We started the first session with a short prologue for each character. The aim was to set the mood and give some insight into their backgrounds.
The Wetlands
E.B. Root's prologue starts with him sitting on the back of a lorry with some kids on his way to New Orleans. The kids are fascinated with the alligator skins he has with him (that he intends to sell in NO). The kids ask pester him to tell them how he killed the gators and he finally gives in. E.B. tells them how he was in the marshlands hunting for the big gator he knew was hiding in the murky waters deep in the swamp. This gator hid deep in the swamp, so deep actually, that sometimes one could run into these ancient, black stones jutting menacingly from the waters. Some were standing on tiny isles or skerries. Plenty of old wives' tales and talk about strange creatures regarding those stones.
The gears are in motion, the date is set, and we are getting ready for our first gaming session. There are several things I have been mulling over in my head. I feel pretty confident I am over the initial jitters I had about running a game improvised to this extent. This, I believe, is mostly because I decided to go with two story-lines the present day of the 1930s and the history of the mask in the flashbacks. The present day narrative is something more familiar I can lean on as it will be more traditionally structured and less improvised. Having said that, I will try to use parts of it to get player input to encourage and instruct them before we get to the first flashback.
Maybe I shouldn't call them heroes, this is Cthulhu gaming after all, and they are more than likely to become screaming lunatics, before dying in a suitably horrible fashion. So, let's call them investigators, regardless if they investigate these matters voluntarily or not. We will have three players, as well as a few others possibly making guest appearances during the flashbacks. The guests will create characters especially for a given flashback and used to highlight and bring distinct flavor of the period into the game as well as hopefully memorable appearances. And they are expendable when necessary (in cooperation with the player of course).
There are several reasons why I ended up with New Orleans as the location for the 1930s part of this adventure. I have always been fascinated with the Crescent City and it is actually my intention to visit NOLA later this year. Therefore, I already have several guide books in my bookshelf ready to serve as inspiration and reference. Also, I own Chaosium's Secrets of New Orleans, which, although maybe a bit thin on the inspiration side, gives very good insight on what the city was like at the time. So, with these books at hand I have a good starting point.
I need a way to bring the characters into the plot and in a good, old-fashioned Call of Cthulhu tradion I will use an NPC who is an old acquaintance of the PCs. This Mister X will serve as a starting point for the adventure, and as the investigators sort through clues and uncover the true nature of his esoteric reasearch they will be lead to the actual gist of the adventure - the Unnamed Mask.
However, to make this Mister X more mysterious and multifaceted each PC knows him from different circumstances and is familiar to a different aspect of him. The goal here is to give the players an image of a man who has many different sides to him and has only revealed one aspect of him to any given person. This will give him an aura of mystery and emphasize the fact that he is a man of many secrets.
Concerning Structure
My first thought was that this would be an adventure set in one room where the investigators sort through clues and the history of the mask is revealed through 3 or 4 flashbacks before the bad guys barge through the door. The “present day” part would form a frame narrative around the flashbacks take place in times and locations influenced by player input and as there will be several of these flashbacks it would be too much of a hassle to create characters for all of them. Therefore, my reasoning is that the players will create investigators for the 1930s US and these PCs will then serve as sort of avatars during a flashback, their skills adjusted to suit the period (or actual avatars if this turns out to be some kind of Yithian plot). For example, a Detective could be a sheriff or a Military could be a gladiator or a samurai warrior etc.
The gist of this Trail of Cthulhu adventure is a strange, unnamed mask and its esoteric history. As the investigators unravel its mysteries they inexorably doom themselves to a descent into madness and death as the mask’s Mythos truths are revealed to them. Hence, the actual physical prop will be a key component of the adventure and will be used like the documents in The Armitage Files to fuel player imagination and encourage them to make choices and give narrative input that will then be used by yours truly to improvise a mystery for them to solve.