Hi, Robbie!

Check out Michael "Stargazer" Wolf''s The Horror of Leatherbury House (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_i … id=82510).

As I recall, there are some couple of horror articles in Fudge Factor.

Happy gaming!

Thanks for that, fudgebob. I'll take a look.

The beauty of The Unexplained" is that it takes place in the "real" world in the current day. Adventure seeds are as easy as 30 minutes spent using Google and Wikipedia. For example, a Google search on Cryptozoology turned up http://www.cryptozoology.com/. Clicking on the cryptids link showed pictures of various creatures. clicking on "Champ" got me to http://www.cryptozoology.com/cryptids/champ.php. A check of Wikipedia on Champ got me even more background information, including a small map of Lake Champlain (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champ_%28cryptozoology%29). Google Maps can give me everything from street maps of cities and towns and forests around the lake to street level picture of local buildings (such as the University of Vermont where PCs may go in search of more information). Since it is winter (and a very snowy one!) in New England, I did a Google search on "ice fishing on lake champlain" and found some sites with photos of the lake with people ice fishing. Now I create a few NPCs - 3-4 victims who disappeared while ice fishing, a not-so-credible witness or two (perhaps drunk college students), a resource or two (local police, university paleontology professor), identify some selected locations on the Google maps, and we have an adventure.

Of course I realize my Champ example was not a haunted house, but I went to school at the University of Vermont, so when I saw Champ, I got side tracked. Start your search on "haunted houses of (and fill in your preferred area)"

So your suggestion, Paul, is that I shouldn't waste my time going to a roleplaying site looking for scenario ideas (where someone else has come up with plot hooks, carefully crafted characters, locations, twists and turns etc.), as that would be a waste of everyone else'svaluable time? Instead I should use Google and other resources to make my own scenario (coming up with my own plot hooks, carefully crafted characters, locations, twists and turns)?

Cool ... Thanks, Paul.  In future I'll make my enquiries elsewhere.   (I am teasing.)

Robbie wrote:

So your suggestion, Paul, is that I shouldn't waste my time going to a roleplaying site looking for scenario ideas (where someone else has come up with plot hooks, carefully crafted characters, locations, twists and turns etc.), as that would be a waste of everyone else'svaluable time? Instead I should use Google and other resources to make my own scenario (coming up with my own plot hooks, carefully crafted characters, locations, twists and turns)?

Cool ... Thanks, Paul.  In future I'll make my enquiries elsewhere.   (I am teasing.)

Sadly, I am simply dating myself and illustrating my advanced age. When i started role playing, frankly, much of the modules available were of poor quality. Little more than random maps with random obstacles.  So I tended to create all my own adventure and campaign settings (I had more time and energy back then). As I find the old saying "truth is stranger than fiction" to be often true, I would base my creations on real world myths and legends.  Use actual locations, maps, etc., and alter them to suit the setting. Fortunately, in those days I had good access to libraries. Later as I had money, Ann and I built up quite a collection (which we still have) of reference books (from the Time-Life series on ancient civilizations to text books on Castle engineering - a few thousand in all). Having worked with computers since the 70's, I am still able to marvel at how easy the Internet makes obtaining information about almost any topic, including scenario ideas for adventures. I wanted to post the suggestion for others reading this topic.

That said, you are of course correct that it is still far faster to use a well written adventure already available than to create your own.

I do hear where you are coming from, Paul. We play online (as I've mentioned previously) and we use a fair bit of graphical material such as maps, photos of real locations etc.

In one of my recent Unexplained stories I did precisely as you suggest: I used a Microsoft Bing map of an area in glorious satellite view (a few thousand pixels square) which we moved representations of our game characters around. I also found a map of the local area (a hand drawing) as a handout, real photographs of principle locations, and I hunted down suitable images of all the protagonists, presenting each in the style of Polaroids with the NPCs name written on the bottom of each. The Internet is an absolute gold mine, a rich resource for material, and of course, ideas, no argument.

The scenario mentioned above was based on the Bigfoot set up that Brad includes with The Unexplained corebook. I delivered a story 'inspired' by that scenario, but following somewhat tangential lines.

I once had more time and energy to come up with new and refreshing stories off my own bat. These days, I really appreciate a ... kick start in the right direction and then I'm good to go.

My latest game, a one-off story, finished last night. It was based on a half-dozen-page supplement originally supplied as part of an old GM's screen. I fleshed it out, improved the maps (they were rather low res), added NPC characters, found photographs of people and places, created sound effects etc. Thus a scenario intended for an evening's play, an anticipated duration stated in the scenario itself, took us five game sessions (roughly 18 hours) to conclude. And I think folks were pleased with it.

But without that kick start of the original scenario core concept, I'm not sure if it would have gone as well.

I've found this pdf (you can get it as a book for a little more) titled "Eureka, 501 Adventure Plot Lines for GM's" to be an absolute gold mine. Similar to what Paul said, you have to flesh them out further but this has everything from high fantasy to punk AND it has ways to convert the ideas ( like a science fiction plot to a high fantasy plot). My gaming group never has to go without a great story cause it's really easy to take something from this and it might go for a session or pan out to five. It doesn't cover the maps and creatures (it does have suggestions though) that you were saying you wanted but it'll start your brain churning for more ideas. Hope this helps.

One can also abuse TV tropes for fun and profit.