Image by Greg Panagiotoglou
The Dare: Stranger Things meets Call of Cthulhu
A dark and abandoned house, a dare to spend the night in it, and a small club of kids looking to recover their stolen box of secrets.
$5.00
/ Session
Details
Once / Wednesday - 8:00 PM UTC
Jul 29
Session Duration / 3–4 hours
0 / 5 Seats Filled
Report Adventure
StartPlaying Money Back Guarantee
If your game doesn't happen, we guarantee a refund. Just reach out to StartPlaying Support. Refund Policy
About the adventure
Let’s start with some flavor text: “The 1980s. The sun is setting on Halloween night. Rumbling clouds can be heard somewhere far outside of town, slowly approaching. Your club had one entry rule: everyone writes down their darkest secret, folds it up, and locks it away forever. Someone has betrayed the club and now the box is gone. Roger, the worst of the neighbourhood bullies, says he has it. And now he’s waiting outside the old Barnaker House with a flashlight in one hand and your box of secrets in the other.” Welcome to The Dare, a Call of Kid-thulhu one-shot featuring pre-teen protagonists (10-13 years) getting stuck spending time in a supposed haunted house. This one-shot will be a sandbox style exploration, in which players will have to outlast whatever seems to be creeping around the house. It is a dark-themed adventure, like any natural Call of Cthulhu scenario, and will feature harm being done to children, as is natural for Call of Cthulhu protagonists. This one-shot also features dark themes and does not refrain from exploring such aspects. Warnings and lines will be signaled more in detail after joining.
Game style
Combat Lite
Roleplay Heavy
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Rules as Written (RaW)
Hexcrawl / Exploration
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(5)
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Highly rated for: Creativity, Inclusive, Sets the Mood
About me
Hi! My name is Marc and I am a Game Master with ~8 years of experience with TTRPGs. I am an addict of stories and have used this to run or play across different systems like Dungeons & Dragons 5e, Pathfinder 2e, Vampire the Masquerade and Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. I like to take inspiration from books for characters and themes, from movies for epic scenes and from music to help grow my imagination. I am a sandbox GM at heart and rules-lawyer in my mind, meaning I allow players to explore and flesh out their characters in the worlds I describe. I don’t punish mistakes that players might make, but I do keep table limits, so players don’t go overboard or hog time, or abuse the rules of the game. I do allow a little bending of the rules, as long as the rest of the players still have fun. I do not enforce themes, but my games tend to adhere to these and I always cooperate with my players to sync on themes and expectations. That starts with character creation and I always try to subscribe to my player’s ideas of their characters. If themes don’t align, I would help with suggestions of adjustment and if I can see player conflict from the beginning, I try to address professionally and help build a better game group. My sessions feature a mix of immersive descriptions and short “here’s where you didn’t check” reminders. Meaning I always let players initiate transitions. I like to describe scenes, play out NPCs and their voices and, sometimes, get lost in the immersion. But I’ve learned to push my players ahead or give them hooks to continue on the story. Combat will be fun and lenient, or high-stakes and high-energy. My strong areas are atmosphere, exciting moments in combat, and creepy or funny moments during play. I’ve made players feel creeped out, scared, excited, curious, happy, laugh-out loud and I always try to entertain their ideas. I've run both published adventures and homebrewed one shots or campaigns for friends or strangers, beginners or veterans and role players or tacticians. See you at my table!
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Player characters are pre-generated and tailored for the adventure. If players are interested in creating their own investigators, check out Chaosium's wiki for a structured guide: https://cthulhuwiki.chaosium.com/investigators/ The Keeper is always interested in hearing about your investigator ideas and will be available to guide and help in creating one! Each kid will have its own secret. The Keeper will assign it randomly from a defined pool, but players have the option to come with their own idea. This can be a dark or terrible secret that I child might keep because of trauma or even fear. Or it could be something very goofy or silly.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
We will be playing on Foundry Virtual Tabletop. To participate, you will only need a PC with internet access and a web browser, along with a mic and preferably a headset. Checklist to prepare: 1. Have a computer with access to internet. I would recommend Google Chrome, but it depends on each person's computer. If VTT connections arise, I recommend to have 2 other browsers as a backup. 2. Have a set of headphones and mic prepared to isolate noise and better the immersion. 3. Have Discord installed, with an account joined on the server, ready to start the session. The link to the server will be shared to the player dashboard.
What Marc brings to the table
- 7+ years of experience running TTRPGs, including Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu - Art to portray the scenes and handouts for immersive investigation and clues searching - Theather of the Mind - Playlists and music to set the mood
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Headphones
Platforms used
Safety
How Marc creates a safe table
Call of Cthulhu features a lot of unsettling content, be it visual or in the mind. Because of that, I bring content warnings before each session to make sure everyone is informed and no unexpected surprise affects the players. I keep the adventure unchanged. If anyone wants to speak up or interrupt a situation that makes them uncomfortable or if it's too much, please do! The table is open and people can take a break, step away for a moment or speak up. The main principles of my table are open expectations, common sense, no pressure and an interest to follow the tone and setting of the game. I want to have a controlled environment in which we can experience the themes of the game safely. In this scenario, players are children. Because of how Call of Cthulhu games play out, harm may come to them. And players are invited to act like children. To roleplay as snobby kids and play pranks and to keep up a whimsy spirit natural to youngsters. Even so, I do not condone player to player or targeted bullying.
Content warnings
Safety tools used