Midnight In The Desert (Buckets of Blood Campaign Pitch)

Art from Cosimo Galluzzi. Most art here from them, actually

You're a broke loser, and you and some other broke losers have just met up in front of some 70s muscle car.  The voice on the payphone told you that it would get you all out of debt if you could simply deliver this briefcase to an address on the other side of the United States - and PLEASE don't open it, it's really for your own good. Whether it's from New York to New Mexico or from Washington to Florida doesn't really matter, because no matter what it's gonna be a long drive.

Inside the car is:

• The keys.
  
• A loaded double-barrel shotgun, with six more shells in the glovebox.
• One thousand dollars in cash. 
• A walkie-talkie with no batteries. Your employer's preferred method of communication.
• The briefcase. Locked and covered with talismans from every religion you can recognize, and several you don't. Don't open the briefcase.

If you for some reason find yourself opening the briefcase, then inside you find an ancient book with yellowed pages, everything written in Classical Arabic. How do you understand Classical Arabic? You do now.

It is The Necronomicon.

The briefcase and the talisman's purpose is to hide its presence. Open it, and you gain the magical equivalent of a nuke, but at the cost of having every single thing that wants that nuke know your precise location. That's assuming you open it. What if you do as you're told?

Well, you drive across the U.S.. You beg, borrow, and steal more money. You enjoy classic Americana (this was Marilyn Monroe's favorite diner!). You fend off demon cults, lovecraft cults, demonic horrors, lovecraftian horrors, government men, and cryptids/aliens. You marvel at natural beauty.

His head was killing him—but he felt on the brink of something big,
 something important. He had to get out, get
away from the house and the noise.
Out into the warm evening air.

Even with the book concealed, it still attracts all sorts of weirdness. Everywhere you go, something is wrong, and woe be upon the place where you linger for more than a day or two. To put it in more gameplay-oriented terms, the main loop would be travelling while trying to maintain resources (sleep, gas, food), and dealing with spooky complications on the road and at towns. As for tone, it should be spooky and weird, but have a humorous B movie edge, even if the humor is in the excessive amounts of gore.

All this takes place in the 80s/90s, of course.

1d6 Spooky Road Events

1. While driving at night, the environment around you is suddenly bathed in darkness. Then the road stripes disappear. Then the road. 
2. You hear the patter-patter of feet on the road, then something lands BAM on the roof. If you get out and see what it was you see something running off in the distance, leaving nothing but bloody bandages and the smell of rotten meat.
3. Carrion birds circle and follow your car.
4. An engine starts behind you, and you see red and blue lights. A police motorcycle is heading for you at top speeds, with no regards for the driver's safety.
5. A man sitting in the back seat asks for a drink. He wasn't there before.
6. Blocking the road is a procession of hooded, robed people. You're gonna be here for a while.

Rolling blackouts scheduled for this evening.

1d6 Creeps and Weirdos

1. A horned person in a business suit, floating as if underwater. His/her/their face is intensely familiar. He/she/they ask if you remember him/her/them. He/she/they will make you remember.
2. WHAT THE FUCK ITS THE FUCKIN MOTHMAN! He steals some of your snacks and tells you some cryptic advice about the next encounter/danger. He's a cool dude, really, the type you can chill out and have a couple beers with.
3. Someone in a lab coat who's exploded into crushing red and yellow tentacles, their deflated body being dragged along. It constantly emits a high pitched whine, like a thousand mosquitos. The disease isn't biological, listen for too long and you might catch it too.
4. A giant bigfoot wearing a top hat. He throws ripped-off cow genitals at your windshield and laughs heartily. It's only gonna escalate from here.
5. A battered pickup truck truck filled with teenagers, power tools, and kerosene. They've listened to one too many metal songs and played one too many games of B/X, and are now on a sadistic rampage. Forget no harm to minors, it's kill or be killed and they're probably all possessed anyways.
6. An elderly middle eastern man, wearing dark glasses. He's hitchhiking, and who would deny some poor old man? In reality, he wants to revisit some of the work of his youth, and he won't let anyone get in his way.

A psychic disease buzzing like a
summer evening. Lurid. Pervasive.

1d6 Particularly Messed-Up Towns

1. There's a certain sadness to this town. The historical St. Obed's Church was the people's pride and joy, and ever since it burnt down it seems like the community have all entered a state of mourning. They're even refusing to have more children.
2. The people here all have memory problems. They struggle to remember why you're talking to them, facts about the town, what they normally do. Peoplewatching, everyone seems to just move on autopilot. At night, they all go outside to look at the lights in the sky.
3. Everything's closed down, except for the mall. Car not working? Go to the mall. Need a doctor? Go to the mall. What about a place to sleep? Go to the mall. From the outside, the mall doesn't look like it's received any changes to accommodate anything.
4. This town is surrounded by a sort of bubble. No matter what time of year, when you go through the threshold, it's a sweltering, humid summer. It's almost like an everlasting summer, bro that's pretty messed up bro.
5. There's no one here. Everything's free. Something moves in the corn, though, laughing. This town is theirs now, and it does not suffer thieves.
6. Holy shit and piss and cum they put fluoride in the drinking water.

One day, the tides went out and never came back - still he heard the waves out in the desert.