Open House Adventure Seeds

[Armorlord]

Turn strange events of the Open House into BtS adventure ideas!

Hook:
-A young man driving home from a convention for fans of certain roleplaying games finds his return trip taking inexplicably longer than it should. The man examines his route and double checks the miles for the missed turn off, and still finds that his trip counter for the return drive reports almost exactly 50 miles more than there should possibly have been, along with 2-3 more hours added onto the trip total. The man reports experiencing strong emotions of anger, rage, helplessness, and despair at times during the trip, and feeling extreme exhaustion, mentally and physically, towards the end.

Possible leads and clues:
-The man reports that at one point somewhere between Cleavland and Pennsylvania he believed he only had about 22 more miles until he cleared Ohio, but that it took noticeably long, however he cannot recall the actual time or miles involved.
-The roleplaying games in question play heavily off of supernatural themes and reference the work of Victor Lazlo.
-The man's friends are dubious due to his record of getting lost, but the man insists that he has driven that way a few times before, to the same publisher's 'Open House' event, and that he triple checked the routes, miles, and hours upon waking the next day from his return.

Possible Beyond the Supernatural Line:
-An entity is preying on motorists, manipulating them and feeding on their emotions, heroes must travel hard to track down this highway haunter.

Possible Beyond the Supernatural Sinker:
-Through the course of the investigation and hunting of the entity, the heroes find that instead of merely randomly going from one available motorist to another, it was going after fans of these games in particular. Further investigation indicates gremlin activity affecting a group of fans on their way to the Open House, this and psychic impressions seem to indicate that these things are not being sent by the publisher. Is someone, or something trying to disrupt it?

Bonus NPC: Investigation of previous year's gremlin activity uncovers a young Welshman with a latent and uncontrolled psychic power that edits his presence out of the minds of others. When suffering from injuries or stress, those that fail their saves vs psionics fail to notice or remember his presence. Those directly interacted with will remember conversations and actions, but will not associate those events with the larger events around him, even if he is a large part of those events. People can be reminded that he was involved, but will forget again within 2d4 hours. If reminded of having been reminded before they may make their save again at +4 to remember being reminded from then on.
Those that possess the power of Total Recall that failed the save at the time must make the save again when recalling those events or only recall events with his edited out of them. A perception check, difficulty based on how big a role the young man played, will reveal that there are stark blank spots in the memory. Attempts to Total Recall direct interactions succeed as normal, though the lack of information on anything going on around those interactions is usually obvious to the psychic.

Edit: Let's narrow down the category.

[Natasha]

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=106013

[Lord Z]

That's an interesting hook, Amorlord. I think that the convention aspects will resonate well with any gamers who would play this game.

If you are willing to take a sci-fi route, missing time is an important element of alien abduction stories. Aliens, contacted during the convention because of use of some prop (maybe a old scroll used in a LARP or an piece of space ship debris sold as a twelve sider at auction). Now the alien are tracking and abducting everyone who was attending, one at a time.

If a less epic game is prefered, maybe someone else is just using the same technology. Since gremlins go just about anywhere in the megaverse, maybe they stole an alien time distorter gizmo. They brought it to BtS Earth, and are camped near the highway. The technology is too complex or esoteric for even their magic derived technical capabilities. They are using travelers as lab rats while figuring out how to use it.

The psychic who makes other forget about him could be described as using a haywire version of the power Psychic Invisibility. His lack of control suggests he would be categorized as a Latent Psychic or a Cursed Psychic (from Rifter #1 for 1st edition). Or he could be a Medium whose Spirit Guide is unique because it isn't human; the psychic isn't in control because it is the spirit that is doing it.