Thoughts from the Twilight Zone VI

Last meditation on the Twilight Zone this year. After all the familiar episodes and the sometime uninspiring if novel dross, I found a final few that sparked new ideas for me. A Stop at Willoughby gives me an idea for Mage: the Awakening, The After Hours could be the source of a host of stories, and A World of His Own gives me an idea for a great horror scenario.

Season 1: Episodes 30-36

A Stop at Willoughby

A stressed out ad man dreams of a pastoral town on his train ride commute. As his life unravels, he tries to escape into the town of Willoughby. It doesn’t end well.

I thought this was going to be another escape into the Twilight Zone but instead our protagonist simply dies jumping off a train. Still I think it could be the basis for an Astral journey. Willoughby could be a realm in the Tenemous (part of humanity's collective dream and memory for non-Mage fans), a vision of perfect pastoral beauty and existence. Perhaps meditating on a train (or falling asleep in the right seat) transports a person’s mind to this place...unless it is a trap drawing souls to their doom. Perhaps some entity lurks there living off the energy of those who fling themselves to their death or waste away in an attempt to live in Willoughby. Can the Mages destroy the monster within the town? And what to do with those who find themselves still drawn to its comforting bounds?

The After Hours

A woman finds out she is a mannequin when she reaches the nonexistent 9th floor.

I love this classic, it raises so many questions. What are these mannequins? Aliens? Fae wood? A separate species living alongside us?

What happens if an outsider (i.e. a real human being) makes it to the 9th floor? Do the mannequins hide? Or do the hungry wooden creatures move in and devoured their identity?

Another question, how does Masha White have a mother? Is it just a fiction of her mind or does she possess some sort of cover like in Demon: the Descent? Is there a whole life these beings possess when they leave the store? What happens when a PC discovers their sibling was always just department store mannequin?

In the Chronicles of Darkness these creatures could be a clan of Prometheans, a Demon who stores covers in semi-animate wood, or perhaps something stranger still.

A World of His Own

A famous playwright has the power to conjure anything he describes into being. Unfortunately his wife does not believe him until it is too late.

The protagonist creates a mistress, an elephant, and even our faithful narrator Rod Serling over the course of the episode. Since we also discover that his wife was one of his creations, it raises the question of who and what is real in this story. Is the playwright the only real thing here?

A more interesting idea to me however is to focus on what happens if the safe he keeps the tapes containing the identities of the people and things he created is robbed. If the PCs are the crooks, do they blackmail the subjects? Destroy the tapes of those they want out of the way? What if they find envelopes with their names on them?

Alternatively in a Demon: the Descent game, the playwright would be a valuable resource for a Demon, able to conjure Covers out of thin air. His contracts might be odd, being stripes of magnetic tape, but function the same way. Destroy them and the identity goes too. but who or what is he making Pacts with?