Today's guest is "Dead Man Stomp" (hereafter called DMS), a starter scenario culled from the pages of the quite respectable 5th editions of the Call of Cthulhu rules. I ran this with 7th edition rules, however, just requires a slight bit of editing to make it work with that set.
r̶e̶p̶r̶i̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶l̶e̶d̶g̶e̶ It turns out that's incorrect; it's actually been reprinted in the 6e rulebook too. Thanks to Darrin Priddy on Facebook for the info! I remember reading through it when I first looked at the rulebook for 5e about 4 years ago now, thinking, "Oh my outer Gods, it's a gritty crime romp involving zombies and re-animation via music in the Roaring 20's, I HAVE to run this!" The fact it's got Nyarlathotep involvement and has a music theme just sealed the deal for me - I admit, I am biased towards tales concerning the Crawling Chaos, because duh. What Keeper can resist the temptation to play THE trickster god, especially one like me who's played him before and become quite the addicted little acolyte of his indeed?
However, I think I expected a bit too much of DMS - it's short, sweet, and way too easy for seasoned players (I'd recommend more firefights and bringing in the graveyard zombies a little sooner for the seasoned vets), but it is only a starter type campaign, after all. There's not much room for pure horror atmosphere building until the graveyard even with all the dancing corpses, although not for lack of character - DMS deals with the criminal grimy underbelly of a big city in the 20's, racism, and the differences in culture between African-Americans and white Americans in the 20's, setting an interesting scene for Keepers that wish to play around with more touchy themes or that want to give a flavor of "gritty noir romp" to a long campaign. I would highly recommend that seasoned Keepers use DMS either as a breather episode, a starter for newcomers to the game, or a personal warmup for the self and the players after a bit of length away from Keeping. It's also excellent for new Keepers - the clues are just minimal enough, the mystery just simple enough but intriguing.
The characters in DMS, and of whatever city you put it in (I chose Chicago as per the game suggestions but any large city could work), REALLY make this scenario. Leroy is a sympathetic drunk who lost his girl, Bonato's the stereotypical crime boss with his greasy underlings, Pete Manusco has a secret criminal past to hide under that polished exterior, and Detective Daniel Rogers is a tee-totaling Prohibition agent that is quite simply Keeper Gold. Seriously, the detective's cool, he can be funny, a hassle, an ally, a Deus Ex Machina... anything really. And he makes for a great connection branch-off point to other places, too. Tn my current campaign trek, he's leading the players into my next one-night scenario, "The Madman", by asking them to do him a favor since he trusts them and check up on an old reporter friend of his...
Be prepared for players to do VERY unexpected things in this campaign, especially if they're all flawed or criminal/shady in some way. One, an antiquarian, kept dwelling on the "runic inscriptions" in Leroy Turner's trumpet to the point she kept the damned thing and intends to study it; I probably won't be following on that thread any time soon but it does leave a tantalizing string to follow hanging... My players also engaged in a (very one-sided) chase with Joey the Rat and ended up cornering the guy in an alley easily; they struck a deal with the gangster and ended up helping Leroy get kidnapped in exchange for directions to the Bonato Crime Family's warehouse! Absolutely NOT what I expected to happen (I'd planned for an epic car chase), but hey, them's the way the cookies crumble... and of course, they all lost SAN for realizing they were implicit in poor Leroy's madness!
I would recommend, if you wanna stress the connection Nyarlathotep has with the trumpet, that you have SOME human avatar of his, however minor, show up at least once. Hell, I'd recommend using the Messenger and Soul of the Outer Gods wherever you like (and there goes that bias of mine again). He is so goddamned fun to play! If you can play a sneaky greasy trickster or Barnum-like charlatan, you can play Nyarlathotep, and every Keeper should play him at LEAST once somewhere! Why not here? He could even get black PCs into the Blue Heaven, maybe by sneaking them in or intimidating the bouncers somehow - hey, the more to see the ensuing chaos, the better, right? Though do be careful and NEVER have him reveal important plot coupons or be too helpful. He should always be a sardonic, mocking, maybe curious observer. I liken it to a human binge-watching a drama on Netflix - you have no serious stock in the show or the characters, because they're not really anything more than entertainment to you... but damn, do you ever want to see how it ends!
This story is short and harmless enough, and makes an excellent "breather" for a longer campaign as is. Seriously, unless your players do something very, VERY wrong with Bonato's gang at the warehouse, you will never even come close to possibly contemplating the loss of a PC. DMS can easily be made much more deadly, though - just adjust the number of gangsters, make Detective Daniels more persistent... maybe even make the zombies re-animate early. As something to slot into another campaign, it works very well. YSDC's MoN Companion recommends slotting DSM into the New York chapter of that campaign, and I'd have to agree with that assessment - though, if you DO slot it into MoN: New York, I'd suggest adding Bloody Tongue (NYC) cultist influence (maybe the Bonato gang's in bed with them, or they're members of/a front for the cult themselves?) and more Nyarly influence yet. But hey, not my Campaign, not my Old Ones - you will do, it is said as you will...
So, overall, DSM is good clean starter CoC fun, able to be done in one night, but I would REALLY not recommend it for 5-6 players; it's just too short a little tale and too many players makes it just a little too cluttered. And getting (and keeping!) Investigators together for such a small story like this proved to be a pain since everyone was following different leads, though that's almost always the case in a larger group if the PCs don't know each other/have a common thread. New Keepers, ALWAYS, ALWAYS HAVE A COMMON THREAD BETWEEN PCS SOMEHOW IN LARGE-SCALE CAMPAIGNS, I really cannot stress this enough! It saves time and effort in the long-run and really will give you fewer headaches with large groups. Overall, 7/10 - flawed and too easy, but would probably run again because the characterizations and charm make this scenario.