The Slenderman Mythos

[Harmony0stars]

I've spent all night writing a modern adventure involving Slenderman, who has abducted three families who caught him on camera and threatened his privacy. The families lived in a suburb next to the woods, and I'm thinking of having a table to roll on as the group wanders the woods, but I need some places for them to end up at. I want each place to not reveal too much, but sort of build up the creepy atmosphere. Any ideas for creepy wooded places would be awesome.

Keep in mind, Slenderman can bend space, so you go into a tunnel or through a door on one end, and you end up somewhere completely unrelated (as seen in the EverymanHybrid series and several blogs). In EverymanHybrid, they found a "crawlspace" in someone's closet that went to the basement of an abandoned/historical house in a park they had visited the previous week. The crawlspace eventually disappeared, BTW. In one of the blogs, SM lured a group of children over three hundred miles away to Pennsylvania in the middle of winter to find a "treasure." He can also move people forward in time, though he hasn't moved anyone backwards yet, so there's some question as to whether he actually controls time or if he's just putting victims in a fugue state in which they don't notice the passage of time.

So, some creepy places... your players could enter an underpass and when they come out on the other side, they've somehow come out in a basement. It's the basement of one of their homes, the home of one of the victims, or wherever they're staying.

They could be in the woods and slowly realize they're coming on a rock field (like Ringing Rock Park or a similar glacier field). They begin to notice very large boulders among the trees, taller than a man. Then they notice the boulders are evenly spaced, in a ring... and there is a very large stone slab at their center with red stains... As the clouds clear away from the moon, the light makes the rocks almost seem to move.

They come upon an abandoned quarry. The players notice footprints heading down the overgrown road. If they follow them, the trail leads into the water. There are no footprints coming back out. Maybe they notice what look like ominous dark caves along the water line and a faint tapping. They notice a frayed rope hanging from a nearby tree that hits the rock when the wind blows. They wrap it around one of the trees. The tapping gets LOUDER. hehe

You could also add "rake" sightings as seen very clearly in one of the episodes of Everyman Hybrid.

[OuterDark]

Hi people (:

Oddly enough, I also just had the idea of incorporating the Slender Man into my Delta Green campaign, which has been running on and off since about 1998, and so I just posted over on the Delta Green Mailing List asking for ideas and people's thoughts about my own ideas, and someone pointed me to this thread too.

I initially thought about using SM as one of Nyarlathotep's Masks, as several people here seem to have done, but after considering I decided it would fit more as an agent or aspect of Hastur from John Tynes' Hastur Mythos from Delta Green: Countdown, just as a couple people from earlier in the thread said. Great minds think alike.

My take is that it's kind of like the Harlequins that people stary seeing out of the corners of their eyes as they keep getting deeper into the Hastur Mythos, or perhaps even something akin to the King in Yellow; an agent or avatar of mental breakdown, an aspect of entropy. I also liked the idea from someone upthread that whenever someone photographs or writes about the Sender Man they steal a piece of it, and it wants it back But my idea is that when he takes that piece back, it ends up taking a big chunk of their SANITY with it, and each time it takes more SANITY it grows stronger, and those unfortunates who it steals all of the SAN from become cultists, either of it itself, or of Hastur. This way, the Slender Man COULD have been created 2 years ago in the SomethingAwful forums, just as is clearly documented, but at the same time it could ALSO be part of something far older, an idea which became a meme of terror and mental breakdown which was drawn into Hastur by the collective fascination, if not belief, of those who read about it, just as The King in Yellow and Carcosa became real to those who read about it. Think of the Internet meme of the Slender Man as the modern version of the King in Yellow play; just as those who read that play slowly became insane and were drawn into Carcosa, so are those who become obsessed with and start writing about the Slender Man slowly become pulled into the Slender Man Mythos. The Slender Man Mythos as a sort of modern, interactive version of the King in Yellow play.

I hope I'm explaining myself well enough that you can understand what I'm trying to get across. If not, it's my fault in not being able to put my ideas into words well enough.

I'm really liking this idea, and the ideas in this thread. Any other thoughts would be most welcome!


Thanks in advance!
Aaron M. Litz

[Harmony0stars]

There are actually quite a few Slenderman ARG. Almost all the Slender-blogs are ARGs, and a few of the Youtube series encourage viewer interaction.

[trevlix]

Not to perform thread necro, but I just found out about Slenderman yesterday. And I was pleasantly surprised (although I should not have been) to see there was already a thread here.

It sounds like a number of people that were going to create scenarios based around him. Has anyone completed theirs and how did it go?

[Kallisto73]

Not to perform thread necro, but I just found out about Slenderman yesterday. And I was pleasantly surprised (although I should not have been) to see there was already a thread here.

It sounds like a number of people that were going to create scenarios based around him. Has anyone completed theirs and how did it go?

Don't know if this has been posted here, but here is an Actual Play Podcast of a Slenderman scenario:

http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicr...f-slender-man/

It totally creeped me out, it is very, very spooky and very, very, very well roleplayed. I was at home alone at night, and it was stormy and I was listening to this. I can really recommend it, but I would also caution listeners. It can be very frightening.

[Max_Writer]

My ideas are still percolating.

[Mechanicum]

First thing I thought when I got into Call of Cthulhu was how awesome a Slenderman scenario would be, I'm really glad to see that other people feel the same way.

[garethdurasow]

Just a thought, but rather than have the PCs investigate missing children, how about having them BE the children? Whereas typical investigators are to some degree "secure" in the knowledge that they have to soldier on as unsung heroes against some weird creepy blighter, children would also have to deal with the persecution of the well-meaning adults to whom they turn for help. Keep percolating.

[BaneOfNyarlathotep]

Watched Marble Hornets and loved it. Can't believe they're still doing it. Slender Man has always seemed like an avatar of Nyarlathotep to me, though there are some other very good explanations in this thread.

[Noble]

Loved it, I see the Slender Man as the guest in the King in Yellow.

[Noble]

Okay I have come up with the start of an idea, like OuterDark I feel this is a Delta Green kind of game, I have put it in a blog as it was a bit long for the boards, please check it out and tell me what you think!

[Laraqua]

Slenderman would probably work better for a Survival Horror than an Investigative Horror format. Then you wouldn't need to worry about his motives so much, or at least, you wouldn't need to know more than a gist.

[Ewoklord]

I ran a Slender Man game for my group a couple months ago an it went great. I basically set up a back-story of what happened and some locations and let my players go where they wanted with it. One of them quickly figured out the whole "Slender Man = Static on recordings thing" (and my players don't really know much about Slender Man) and set up a camera to instantly playback what it's recording on a handheld screen, allowing them to know when Slender Man is near. I thought that was ingenious, and it made for some great scares while they were staying the night in a hotel, watching the screen for any static. They got some and my players freaked out, which was a great moment. All of my players survived the adventure and somewhat successfully completed their goals. They got a couple of shots off at Slender Man near the end, but they got their asses whooped. I had a fun table I rolled on for the locations they ran across while wandering the woods, and I also introduced a character I really like called the "Middle Man", who helps out the Slender Man when things need a more human touch. This adventure kicked off a modern horror campaign that has the Slender Man as an antagonist, but not all the stories are about him. Next up: My try at a creepy version of Manos: The Hands of Fate!

[Noble]

I've just finished the first chapter and a big chunk of the second of Delta Green vs The Slenderman, a adult game spanning 60 years of Slenderman from his creation to his possible end.

I've put in a 1950's Majestic12 tied in which they unknowingly create Slenderman, and I am playing with adding 'away from the table' interactivity via modern technology. I'm looking to play test it with my group within the next few months and then I may ask if anyone else wants to try out the first few chapters.

[Balthassar]

It seems somewhat similar to the Phantasm series of films, where the main antagonist is a Tall Man in a black suit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasm_%28film%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_Man_%28Phantasm%29

http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/phantasm-theneverdead.htm