Originally posted on This Rough Magic substack.
Warning: Contains spoilers for an unpublished scenario.
Set in 1931 Detroit, during the dying days of Prohibition and the lead-up to the American Legion Convention, this tale begins with a favor from an old friend, a free-wheeling dentist who never knew when to hedge a bet, especially around gangsters. It pulls investigators into a bloody tug-of-war between the violent bootlegging outfit and something far older, stranger, and sadder lurking in the waters of the Great Lakes.
The story is thick with gangsters, corrupt cops, secret tunnels, and speakeasy doors, but that’s just the local frame. The intended heart of the scenario? It’s about the incalculable weight of blood and the murky nature of humanity.
Exploring Identity
This scenario let me twist a classic Mythos trope, Deep One transformation, into something more fragmented and regional. What happens when your dreams aren’t of the ocean, but something primal and reptilian calling from the depths of Lake Superior? What does it mean to be drawn to something alien that still feels like home? And what if it’s the lesser of two (or three) evils?
Investigators will meet hybrids torn between their human lives and their monstrous inheritance. Some flee it. Some worship it. Some try to bargain with it. That tension, between legacy and self, runs throughout this scenario.
Family as Burden and Beacon
The core relationships here are haunting. A mother who abandoned her child to flee her father’s cult. A son locked in an asylum by his father to keep him from transforming. A man begging strangers to rescue his boy from a government cage.
Every major NPC carries the weight of family, and none of them escapes it clean. That’s the emotional tension I wanted to surface, not just the horror of what you’re becoming, but the horror of what you left behind. And the hope that maybe, just maybe, it’s not too late to make it right.
Who Are the Real Monsters?
At the center of Sleeping with the Fishes is a central question, a challenge to both Lovecraft and ourselves: What makes a monster?
It’s easy to point at the Deep Ones. They’re misshapen. They live in shadows. They move through water like ghosts and worship strange gods. They were Howard’s xenophobic anxieties manifest. But this scenario allows you to sit with them a while. You see the lengths they go to for kin. They ask for help, not conquest. And when they bargain, it’s for a life, not a sack of cash.
Now turn to the humans. Torture by ambitious gangers. Corrupt cops pantomime justice while cashing mob checks. And the system, government and medical alike, locks up innocents in a research wing because they looks strange and come from the wrong town.
Sleeping with the Fishes doesn’t give a clean answer. It aims for you to sit with the discomfort. The scenario invites players to step into murky waters, morally and emotionally. Do you protect the ones with gills and claws because they show more humanity than the men in suits? Or do you turn on them because the world tells you that anything alien must be dangerous?
In its development, this scenario began as a pulp romp through Prohibition-era Detroit, but it turned into something thornier. It became my first intentional foray into exploring belonging and otherness through play. And it asks something that horror allows us to explore:
What if the monster just wants a home, and the real terror is how far we’ll go to keep them from it?