What I've Been Doing With Cults of Chaos

So every two weeks for a while now, I've been running a game at a local gaming event. It's pretty great: they reserve a whole restaurant/bar, which is spacious and has great food. The crowd is mostly the younger crowd of gamers (a few times my table has had more under-18s than adults).  And of course, I've been running Dark Albion.

For this event, I've had a floating group of interested players. Plenty of them come back one session after the next, but it's not always the same people, and there's always been at least one or two new players each time. So the format really required that I have something episodic and variable.  I'm running an "Inquisitor campaign" as described in Cults of Chaos, with each session starting out with the PCs being sent by the Clerical Order to go investigate some possible Chaos manifestation.

Here's how I've been doing each adventure: just before starting the session, I'll quickly roll up a random Cult from Cults of Chaos, using the method outlined in the book. I then choose a suitable location to fit the adventure.  And that's it. The rest runs itself.  That's how proven and fantastic Cults of Chaos is for making up not just a group of villains, but the whole setup of the situation they find themselves in.

Here's just a few of the randomly-determined sects/adventures I've rolled up so far and ran:

-A chaos sect in Canterbury operating out of a whorehouse, who have corrupted a number of local prominent people, and are using some underground ruins for dark purposes involving mutation.

-A report of a werewolf attacking an isolated village in York; that turns out to actually be the work of an insane (but non-supernatural) serial killer.

-A sect that operated out of a monastery, who had come into contact with an Elven incursion from a nearby stone circle.

-A village in "the Pale" outside Calais, who had entered into contact with the Frogmen and plotted to help the Frogmen invade.

-A gang of bandits (non-cultists) who had gotten hold of a stolen relic of the Church, and were planning to sell it to a nobleman. The noble is a powerful sorcerer intent on using the relic as an offering to a demon.

Those are just a few examples of the groups and adventures I created almost totally at random, in about 15 minutes before each session.


So, if you think a tool like this could be useful for your fantasy campaign, be sure to check out Cults of Chaos!


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