[Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

It's been a few months since the last one, so let's raise the rooftop lightning conductors into the darkening sky and animate a new setting!

This is a collaborative setting construction forum game. The objective is to use our shared talents to put together a setting that could be used with the GURPS: Monster Hunters series.

The method is to answer a posted question about the setting, then post a question of your own. Build bit-by-bit on what the other posters have written, and try not to contradict anything that's been established. Questions can be anything from the very general to extremely specific, complex or simple, and can follow on from what's gone before or start off a new direction.

As a Monster Hunters setting, the premise is basically that:
- for most everyone, the world is a mundane, non-magical place
- in truth, there are monsters living secretly in the world that threaten the populace
- there are high-powered characters (~400 CP) that oppose these monsters and try to eliminate them without revealing their existence to the general public
- various groups, such as cults, covens, gangs, secret labs, corporate research bodies and top secret government agencies, may know about the secret and each has their own agenda regarding the monsters

For the purposes of this thread:
- We don't need to feel too restricted by everything in GURPS: MH. Consider it a toolkit.
- We don't need to make a kitchen-sink setting that includes every possible kind of monster or hunter template in the sourcebooks- a tightly focussed setting with just one or two monsters or power sources could work just as well. On the other hand, the more stuff in the blender, the better too.
- In general, try to build off one another and work to include everyone's efforts into the setting as it's built.
- However, we'll try out a new rule for this kind of game:

If you feel someone's contribution won't work for whatever reason, make a reasoned case for it and we can consider revising or removing it, if necessary.

- We'll start off with one question and answer per post, but we'll allow more when we have some of the setting basics settled.
- To make it easier to read through, clearly mark questions and answers in bold, and quote the question you're answering, in the below format. Also try to use line breaks to break up wall-of-text answers.

Post format:
Answer 8- Sewer Crocs
Most are the size of normal crocs, but King Croc, who lives in the flooded subway station, is the size of a train carriage and has 10 legs and jaws like a refrigerator door.

Question 9
What's the name of the flooded subway station?



If you want to see some previous efforts, here's a list:

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

And to get started:

Question 1:
What era are we going to use? MH suggests modern day, but I think anything from 19th century up to the Age of Cyperpunks could be workable.

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

The early 1900s. Big-game hunting weapons will be useful, travel is practical, but there's no TV to transmit embarrassing footage.

Question 2:
Are the monsters world-wide, or confined to a particular region or continent?

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

Answer 2:
Record keepers trace the earliest written reports to the East India Company's Great Trigonometrical Survey team members as they started reaching into the Himalayas in the 1820's. The monsters were originally confined to that region, but since then it seems that they might pop up in almost any population centre with sufficient trade or contact with the rest of the world.

Question 3:
How many types of monster- be they undead, spirit beings, cryptids, parahumans, or whatever- is the world faced with?

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

Answer 3: The monsters run the gamut from the classics of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and Frankenstein creatures to more esoteric types like bridge trolls and goblins, and even more creatures that haven't been described yet. There's a whole world out there hidden from prying eyes by the veil of mundanity, reinforced by the late Victorian era belief that "science can explain everything", and the monsters' own general desire to stay out of the spotlight.

Question 4: Is this a steampunk type world with fantastic gadgets (such as a pneumatic rotary repeating crossbow) or closer to the historical Spanish-American War to WWI era?

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

Mostly historical, except for some revival of magic, which started to become possible around the time the monsters were discovered. There's also some non-historical equipment built for monster hunters, but it's all things that could have been built, but weren't needed in our history.

Question 5:
How have the monsters spread from the Himalayas?

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

The exact method appears to vary for each monster: a few were brought back in ships, but many others seem to move of their own accord. Its often very difficult to tell exactly what path a given creature took.

They usually show up in either in the many ports of the world, or in western Asia, among the Turks or the Russians. And of course near their homelands in India.

Question 6:
Among the categories of "The Dead", "The Living", "Spirits", and "Rouge Humans", which ones are the most prominent or worrying? Which are the least?

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

Red Humans? o.O (I think you meant "Rogue", not "Rouge". "Rouge" is a kind of red-tinted cosmetic, and the French word for "red".)

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

From the GM's perspective and considering the time period, are you all sure you want to rule out the possibility that monsters might exist in and come from other, barely explored, poorly mapped and inhospitable, locations in the world, like Darkest Africa (all but infinite pulp, horror and adventure fiction source materials), Antartica (Poe, Lovecraft, The Thing), remote tropical islands or South African jungles (innumerable sources) or the oceanic depths (vast number of sources)?

Re: [Game] Animate a Monster Hunters Setting
 

Those are of course valid sources, and would be handy to use in a complete kitchen-sink style setting. The challenge of this format though, is to take what we've got and see how far it gets us in a particular direction. We haven't decided anything about why the monsters came out of the Himalayas yet, we don't know if any of those other origins would be necessary.

I had a couple of ideas as to why but the thread has already gone in a different direction, so it's interesting to see what will come up instead.