The King in Yellow: Coming Soon to Theaters Everywhere

The GM: Brian and Jon

The Characters:

Game System: Call of Cthulhu

Game Type: One-Shot

Synopsis:

This was conceived by Jon and Brian as an epic Cthulhu campaign that was a modern version of the King in Yellow story -- Carcosa became the Carcosa towers office building, whose mirrored windows and positioning gave the impression of the moon rising in front of the building, etc.

It began on the first night with some crazy guy pulling the characters into a screening of a preview for a new movie being made, entitled The King in Yellow. Naturally the Yellow Sign featured prominantly. Then strange things began happen to the characters: people repeated conversation around them as if they hadn't happened, moved strangely, and other oddities. They learned it was somehow all linked to this movie, already the most expensive project ever made and it was still in production. Eventually the characters were all gunned down while invistigating the movie set...

But as they lay bleeding and dying cameras and people suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and a guy yelled "Cut! Cut! That didn't work at all! The cameras weren't in position. Ressurect them and shoot it again!" Then the characters were alive in the same alley. They were immediately gunned down again.

They were, of course, unwitting stars in the film -- and all the strange people they'd been interacting with were actually actors following cues via earphones (restating things if the invisible camera angle was wrong, etc.)

Alas, this is as far as the game ever got. Despite exstensive plotting of the rest of the campaign (in which the players made new character, their real characters, who were investigating the collossal failure of the movie (who's only purpose was to get as many people to see the Yellow Sign as possible, after all)) Jon and Brian never ran it. In fact, they lost the myriad of convoluted notes that led the game from LA to the Gobi desert and back to Chicago. The first night of the game, stated above, was run several times.