Undead Edition

Tell us about your horror settings, games, etc. Share inspirational art, prompts, etc.

>List of games:
Call of Cthulhu, Chill, Cold and Dark, Degenesis, Delta Green, Don't Rest Your Head, Dread, Esoterrorists/Fear Itself+Book of Unremitting Horror, Fall of Delta Green, GORE, Into The Shadows, KULT, Little Fears, Mothership RPG, Nemesis (free on Arc Dream's website), Nights Black Agents, Silent Legions (Mostly for the tables), Stalker: The SciFi RPG, Symbaroum, Ten Candles, Trail of Cthulhu, Unisystem (All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Witchcraft, Conspiracy X, etc.), Unknown Armies, The Whispering Vault, Vaesen

>Inspirational stuff:
Caitlin R Kiernan, Castlevania, Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Doom Watch, Fear & Hunger, George Romero, Ghostwatch, House of Leaves, I Am In Eskew, John Carpenter, Kolchak the Nightstalker, Laird Barron, John Langan, M.R. James, Nick Cutter, Old Gods of Appalachia, Quatermass, Ramsey Campbell, Remedy Series (Alan Wake, Control), SCP Foundation, Scarfolk Council, Shaun Hutson, Silent Hill, Stand Still Stay Silent, The Evil Dead, The Magnus Archives, The Secret World, The Stone Tapes, Anatomy, Thomas Ligotti, Twin Peaks, Vault of Evil forums, toomuchhorrorfiction

Other News:
"The Sutra of Pale Leaves: Carcosa Manifest" coming later this year
https://www.chaosium.com/blogcoming-in-2025-for-call-of-cthulhu-the-sutra-of-pale-leaves-carcosa-manifest/

Current Book Club Topic:
"The Salem Horror" by Henry Kuttner
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76108

Questions for the thread:
>Have you ever run a zombie apocalypse/survival game?
>What system did you use?
>How'd it go?

Previous thread:
>>95785422

Please try to keep arguing to a minimum. Don't respond to bait/drama/politics posts.

And as usual, try and keep it alive, or at least... undead!

>>95792366
>>95957958
I'd love to do a Jersey Devil game at some point.

>>95958319 (OP)
How's this for a Nights Black Agents conspiracy:
>Vampires are black magic knights templar ala Tombs of the Blind Dead
>Unearthed during the war on terror
>Cia goes "hey, you hate Muslims, we hate Muslims, let's team up.
>CIA starts project Achilles, using black magic vampire blood to make super spies
>Templars end up building second state within European CIA
>Plan on maybe turning the Pope, plan on maybe getting nukes to fuck up the holy land

This is just my very rough idea, wondering if anyone has an thoughts or additions.

>>95958200
I rank Mothership with shit like Mork Borg. Edgy """arthouse""" game that isn't really a game.

>>95958741
Which game you like anon? Better settings like cthulhu? because "arthouse" is about the style so you want matter and content instead?

>>95958319 (OP)
Forgot something, OP.
Book Club Questions
>What works?
>What's cool about it?
>Why is it so effective?
>What is the best part of it in your opinion?
>Thoughts on the characters?
>Is the villain effective?
>If you had to pick a moment that really scared you, which would it be?
>Is there anything you feel could have been expanded upon?
>What would you change?
>Would you use it as inspiration for a game?

>>95957750
It's certainly my favorite by far. Really like how 7e made the game easier without overly simplifying things like DnD 5e did. Making characteristics into percentages like skills was such a good change, I'm shocked they didn't do it earlier.
Also, really helps every edition is backwards compatible with minor tweaks, so you can always use old modules.

>>95958319 (OP)
What kind of special training might a Delta Green Agent with a career in the DEA as an Operations Division (Police Officer) have? Money Laundering? Black (or drug) markets?

The idea is that this dude was doing drug busts related to cartels and other terrorism when he stumbled into a cult, becoming aware of the unnatural and being approached by DG.

>>95958319 (OP)
How do you get this kind of atmosphere for a game? Lovecraft’s ability to describe a scene and environment is insane
>Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bullfrogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpentlike suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.

>>95961347
Just use long and antiquated words to describe shit. Like problematical is just another way to say concerning or worrying.

>>95961377
That's not the entire reason why Lovecraft was good at writing environment; he had a sense of weight and brevity for each word.

>>95961397
This. Modern Lovecraftian stories that try to cut out the overly verbose descriptions are one of the things I most hate. They help sell the ancientness and truly Eldritch nature of the horrors in a way simpler language often fails to do.

>>95959636
NTA but the issue most people have with the Artpunk thing isn't the aesthetic, even if it turns off a lot of people. It's the complete lack of depth. In their pursuit of being "rules-lite" they've ended up with something entirely shallow.
Games can be simple but still good.

Gemini isn't that good at being a GM; it can't tell when to hide a secret, like telling me one NPC is a vampire straight up.

>>95961982
they all have a problem with hidden information

>>95962020
Are we ever going to have AI GMs? I feel like you could edit the PDF to have secrets with different prompts so it never reveals it

>>95958337
That's cool. I personally pick Bigfoot.

>>95961347
>Have the ability to picture a scene.
>Describe the scene at lengh
That's being a good writer 101, the rest is talent or cultured mishmashing passed as talent, ideally both

>>95961982
>>95962020
>Anons unironically wanting AI to be better at hiding information
This truly is /hsg/

>>95958741
>>95961849
I used to think so as well, until I played a few sessions of MB. It's fine, it works. Hate the art direction though.

>>95958319 (OP)
TQ: I've considered running a zombie game with AFMBE, but a pet project of mine a little while ago was designing a heavy retool of Modiphius' 2D20 into the zombie survival game I wanted. Still haven't play-tested it yet though.

>>95961982
>>95962027
>Using an AI GM for Call of Cthulhu, the one major RPG to heavily promote and support solo play
ISHYGDDT

What's the go to system for some resident evil type shit? Zombies, BoWs, etc.

>>95962903
I mentioned All Flesh Must be Eaten before, which would be your best bet. It's even got a dedicated Resident Evil fan-book. Just google AFMBE Regenesis.

You use AI to simulate a GM. I use AI to simulate players, we are not the same.

>>95962943
Honestly very useful for testing stuff, perfect simulation of player retardation.

>>95961849
What game for solo then? I'm not going through pages and pages of rules, playing solo need to be nice and have rythm not triple checking the rule everytime I role something.

>>95962838
Why did you like MB? what kind of session was it, in group?

>>95963448
>Why did you like MB?
I just remember it being very out of our way: the GM prepared a crazy world and we fucked around in it and had a good time, combat was fast and rolls were rare and significant.

>>95962943
This.

>>95963448
Can't speak for solo play much and definitely not for horror. Ironsworn is cool. Same with 5 Parsecs from Home and the like. I don't have much occasion to play solo RPGs but when I have it's been AD&D and B/X mostly.

>>95961463
Respectfully disagree. I think the hallmark of great post-lovecraft eldritch horror is being able to convey the same sense of utter wrongness in different, usually tighter, writing styles.

OK, here's an idea: the Warp from 40k, but in reverse. There's some extra-spacial dimension and the lifeforms there have recently evolved to become sapient, but now the psychic emanations of their negative emotions are leaking into 4d spacetime and causing eldritch stuff to happen.

>>95968477
I like it! So demons aren't manifestation of human/ sapient life in our universe emotional energy but from beings in a differet universe?

>>95968591
Not him, but that seems to be the implication.

>>95969923
How would that be any different from just 'alien beings from another dimension' if these new demons are manifestations of alien emotions from other interdimensional aliens. Unless its just alien rage, stagenecy etc thats get turned into the 40k daemons as we know them now.

Call of Cthulhu is so fucking fun
It’s even good playing solo with AI
I convinced this sorcerer of Azathoth to follow me into flames because he was immune to bullets from magic or something

>>95970857
kino..

>>95970332
You could play into the emotions angle by making it so, to defeat the negative emotion entities, you have to counteract the emotion they represent. However, since it’s alien emotions, learning them and the counteracting emotions, as well as recreating the conditions for the counteracting emotions, is difficult.
“The emotional anger of your 12th breeding cycle failing can only be countered by the contentment from breathing a fresh spring breeze of pure nitrogen.”

What is best way to do a game in the 28 X Later world?

>>95961347

You don't. Even he wouldn't improvise something like that in a game night, if he played.
That being said, get clues from him: do a place you did see by yourself.

What kind of aesthetic should my post-apocalyptic setting's evil robots have?

>>95972302
Whatever system you use, ignore everything after the first movie.

>>95974486
Strogg. Do a spin on Skynet where the machines don't see humans as inferior/a threat, but as something they need to elevate, and bio-machines are the master race.

>>95958319 (OP)
So how often do Delta Green ops end in burning or blowing up whatever the spooky shit is until it no longer is spooky?

Also is it the sort of game where I should prep backup characters?

>>95977112
Yes.

Anyone watching old horror movies for inspiration?

I'm finding myself in need of a one-shot for my next Call of Cthulhu session due to a player being absent (We're running Horror on the Orient Express) and me not wanting to finish the chapter without them.
Instead of using a pre-made, I'm trying my hand at writing my own adventure for the first time in a while, as I feel I'm more experienced with the game than last time I made my own and want to try it out again.
Here is my idea. I'd be happy for any feedback or ideas.
>A decade ago in a small village, an immortal witch had lain a trap for a Star Vampire which had been summoned up by a rival of hers centuries ago and sent to kill her. While the rival was long dead at this point, the Star Vampire lived and continued its hunt.
>She had attempted numerous rituals and spells to kill the creature, all to no avail, and was getting desperate. As such, she was pursuing a risky option: Opening a doorway to a pocket dimension using eldritch geometry and trapping the thing inside.
>However, something went wrong during the attempt, with the witch accidentally falling into her own trap and getting sucked into the pocket dimension. The Star Vampire attempted to pursue but ended up ruining the lines she had drawn, closing the gateway and sealing her inside and it outside.
>The Star Vampire now lurks inside of the witch's old home where she made the trap, knowing she's nearby but unable to reach her. It can do nothing but wait for her to escape so it can kill her. Every few years it must go out and feed, else laying in a semi-hibernation.
My plan is for the PCs to be part of a group that investigates supposedly paranormal instances. They'll get on the investigation through reports of animals being found drained of blood. I'm hoping to put in handouts about the immortal witch's history, with reports of people being found exsanguinated in areas she's been, in order to make them think she's a traditional vampire and to hide the Star Vampire's presence until later on.
(1/2)

>>95981692
As for the resolution, the players will have to either kill the Star Vampire themselves or, more likely, rediscover the witch's pocket dimension formula and reopen the doorway so that the Star Vampire will go inside in order to finally kill its quarry.
The witch will still be alive and have limited interactions with her house, able to speak in a spectral voice and perform limited telekinesis. I'm stuck between her either attempting to scare the players off because she doesn't want the gate to reopen and her to get killed, or to be helping them out because after being stuck in the pocket dimension for so long by herself, she longs to finally die
(2/2)

>>95961020
Special Training is a really poorly developed game mechanic, but it is meant to apply to specific things like grenade use or scuba diving or parachuting, and allow you to use a different skill or stat for that type of action.

Money laundering and knowledge of black/drug markets falls explicitly under accounting and criminology.

The most recent errata from arc dream says that an Agent needs to have grenade training or suffer a -20 to use of grenade (which is the athletics skill). Id be fine with a federal law enforcement officer having grenade special training, they probably throw a few flashbangs at the academy or at some point during a training seminar.

>>95981692
>>95981703
It's not a bad idea, the thing to think about is how you're going to get that information to the players, and why that information hasn't already been found. Why is the house still standing, who owns it, how will the players find out about the ritual and the pocket dimension. The alexandrian has an idea I like, called a revelation list; instead of thinking in terms of what clues your going to plant, think in terms of what information you want them to find. You've got
>There is a star vampire
>The vampire is laying in wait for a witch
>The witch is in a pocket dimension, and there is a way for the players to open it.

You need to think of the avenues by which you can give this information to the players.

I like the idea, though, anon, star vampires are neat, Eldritch geometry is neat, and witches with beef are neat.

>>95958319 (OP)
Do you ever make monsters or NPCs from your players' favourite media? I am going to put Judge Holden in my adventure and subtly hint that he's going to be the boss fight at the end.

>>95982982
My buddy once put some homebrew Japanese turtle with a crying baby's head in our pathfinder game. I had no idea what it was at the time, but I guess it's a malevolent spirit of drowned unwanted babies or some shit.

Anyways our physical attacks didn't seem to be doing shit, so I used my cool new ring of fire immunity to grapple it and drown the dead baby spirit a second time. In nearby lava.

Your idea sounds fun too.

>>95983105
That sounds good. Drowning it in lava sounds like a good sendoff for a homebrew monster.

>>95958741
Mothership is weird, the system presents itself like a toolkit
But at the same time there are a lot of deliberate omissions or areas the game kneecaps itself by not directly explaining the areas it left open or absent
Such as a lack of a stealth mechanic and perception checks

The GM screen included with the box set is also really useful
And character creation is fast as living fuck provided you are flipping through the physical small booklet in your hands

The game feels like it was designed for this fast and compact physical format, really at the expense of a lot else and I’ve found the adventures relatively easy to run

Do you incorporate any Lovecraftian descriptions or prose in your games? I might try it with the entry of a monster.

>>95984317
I admittedly do, mainly because I read a lot of Lovecraft and his contemporaries, so their diction has bled into my way of talking when it relates to horror.
I remember an editor on a book I’m writing suggest I remove the word “Eldritch” from a sentence and I absolutely refused.

>>95984809
>an editor on a book
Was it an in-house editor or one you hired? If the former, well done on getting published!

>>95984809
Funny how that word has become the description of anything cosmic horror. He uses many other great old words you can use and that wouldn't feel cliche.
>>95984317
In my recent readings of lovecraft I've noticed 'outer spheres' is used now and again.

Which monster would you pick for a game? There is a lot to use from mythology.

>>95984956
>EL HOMBRE DEL SACO

>>95984854
Neither. It’s a family member who works as an editor who is doing it for free.

>>95984855
It’s the only time I’ve used it in the book and it’s for a character who speaks like a traditional Lovecraftian protagonist as a character trait. I’d be remiss if I didn’t use it.

>>95984956
None of these. I’m writing Fafnir into my next project.

Torn between AFMBE and Delta Green. I feel like I could come up with a scenario for either one, but which ruleset do you recommend for a party that likes more fluff than crunch?

Anyone tried "Across a thousand dead worlds" ? What did you think of it? Any bad points while playing? (Better if tried solo)

>>95986725
Barring the bond rules, DG is pretty simple, and even the bond rules aren't super complicated. Plus there is a giant PDF of pregens for DG organized by career. They are both pretty light weight though, It depends on whether or not you/your players like d100 roll under or stat+skill roll high, I guess.

>>95982394
Thanks for the feedback. I do have plans for how the players are going to find out each of those pieces of information.
>There is a star vampire
As said, the inciting incident is going to be animals found drained of blood. I'm also going to have an urban legend that the witch once snapped a man's neck telekinetically (in truth he was attacked by the Star Vampire while it was pursing the witch). Finally, in the witch's house itself, there will be a journal where she talks about being pursued by a "damned thing" which cannot be seen.
>The vampire is laying in wait for a witch
I'm going to have a rival occultist to the player characters who is also attempting to uncover the secret of the witch. He's going to have gathered valuable clues but come to the complete wrong conclusions. He's found past cases where exsanguinated people and animals were found in places the witch (under aliases) had been. However, all the recent cases have been near the house, whereas before they were all over the region, showing that whatever is doing it is staying put.
>The witch is in a pocket dimension, and there is a way for the players to open it.
Again, witch's journal and they can find the remains of the lines she drew, with some of them having been scuffed out. I'll plant a tome, perhaps either in the house or in the town's historical society that has the ritual itself (in the latter case, it was recovered during the Star Vampire's hibernation and donated there).
I also plan to have a spirit box placed in the house that the witch can communicate to the players through if they turn it on, allowing her to fill in any gaps they miss, or at least hint at them.

>>95986725
AFMBE is tight but I'd recommend using CoC7e as a baseline for a zombie game. It's the better system.

>>95989550
NTA but there's shit I really dislike about 7e. I'd say it's a side grade to DG, at best, and probably easier for a modern campaign.

>>95989550
It absolutely is not better. AFMBE is criminally underrated.

>>95984956
On the pic? Probably Krampus. If we're looking at all folklore monsters, I gotta go with Mothman. He's cool and underutilized.

>>95989971
Jesus I can't type tonight. DG is probably better for a modern campaign. Also, as >>95990246 says, afmbe is underrated and purpose built for zombie shit.

>>95982982
Judge Holden came in and shot an NPC three times in the back after forcing another one to dance to death in contortionist style

>Cops were racist to me and killed my dad
>This excuses me awakening the Great Old Ones and wiping out all of humanity
>Also, the magic system is now based on a belief from a Black Supremacist group
Well this was a disappointment.

Recently saw a video on the Memphis rap sigils and imo the concept would make for a wild CoC campaign, imagine a mcguffin chase where you have to find the 8 tapes to discover the secrets of the memphis pyramid and discover the true purpose of the crystal skull hidden within it.

>>95958319 (OP)
Sorta. It's more of a generational downfall than one-and-done disaster but Zenotte is assimilating into the p-zombie headspace of the precursors they've unwittingly built their whole civilization on top of. This has happened before countless times, the precursors are effectively a memetic prion (anyone who comes to fully understand the threat they represent has become indistinguishable from them).

That's all deepest lore, for now the Fear Itself campaign is about neutralizing a p-zombie precursor who's "caught" sapience and become a slasher villain. Going well so far! 2 PCs dead, one unpersoned and next session another will be horribly transformed.

>>95982982
I was going to toss in Plague Roach as a nutter with severe face blindness and (somewhat justified) paranoia.

https://youtu.be/SeeGBG6akR0?si=PsuI9ReY8COSHt5A

On the one hand he's survived in the perceptual backrooms while staying relatively sane for far longer than most, on the other he'll eventually decide you're one of "Them" and murderize with aplomb. Pessimism is one of the triggers for this as are lies, PCs in a horror game are liable to be bummed making genuine misery or pretending everything is fine their base state (you can see where this is going...).

>>95992572
Ah, this one shows more of the main schtick I aim to ape (though the 1000 yard stare in "precious memories" is gold!).

https://youtu.be/tV54wy_IBVg?si=Fv5SK-RsZp4tQhyi

If I can get away with it I'd toss this exchange almost verbatim into any sort of surreal horror. Very Lynchian!

https://youtu.be/nw_kbcDdGto?si=zOzBExLK1LtTha4t

>>95992572
Though less fit for the thread I almost managed to sneak in a Steamed Hams reference into the party's sewer delve. Basically clams are used to monitor water quality irl and pigs can be used as decent stand-ins for human flesh. "Steaming" the clams / hams refers to sterilizing the enclosures (to prevent yoghurt contamination among other things) and was to be used as an excuse by sewage foremen for closing off portions of the network. The "aurora borealis!?" bit at the end was to be played straight, should the PCs barge in they'd see the alien substructure laid bare, something the human mind is loathe to perceive as anything but a swirling mess of sensation.

Party derailed and tried tracking the slasher villain instead (didn't go so well, ended up causing the aforementioned deaths).

>>95974486
Can't speak for your thing but precursors in Zenotte are mostly present among humans in the form of "wretching gargoyles". They actually look nothing like gargoyles, it's just easiest to rationalise leaky antimemetic cyborgs as elaborate gutter detailing. They're also literally incapable of evil what with being p-zombies and all (in fact their last action as free-thinking souls, becoming a p-zombies, was most likely an accident). That said doing what they do will result in yet another species being added to their shambling collective without even being given the chance to knowingly resist, that cancerous apathy is perhaps the truest evil there can be.

>>95989971
>>95990246
What do you think AFMBE does better? I ran a zombie survival game in both AFMBE and CoC7e, exact same premise and setup and zombie types, and CoC resulted in the way better game.

>>95991345
If NYT recommends it chances are it's woke dogshit.

>>95992729
>What do you think AFMBE does better?
* Core die mechanic is better. d100 sucks. Success Levels are good. "Roll, add two numbers, get nine or fuck off" is good. Skills and attributes 1-5 is good, onboards newbies very quickly. Exploding dice are a treat but the specifics stop them going all retarded like Savage Worlds.
* Varying character power level is easy: Survivors or Norms.
* Damage rules are elegant, feel good in play, have real punch.
* Zombie creation allows for a lot of ZM creativity and can make a large number of other monsters.
* Splatbooks are good, have a lot of really adaptable stuff in them. CoC splats always feel hemmed in as fuck especially if you just want horror without all the Summoning Aps'trophy The Tentacular lore.
* I really like the GURPS-esque way characters are built. Advantages and Drawbacks, etc.
* Expansibility with other Unisystem games means you can go full Action Wizards, pulp adventure, Delta Green, etc.

Just off the dome.

>>95993144
>core die mechanic is better, d100 sucks
Entirely subjective. Some people think d10, d6, and d20 suck. Ultimately it's all percentage based anyway. I do think CoC should use core BRP's 1-20 characteristics though.

>success levels are good
CoC has success levels.

>get nine or fuck off
Get under the skill number or fuck off. Static and constant DCs are another subjectively good or bad thing.

>1-5 skills and attributes is good
But ultimately very limiting and easily broken if you go beyond them. You can "top off" fast in AFMBE.

>varying character power is easy
Also easy in CoC.

>damage rules are elegant
Way too swingy for me desu. A baseball bat has a chance of barely doing any damage or atomizing something into paste, since most damage is handled with multipliers. Damage is extremely inconsistent as a result.

>zombie creation
Can be done beat for beat in CoC.

>splats
Agreed. I hate Lovecraftian horror and it sucks that 95% of splata focus on it. That said most of AFMBE's splats are also specific to their setting. You won't find much modern day zombie stuff in the Fistful of Zombies or Dungeons and Zombies books for example.

>gurpsesque characters
Subjective but imo very overrated. People will always just minmax them to the fullest extent possible. They don't define characters very well.

>expansibility
CoC is built on BRP and compatible with everything BRP is compatible with, so basically everything. You can hack BRP to a far greater extent than Unisystem, and everything AFMBE does that you said you liked could easily be ported over.

>>95992729
I don't feel one way or another about AFMBE, I think that CoC 7e is overrated and was recommending DG if they want a modern, bro/d100 game. Sorry if I was unclear.

>>95961020
>drug busts related to cartels and other terrorism
what era and how high-speed was he? that could range from briefing and accompanying local police on busts to full on being deployed into south america or afghanistan.

>>95993806
>I think that CoC 7e is overrated and was recommending DG if they want a modern, bro/d100 game
There are barely any differences between the two. DG is more like CoC 6.5e. In both cases, any pros or cons to both systems can be fixed extremely easily with homebrew. BRP is endlessly tweakable. Unisystem is much more restrictive than it seems. Not as much as Savage Worlds or Fate, which are basically scams to be called "generic" systems, but it's still not nearly as flexible as it should be for a generic, one-size-fits-all basis, while I'd say BRP is the most universal system out there. To the point you can even change the entire dice engine and nothing breaks (Pendragon).

>>95994432
Late 90s/early 2000s. I see him as having boots on the ground experience in South America for a portion of his career prior to DG recruitment. Briefed and accompanied local forces on their efforts against cartels. Not a stranger to shootouts and raids, but not to the degree as actual military personnel.

Totally unrelated, but yes I've been watching Narcos lately.

>>95995462
If you are doing a drug busting fed to occult secret agent character pls take a look at the Narcosatanicos case, could be great inspo for your character's backstory. Many aspects of cartel culture in general are heavily linked to santeria and other occult traditions like the worship of La Santa Muerte and other saints, as well as implementing rituals derivated from african and prehispanic traditions.
t. mexican stuck in narcolandia

>>95995462
pre-gwot he'd be more experienced than most personnel ironically. language, navigate and military science would make sense to add onto the federal agent kit i'd say

>>95995933
seconded 100%, the mix of gangster culture and folk religion basically writes itself when it comes to incorporating DG stuff

>>95995371
I was going to say, aren't the only differences between CoC 7e and DG:
>CoC
Has Hard and Impossible rolls, Skills get checks on success, Bonus and Penalty dice, Characteristics are percentages and has chase rules
>DG
Has Lethality Rating on weapons, Skills get checks on failures and the Bonds system
Are there any other I'm not aware of? Been a while since I played CoC 6e or read the DG rulebook.

>>95995933
>>95996530
Thanks anons. I knew about how big folk religion is down in those cultures, but having some terms to dive deeper into that subjects great!

>>95982982
you need to add Dutch to his spoken languages

>>95991345
>Tell me you didn't understand the book without telling me you didn't understand the book

>>95995371
DG plays quite a bit differently than 7e. Lethality rating, no luck stat and spends, no pushed roll nonsense, action economy/combat is different, bonds for ablative sanity armor, kind of more deadly, at least in my experience. It also has modern careers built in.

Also, the system being restrictive is a dumb complaint, because the original anon was asking about a zombie survival horror game, so a game restricted to zombie survival horror isn't a bad thing.

How do you utilize phobias in Call of Cthulhu?

>>95982982
I'm going to mix up Dunwich Horror with this Azathoth incarnation; an NPC will give birth to a shoggoth-like monstrosity that resembles Judge Holden only in the face.

>>95997618
I think black and white with film grain makes the monster look more eerie in being less "photoshoppy"

>>95992572
>Fear Itself
How is it working out for you? I dig the rules but I'm not sure I have the right kind of group.

>>95997215
>lethality
Skub. IMO it makes the game way less tactical in tetms of automatic guns, but 7e's not good either. Autofire is weird both ways you do it.
>no luck stat
Not an objective pro or con. You can run 7e without using Luck.
>no pushed rolls
Agree there, pushed rolls are a weird mechanic and in years of playing/running 7e they've almost never come up.
>ablative sanity armor
DG's bonds only work if you're doing its ubernihilistic setting. 7e's sanity is also largely tailored to le tentacles of doom type shit and will need slight tweaks to work better with different horror but nothing significant. You can also use bonds in 7e and 7e already has similar mechanics.
>kind of more deadly
Just do 7e without luck if you think it's too easy. No luck and buffed monsters are all that really makes DG harder.
>modern careers built in
So does 7e.
>being restricted isn't a bad thing
Other anon brought up 7e's splats being restrictive as a bad thing. Which I agree it is, but AFMBE and DG's splats are equally restricted if not moreso.

>>95998242
Lethality is good for bombs and explosives. I just reduce the lethality for autos to be a slightly lesser chance of an instakill.
The best thing I enjoy about DG is how the setting has the idea of "New people coming in" built into the system. It saves me a small headache of needing to justify why dickhead #2 is coming into the investigation after a PC dies. It's simple, clean, and allows for a seamless continuity of the game's atmosphere.

>>95997168
No, I got it. It’s just that by the end of the story, I hated every character and didn’t even find the cosmic horror stuff particularly compelling. I fucking hate when writers try to do “humanity is the real horror” in cosmic horror, a genre all about the insignificance of man and everything he believes in.
A tragedy only works if you actually like the character who meets a tragic fate and Tom effectively lost the moral high ground pretty fucking quickly. Like, only AFTER the fact does he consider his apocalypse is going to destroy people and places he likes? What a dumbass.
Also, didn’t really care for the total vilification of Malone considering he’s an Irish immigrant, a group who also faced heavy prejudice and oppression at the time (absolutely none of which was present in the story).

>>95991345
>>95999312
I mean, you basically ate shit then got surprised and angry when it tasted like shit. It's very obvious it was written as slopaganda.

>>95997772
Pretty well though it's hard to separate any shortcomings of the system from mine as a GM. As you've likely surmised the schizo-lore runs deep and day-to-day existence in Zenotte can be unintuitive. There's likely an elegant way to get the sense of uncanny everything across without excessively disorienting players but at present I'm just fumbling towards it (fortunately while everyone has fun along the way).

Rules-wise the mystery / scene building procedures do what they're supposed to in terms of preventing soft-locks even in the hands of a novice GM. One snag is the attrition of skill points assuming longer sessions than what I have available, knowing what I do now I'd have adjusted character build points downward to account for our group's particular arrangements.

What would you like to use Fear Itself for?

>>95998242
I’m surprised you guys don’t like pushed rolls. I like the trade off between either pushing a roll or spending luck, and how pushed rolls come with consequences if you fail. Admittedly it comes up less often with luck spending, but I still find it a worthwhile mechanic.

Fairies should be used more often in horror.

>>95999863
The problem is luck spending is better 99% of the time and bonus dice are fairly easy to come by. Not to mention to make pushed rolls useful you have to basically be willing to stall the entire game and only let players attempt something once or they can never do it again unless they push it. The game also isn't clear on what should happen on a failed pushed roll, other than "idk make something bad happen".

>>95999863
>>96002417
Basically this, and I also don't like how it sort of frames dice rolling in the game. If you have to roll the dice at all, it is a risky situation and you are giving it your best shot. It makes it this weird shit where "ok, I roll to jump the chasm," "okay, you rolled 89 over 65, so you get right up close to the edge but then get a cramp and stop just short." Like, I don't want to constantly come up with narration of how they didn't actually fail the thing, just almost did but then didn't. It reframes every single instance of dice rolling in a way that I don't like.
I think the only reason a mechanic like it exists in the first place is that people end rolling dice way more often in these games than they need too.

Been finally reading up Tim Powers stuff. Absolutely fantastic
I can see how Unknown Armies pilfered him for all he's worth.
I've done Last Call and just finished Expiration Date. I might take a little break before diving into Earthquake Weather but really these are all fantastic. I love urban fantasy,and the concept of the Smoke Trade is just so fucking grim it's fantastic

>>96002417
Fair, but I like the risk/reward factor between Pushing a roll vs. Spending Luck. After all, Luck is a finite resource and passing a skill with Luck means you don't get a check for that skill to try improving it later.

>>96003104
I see what you're saying, but something you have to remember is that Pushed Rolls can only happen in instances where they can be justified. So in your instance of someone failing a jump roll over a chasm, presuming they already did it with a running start, there isn't really a way they can justify a Pushed Roll since they already gave it their best shot. So I'd say you're clear to make them fall on first failure at that point.
If they come up with a justification retroactively and it's far, you can always walk back what you said to get them to the point of a second attempt. But a Pushed Roll shouldn't always be available.

>>96003373
In the games I ran of 7e, it just ended up causing confusion or fucking with the game flow, and ended up getting ignored. And that's not good, imo. The fact that they spent a non-trivial amount of word count on something that doesn't really work (and, if I recall correctly, tied insanity mechanics into it) makes me dislike the game.

If I'm gonna run a Lovecraft game anymore, I'm running Trail of Cthulhu anyhow.

>>96003104
>I don't want to constantly come up with narration of how they didn't actually fail the thing, just almost did but then didn't.
I wouldn't either if that was the only thing I did when they failed a roll. Far more often, I resort to the "yes, and..." or "no, but..." principle and instead of scrambling to figure out some novel way of describing how they completely failed in a black and white binary way, I have them "fail forward." Often the best way is to give them a choice to make or a roleplaying challenge afterward.
Examples: Failed the chasm Jump roll? You make it across, but you lose your balance and your grip slips on your gun. (Now they have to decide to keep running or stop to pick it up.)
Failed your Library Use roll while poring over that cultic symbol you found? The only copy you could find is guarded by an obsessive bookkeeper. You're going to need to figure out some way to convince them to part with it (or perhaps try stealing it).

>>96003200
Holy crap. That cover just reminded me that I read these decades ago. Had completely forgotten that they exist. They're good.

>>95999700
Thanks for the feedback. Honestly I just got inspired by the pretty art on the new edition's Kickstarter and wanted to run a game about 70% pulp 30% investigation, not unlike some modern horror movies.

>>96004125
I don’t believe Sanity is tied into the pushing system. I’m pretty sure Sanity Checks are one of the things you universally can’t push (nor can you spend Luck in it).

>>96005372
NTA but I think there's a mechanic where if you're insane and fail a pushed roll you go more insane or something. Idk, 7e is a great system but the whole sanity subsystem is dumb and clunky.

>>96005160
Okay, so, you're ignoring the "push mechanic" in favor of doing something else. That's my point, a mechanic you have to ignore is a bad mechanic.

>>96006408
I think what you’re referring to is insane insight, where if you fail a roll while insane you might spontaneously gain knowledge of the monster or situation you’re in. It’s an optional mechanic and more to help the PCs out if they’re in a bad situation where they’re all insane and don’t know what to do.

Thoughts on Sandy Petersen? How does he compare to other grandfathers of gaming like Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson?

>>96010334
Terrible doom mapper, A+ Grognard. Sandy's got his quirks but I respect him for being a titan of tabletop gaming.

>>96010414
I don't really remember what Doom levels he made but he made nearly all of Episode 4 of Quake

>>96010334
His monster design seminars are kind of, I don't know, not really my thing? But his love of Lovecraft and classic horror in general is infectious, and Call of Cthulhu is the progenitor of pretty much all of my favorite games. He is the weird uncle who let you watch RoboCop when you were way to young of ttrpg.

>>96011430
>I don't really remember what Doom levels he made
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Sandy_Petersen#Credited_levels

>>96011579
I like his doom levels more. Although Episode 4 of Quake is peak vibes the gameplay is shit. SHIT.

>>96006667
That is what the push mechanic is tho? The push mechanic is just, failing the roll might mean bad consequences, failing the pushed roll always means worse consequences.
That's it.

I wish Seth Skorkowsky didn’t do skits; it makes his videos unwatchable

>>96012271
I find the skits help capture what his players were doing and saying when they reached certain parts of the adventure he’s reviewing, especially during his campaign diary episodes.
Plus, who doesn’t love the Scott Brown Incident?

>>96012271
Agree to disagree. A lot of his skits seem like they're genuinely candid, it's nice to see a more personal side of things than the reviewer who should try to be impartial at all times. I can fully imagine his table is exactly as he described and that just elevates the stories he shares

>>96012271
Oof, big L take.

>>96011743
That isn't what the push mechanic is, and it's also not what you described in your post.

What you're doing is good, failing forward is a solid idea. It's sort of totally orthogonal at best to the push mechanic, though.

>>96013424
Nayrt but I thought it worked like he described it. I've RUN it like he described it.

>>96012271
I wish he wasn't an ignorant wokeoid. He caught TDS and it was all downhill from there.

If we're talking mechanics, can someone help me understand 7Es chase rules? It sounds kind of convoluted and I've not really used it or played with someone that used it.

>>96014467
Not too convoluted but does need pre-prep. You need to pre build a sort of "racetrack" of events and then characters go through it one roll at a time.

>>96014467
I've used them exactly one time in about 6 years of running CoC and I've never felt like using them again. They're extremely weird, almost board gamey, and don't really add anything, whether it's players chasing someone or someone chasing them.

>>96014467
They’re the kind of thing you need to play once to get the hang of, but once you do, they’re great. I use them all the time and make for a nice break from combat encounters.

>>96013565
God you people are so fucking exhausting.

>>96015659
>no u

>>96013424
Brother I just checked the rules, that is literally how the push mechanic works. It's trying the action again, in a different way, and inviting potentially worse consequences if you fail.

>>96017556
Okay, but that is not what >>96005160 is describing at all.

>>96013565
>I wish he wasn't an ignorant wokeoid. He caught TDS and it was all downhill from there.

>>96015789
Mate, learn to speak in actual language instead of a strong of buzzwords and maybe you'll get taken seriously.

>>96017649
>>96017712
Not him but you're being intentionally obtuse. And yes, Seth crashed out over politics and ranted about "nazis" on his social media.

>>96018237
What, you mean this? When he was talking about a game with literal, actual, 1930s Nazis and Trumpoids decided to make it about something else? Are you the guy who replied to him? Because I don’t think other people are being the obtuse ones here.

>>96018417
He complained about banning "certain books" from school libraries and compared it to Nazi book burnings. With how aggressive he acted toward that guy, plus the "punch nazis" thing, it's pretty obvious what he meant there too. Dude's a wokey, sorry to say.

>>96018441
He’s a published author. Of course he’s against book bans. As am I.

Do you ever turn a child’s cartoon into a horror game?

>>96017712
No u

>>96014467
Here's a video going over it that might help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy1LL05E5gI

Has anyone played it?

>>96027259
Chris O'Neill????? Since when does he do TTRPG shit?

>>96027509
Wrong dude

Last year I ran the Night of the Walking Dead Ravenloft module using AD&D 2e / Masque of the Red Death. It was a great time, we ran it in one shot so I modified the adventure to be faster paced, not tied to the Grand Conjunction arc, and I used a real life timer to advance the days. We had a great time and the climax was fantastic. Running through the rain drenched town and cemetery avoiding zombies, and the funeral procession at the beginning were all very memorable scenes. I allowed a character who was a soldier taken into the town by the Mists to keep his navy revolver but he had only 6 shots for the whole adventure, which was surprisingly effective at creating intense scenes with the murderer and zombie army. I plan on running either a few vignettes again set in Ravenloft, or running a larger campaign in Ravenloft. I really like the older setting material; it takes some work to get it working properly but when you do the payoff is really worth it.

>>95983499
>Such as a lack of a stealth mechanic and perception checks
you derive stealth from specific actions, failure defaults to not being stealthy unless there is something more important. Perception is absolute as long as players bring it up, you don't limit information with a roll.
Both are things explained in the tiny manual and intended design choices so you play it a certain way. People could also complain it lacks a charisma stat, but you don't see that because they usually understand that wasn't something the game cared about. Similarly, the game isn't about finding clues, you find them and then we see what to do with them.

>>96025911
Didn't even know all of the Belong Nowhere monsters had names.

>>95963448
>Why did you like MB? what kind of session was it, in group?
NTA
I ran 3 one shots around the system. MB had some issues but I felt there was a very clear tone it was pitching that I wouldn't even consider without the game, that was nice. Corp Borg was fun wacky, a bit too much, we wasted a ton of time fucking around (including me, the GM), Cy_Borg worked better, probably because everyone rolled enough health to make combat an option.

The ultra lite system isn't for me, I found the art useful to get the feeling the game wanted. I think people wanting it to drop the aesthetic want to do their own thing, which will make it very basic and dumb, but if you try to embrace it's an interesting thing to try out.

If you want to try it solo, Galgenbeck: Sacrifice is written in a way you can find out stuff as you read. Salt Crown is also very good, people play it with different systems.

>>95970857
>AI GM
>It tells you how you feel about things
shit GM

Anyone played Kids on Bikes? Is the second edition version of it worth it?

>>96029188
the second edition is barely different, but after a while the game is so barebones that anything extra would feel refreshing. Someone posted it in the sharethread already, you can check it yourself.

I'd recommend not trying it for a campaign, and for a one shot have a clear adventure with an evident threat chasing them or whatever, something very tangible and direct.

>>96027726
Oldschool Ravenloft is criminally underrated. It was a whole lot more interesting than what WotC watered it down into by 5e.

>>96029304
5e Ravenloft is a travesty. It removed all the character and did a bunch of sloppy DEI changes that completely miss the point. 2E Ravenloft is a wellspring of creativity and insane ideas. Some of them are shit in terms of gameability but there are a lot of really compelling ideas and characters. It's overflowing with SOVL

>>96029585
you failed to make a single argument in that soup of buzzwords. You just said the new one has things you don't like and the old one has things you like, a 4 year old makes more compelling arguments to avoid a nap. If you have nothing particular to say you are allowed to just not post.

>>96029632
Are you retarded? I wasn't arguing with anyone, least of all you. I know this is hard for aggressive autistic social retards like you to understand but not every interaction between people is an argument to be won.

>>96029660
nice try but you've activated my chud card

>>96029632
Not him but fuck off.

>>96029585
2e Ravenloft was just old monster movies and novels rewritten as dungeons. I love it but let's not lie about what it was.

Anyone got something to say about this or old Chill games it is a retroclone of?
I'm planning to run a old timey creature feature campaign.

>>96030739
>2e Ravenloft was just old monster movies and novels rewritten as dungeons.
... Yes? Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

>>96031048
Nah, not at all. I'm just saying don't blow its dick too hard w/ stuff like:
>It's overflowing with SOVL
Come on. Dudes watched the cheesiest horror movies in history and said "like that, but a dungeon!" A couple of 'em went so far as to read a handful of novellas. These were "quick crank out another!" modules. And they're perfectly good. But "5e is a travesty" and "2e is a wellspring of creativity?" Like have you just never read a book before? They're aright. But "really compelling ideas and characters?" Was the most recycled, cliche charicatures of 50s horror movies that were charicatures of penny dreadful novels.

>>96030739
Yeah and it was kino

>>96029585
>>96031155
>kino
>sovl
Jesus christ with you people. Have a single thought somewhere in your heads, would you please? They were perfectly fine as a 4th generation rehash of stories that were rehashed from stories that were rehashed from stories that were written in throw-away fiction.

>>96031203
There's no need to be upset about word usage. And anyways, all creative works are rehashes with little twists of originality. I think old Ravenloft is a great example of it.

>>96031306
>There's no need to be upset about word usage.
Pretending that they're bastions of creativity and originality is just thoughtless. As thoughtless as singposts like "sovl" and "kino." It demonstrates your lack of familiarity with the source material and betrays that you can't bother to learn anything that wasn't conveyed in the captions of a tiktok video. It's icky. Use whatever words you want. But damn. Use thoughts, too.

>>96031334
I am very familiar with the source material, you've simply made an incorrect assumption on that. I also disagree with you in thinking it is unoriginal or not of a good quality. How about instead of baseless accusations and attempts at dictating your opinions as fact, you show some examples of things that you would call creative in the space?

>>96031377
It's simply not possible to be both familiar with Dracula (hell to have even seen a movie), and asking for examples of what it is that makes 2nd Edition Ravenloft unoriginal. Between Strahd and Van Richten and the Vistani and Barovia and, and, and. That's just not an option.

>>96031377
>not of a good quality
That's not something I claimed. I took issue with the below statements by you about Ravenloft:
>a wellspring of creativity
>insane ideas
>really compelling ideas and characters
>overflowing with SOVL
I think the execution of Ravenloft is pretty good and I've had lots of fun with it. I just didn't need to lie to myself about it to do so.

>>96031454
I didnt ask you that, though. I asked you to give examples in the ttrpg horror space that you find original. And in any case I simply disagree that taking Dracula and putting your own spin on it disqualifies you from being original. I find things like Castlevania to be very original for example.

>>96031514
I responded to this claim that you made:
>I also disagree with you in thinking it is unoriginal
I don't care that you wanted to shift the conversation to a different topic.

>>96031523
It is not a shift. I want to know what you think makes something original. And the fact that you won't even provide one example seems a bit ridiculous. Don't you play these games?

>>96031532
>It is not a shift.
We were talking about the unoriginality of Ravenloft, and you were failing to defend it. You would now like to talk about other games instead.

In what way have you convinced yourself that that's not a shift in topic?

>>96031540
No, I am asking you what makes something original. I don't care if you call something unoriginal if you won't even define what that means with some counter examples. It's just meaningless wordplay. If you don't want to engage in am actual conversation then whatever.

>>96031561
You're trying to switch the conversation because you know you cannot defend your claims. That's fine, anon.

But I'm not the one claiming that "originality" is a virtue in horror games. You are. And you're claiming it about 2nd Edition D&D Ravenloft, of all things.

>>96031568
This isn't a courthouse. I did "defend my claims" as you put it by stating what I think originality means, and then you simply disagreed and asserted that your opinion is a fact without any backing, and now you refuse to engage in any meanginful conversation. Fine by me.

>>96031602
>I did "defend my claims" as you put it by stating what I think originality means, and then you simply disagreed and asserted that your opinion is a fact without any backing
No I pointed out just a handful of the vastly over-recycled material rehashed a thousand times until it got to Ravenloft, and then you tried to swap to a different topic of conversation, anon. I get it: you don't want to admit you said something stupid and indefensible on the internet that is demonstrably untrue.

As to originality: it isn't important, in horror. Horror hasn't been original since I dunno... 1900 at the very latest. The formulas that horror regurgitates are what make it good. Hell: they're what make it "horror."

>>95958319 (OP)
I ran a zombie survival on /qst/ last year into this spring, called The Merchant Zombie Survival Quest. I am an afficianado of the zombie genre, mostly movies and video games, but never cared for the stupidity of characters. To me, it seemed like a cheap device to add drama. My thought with zombies was not that people are not stupid, but that the survivers would not be, which is what allowed them to survive. So i tried to make a game built around being intelligent as a means for survival, and cooperating with team mates as a means of not being eaten.

My favorite bit in recent zombie games was the small backstory of the gunrunner merchant in RE4, which was such an obtuse addition that it seemed entirely believable, that he would love money and commerce enough to hazard near certain death. Warzone merchants and black market traders are real life variations of this personality type.

Being unfamiliar with the board, and only passingly familiar with pen and paper games, i made up the dice system using post ID to allow multiple actions per turn, usually 4 actions. Also, i resorted to it because my phone kept resetting, and I could never get the dice system to function properly for myself.

To consistently play against the players I put a Calamity roll into every turn, so that even if you hotwire the truck, and get the engine started, and shoot the zombie lunging at you and get the truck moving, a cinderblock thrown at under the wheel by the mob of gang members is enough to knock one of your team out the open door, and now you have to back up in the dark, while fighting zombies and gang members to retrieve him.

Picrel is one i used for this exact scenario. For most of my posts i tried to include a picture, gif or drawing to give context to what i was writing, and to help inspire the direction of play. It helped me stay on topic, and assisted my imagination.

As far as players, i think there were 4-6 players in the 7-8 months i ran the games. Cont.

>>96032974
>Modern zombie media
>afficianado
Fake fans gtfo. The only zombie media that counts since Snyder's turd of a 2004 remake were the rest of Romero's films.

>>95958319 (OP)
>>96032974
The players seemed to have a good time. We would have assides for discussion during play, but mostly they had no suggestions. As a writer if felt a bit like treading in marshmallows, because I had no idea how to improve the game experience without feedback. However, as i played the NPC characters and ran the game I felt it was enjoyable.

A second way of playing against the other players was to have additional contingient rolls which I wrote into my responses to their decisions, as interjections which would give good or bad outcomes if certain numbers in their or my post ID rolls were met.

For instance

>[If my 2nd+1st ID digit is <=(greater than or equal to) 10, the bomber drone pursuing your party will get caught on a dangling eruv wire and explode. If more with will pursue you for another 4 turns.]

The combat system was pretty simple. It was pass fail, usually, i.e.
>attack ghoul [1-5 pass, 6-0 fail]

However if the players were running as teammates, or if i was playing the NPCs, we or they could buff oneanother's rolls by guarding eachother, or buff themselves by such actions as
>aiming [+1]
>breathing [+1]
>focusing [+1]

These +1 actions were best used in places such as my 3rd id slot, which is likely going to be a 9 or 0, no matter what i say or do, and can buff my 2nd ID slot into a more passable range, 5+3=8.

The health system in a zombie survival is nonexistent, at least to my thinking. If you get bitten you'll turn, so instead of that i made their final digit, which also serves as the calamity check, the arbiter of their survival.

So normally it would be a 50/50. 1-5p, 6-0f, for every turn whether something bad happened. That could be anything from dropping bullets they are trying to reload, breaking a flashlight, twisting an ankle, or falling out of a moving vehicle. This stat could be buffed or debuffed by choices or mishaps and once debuffed, it usually was perminent. The idea being that trouble had a snowball effect. Cont.

>>96033069
I don't like most of the modern fare, except to see the asthetics. NOTLD is the best example of the genre, in addition to creating it, with 28 days Later being near classic, until they ruined the ending.

The bit at the end where they are leaving in the car, and jim is shot and they smash into the gate, the film freezes. If they had cut from that freeze straight to the credits, the movie would have been fantastic. Because it would have robbed the audience of catharsis. The way they froze it, someone had that idea, but the suits must have made them change it. Anyway, the first 3 romero movies were good. I couldn't get into Land of the Dead, even though I enjoy Dennis Hopper.

>>96033169
Neither of those movies have a single eyeball popped or fight even one shark. Actually I guess Jim does pop some eyeballs, come to think of it. But no rumors of murder investigations or anything!

>>96033169
Well, you had the ending where Jim died in the hospital.
I would also put RotLD up there, mixing comedy, body horror, and sex in the same film. Starts funny and sexy, becomes horrifying.

>>96033169
>>96033181
Also? Sex Machine's remake is flatly, blatanty superior to the original Night of the Living Dead.

>>95958319 (OP)
>>96033122
So if a character gets a bad calamity roll, their next roll range decreases by 1, which not only acts as a standin for health, but makes it more likely that the next bad thing will happen. As the odds go from 50/50 to 40/60 and so on. Actions like resting, cadging a smoke, drinking, and drug abuse can play into this as well, increasing success in one area while making huge trouble more likely later on, or being an expensive habit.

The game was set 10 years into a zombie apocalypse, and so most of the population had already turned into zombies, while most of the resources had been used up. So there was no gasoline, little food and less ammunition, which made trade a necessity. Like real life, the only thing that would keep people alive when resources become scarce is commerce. This also let the players have a reason to go on missions, scavenge and investigate, because, unlike communist fare like The Walking Dead, players in the merchant universe owned property, and got rewards for success.

In the whole of TWD, no one ever uses money, or has motivation to do anything except as part of a sense of gang loyalty, making the red shirts completely expendible. With the Merchant, there was conflict, but it was always written as ridiculous and counterproductive. The survivors always got paid, and enriched.

In that way, the game was centered around economy, and work as much as it was around horror. The horrifying aspect was the ways that other people had gone savage, or had subscribed to some apocalyptic notion of transhumanism or malthusianism. The bad guys are the ones who actively seek to kill humans.

The ghouls/zombies were inexhaustable, and could be summoned at any time, in any quantity. I wanted the situation to be realistic, as much as that might require a suspension of disbelief. So i didn't go for fast zombies, or super zombies, but just slow ones. You could kill as many as you like, and one small noise later there would be 10 more.

>>96033181
Not everything can be an italian sexploitation flick, sadly.
>>96033201
Where he died of the gunshot, or the scrapped ending with the blood transfusion? The transfusion bit would have been good, except that it didn't make sense. I liked the idea of the trapped scientist who refused to leave his bunker for any reason.
>>96033240
Tom Saviny did a good job, and the change up with the girl becoming rambo was refreshing, if goofy. It is always nice to see things changed up.

>>96033348
>Not everything can be an italian sexploitation flick
And you pretend to be a fan...
But I am willing to negotiate on "Italian."

>Tom Saviny did a good job
Romero and Sex Machine (you call him by his proper name) both did a better job. Romero wanted to make a cultural critique and ended up with a heroine who'd faint if she saw a mouse and a black man who was straight up a noble savage. The remake fixed both those rather-glaring oversights. It was just so much better.

>>96033286
The number of zombies, even if they aren't all there at once, made the game move fast, as the players couldn't linger anywhere, even if it were zombie free, because the first bad roll would start combat again, and it could be their roll, or my narration roll.

The zombies could not climb ladders or do complicated things, so there was a built in safety system for the players. If they could climb onto a roof, or up a tree, they could fight from high ground, and if they could get into a car, or through a door, they could be reasonably safe from attack for at least a few turns.

One of the last games we completed had a guy bringing back a bunch of loot to sell, glass jars and paper, enough that he needed to move them in multiple shopping carts to get everything in one go. While he was staging all of this, the house he was in got surrounded and beseiged by a gang of teenagers. They were intelligent enough to use weapons and doors and to climb up to a second story window, and at one point, after one of the gang got zombified, they used him as an attack dog. That game allowed the player to kill by stealth, hide upstairs, barricade the path of his enemies, and pit 2 groups against eachother to thin their numbers. It was a good scene.

In the end, I let the players do what they liked, and so he recruited the last surviving gang member to his own side, and agreed to split the loot with him after they returned to sell it.

The offer to split the loot gave a buff to the persuasion roll, but the gang member still had to pass a few honesty checks to keep him from trying to stab the player in the back.

How horrifying it all was, i can't say, but it was how i wanted it, at least it was as i wanted the people to be able to play it. Sadly there is never enough time for everything to be played.

Vidrel was one I wanted to use but never had the opportunity. Webms of mobs of 3rdies were the best thematic accompanyment i ever found to the general theme of a swarming horde.

>>96033348
>he died of the gunshot
This one.
It would have been a shocker ending, right after the car crash, right up there with The Mist.

I had ChatGPT compose a solo scenario for Delta Green. Turned out alright.

https://gofile.io/d/PT2J8d

>>96033387
The woman's character in the original was neurotic and had a frail constitution. It makes total sense that she'd become catatonic, and made the movie really good, because duane jones, an old school black, had to look after this person who was basically of no help. Carrying dead weight is what makes the movie work, and it happens repeatedly.
>johnny carries barbra by defending her
>ben carries Barbra the rest of the film
>tom carries his girlfriend judy
>harry and Helen carry Karen
>ben carries the group
It also shows that in carrying others, eventually, they slow you down leading to your downfall and/or you abandoning them.
>barbra leaves johnny to die rather than fight to save him
>ben leaves barbra to wander into the zombie horde
>helen carries karen until she kills her
>ben carries harry until harry turns on him
>tom carries judy until she gets them killed in the fireball
I forget who sprays the truck with gas and winds up lighting it all on fire with the torch, but i want to say it is tom.

My favorite bit is near the end when ben sees the gas key labled and dangling on the nail in the basement. Peak irony.

The original was better than the remake. Whatever savini did right was a shadow of what the original did better. The remake was like so many local theater renditions of classic broadway shows, where they decide to spice it up and remake the paradigm. It's fun, but the original is better.

Also, shaun of the dead was the best zombie film in 40 years. It's just more fun than the other stuff.

>>96033463
I liked the mist. Marcia gay hardin was great as mrs carmody. She really makes the movie.

I liked the silent hill movies too. They were not great, but they were good. The second live action one was better than the first, even though it was more discombobulated. But the featuring of pyramid head made it good. Also the animated Dead Space movies were pretty good, the prequel one was cool.

But now i'm just spinning my wheels

>>96033574
>shaun of the dead was the best zombie film in 40 years.
I see now what kinda "afficionado" you are. Ew. I mean they talk in British for fuck's sake.

>>96033574
It is also a commentaryon the predilection of people to look out for each other, even if it is to your disadvantage.
It makes us HUMAN, compared to monsters.
>>96033622
It was a good movie, what do you want?

>>96033622
Let me guess, you prefer the remake of day of the dead? Planet terror? Zombie nation? Don't tell me, your favorite is Fear the Walking Dead, right?

>>96033656
>you prefer the remake of day of the dead
I don't think it was all that bad, given it's a remake.

>>96033646
It's like the bible says: "the most offensive sound to the ear of God is the voice of the Brittish man. Let he that hear it smite the offending ear." Better, anon. I want better.

>>96033656
We already discussed that Zombi 2 is the best zombie film, anon. Keep up.

>>96033646
>makes us HUMAN
Speak for yourself.

I know it adds to the drama, and is natural. But the genre always is written by the same crowd, so the characters wind up being insufferable fools and bunglers, like tom and judy in NotLD, or preposterous overdone psychopaths like all the villians in TWD. No one behaves like all the other real people that inhabit the world.

Take Dawn and Day of the Dead, the originals. Romero was so intent on rectifying the image he created with NotLD with having the weak woman and not strong enough black, that he made women and blacks the heros of his next two films. They are the only survivors. The first being a treatis on racial pecking order, and the latter on feminism. Both good films, otherwise. Still Day is the worst of the group, the least believable, and the most forced.
>joe patilon is the bad guy
>psychotic military
>chauvanists are bad
>stronk woman
>good black man is pot smoking rastafarian
>crazy military men fall apart and are really weak
>only the weaselly bearded guy get poontang
>humans are the real monsters
>no one should listen to authority
>but trust the experts
It's full of internal contridictions. The claustrophibic aspect makes it.good, but all the actions are retarded. I hate everyone except the captain, the mad scientist and the alligator at the beginning.

>>96033702
Here's a remake of the 5th element. You'll love it.

>>96033775
I dont see Tricky anywhere in that image. Although to be fair i think hes only like seven inches tall, so maybe Lilu is blocking him.

>>96033714
>we
We? There is no we without me, and no final judgement until i've had my say. The only say that matters, thank you.

It's Zombeavers.

>>96033799
Zombie parodies have besn tired since Brain Dead.

>>96033788
Nothing's perfect

>>96033806
Dead alive was pretty good, i could eat it up.

>>96033387
On the topic of Sex Machine, i liked him in FDTD, and generally enjoyed the film itself. Harvey keitel and clooney are good, and i liked the whole story, i like juliette lewis generally. Not much wasted time, and it compressed the story into about 24 hours which was good thematically. Also i liked that cheech marin keeps showing up in different rolls. He is always fun.

I don't know what happened with Rodriguez after the 90's. Spy kids was fine, whatever, but he lost himself for years, frankly.

>>95984317
Whenever I get the chance since I find describing things in that way to be really fun

Ran a zombie survival game with fast, animalistically intelligent infected, 28 Days meets Dawn 2004, with CoC 7e. It was a fucking blast.

What's the best way to kick off a zombie apocalypse game/campaign? Do you start the night of and play through the fall, or do you start in the fallen world?

>>96034359
IMO arcs are the best. Like do the first "arc" at the start of the outbreak, then do successive arcs at various points in the future. Something like:
>arc 1: 24 hours after the first infection
>arc 2: 2 weeks after the first infection
>arc 3: 2 months after
>arc 4: 6 months
>arc 5: 1 year

>>96031306
>I can judge creativity and originality
>That's why I communicate my ideas with internet buzzwords

I have this vague idea of running a giallo style one shot using Kids on Bikes. I feel the cliche oriented build would work with it and be unobtrusive for weird random events that push the plot forward. Is this absolutely retarded?

>>96034403
NTA but that's a great idea

>>95958741
>>95983499
You can work with rolling a "situational" skill whenever you want to run or hide.
The bigger problem is you have multiple different ways to resolve combat.

Terminal case of a style of play I don't have the proper term for but could be called daycare GMing.

>>96035028
>The bigger problem is you have multiple different ways to resolve combat.
in what sense?
MoSh has a single combat skill to make it simple and not as engaging as trying other stuff, MB has most of its extra class stuff around combat.

>>96035067
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/51642/roleplaying-games/mothership-thinking-about-combat

tl;dr it doesn't want to pick between initiative based combat or PBTA style player facing combat.

>>95958319 (OP)
My LGS is hosting weekly one-shot nights, and I want to finally run All Flesh Must Be Eaten after owning the books for almost 10 years.
Are there any other good scenarios out there beyond the demo (college roadtrip), the free RPG module (endtimes with possessed zombies), and 13 ways to die?

>>96033463
>>96033608
Controversial take: I think The Mist's book ending is better.
Kinda undercuts the horror when you know the United States military could clean up everything in an afternoon. I preferred the apocalyptic implications of the original.

>>96035325
I liked the book ending better, the way they left and tok refuge in the hotel, but it has been so long since o read it, i'm trying to remember how much of the middle is the same. Do they go to the pharmacy in the book too? The bit where the soldier is full of spiders in the movie was a gruesome touch, but i seem to remember some other incongruity in the plotlines.

>>95962880
Solo Play is active play where you act as both Keeper and Player, where you write a journal about your adventure and let the oracle direct you as the keeper. It does not feel the same as being only a player, and to pretend otherwise is intellectual dishonesty at its highest.

>>96035325
>>96035482
Uncontroversial take: fuck the ending of the movie. It's mindless shock factor and I fucking hate it. I love that movie and turn it off when they're driving away.

>>96035318
When i ran my game it started years into the fall, and revolved around survivors trying to restart a civilization stronghold on the outskirts of Houston. Once the game was going i introduced a depopulation terrorist group, tax collectors, ethnic gangs, psychotic survivors, random holdout survivors, recruitable NPCs with backstories, and forced the players to relocate after drone striking the first base.

Having lots of lore ready can give your game a lived in feel, where the players don't have to create the game, so much as explore what you've prepared. Little touches, like finding recruitable character already halfway through their own story lets you come up with less story, and start in the middle of one that you otherwise might not have been able to use, or which would take too long to set up.

To wit, survivors. On the third game we played, i had a new player and sent him on a mission to investigate a multiblock fire in the middle of the night. A random roll added an NPC slavic mercenary to his team, and they proceeded across a 2 mile stretch of Houston Ghetto and industrial buildings on foot. They stopped on the way to loot an apartment, but left before attracting attention, and when they finally found the fire, they discovered
>a plotline already in progress

Hordes of zombies were being held off by two NPC survivors standing atop an ambulance. The player was able to hotwire the ambulance, and the group, now 4, retreated from the thousands of ghouls, only to be accosted en route by a gang of cannibals lead by a drug dealing voodoo witch. The 2 front battle proceeded down the streets until a shootout at the end. After returning the characters recieved their rewards and drawbacks, and a new playable dungeon
>the ghetto

It wasn't an exact "scenario," as it was written as we went, but it worked well.

is it possible to do a conspiracy/Illuminati-themed campaign?
I'm more asking in the vein as is it possible to not make it too ridiculous to take players out of the game? Since I have ideas to break up the serious parts with some comedy here and there.

>>96033387
>a black man who was straight up a noble savage.
You have no idea what any of those words mean.

Anyone got tips to run a medieval fantasy zombie apocalypse game that does not feel too heroic but not too low fantasy either? The basic idea would be for player characters to stick to rural areas in their mobile caravan, from where they need to venture into highly dangerous infected cities for the plot to happen. Accepting system recommendations too.

I want to try out a horror game
All of my players have never played anything except DnD

Would you recommend Alien or CoC?
It is not supposed to be a long campaign
Just a one shot or 2-3 session adventure

>>96038257
Alien is really good for short campaigns.

>>96037074
More importantly, Romero does and it's part of what he said he wanted to address.

>>96038602
>muh cultural critique
Tiresome.

>>96038257
They’re both great for shorter games and arguably better at it than long form campaigns. I would say CoC is a crunchier system but Alien handles combat better. So if you don’t want to stray too far from DnD, go with Alien. If you want a really major change of pace, do CoC.

>>96037124
CoC or Magic World (both BRP systems) would work great. My only concern would be that a dedicated zombie apocalypse game in a medieval fantasy setting may get dull pretty quick. I'd personally do a medieval fantasy game that includes zombies, but it all depends on your style and group's tastes.

>>96038724
>Irrelevant
No one cares. You wanna whine about fixing the charicature of a Noble Savage that Ben was in the first film, go whine at the guy who wrote both of the films and said he wanted to fix it, stupid.

>>96039011
W/e hippie dippie shit Romero said to appeal to leftist counterculture in the 60s/70s is irrelevant to me. Bikers throwing pies at zombies in Dawn is not some deep insight on social conditions or something. Night's a cool zombie flick and I again don't care whatever he has to say about muh cultural representation.

>>96038480
>>96038755
Alright
Thank you for the input

>>96033768
>The first being a treatis on racial pecking order
If there was ever an actual zombie apocalypse, you know there would be plenty of whites that would try to enact their own version of Helter Skelter at the same time.
Americans really don't understand how much hate and seethe they have for blacks, especially black men, and how much that has fucked them over geopolitically (maybe fatally) due to the collapse of AFRICOM.

>>96039011
>>96039222

>>96038865
Never read Magic World so might as well, thanks anon.

>a dedicated zombie apocalypse game in a medieval fantasy setting may get dull pretty quick
I try to give players more variety in the wilderness where the infestation is lesser or even absent, but still dangerous due to long time without patrols since collapse of centralized law and order.

>>96039222
>My opinions are important!
Cool my guy. Watch whatever you want. You waded into a conversation about why Romero said he remade the movie to tell us you don't care why Romero said he remade the movie? Thanks for the insight.

>>96038602
No, I meant the 'noble savage' buzzword he just threw in there to make himself look literate. Ben's character in NotLD was nothing of the sort. He was literally a run-of-the-mill stoic, manly, lantern-jawed, Gregory Peck-esque 60s male lead, that happened to be black. You couldn't ask for a more colorblind casting.

>>96039903
I don't care that you disagree with why Romero said he changed the character.

This anon here >>95981692 >>95981703 here.
I have finished typing up my one-short with the witch and the Star Vampire. I wanted to post the PDF of the adventure text for feedback and to potentially let you guys use it, but it's not letting me for some reason.
Is there a trick to uploading a PDF on here? Alternatively, what would be the best way to share it?

>>96044170
Can't upload PDFs since the hack.

>>96003200
Just finished Last Call. Really good shit, I'm going to start Expiration Date tonight.

>>96044175
Ah yeah, that makes sense.
Is there a best alternative then? Outside of screenshoting every page and uploading them individually?

>>95961020
I could imagine him having lockpicking as special training. Otherwise, most skills you describe for your agent are covered by standard skills. If you want to play an operator-type character, the DEA has a special-force/SWAT-type unit - the SOD.

I just got my first professional short story accepted by the most well paying horror magazine going around! Yay! This is right after I took a massive break and just played Call of Cthulhu for most of the year instead of writing.

>>96047243
Nice!

>>96047243
very nice

>>95962027
yes, check /aicg/.

>>95958319 (OP)
>>Have you ever run a zombie apocalypse/survival game?
No but I do have another question for the thread, how does one make a zombie apocalypse not completely illogical that it would catch on (Slow zombies that can only spread through bites conquering the USA, a country that's about 30% flat fields of nothing and 70% firearms) or that anyone would survive (Hyper virulent superplague that's airborne and waterborne, 100% fatality rate, turns the dead into fast zombies and left 4 dead special infected)?

>>96050416

Longer incubation period and make it airborne?

>>96050416
L4D has the right idea: people with natural immunity. It kills 60 percent of the population, every time.

I was DM'ing a one-shot D&D game with some friends of mine a few years ago. We were bored of our current campaign so we decided to do something different to break the tedium.
>It takes place during a zombie apocalypse.
>The vile sorcerer that was suppose to have been their antagonist ended up losing control of the serum that brings the dead back to life, and it began to grow controllably.
>The zombies are able to grow this liquid within their bones, and once in contact with living creatures it begins to rapidly decay and turn that limb gangrenous.
>There is a singular, massive horde that is spanning from the southern pole in all directions, following the trail of those running away.
>There is no cure. Their disease isn't airborne yet(The Zombies are steadily evolving; the older they get, the more pustules they grow that can and will burst and spread an airborne variation of the disease for a few miles).
>Many kingdoms are begun closing their borders.
>Some of the Mountain Dwarves are shutting their massive gates as the zombie horde draws near.
>Forest Elves and Hill Dwarves are beginning to construct walls that they hope will keep them at bay.
>Human cities and towns are offering support, putting various feuds to the side(although some fighting still crops up) so that they can keep them away.
>There is a counter: For every Hamlet, Village, Town, or City that falls, I roll a 1D100, then multiple by 10.5. That was the population. Then I roll a 1D20. Thats how much of the population has been infected.
>The party consists of one of each race: A Dwarf, Kenku, Elf, Human, and a Gnome.
>The Dwarf is a Hill Dwarf whose home was consumed by the rabid horde. The Gnome was a friend who was visiting from Gnomeria, the Island of the Gnomes. The Elf is a Forest Elf whom the party is following to her home further North, to help protect it. The Human comes from one of the outlying mountain towns which is so far protected for now.

>>96050689
>The Horde attacks in waves, with no fewer than ten and no more than a hundred, unless they're in a town or village then it jumps between a hundred and a thousand.
>The Horde itself numbers around ten million in total, though theres a good chance they won't ever face them all.
>They're incredibly simple, they shuffle in a single line spewing bile and plagued liquids from their stomach, wounds, or fractures.
>The enviroment begins to rapidly decay around them. Areas they have passed by are classified as 'Blightlands'; nothing grows, the disease is found in the soil and watertable, and will last for a very long time.
>They are driven by a singular purpose to eat, preferring fresh living prey over anything dead, and preferring humanoid creatures to animals, though they will take an animal if they catch one.
>They do not consume for sustinence, it is simply an emotion that drives them.
>Destroying the head is a surefire way, but the body will continue to produce this disease bile for some time, thus its recommended to destory them with fire.
>They can be frozen, but unless the brain has been destroyed with ice, they'll thaw and return to their ambulatory phase.
>They will burn until their health is depleted, then fall down as crumbling remains.
>Holy powers deal substantial damage to them, but they are numerous. They're also at risk every time they engage in melee combat, resorting to some Paladins and Clerics to use projectile weaponry against them(Ballista's, Trebuchets, Catapults, Onagers etc.) against them.
>Because the disease can spread through the watertable and occasionally through the air, each new arrival at any town or village is scanned and checked for any signs of the disease, of which there are stages.
>Stage one: Fevers and chills. Then numbness in the extremities. A higher fever then shows, along with muscle weakness and fatigue. Within the next day or so, the person falls into a coma, after which they die, then begin to reanimate.

>>96050742
>Using specialized hunting dogs, they're able to 'sniff' out those who begin to show signs of the disease early, as the dogs and indeed any animal can begin to feel when they're in the presence of someone infected.
>Elves and Dwarves, being intuned with nature(The Forest/Mountains), are also able to sense when in the presence of someone infected, or if someone is infected by an inherent sense of wrongness about the person.
>As there is no cure, the only merciful thing to do is to kill the person before they change, and as of late, people found infected have had sacramental spikes driven into their head after being given enough anesthetics or booze to draw them into sleep, so they don't feel a thing.
>The party right now is ten miles from the closest town. The Horde is behind them, about twenty miles back.
>They will be able to make it to the town by nightfall if they're able, with the Horde being about two days away.
>The Horde's strength is about three hundred strong.
>The Elf, being a wizard, threw a fireball into the forest behind them, hoping that they'll walk into the blaze of the forest fire, and will hopefully thin their numbers.

>>96047243
Pic related.
Seriously though, congratulations. I submitted one of my stories to a horror magazine recently and I'm hopeful for its chances.

>>96050999
Thanks. It took me years of trying and self doubt. Here’s my copy pasta:

>Clarkesworld
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/submissions/
1000-22000 words, no exceptions
12c (USD) per word. No horror but dark SF/F permitted.
No use of AI allowed
No simultaneous submissions (do not send the story somewhere else).
Stories must be well-written, suitable for audio (since there are narrated audiobooks), and convenient for screen reading (so no weird formatting).
Rigor in science fiction is appreciated, but it does not need to be "hard."
There can't be any of the tropes listed on the site.

>Asimov's
https://www.asimovs.com/contact-us/writers-guidelines
up to 7500 words, at 10c per word (USD)
Character oriented stories, but there is also some poetry $1 per line
Absolutely no use of Chat GPT nor AI allowed
No simultaneous submissions (do not send the story somewhere else).

>Fantasy & Science Fiction
https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/glines.htm
No simultaneous submissions (do not send somewhere else).
Up to 25,000 words in length. 8-12 c (USD) per word. You must read a sample of the magazine before sending.

>Interzone Digital
https://interzone.digital/submissions/
Simultaneous submissions accepted (you can send somewhere else).
Maximum of 5000 words. 1.5c (EURO) per word.

>Apex Magazine
https://apex-magazine.com/submissions/
8c per word (USD), up to 7500 words
Usually dark sci fi or horror is accepted.

>Beneath Ceaseless Skies
https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/submissions/
Up to 15,000 words, 8c per word (USD)
Provides feedback on rejections
No use of Chat GPT nor AI allowed
Character-focused, adventure fantasy (no sci fi nor horror) that has a deep sense of world.

>The Dark Magazine
We pay 5 cents/word for original fiction up to 6,000 words on publication for first world rights; and 1 cent/word for reprint fiction up to 6,000 words on acceptance for nonexclusive reprint rights.

>Deadlands
The Deadlands pays 10¢/word for original fiction.

>>96049793
That is one mighty cute pig.

Is Symbaroum the best system there is for high fantasy horror?

>>96052348
I keep seeing that around, and I'm interested in the aesthetic, but what makes it unique? I've just finished a modern horror campaign with friends and want to do something folklore horror-inspired, but since my group isn't into crunchy games I've been thinking I'd use Cairn and Wyrd and Wild to run a forest-crawl. What are the strengths of Symb?

>>96044216
https://catbox.moe/ will work fine.

>>96050416
Do Dawn of the Dead remake infected.
>spreads through blood and bites
>infected are strong and fast but can still be stopped by non-headshots from strong enough guns
>infected have an animal-level intellect
>relatively fast infection and turn speed especially if bitten in a major artery

>>96050416
Red Markets' Blight is unironically pretty good. Leans heavily into the "alien space bats" stuff in that a mundane single point of origin would have seen it far more contained than the arbitrary simultaneous emergence across the globe. It has its cake and eats it virility-wise in the form of "Hot Blight" spread by Vectors (the 28 days later dudes) and certain niche special zombie allowing for cascading outbreaks which crack settlements while flooding the surroundings with fast zombies who threaten to domino until overexertion wipes them out.

Casualties (classic Romero fare) and their "Cold Blight" (ditto) act as longer term area denial. The fact that there are not only Immunes but Latents (visibly infected, infectious and further immune but otherwise fine until they're killed and immediately go Vector) add a nice moment of hesitation to "should we kill them?" scenes. It's canonically impossible to distinguish real turning from nocebo hysteria at a glance (Cold bites are actually survivable or give time for amputation, many were killed who needn't have been).

In theory but for Aberrants (L4D specials) the world never entirely collapsed and will eventually bounce back. The trouble is that incentives don't encourage it at least in the US (half the African Union is cleanser-settler frontier and the UK is actively gearing up for fanatical reconquista of the Continent).

>>96047243
Congratulations. When did you start approaching things professionally and what's the gist?

>>96036675
Sure. Play up the Reptilians subtly turning all the institutions of modernity against the players and then sprinkle in the implication that some of this happening without their direct intervention. Turns out that swivel-eyed paranoia draws the bad kind of attention even when you happen to be correct.

would anyone have a PDF of Mothership? I want to run a horror one shot that takes place on a planet thats all one giant mall, and im having trouble deciding which system works best. Mothership seems to be the one, seems simple and brutal, but i wanted to peruse the handbooks before buying it.

>>96059537
There should be one on da archive, if not just ask on the sharethread.

>>96050999
>spoiler
Hoping for the best for you, anon.

I wonder how Delta Green would handle the Hidden People
And on that note I'm pretty sure Nelson Tethers would make a great operative. I just wouldn't trust him with the guns

>>96053828
Yep, that worked.
Here you anons go:
https://files.catbox.moe/28n1qu.pdf
I actually ran the one-shot tonight and it went really well. My players dug the mystery and liked the twist on dealing with a sympathetic witch for once. During the first round of the final combat with the Star Vampire, one player went insane and went blind as a result and another had his shotgun blow up in his hands due to rolling a Nat 100 and then failing a luck roll.
Despite this, three out of the four PCs lived, even with me rolling that the Star Vampire knew a spell, getting Grasp of Cthulhu (which was how it killed the one PC. Cast the spell on him to immobilize him, then attacked with a bonus die and got an impale, tearing off his head).
I think I'm gonna try taking this to cons to I can run something other players won't be used to/have foreknowledge of.

Ocean Game when?

>>96071852
What even is Ocean Game? I see it mentioned here all the time but never heard of anyone actually playing it.

>>96072452
Big expansion for Esoterrorists/Fear Itself where you can play as wizards and there's more creatures from hell.

>>96055863
>When did you start approaching things professionally
About three years ago. I got my first short story published in 2023 but it was accepted in late 2022.
>and what's the gist?
An ekphrastic story describing an album of film photographs about the end of the world.

Does anyone read fiction to get ideas? What do you think of Ramsey Campbell?

>>96073305
I should hope everyone in this thread reads fiction to get ideas. Considering the most famous horror game is based off the work of an author and his friends.
I recently finished reading pretty much everything by Lovecraft and have started branching out into the people who inspired him and his circle. Haven't gotten to Campbell yet, but I have read The King in Yellow, House on the Borderland and The Great God Pan, as well as a few Clark Ashton Smith stories and the Opener of the Way collection for Robert Bloch.

>>96076353
Is the opener of the way worthwhile? Its been in my cart for ages.

>>96000811
Changling the lost is what comes to mind

>>96076508
I certainly enjoyed it. The cover art is nice and it's a decent sized hardback. Like any anthology, the stories are hit or miss. My favorites were Slave of the Flames and The Shambler from the Stars.
It's not strictly Lovecraftian stuff. There are some traditional (and not so traditional) murderer stories, showing Bloch's shift towards eventually writing Psycho, and a few positively Goosebumps-esque stories.
Still, worth it for any collector of weird fiction.

This sucked. I think I will pass on 1shotadventures.com from now on. Every single time I play or run his stuff I dislike it.
I've been trying to play more classic CoC games, so "Tell me, have you seen the yellow sign?" will be my next game

>>96079483
What went wrong with the scenario? I remember someone else in the thread tried it and being disappointed.

>>96080433
My player felt railroaded

>>96079483
Yellow Sign is fun but at some point the investigation gets stuck cause the more time passes the less chances you have of actually stopping the bad thing from happening but tbf it didnt help that half my party died cause they had the amazing idea to go to Carcosa and the rest never found out what happened to them cause they went in secret ignoring my character's warnings of it being a really bad idea

>>96071852
Soon.

>>96072452
Modular set of campaign elements for Fear Itself/Esoterrorists where you play as Players in the titular Ocean Game hosted by the Mystery Men.

>>95958319 (OP)
Working on an RPG based on shitty 80's-2000's horror. Kinda got inspired by those retarded fucking millennial nostalgia games you always see at every gaming store.

Whole basic premise is that its a bunch of walking stereotypes and shit from every one of those films trying to stop an actual fucking horrifying threat (kinda like how those movies were before they all became the same fucking pun slinging / gore porn flicks.)

Breaking up all of the classes/whatever the fuck into Survivor archetypes. Basic shit like "Jock" "Nerd" "Final Girl" "Slasher Bait" "Harbinger".

Working on one inspired by retarded 2000s-2010 4chinner stereotypes, but I realized that Its just not funny at all lol. Theres like maybe 3 jokes I can say with it.

>>96082843
Funnily enough, I have something like this was a work in progress.
A few years back I got the idea to run an RPG based off 1950s B-movie film tropes. However, I couldn’t find a system I was satisfied using for it, so I made my own, with classes based off genre archetypical chargers like The Scientist, The Damsel, etc. Players had fun, it worked out surprisingly well, and one of them mentioned I could take the base system and makes an 80s horror version easily.

>>96083588
Dude that sounds sick, you got anything you could link for this? I would absolutely kill to see this lol.

>>96084794
The B-Movie one I’ve been touching up so I could reshare it (since a lot of rulings for it were stuff I made up in the course of play), but it wouldn’t take too much to finish the touch ups and post it here. It’s only been procrastination holding me back.
The 80s horror one isn’t in a state to be playable yet and wouldn’t be for a while. But I can see what I can do for the B-Movie one in the meanwhile.

>>96082843
World of darkness Slasher
I did a Wip inverse horror game with the troupes turned upside down
4 Slashers, Nerd,Slut,Thrill Seeker,and The Innocent

What are the best adventures in Classic Call of Cthulhu

>>96086731
All of them.

I'm currently in a game running off delta green. The setting is following a country wide emp with the PCs starting on a highway with their cars shutting off mid drive.
Slow burns till we're setup in a city and the gm introduces a The Thing-esque body snatchers. Now with a whole bunch of civilians the PC are trying to manage and take care off and potentially a body snatcher in the midst its got the majority of us in a state of suspense. Very good so far besides very frequent scheduling issues

>>95974486
Instead of a large robot army, maybe make a singular intelligence that's personally present and capable of seemingly projecting its consciousness to bring it front and center to the players, Agent Smith style.

>Any electronic object can by hijacked by the AI.
>When it does this, it will often repurpose speakers, displays, or whatever else to terrorize the players.
>Sometimes it's actual robot bodies that get used, sometimes it just captures your car's electronics to drive you off a cliff while taunting you on the radio.
>Any time you "kill" it, it just possesses something else a little later and resumes its murder attempt.
>It's creative, so mundane tasks like microwaving your dinner can turn into a radiation emitter.
>Makes players suspicious of every modern convenience since anything can turn deadly at a moment's notice, making them regress back to cavemen.

It could either be an AI connected to everything in a "smartphone world" style setting or take a page from Virus and it's actually a sentient intelligence that rides along an electrical current, which lets you get away with more bullshit since you can inject a lot more energy into anything or justify some movement via magnetism that shouldn't happen.

>>96093607
Love it

>>96084818
Well stop procrastinating and share. Always nice to see someone do something interesting.

What would a cult of Kthanid be like?
What abilities would a virtuous and powerful cultist or wizard blessed by Kthanid have?

I remember an anon a few threads ago putting together a mythos themed tarot deck with pic related being his list so far. Anyone know of anything similar out there that cam be used? I've been hoping to use it in a future.

>>96102141
Hey, tarot anon here, there are 2 tarot sets i know of so far but i dont like both of them so that's why i started making mine, took a bit of a break from art to focus on my job and other hobbies but i do plan to continue soon so dont worry. Next on the line will be either shudde mell or the necronomicon i havent decided yet.

>>96099017
>Reputed to be the “brother” of the Great Old One Cthulhu, Kthanid is physically identical to his sibling - a colossal humanoid with stubby bat-wings and sporting a growth of octopoid tentacles from his lower face - in every way but one: his eyes are a deep gold in colour. Said to be as good as Cthulhu is evil, Kthanid radiates an air of benevolence to all who those in his presence. He is the head of the pantheon of Elder Gods who oppose both the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, and resides in a vast crystal palace at the centre of the realm of Elysia, home of the Elder Gods.
Wow. Tentacled Aslan.
I guess same domain and everything as Big C. Just good. I guess

>>96102141
>>96105594
Speaking of

>>96106539
Nice! Great work as always, anon!

>>96105594
That's great anon! And I completely understand, take your time it's good knowing you're still working on it though.

>>96106539
>>96110840
And fantastic work on these, coming along very nicely.

>-6 degrees
>summer
I hate you

Do you ever do pre generated characters? I’d like to run a game where all the characters are cops but don’t know how much to build around pre generated concepts or characters

>>96027726

Do you have a link to where an enterprising anon can find the full 2e Ravenloft catalogue? With Trove down I've been hunting for it but I can't find a collection of all the 2e Ravenloft books.

also, post your Delta Green campaign inspo. I picked these up from an /x/ reading club and they are very, very God's Teeth type of through-the-looking glass, insane governmental evil mixed with occult stuff. Gnarly reads but handy for understanding the mindset of Tynes, Detwiler etc. who I think have done some similar reading.

>>96118937

There's a Delta Green Reddit post out there somewhere where a guy randomly generated like 1,000 Delta Green characters and put them all into one massive PDF. Infinite pile of gritty cops, firemen, FBI etc. to choose from

Has anyone here played Red Markets?

>>96121241
You can always ask the Share thread for the books. It's what it's there for after all.

>>96118937
Pre gens are good for one shots and for introducing people new to the system. Also good for short campaigns where intrigue is a central focus and you want them to have hidden, conflicting goals that aren't diametrically opposed, yet still generate some conflict. ie, P1 wants to turn the forbidden tome over to Group A, P2 wants to turn it over to Group B, the other players just want to get paid and now P1 and P2 have to try and convince the rest to go with their choice. Much better than the "P1 wants it destroyed, P2 wants to use it, total party wipe ensues" that you can get when you don't reign those things in.

>>96128457
>>96129266
Bump limit has been reached. New thread needed anon.

>>96003200
I love On Stranger Tides and The Anubis Gates

>>96047243
What magazine? I’m always looking to read good short horror

>>96129833
Made it.
>>96133537