I’m just throwing this out here because God knows our team won’t have time any time soon to make something like this. Anyone can take this idea for a Eureka mystery module and run with it, it would be a great idea for a submission to the upcoming Eureka mystery module jam. Don’t worry if you think someone else is already doing it, two people taking this same idea are still gonna turn out with two very different modules. And, that’s two modules. Players can play both.
In this post I'm gonna lay out all the concepts and ideas that this hypothetical module may entail. I’m making this a regular type of post where I pitch Eureka adventure modules to the fanbase in a sorta stream-of-consciousness kinda way and offer as much scaffolding as I can in the hopes that somebody will make it, because the A.N.I.M. Team is at project capacity, but more mystery modules are always needed, and if we want to play our own game then the modules we play have to be written by somebody else anyway.
Anyone with ideas they think they can contribute on this concept, please feel free to comment and discuss them.
I'm pitching this adventure module as a way to get the most use out of the Extreme Conditions expansion as possible, since there are currently no adventure modules that utilize it at the time of writing this.
Hook Ideas
Missing friend 1
Hiker friend doesn’t come back from hiking trip deep into the heart of some national park like Yellowstone. Search & Rescue have their hands full with some other shit. (Maybe related, maybe not) investigators must make multi-day hiking trip using investigative skills to try and trace his steps. This would involve multiple tic tak toe grid maps that the investigators must cross in the correct directions.
Missing Friend 2
Friend gone crazy. Set off to destination. Search & Rescue not concerned. A friend of the investigators has been acting weird, talking cryptically, and then he disappeared. Except he didn’t really disappear.
His movements are easily tracked by investigation, and he went to [national park]. The investigators have some rough idea of his destination but he has a couple days head start on them. In this version, they’ll be actively tracking him and trying to catch up with him while trying to figure out what is driving him to go where he’s going.
What’s going to happen when he gets to his destination, learning that is going to be up to investigation, or failing to catch up with him in time.
In either version of the Missing Friend idea, finding and investigating the friend’s camp sites could give important clues to his motives and whereabouts, so it wouldn’t just be exclusively following footprints and stuff. Hell, investigation of camp sites they find would be really good for figuring out if this is even their friend’s campsite or someone else’s.
Mysterious Treasure 1
One or more of the investigators is contacted by a mysterious individual who wants them to participate in a “treasure hunt.” They’re given coordinates extremely deep in a national park, but also told they’ll have to solve clues to find X number of keys at other locations in the area to open the door to the vault where the coordinates are.
Mysterious Treasure 2
There is a treasure this guy wants them to find and bring back to him that he sent a previous expedition to find and they never came back. The investigators are tasked with finding the treasure and figuring out what happened to the previous expedition. The benefactor thinks that the expedition probably just skipped out with the money, so he isn’t very concerned. But you know some shit happened.
Truth Ideas
Some Scary Screature
The friend who went hiking and didn’t come back is because of a scary screature(s), and it’s stalking other hikers/campers around the area, few of which have lived to tell the tale and those who have are injured and stranded in the wilderness with no way to call for help.
The creature or creatures may be invisible, camouflaged, just really tough and dangerous, or have some other advantage. They may not even be creatures, it could be just one completely mundane maniac with a gun.
If it is a creature or creatures, I had an idea about large numbers of human-sized praying mantises as monsters for a Eureka adventure recently. They would be extremely stealthy and extremely deadly if allowed to get close, but could also have just 5 Superficial/Penetrative HP like a human and be dispatched by a single bullet. Don’t forget though there still has to be a mystery. What are these things? Where are they coming from? Answering these questions will be vital to stopping them or at least preventing future deaths.
If it’s just a guy with a gun you may want to restrict certain paranormal traits because otherwise one of the investigators might casually eat him without even realizing that was the killer.
An advantage of the stealthy monster idea is that it can really help take advantage of the pissing and shitting mechanics in the expansion. One of the main purposes of those mechanics is to encourage the party to separate, meaning they’re vulnerable to getting picked off.
And an advantage of there being a large number of these creatures is that it means that the investigators get lucky and blast the first one they see, that doesn’t mean they’re out of the woods. You should probably expect that at least one investigator will have a gun for this.
Most Dangerous Game
That mysterious benefactor is luring the investigators into a trap, where he and his band of other psychos will hunt them for sport. This should of course still be a mystery, meaning that by paying attention the investigators can get some idea of what may have happened to previous parties and what they’ve gotten themselves into in time to be prepared to try and turn the tables on their hunters, or at least get a head start on escaping them. And like having multiple monsters, having multiple guys with guns makes them a more consistent threat. Especially because guys with guns in Eureka are honestly more of a threat than like 60% of monsters you can come up with.
He just hurt his leg
Scary screatures are awesome but don’t discount mundane explanations. The friend just being mundanely stranded in the wilderness and just hoping somebody finds him before he starves can be just as much of a compelling mystery.
He was serious about the treasure.
Like I said it doesn’t have to be a creature. Having to do a whole scavenger hunt to find a bunch of keys spread out in the wilderness is already a mystery.
Of course you could easily overlap some of these. Like, the benefactor guy was totally serious about the treasure hunt game but there is also a scary screature.
One thing you should probably not go with is “it was crazy savage natives.” Also don't just copy some "there's creepy stairs in the woods" r/nosleep shit unless you think you have a real mystery to contribute. Those stories are scary because there is no explanation given. For a Eureka mystery the PCs should be able to figure out at least a lot of what's going on, and so you shouldn't try to make it scary with things that get less scary the more they are explained.
Gameplay Concepts
Here’s some gameplay concepts I feel are very important to the module I'm imagining.
Kolchakian
This was probably obvious but this module would take place across a really broad area and utilize the travel mechanics and stuff.
Time limit, but like a long time limit.
Multiple versions of this idea would involve a pretty important Ticking Clock, but one that still gives the investigators at least a week or two so before, like, their friend dies or whatever. This kind of “long term hurrying” would force the investigators to pace themselves instead of just rushing the whole time, and would force engagement with stuff like the hunting and fishing rules.
Multiple Grids
Here’s where the really unique part comes in. A grid of map grids. I guess that really just means a big grid but probably only about 9 squares would be shown at one time.
Great Fairy PC Opportunity
This would probably make the most sense if this took place somewhere in northwestern Europe, but what the hell the Eureka rulebook already does imply that fairies exist in North American at least in the present day. A Fairy Trait PC could be established as living deep in the forest, and be introduced to the party once they enter there, and decide to help out because it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to them in however many years. I think this would make a great “vibe” for the relationship between the rest of the party and a fairy PC and would allow a fairy PC to truly be some magical weirdo who lives in the woods even in the “urban fantasy” setting of Eureka.
so im doing a project/research about how many people go missing in state parks near caves and tunnel systems.
the first map is where the most people have gone missing without a trace, and the second map shows that most of the disappearances are exactly where cave systems are. feel free to jump in on the convo im looking for feedback!
What’s up, I’m Morris/Dakota/Mo/idgaf. I’m 19. And I just love talking and interacting with cool shit. I love art of any type, weather it is written, illustrated, filmed, sculptured, or what have you. I just love passionate people.
I don’t know how to summarize what my page is. Frankly, I just post what comes to mind, a weekly photo dump, and repost funnier people than me.
Feel free to ask a question or DM me about the nerdy shit you’re into.
I love midwest emo music, Trigun, CreepCast, Car Seat Headrest, TØP, Sam & Max, reading fan fiction, lost media, Detroit Become Human, rural photography, mixed media art, horror literature, college films, Adventure Time, poetry, Call of Duty, The King in Yellow (novel), the color orange, religious sci-fi, spoiling my cat Suka, yapping, listening to audio dramas, collecting vinyl records, illustrating, writing shitty poetry, going on walks, punk culture, Spider-Man, rainbow trouts, funeral science, history, unreliable narrators, moose, TMNT, horned beetles, Missing 411, catholic imagery in media, ARGs, Tales From the Gas Station, West Anderson films, theater arts, camping, Miles “Tails” Prowler, Midnight Gospel, Lego mini figs, national parks, shiny trinkets, tattoos, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the removal of AI from creative spaces, and so so much more.
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The other day someone saw my Oregon coast hoodie and said he has just watched a documentary about Bigfoot and all these people going missing in Oregon and I just explained that it's not Bigfoot. It's people going out into the forest, dying from exposure and their bodies not being found because of #1 its mountainous and also because of how dense it is and then you have to take into account that it's literally a rainforest with an abundance of fungi so you have organic material breaking down much faster and you have all the elements for someone to go missing and never be found and I didn't even mention mudslides
HE ACTUALLY GOT MAD THAT I HAD A RATIONAL EXPLANATION
I promise you this cornfed republican Texas asshole has never even seen the Pacific Northwest rainforest. Anyone who has ever seen it can easily see how so many people can go missing and never be found. Several serial killers have used it as a dumping ground. There's hundreds of unclaimed people out there that will never be found and it's not because of fucking Bigfoot.
you cannot reason with people who are wired to accept conspiracy theories over facts
To me, the worst kind of dead you can be is missing. The scariest kind of body is one they never find. One they send people looking for. One that they give up on.
There are skeletons out there in the woods, and the mountains, and caves, somewhere human eyes have failed to look. And those places, wherever they happen to be, are the only graves those bodies ever get. Frozen, starved, eaten, exposed, bones broken at the bottom of a gulch.
And maybe more tragic than the circumstance of their death is what follows. The lonely decay. Never buried. Never mourned. You can't mourn a thing that's missing. Not until you can call it dead. Not until they find them.
Everyone's afraid of monsters in the woods, but the woods have only ever been a perfect place to hide. That's where bodies go when god doesn't have anywhere else to put them.
