RPG Encounters: Trains

Need a one-session encounter as a bridge between larger story arcs in your Call of Cthulhu game, or Steampunk- or Roaring 20s-themed DnD/RPG game, and are looking for something unconventional? Or are you just a fan of trains (aren't we all?) and are looking for a way to incorporate them into your game in a way that isn't boring for your players? Here are a few session ideas, courtesy of various works of fiction:

Baccano! The luxury express train on which your players are riding is suddenly commandeered by a group of terrorists (who boarded while masquerading as a wedding party), who take the train's passengers hostage. A prominent politician's spouse and children are aboard the train, and the terrorists hope to use them as leverage against the politician to force them to have the terrorists' leader released from jail. The terrorists have already sent their demands to the politician and are waiting for their response via radio/telegraph; if their leader is not released from jail, they will blow up the train, or blow up a bridge the train will soon pass over (GM's choice). Players must defeat the terrorists to secure the passengers' safety. Feel free to make the situation more complicated by making the terrorists freedom fighters, and the politician an asshole who's willing to sacrifice his family rather than acquiesce to the group.

The Lady Vanishes (Depending on your player group's size, this may work best if you split your players up between several compartments, or have them riding together in an open coach) In a foreign country, one or more of your players are sharing a train compartment with 3-5 strangers (six people per compartment), one of whom is a very friendly old woman from their country who makes friends with your players. This old woman accompanies your players to the dining car for lunch, and writes her name in the condensation on the window when the train's whistle drowns out their voice, but when the train passes through a tunnel and is momentarily plunged into darkness, she vanishes from the carriage. Your players will assume she went back to their compartment, but when they return to it she is not there, and the other strangers swear that there was no such woman in the compartment with them. When your players go back to the dining car to question the staff, the employees also swear there was no such woman. No one aboard recognizes the woman your players were with. When they return to their compartment, an entirely different old woman has taken the first woman's place, and the other strangers insist that she was the woman your players were with the entire time. Unknown to your players, the first old woman was a spy carrying information dangerous to the foreign country's government, and the other strangers are domestic agents sent to get rid of her before she reaches her home country. It is up to your players to find out what happened to the woman they met, and rescue her, before the train reaches its destination, and the woman is disappeared forever.

Murder on the Orient Express (This may work best if your players have already achieved some renown) Your players are riding a long-distance sleeper train which will spend one or more nights en route to its destination. On the first day aboard they are approached by a wealthy stranger with a dangerous aura, who tells them that they have been receiving threatening messages and fear for their life, and they want to hire them as bodyguards. Hint to your players that the stranger is up to no good to encourage them to decline. Either that night or the following night, the train is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift or a rockslide, something that blocks the tracks. The following morning the wealthy passenger is discovered murdered in their cabin by their valet and the carriage porter, who break the lock on the door when they don't answer. Have your players investigate the crime scene, and leave clues that indicate that the murderer was someone aboard the train, and that someone is still aboard the train (if in winter, the window is open but there is no snow on the windowsill, and there are no footprints leading out from the window. If in a warm season, the rockfall blocked the train into a notch or on a cliffside, with no room for the assailant to escape through the window). The sleeping carriages are sealed up at night, which means the murderer is one of the passengers aboard this very coach. Have your players interrogate the passengers to determine who the culprit is.

Demon Slayer Your players board a train and settle in for a night of relaxation or boredom. Unbeknownst to everyone aboard, demonic forces are at work to commandeer the train and suck the life essence out from all of the passengers aboard to grow their own strength. Have your players discover and battle the monstrous forces lurking before they consume and kill everyone aboard. To spice things up, have your characters congregate in the lounge car after dinner, where, amid the dim lamps, several passengers make your players' acquaintances. As an icebreaker, one of the more gregarious strangers elects to tell the group of a ghostly encounter of theirs, and after them the other strangers start telling their own tales of woe or haunting. Soon after, one by one, the strangers start getting killed or injured in ways that resemble the stories they told, hinting that the monstrous evil aboard the train manifests as its victims' worst fears or trauma.

The Gertrude was a fictional 300-ft (100 m) megayacht featured in the 2006 film Superman Returns. Envisioned as a lavish gift to the minor character Gertrude Vanderworth from her deceased husband, a wealthy shipping magnate, the vessel boasted an onboard gym, lounges, and several dozen cabins, but its crown jewel was the “marine gallery”, a gigantic library and lounge situated in the ship’s belly, below the waterline, which featured an expansive glass bottom for viewing the ocean depths.

The ship, inherited by Lex Luthor at Gertrude Vanderworth's passing, is dramatically destroyed in the movie in the course of enacting his nefarious plans.

Image Sources

Incomplete list of movies and TV shows that would make great inspiration/settings for RPG campaigns, or one-shots (dungeons crawls), for DnD, CoC, or others:

The Mummy (1999)

The Fall (2006)

The Cell (2000)

The Poseidon Adventure (1972) / Poseidon (2006)

Baccano! (2007)

GoSICK (2011)

Ghost Ship (2002)

Fool's Gold (2008)

Blade Runner (1982) / Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Natsume's Book of Friends (2008-2017)

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

Get Smart (2008)

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Out of the Dawn     -     William Robinson , 1987.

Australian, b. 1936 -

Oil on linen

Marcille: Falin bby, can you please stop quoting star wars during sex

Falin: Now THIS is podracing!

I didn't have any dreams last night, but I woke up this morning suddenly with a spiel popping into my head by a possible new DnD character, a character who's a fanatic worshipper of some god. This speech is supposed to be a sort of anti-pep talk spoken over a campfire one evening. Whoever this person is, they're not the best person to seek nurturing advice from.

"Then don't. If you don't feel it in your heart to worship the Gods, then don't. They have worthier subjects anyway. Do you think the Gods want your Sunday-in-the-park love? The Gods want Devotion! Fanaticism! Not some lackadaisical prayers and putrid doubting. You should love Them as you love yourself, as the air you breathe, above your own mother and father! Get your milquetoast nonsense away from Their eyes. *sighs and slurps* Anyway. These beans are good."

Headcanon: If orcs and half-orcs are green-skinned, then embarrassment or alcohol causes their faces to flush with burgundy or gold, while illness or disgust causes them to tinge with dark green or a faint blue.

DnD encounter: giant wall of paintings in a nobleman's home that causes vertigo to whoever gazes at it (requires Wisdom save, Failure causes incapacitation for one minute)

Painting: Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels, by David Teniers the Younger  (1610–1690)

Idea: A character named Odilon, who goes by Ode for short

Here’s the homebrew training system for D&D 5e that we’re using in our campaign. Some content may differ from PHB since I use my own worldbuilding & lore. Feel free to share your suggestions!

Credits:

This reddit post that have been altered & elaborated by me, the DM.

Kleoite for the lovely illustration on the last page. ❤

Bad D&D idea #358:

Magical suit of armor that's just a rubber muscle-suit. Magically form-fitting, requires attunement (one hour of wearing, during which they are hot and sweaty). Once attuned: Grants +1 to AC and +1 to Strength rolls, does not hinder movement, does not cause Disadvantage on Stealth rolls. Considered body augmentation, may be worn by spellcasters without breaking "no armor" rule. May be worn under clothes. May also be worn underneath other armor and combined for extra AC bonuses. Suit melds with body and does not hinder normal bodily functions.

Suit magically bonds to wearer during attunement and increases their muscle mass with thickly-padded rubber muscles, so all tight-fitting clothes tailored to their real body are no longer wearable and must be replaced. Suit may either grant +3 or -3 on Charisma rolls depending on how realistic it looks (at DM's discretion. This may also involve a Perception roll from others if you want to get complicated with it.)

Cursed variant: Suit of the Himbo

Automatically attunes to wearer once donned, attunement cannot be broken unless hit by "Greater Restoration" or "Remove Curse" spells. Suit joins with their body and cannot be removed unless attunement is broken. Suit grants +2 to AC and +2 to Strength rolls, but Disadvantage on all Wisdom and Intelligence rolls. This suit bonds to its wearer and increases their strength and hardiness, but causes a fog to fill their brain, dulling their thoughts and senses. This fog makes them placid and gullible and easily led astray. They are not aware of this fog, and their changed demeanor must be spotted by another for it to be removed.

The Faceless! The edgy, weaker cousin of everyone’s favorite D&D baddie, the Lich. These haven’t been extensively tested, so their CR is pending change. The plain-text version of their lore blurb (for those who can’t/don’t want to read the image) is under the read more.

Keep reading

Animari, or “Living Armor”, is magical or spiritual energy condensed and contained within a suit of armor.

To further explain, Animari can be created by two primary methods. The first option is true creation, where a powerful wizard or event causes excess arcane energy to be condensed and granted sentience, binding itself to a suit of armor. The second option is often accidental, but sometimes with purpose - spiritual. When a spirit is caught between life and death, it can bind itself to a suit of armor. For example, a sorcerer’s attempt at lichdom fails, and as their spirit is pulled to the Ethereal Plane, in a last ditch effort, they bind themselves to the robes left on their corpse. Alternatively, with his dying breath, a warrior calls out for vengeance against a foe. His spirit is so strong it clings to life, but as the flesh decays only the armor they were wearing remains.

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Bad D&D idea #203:

After new labor laws aimed at child welfare were passed, the film industry (think 1930s) no longer found it tenable to hire child actors due to the strenuous long hours worked by the film stars every day resembling too much the gruesome conditions of child factory workers (which is what the laws were actually seeking to ban). The film industry of Hollybrookland thus hit on the exciting idea of casting younger adult halflings and gnomes in the roles of human children, allowing them to circumvent the laws restricting how long minors can work for and instead follow the laxer laws for adults (in Hollybrook 18-hour workdays are the norm). This flagrant shirking of humane conditions has an upside though, in that members of the shorter races have broken through the "glass ceiling" of the human-centric film industry, and now gnomes and halflings count among Hollybrook's silver stars, with Shyrlee Tempell and Mackall'y Kulcan being household names. But there's a darker side too, and some feel that the excitement for working adults making a living by portraying childhood innocence on screen might be a little eww-worthy, particularly from among the clergy who rally around rosy-cheeked Shyrlee Tempell.