As with other GUMSHOE games like The Esoterrorists and Mutant City Blues, Ashen Stars GMs are encouraged to look to the news for episode inspiration. Like the writers of the various Treks and the nouveau Battlestar, they might use the space opera form to examine issues of the day. Alternately, they can start with pop […]
Tag Archives: ripped from the headlines
It’s not just The Esoterrorists that urges you to reconfigure real-life mysteries by ripping tales from the headlines. With Mutant City Blues undergoing a resurgence of interest lately, I figured I’d start swapping in case ideas for the Heightened Crimes Investigative Unit as well. Japan’s strict limitations on organ donation have created a thriving black […]
When a phone tip from a woman claiming to be a psychic leads police in a rural community to excavate a supposed mass grave, the Ordo Veritatis dispatches a team to the site to cope with supernatural repercussions. By the time they arrive at the scene, the call is shown to be a hoax. But […]
News of an Esoterror bioscience expedition sends the investigators on a jaunt to the Brazilian rain forest, where they encounter the usual horrors of nature at its most fecund and ferocious. After a red-herring encounter with corporate forces intent on leveling the rainforest for beef production, they catch up with their quarry and find them […]
Normally Ripped from the Headlines features scenario premises for The Esoterrorists. Today’s news story seems to cry out for a Trail of Cthulhu treatment—perhaps in the modern day. When reports surface that the venom of certain poisonous snakes induces a intoxicating effect strong enough to get through to hardened opiate abusers, a cadre of jaded […]
Learning that the implements used in Elvis Presley’s autopsy are up for public auction, the Ordo Veritatis dispatches a team to monitor the sale. Celebrity autopsy equipment has a habit of going missing, often in conjunction with a subsequent rash of inexplicable deaths. A roving Esoterror cell seeks the implements but would rather steal them […]
As an Ordo Veritatis team dedicated to uprooting the occult menace of the Esoterrorists, the PCs are dispatched to investigate a series of strange mailings. Prominent intellectuals suffering from life-threatening illnesses receive packages from an untraceable group called the Hope Bombers. They promise to pray for the health of the recipients, who tend to be […]