My second entry for the game jam I mentioned last week. Content warning for harm to children, again (don't worry about this become a pattern. It's FINE). This is a mess in dire need of editing because I was rushing to meet the deadline. For now I'm posting it as is, warts and all, but eventually I plan to revise it and maybe even run it (crazy, I know).
I WAS A TEENAGE WEREFROG
Introduction
This is an investigative scenario with the premise that a UA lycanthrope, played straight, is weird enough to be the entire crux of a mystery. Set it anywhere in suburban America.
Objectives
Here are several possible setups for the scenario, plus associated objectives.
A Sleeper cell from out of town: Make sure “The Kevin Situation” doesn’t wake the tiger. Starts at 20% due to being grounded in the unnatural from the outset.
Local rubberneckers about to have their trigger event: Find out the truth behind Kevin Liao’s disappearance. Starts at 10% due to the reduced firehose of new faces and names to keep track of.
Private investigators hired by Kevin’s father because he’s noticed his son has abruptly stopped spending his money: Find Kevin Liao and make sure he’s safe. Starts at 0%.
Note the different implications about possible resolutions.
Timeline of Events
13 days ago: Kevin meets Patricia Albrici at a Humphrey Bogart marathon at local indie theater UnReel. She uses him to charge but he realizes she’s magick and insists she teach him.
10 days ago: Patricia gets sick of Kevin following her around and lures him into conducting a ritual that gets him possessed by a lycanthropic demon.
9 days ago: Kevin transforms for the first time. He spends 9 hours as a bullfrog in the O’Neils’ house over the weekend without attracting special attention, then reverts.
7 days ago: The demon takes over Kevin’s body for about two hours before school. It uses this time to make meticulous notes in Portuguese on all of the children in his neighborhood and plans to abduct and murder them. After school, Kevin takes the time to translate a couple sentences of this weird stuff he doesn’t remember writing, freaks out, and returns to UnReel to try and get answers. He holes up in a disused projection room.
6 days ago: Patricia manages to duck Kevin’s notice at UnReel thanks to a deployment of random magick (“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Chewie…”). She begins asking checkers if Kevin has done anything bad that could be traced back to her and buys a “sexy cop” Halloween costume.
5 days ago: Having learned that Kevin’s been absent from school for several days, Patricia dons her “Officer Albrici” persona using the Stock Wardrobe spell and does damage control at Kevin’s school while she tries to find out more.
3 days ago: The demon regains control of Kevin, sneaks out of UnReel in the dead of night, sneaks up to a house to snatch a toddler, then gets displaced by the bullfrog’s spirit, which idly stares into the window for four hours. Kevin reasserts himself just before daybreak and flees, though several neighbors saw him in bullfrog form.
Yesterday: The demon wins out again. It uses Kevin to snatch a different child, Kaighley Vass, and then butcher her with a garden trowel. Kevin comes back to himself in the midst of scattering the pieces at a trash dump. He runs off into the woods in the midst of a total mental breakdown.
GMCs
Ruoxi “Kevin” Liao: A Chinese foreign exchange student-cum-were-bullfrog. He attends Angus Academy on the dime of his father, the CEO of a major rail company. Even before his lycanthropy, he was a bit of a wild child. He deliberately flunks math and science just to buck stereotypes, and has adopted a slightly ridiculous “All-American” persona to try and fit in; he feigns passion for baseball, Westerns, and the Rolling Stones.
His dream is to become a bigshot Hollywood director; he really loves Tarantino. Most likely, he’s somewhere on the Autism spectrum and he self-medicates with weed in the school parking lot. Lots of people know about him, but nobody knows him well.
For a week and a half, he’s had to share his body with a sadistic and murderous demon and the mellow spirit of a bullfrog.
“Detective” Patricia Albrici: A cinemancer (Book 1: Play, p. 148) with a penchant for gritty crime flicks and a complicated relationship with the prevalence of misogynist themes often found therein. She knows there’s a demon in Kevin, but not that it’s lycanthropic.
Alongside Terry Kidd and Patrick O’Neil, she’s inserted herself into the hush-hush management of Kevin’s disappearance as “Detective Albrici,” and won their trust and silence. She takes her cue for this performance from Fargo (the movie, not the show, of course). She’s starting to freak out about the lack of news regarding Kevin’s whereabouts that her occult underground contacts have brought her. When she finds out about the dead little girl, she’ll go apeshit.
Patrick, Lena, and Conrad O’Brien: Kevin’s host family. They never saw much of him, which Lena finds sad and Conrad is amused by. Patrick, a workaholic corporate lawyer, doesn’t even know that Kevin is fluent in English. Lena volunteered to host Kevin because she hoped he’d be a well-behaved geek who might bring Conrad in line. For his part, Conrad is more or less a pampered neo-nazi with aspirations in what is to him a political environment full of promise.
With Kevin gone a week, Patrick has begrudgingly starting pulling strings to keep things quiet; he wants to avoid Kevin’s father finding out what’s going on at all costs.
Terrence Kidd: The principal of Kevin’s school. Like Patrick, he was late to hear about “The Kevin Situation,” but is going out of his way to keep it under wraps. A surprisingly spry Vietnam vet, he wishes he got to run the school like a boot camp and grouses often about participation trophies and the like.
Stepan Kovac: The media studies teacher. As a Slovakian immigrant, he’s sympathetic to Kevin’s struggles fitting in. He recently agreed to supervise Kevin on an independent study to shoot a feature film, with the hopes he can elevate the boy’s taste above derivative film bro crap. Now that Kevin is missing, he’s sweating bullets, fearing how their relatively close relationship might reflect on him. He’s also the one person really invested in making sure Kevin is safe and accounted for. So far he’s been trying to snoop around on his own, but he’s reached the conclusion he’ll probably have to come clean to “Detective” Albrici at some point.
Kai McDowell, Dong “George” Feng, Nicole Dittmar: Kevin’s hangers-on, or what pass for his friends. Respectively, a nihilistic nonbinary senior who’s checked out of their life until college; a homesick fellow Chinese exchange student whose rebellious streak has just about petered out; and a freshman who’s crushing on Kevin, albeit in a creepy, orientalist way. Since he stopped coming to school, they’ve enjoyed debating what exactly was wrong with him, and where he might have gone.
Key Locations
Angus Academy: The private school Kevin attends. An odd amalgamation; teaching styles range from old-fashioned and conservative to loosey-goosey, post-Montessori weirdness. Its students are roughly 80% filthy rich American kids, 10% filthy rich foreign exchange students (like Kevin) and 10% the offspring of teachers and staff (who get free tuition as a benefit).
Sentry Street: The affluent cul-de-sac where Kevin lives with his host family, the O’Neils. Also the home of the family that bullrog-Kevin stared at three days ago and the Vasses, whose daughter is missing, because demon-Kevin killed her.
UnReel: The indie movie theater where Kevin met Patricia Albrici, and where he’s spent a lot of the last week and a half. It used to be a big attraction listed in guidebooks, but now half the rooms are shut down and its only staff is its geriatric owner and a couple of part-time college students.
The Woods: Kevin’s current location. Really, it would be more accurate to call it “The Park,” because it’s well-maintained and nearby homeowners like to call the cops on people who walk their dogs off-leash. Needless to say, Kevin will have to move on soon.
Complications
Sprinkle some or all of the following in as pacing and bungled investigation demand (other than Transformation, which has to happen):
Ribbit: Every time Kevin tranforms into a frog or gets possessed by the killer demon inside him, the surrounding area is beset by unnatural phenomena: the buzzing of nonexistent flies fills the air and patches of the ground or floor turn into swamp muck and cattails (permanently). If the demon takes over or Kevin is reverting to himself, a physical quirk lingers for 1d10 minutes, such as a long, prehensile tongue or webbed digits. If he’s turning into a bullfrog, it’s the inverse, such as 1d10 minutes of human eyes or a bowlcut on his slimy little head.
These things could happen while the PCs are in Kevin’s presence, or have been witnessed by a GMC. Maybe the GMC functions as a clue dispenser, or maybe they’re losing their shit following a failed Unnatural check, and now they pose a danger to the PCs.
Your Worst Nightmare: If the PCs threaten Patricia (including outing her authority as a magickal farce), she can go all Rambo on them – see the Cinemancy formula spells as a starting point.
False Flag: If the PCs go to the police at any point, it will sooner or later come to light that Patricia is not who she claims she is. This will likely kick off Your Worst Nightmare, and could easily lead to the cops wasting a lot of the PCs’ time and generally obstructing their efforts, if not just arresting them. This is also bad news for most of the GMCs listed above. Depending on how much information has ben gleaned, and how much is then shared with the cops, a manhunt for Kevin is not out of the question.
Transformation: Kevin’s body is again taken over by the bullfrog for 1d10 hours. Ideally, deploy this one in the midst of a conversation with someone who’s seen Kevin recently, and/or in a context that would make his… being a bullfrog, and always having been one a mindfuck. Especially if the PCs are local ponies, this is one of the GM’s best opportunities for a big Unnatural check. Also feel free to fudge the exact point he turns back for similar dramatic effect.
The Bullfrog Strikes Again: The demon gains control of Kevin’s body for another 1d10 hours and kills another child in horrific fashion, with even less effort toward covering its tracks as it continues to indulge its Urge.
Too Many Cooks: A group pursuing one of the objectives your players didn’t pick from the three above gets in their way or misconstrues their involvement for complicity in something really bad.
Inverting the Objective System
Try this as an experiment for using the Objective system for a one-shot: the players know what their objective is from the outset, but aren’t given any milestones. Once you’re almost out of time and ready for a climactic last scene and/or denouement, consult the list of milestones below. Let the players roll the points for each one they completed, plus any other noteworthy actions they took that aren’t listed that you feel should still count.
Then, (in the likely event they are below 100%) have them roll it as a kind of oracle (in the solo RPG sense). Suggestions for a final scene are listed under the different Endings sections, based on the level of success.
The milestones can also help you as GM figure out where to steer the PCs, since most clues are not tied to specific GMCs.
Petty milestones
- Interrogate Kevin’s host family, teachers, or classmates
- Interrogate
- Use minor charge(s) to try and locate Kevin
- Sic the police on one or more involved parties
- Provide proof of Kevin’s location and/or status to a relevant authority
- Prove to a relevant authority that Kevin has not been acting entirely of his own volition
Weighty milestones
- Interrogate Patricia Albrici about
- Use gutter magick or significant charge(s) to try and locate Kevin
- Kidnap, seriously injure, or traumatize one or more involved parties
- Take action to directly ensure Kevin is permanently prevented from harming himself or others
- Exoricse the lycanthropic demon (through some means outside the scope written here)
Endings: Sleepers
00: Kevin transforms somewhere public and wakes the tiger. The PCs get caught in the growing rampage of torches and pitchforks (i.e. gasoline cans and shotguns).
Matched Failure: Kevin’s transforms in front of ponies and wakes the tiger. The riot is small and should be easily contained in the short term, but deciding what to do with the witnesses may be difficult…
Failure: There’s no riot, but enough different people have seen enough of the unnatural around town that the PCs will have weeks of cleanup ahead of them, best case scenario.
Success: The PCs’ only option to keep the tiger asleep are to kill Kevin or some innocent bystander who happened to have seen too much.
Matched Success: The shocking news about Kevin’s violence gets out, but the PCs successfully suppress any unnatural tinges to the story.
01: The PCs get a golden opportunity – through a stroke of luck or possibly occult means – to keep this entire situation under wraps, if they so choose.
Endings: Locals
00: The PCs end up going to prison, either framed for crimes Kevin committed, or else for any illegal actions they took in pursuit of the truth. They don’t get any clear answers as to what Kevin’s ultimate fate was.
Matched Failure: The whole thing ends up a wash. Though the PCs can get off scot free if they lay low for a while, they never find out what became of Kevin, nor can they sift through the various rumors that pile up for any juicy occult truths.
Failure: The PCs don’t get a neat answer as to Kevin’s role in everything, but they do get some undeniable proof of the occult, either from unnatural phenomena related to his transformations or interactions with Patricia.
Success: The PCs gain a complete understanding of Kevin’s sordid last two weeks, but are oblivious to any wider occult implications, and likely have a very inaccurate understanding of how lycanthropy works.
Matched Success: The PCs figure out pretty much the whole of the big picture of the scenario. But if they want to get into the occult underground, they’ll have to find their own ins.
01: The PCs figure out the whole of the big picture of the scenario, and Patricia Albrici or one of her local occult underground contacts ends up teaching them a ritual, cinemancy, or some other real magickal knowledge as thanks, due to blackmail, or for some other compelling and relevant reason.
Endings: PIs
00: Kevin is killed by raiding policemen. The chief (if not someone higher up the totem pole) now has a lot of pointed questions for the PCs about their involvement.
Matched Failure: An occult bloodbath ensues when cops come for Kevin. When the PCs get there, they have to deal with a literal bullfrog handful of dead, metaphorical pigs.
Failure: Kevin is arrested for killing Kaighley Vass. Technically, prison is a safe place, but the PCs are probably not getting paid much, nor having many burning questions answered.
Success: The PCs find Kevin before the cops or anyone dangerous do. He’s freaked out, missing memories most of the last two weeks, and worried about what he may have done He’s also still a lycanthrope, not that he knows it.
Matched Success: The PCs find Kevin having been purged of lycanthropy. He’s freaked out and has little memory of the last couple weeks, and a ton of scary questions. The PCs can send him back to the O’Neils and get paid, but there will be some uncertainty, and maybe some guilt, at the loose ends.
01: The PCs find Kevin in the hands of some sympathetic occultists who’ve just purged him of his multiple undead visitors. He remembers blessedly little and the PCs are happily unaware his body committed at least one child murder when they collect their hefty paychecks.
Stat block: Ruoxi "Kevin" Liao
Obsession: Becoming someone people will respect.
Rage stimulus: People's rigid ideas of what I should and shouldn't do.
Fear stimulus: Being treated like a weirdo for reasons I can't control (Isolation).
Noble stimulus: Finding my place in the world.
Budding film bro 40%: Subs for Knowledge, Reads Obsession, Protects Self
Rich kid 35%: Subs for Status, Protects Helplessness, Protects Isolation
Aggressively American 25%: Subs for Connect, Subs for Lie, Subs for Secrecy
Violence: H 1 / F 1
Unnatural: H 2 / F 1
Helplessness: H 2 / F 2
Isolation: H 4 / F 1
Self: H 2 / F 1
Kevin the Demon
Urge: Stalk and Kill Children 70%
Elementary School Teacher 25%: Subs for Connect, Subs for Lie, Protects Helplessness
Psychedelics Abuser 35%: Subs for Notice, Protects Unnatural, Coerces Unnatural
Kevin the Bullfrog
Bullfrog Soul 15% (functions like a demon's urge (see Book 2: Run, p. 110)
Bullfrog Bod 10%: Subs for Fitness, Subs for Pursuit, Subs for Struggle
Stat block: "Detective" Patricia Albrici
Obsession: The seedy underbelly of society, as captured in cynical films.
Rage stimulus: Optimists and kids, and especially optimistic kids.
Fear stimulus: Being trusted (Self).
Noble stimulus: It's a dog eat dog world.
Cinemancer 65%: Casts Rituals, Casts Gutter Magick (adept path)
Armchair Criminologist 30%: Subs for Pursuit, Subs for Secrecy, Subs for Knowledge
Mean-Spirited 25%: Subs for Struggle, Subs for Lie, Protects Isolation
Violence: H 1 / F 0
Unnatural: H 5 / F 1
Helplessness: H 3 / F 1
Isolation: H 5 / F 0
Self: H 5 / F 2
