New campaign for our group -- horror world
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 8:15 pm
So after several years of playing Champions almost exclusively (with a little Pathfinder thrown in), our group has decided to change things up and we're going to be starting a Nightbane campaign in the near future. Rather than going with the standard campaign setting, we're going to be incorporating aspects of some of our old D20 Modern horror games. The group has a mixed degree of familiarity with Palladium. The GM and I have the most, and the other guys have played with it a little bit.
Anyway I thought I'd share.
The idea is that this version of Earth follows the rules of horror movies. In fact, many classic horror movies may have happened here, in one form or another. That doesn't mean that the Friday the 13th movies actually took place, but something quite similar may have happened back in the late 70s, early 80s. This is a world where everything is just a little bit worse than it is in real life, before you add in the supernatural stuff. Cars are less reliable. The power goes out a little more frequently. Cops are lazier, and/or less trustworthy. Crime rates are higher. And people are a lot more likely to just look the other way when they see something they can't quite explain. That howling sound you heard? Must be the wind. Or a big dog. But you're sure not going to go look outside. Not tonight. Maybe in the morning.
Horror movies don't really exist in the world. You may have the old Universal monster movies, and the radioactive giant ant movies and stuff from the '50s, but anything beyond that just never caught on. People don't want to watch that sort of thing. Every once in a while a movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre gets made, but they always tank at the box office, and you have to really dig to find a copy of them anywhere. As a result, people aren't all that familiar with common vulnerabilities of monsters. On the plus side, no Twilight.
Elements of the Cthulhu mythos are incorporated into the world, but the world isn't in imminent danger of annihilation. The Old Ones aren't just sleeping. They're pretty much dead. Their influence can still be felt, but the cultists aren't going to be able to accomplish their goals of destroying the world and reviving great Cthulhu. That doesn't mean they can't murder a bunch of people and call forth one of his underlings, however.
We'll be using a mixture of vampire types. Rifts-style vamps, as well as others will exist here. At some point in the past, some particularly strong-willed vamps broke free from control of the intelligence, and they spread from there. Other types of monsters exist as well. The Earth is basically pretty packed with things that go bump in the night.
We are probably not going to have Dark Day happen. The Nightbane and the Nightlords are still around, but the Nightlord plot would not be nearly as far along. They're trying to get to the level of control they have in the main setting.
The supernatural messes with technology. That's why most people don't know or just don't believe in that stuff. Cameras will rarely get a good picture of whatever creature it is. It will always be blurry. DNA tests on that hair the cops found will prove inconclusive. For the most part, the government doesn't believe in any of it. Well, except for the parts that are controlled by something. Some of the richest and most powerful people in the country are involved with devil worship and black magic. And some of them are descended from things that aren't quite human. But werewolves? Please. The children of Dagon don't believe in werewolves. That's crazy talk.
As a result, no one group has really managed to get control. There are some secret organizations that are working to stop the handful of things they know about. We've used S.A.V.E. from the old Chill game. But most of them got killed off, it's a dead organization. Monster hunters don't have a very high survival rate.
And that's the world the PCs will be going into. We're going to start as normal humans, without knowing our real supernatural nature. Sometime during the initial adventure, we'll have an awakening and our abilities will manifest.
Thoughts? Comments?
Anyway I thought I'd share.
The idea is that this version of Earth follows the rules of horror movies. In fact, many classic horror movies may have happened here, in one form or another. That doesn't mean that the Friday the 13th movies actually took place, but something quite similar may have happened back in the late 70s, early 80s. This is a world where everything is just a little bit worse than it is in real life, before you add in the supernatural stuff. Cars are less reliable. The power goes out a little more frequently. Cops are lazier, and/or less trustworthy. Crime rates are higher. And people are a lot more likely to just look the other way when they see something they can't quite explain. That howling sound you heard? Must be the wind. Or a big dog. But you're sure not going to go look outside. Not tonight. Maybe in the morning.
Horror movies don't really exist in the world. You may have the old Universal monster movies, and the radioactive giant ant movies and stuff from the '50s, but anything beyond that just never caught on. People don't want to watch that sort of thing. Every once in a while a movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre gets made, but they always tank at the box office, and you have to really dig to find a copy of them anywhere. As a result, people aren't all that familiar with common vulnerabilities of monsters. On the plus side, no Twilight.
Elements of the Cthulhu mythos are incorporated into the world, but the world isn't in imminent danger of annihilation. The Old Ones aren't just sleeping. They're pretty much dead. Their influence can still be felt, but the cultists aren't going to be able to accomplish their goals of destroying the world and reviving great Cthulhu. That doesn't mean they can't murder a bunch of people and call forth one of his underlings, however.
We'll be using a mixture of vampire types. Rifts-style vamps, as well as others will exist here. At some point in the past, some particularly strong-willed vamps broke free from control of the intelligence, and they spread from there. Other types of monsters exist as well. The Earth is basically pretty packed with things that go bump in the night.
We are probably not going to have Dark Day happen. The Nightbane and the Nightlords are still around, but the Nightlord plot would not be nearly as far along. They're trying to get to the level of control they have in the main setting.
The supernatural messes with technology. That's why most people don't know or just don't believe in that stuff. Cameras will rarely get a good picture of whatever creature it is. It will always be blurry. DNA tests on that hair the cops found will prove inconclusive. For the most part, the government doesn't believe in any of it. Well, except for the parts that are controlled by something. Some of the richest and most powerful people in the country are involved with devil worship and black magic. And some of them are descended from things that aren't quite human. But werewolves? Please. The children of Dagon don't believe in werewolves. That's crazy talk.
As a result, no one group has really managed to get control. There are some secret organizations that are working to stop the handful of things they know about. We've used S.A.V.E. from the old Chill game. But most of them got killed off, it's a dead organization. Monster hunters don't have a very high survival rate.
And that's the world the PCs will be going into. We're going to start as normal humans, without knowing our real supernatural nature. Sometime during the initial adventure, we'll have an awakening and our abilities will manifest.
Thoughts? Comments?
and the like as well as the level of genetic/bio tech as it was in real life such as in the 70's/80's/90's and the repercussions of such *experiments* carrying over/getting worse as the years pass from when the *incident* took place, also nuclear power plant meltdowns/leaks(Chernboyl(SP)/Three Mile Island), or government bio/chemical weapons factories/labs having an *incident* could lead to a growing monster/mutant horror problem over time.