One of the things I'm currently working on is a small game entitled 'Cold City'. In this post, I've included a very brief introduction to give a feel for what the game is all about, plus the basic character creation system. The base mechanic will be a D10 dice pool vs dice pool system (not unlike Sorcerer, to be honest!), using Attributes as the basis for the pool, with Abilities, Keys and Hatreds giving additional dice.

The basic description of the game would be: Cold War monster hunters in 1950 Berlin.

Intro

World War Two has been over for five years now. Much of Europe remains shattered and ruined, kept alive by American money and know-how flooding in. The Grand Alliance that defeated the spectre of fascism has been blown away on the winds of change. The USA and the USSR now stare at each other with unblinking eyes, waiting for the moment when the Cold War finally goes hot. Britain sits alongside her powerful ally, brooding over the loss of influence and Empire. France contemplates the damage done to her cities and countryside by ravages of war. And Germany, defeated and destroyed. Mangled by aerial bombardment and traumatised by raging battles. Germany tries to recover from the brink of annihilation.

In the ruined city of Berlin, a city slowly rising from the ashes of conflict, another war is being fought. An underground war to turn back the tide of evil unleashed by the Nazis. An evil unseen by most of the world, horrors brought about by the ceaseless progress of twisted technology and lunatic schemings of evil minds.

The great battles may be over, but the war carries on.

What Is 'Cold City' About?

In essence, it's a game about hunting monsters and eldritch creatures in Berlin during the early part of the Cold War, a time when the city is slowly rebuilding itself. The characters are drawn from the former allies who now occupy Germany. Ideally, there should be a maximum of 4 characters: 1 American, 1 British, 1 French and 1 Soviet, although this isn’t an absolute necessity. This helps to bring a certain level of conflict into the party at the outset.

The characters are secret agents who have to hunt down scarcely believable creatures and entities, whilst preventing information about their activities from leaking out. Think 'Hellboy' meets 'The Third Man' meets 'The Manchurian Candidate'. Games are intended to be short and quite possibly brutal. The situations that the characters will find themselves in are life threatening and horrific, so they might not last that long. But that's OK, as character creation is fairly swift.

Tension is important in 'Cold City'. Tension between the forces that now occupy German. Tension between various factions struggling to survive in the slowly reviving city. Tension between the characters. By necessity, the game will make so very broad generalisations about various aspects of the setting, this is entirely deliberate. If you want to go into the details of how a French artillery officer would deal with a Red Army commissar, then feel free to do so. However, in this game, it's pretty likely that they will have an instant distrust for each other. All the better for creating conflict.

In the end, all of the characters are forced together by the job that they have to do: hunt monsters.

Twisted Technology

If you look into the technology of World War 2, you'll find there were some crazy ideas floating about. Flying saucer like VTOL aircraft, jet powered intercontinental bombers, death rays and so on. So what if some of this actually came true? What if German scientists actually did produce some of the technologies that we can only see as plans, models and mad ideas? In 'Cold City', much of this has come true. Although the war played out exactly they way it says in the history books, the victorious allies found many things that astounded and amazed them. That’s why you'll see disc shaped VTOL gunships flying over Berlin, rocket powered interceptors sitting at airfields and so on.

Then there were the technologies that that Allies kept hidden after the war. The convertors that gave off strange auras, the machines that snatched creatures from strange 'other' places, devices that opened portals into alternative dimensions, the transmitters that brought dead soldiers back to life. This hellish technology, now mostly scrapped by fearful governments, is the raison d’être behind 'Cold City'. This is what gives the monster hunters their purpose: to hunt down the things created by the Nazis and so seek out and destroy the last of the twisted technology.

Foes in 'Cold City' fall into three main groupings:

Alternatives: Snatched from other timelines and universes that might just have been, these are entities from our myths and nightmares. Werewolves, shambling horrors and other things that might just have been.

Incursors: Creatures that were brought into this world from other places and other dimensions, warped beings totally alien to our own way of thinking.

The Dead: The re-animated corpses of those who fell on the battlefield or were killed during aerial bombardment, these shambling zombies know only pain and suffering.

Character Creation

All characters in the game are agents engaged in the Underground War. First off, the player must choose a nationality. Most commonly, this will be either American, British, French or Russian. On occasion, they may be from one of the other Allied nations or possibly German or Austrian (quite a few of whom are employed by various covert agencies).

Character name

Occupation and background.

All characters are, by default, 'agents'. However, this covers quite a lot of ground and characters can have pretty much any background that they choose. Given the fact that WW2 only ended five years ago, it's reasonable to expect that many of the characters have military backgrounds or training of some kind.

Sample Occupations: Serving Military Officer, Traumatised RAF Bomber Pilot, Red Army Soldier, Conniving Diplomat, Self-Righteous Aid Agency Worker, etc, etc.

Draw

How was the character drawn into the Underground War? What reasons do they have for continuing their participation? What circumstances might arise to make them disassociate themselves from the Underground War?

Attributes

There are 3 attributes that serve to define characters in Cold City. And these are:

Body

Body is used when the character takes any physical actions, for example: firing a gun, punching a guard, etc.

Mind

Mind is use when the character is in a situation that requires intellect or perception, for example: working out a tricky puzzle, spotting an Incursor hiding in shadows, etc.

Heroism

Heroism is the most nebulous of the three attributes and represents the heroic qualities of the character. It is used in situations where the character does something that is, well, heroic! Examples of this would be jumping through a window onto the top of a moving train, making a last stand against hopeless odds, etc.

Attributes range from 1 to 5 and players have 8 points to spend on the three attributes.

1 = Poor
2 = Average
3 = Good
4 = Excellent
5 = Almost superhuman

Keys

Each character gets two 'keys'. These are aspects of their personality that drive them, trouble them or scare them. For example:

Fear of flying
Crazy in a fight
Paranoid around Russians

Hatred

This is something or someone that the character hates beyond all reason. Hatred should be chosen carefully, especially if they relate to people. While it would be fine to choose the hatred ‘Britain and the British’, think carefully about how this would affect the character in play, how they would react to colleagues and so forth.

Abilities

Abilities are skills and talents that the character has learned, acquired or perhaps just been born with. Abilities don’t have a level, you just have them or you don’t. Sample abilities might be:

Brawling
Driving
Investigating
Lock picking
Occult knowledge
Piloting
Rifle shooting

Players get to choose 5 abilities for their characters.

Sample Character

Major Digby Walters

Occupation: Serving British Army (airborne) Officer
Background: Served since 1942 and was involved in the D-Day and Market Garden operations. Can no longer parachute due to badly injured knee and has been confined behind a desk since 1946.

Draw: Walters yearned for excitement and was drawn into the War by piecing together various bits of intelligence that passed across his desk.

Body  2
Mind  2
Heroism 4

Keys

Immensely proud and stubborn
Has flashbacks to the battle in Arnhem

Hatred

Walters loathes Communism in all its aspects.

Abilities

Marksmanship
Tactics
Hand to hand fighting
Investigating
Flattery

One thing that concerns me is the current extent of the characters. Given the setting, should stats for fear/madness/other be included in order to reflect the stress and trauma that the characters may )and probably will) undergo? Would character creation benefit from greater emphasis on inter-party tension? Any feedback on the basic premise would also be appreciated.

Cheers
Malcolm

Wow, that's a great premise.  But it's about monsters like Dogs in the Vineyard is about demons.  I really, really like the idea of a four-person team drawn from the four occupation powers, forced to work together and having nominal access to all areas of Germany. 

I think it would be interesting if your principal decision was which nation to represent - the choice supplying a stereotype that you'd erode (or not) during character generation, but that would still exist for everyone else intact - maybe always, maybe until they got to know you.  So if you were playing a Yank, you'd start out loud and self confident, oversexed and under-smart.  Maybe you'd modify that, but when others dealt with you, those stereotypes would somehow still be in place.  That'd be cool.  I could really see a game like this being all about relationships and betrayal and hard decisions under the worst of circumstances.  Plus, who doesn't love a nazi zombie?

--Jason

That's a superb setting.

A quick historical point:

Malcolm wrote:
Much of Europe remains shattered and ruined, kept alive by American money and know-how flooding in. The Grand Alliance that defeated the spectre of fascism has been blown away on the winds of change. The USA and the USSR now stare at each other with unblinking eyes, waiting for the moment when the Cold War finally goes hot. Britain sits alongside her powerful ally, brooding over the loss of influence and Empire. France contemplates the damage done to her cities and countryside by ravages of war.

Malcolm wrote:
The characters are secret agents who have to hunt down scarcely believable creatures and entities, whilst preventing information about their activities from leaking out. Think 'Hellboy' meets 'The Third Man' meets 'The Manchurian Candidate'. Games are intended to be short and quite possibly brutal. The situations that the characters will find themselves in are life threatening and horrific, so they might not last that long. But that's OK, as character creation is fairly swift.

Malcolm wrote:
Tension is important in 'Cold City'. Tension between the forces that now occupy German. Tension between various factions struggling to survive in the slowly reviving city. Tension between the characters. By necessity, the game will make so very broad generalisations about various aspects of the setting, this is entirely deliberate. If you want to go into the details of how a French artillery officer would deal with a Red Army commissar, then feel free to do so. However, in this game, it's pretty likely that they will have an instant distrust for each other. All the better for creating conflict.

In the end, all of the characters are forced together by the job that they have to do: hunt monsters.

Malcolm wrote:
One thing that concerns me is the current extent of the characters. Given the setting, should stats for fear/madness/other be included in order to reflect the stress and trauma that the characters may )and probably will) undergo?

Malcolm wrote:
Would character creation benefit from greater emphasis on inter-party tension?

Jason wrote:
Wow, that's a great premise.  But it's about monsters like Dogs in the Vineyard is about demons.  I really, really like the idea of a four-person team drawn from the four occupation powers, forced to work together and having nominal access to all areas of Germany. 

I think it would be interesting if your principal decision was which nation to represent - the choice supplying a stereotype that you'd erode (or not) during character generation, but that would still exist for everyone else intact - maybe always, maybe until they got to know you.  So if you were playing a Yank, you'd start out loud and self confident, oversexed and under-smart.  Maybe you'd modify that, but when others dealt with you, those stereotypes would somehow still be in place.  That'd be cool.  I could really see a game like this being all about relationships and betrayal and hard decisions under the worst of circumstances.  Plus, who doesn't love a nazi zombie?

Graham wrote: As we all know, Britain was actually marvelling at the plucky British spirit in the face of the German menace, not brooding about anything.

How do you mean? If a player's character dies, does the player quickly roll another character and carry on? Because, if characters really get killed off that quickly, it doesn't sound that much fun. No chance to fight, or tell a story, or anything?

Or do you just mean that players shouldn't get too attached to their character, since they'll probably only last a session anyway?

Can I just check what you mean by conflict? Do the characters bicker, but basically work together? Or actively sabotage each others' missions? Or are they forced to work together, but have deep reservations about doing so, which occasionally spills over into party conflicts?

On the setting: do the characters know about all the weirdness at the start of the game? Or is part of the game the idea that they gradually discover how weird the world is and what their governments were plotting?

I'm also a little confused about the Heroism trait. I think it's a great idea. But how do you decide whether, say, jumping on a train is a Heroism or Body challenge?

One thing that concerns me is the current extent of the characters. Given the setting, should stats for fear/madness/other be included in order to reflect the stress and trauma that the characters may )and probably will) undergo?

It's an idea. Would it serve a purpose? Do you want a major part of the game to be how characters battle against their own sanity?

Malcolm wrote:
The idea of having a stereotype that overlays your real character is certainly something that has got me thinking and I'm wondering how to actually implement that?

One thing I'm keen to incorporate is the potential for one or more of the characters (and it's an extremely likely possibility) spying for their own side, passing information back. Hang on a minute! What if that's an intrinsic part of all the characters, that they are passing information back to their own side? It would be interesting to get the players to write brief secret notes about what they are passing back, to see their varying interpretations of what exactly is going on and modify the game based upon this? Hmmmm, now there's a thought.

Sounds interesting enough. I don't have the time to read everything right now, but two points:

1) Why limit this to Berlin? They could be chasing Monsters all over Germany.

2) What about a German on the team? Someone to speak to the locals and such?

- Frank

Yes, you should definitely have the option of playing a German tool of one of the four powers, and Germans would have their own stereotype.  I would totally require exactly four players, each with a character pushing the agenda of one of the four occupying powers. 

Frank wrote:
Sounds interesting enough. I don't have the time to read everything right now, but two points:

1) Why limit this to Berlin? They could be chasing Monsters all over Germany.

2) What about a German on the team? Someone to speak to the locals and such?

- Frank

Jason wrote: Yes, you should definitely have the option of playing a German tool of one of the four powers, and Germans would have their own stereotype.  I would totally require exactly four players, each with a character pushing the agenda of one of the four occupying powers.

As we all know, Britain was actually marvelling at the plucky British spirit in the face of the German menace, not brooding about anything.

Przemyslaw wrote:
Would it be possible to show the forbidden technology as something tempting, giving players the choice to either actually fight the menace, or just pretend to, in order to gather information for themselves/their government etc.?

Keys

Each character gets two 'keys'. These are aspects of their personality that drive them, trouble them or scare them. For example:

Fear of flying
Crazy in a fight
Paranoid around Russians

Hatred

This is something or someone that the character hates beyond all reason. Hatred should be chosen carefully, especially if they relate to people. While it would be fine to choose the hatred ‘Britain and the British’, think carefully about how this would affect the character in play, how they would react to colleagues and so forth.

Abilities

Abilities are skills and talents that the character has learned, acquired or perhaps just been born with. Abilities don’t have a level, you just have them or you don’t. Sample abilities might be:

Brawling
Driving
Investigating
Lock picking
Occult knowledge
Piloting
Rifle shooting

Given the setting, should stats for fear/madness/other be included in order to reflect the stress and trauma that the characters may )and probably will) undergo?

Przemyslaw wrote:

As we all know, Britain was actually marvelling at the plucky British spirit in the face of the German menace, not brooding about anything.

Yeah, and Poland was simply delighted because of its liberation by our Eastern friends. Hurray CCCP.

Anyway, to the point. A question, if I may:

Care to elaborate on the presence of this "twisted technology" in the setting? How exactly widespread it is? Any connections with the nazi occult, perchance? Would it be possible to show the forbidden technology as something tempting, giving players the choice to either actually fight the menace, or just pretend to, in order to gather information for themselves/their government etc.? It would give PCs yet another reason for distrusting each other.

mutex wrote:
It seems like you already have it in place. You've Keys, which are significant to driving character. I absolutely love keys. It's like they're RPG superchargers; really lovely. You've Hatreds, which could be extrapolated to aggressive behavior, phobias, etc. And you've Abilities, which could be beneficial side-effects of your characters contact with Twisted Technology and Nazi Occult.

So, you can kind of assume that shocking or corrupting encounters with TT/NO will yield a risk of a new Hatred, an option to adopt a new Key if applicable, and sometimes even gain a new Ability.