MaricopaCon Game Preparation I: Danger Roadwork Ahead/Lover in Little Altamira.

Rest assured that this discussion will remain spoiler free for obvious reasons.

A little background is necessary.  Danger Roadwork Ahead is not a pre-written scenario.  It has however been run into actual play podcasts, however.  First, it was a bonus Skype game for Kickstart backers of a certain level Caleb Stokes/Hebanon Games' excellent No Security package of systemless scenarios.  It's background can be found in the GM information in Lover in the Ice, originally run by Caleb for RPPR's Actual Play podcast as a Delta Green game, but now written up as systemless.  In addition, two recordings of the Actual Play.  First, The Drunk and the Ugly recorded their Skype game.  Also, RPPR recently released their playtest as an Actual Play.

Effectively, I'm doing a loose interpretation of the game based on the two Actual Plays, and the GM information and Lover in the Ice, which was a bonus scenario from No Security.

Danger Roadwork Ahead, as I will be running it will be run with Call of Cthulhu 6th Edition rules.

My work, while it may seem simple, basically consisted of turning three slightly different narratives into one fairly cohesive structure.  Accordingly, I took the time to write up the scenario as though it were meant for publication.  While I tend to run games very loosely, with reference to few notes other than a bullet pointed outline and a fistful of NPCs, I find, for con games especially where I'm a little more nervous than usual, that the discipline of actually turning those bullet points into text gives me a comfortable background from which to run a game.

In this case, that file is 22 pages long. Um, yeah.  I got carried away.  Still, it's 100% ready to go.  The game is best described as a survival horror scenario set in 1960's Brazil.

It's based around an actual historical fact, that being the never fully completed Trans-Amazonian Highway project.  Effectively, the scenario gives a Call of Cthulhu answer to the question of why was it never finished?  The players play a gonzo journalist and his strange retinue, his permanent student friend who knows where all the best drugs can be found, an interpreter, a soldier, a professor, and a representative of the Brazilian foreign office, who is determined to put a shiny happy face on a thuggish military regime.

I will be debuting it this Saturday in a playtest at Free RPG Day at Imperial Outpost games and will be running it again at MaricopaCon.