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Old 09-07-2020, 09:17 PM   #1
Vagabond
 
Join Date: Sep 2020
Default 2020 Halloween game thread

Greetings all.

I'm returning to GURPS after many years away. One of my favorite genres is horror, and wouldn't you know it, we're just under two months away from Halloween! So share your plans for a Halloween rpg session (and give me some ideas)!

Ready...set...go!
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Old 09-11-2020, 04:33 PM   #2
Astromancer
 
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: 2020 Halloween game thread

Try this idea, a villain I made years ago for GURPS: Villains but didn't get in in time. Little Susy, The Happy Camper.

Susan was a neglected child of a wealthy family living on the shores of lake Champlain ran off in a bid for attention from her parents (both of them spoiled brats grown tall). While climbing into a hiding spot in a tree, Susan fell and knocked herself out and drowned in the lake.

Susan's soul was bitter and it bound her to the Earth. Something ancient and cold in the dephts of Lake Champlain, something that was there before the great ice sheets ground the lake out of the land. Something that wanted to be amused.

Susan was spoken to by the cold thing, and she said yes.

Now there are Summer Camps all around Lake Champlain. Susan was jealous of the kids who went to these camps. Those children had parents who cared enough to arrange a special treat for them. Even the poor children in charity camps had someone who cared enogh to send them to camp for the sake of their health and well-being. The Cold Thing sent Susan to camp.

Basically, Susan is a Wright, an animated corpse with the malevolent will of its deceased owner. Susan doesn't look like a wright, she looks like a petite sweetly pretty twelve-year-old girl. Susan has the strength of a linebacker (ST14) and the constitution to match. Add to that a century of practice at Field Hockey has made Susan deadly with a club. But Susan's real weapon is the Enthralment skills. Susan tells those nasty bloody fireside camp stories with such skill she hyptnotises people into thinking they are characters in her stories. This often leads to people murdering their closest friends.

Susan never had friends. So she enjoys ruining the lives of those that do.

The Cold Thing finds this so amusing.
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Old 09-12-2020, 12:08 PM   #3
Shostak
 
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Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
Default Re: 2020 Halloween game thread

I hope to run a GURPSified The Keepers of the Woods, which I've twice run on Halloween. It's a good adventure, and it's FREE! If my group has time, or if they prefer, I'll run a cosmic horror adventure I made for a convention that was cancelled and so never got the chance to run.
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Old 09-13-2020, 08:55 AM   #4
Gold & Appel Inc
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
Default Re: 2020 Halloween game thread

Not really plans for this year due to technical difficulties in the location department, but the annual Halloween game was kind of my "thing" in the Denver GURPS Group, starting with my first installment of Bare-Handed Zombie Cull in 2008. This session was inspired as much by my desire to test-drive my newly-acquired copy of 4e Martial Arts as the holiday itself, and became an instant classic despite its straightforward "a bunch of MMA fighters get bushwhacked by Romeroesque Voodoo Zombies while training in the Bayou" premise.

Further installments featured a different fighting style and zombie sub-genre every time, but stuck to that basic theme like splattered brains on a windshield. My personal favorite was 2009's Zombies Vs Pro Wrestlers, in which our heroes got to use their signature WWE moves to battle their own audience who were turned into killer zombie-like automatons during a live broadcast by the sinister sorcery of the otherworldly mystery wrestler Gold Lamé Elvis Impersonator, whose entrance to the arena was naturally heralded with a dark, minor-key instrumental cover of A Little Less Conversation featuring a lot of theremin and Hammond B3, of course. Complications included the desire to impress the world-wide live TV audience and try to avoid mass fatalities on-camera (sure it was self-defense, but looking too enthusiastic about stretching the limits of Reluctant Killer doesn't play well in the Midwest), while battling The King as he tried to prevent them from stopping his brainwashed minions from conducting the eldritch ritual that would zombify the folks at home and usher in The End of the World!

The session was enhanced tremendously by an abiding knowledge and love of pro wrestling tropes among all participants, as well as the generous donation of above-par props and snacks by all players. As always, feel free to adapt or outright steal this if you want.

Last edited by Gold & Appel Inc; 09-13-2020 at 09:08 AM.
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Old 09-13-2020, 10:36 PM   #5
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: 2020 Halloween game thread

I usually run Halloween sessions rather than Halloween games, but the pandemic means that nothing is happening right now. I do have an idea for a session.

Imagine a pool in a forest. The pool offers anyone who looks into it their idealized image. If they are foolish enough to touch their image, they (and any of their companions) will be transported to a horrific world where they need to be their idealized version of themselves to have a chance to survive. In effect, each character is given a bonus 400 CP, but they will face dangerous enemies and lethal complications that will be challenging even with an extra 400 CP.

If they die in the horrific world, they die in real life. If they survive for twenty-four hours though, they will return to the real world with 20 CP of permanent traits, as they now know what they might be capable of. When they return to the real world though, the pool has disappeared for another century, and the corpses of their dead companions are stacked where the pool once existed. If, however, they have intimately and/or positively connected with any entity from the horrific world, they will have permanently returned with the character to the real world (and will have equivalent capabilities as the PCs, regardless of their former nature).
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