Innsmouth and "the look"

[Kinghonkey]

I was wondering if anyone has found a way to keep the the Innsmouth look from being too obvious of a giveaway.

What I mean is that if you look at the character sketches for Return To Innsmouth or any other adventure (or even DCotE), the PCs can pretty much tell by looking at the individuals that they're quickly becoming inhuman, whether the players are familiar with the mythos or not.

I feel that it needs to be more vague as to what exactly is wrong with these people in this backwards little fishing village. I understand the protruding eyes, thick lips and disappearing ears are par for the course when you're slowy turning into a Deep One, but in the scenarios they say that the most obvious cases are held behind locked doors and in cellars, but most of the half-breed folks walking around the steets look pretty obvious to me already.

I plan on running Return To Innsmouth for some brand new players. As fellow Keepers, can you recommend any ways that I can increase the shock value and downplay "the look" as to not give away the moment when the investigators finally find out "the truth"?

Thanks.

[Teapot]

Find a way to suggest inbreeding as the cause of physical abnormalities. Darkness can also obscure most irregularities, but that would involve somehow keeping the investigators secluded during the day.

[JackLind]

I guess you could make the description a little more subtle. I’ve read somewhere that Asenath Waite is probably a hybrid deep one and she’s descriped like this:

“ She was, I judge, about twenty-three at the time;(…) She was dark, smallish, and very good-looking except for overprotuberant eyes; but something in her expression alienated extremely sensitive people. It was, however, largely her origin and conversation which caused average folk to avoid her. She was one of the Innsmouth Waites, and dark legends have clustered for generations about crumbling, half-deserted Innsmouth and its people.”

I don’t know what time of year you’re playing, but if its winter, some people have hats and scarf that can cover most of their face.

And a thing I’ve always done, (either before the encounter or soon after the first) is the spread a rumor about a disease. So maybe your players will just think these people are folks who like to fish, have overprotuberant eyes and some sort of (skin) disease!?

Hope that was helpful

[Laraqua]

If you change the name of the town, players in the know might not jump to conclusions. Why not play on other features that could suggest any number of deformities? If anyone has ranks in medicine, you could describe them as having specific medical problems or you could cloud the issue. Deep Ones have claws, right? (I think I remember reading that they have a claw attack). Why not play on their pudgy hands with long, thick claws? They might even think they're dealing with ghouls if you do it right.

[allicorn]

Hybrids have been pretty extensively described over various works - you could potentially just switch out which of their characteristics you actually mention in your description. Rather than referring to the most obviously "fishy" elements of their appearance, refer to others of their degeneracies which while still giving an unsettling image, are not overtly icthyian:

• general stature is hunched and deformed
  eyes are watery and pale
  skin lacks color
  speech is slurred
  hair thin and balding
  often very heavy-set with broad but sloping shoulders
  some references to overly large or "fat" hands

If you're talking about players who are pretty experienced RPGers generally then, with a few carefully selected words, you should be able to have them jumping to all sorts of crazy conclusions very quickly.

I guess the elements to avoid are probably the familiar:

• narrow head
  eyes described as "staring" or "unblinking"
  fishy odor
  freaky gill-slits in the neck
  skin described as "scaly"

Perhaps pick a red-herring conclusion yourself and then try to steer all your descriptions to reinforce that. Eg, describe them in a certain way and you could maybe have the players jump to the incorrect conclusion that the folk of Innsmouth have all been drugged!

• his head bows low and lolls heavily as he walks
  his eyes are very bleary and clouded
  his complexion is pallid and unhealthy
  he speaks slowly, as if laboring to find his words and when they come, he slurrs them strangely as if almost choking on them
  his hair is thinning, in a somewhat patchy manner as if falling out in clumps
  his shoulders slope heavily and his arms sway at his sides giving the impression of a stumbling sleepwalker
  his heavy, dirty hands seem swollen

With more than one set of descriptions prepared you could perhaps give them a party Idea roll on entering the town and switch from very misleading to quite obvious descriptions according to how well they succeed in that.

Regards,
Alli

[Gol-Goroth]

Most Hybrids seclude themselves once they can no longer pass for human. Those are the ones locked away in attics, cared for by family members until they have progressed to the point they can slip into the ocean to live forever under the sea.

I've had my hybrids do the hat and scarf thing, do the huge lady's hat thing, pretend to be burn victims, disfigured WWI vets, blind (Huge dark glasses) and even members of some isolated south east asian/pacific island tribe.

[theshoveller]

This is a metagame problem really, isn't it?

To the complete innocent, Deep One hybrids just look like third-generation inbreds. To experienced investigators, the suggestion of webbed fingers is justification to start shooting then and there (see my thread, 'For GFS' for more on that...). Of course, one possible solution is to fill your town with regular inbreds as one collosal red herring.

[SquibblyDibbly]

Asenath Waite is a babe !

At least according to the movie 'Strange Aeons'.



She doesn't look too much like a deep one to me

But yes, I'd agree with The Shoveller, the problem you have is players meta gaming. Someone showing the 'Innsmouth Look' in real life would be assumed to be deformed, inbred or diseased. The last conclusion you would come to is that they were under some sort of supernatural curse.

The best trick I found to throw people off is to use this against them. As Allicorn put it throw in a few red herrings ( dreadful pun by the way ). This is a fishing town so having a few people smelling of fish is not unusual, perhaps someone with a lumbering gait was crippled by flu at an early age, maybe the person who seems to be following them is a travelling salesman after a sale. If the PC's are too paranoid a few false alarms can stop them from being quite so sure of themselves.

[Modean]

Hybrids have been pretty extensively described over various works - you could potentially just switch out which of their characteristics you actually mention in your description. Rather than referring to the most obviously "fishy" elements of their appearance, refer to others of their degeneracies which while still giving an unsettling image, are not overtly icthyian:

• general stature is hunched and deformed
  eyes are watery and pale
  skin lacks color
  speech is slurred
  hair thin and balding
  often very heavy-set with broad but sloping shoulders
  some references to overly large or "fat" hands

You know, I ran an adventure where the investigators were looking into a series of mysterious disappearances and a few mutilated bodies being washed up on the shore at a beach front resort. Of course they expected Deep Ones, and I managed to throw them all a red herring by having them bump into a man coming out of a small drugstore, I described the situation thusly:

You've run into someone leaving Wirth's Pharmacy. He is a heavy-set man, and as he bends over to retrieve his fallen packages you notice he has large, beefy hands. His hat falls from his head while he's bent over revealing a sparsely populated pate (player retrieves it). As you hand him the hat and apologize for bumping into him you can’t help but notice that his skin is quite pale and his eyes appear to be bulging are watery. He takes the old, battered trilby from you and sheepishly accepts your apology but as he does you can’t help but notice that his voice is gravelly and cracking, and the fact that he slurs his words quite a bit doesn't make him any easier to understand. He turns and continues down the street, walking with a stooped, shuffling gait as he goes.

Well after that description they were convinced they'd found a Hybrid Deep One. I asked them all to give me idea rolls and they did, the two doctors in the group failed theirs(!) so as a group they decided to surreptitiously follow him home. Once there the first chance they got they broke into his home, tied him to a chair (after a brief but spirited struggle) and threatened him with torture unless he divulged the location of the Temple of Dagon. The poor ol' bugger was treated quite viciously by the investigators in their zeal to "find the temple", only to discover, quite by accident, that their victim was a normal human male, of about 63 years of age, who suffered from Hypothyroidism, Hypertension, and had a mild heart condition.

They screamed that it was all a cruel trick, but I pointed out that they had two doctor's in their party and neither one bothered to ask me what medical condition might explain that description, and if they can’t tell the difference between a man with Hypothyroidism and the tell-tale signs, and someone with the Innsmouth look, that wasn’t my problem.

Of course they really howled when the discovered that it wasn't the Deep Ones at all, but Tcho Tcho.

[allicorn]

They screamed that it was all a cruel trick, but I pointed out that they had two doctor's in their party and neither one bothered to ask me what medical condition might explain that description, and if they can’t tell the difference between a man with Hypothyroidism and the tell-tale signs, and someone with the Innsmouth look, that wasn’t my problem.

Hehe, brilliant!

Alli

[Gaffer]

I guess I've been fortunate in my players over the years. Most of us have a lot of theatrical experience where a player (in the Shakespearean sense) always knows the secrets behind other characters and even how the story will turn out, but must act his/her part as though these things are unknown. Even when we nudge one another and say "I bet it's Deep Ones," we still can play our characters' knowledge rather than our own. (Okay, maybe we make some "lucky" preparations.)

So when I describe the hybrids, I can start with what an observant person would be most likely to notice, rather than trying to mislead with dodgy details. Still it is nice when they go for other red herrings and form totally misguided theories.

My experience at convention events has been that people with loads of HPL and CoC knowledge would much rather "play what your character knows" than wreck the story for everyone in an attempt to "beat the Keeper."

As I say, I must just have been lucky.

[ProfSpender]

Another point about Deep Ones/Deep One Hybrids: can they still speak human languages in later stages of the transformation and after it is finished? The German campaign Auf den Inseln is pretty clear that full transformed hybrids can't speak any more, while another scenario (from Before the Fall) is quite clear that they could even pass for humans (SPOILER: "Mary" has a Deep One taking human form via Consume Likeness. The English speech might be a bonus from the spell, however.)
Their voices are described by HPL as expressive, so they should be physically able to mimick English sounds. And if not English, then perhaps other, more guttural languages like German or Russian?

[ZootSoot]

I was wondering if anyone has found a way to keep the the Innsmouth look from being too obvious of a giveaway.

What I mean is that if you look at the character sketches for Return To Innsmouth or any other adventure (or even DCotE), the PCs can pretty much tell by looking at the individuals that they're quickly becoming inhuman, whether the players are familiar with the mythos or not.

I feel that it needs to be more vague as to what exactly is wrong with these people in this backwards little fishing village. I understand the protruding eyes, thick lips and disappearing ears are par for the course when you're slowy turning into a Deep One, but in the scenarios they say that the most obvious cases are held behind locked doors and in cellars, but most of the half-breed folks walking around the steets look pretty obvious to me already.

I plan on running Return To Innsmouth for some brand new players. As fellow Keepers, can you recommend any ways that I can increase the shock value and downplay "the look" as to not give away the moment when the investigators finally find out "the truth"?

Thanks.

Take a look at Britney Spears, Wynona Ryder and Mark Wahlberg. They look good, even attractive . . . but there's something a little wrong, just slightly off with their looks. The young Jack Nicholson is another good example but somehow he seems to have refversed the transformation . . .

[The_Usernameless_Horror]

Maybe you could have their appearances only seem abnormal to players who FAIL (secret) Idea rolls? If they pass, their minds rationalise the abnormalities and they don't really notice; if they fail then they feel a definite wrongness. The second hybrid they meet should attract the same reaction, and this time they realise what features are out of the ordinary; the eyes, the shape of the skull, the skin and the gill slits. Characters of low sanity might become paranoid and see the Innsmouth Look in random NPCs they meet.

Alternately, maybe the players note nothing until an NPC raves at them in cryptic terms; "Look at him. He's got that LOOK he has. Folks like you, from OUTSIDE'd never notice, but thems what live here knows..." Then the Idea rolls are taken and the hybrids have a sinister air of weirdness; the players realise that they've never once seen the mayor blink... and it could have been one of the Investigators who has the Look first pointed out...

In this way an atmosphere of dread and paranoia can be created. Previously trusted NPCs suddenly take on a monstrous aspect. The tension also builds at with HP Lovecraft's typical pace and style of steadily mounting dread leading to a sanity shattering climax.

[Quiller]

I guess it all depends on the emphasis that you place on the characteristics or appearances. There's a multitude of people with weak chins, domed foreheads, bulbous eyes or sallow complexions. Hell, here in Grimsby, it's commonplace. Most of 'em have gills, too!

But most of the Deep-one hybrid deformities could be explained logically. The bulbous eyes could be the result of glandular problems, for example. Poor complexion, and even hair loss could be a result of a poor diet, or an illness. Okay, gills could be a problem. I guess shaving cuts would be hard to swallow. But that's where scarves or polo-necked sweaters would come in handy.