I took this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV0I-iA5lJU

and used it as the core of a one-off* horror game I ran the other night.  Most of the tabletop group was away, so with three players I cooked up something on the fly.

Firstly, for characters everyone took the basic D&D stats (Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha) and divided 90 points over them.  (Wis+Int)/2 = SAN

Skills were based on d20 roll < (stat), depending on action.  Each player chose a specialization - science, medical or military, and could subtract 3 from whatever roll they were making if it was in that field, or in the case of Military add it to their d20 to-hit roll.  I just used OD&D for combat, and treated everyone as a 3rd level fighter.

I lifted the Morrow Project scenario: the players were put in cryogenic hibernation in a "bolt hole" with weapons, equipment and a vehicle (Cadillac/Gage V150 as in Morrow Project).  My game's timeline was 1981 - onward.

I narrated how they went through their training and were put under, and then they woke up.  Their outpost's computer was offline, but power (provided by a radio-thermal generator type reactor, buried deep beneath their outpost) was still on.  They got the PC working and discovered that three "Events" were logged before the computer went offline (they did some repair work on the computer and found out it was merely a hard drive cable knocked loose).  Once they determined that there was no radiological or biological threat outside, they began to explore.  They discovered that even at 9AM there was barely enough light to see by, like a very dim pre-dawn.  Driving down the highway to the town nearest their redoubt, they passed a country home, everything dilapidated and in disrepair.  They pulled over and explored, and found out that power was still on.  Someone switched on the TV and the video I linked to was playing on a loop (I cut it off before the "If this accidentally gets played, say it was a hoax" part and said it just loops).  They found the family in a bedroom; mom and two teenage boys under a sheet, dead from self-inflicted gunshots, with GOD FORGIVE US written on the wall.  There was another skeleton in the yard that they'd accidentally run over but assumed it was the patriarch, also dead from a gunshot wound (found: one rusty .38 revolver, 2 bullets remaining in the cylinder...)

I ran some more, things got "worse" when they found a local church full of bodies and an empty Cyanide bottle...

I can write up more if anyone cares?

Yes is the answer, obviously!
😊

Quote from: Bobloblah;905690Yes is the answer, obviously!
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Seconded. Great find on the video.

To the tune of some looped music (Godspeed, You! Black Emperor's "Dead Flag Blues" and "In The House, In A Heartbeat" by John Murphy from 28 Days Later were in the mix), the party drove through desolate country roads looking for any sign of life.

They found a town that was in roughly the same shape as the country house; rows of houses and a town square, all mirrored the tableau at the farmhouse and church.  During the drive time, they would occasionally hear a distant, steady rumble that would end as quickly as it began, with no resonating echo.  It seemed to be everywhere at once and nowhere, and emanate from no one place.  The radio was mostly static, although twice they heard something that sounded like voices (bad dice rolls prevented them picking out anything for the brief moment they heard it and they didn't stay in place to try and tune it in better) and later, on the radio band they caught a female voice whispering the Lord's Prayer.  When they responded the voice said "Shut up it will hear you" and then the transmission stopped.

They picked over the remains of the townfolk, looking for some kind of sign of what drove them all to commit suicide beyond just the Contingency broadcast.  While they were in the town courthouse, a player noticed that it seemed to be getting brighter outside, like actual unfiltered sunlight.

Then went out, and saw a rift in the low cloud cover.  Through it they saw a hellish red nebula with stars shining faintly behind it.  Then fading in to view, a field of an untold number of eyes, staring down at them through the rift.

Two of the characters went insane immediately; one leapt into the V150 and cowered in the crew area, the other fled on foot.  The third player-character got into the 150 to chase the fleeing character who was now running through the neighborhood near the middle of town; house after house, yard after yard, individuals, couples and whole families in the "victory position".

The insane fleeing character broke into a house with no body on the lawn and ran into the basement where he found a shotgun-armed "survivor", the other two characters followed in, disarmed her, and all suffered minor insanities (the team leader went Manic for 10 days...)  By the time they'd entered the house and disarmed the insane woman (there was a CB radio in the basement so they think it was the "praying woman", she'd also covered every surface in the house as well as herself with drawn crosses), it was 2AM so we wrapped up.

Oh in the first post the * = don't know if we'll ever come back to it, it was only going to be a one-off.

I basically came up with the scenario outline after seeing the video, then kind of dropped details in here and there as we played and I thought of things that would make good "suburban creepypasta" kind of horror mixed in with a little mythos.  The eyes thing is from a short story series by Zack Parsons...I just sort of mixed and matched but they seemed to enjoy it.  I honestly don't know what to do with it from here or where to go.  This is definitely a horror game, not "horror-action" or the like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVekJTmtwqM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_UFqw3vm0s

Quote from: Certified;905692Seconded. Great find on the video.

I've been a fan of Kris Straub since the Checkerboard Nightmare web-comic days; when he trolled Wikipedia I became an even bigger fan.  Inasmuch as I love his comics, if he stopped those to spend all of his time doing Local58 creepy suburban horror videos I would love it.

There is a certain something about his videos that resonates with me.  I think it's because, being a Gen-X kid, I grew up with 6 TV channels available (until I was about 12), and two didn't come in real well. I remember grainy kinescope title cards, "We now conclude our broadcast day", TV stations that couldn't get out of our general valley location (NE Alabama) and so on.  Plus Emergency Broadcast System tests.  The Weather Service and Contingency videos really push all the right buttons with me when it comes to horror.  HPL, vampires, haunted houses and so forth don't really do it any more.  Multi-media things like The Dionaea House and Ted the Caver (the latter of which I incorporated into a D&D game, look around here for the thread on that), those do speak to me.