Hook line and Sinker The king in Yellow

[Prince Cherico]

Hook- The King in yellow is a forbidden
text that can summon something terrible.
The text contains a play anyone who reads
the full play gains a random insanity if
the play is preformed it will as said earlyer
summon a horrible creature into this world,
drive the audiance mad and perminatly
possess one of the actors with a evil
thing.

Line- Naturally a copy of the king of yellow
is in the players city, the players have been
contacted by a mysterous group who wants
this threat delt with and their willing to
pay a sizable amount to make sure the
copy is destroyed.

Sinker- some how a high school drama
teacher got a hold of the copy it is up to
the players to stop the play destroy the
copy, before the summoning.

[R Ditto]

Hmm...
Do I sense an Arkham Horror fan/player?
Or is this from the setting Arkham Horror is basically based on?

[Prince Cherico]

Hmm...
Do I sense an Arkham Horror fan/player?
Or is this from the setting Arkham Horror is basically based on?

never heard of Arkham Horror I was
able to read a portion of the book about
the play.

[R Ditto]

Arkham Horror is apparently based on the setting/background for Call of Cthulhu.

A friend used to own the Arkham Horror game, and one of the expansions was called The King in Yellow.

What you mentioned in your hook, line and sinker was pretty much the same basis, except in Arkham Horror the play starts up at a University instead of a high school.

The idea is very interesting.
Reminds me of an idea a friend and I worked on, of 'spells' that were like a fragmented program, each bit did something different and useful, but only when properly combined in the right order, the true overall effect occurs, changing from different spells that did different things to a major effect comparable to a ritual having occured.
Sort of like how the play is apparently a delivery method to bring about all sorts of nastiness, only working when the entire cast puts on the play with an audience.

Just imagine the disaster that could occur if, by some fluke of nature, or manpulation by some clever bad guy, the cast was able to get the play put on someplace with seating into the thousands or even tens of thousands.

If the heroes were unable to stop the play from happening on such a scale, they might find themselves on some serious damage control, and a massive surge of crime comitted by people who used to be average everyday people without previous criminal records, perhaps even members of law enforcement having been affected also.
Perhaps some of the heroes' contacts/sources/suppliers gets compromised also, so many possibilities of what could go wrong.
Just need to toss in a cross bearing, holy water tossing, spell flinging nun into the mix...