Untitled -- A modern horror setting

[jdagna]

Seamus,

I'm reminded of a really good Stephen King short story in which a high-energy physics reaction goes haywire, bringing this weird fog to cover the planet and lots of weird creatures that eat people.  A fellow escapes being eaten and the story ends with him heading out into a new, fog-covered, horror-infested world with his kids and dog in the back seat.

Not only is it somewhat similar to your setting, but it ends pretty much where your description ends.  We're sort of left with a "Cool, now what?"  This is good, since we'll probably pick up the book (or PDF) and read more, but we need to have more.

How to develop that "more"?

I'd start by writing up a scenario for the game.  Not only will this help people play the thing (when the time comes), but in doing a scenario, you'll bump into things you need.  What kind of technology is available to people?  What are the stats of the creatures?  What resources can people bring in to help them?  And, most importantly, why might the PCs be brought in in the first place?  This should give you a decent list of things to resolve for that one scenario, and that should help define the more general areas where information might be needed.

[Christoffer Lernö]

If your focus is on setting or situation you have to decide on different things (I suppose). If it's about running around in this world and kinda discover what's happening, it's more about setting. In that case you probably want to decide how much the characters can affect on their own.

If it's about the plot for the adventure, the players ought to have a big impact on the outcome of the story. If you set a limit on what they can affect you effectively limit the scope of an adventure as well.

Exploring setting, you probably want a lot of background material, but that makes it harder to create stories. Look at vampire.

You have to decide what you want.

[S.Lonergan]

jdagna,
I certainly will write up some form of scenario, thankyou for the advice,
Stephen King? I never expected my setting to be likened with a Stephen King story....

Pale Fire,
How much the characters can affect is definitly something i will explore. I want a setting that they can explore, but I also want somewhere where Gm's can create what they want as well and not be too limited. Thats the problem, I definitly want a truckload more background than I currently have....
(all background can be found at http://www.geocities.com/drunk_monkeyau/untitled.htm,
Trouble is.. i dont know what more to add. Technology that is available, How they came to be in some form of "Squad" or "Group" of Daemon fighting good guys im not sure of yet... I was thinking something like , the government just comes one day out of the blue and enlists them or something.... Im not sure.....

I will certainly check out VTM...

- Seamus

[Christoffer Lernö]

Write down a example complete with player and GM dialogue. Something like

Bob: "I pick up the axe, does the corpse move any?"

GM: "No, actually with the head chopped off, it looks like it's going nowhere, and yet... you have a bad feeling"

Rob: "I look outside, do I see that guy who hunted us?"

GM: "Well, the window is a little to dirty to provide a great view. You can't be sure unless you open the door"

Bob: "Don't open the door!!!"

Rob: "Well, a quick peek can't hurt..."

and so on. There are some examples in other threads. (To lazy to give the urls right now)

[S.Lonergan]

I will definitly write some examples... im also going to write a section just for the GM

[Doc Midnight]

I'm having trouble not seeing a version of Beyond the Supernatural here. That's not a bad thing because I liked that game.

It was just one big monster hunt though. This sounds like it could be better than that.

If the world evolves based upon some outside influence then the PC could fight that.

If the world effects the PCs in a way that they evolve into something twisted then you'd have an interesting concept.

It would be PC vs themselves. You could have a mechanic to track the level to which they're tainted.

After a certain amount of personal change has gone on, then the PCs could change their environment. There is a cost for doing any of this and the consequences are not worth the benefits gained.

Like casting spells in CoC.

I like your idea though.

Doc Midnight

[S.Lonergan]

The way I have spell casting figured out is ,
When creating your character, you get one psychic skill, from a random list of 80. Then you can use that sparingly.. But they put the PC's above the average populas.

The Daemons are not so much there to be fought. They are there to try and stop the PC's and continue realities changing. If I linked the Daemons to the evolution of reality, and then made it so that they were the ones that could change it more irraticly, reality would still change slowly though, do you think that may work?

I might also introduce some form of Humanity measure.. where people get lighter or darker, and become warped and twisted if they perform evil deeds....

Does anyone think that may work?

- Thanks for your help Seamus

[Doc Midnight]

I might also introduce some form of Humanity measure.. where people get lighter or darker, and become warped and twisted if they perform evil deeds....

I like the one random psychic ability. I also like being able to measure humanity. It gives people some goal other than monster fighting.

Doc Midnight

[S.Lonergan]

I like the idea of randomly generating skills as well.. if it was a choose one skill thing, then there would be one favourite skill that everyone would have...

The humanity idea only came about after someone here mentioned it..

[Mike Holmes]

First I tried the link, and got 404.

What I'd do is just make "normal" people characters. Describe what they are like, and how they exist in the current world. And then give them the psychic ability last. In fact, play out the scene in which they get it. Give them the sudden impact of the realization that the world is not what they thought it was a moment ago. That would be a cool way to start out.

Then, I'd go with a tight situation. The PC is contacted by a character who can detect other psychics. That guy gets them in contact with other psychics in the vicinity (PCs). Then the "adventures" begin.

See what I'm angling for? Otherwise you're going to have to do some fancy footwork to get the PCs interacting.

Mike

[S.Lonergan]

Mike,
The linked page has disappeared, but if you go to http://jimandmonkey.iwarp.com and then click on Untitled, it has a page on it there...

As for what you suggested, i really like that angle. PC's first discover there ability as children, when they reach puberty, which can be different depending on the person. But to have no characters rolled up, and role play children as they discover their ability. Then explain it, then fast forward to them as adults, and then role their characters.?

They are intirely normal people, the only difference is the psychic skill.

- Seamus

[deadpanbob]

Seamus,

If you're going for an "Exploration of Setting" (and you should read the G/N/S stuff here if you haven't already), one of the ways to write background is to extend what you did at the beginning of this thread.  Describe what's different.

Take one thing, the thing that piqued Pale Fire's interest, the statement that People have become longer, skinnier, paler and eviler and do some free writing on this (okay, for those of you keeping score, this is the second time in as many days that I've mentioned this - it's serendipitious baby!).

Essentially, start with the thought "Why are people longer, skinner, paler and eviler?"  Then set a timer for ten to fifteen minutes and just write (typing is okay too, but writing with a pen or pencil seems to get the jucies flowing better).  Don't stop to edit, and you have to write the whole time.  If you've never done free writing before, you'll find your mind resisting with things like "I don't know why", or "Because it sounds cool".  That fine, write that down exactly as it comes to you.

After the ten to fifteen minutes, look over what you've written.  You'll probably only find one or two things that look promising - ie things that seem to answer the qeustion in a way that seems satisfying to you.  Then take those ideas and repeat the process of free writing.

Every time you do this exercie, you'll get better at, and more and more good things will come out of it.

Once you've got a list of ten or twenty or thirty realtively good ideas in this manner, then you have to begin organizing those thoughts.

If you decide to try this, and you have any problems with it, or with organizing the thoughts after you've generated them, bring them back here to the Forge and many people (as you've seen already) would be happy to help.

It'll take quite a bit of time and effort - but if you're willing to give it a try, you should be able to generate enough setting information (in this case rembmer that since the game is set essentially in the real world, only things are a little bit different, your setting information needs to cover those differences in-depth) to support an Exploration of Setting type premise.

Cheers,

Jason

[Mike Holmes]

As for what you suggested, i really like that angle. PC's first discover there ability as children, when they reach puberty, which can be different depending on the person. But to have no characters rolled up, and role play children as they discover their ability. Then explain it, then fast forward to them as adults, and then role their characters.?

That would be very cool. I figured that they would be adults. But this could be even better. What this does is give the players all a view of a similar experience that their characters have had. Which will hopefully give them common ground to work from, and allow the players a bit more insight into how the character feels abot their own ability. In fact, you could have the player frame another scene from the character's past that went into that sort of thing. So the primary scene is to give the feel of the effect of the discovery, and the second scene is to explore how the character feels about having the ability after they've had some time to get used to having the power. Or something like that.

Lots you could do with it.

Mike

[S.Lonergan]

When i eventually write the GM section, one thing I will definitly suggest strongly, is that individually, prior to the session you play the game, role play the day that each child discovers their power and how reality changes, and then how the government takes them (see www.geocities.com/drunk_monkeyau/untitled.htm for more on that..) ... and some background... adn then fast forward after all the players are done with that..

deadpanbob, i will definitly try that

- Seamus