[Adventure Seed] The Horror of 1870

[generalrose]

First and foremost, this is my first Adventure Seed (at least I'm reasonably sure it is) and I'd really like some feedback on it. What needs work and what doesn't, etc. 

As for this seed, it's a 2-page variation on the Legend of Sleepy Hollow with Stats for Katarina Van Tassell and some ideas to use existing villains. Updates may include actual Headless Horsemen stats, but don't hold me to that.   

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I hope this helps someone out in a horror themed session.

www.mediafire.com/view/ysksa4ph632508s/THE_HORROR_OF_1870.pdf

[Catsmate]

I like it.
The relocation to 1870 allows you tie it into a more modern USA (telegraphy, railways et cetera) rather than the original late eighteenth century setting. It also should give it a different feel than the film adaption of the story. Though you could include a NYC investigator, perhaps he's delayed and the PCs mistaken for him and his assistants?

• A Who trope so used it'a almost hackneyed.
  

As for what's going on, well as you suggest there are lots of possibilities. In a GURPS Traveller game we had the village plagued by a piece of Ancient technology, complete with psionically reactive nano-morphic materials. You suggest a Cyberman, have you read Illegal Alien? It had a damaged Cyberman stalking people through the London Blitz for parts. Or maybe a Silurian or two, their minds damaged by the long hibernation.

A few points/suggestions.

• The 1870s were one of the highpoints of the spiritualism craze, seances were quite popular so why not stage one? Depending on how you want to organise things it might tap into the Cyberman group mind (assuming there's an actual Psychic around), link to the psionic computer in the crashed spaceship or give the big bad's minions an opportunity to attack.
• Slip in a few references to current events and news; the Franco-Prussian War started on 19 July, Charles Dickens died on 9 June and Robert Lee died on 12 October. Earlier in the year (19 January) the new German Empire was formed and the SS City of Boston mysteriously disappeared in the Atlantic.
  
• Talking of Dickens, perhaps a tie-in to his encounter with the Doctor, the Gelth and the events of The Unquiet Dead. Did Gwyneth emigrate to the USA and have children? Did they retain her psychic sensitivity?
• Then there's the controversy over allowing African-Americans (and in Utah African-American women! ) to vote. An excellent bit of background.
  
• Or the beginning of the Bone Wars between Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. It got nasty in 1870 when Marsh publicly pointed out an error Cope made in reconstructing a fossilised marine reptile (putting the head on the tip of the tail). Certainly a time traveller familiar with their antics would notice the incident in print. Perhaps in the newly started magazine Nature?
  
• If the PCs are in New York City don't forget the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge has just started. Perhaps a copy of The Gentleman’s Directory turns up as a clue. A trawl through the city's brothels may be needed...
• One interesting other odd event that could be included, relevant or red herring, is the strikingly brilliant aurora borealis that was visible in the state on 14 October 1870. Perhaps this was triggered by the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and a landing/passing/crashing spaceship? There were a number of meteors in the period too. If you use handouts then these extracts from the New York Times 15OCT1870 and 27OCT1870 might be useful.
  

Also, a very nice job of laying out the PDF.

[generalrose]

Oct 14, 2015 10:14:59 GMT Catsmate said:

I like it.
The relocation to 1870 allows you tie it into a more modern USA (telegraphy, railways et cetera) rather than the original late eighteenth century setting. It also should give it a different feel than the film adaption of the story. Though you could include a NYC investigator, perhaps he's delayed and the PCs mistaken for him and his assistants?

• A Who trope so used it'a almost hackneyed.
  

As for what's going on, well as you suggest there are lots of possibilities. In a GURPS Traveller game we had the village plagued by a piece of Ancient technology, complete with psionically reactive nano-morphic materials. You suggest a Cyberman, have you read Illegal Alien? It had a damaged Cyberman stalking people through the London Blitz for parts. Or maybe a Silurian or two, their minds damaged by the long hibernation.

A few points/suggestions.

• The 1870s were one of the highpoints of the spiritualism craze, seances were quite popular so why not stage one? Depending on how you want to organise things it might tap into the Cyberman group mind (assuming there's an actual Psychic around), link to the psionic computer in the crashed spaceship or give the big bad's minions an opportunity to attack.
• Slip in a few references to current events and news; the Franco-Prussian War started on 19 July, Charles Dickens died on 9 June and Robert Lee died on 12 October. Earlier in the year (19 January) the new German Empire was formed and the SS City of Boston mysteriously disappeared in the Atlantic.
  
• Talking of Dickens, perhaps a tie-in to his encounter with the Doctor, the Gelth and the events of The Unquiet Dead. Did Gwyneth emigrate to the USA and have children? Did they retain her psychic sensitivity?
• Then there's the controversy over allowing African-Americans (and in Utah African-American women! ) to vote. An excellent bit of background.
  
• Or the beginning of the Bone Wars between Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. It got nasty in 1870 when Marsh publicly pointed out an error Cope made in reconstructing a fossilised marine reptile (putting the head on the tip of the tail). Certainly a time traveller familiar with their antics would notice the incident in print. Perhaps in the newly started magazine Nature?
  
• If the PCs are in New York City don't forget the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge has just started. Perhaps a copy of The Gentleman’s Directory turns up as a clue. A trawl through the city's brothels may be needed...
• One interesting other odd event that could be included, relevant or red herring, is the strikingly brilliant aurora borealis that was visible in the state on 14 October 1870. Perhaps this was triggered by the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and a landing/passing/crashing spaceship? There were a number of meteors in the period too. If you use handouts then these extracts from the New York Times 15OCT1870 and 27OCT1870 might be useful.
  

Also, a very nice job of laying out the PDF.

Thanks for the critique! 1870 was actually a typo in the title of the document that made it's way to the file name and somehow got burned into my brain. Still, as you point out, modernizing the setting by about a century really does differentiate it quite a bit from the original story and gives it a bit more of a life of its own.

• I'll definitely have to do some reading up on the current events of 1870. I'll be sure to put in a few to spice up the description. The SS City of Boston could be implied to be linked to the mystery happening in Sleepy Hollow/Tarry Town.
• I'll definitely add Gwyneth as an optional NPC depending on if the GM wants to use her.
• Forget the rest of the bullet points. All of your ideas are getting included in someway for extra flavor.

Thank you again Catsmate

 

[Catsmate]

I'm glad I could help. The SS City of Boston is an interesting case. It departed from Halifax in Canada bound for Liverpool on 28 January 1870 but never arrived, nor has any sign of the ship or the 191 people aboard ever been found. While the most probable explanation is that the ship either collided with an iceberg or foundered in the violent gales and
snowstorm that occurred around the 30th of January there is the fascinating connection to Alexander Keith (aka William Thompson) who attempted to sink the Mosel in 1875 as part of an insurance fraud. He used a a long delay dynamite bomb fitted into a barrel in that case but it exploded while the ship was in harbour at Bremerhaven.

Of course there other possibilities for a mysteriously disappearing ship; Sea Devil attack, dimensional rift, mysterious alien artefact aboard or human Mad Science!