GURPS... Creepypastas?

[Tallor]

I sadly forget who it was that suggested the original "GURPS: Horrors II: Creepypastas", just that it was on that thread I posted about "GURPS Books you want to see". Or was it "GURPS books you DON'T want to see"? I forget.

I really liked the idea, but I'm not sure if they wanted to play it straight as horror or play it silly as a sort of comedy meta-game. If anyone has ideas, shout here!

[PTTG]

Well OK...

And then there's my favorite: The Deagle

The Deagle in particular is probably an Ally with the Gadget and Accessibility (Wielder is American).

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Well OK...

And then there's my favorite: The Deagle

The Deagle in particular is probably an Ally with the Gadget and Accessibility (Wielder is American).

Hmm... very good silly ideas, but I'm not feeling the creepy in the pasta. :P

[starslayer]

Originally Posted by Tallor

Hmm... very good silly ideas, but I'm not feeling the creepy in the pasta. :P

You need to look more at the site. Many of the scp files
1. Are lifted while cloth to make the creepy pastas
2 are legitimately terrifying enough, but only with with lots of background references to other scp files.

[somecallmetim]

The SCP files are an interesting setting. I wouldn't use it as is, both because it is a bit overstuffed, and some of the attempts to be edgy are a bit silly, but the premise is great for an RPG. You have a bunch of agents capturing horrific things to be studied by scientists trying to forestall the end of the world. Just about any horror story can be adapted as a target for the investigators, but "creepypasta" stories work well because they tend to center around the interactions of incomprehensible things with relatively mundane people and events.

If you do have usable magical effects or black technology coming from the horrors the PCs are fighting, using them should probably be a source of Corruption. The supernatural is corrosive to reason and sanity in most of these stories.

Stepping away from that particular setting, creepypasta stories have a whole lot of different plots, some more gameable than others. Because they bank so heavily on uncertainty to be frightening, they will require a lot of decisions to be made by the GM to make them workable in a game rather than a short story. One fairly large subset are creepy but not something that would be actionable by PCs with guns. Candle Cove, for example, is plenty spooky, but seems to have no lasting effect and nothing tangible to target. Although a mysterious kids show could be the common factor in a series of horrific events, you'd have to make a lot of it up whole cloth. Any number of stories centered around a video game cartridge or cartoon doing something not quite right fall into this category.

Another chunk are very straightforward to adapt. Slenderman, the Rake, any number of disfigured murderers, etc. are all pretty similar to the GURPS Horror Psycho/Slasher Killer. The occasional Goatman makes a good Shaggy One or reskinned Werewolf. The Evil Clowns are pretty much straight out of the genre. The major issue with these monster or killer stories is keeping the story from feeling like a bug hunt. The target should either rarely present themselves for a stand up fight, or not be susceptible to direct violence. If you can't pick the PCs off, be sure to make the victims to be likable enough that the PCs will at least feel some vicarious fear for them. Also, if you have several of these, I'd try to change up the setting or the way the killer stalks the PCs to keep them from getting too samey.

Another batch are stories about a creepy or unnatural place. These can make good, vaguely surreal locations for monster or cursed object hunts (Abandoned By Disney's forsaken amusement park with monstrous and/or murderous mascots could be fun). Or are the horror in and of themselves (like No End House and the urban legend of "Chimera House", the haunted house attraction no one survives completing).

Reddit's NoSleep subreddit has a whole batch of stories featuring the "Shadow Web", which is basically the dark web if all the urban legends were true. Murder for hire, lethal software, live snuff shows, and cursed artifacts for sale. Tracking down the humans participating in some of these things and shutting them down could make a nice technothriller change of pace from all the abandoned amusement parks and moonless moors.

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by somecallmetim

. . .
Reddit's NoSleep subreddit has a whole batch of stories featuring the "Shadow Web", which is basically the dark web if all the urban legends were true. Murder for hire, lethal software, live snuff shows, and cursed artifacts for sale. Tracking down the humans participating in some of these things and shutting them down could make a nice technothriller change of pace from all the abandoned amusement parks and moonless moors.

This sounds like a really good GURPS: Cops meets GURPS: Horror idea...

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by Tallor

Hmm... very good silly ideas, but I'm not feeling the creepy in the pasta. :P

As pointed out by others, you should take a look at the rest of the site. The -J at the end of the codes in his links indicates that they are joke posts. While most of the SCP entries are pretty well-done creepy-pasta (and there are >2000 of them), the -J entries are, appropriately enough, jokes.

That said, I'm not convinced SCP would work that well as a roleplaying game other than maybe as a one-shot horror. People just aren't important enough. Realistically, if you are doing retrieval, the odds of a TPK are just too high for a sustainable campaign and the odds of one group actually doing retrieval on more than a couple SCP is pretty low. If you are doing guard duty, most of the time nothing ever happens and when it does, you are probably so completely outclassed that if any violence is a possibility, a TPK is by far the most likely outcome. Research could be interesting, but you'd probably be stationed to a single SCP and it would get tedious fast.

So, I think SCP could work well as a quick one-shot with a group that was familiar with the universe and as a source of inspiration, but less so as the universe for an actual campaign.

[starslayer]

I don't think I would ever use the scp universe for a setting (its internally inconsistent, there are some strong 'personality' posters who hate certain things, etc)

I have however used a given file as an encounter/mcguffin/quest reward with great success. The gear that eats is a fantastic alternative to a dunwich horror type scenario for example.

I do not include some sort of warehouse 23 style super-organisation that Shepard's these things, instead using a limited number of them encountered 'in the wild' to provide some interesting challenge for moderately powerful PCs (I have yet to toss anything from the scp files at a low powered group).