prokopetz:

Concept: a tabletop RPG scenario that’s basically My Life with Master meets Weekend at Bernie’s. You play as the favoured servants of a vampire lord, evil wizard, aristocratic mad scientist, or other classic Gothic baddie who has just met their untimely end in some bizarre accident, and – this is key – nobody knows about it yet except you.

The smart thing would be to quietly make yourselves scarce before the torch-wielding mob arrives, of course, but the player characters aren’t going to do that. Maybe there’s some sorcerous binding preventing you from abandoning the castle, maybe you require some exotic substance that only the master’s laboratory can produce to survive, or maybe you’re just too dumb and greedy to want to give up the good life. Simply coming clean isn’t an option owing to the fact that the master’s numerous enemies would be more than happy to take their revenge by proxy, so what you’re going to do instead is carry off a massive con to prevent anyone from realising the old bastard is dead.

Potential challenges include responding to the petitions of supplicants from the nearby village that furnishes the castle’s needs, fending off would-be monster slayers who don’t realise the job’s already been done, playing host to visits by the master’s fellow monster nobility, and dealing with whatever that thing in the basement is – you’ve never managed to get a good look at it, but you’re pretty sure it has more eyes than are strictly necessary.

(Rigging the master’s corpse up as a grisly marionette is optional, but recommended on the grounds that hell, what have you got to lose?)