[Lendrhald] Hostile fantasy setting

[David Berg]

I'm looking for input (mostly brainstorming) on a certain aspect of my current project, that being a setting that successfully conveys a sense of menace to the players.

THE GAME

This is a realistic fantasy game (tech. as per 1000-1300 A.D. Europe) in which the sense of menace is a very important part of what the game is about.  The game is about ordinary people, about being alone in the dark, about being part of something larger than yourself, about the value of hopeless struggle, and about the inevitability of death.  Small bastions of relative safety are carved out of a larger environment that is hostile and threatening (this is true on virtually every scale).

The way things are currently set up, there is much hidden knowledge that, if discovered by the PCs, will point to an image of the world that is quite frightening.  I have a nice Cthulhu-esque metaphysics that effects things like the stars, deep and dark places, and the enemies of Man.  However, this game is not intended to be like Call of Cthulhu, in which the cosmic horror is all it's about.  Nevertheless, I want to get off on the right foot and not wait for hundreds of adventures to establish the desired feel.

THE GOAL

For the general populace, including starting player characters, a sense of being threatened should be present, though subtle.  Like the threat of nuclear war in the '60s.  Or maybe the fear some people seem to feel about the threat of terrorism.   

Some subtle signs of the hostile world's effect on human culture should also be evident, kind of like how seeing fallout shelters today evokes the Cold War fear of nuclear holocaust.

The goal is to create a sort of deep-rooted, pervasive, relegated-to-the-background vibe, such that:

1 - it can be conveyed to players (perhaps imperfectly at first, and then with more fidelity as time goes on) in a few hours of play

2 - it can be "shown, not told", surfacing through play rather than relying on pre-game orientation talk

3 - it seems like a generalized thing, the nature of the world, not just a fact about such and such a bad-guy near here

4 - it's widely known

LIMITATIONS

5 - it can't overshadow everything else

6 - it can't break or severely distort recognizable human culture -- whatever it is that threatens people, it must make sense that society has not morphed into some extreme, weird form to combat it

THE THREAT

Most of the danger that threatens Men has a common source.  However, I feel it is important that encounters with pieces of this Evil Threat not make the threat come off as:
    * simple
    * effable
    * predictable
    * contrived

To accomplish this, I intend to avoid recycling many specific types of encounters.  Once something is seen too much, it becomes understood and familiar, and ceases to be effectively scary.

Observant, curious characters should be able to tie some Evil Threat phenomena together, possibly correlating physical characteristics or symbols (though obvious connections should be infrequent), or thematic elements (this kind of subtle connection can be more common).   

So, a major part of my attempt to give my setting the desired feel will be coming up with a great variety of Scary Evil Things, and various ways in which they might be connected to each other.

HELP!

Any suggestions within the constraints of these goals and standards are welcome.  Feel free to propose Scary Evil Things, brainstorm ways to flavor urban and rural communities, or comment on evoking frightened vulnerability in roleplaying, etc., etc.  This gameworld is already fairly solid in my mind, and I'll elaborate as needed.  My next post will provide some examples of my own attempts to tackle both the hostile environment and the Evil Threat.

Thanks,

-Dave

P.S.  Potentially important metaphysical point that might curtail some brainstorms: the world isn't naturally human-averse, quite the opposite, the problem is that human-averse things have gotten into it.

[David Berg]

There exist sizable chunks of untamed land, much of which is filled mundane threats: boars, bears, lions, wolves, etc.  There are also areas where bandits or toll-charging thugs prey on the roads.

Then there's the danger of nighttime, especially on full moons, when sylvan creepies come out and fey weirdness kicks in: sprites, lycanthropes, sleep-walking, disorientation, hearing things.

Primarily, though, The Threat derives primarily from a source that is alien and fundamentally inimical to life, embodying entropy, dissolution, and destruction without creation.  This Cthulhu-esque schema has manifested in the world in various ways:

HISTORY:

-Massive plagues of supernatural origins.

-When stars get too big and bright, destructive comets fall and create craters of evil.

-Mythology claims that the Gods had to re-create the world once already after Evil got in and wrecked it.

EVIL RACES:

-Frenzied Orcs who cover the Southern half of the continent and have nearly exterminated Man in the past.

-Aquatic shark-men who prey on Men at sea.

-Large arctic lizard-men who raid from the frozen north.

-Daemon-possessed werewolves in the remote Northwest working on some foul project.

-Maybe kobolds/goblins.

-A darkness-shrouded crater in the Northeast from which swarms of horrific daemon-creatures periodically emerge.

MONSTERS:

-Giant insects, mutant plants, oozes, abominations (including massive Grells), semi-corporeal nasties, maybe undead.

-Aboleths, sea serpents, maybe a kraken.

EVIL PLACES:

-A large, central forest Orcs once controlled, permanently cursed.

-Scattered patches of land that Orcs have desecrated, also cursed, gross, and dangerous to varying degrees.

-A spooky, fog-shrouded lake.

-A small, impoverished nation ruled by a ghoulish nobility.

ISOLATED ENCOUNTERS:

-Wander into strange place, leave normal reality for shifting, chaotic plane inhabited by nasties.  Escape only by analogy-logic.

-Get your brain scanned by some malign entity.

-Get possessed by some malign entity.

-Go insane or get cursed from: entering a cave or haunted structure; following desirable thing into foreign place; dreams, daydreams; getting entranced by complex stimuli (art, music); staring into mirrors or water; mucking with mystic rituals.  Curses should be known of, be a part of cultural folklore, and be frequent enough that PCs wandering through a dense population center for more than a couple days may hear of multiple incidents.

TYPES OF CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EVIL THINGS:

- recurrent symbols, in clothing, arms, or tattoos

- analogous ritual diagrams

- distinct smells

- breakdown/corruption of stuff nearby

[dsmvites]

Hey there Dave,

I got full of ideas when I read the first post... but the second lost me for good. Only due to the races! All else is cool and can be really worked out nicely:the feeling you want can be really compelling, the omens and portents all evoke a good horror game, the epoch suggested allows for some deep violence on the individual and widespread levels. It brought me images of movies like The Omen, Reign of Fire, 28 Days Latter,The Exorcist (The Beginning)... all applied to a Dark Ages setting. Can't tell you that I haven't had some inspiration in this same direction before.

-the world isn't naturally human-averse, quite the opposite, the problem is that human-averse things have gotten into it.

The word "human" fits nicely in the general idea. Well, would it be too much of a stretch to suggested you to keep things Human based, and put the threats as immaterial and possessing regular people and animals? It would enhance the paranoia and put the feeling of dread closer to the average person. And it wouldn't by all means restrict your weirdness level! ;-]

Somehow useful?

Douglas.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I'll tell you my metric for questions like this. It is: what is the reward system of the game?

Does it involve character improvement? Does it involve losing characters? Does it involve interactions among the players? Does it involve consequences of dice rolls (or whatever)? And so on.

Whatever your answer is, compare it to the thematic or atmospheric issues that you described in your first post. Do they match? Do they reinforce one another?

If the answer is "no," then you've discovered how to address the questions you raised in the first post. I'm willing to bet that's the current answer, actually.

A lot of people get it backwards - they say, "if you get it from the start (meaning theme and atmosphere), then the reward system can be about character-advancement (as usual), and it'll all work anyway, because you got it, right?" Which does not work consistently; "it" will only work for people who are very close to the source material, and very close to the author.

Instead, try it the way I suggested.

Best, Ron

[Castlin]

I agree with dsmvites, the races/monsters in the second post threw me from a really good crest in the first. You'll have an easier time creating an impending doom feeling in a world of just humans (or nearly just humans) as the sentient race. Why? Of course, your players will have an easier time relating to them (at least most of your players, I would hope). But adding whole races of orcs and werewolves removes some of the mysticism I think you're trying to attach to this Otherworld Doom. They are too jarring, while at the same time providing a "gray area" that I don't think you want.

Maybe if you replaced them with humans that have been changed somehow? Mostly in the mind, not physically (too much, small physical changes can be good). Physical changes usually are scary or startling, but a changed mind or warped culture is disturbing on a more subtle level. Replace your orcs with maddened savages (what drove them mad?). Replace your shark-men with pirates who refuse to set foot on land (why?). Replace your were-wolves with nomads who keep wolves and refuse to leave the cold lands (why?!).

Whichever way you take it, one thing that I find creepy is large displays of effort for no apparent reason. Like an old and defensible wall in a field (what was it built to defend against?). Or a good road that leads into the wilderness and stops. Those drawings that can only be seen from a plane are weird to me. Particularly in medieval times, you had to have a REALLY GOOD reason to break off working on the harvest to build a wall, and it usually involves a lot of people working together. This is linked to the fallout shelter you mentioned in your first post.

Also, keep the "otherness" impersonal. People want to feel special, like they mean something, and being destroyed by something that wishes them malice or harm is almost okay. Being destroyed by something that doesn't (or can't) acknowledge you, but is still sentient, is terrible. It invokes a sense of worthlessness and helplessness that eats at our very ideas of "self" and plays havoc with our egos.

I like the notion that people know the world was destroyed and rebuilt after everything went wrong sometime in the past. That gives players something to rally against.

In terms of actual monsters, I would recommend against species for the most part (you mentioned grell). I think monsters are more... monstrous when they are unique. It even helps in the meta-game: the players themselves never know quite what they're going up against, they only have whatever clues their characters have uncovered. It isn't too hard to make up some monster tables that would let you roll up a new monster pretty quickly. You could tie them in with your "encroaching doom" if you really just made the tables into "modifications" to add to existing people or animals.

Hope some of these ideas help!

[Anders Larsen]

You have some interesting ideas about how this cthulhu-like horrors is part of the setting. That is fine, but what I see as more important is how these 'horrors' affect the characters, and what choices the characters face when they are up against them.

In many dark fantasy games the 'unspeakable horrors' is mostly just something out there that the character don't have any emotional connection with. And when they meet the horror it is in physical combat, and then the dark fantasy game has turned into a kill-the-monster game.

try to think about how these 'scary evil thing' affect the characters (and the NPCs), and think about how you can enforce this in the system. This will then bring the horror much closer to the characters.

And by the way. I agree with Douglas and Catlin, if you really want monsters (other than humans), they should not be well described, but something mysterious that never can be fully understood.

- Anders

[David Berg]

IMPORTANT NOTE ON "EVIL RACES"

Alas, my use of the term "evil races" brought with it all the wrong connotations. 

You might be able to talk to it, reason with it, and most importantly, empathize with it.  Right?  We could just take a step back and view Men vs Orcs as Red vs Blue.  Right?

Wrong. 

Only humans are used for those "gray area" roles in this game.  Anything non-human is intended to be 100% non-empathizable.  They do not speak the same language or share the same goals (mostly) or thought processes as Men.

The Orcs are marked by a powerful daemon.  They believe (correctly) that they are bound for afterlives of eternal torment, and that the only respite is granted for slaughtering tons of Humans.  When they see you, they will try to kill you, or tie you up and ritually sacrifice you to the daemon.  That's it.

Orcs are encroaching doom.  They lack the organizational structures to sustain long, widespread military campaigns, but they outnumber Men and are individually quite powerful.  They have come close to wiping out humanity twice in the last three centuries.  A whole bloodline of Men, comprising 1/4 of the population, has been eradicated from the Southwest, their entire kingdom fallen to the Orcs.  The walled major cities have existed for times in states of siege, with all the farmland around them burned and spoiled.

I have not found a satisfactory answer to the question, "What do Orcs do when they're not killing Men?" but I think their role is important enough that I'll keep working on it.  Suffice to say, no Human will ever encounter an Orc family or Orc hunting/fishing/farming community.

My intent is that, while the Evil Threat itself is fundamentally alien to this world, it has long-term agents within this world, and those agents have forms and behaviors that allow them to survive here.  I called these "evil races", but perhaps "monsters that eat and reproduce" would have been more appropriate.  The lizard-men and shark-men are basically predators with interesting back-stories, never evincing more than animal intelligence individually.

[David Berg]

would it be too much of a stretch to suggested you to keep things Human based, and put the threats as immaterial and possessing regular people and animals? It would enhance the paranoia and put the feeling of dread closer to the average person.

Immaterial threats will definitely be featured, but they don't make for very good fights.  Most of the time, in an no-PC-magic setting such as this, you pretty much try to survive to run away when you encounter an immaterial adversary.  This is great, but needs to be supplemented with other types of encounters too.

As for fighting fellow human beings who are obviously being controlled by some malevolent power, I like it but don't think it can be over-used.  Zombies lose their creepy factor real quick if you keep seeing them.

I agree with dsmvites, the races/monsters in the second post threw me from a really good crest in the first.

D'oh!  Please, ignore them and return to your crest!  Hopefully my "evil races" post successfully addressed this issue...

Maybe if you replaced them with humans that have been changed somehow? Mostly in the mind, not physically (too much, small physical changes can be good).

Altered Men fill an important niche, but it is as Victims of the Evil Threat, not agents of it.  Men who can no longer live amongst society -- that might fall out as a product of some transformative curse or other.  Men who are raving and live as savages is definitely a good component -- these are the people who have been driven insane by comprehending the horror of the Evil Threat.

Whichever way you take it, one thing that I find creepy is large displays of effort for no apparent reason.

Yeah, that seems like a good track to brainstorm on...  Evidence that other Men had to perform some great labor to defend themselves against some hard-to-imagine (or at least scary-to-imagine) Thing... 

Alas, I don't think defense against standard physical assault would add much beyond the fact that most of the prominent cities in the world are walled anyway to defend against Orcs, and most near-to-Orc farming areas including forts and garrisons. 

Defending your town against something that comes out of the ground or comes down from the sky or creeps out of your mirrors or emerges from shadows would leave behind some interesting puzzles...

Or a good road that leads into the wilderness and stops.

This is perfect, as it is in the interests of the Evil Threat to erase not only Men themselves, but Men's knowledge of and control over any portions of the world.

Particularly in medieval times, you had to have a REALLY GOOD reason to break off working on the harvest to build a wall, and it usually involves a lot of people working together.

Instead of a wall, perhaps some sort of giant religious symbol intended to ward away some kind of threat, with the symbol evoking the threat or its opposite in some metaphorical fashion... or giant stores of wood and omnipresent torch sconces, for keeping the town lit through the night...

Also, keep the "otherness" impersonal. People want to feel special, like they mean something, and being destroyed by something that wishes them malice or harm is almost okay.

I am glad you brought this up.  In this game, any individual person may not be a big deal, but Humanity is special and does mean something.  The Evil Threat is partly a mindless force of entropy, but it is also composed largely of malign intelligences who view Humanity as their enemy. 

The horror is not intended to come from being disregarded by mindless cosmic forces who happen to run you over on their way to work; it's intended to come from facing a superior foe who you may hold at bay for a while but will eventually come to drag you down into madness and destruction.

The feeling of human importance should be a large part of what bolsters people to persevere against impossible odds for as long as they can.

I like the notion that people know the world was destroyed and rebuilt after everything went wrong sometime in the past. That gives players something to rally against.

Aye.  As is, players are confronted with this fact extremely infrequently, by stumbling across some construct of the Ancients, or by hearing some myth recited by a local shaman.  That may be good enough, but I'm certainly open to suggestions...

In terms of actual monsters, I would recommend against species for the most part (you mentioned grell). I think monsters are more... monstrous when they are unique.

I completely agree.  Mostly, I only intend to turn a Thing into a Several Of A Thing when it is intelligent and operates on a grander scale (e.g. trying to shred the barriers that keep the Evil Threat out, thus destroying all reality).

It isn't too hard to make up some monster tables that would let you roll up a new monster pretty quickly. You could tie them in with your "encroaching doom" if you really just made the tables into "modifications" to add to existing people or animals.

That sounds less labor-intensive than my plan of making a very long list of one-use monsters, so I like it.  In fact, I already have some ideas for those modifications, which I will spell out in a subsequent "monster attributes" post.

Thanks for the input!
-Dave

[David Berg]

In many dark fantasy games the 'unspeakable horrors' is mostly just something out there that the character don't have any emotional connection with. And when they meet the horror it is in physical combat, and then the dark fantasy game has turned into a kill-the-monster game.

Very true.  I am trying to walk a fine line, in which the horror element of the game is effective, without forcing players to play "a horror game".  This setting is intended for adventurers, with motives similar to many who play "kill-the-monster" games: wealth, cool toys, thrills, knowledge, discovery, satisfaction of curiosity.

try to think about how these 'scary evil thing' affect the characters (and the NPCs)

In some cases, I think "that was disgusting and hard to kill" is perfectly sufficient, provided the disgust is genuine.  The task of creating the emotional connection you refer to is shared amongst many things in the world, with physical monsters a rather simple and confined part of that.  Encounters with physical monsters over extended play should help convey the general nature of the Evil Threat as something that corrupts, destroys without creating, and is hostile to both its environment and particularly Humanity. 

As for individual encounters which really develop a horrific feel, I think you are quite right with this statement:

they should not be well described, but something mysterious that never can be fully understood.

At the moment, I am thinking of these not as physical monsters, but as incorporeal intelligences.  See my upcoming "monster attributes" post.

think about how you can enforce this in the system. This will then bring the horror much closer to the characters.

Hmm.  So, suppose you are a sword-wielding adventurer, and you wander down a dark path, and the GM confronts you with some oozing abomination.  He describes something with malformed appendages, visible digestive organs, and randomly scattered eyeballs.  It screams and slithers toward you, leaving a trail of rotting vegetation and mucous in its wake.  Is this experience made any more effective by some particular mechanic?  Such as rolls to avoid puking, screaming, fainting, running, being paralyzed with fear?  Taking temporary damage to a Composure or Sanity stat?

I would guess that it would only be really effective if some sort of permanent loss was incurred, and I'm not sure if I want PCs to hemorrhage possessions and attributes every time they see a monster...

Pardon me if my responses sound negative; I'm actually rather on the same page with your perspective, just trying to trouble-shoot here.
-Dave

[David Berg]

"MONSTER" ATTRIBUTES

Any brainstorm help in generating setting-appropriate creatures for encounters would be appreciated.  Also, feel free to critique my brainstorms below. 

Note: the mutants are intended to be unique, not recurring; the same probably goes for the alien, and maybe the incorporeal as well.

Incorporeal

These creatures provide excellent opportunities to point toward the alienness of the Evil Threat.  Their capabilities should be heavy on events that never happen in the real world, and disdain physics and spacetime where possible.

Appearance brainstorms:
- invisible
- black shape of fluctuating dimensions
- black humanoid shape
- pinpoint of light
- illusion that suits its purpose (often human?)

Capabilities brainstorms:
- Pass Through Solids/Liquids
- Teleport
- Be In Multiple Places At Once
- Enter Your Mind
- Cause Insanity
- Drain Vitality (aging?)
- In general: mental powers good, touch attacks bad (is it incorporeal or not?!)

Alien Physical Creature

Stuff clearly not evolved by nature for survival.  Another good opportunity to portray the alienness of the Evil Threat.

Appearance brainstorms:
- internal organs on outside
- secretions
- useless protrusions
- incompletely-formed limbs
- incompletely-formed sensory organs
- oddly located sensory organs
- multiple mouths
- crawling with bugs
- dropping body parts as it moves
- semi-liquid
- amorphous
- sulphurous smell
- rotting meat smell
- moaning
- gibbering

Capabilities brainstorms:
- engulf you
- absorb you/turn you into more of it
- corrosive/rotting touch
- make you flee/vomit/scream/faint/freeze
- spit corrosives

Mutated Physical Creature

Start from a bear, wolf, lion, boar, python, crocodile, etc.  The more lavish your disgusting mutations the better -- it is necessary to get to the point where PCs will assume a mental state different than the original creature.  This assumption will then be borne out when the thing attacks you with no regard for its own survival.

Physical modification brainstorms:
- skeleton & internal organs visible through rotted-away skin
- secretions
- useless protrusions
- extra limbs (fully-formed or otherwise)
- extra sensory organs (fully-formed or otherwise)
- extra mouth(s)
- crawling with bugs
- dropping body parts as it moves
- sulphurous smell
- rotting meat smell

Capabilities brainstorms:
- corrosive/rotting touch
- make you flee/vomit/scream/faint/freeze
- spit corrosives
- particularly deadly teeth/claws

Mutated Inanimate Object

The quest to make plants, fungus, etc. scary and not silly...

Physical modification brainstorms:
- change in color
- faint glow
- looks dead
- smell rotten

Capabilities brainstorms:
- rapid growth to snare or engulf you
- emit spores that kill you
- emit spores that make you hallucinate
- strangle you with vines

[Anders Larsen]

Hmm.  So, suppose you are a sword-wielding adventurer, and you wander down a dark path, and the GM confronts you with some oozing abomination.  He describes something with malformed appendages, visible digestive organs, and randomly scattered eyeballs.  It screams and slithers toward you, leaving a trail of rotting vegetation and mucous in its wake.  Is this experience made any more effective by some particular mechanic?  Such as rolls to avoid puking, screaming, fainting, running, being paralyzed with fear?  Taking temporary damage to a Composure or Sanity stat?

I would guess that it would only be really effective if some sort of permanent loss was incurred, and I'm not sure if I want PCs to hemorrhage possessions and attributes every time they see a monster...

Pardon me if my responses sound negative; I'm actually rather on the same page with your perspective, just trying to trouble-shoot here.

Well I guess we agree most of the way, it is just the question about the mechanic. I should properly have been a little more concrete, so I will try to give an example here.

Ok, here is the point: Horror outside the character is very hard to get to work, because it all depend on how good the GM is to describe the monster (or the horror scene), and many players like to play cool characters that do not react on these horrors. What is much more interesting is when the horror is inside the character; if the really scary thing is the choices the character have to make to overcome the monster.

The insanity-type mechanic you describe could work if it is done right, but it was not what I was thinking about. My idea was a mechanic that will give the character a bonus against these horrors, if he jeopardise his humanity or if he jeopardise the people he have relations to or his sanity or other thing that mean something to him.

This could be done by saying that to effective battle these monsters you have to use there own power against them. So when the character is up against a enemy too powerful for him he can choose to invoke some 'demonic' power. But to do this he have to scarify something; for instance:

* He compromises his humanity by gaining power through a blood ritual where he have to scarify a baby.
* He can 'scarify' his relation to his wife to get power. Which means that sometimes in the future his wife will be the victim of some 'demonic' influence.
* He can renounce his fate to get power, but the gods will properly punish him for this.

And it is possible to make mechanics for these things.


Well, this is just an example I could think of right now, it could properly be done more interesting, but I hope you get the idea.

- Anders

[David Berg]

what is the reward system of the game?

It's funny, most of what I hope to achieve when I play in settings like this has nothing to do with the system.  The first things that come to mind when I hear "rewards" are "knowledge" and "cool experiences", followed by things like "becoming famous" and "acquiring wealth and allies".  These things, to me, are rewards in themselves, without needing to confer any future advantages on any sorts of tests.  (Does this mean I'm mostly a Narrativist at heart?)

The prerequisite for all these rewards is curiosity, the adventuring mentality wherein spooky or mysterious things should be investigated.  Beyond that, behaviors that tend to earn these rewards are careful thought, cautiousness, clever problem-solving and tactics.  The punishment for charging in fearlessly is usually death.

At the moment, the system involves a kind of advancement in between modeling reality (skills improve slowly with practice) and giving fantasy gamers what they've come to like (skills improve quickly by virtue of succeeding in game goals).  It's not entirely concrete yet, and supposing I choose in the direction of just modeling reality, then I'm not sure if there truly is a rewards system at all.  Players simply keep track of what their characters earn within the game world, and pursue whatever interests them in-game: wealth, cool trinkets, better armor, etc.

I suspect I may be thinking too narrowly about "rewards system" as a concept...?

Whatever your answer is, compare it to the thematic or atmospheric issues that you described in your first post. Do they match? Do they reinforce one another?

Well, the attempt to model reality reinforces the thematic concern with "ordinary people", and the lack of hand-outs reinforces a certain level of environmental unfriendliness.

Characters begin weak enough to identify with other normal people, and with a mundane past which also contributes to this.  Hopefully this helps them see themselves as part of a society and a world.  It is important that no matter how much they advance they not become a class apart, because that generally leads to the feeling that one is a badass and is in control, which is at odds with the appropriate impression.  Thus, the degree of advancement is modeled on reality: you get better at the things you practice, and this happens slowly. 

The form of advancement is not pre-determined; characters get points that they can spend at their discretion.  This is intended to contribute to a define-and-motivate-yourself mindset which meshes well with the game's themes (value of struggle, being alone).

The fact that if you are curious but not cautious you will probably die reinforces the dangerous world theme.

So, to answer your questions:

Do they match?  Well, they are at least compatible and complementary.
Do they reinforce one another?  I think so, but perhaps not as directly or powerfully as they could.

A lot of people get it backwards - they say, "if you get it from the start (meaning theme and atmosphere), then the reward system can be about character-advancement (as usual), and it'll all work anyway, because you got it, right?"

I completely agree that a reliance on players "getting it" from the start is to be avoided.  My intention has been for "getting it" to come about naturally as a result of continuing to wander around in the setting.  The system's job at the moment is mostly to allow that to happen, by facilitating immersion in the setting through mechanics that are as realistic as possible while still being fast and fun.

As for using a mechanical system of rewards/punishments to, by its own merits, make players "get" themes of ordinary people alone in the dark engaged in hopeless struggle... I honestly wouldn't know where to start.

If anyone feels up to generating an example, just to point me in directions I may not have considered yet, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
-Dave

[David Berg]

Ok, here is the point: Horror outside the character is very hard to get to work, because it all depend on how good the GM is to describe the monster (or the horror scene), and many players like to play cool characters that do not react on these horrors.

You're absolutely right, but I would like to try anyway.  Mechanics that would help out the GM are welcome; thus, my own attempted brainstorm churned out some compulsory fear ("you run away from it!") and some emotional damage ("your Sanity score drops!").

The Horror is intentionally outside the character.  The all-devouring evil of the cosmos hates you and your species and it's coming to get you.

My idea was a mechanic that will give the character a bonus against these horrors, if he jeopardise his humanity or if he jeopardise the people he have relations to or his sanity or other thing that mean something to him.

Hmm.  Interesting.  If there is some specific way these horrors can be survived, or killed, which is different from battling normal creatures... then there could be stats measuring a PC's ability to do that... and these stats could be modified by experiences... perhaps sometimes intentionally so... and perhaps sometimes that act would be foul in itself...

This is all good food for thought. 

However, I do not think it's possible or desirable to try to institute a policy that every encounter with Evil must entail a dramatic moral quandary and damning choice.  That sounds more like a story arc than an encounter type to me.

[billvolk]

I like where this idea is going. It reminds me of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, with the more obnoxious Tolkienisms removed. You might want to check out the WFRP core book for ideas on how to convey that kind of paranoid flavor through art and prose passages (or just to get an idea of what's been done already.) Personally, during my experiences playing WFRP, I wanted a more down-and-dirty horror story when everyone else wanted a more traditional dungeon-crawl, so I'm really looking forward to your finished product!
I think you'll get more effect by showing your players reasons for their characters to be xenophobic, rather than telling them how to roleplay. Let their characters be open-minded and "modernist" if they want, just make sure that those characters are the first to be betrayed by "misunderstood" NPCs, stricken with plagues and hexes, and eaten by awful Lovecraftian horrors that they should have been shunning instead of buying a Coke and keeping company.
Also, modern paranoia has a different flavor than medieval paranoia. In the game itself, I'd avoid references to modern things like terrorism and nuclear scares in favor of witch-hunts, plague-years, and prophets of doom. The timelessness of fear will likely come through by itself.

[dsmvites]

Hy there Dave,

I read your (many) posts and came to some questions:

a) There seems to be a discrepancy between the mood first suggested and your developed idea. At first you conjured us visions of paranoia and pervasive fear and you used term like the nuclear scare and cold war. You also added up a notion that mankind was special in the setting and the heroes would face (besides regular challenges for survival) an Otherworldly threat. Then monster races appeared in the posts and when you developed your ideas we ended up seeing a gibbering aberration as opponents. Thus, the question: how do you want to terrify your characters? With gross violations of natural order or subtle fear of an unspeakable evil that may be among them?
If the answer is the first, it seems like you really liked the Crab clan in Legend of the 5 Rings. Otherwise, you got back to those subtle feelings you brought forth with modern fear comparisons.

b) I read you description of orks and kept thinking: "why do they NEED to be orks?". There was no impediment whatsoever to the possibility of 'orks' meaning savage human tribes perverted by Otherworld evil. When I told you about immaterial foes my intent was not DnD related ("Goooosssh a ghost... [and I dont have a weapon +1]"), but instead something otherworldly bound to act in this plane through possession. These beings could pop up in your neighbor's family or may have taken over a whole nation (that tore itself apart). In the end it all comes down to question A above.

c) Finally, despite your answers above there is still a possible addition to the brainstorm. I got myself thinking in "What do they gain with it?" and translated to "Why the hell are they going to be heroes?". Of course, to save their hides. But, what if: some castes had a purpose and a role preventing this otherworld taint to spread? Something like nobility with laying of hands, sworn to protect their people from ______ (insert evil threat here); or clergy with prophecies granted by _______ (whoever rebuilt the world after some Great Big Mess) bound to guide people on this new beginning. They could even advance (not in ranks or levels, but in Essence) whenever they upheld their purpose.

Well... just adding to the brainstorm.

Douglas.