Apocalyptic Log / Tabletop Games

• The prologue to the Zombie Apocalypse game All Flesh Must Be Eaten has a scientist, just bitten by a zombie, discuss the transformation from human to infected cadaver in a truly disturbing series of logs. The last few are after his death, as the brain is the last thing to go... and the final one has him reduced to groaning that the hunger is all he has left.
• The recent "Jihad" series of BattleTech sourcebooks feature a number of these, usually from victims of the Words frequent use of WMDs. Probably the most distressing are the cries for help from Alarion; the population are dying from a bioweapon attack, but claim there are uninfected children.
• Call of Cthulhu
  • Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, adventure "The Warren". When the Player Characters enter a room sealed by rubble, they find a skeleton and a piece of paper with the last words of the victim. It describes how he heard cult members chanting, a bolt of lighting striking the house and finding the door blocked. His last words were "I am sitting now waiting for rescue. It has been eight hours."
  • Also, in the adventure "Horror on the Orient Express," the player characters keep Apocalyptic Logs to allow replacement investigators to join a very long, detailed investigation fully up to speed.
  • Supplement Cthulhu Companion, adventure "The Mystery of Loch Feinn". Professor Gibbson's journal details his investigation of the Water Horse and his run-ins with the MacAllans — the Cthulhu cultists who eventually killed him.
  • Fearful Passages, adventure "Armored Angels". Professor Powell's notes give information on his plan to open a gate to the planet Yuggoth. The last page of his diary give a horrifying account of the invasion of Mi-Go and a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath through the gate.
• Chivalry & Sorcery 3rd Edition adventure Stormwatch. The PCs can find the log of an old expedition that was destroyed by a disease. Because the members did not die on holy ground, they were not properly laid to rest and were condemned to become undead.
• Not a tabletop RPG, but a letter-writing RPG, the out of print Lovecraftian game De Profundis was presented wholly as a collection of letters from someone gradually going insane after having a dream about a book that laid out the game's rules. Part of the supernatural insanity gripping the "author" involved writing down and sharing the game to try to spread the insanity.
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • A Planescape supplement contained, as Flavor Text, the diary of an explorer describing his journey around the Concordant Plane of the Outlands. The diary takes on a distinct tone of encroaching madness after he set foot into the Caves of Thoughts, the domain of the mindflayer deity Ilsensine the Great Brain. It doesn't end well.
  • Module S4, The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, had a diary left by a previous expedition into the title dungeon. It had vague hints of what was to come, with several sections with vital information being smeared and smudged. It ended with the party meeting the Final Boss of the dungeon.
  • The Ravenloft adventure Tome of Strahd is something of a half-journal/half-manifesto written by Count Strahd von Zarovich, which details in his own words the night he made his pact with Death and sacrificed his younger brother in exchange for immortality and the love of his brother's fiancée. Said fiancée, consumed with grief, flung herself from the castle walls rather than live without her love. The Tome's final words reflect Strahd's anguish at seeing her being constantly reincarnated by the Dark Powers only to be lost to him time and time again.
    • Plenty of other Ravenloft supplements use excerpts from victims' diaries, journals, and literal ships' logs as flavor-text.
  • Dragonlance module DL12 Dragons of Faith. A page from a ship's log tells of the destruction of the ship and the fate of its crew.
  • Module DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor. In the Comeback Inn the PCs find a parchment scroll written by Hepath Nun. It tells the story of how his adventuring party searched for, found and entered the Inn. It further tells of how they were trapped inside, couldn't find any way out and eventually went through the Gate in the cellar. Only Hepath Nun decided not to go, because he was too scared. The PCs find his body hanging from a chandelier near the scroll.
• Mage: The Awakening has one of these as a magic item detailed in the Grimoire of Grimoires supplement — the Hildebrand Recording, an attempt at capturing a seance with a ghost on tape. The poor researcher got an Eldritch Abomination instead, which proceeded to toy with his psyche before ripping him to shreds. It's just as bad as you think it is.
• Normality can pretty much be described as Apocalyptic Log from start to finish, insofar as it makes any sense at all. Extra points for having the ''authors'' die in-game halfway through though.
• The Morrow Project adventure R-002 Project Damocles. In the Back Story, a group of scientists create an artificial intelligence but a nuclear holocaust begins while they're testing it. They try to escape the underground area where they're working but the AI (named Damocles) malfunctions and won't let them out. One of the project members, William Lezrow, records the events that led up to the disaster and the fate of each of the team members. The PCs can find it and read it as they explore the area.
• Rolemaster campaign setting Shadow World, supplement Norek: Intrigue in a City-State of Jaiman. A powerful crystal inside a mine causes radiation poisoning in the miners. They think it's a plague and seal off the mine to protect the outside world. After the effects get worse, the miners seal themselves in their rooms to await death. One of the miners leaves a diary of the events that the PCs can find.
• The free solo RPG Swords of the Skull Takers on 1km1kt.com is about the player creating an apocalyptic log, unless they win. Even then, Diabolic Victories can get even more disturbing.
• Many of the cards one can draw on the Forbidden Island in the Touch of Evil expansion "Something Wicked" detail an exploration party gradually succumbing to a lycanthrophy curse. Several other cards can inflict lycanthopy on the exploring player.
• Traveller: The Traveller News Service during the later part of the MegaTraveller line and in the New Era supplement Survival Margin is basically a chronicle of the destruction of the Third Imperium. The last few entries are frantic warnings to disconnect all computers from the network, with the entries getting increasingly garbled and finally deteriorating to gibberish computer characters as the TNS servers are taken over by Virus.
• Warhammer 40,000
  • The background book Xenology turns out to be one drawn-out example of this, written by an Inquisitor examining another's work at gathering and studying various alien beings in a hidden facility. It turns out the "Inquisitor" who set up the facility is actually a Necron Lord who established it to study other organic races, and once he was finished, he lured the other Inquisitor to the facility to study him.
  • We never get to read it, but the galaxy-sized locust swarm that is the Tyranid race was named because of the Apocalyptic Log that was left behind, buried 1000 feet underground, on the planet Tyran. Most of the Tyranid Codexes — combinations of backstory and rulebook — contain detached descriptions of Tyranid attacks that read like an encyclopedia entry based off an Apocalyptic Log as well.
  • Similarly, the Warhammer background book Liber Chaotica is written as an in-character study of the Chaos Gods. As the book goes on, the author starts having more and more ominous visions and making less and less sense as he descends into madness. At least half of the quotes in the Necron, Tyranid, and Dark Eldar codexes fit this trope.
• There's at least three examples along these lines from the Warhammer magazine White Dwarf, although two are merely dealing with attacks by vampires and Necrons respectively.

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