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This episode, Keepers Bridgett & Evan discuss ways to spice up your scenarios with something new!

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Main Topic

New Things You Can Do in a Scenario:

Scope and Stakes:
1. If you usually play world-spanning campaigns where the fate of the Earth is at stake, try limiting yourself to one city, one neighborhood, or even one building, like the airship or submarine scenarios.
2. Try playing for small, personal stakes. One person, maybe not even life or death, maybe just their ability to continue living the life they thought they knew.
Threat/Antagonists
1. What to do instead of cults? Instead of a big monster?
2. Think antagonist rather than villain
3. Or little monsters that do horrible things when they gang up on you (gnomes, puppets, dolls, cloud of vampiric gnats, etc)
4. Try a scenario where the threat is unconventional – I’ve done a few where the threat is basically just a spell, that exists, but it draws people in and ruins them
Pacing
1. If you usually do long, leisurely multi-session scenarios, try a tight 1 or 2 hour event that starts fast and doesn’t let up. You can check out No Time to Scream as a place to start.
Structure and Clue Trail
1. Shoutout to Heinrich – start the scenario *after* the bad thing has already happened
2. Emphasize or de-emphasize the clue trail
3. In a short scenario, try fewer “Acts”
4. Try improv – Players can do this too, leave your background blank and fill it in as you go, or roll randomly and make it fit the emerging story
Tone
1. Pulse-pounding vs. cerebral, quiet and sad, loud and shooty, comic, uncomfortable
2. Singing! An opera/sung-through-musical
Setting:
1. Try a new time in a familiar place, or a new place in a familiar time
2. Give your brain lots of new things to explore
3. Try Pulp in any setting
For Players
1. Play a totally different kind of investigator: brainy vs. brawny, different social background, different approach to solving problems
2. See what happens if you don’t optimize for the traditional Cthulhu skills; Keepers, are you willing to reward a player who puts points in Climb, Swim, Throw, and Track?