# CoC D20: Escaping the Asylum



## Labmonkey-XL (Dec 17, 2002)

I had a great campaign I just finished up and thought i would share since everyone really cares so much  .

The players started off in a mental asylum with complete Amnesia and dont remember anything of how they got there, what year it was or anything.

It started off with each character waking up from a drug induced coma into a crazy scene reminescent of the movie Natural Born Killers where the prisoners are rioting through the prison.

The mental patients have escaped and the security guards have been massacred and survivors have locked themselves in various area's of this insane asylum.

Characters tried to make their way to the outside, but their is a raging blizzard outside and decided to stay and find their files on how they ended up in the asylum.

During certain points i triggered flashbacks, but the PCs had no idea what was going on and figured they were part of some sick science experiment and reacted to these flashbacks as they normally would.

Soon enuff while the players were trying to survive the asylum and the flashbacks, they came across a docter who locked himself in the medical supply room who says that another Docter might have their files in sanity ward 13, as well as the keys to his SUV so they can get off the mountain top and into the town below the asylum.

At one point the flashbacks begin to hit their heightened peak, I started off a session supposedly back in the real world. The characters came to the conclusion that everyone in the small town or wormwood was possessed by demons and went on a homicidal killing spree.

Afterwards they were commited to the asylum where they are now and found the file that explained their dilemma.

During the Escape a mob of mental patients were chasing after the player group so they locked themselves in an operating room that had flashing lights due to electricity failures and created a strobe effect, (at which point i turned on the strobe light for the mood).

The players heard a montone buzzing from the other room connected to the operating room.

As they investigated they came across a horrifying scene, a security guard was strapped to a table with his stomach open and strapped to a table revealing his insides. Operating was a strange insect like creature that the players could not get a good look at, but it had a strange black chitinous carpace, no facial features, but six appendages that were digging thru the security guards insides while he was still alive.

One of the players failed a sanity check and screamed, unloading a 9mm clip he found on a dead security guard earlier. The insect like creature screached and jumped to the ceiling crawling on it into the other adjoining room at fast speeds.

The docter and another PC tried to cut it off by going the opposite way by taking it out with a shotgun, as the docter entered the Mi-Go was hiding above the doorway and hacked off his arm, the other player who went crazy finally ran out of bullets firing upon the thing.

The characters found a door that lead to another part of the asylum, the creature was still crawling around while the postal PC kept screaming at it, the players dragged the docter into the other room and grabbed the hysteric PC and ran into the other room with the Mi-Go close behind them.

They shut the door behind them and used the shotgun to bar the door. All they could hear was banging against the metal walls from the creature locked inside the operating room.

Sanity Failure all around as players tried to make sense of whats going on. Luckily they found a medical storage closet and took ALOT of meds to cope with their loss as well as patching up the docter with help from a nurse survivor earlier.

The scene was tense and memorable, and players still talk about that scene to this day.

Eventually the players made it out of the Asylum into the town of wormwood to find it completely empty, with the ONLY road out of town blocked off, and the phone lines out.

In the end it turned into a survival game where the players had to wait out the blizzard, dodging Mi-Go that swarm the town looking for survivors and anyone to experiment upon.

In the ending session only one PC was left alive but when the help finally came he was COMPLETELY insane and the ONLY survivor of this entire massacre.

Eventually a government coverup ensued, the player was commited once again, and the entire county that wormwood was based in was blocked off due to a "Biohazard spill".

I'm thinking of doing a followup campaign where the players are a special task force of FBI agents who are trying to figure out whats going on, and have the surviving PC return in his roll as the delusional homicidal sole survivor of the Wormwood Massacre.

Hope this gives some good ideas, I know my players loved it!


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## Broccli_Head (Dec 18, 2002)

Very cool summary. 

How did you run the amnesia? What game mechanics did you use to simulate what the PCs knew and didn't?

How long did the campaign take? 

Any maps?


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## Labmonkey-XL (Dec 18, 2002)

As far as the amnesia goes, it was all roleplaying and flashbacks.

They just woke up in an asylum amidst all this madness. Every once in a while a certain scene would trigger a flashback to the PCs leading normal lives.

Every flashback i let them roleplay since they had NO idea what was going on, so they responded to the flashbacks as they normally would. 

Eventually they picked up some clues as to why they were there and how they got to be in the asylum.

The players in the flashback had full freedom, and i was careful NOT to have them killed (which was pretty hard since one of the players is kinda megolomaniacal and homicidal).

A voice in his head started to kick in when he saw something in the woods, that he had really no memory of, just the shape and the odd way it moved. It whispered in his head that demons possess the town inhabitants, and he told the rest of the players.

The last part of the flashback session is the players hearing this same whisper everytime they got close to the woods in the town of wormwood. They utterly failed sanity checks, armed themselves and started hallucinating that the inhabitants were in fact demons, so next thing you know they rampaged across town on a homicidal killing spree.

The flashback session ends and they are back in the mental hospital.

As far as maps, there really is only 2, a map of inside the Asylum, and a map of the town of Wormwood. Dont know where they are now, but if i do a followup campaign i'm gonna have to find the maps quickstyle.

The campaign lasted for about 2 months, with 4 hour sessions on tuesday and wednesday nights, and 6 hour sessions on sundays.


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