A few weeks ago I finally got my copy of The Magnus Archives roleplaying game. It's a cosmic horror game powered by cypher and based on one of my favorite podcasts of all time. "But Lexi," you might say, "cypher already has a horror supplement AND released Old Gods of Appalachia not all that long ago. Did they really need another take on the horror genre?"
Honestly, I'm not sure. Without the license I'm not positive that this horror game is bringing anything different than Stay Alive, the original horror supplement. The exception is that in the tradition of cosmic horror, Magnus Archives adds a stress feature for characters that I would retroactively use for any Old Gods game I was running as well.
But this post is not a review about The Magnus Archives. The thing is, I've been playing the game solo and I've been having a blast. Having a character be forced to face off against the dark things that move in the night (or in the day for that matter) realizing they have gotten involved in something so far beyond them that they may as well have jumped off a diving board into the ocean has been a ton of fun.
The first thing I played through was the little adventures included in the book, and then like I do, I struck out on my own with Mythic GME as my guide. I was off to the races. But then the other day I saw something on the Call of Cthulhu subreddit. I don't remember the post exactly, but it was asking how to approach an investigative horror game without spoiling the ending.
It was met with the basic advice that is trodden out for this common question. Try the "Alone Against" series, etc etc. The thing is, I tried the Alone Against series and I really really don't like them. Those books are just Choose Your Own Adventure Books with extra steps. They don't hold onto the true essence of what makes ttrpgs great, the freedom to go wherever and do whatever you want.
There has to be a better way.
Of course there is, and that way - say it with me folks! - is Progress Clocks!
I know, I use progress clocks as an answer to a lot of things. The thing is, for an improvisational dungeon master (or solo gamer), they are just so flexible. But there is more than just Progress Clocks to this procedure. And it is a procedure of sorts. So let's break the steps down.
Step One: The Statement
The Magnus Archives is a game based on a podcast, and it starts off every horror story with a statement. The statement is almost always from a person who experienced something horrific that then has to be confirmed and investigated. Maybe it's a statement from someone who survived a murder attempt... only the person that was trying to kill them was formed entirely of jagged needles of all different sizes (a real story from the podcast I still think about).
The Magnus Archives rpg has a system for working as a group to create a statement. But as solo roleplayers it doesn't really work exactly. It is a method for getting an entire group to work together and we have only ourselves.
I suggest using some mythic meaning tables here, rolling until you are inspired. But the goal here is to have someone telling a story about something terrifying and likely supernatural that our characters then have to go investigate. And this doesn't have to be a full story. It can be a list of bullet points or just an idea that you keep in your head.
A good statement should include:
- The survivor. Their name and a tiny bit of background. A first sentence or two that introduces the setup. "My name is Aloucious Strativos Aria Magnifico the XIV. My friends just call me Strat. And the thing is, I've been disappointing my family for generations."
- The Setup. Now we begin to answer the questions that our survivor introduced. The Magnifico family? Who are they? How has someone disappointed their family for generations? Where and When did this all start? This should also be kept to a sentence or two (or three). "The first thing I remember is the dark of the coffin and the smell of damp loam. Then the sound of a shovel tapping on the rotting wood of my eternal resting place. When my coffin lid was peeled away I looked into the beautiful face of the woman I would come to love, and then come to loathe."
- Round One Details. This is where we start looking at the statement as a person who is trying to play a game. The past two steps have been about creating tone and giving us a character. But we are going to need things to investigate, and it sounds like this story all happened a long time ago. So we give the strange woman a name, let's call her Monica Magnifico. She's a magician (and probably a necromancer) and she's got a show in town this very week.
- Survivor reaction. The survivor begins to explain how they reacted to things. Maybe what they felt about things. They start to introduce why they decided to tell this story. This is another few sentences. "When I first served it was small things. Dreary tasks given in the angelic voice of the woman that brought me back from death. Fetch some water. Dig some holes. But eventually she worked me into her show. You know the one, "Magnifico!" She's been putting it on for over a century now, and people believe that the magician changes from time to time, like a mask passed from person to person. But it isn't true, Magnifico has always been Monica, and the shows keep her alive."
- The horror. Now we introduce the thing at the center of it all. The horror we will have to face. Again, a few sentences is all we need. "It's my fault the shows keep going. Monica seeks to live forever, and she thought it would all happen during a single show two and a half generations ago. She would kill someone on stage while the audience laughed and she would channel all that twisted energy, the fear and the adulation, into a spell net so strong it would sustain her forever. But in the final moment I messed everything up. The spell turned back on Monica twisting her body and turning her into a horror to look upon. Now she hides behind her mask and cape and the shows are the way she holds onto the agony that has become her existence. And still people die on stage while others laugh and applaud."
- The escape and the reason. Now it's time to explain how the survivor actually survived, or why they are choosing to look for help (or forgiveness or any number of other feelings). "In this last decade I have fallen in love with another woman. At first Monica didn't care, then she thought it was cute and pathetic. But in this last few months she has become exceedingly jealous. And last night she killed my love on stage. All I could do was watch. But enough is enough. I can no longer sit back and watch the woman who granted me these extra years perform her evil. It must be stopped - but I am unable to be the one to stop it.
- Round 2 details. We give our statement a final look. We can tweak things if we need to. When I first got into this with the really long name I was thinking of a great family. It feels like this is more focused on Monica than the family though. So maybe we cut that name down. We give this second love a name, let's call her Maria and say that she looks almost exactly like Monica used to. And we have at least a few places to investigate. Maria's family (if any are alive), Strat himself, the magic show, etc.
Mythic can be a great tool to help flesh a statement out. You can roll on meaning tables at each of these steps to fill in details. Or you can let inspiration take hold and go with the flow. It's also important to note that this doesn't have to be a 'statement' like from The Magnus Archives. It can be a series of journal entries, the last thoughts of a dying person, a fortune being read from a mysterious woman with a crystal ball, or any number of other things.
The goal is to have a place to start our horror adventure.
Step Two: Decide How Long and Dangerous the Adventure is. Assign a progress clock.
This step is very fast. Think about the game you want to run. Do you want to play through a terrifying adventure that will take your investigations around the world and take a dozen or more hours to play? Or do you want to play through a more contained game that will take a few hours?
Your answer to that question will help you decide how big your progress clock should be. The general guideline is that each segment of your clock will contain 1-3 scenes. So the longer your clock, the more scenes you will have and the longer your game will be. This isn't always true, but a good rule of thumb is that one segment will take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour to fill depending on your play style.
Step Three: Put Together a Clue List
This is the part of this whole procedure that requires the second most amount of preparation, and the step that ties the entire adventure together. It's time to make a list of clues that is at least twice as long as your progress clock. If you have a 4 segment clock you need at least 8 clues, although you can include as many as you want. Some clues you should tie to specific locations, and other clues should be more general. For my example I'm going to use the above statement and a 4 segment clock.
Physical Evidence Found of Locations (Monica's home or the stage, etc)
- A crumbling playbill from 100 years ago advertising "Magnifico!" It has the same masked magician on the front as the ads do now. The bill has been freshly signed: Monica Magnifico
- A magician's wand. On closer inspection its made of bone and wrapped with faded, sinewy leather.
- A single tarot card. The Fool, it has strange sigils inked over the surface.
- An old picture of Strat with Monica faded with age. Monica looks just like Maria.
Conversational Rumors:
- Someone once saw Monica pull a bouquet of flowers from her sleeve - the flowers were bleeding.
- There is no drinking allowed at Magnifico shows. People saw it's because drinks go flat when the magician is near, as if something is drinking the life from them.
- Maria was a new assistant, and one day she came home from the show in a panic. "It's real! It's all real!" I didn't know what she was talking about, and she refused to tell me.
Misc and General Clues:
- A prop rabbit's corpse, found in a magician's hat or similar place. It's mummified and whispering "Run!" over and over.
- A contract written in a mix of Latin and arcane symbols, binding Strat to serve Monica "Until the final curtain falls."
The point of these clues is not to point to a single answer of 'what happened.' In this method we don't know the answer going into things. I have some thoughts as I put these clues together. "Until the final curtain falls" is a neat clue to hang some things off of. The tarot cards are neat, what happened to the rest of the deck?
But at this point we don't have answers to where the clues are pointing. We just have a list of clues that we can seed into our adventure.
Step Four: Discover Clues Until the Progress Clock Fills
Now we start playing. We start poking our noses into things looking for answers. Whenever the fiction says we should find a clue, we look at the list and roll a random clue. If it's a piece of physical evidence I'm going to roll a d4 from my list.
Every time we find a clue we fill a segment of our clock. This means that at least half the clues we added to the list will never be found. That's on purpose. Again, we don't know what the solution to this adventure is. We follow the clues we made.
Step Five: When the Clock Strikes Midnight
Eventually we will fill all of our progress clocks segments. That's our sign that the investigation should stop. We look at the clues and come up with a theory that fits the clues. Then we determine if our theory is correct by rolling on a d4.
- On a 1, our theory is wrong. We have to act on it, but because we are wrong we will be in terrible danger. Even if we survive, the mystery is not solved. We roll a d4 and add that many segments to our progress clock. We must return to step four until the new progress clock is filled and we can try again.
- On a 2 or 3, our theory is right, but we are missing something important. When we try to put an end to things we will be in terrible danger. But the things we need to survive we have a chance to find. We might succeed.
- On a 4, our theory is right AND we know exactly what we need to do to put an end to things. We might face danger, but we are in control of the situation... as much as it's possible to be in control of anything while playing a horror game.
Step Six: Putting things right
Putting things right is what it's called when we act on our theory to resolve the situation. We help a ghost move on to the next life. We try to destroy an evil magician, but we didn't know her soul is bound in a contract. We manage to escape before the magician kills us, but we limp away twenty years older, and have to go back to investigating.
This part of the adventure is largely determined by how well we did on our theory. In 3/4 situations we have a chance to succeed and actually put things right. Most often we aren't in control and things are terrifying and dangerous and we could fail. But we have a chance. A chance to be brave and bold and be in the right place at the right time to save the day.
Final Thoughts
This method takes things from The Magnus Archives and from games like Brindelwood Bay and smashes them together. The point is to play a game where we don't know the ending. But instead of following a bunch of choose your own adventure paths, we still get to play. We still have the freedom of a ttrpg to go anywhere and do anything.
But this method isn't perfect. Sometimes you'll have a list of clues and one of them doesn't fit in with the rest. And that's okay. The clues don't all have to fit together like a perfect puzzle. They can be a bit messy. Some could be red herrings or just something we thought was relevant, but turns out not to be. And even if all the clues feel like they make perfect sense together, we still have to let the clock strike midnight and make our theory. If we roll a 1, our theory is wrong, even if it looks like it should be right.
It's also important to remember that spooky and scary things should absolutely be happening during the investigation things. And it's more important for something scary to happen than it is to be able to fit that scary thing into the story. Hopefully in the end the larger context makes it make sense, and the scary things should always fit the tone and setting of your adventure. But sometimes the walls just need to weep blood. If that fits the adventure, great. If it doesn't... well, it was scary! We can either come back later and be like, "we killed the magician and everything makes sense. Except for the blood crying wall. What's going on with that?" Then we can play a game and go figure that question out.
I've made this as system agnostic as possible. I highly recommend looking at games like Brindelwood Bay, or a horror game that's carved from Brindelwood, Public Access. My method is much in the style of those methods, and reading those books will only make your games stronger.
And that's it, that's all I have. Go now into the night. Be brave. Don't forget who you are and what you believe when the darkness comes for you.