BEST LEAVE THEM GHOSTS ALONE
The sun rises then sets on a clearing in the forest. A ghost tells a story of skipping stones with their friends a lifetime ago. Words of care are told to a loved one when it is already too late.
Old Gods of Appalachia is a podcast that’s been running since 2019. A TTRPG by Monte Cook would come later in 2023 after being crowdfunded in 2022. Both are set in an alternate-and-not-so-alternate historical early 20th century Appalachia. The Appalachian Mountains aren't just a pretty backdrop for stories: the mountain’s spine casts a shadow over everything, pushing the group to split, and eventually bring them all back together, in the adventure ‘Best Leave Them Ghosts Alone’.
The adventure opens during a summer in your characters’ childhoods. You are encouraged to allow your players to build up their relationships to each other and to the clearing that they discovered together. It is in this clearing that I fell in love with this adventure.
Shanna Germain writes a beautiful monologue that is evocative of the tone and language used by the podcast but also manages to separate itself from the source material by opening with something joyful. The imagery of Old Gods, both the podcast and the TTRPG, is rooted in the pain of the Appalachian region. Appalachia is not an easy place to live, let alone raise a family, and yet this childhood summer is meant to be full of sweat, sugar, and sun. The forests of the mountain don’t just take people away but nourish them as well.
A lot of TTRPGs live by the relationships that players and player characters have to each other. But Old Gods’ setting is a character in and of itself; the connection that the player characters have to their environment and surroundings adds a necessary sense of respect. You cannot truly love a place that you think will always try to hurt you - but that makes the times when it does much harder.
“And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,”
– William Shakespeare
I ran this adventure twice. Once in a cabin by a lake in Washington State and another over Discord. This difference did not matter when Ossie died
Each group had an Ossie, and each Ossie experienced death. Each Ossie had to see how all the players would react to the deal offered by Rabbit Rabbit, a large cottontail whose body is made of other rabbits.
It is a compliment to the opening set-up that both groups didn’t even hesitate to say yes to bringing their friend back.
But when you see someone come back to life, even if it’s by your own making, does it change the fact that they died? Does it remove the doubt of whether this is even still your friend at all or something else? This is where the real tragedy of the adventure sits. Death still took something that day.
“ ‘Tis a fearful thing,
to love what death can touch.”
– Yehuda Halevi
Decades later, each group member is notified about the second - and actual - death of Ossie. Their end of the bargain has come due and whether they chose to remember what happened or not, they must pay back their owe. It is from this moment that we get into the adventure proper.
‘Best Leave Them Ghosts Alone’ gives enough structure to the GM to be able to move the story along but leaves it open-ended enough that they can make adjustments to how the world and its inhabitants react to the decisions made by the players. Some other adventures would have every encounter be contentious or combat-driven, but this is not the case here. This place is indifferent to the player characters and, in some cases, doing nothing will be the best option.
My one complaint about the adventure would have to be with the system itself. Cypher is sold as being a setting-neutral system toolbox and using Old Gods is certainly their attempt to showcase that but I don’t think it does atmospheric horror very well. Cypher is a system where something must always be happening: there must be an obstacle or a challenge that is presented or else you’re not actually engaging with it. If I wanted a game that was like this adventure where there is a stated goal for everyone involved, Cypher makes sense. However, if you wanted a game that leaned more towards the Folk Gothic, Cypher falls a little short.
Ever onward, ever forward, yes?
– The Railroad Man
One of the questions that I have been left with each time I finished running this adventure is: what happens to these people afterwards? They paid their owe and they reconnected with these old friends. Yet, they have also built lives outside of this occurrence. Lives that they now have to come back to and live through after what just happened. Do the mountains still loom over them after they leave? How far does their shadow reach?
I hope that when you bring this adventure to your table, you can tell me your answer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the QQ OGOA group, Ruby Ariel Peach Saint Dennis, Dinocreepy, Mij0, and Fairfax for stealing corpses and cars full of moonshine. Thank you to my CabinCon OGOA group, Tia, X Da Storyteller, and Iphis for taking a chance on this setting that they had only played for the first time on that trip.
Special thanks to Geech for being the best smellhound on any side of the mountains.
Thank you to the team at Monte Cook and the artists Domenico Cava, Sarah Dahlinger, Roberto Pitturru, for making such a beautiful and evocative book.
Best Leave Them Ghosts Alone can be purchased here