Category: Monster of the Week Roadhouse: Mysteries!

Another trick from “The Haunted Case of Eleonore Zugun”!

I wanted the mystery to feel very personal for a print-and-play and I came up with an idea: let the hunters create a history with the mystery just like with other hunters! I wrote a few small hooks in the mystery, like those:

• You were experimented on because of your strange powers. Tell us who did it and what did you do to them.

• You travelled a lot before joining the other hunters. Tell us why and what did it teach you.

• You knew a Romanian monster hunter, Adam Balan, who suddenly disappeared five years ago. Tell us what was the nature of your relation and why weren’t you looking for him.

• You were once working with an Austrian occult goods dealer, Maya Liefnicht. Tell us on what did you cooperate and if she was fair with you.

Each player should choose one hook for his/her hunter. Some of the hooks are directly connected to the mystery (Adam, Maya), others connect the hunter with main themes of the mystery and ensure that (s)he has some opinions on them (travels, experiments). That way the story feels very personal for the team and enriches the hunters by adding new interesting details to their past.

Hi, MotW fans! Michael linked to my mystery “The Haunted Case of Eleonore Zugun” two days ago, now I’d like to tell you a little more about its origins and share some parts of it with you 🙂

I’m a culture researcher and a traveller, I love to dig for strange things that happened in our world. I also love writing RPG materials, I’ve worked as a freelance game designer for a few years.

When I discovered MotW I felt that it was an ideal system for combining my passions. I started searching for pieces of history or culture that would be bases for a MotW mysteries. I have a pile of them in my notes. I mostly look for stories from non-English speaking countries because, being Polish, I feel a little tired with RPGs that happen in the US and I want to create more diversity.

Stories I’ve found happen in various countries and I want to turn them into functional print-and-play mysteries to be used by any group. So for each of them I have some tools for dragging hunters from anywhere around the world. They might be useful for you even if you’re not interested in the mystery itself so I’ve decided to share them here 🙂

So, for example, in “The Haunted Case” the hunters can apply for a research grant that provides free international travel needed to investigate the mystery. However, there seems to be a deeper conspiracy about the case so they might not want to declare their interest in it openly. To make both options interesting I’ve made two custom moves. They both worked great at my table:

A SERIOUS RESEARCHER

When you write your references for the grant program roll +Sharp. On 10+ your references are excellent and you are accepted immediately into the second step of the program. On 7-9 you are accepted but choose one:

• The board evaluating the references notices that you are totally sure that supernatural events are real

• The acceptance of your references is voted by a slim majority and some board members disrespect you

• To show your competences you describe something that should be kept out of public eye.

On a miss, choose – either all of the above happens or your references are rejected.

TRAVEL EXPENSES

If you don’t get into the second step of the grant program, every time you need to cover a major travel expense – like buying an international plane ticket – do one of the following:

• Sell a mundane but expensive item from your gear (one hunter’s gear per travel)

• Sell an occult item to someone interested in such goods (you surely know such people)

• Give the Keeper a very good explanation for why do you have an extra amount of money