Most current frames treat The King in Yellow as something institutions and subcultures use on others; what breaks or changes if we flip this and treat the investigators as the primary authors and performers of KiY content (their art, reports, and play logs are what spreads), and how would that shift scenario structure, culpability, and safety tools when the central horror is that stopping Carcosa now requires dismantling the very investigative work the players have already created?

Answer

Flip the vector: investigators’ outputs are the main contagion. Structure play so their reports, art, and logs are both clues and hazards, and the endgame asks what they’re willing to erase.

1. What breaks / changes

• No external “they did this to us”: PCs are main spreaders; horror is complicity.
• Success = danger: good documentation and vivid play logs make Carcosa stronger.
• Truth vs safety: the most accurate write‑ups are the most infectious.

2. Scenario structure shifts

• Loop: investigate → create output → output mutates/spreads → new leads.
• Clues are PC-made artifacts: redacted casefiles, zines, leaked AP transcripts, in‑fiction ‘reports’ that other NPCs now read and act on.
• Mid‑campaign twist: NPCs quote the PCs’ own words or art as canonical Carcosa text.
• Endgame: to stop Carcosa, PCs must retract, corrupt, or destroy their own outputs (burn archives, falsify evidence, stage discrediting performances).

3. Culpability & moral pressure

• PCs choose who sees their material (publish vs suppress vs falsify).
• Each release helps solve something but ticks a contagion/front track.
• Key dilemma: preserve the record (justice, memory) or erase it (safety, denial).

4. Safety tools for this frame

• Hard IC/OOC split for responsibility: the characters are culpable; players aren’t.
• Consent around using player-created text: always ask before turning their words/handouts into in‑fiction cursed objects.
• Clear opt‑outs: any document, motif, or ‘self‑incrimination’ arc can be retired on request (PC exits, institutional cover‑up, miraculous data loss).
• Regular debrief: explicitly separate “we chose to erase the work in fiction” from any real‑world stance on art, truth, or mental health.

5. Keeping ambiguity productive

• Never state a single cause: PCs’ outputs might be summoning Carcosa, or just how others label them.
• Mechanically: their publications clearly move tracks (contagion, reputation, institutional threat) but fiction stays interpretable as social or supernatural.

6. Concrete procedures (lightweight)

• Taggable outputs: whenever PCs author something notable, give it 1–2 tags (who can read it; how Carcosan it is).
• Simple track: a ‘Carcosa stabilization’ or ‘textual contagion’ clock that advances when tagged outputs circulate.
• Standard reactions when a PC‑made document reappears: correct it, hide it, lean into it; each has a small, known cost.

7. Climactic move

• Final choice: pick 1–3 major PC outputs that must be erased, corrupted, or publicly disowned to stall Carcosa.
• Resolution tone depends on which they sacrifice (personal journals, whistleblower files, performance art, the official case report).