Do you hear them? Sunken bells... they are tolling for me.

"Abraham Sapien. Do you hear... sunken bells are tolling for thee. Out of caverns of num-yabisc, dark and terrible deep, the ocean is calling her children home."

                                                                                                                  -Rasputin

                                                                                                                 Hellboy: Wake the Devil

My mind works in messed up ways. I chalk it up to my gamer ADD. Recently I purchased some Delta Green PDFs. Delta Green has to be some of the best game lines ever. If I have one criticism its that they take way too long for the stuff to come out. But when they do they are always well worth the wait.

Thinking about Delta Green brings two thoughts to my mind. One, what game system I want to use in running it. Two, The Escape from Innsmouth campaign and my need to run it. Escape was the first Call of Cthulhu campaign I ever played in. Hell, this was the campaign that busted my proverbial gaming cherry.

Theres just something about Escape from Innsmouth that seems like the perfect introduction to a Delta Green campaign. Part of it stems from the raid on the degenerate fishing town. Part of it has to do with that this is the pivotal event that lead to the creation of the Delta Green organization.

Now that I've discovered the NEMESIS rpg, the first question has been answered. But then I felt like I needed a way to test out these new rules. Something that has been tried and tested. Something that I have a solid idea how it should turn out. Which leads me back to Innsmouth.

Which got me thinking about how I would like to run the Escape campaign. I want this to be scary. So one goal I have is to put a real effort into making sure that I can evoke a few moments of horror. To think I can make every session scary is ridiculous. But if I do it right I think I can at least make a couple of sessions creepy.

So how am I going to make it scary ? I've been watching a lot of the Lost television series lately. This show is all about the secrets of the main characters and the island. Good secrets seem to be the lynch pin behind most awesome RPG campaigns too. In a horror/investigation campaign this would seem to be doubly important since you cant rely on that D&D formula of encounters being based more or less on a combat/treasure model. There needs to be more to it. So for this my NPCs and my players investigators are going to need secrets. Horrible secrets. Secrets that reveal themselves slowly over the course of the campaign. Something that creates a building sense of dread and revulsion in both the characters and the players. 

For sure one of the players is going to have a tainted Deep One bloodline. This should be relatively easy to do with "The Crawford Inheritance" scenario found in the book. 

Another idea I had was something inspired by PS2 game Silent Hill 2. Perhaps a loved one, a family member, wife, son, whoever, sends the PC a letter telling them their waiting for them in Innsmouth. But the catch is that person supposedly died sometime ago. Or did they ? Who or what sent the letter ?  Why ? Are they alive ? Are they human, a ghost ? Or is the PC just crazy ? Thats just the start. I dont have too much yet but it's the general direction I wanna go with while I meld the written campaign with my own ideas.

In terms of NPCs there are two that stick out in my mind right now as needing to be developed further. There are spoilers below so if you don't wanna ruin the campaign stop reading now you've been warned.

First is Brian Burnham the young manager of the First National Grocery Store in Innsmouth that disappears and kicks off the investigation of "The Escape From Innsmouth" scenario. I feel like its absolutely critical for the players to have a sympathetic connection with this guy. So I defiantly wanna play up his role. Maybe make him a family member of one of the characters.    

Dr. Ravana Najar is an East Indian parapsychologist  and avatar of Nyarlathotep. He is apart of "The Marsh Mansion Objective" in the "Raid on Innsmouth" scenario and is there to capture Esther Marsh before the investigators can. It's an interesting idea, but it comes straight out of left field. Because of that I feel like it loses the full potential that it could have. 

Lastly I would like to develop some more adventures in between "The Crawford Inheritance" and "The Escape From Innsmouth" scenarios since once "Escape" happens Innsmouth becomes a very difficult if not impossible location for the investigators to be right up until the "Raid" happens. I've read "Before the Fall" but to be honest its in my opinion pretty weak. Who knows maybe a read read is in order.

Anyway thats pretty much where I'm at at this point. More thoughts and ideas to follow.