and the snow begins to pile up. Almost makes you long for an adventure.

Setting Touchstones

The Goonies (film), Northern Exposure (TV series), Stand by Me (film) PAGE 101

Alternate Town Creation Questions Summer

• Group: What are the best activities in town during the summer?

• Individual, Shared: It’s light almost all night long. What time do your parents make you come home?

• Individual, Shared: There are lots of tourists in the summer, and not all are polite. Do they feel like intruders, or do you welcome them?

• Individual, Shared: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever run across during the summer?

• Individual, Shared or Private: Ever gotten lost in the woods? What happened?

• Individual, Private: Do your parents keep track of what you’re up to?

Winter

• Group: What do people do to keep from getting cabin fever in the winter?

• Group: What’s the local school like?

• Individual, Shared: How deep are your family’s roots in Talkeetna?

• Individual, Shared or Private: How do you feel about the snow?

• Individual, Shared or Private: How do the long winter nights and brutally cold days affect you?

• Individual, Private: What do you think those strange lights were that you saw in the woods last winter?

Possible Points of Interest

Lighthearted

• Moose Dropping Festival, which ran from ’72 to ’09, when it finally brought in too many drunk tourists. Numbered moose droppings were dropped from a crane, and there were festivities to match!

• Nagley’s General Store, founded in 1921 by Horace Nagley and in operation ever since, thought the name was changed to B&K Trading Post for 40 years or so. If you need a snack, a shelter, or a great source of gossip, this is the place to go.

Serious

• Talkeetna Historical Society, a place to find information that no one alive but Ezekiel Washington might know. Their trove of archived photos and histories might give you the (horrifying) clue you need.

• The Ranger Station, where you go to learn about mountaineering, prepare for climbing Denali, or report children lost in the woods.

Either

• Deep woods which surround the town. The woods are peppered with deep forest lakes. You’ll find rotting cars from the 1920s, forgotten buildings, and long-abandoned roads — if you know where to look.

• Three rivers, merging into one in the town of Talkeetna. In summer, great fishing and swimming spots abound. Frozen in winter and great for skating, hockey, and frenzied flights toward safety while something horrible pursues you.

• Islands in all three rivers, which rise or fall with the river levels. They’re a lot easier to access in winter or late summer than during the spring thaw. There are secrets buried on those islands — hopefully, you won’t be buried there with them.

Possible NPCs

• Wes Dansky, an obsessive cryptid seeker. He’s convinced that Bigfoot is out there.

He even claims to have seen it, although he says his camera jammed that day so he never got a decent photo. Wes plans to open a Bigfoot museum in town, if he can ever find enough time when he isn’t scouring the woods.

• Don Holliday, the friendly local entrepreneur who owns “Holiday Wonders.” Don organizes and sends tourists off on all the best hikes, kayak trips, or ski outings.

Rumor has it that not all those out-of-towners actually come back, and search teams have never found a single body. Don must feel awful about it.

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• Billy & Martha Kirby, the brother-and-sister bullies whose gang delights in ruining anything that you and your friends love. You’re not sure why they hate you so much, but Billy boasts that his father is really important in some special government laboratory, so maybe he thinks he’s special. He’s lying, though; if there was a government lab around here, you’d have heard of it.

• Mrs. Pensever, who lives in the falling-down “witch house” down the lane. They say she’s rich — something to do with old gold claims — but you couldn’t tell from looking at her. Don’t call her that nickname (you know the one) and don’t go into her yard for a lost baseball. Everyone knows what happened to the last kid who did.

• The River Girl, who you only see up by the Susitna River before dawn. You’d guess she’s from one of the local Native American families. She says her parents don’t really like people, and she still hasn’t told you her name. She vanishes pretty fast if you startle her, though, and no one in town has ever heard of her — or her family.

• Maggie Tashima, the town librarian. She’s new to town, but one of the nicest people you’ve ever met, and she’s even more curious that you are.

• Ezekiel Washington, a former railroader who is so old he claims to have lived in Talkeetna before it was even a town. As a child he must have explored the same forest paths that you do now. Ask him how old he is, though, and he gives a tooth-less grin before telling you he’s been alive forever. You’re not sure if he’s kidding.

Possible Adventure Hooks

• That sure is a huge and ancient forest surrounding the town, and things live out there. Ancient things. Things that demand propitiation, and probably blood. The Athabascans knew that once, but people nowadays have forgotten. Every time a tourist goes missing, those things may be to blame — but they’re getting bolder, hungrier, and now they want worship as well.

• Those UFO sightings last year: man-made, natural phenomena, or something else?

If they touched down somewhere, there should be some sign.

• The Alaska Railroad once owned now-rotting and falling-down warehouses in Talkeetna, and it’s said the ghosts of those killed on the rails find their way back. In the dead of winter, when the aurora lights up the sky and the wind howls, there’s a legend of a ghost train that brings all those lost souls back to Hell… unless the whole ghost train thing is a fake, designed to scare people away from an illegal gold mine.

• There are lights shining from under the river whenever there’s strange and unexpected fog. Is something down there? If so, is it a natural phenomena, something supernatural, a river cryptid, or technological trickery — and why?

• The gold rush went through Talkeetna back near the turn of the century, and rumors still abound of the lost Talkeetna strike. Supposedly a prospector found a shockingly rich vein before someone killed him, and anyone who knew the location of the haunted mine has long since died. What if that story is real, someone is looking for it by hunting up old diaries, and you need to find it before they do?

• For a place that doesn’t see too many visitors, there is a surprising number of featureless vans and government cars filled with soldiers and scientists that drive north through town, and then completely disappear. Where do they go, and what are those people doing?

• A bunch of nearly identical out-of-town salesmen have arrived to buy up businesses and houses in town, and the locals they meet with are acting strangely. The locals are talking monotonously and smiling blandly, and none of them — not even Mrs. Pensever — are getting mad. What’s going on, and who’s behind it?

Possible Threats

• A cryptid-hunting TV show comes to town to hunt Bigfoot, setting up Wes Dansky (and Talkeetna) to look like idiots in front of the whole country.

• Dr. Kirby’s hidden government lab is doing terrible things out in the forest, and mysterious accidents befall anyone who suspects what’s going on.

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• Other people as old as Ezekiel Washington come to town to claim him — and he turns out to be much, much older than you thought.

• The things in the forest aren’t content with Don Holliday’s tribute, and they start recruiting worshipers in town. The cult plans sacrifices, starting with the people they don’t like... such as the new librarian.

• Ghost trains don’t come to Talkeetna by coincidence! There’s a portal to the afterlife near here, and someone has accidentally done something horrible to open it.

• UFOs are real, and alien flora and fauna are colonizing the forest. The town of Talkeetna is next.

Possible Powered Characters

• A young Bigfoot, fascinated by humanity.

• A nature spirit (either snow, forest, or river) with a debt of vengeance to pay.

• An ancient prospector’s ghost who can possess others until exposed to sunlight.

• A child who attracts elemental snow spirits, creating the worst winter anyone in Talkeetna can remember.

• The genetically mutated shell of a missing child who has somehow escaped Dr.

Kirby’s secret government lab.

• An alien explorer with very murky motives.

Possible Monsters

• A sentient and intelligent wolfpack, doing the will of an honest-to-gosh werewolf that is too ancient to act for itself.

• A clan of Bigfoot, most of whom delight in taunting Wes Dansky.

• A river spirit whose power ebbs and flows with the spring floods, and who’s falling in love with someone from town — maybe even one of the gang?

• An ancient, evil tree with the slow sentience of all nature, determined to wipe the flesh-puppets off its land.

• The ghost of a young girl murdered between the walls of a falling-down house, whose murder has never been solved.

• Summer means swarms of biting black flies and mosquitoes. So why are the swarms taking humanoid shapes, and why does their high-pitched buzzing sound almost like human speech?

ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES

Rule Addition: Cold Exposure

In Alaska, people are pretty used to the cold. During the course of their adventure, though, characters might find themselves exposed to the elements for long enough that they begin to suffer ill effects. Because the effects of exposure to cold weather depend greatly on what the characters are wearing and just how cold the weather actually is, it’s difficult to create a formula for effects of exposure.

In general, the longer characters stay out in the cold, the worse the effects will be. At first, they should suffer some slight penalty on stat checks. As hypothermia sets in, the penalties should become more extreme, especially for Brains and Charm checks, due to the confusion associated with hypothermia. When hypothermia gets worse, shivering becomes uncontrollable, and any stat checks involving physical action should be assumed to immediately fail. Severe hypothermia causes death, often after “paradoxical undressing” where hypothermia victims start to feel overheated because of the body’s response to changes in blood flow. For more information, Wikipedia has an informative entry on hypothermia.

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Shadows From Sharon Hollow - Sharon Hollow, MI

by Amanda Hamon Kunz

Content Warnings: horror, poverty, psychological possession, wilderness survival Setting information

When Detroit’s automotive industry was flourishing, riches flowed like black gold into the surrounding rural hills. There, wealthy executives built lavish woodland retreats amid the scrappier outposts of the working class. But by the 1990s, the well began to run dry. Auto sales dropped, workers struggled to keep their jobs, and the executives retreated from their second homes.

An hour west of Detroit, Sharon Hollow is not so much a town as a long expanse of rural road. For generations, families have lived quiet lives here, working in the auto plants and increasingly turning to hunting and scrapping to get by. Every year, more skeletons are added to the graveyard of wealthy playgrounds, including empty storage sheds stripped of their toys and lake yachts abandoned on empty lots. Perhaps most notorious is a bizarre old treehouse known only as the Fort. It’s nestled deep in the woods and bigger than some single-family homes.

Rumors of strange happenings have always permeated Sharon Hollow. Of late, though, the locals have become eerily hushed, and some seem to be only shadows of their normal selves. Could be that it’s just a harsh winter. Or perhaps the stories of evil lurking in the Fort are true and something sinister threatens Sharon Hollow.

Setting Touchstones

The Conjuring (film), The Ring (film), Stranger Things (Netflix series) Alternate Town Creation Questions

• Group: What recent odd weather event (a blizzard, an ice storm, an off-season tornado) has Sharon Hollow on edge?

• Individual, Shared: What does your character think about the rumors that the woods and the Fort are bad luck?

• Individual, Shared: Where is your character’s favorite spot to explore in or around Sharon Hollow?

• Individual, Private: How is your character’s family getting by during these tough economic times?

• Individual, Private: How does your character feel about the wealthy who used to flood into Sharon Hollow and about those who still live or visit here?

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Possible Points of Interest

• The Fort, a massive treehouse next to a pond. Located nearly a mile off the main road, this was once a play area for a wealthy. It’s been abandoned for a decade, and locals like to blame the area’s misfortune on the supposed bad luck of the Fort and the woods around it.

• The surrounding woods, a dense forest that dots both sides of Sharon Hollow. But the woods around the Fort are especially primeval and dangerous.

• Mitzi’s Hardware, the general store in Sharon Hollow. The store stocks basic food-stuffs, tools, and gear for hunting and fishing. Run by Marge and Mitzi Frantz.

• Poland’s Junkyard, the property of the old hermit. His lot is covered in naked car frames, old trailers, and piles of other scrap, with an ugly “Keep Out!” sign posted along its fence.

• The old quarry, a huge hole in the ground lined with sharp limestone. Filled with rainwater in the summer, the old quarry is frozen solid in the winter.

• Chip Crick, the creek that flows alongside a portion of Sharon Hollow and descends into a gorge with a treacherous hiking trail just east of the Surrounding Woods. The best hunting grounds are here, everyone agrees.

• The abandoned well, just behind Poland’s Junkyard. The well is empty, uncovered, and on an empty lot next to a junked speedboat.

Possible NPCs

• Marge Frantz, one of the owners of Mitzi’s Hardware. She has been known to chase off hooligans and troublemaking out-of-towners with a meaningful pump of her shotgun. Typically she’s gruff and taciturn, but she adores discussing popular characters on reality television.

• Mitzi Frantz, one of the owners of Mitzi’s Hardware, the store that her parents named after her when she was a child. She’s an affable businesswoman and can sell practically anything to anyone.

• Connor Gershman, a young man from an affluent suburb who now lives here full time. Rumor is he’s building something weird in his backyard. Husband to Jessie.

• Jessie Gershman, a young woman from an affluent suburb. She’s incredibly cheer-ful and often takes long nature walks in the surrounding woods. Wife to Connor.

• Walt Herman, President of Sharon Hollow Hunters, a local club. He hunts with a bow, is fond of conspiracy theories, and is convinced the Fort is haunted.

• Poland, a hermit who never leaves his junkyard-like property, but happily sells most anything to visitors. Few locals have seen him. Rumors about his appearance and habits are wild.

• Jake Stelzer, a local kid who lives with his grandmother and delivers newspapers along Sharon Hollow. Loves telling fantastic stories about the woods.

• Heather Underwood, a local kid and notorious hoodlum. Likes to break into empty buildings and explore, but rarely steals anything.

Possible Adventure Hooks

• Several locals have started acting strangely disinterested in daily life, as if all emotion were drained out of them. What’s more, these people seem to have contracted some sort of disease that’s blackening the veins in their eyes and hands. Those who have seen a doctor say it’s just a vitamin deficiency thanks to the hard winter, but Jessie Gershman and Jake Stelzer are convinced that something sinister is lurking in the woods and afflicting these folks. They know that you know this area like the back of your hand, and they ask you to investigate.

• Mitzi bemoans the strangely aggressive vandals who have broken into her hardware store three times in the past month. Though Marge scared them off each time, Mitzi worries that someone will soon get hurt. The vandals don’t steal anything, but simply use charcoal bricks to scrawl “It’s Coming” all over the store’s walls.

She assumes the culprits are kids and asks you to discreetly find out who’s behind the break-ins and convince them to stop their pranks. As a reward, she offers each of you anything in her store.

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• Every full moon, curious green-and-purple lights flicker along Chip Crick’s hiking trail toward the Fort. The local hunters say it’s some sort of invasive firefly species, but Heather Underwood is convinced it’s evidence of something valuable that an out-of-towner (or perhaps the Gershmans) is hiding away. She asks you to come with her to check it out.

Possible Threats

• A group of local hunters who have decided that kids and out-of-towners skulking about the woods are giving Sharon Hollow a bad reputation and are menacing people in the wilderness.

• A group of local ghost seekers who have little attention for safety or private property. They infiltrate abandoned places to look for ghosts, often causing major property damage — or worse.

Possible Powered Characters

• A wanderer found dazed and incoherent in the woods. She looks familiar, but no one can place who she is. She says she’s been living in the Fort for years.

• A tracker who lives in the woods, though no one has ever heard of him. He lives with a pack of shadowy wolves who seem to understand his every word.

• A ragged woman who can only venture a few hundred feet from the pond beside the Fort. When she touches its waters, she turns into a bluegill and swims off.

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Possible Monsters

• Shadow tentacles that extend from the Fort and pull anyone nearby inside.

• A pulsing portal inside the Fort. Destroy it and stop the menace to the surrounding woods (see Rule Addition: Shadows Within for more).

• An inky vampire deer in the surrounding woods. It’s 10 feet tall and ethereal.

• Temporarily besotted locals, driven mad by the shadows within (see the Rule Addition: Shadows Within for more).

ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES

Rule Addition: Shadows Within

The shadowy powers at the heart of the Fort are slowly leaching into the people and places around it. As they explore the surrounding woods, there is an increasing chance that the characters absorb some of this mysterious power themselves, albeit temporarily.

For each day that a character spends in the woods surrounding the Fort, there is a 50

percent chance that they gain a one-time-use power card. Triggering this 50 percent chance is cumulative; each time a character has spent a total of 12 hours in the woods, the GM rolls a d20. On a result of 1-10, nothing happens. On a result of 11-20, the character temporarily gains a power. Depending on how the game elapses, there is a good chance that the characters will all gain temporary powers at least once.

When a character gains a power, the GM chooses a power card and gives it to someone sitting next to the player controlling the temporarily powered character. The player holding the power card cannot reveal its details to anyone, and not even her own character knows the power’s details. Similarly, the temporarily powered character doesn’t know the details of their own newfound power, only that they feels somehow different and strange. A minor but noticeable physical change happens to them: the veins in the character’s hands might turn black as obsidian, their breath might come in smoky exhales, or their shadow might become sharp and distorted. Regardless, it’s obvious that something’s up.

At any point while the characters are exploring Sharon Hollow, a player holding another character’s power card may encourage the affected character to use their power. This represents the encouraging character’s intuition about how their compatriot has been affected in the woods. While the encouraging character should not describe exactly what the power might do, that player should encourage their ally to use their strange new power only when it would help the group!

If the affected character agrees, that character uses their power and the card is revealed to the group. The GM decides how that power is resolved in the events of the game. The affected character then loses their power. If that character later gains another power from spending time in the woods, it’s up to the GM whether they regain their previous power or is afflicted with a new one — and the characters are left guessing!

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Pointing Pleasantly - Point Pleasant, NJ

by Doug Levandowski

Content Warnings: bullying, drowning, human experimentation, mind control, mob violence

Setting information

Author’s Note: Although Point Pleasant is a real location, I’ve taken some liberties with what’s actually there. – Doug

Point Pleasant can serve as a setting for lighthearted adventures during the summertime or more serious, existential adventures during the off-season.

Right on the Jersey Shore, a convenient train ride away from New York City, is Point Pleasant, a vacation hotspot for both city dwellers and inland New Jerseyites — even the occasional Pennsylvanian — though they usually go to Long Beach Island. During the summer, Point Pleasant is nearly constantly thrumming, and the Ferris wheel is always turning, even at night. It offers both the beach, which is the main attraction, and the bay, which is where the more rebellious kids hang out.

But after Labor Day, the off-season begins and the population drops to less than 30

percent. For the families who work in the tourism industry, the other nine months are slow. Sure, the town needs to keep going. There’s the small elementary school or the combined middle and high school. Or, there’s the grocery store and the library — but there’s not enough work for the folks in town during the off-season.

For the kids who live in the area, there isn’t much to do, either. Younger kids will often invent crazy stories about what they see in the ocean, what lives in the less developed parts of the island, or why the bay sometimes seems to be whispering. Teenagers will usually split their time between figuring out how to get out once they graduate high school and sneaking into houses to cause trouble.

Setting Touchstones

Creature From the Black Lagoon (film), Gravity Falls (TV series), The X-Files (TV series)

Alternate Town Creation Questions

Off-season

• Group: What are some notable organizations that remain in operation during the off-season?

• Individual, Shared: What rumor about the town interests you the most?

• Individual, Shared: What does your character do during the off-season?

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• Individual, Shared or Private: How does your character feel about the out-of-towners (the “Bennies”) who are here only in the summer?

• Individual, Private: How does the beach impact your life?

• Individual, Private: How do you feel about the slower pace in the off-season?

Where are you on the spectrum of being happy about a break or bored by it?

Summer

• Group: What are some notable organizations most active during the summer?

• Individual, Shared: What is the biggest difference between life in the summer and the life you lead during the other nine months of the year?

• Individual, Shared: What rumor about the town interests you the most?

• Individual, Shared: What’s your favorite activity that Point Pleasant offers during this time of year?

• Individual, Shared or Private: How do you feel about the townies who are there year round — or about the out-of-towners (the “Bennies”), if you’re a townie?

• Individual, Private: How does the ocean impact your life?

Possible Points of Interest

Lighthearted

• The Curious Shelf, the local oddity shop on the boardwalk that’s open year round and run by Mister Mystery.

• SKEE-BALL!!!! OPEN YEAR ROUND!!!!

• The forests a few miles out of town, past the rich people’s houses.

Serious

• The Bennies’ houses by the ocean, which are great places to sneak into, especially if a summer friend “loses” their key.

• The secret meeting place of the cult operating behind the scenes year round in Point Pleasant.

• The platform under the Bay Bridge (which connects the island and the mainland).

Either

• The beach (of course).

• The Woods, which are deep, dark, and mysterious (of course).

• Babbling Point, a place where many locals have insisted they’ve heard the bay whispering.

• The jetty that’s so much longer than all of the other ones. People who venture all the way out insist has a hollow rock at the end of it.

• The mysterious island that seems to have appeared off the coast. Some people claim to have swam to the island, but give conflicting answers about what’s there (because no one who has actually gone there has ever returned).

Possible NPCs

• Dr. Michelle Cartwright, a benevolent or malevolent scientist who moved to the town after she retired from her work at some shadowy government agency.

Now, she teaches at the high school, but she’s still conducting some experiments.

Perhaps they’re for the good of the town. Perhaps they’re harming the townies.

• Petra Ivanovitch, the old fisherwoman who lives by the bay. She has lived in town for as long as anyone can remember, even the adults.

• Beth Kramer, the town sheriff who is very anti-Benny — and doesn’t like any out-siders, for that matter. She lets her son Tommy, an unrepentant bully, get away with literally anything.

• Mister Mystery, the owner and operator of the Curious Shelf, the local oddity shop. His real name is Stanley Gerkin. Most townies think he’s an insane huckster, but the kids seem to like his shop.

• John Paulson, mayor of the town. An endlessly upbeat citizen, Mayor Paulson is a member of nearly all local organizations. He owns the only grocery store in town.

• Stacy Paulson, the mayor’s wife. She is even more upbeat than her husband. She’s part of every women’s group in the town — and perhaps some secret ones. But how can she be so happy all of the time?

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• Emerson Thoreau, a recluse who lives near the bay, a few miles into the forest.

Everyone calls him Emerson, but his real name is unknown. He happily welcomes visitors, so long as they don’t stay the night.

Possible Adventure Hooks

• Mister Mystery gives you a book that he says can help you find all kinds of neat stuff hidden in the woods. All he asks in exchange is that you get a few for him.

• A surprisingly large group of the Bennies suddenly decide to stay at Point Pleasant all year, but they’ve been dodgy about exactly why they’re staying.

• People swimming in the bay have been suddenly feeling drawn to stay underwater longer and longer, sometimes to the point of passing out. When they wake up, they don’t know why they did it, but they don’t want to go in the water anymore.

• Some swimmers have reported seeing a giant monster, like the Loch Ness Monster, in the ocean — but always from a distance. One teen swears that he saw it not moving one day, got close to it, and heard it clanking before it swam away...

• Dr. Cartwright has seemed erratic in class recently. She has been out late searching for an experiment gone missing — perhaps one that she doesn’t want the town to discover, perhaps one that she wants to protect the town from.

• Some of the townie teens, normally rebellious, have come back preppy and carrying on about “pointing Point Pleasant in a pleasant direction.” Perhaps your friend, sibling, or child is one of them.

Possible Threats

• A group of townies who deeply resent the Bennies. Sometimes that resentment bubbles over to the point of violence.

• A group of shadowy developers who want to buy up real estate and raze many of the locals’ houses... and the townies who are inexplicably working with them.

• A secret organization that knows the secrets of the town and is quite resistant to anyone finding out about them, or is working to summon something ancient and powerful from the ocean — or both.

Possible Powered Characters

• A scaly, scared humanoid creature that splits its time between the ocean and shores and both fears and loves humans (and perhaps toy boats).

• A large ape-like creature that small children say helps them find their way home when they get lost in the woods (and who apparently really likes PB&J).

• A missing townie, assumed drowned, who has been experimented on by the evil Dr. Cartwright, given strange powers, and returned with no memory.

Possible Monsters

• A squid-like creature that is pulling night swimmers beneath the surface, never to be seen again.

• A wolf-like creature that stalks the shores of the bay and has, so far, only been attacking small animals.

• A violent crab-like creature that the good Dr. Cartwright had been trying to cure...

until it escaped back into the bay.

ADJUSTMENTS TO RULES

Rule Addition: Holding Your Breath

At some point during their time in Point Pleasant, characters might find themselves underwater for longer than is comfortable. Though it may seem like an impossibly long time, the average person can, in a pinch, hold their breath for about two minutes without any negative effects. Beyond that, though, bad things can start happening.

Consider the following when figuring out how long a character can hold their breath.

Only apply adjustments from a cell once. For example, a teen lifeguard who is a strong swimmer would get a +20 second adjustment, not a +35 second adjustment. Finally, regardless of modifiers, the shortest a child can voluntarily hold their breath is 10

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seconds, or 20 if forced to hold their breath. The shortest that a teen or adult can voluntarily hold their breath is 20 seconds, or 40 if forced to hold their breath.

Child

Teen / Adult

Base

30 seconds