Quote:
Originally Posted by combatmedic
Vote up an Urban Fantasy Setting
Okay, let's try something more focused the just "fantasy."
The setting (at least the primary setting) will be Earth. The genre is "urban fantasy." For the rest, you guys vote.
I'll come along after I deem sufficient votes are in/the thread seems ripe, and make a tally.
Then I'll put up more voting and more categories, based on your ideas and submissions.
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Greater value number rank= greater preference.
Time period RANK 1-5
• 1980s (1)
• 1990s (5)
• 2000s (4)
• This decade/present day (2)
• Near future (3)
History: RANK 1-4
• Hidden weirdness: the supernatural stuff has always existed, under the surface, more so in recent centuries—textbook history and common knowledge match our world (4)
• Lost time: a significant chunk of the historical past is fabricated, centuries might be ‘’missing’’ (1)
• Small differences alternate: like the first category, but with some minor though potentially important differences in recent decades—wars, art trends, leaders, sports (3)
• Reality quake: a reality altering event has occurred, either recently or deeper in the past/further in the future but affecting the present. Magic bleeds into the world and lots of people are noticing… (2)
Distribution of weirdness RANK 1-3
• Tight, supernatural stuff concentrated in one city (3)
• Regional, one country or large region has more of the weird stuff going on under the surface, other places less (1)
• Diffuse, hidden spookiness and supernatural stuff exists all over the world (2)
I'd actually like it if there were supernatural "hotspots" where the spookiness is concentrated, but it can be found all over, even if it's uncommon.
Default player-character types RANK 1-4
• Mostly “regular” (from weak to very competent) folks who come into contact with weirdness (1)
• Ghost-breakers, badass detectives, occultists who have real power, etc. (3)
• Minor super heroes with mystical , magical, or gothic themes (5)
• monsters that might be sympathetic as well as scary (White Wolf did a lot of this) (2)
Magic and weird powers, number of categories: RANK 1-3
• One (3)
• Two (1)
• Three or more (2)
Categories of magic/weird powers RANK 1-6
• standard system, limited grimoire and secret (4)
• psi as magic (5)
• supernatural advantages and powers as magic (1)
• book/path of some kind (2)
• esoteric skills like alchemy and herbalism (3)
• fringe tech/weird science (6)
Number of monster categories, rank 1-6:
• One (6)
• Two (4)
• Three (1)
• Four (2)
• Five(3)
• Six or more (5)
Monster types, RANK 1—10,
• Shapeshifters (7)
• Ghosts/Spirits (1) -- but see below.
• Vampires (8)
• Fairies (3)
• Witches, warlocks, evil magicians (10)
• Zombies (9)
• Demons and devils (4)
• Cryptids (6)
• Golems/constructs (2)
• Other types, including possibly some from Creatures of the Night (5)
What I would like to see would be a small number of multi-purpose monsters. For instance, tulpas--so what people think are, say, vampires are actually someone's thought-construct. That way you not only have to defeat the monster, but find out who created the tulpa in the first place. Tulpas would be useful if there are a lot of different types of a monster, too, because everyone has their own idea of what a vampire is like.
For ghosts/spirits, this is an idea I've had floating around in my head for a while. Even if nobody likes it, I'd like to throw it out here.
On the Ghostbusters DVD, there's a special feature of concept art for some of the ghosts--which, going by their appearance, look like what most games would classify as demons or eldritch abominations. I was mildly freaked when I saw them, because here are these twisted, bizarre looking things that are
supposed to be the souls of the dead. (I realize that it's possible that they're actually extradimensional, or really are demons, or something else--I don't know anything about the Ghostbuster's expanded universe, if there is one; I just know from the movies and what I remember from the cartoon.)
So: despite what religions say, there is no heaven or hell (or if there is, only the best and worst go there, or reapers get as many souls as they can but can't get them all). Instead, all souls end up in a dimension that has mutagentic properties. Form and mentality both get warped in strange ways, and the longer something has been dead, the more inhuman it gets. Personality is wiped after a while, but the core concepts remain intact longer and may even be magnified (e.g., the Eidolon from GURPS Horror). Most of the time, these spirits remain in their dimension, "living" and growing and possibly eating one another, but at times they manage to break through. A rare some stay on earth after death and are what we normally think of as ghosts, but most will either end up in this afterlife dimension or dissolve.
And by all souls, I mean all souls. If the PCs have to take out an ectoplasmic horror, they won't necessarily know if it's the spirit of Granma or one of the spiders she smushed.
For other monsters, perhaps some could be combined. For instance, one of the GURPS defaults is that faeries are spirits. Perhaps in order to interact among humans, they have to build golems to use as bodies. They aren't flesh and blood, but clay or wood wrapped in glamour. Same thing could be done for demons, which admittedly is a bit In Nomine but I've been reading the books again lately so I have that in my head.