For a few years we had a tradition where I would run a one-shot mystery horror that was christmas themed. Really, it was a mystery horror that tangentially related to christmas and we did it between xmas and new years but whatever. It grew from a story that I remember like this:
We were teenagers standing in the vendors hall at Origins, looking at the different types of dice. Joey picks up a small clear plastic box with a set of red and green swirled dice.
Me: Oh, those are perfect!
Joey: They are?
Me: Yeah, for the christmas horror you're running!
Joey: I am? what is a christmas horror?
Me: I'm eager to find out!
Joey: Great, now I guess I have to buy them.
True to his word, Joey ran a one-shot in dnd that december where we all played "investigative" characters1 trying to discern the mystery of santa's disappearance. But Joey didn't know much about pop culture christmas, so when he revealed the villains name, Burgermeister Meisterburger, he stumbled over saying it, then was endearingly confused when we all knew him immediately. The only other thing I recall was Burgermeister piloted a mecha and tried to stomp us. That was the only xmas horror until 2018 when I had the time and energy to revive it.
In this iteration the players were given characters hired by the coca-cola corporation in 1933 to figure out why a remote research base in northern canada had stopped sending reports on their efforts to create a new formula for coke, seeing as they were losing the cola wars.
The next year the mystery took place on a large chartered boat slipping into international waters during a midnight cruise NYE 1929. The boat has a rendez-vous with a canadian vessel carrying booze for all the wealthy elite of Boston to celebrate the new year without worrying about prohibition. The santa impersonator is discovered dead by the PCs in short order. The fun little twist was that each of their characters had snuck onto the boat for their own reasons and was trying to avoid detection.
All of that is to say I opened the 2019 files to work on updating them so I can package the whole thing and put it up on itch.io but then I saw I opened the files last exactly one year ago today and thought writing this would be a good way to procrastinate.
1 I remember Donisi played a druid with a wolf familiar that had the mannerisms of Shaggy and Scooby, and ate a cookie every time Scooby would get a scooby snack