The Tunnelers Campaign Session 1



I’m keeping a physical notebook for the Tunnelers campaign, something I have regretted not sticking to as diligently in the past.



On Tuesday, May 12^th, 2025, I ran the first session of the Dundarave Washington Tunnelers campaign. Prep for the session consisted of rereading the play material I have been working on for months and deciding on starting circumstances: I decided to slow roll the start by having the party be dropped off in the town center after hitchhiking to town, but a more robust set of starting scenarios could be valuable for repeat running of the game: onto my to-do list it goes. I arbitrarily placed the starting date as June 3^rd 2003 (a Tuesday to match the Tuesday I ran the game on), and did some quick searches of timelines of notable US happenings in 2003, as I want to be able to give a sense of a news cycle in a world with television and internet access. To my delight, June 4^th 2003 is the day Martha Stewert is indicted for using privileged investment information. I cannot think of a more perfect piece of tonal setting for the bizarre experience of being bombarded by the banal while facing down the supernatural. Sometimes things just work out beautifully. I do think a calendar is pretty much necessary for this game and I ought to think about how much to intervene in the real world historical events. Following that discovery I plotted out my descriptive intro to the town and rolled the encounters for the first day: a herd of elk, a vulture (spying for a teen occultist), raccoons, and a werebat in the night.

The first half of the roughly 2 hour session itself was largely taken up by character creation. For one of the players present this is a first introduction to ttrpgs, so I took care to walk through the steps of rolling up a character and define unfamiliar terminology. In the second half, the party arrived in town: hobbyist photographer and dentist dropout Ash (she/her) and rebellious A/V archival tech Jel (she/her), acquaintances from the Tunnelers forums, are dropped off after hitchhiking up State Route 9, traveling north and landing in 0404. They know that “protogeometric” on the forums has paid for hotel rooms for the Tunneler influx to Dundarave, but not where that hotel is. They also know some basic history of the town (being named for a Scottish castle, a replica of which is nearby, built by an eccentric founding family during the mining industry years) and have seen some of the sights along the highway into town — most notably the under-bridge area in 0506 and Frank’s Farm in 0607. To recharge after travel and avoid the ire of the sheriff, who is nearby looking grouchy at these disreputable newcomers, Ash suggests going to Bradley’s Pizza in 0505. The duo walks there and to their luck discover another one of the Tunneler influx, recognizable by an over-laden backpack: “professorplum2” from the chatrooms, a man with an enthusiastic but formal style of posting who turns out to be a mioddle aged anthropology teacher named Anton. Not wanting to have the burden of breaking the ice, the party walks in where Anton can see their own backpacks loaded with digging equipment. Being friendly and enthusiastic he immediately invites them to share some of his pizza (“pepperoni — it’s the only good one on the menu!”) and begins welcoming them to the town.



Anton shares a lot: the accomidation that “protogeometric,” or Pierre, has paid for is the Treeline Motel in 0504. Anton himself is paying from his own pocket for a nicer room in the Pioneer’s Respite, the nicer hotel in town, where he is researching Salish legends for some clue about the video, and making little progress. He does share that he has learned the location of the Harlowe family’s old abandoned mansion, built back in the pre-timber-industry silver mining years. The two disaffected young women are glad for the information but struggle to relate to this overly sincere middle aged man, and the pizza is terrible (crust overdone, sauce too thin), so they excuse themselves to head to their new base.



In the next session, I plan to place the creature encounters along the way as they traverse the field between here and the motel.

This play report written while listening to Astro-Creep: 2000 – Songs of Love, Destruction, and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head, by White Zombie