Florence Medieval Monster Hunter

[valerio.crini]

Hi,
I'm trying to launch a "demo" session to convince my players' group to switch from a super campaign to a fantasy/monster hunters campaign set in Florence, Italy, anno domini 1348.
I'd like to share with you in order to model better this pilot.

April 1348, in "Four Lions" square a group of children (the player characters) find a dying sparrow. They take care of the poor bird but after a few hours it dies by black plague - the children are patient zero of the contagion that will decimate Florence (from 100.000 down to 40000).

Adventure start here:

Illness is supernatural, and it hit Florence because magical barriers that prevent evil forces to overwhelm the city have been eroded when a statue of God of War Mars (named Marzocco) was carried away by a flood of the Arno river in 1333.
The children - the pg - have black plague (TODO where can I find GURPS stats for this illness?) and they have a week or less before dying they need to do something to save the city from collapse.
They have an external help, Marzocco from the Arno's deeps, calling them to recover it to awake it's defensive magic to protect Florence from the Plague.
They'll have

• find Marzocco in a dungeon under the Arno river protected by evil beings (they'll need to avoid confrontation because ill children are not good monster hunters).
• after Marzocco is found they'll be granted Monster Hunter status - so they'll grow up to 400 points characters so they'll be able to fight the evil.
• at the end the children will die from the illness but having awakened Marzocco and his legacy will live forever letting generations of Monster Hunters to protect Florence from evil. This means that in the next episode they'll play a "reincarnation" of the Monster Hunters that cleaned dungeon of Marzocco.

Some notes:

• Evil endangering Florence is not yet clear: it can be a devil or a curse that afflicts Florence generating the plague.
• Monster Hunters are taken from Monster Hunters 1 - Champions downgrading from TL8 to TL4
• Guns are present but primitive (I need to create a subset from Low Tech)
• Next episodes could happen during events described in Hot Spots: Reinassance Florence
• This pilot must be played in a session in order to give the idea of the campaign so I need to keep it small and quick to play.

Any idea, suggestion or criticism?

[Ji ji]

Se il tuo gruppo non vuole giocare l'avventura, la gioco io!

[If your players don't want to play the adventure, I am here!]

[Cornelius]

Very interesting idea! There' a lot to work on.

My criticism:

• Using children (or young teen) is a nice idea, but it will force players to avoid confrontation completely and this could not sit well with some player. I would rather set for teens (12 to 15 years old) which would make them nearly adult by the time.
  
• Give them a patron. This should be a shady individual which would provide them with the necessary information (you have to find the Marzocco to end the plague!), equipment and eventually training. Who actually is and what are his motivations should stay a mistery.
  
• Rather than giving them 400 points after the adventure, I would have them start as nornmal 50 point characters and having them gain the sidekick status through a ritual (courtesy of your misterious strangerTM) It could work as an alternate form. The powers and the knowledge would come from spirits of long dead warriors
  
• Black plague should be in the basic set, I think, but i wouldn't bother too much: read the wikipedia entry for the symptoms and call it a day.
  
• Guns: no guns in the XIV century, it's too early, at the times they were still experimenting with the first bombards (Unless you want to go down the clockpunk road, of course)
  
• I would definitly play more sessions in the late middle age, too.

Finally, Mi associo a quanto detto da Ji Ji. Se hai bisogno di un giocatore fai un fischio.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by valerio.crini

Illness is supernatural, and it hit Florence because magical barriers that prevent evil forces to overwhelm the city have been eroded when a statue of God of War Mars (named Marzocco) was carried away by a flood of the Arno river in 1333.
The children - the pg - have black plague (TODO where can I find GURPS stats for this illness?) and they have a week or less before dying they need to do something to save the city from collapse.

Ciao Valerio! I do not know of any published GURPS rules for the plague (either as 14th century people described it, or as modern doctors describe it), but there may be some GURPS 3e rules in Swashbuckers, or 4e rules in GURPS Bio-Tech.

Edit: There is a version of the plague based on early 16th century beliefs about it in the GURPS Saduria project. Search for "plague" not "black death" or "bubonic plague."

[valerio.crini]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Edit: There is a version of the plague based on early 16th century beliefs about it in the GURPS Saduria project. Search for "plague" not "black death" or "bubonic plague."

I like this plague, simple and deadly.

Ji ji, Cornelius from what regions of Italy are you from? I'm from Florence, obviously :)

I like the Patron figure, it could be a disguised Boccaccio, not only future writer of The Decameron but occult scholar and secretly founder of sons of Marzocco (a.k.a Marzoccheschi) that will inspire republican Florentine troops in the Siege of Florence (1529–1530) to take same name.
He will visit the infected boys (better than children, you are right Cornelius) and give them details for the ritual become sidekick (e.g. drink Arno water near Ponte Vecchio where Mars statue was lost) there they'll have a brief encouter with evil pawns that were waiting for them.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Ciao Valerio! I do not know of any published GURPS rules for the plague (either as 14th century people described it, or as modern doctors describe it), but there may be some GURPS 3e rules in Swashbuckers, or 4e rules in GURPS Bio-Tech.

IIRC there were rules in both GURPS 3rd Ed. Biotech and 3rd Ed. Compedium II.

While not fitting to GURPS 4th Ed. it might give you some ideas.

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by valerio.crini

Ji ji, Cornelius from what regions of Italy are you from? I'm from Florence, obviously :)

I was in Piedmont until I moved to India for my job. Out of my joke about your group willingness to switch campaign, I would be happy to play by hangout/skype, for example. Playing GURPS in Italian is quite a rare opportunity!

[T.K.]

Like your plot idea!

Some stuff to give you ideas:

If your players are used to playing Supers, something that might peak their interest might be different options of "sources" or "powers" so I believe allowing options that suit your genre could probably peak their interest as well...

- What if one of the teens is taken under the tutelage of an inventor/scientist? He could then have access to steampunk weapons and gadgets. Instead of allowing weapons for everyone, he could have protected access to them, becoming "his thing".

Think "Tesla", "The Prestige" movie, "Steampunk", "Castle Falkenstein", "Wild Wild West" movie.

- Certainly seems fitting that one of them wields "The Holy". However you see it, the opposing power of "The Darkness" or "The Evil" in your campaign might be, their Patron could be an agent of this opposing force or the teen in question could simply find meaning on it by itself.

It could range from "The Exorcist" type where it's more a type of priest with real powers being able to turn devils and demons away, hold them in place and such...
Or it could go as far as an ancient order of Crusaders that's passed down generation after generation chooses one of the teens as the next successor and he must find artifacts of old like a holy sword of history or a piece of armor, that in his hands are real artifacts of power...

- Maybe one of the teens has a connection with...deeper things? What if one of them is descendant of a demon? Or Cain, if you use that legend? What if that's why he was there, at ground zero, because he's directly connected to the "Evil ones" somehow?
Maybe he even start to develop "evil gifts"...will he embrace his destiny or fight against it?


-- Aside from the characters...what if things are not so clear cut...ok, Marzocco Seal was broken and all and that allowed evil forces to pour into our world....but what if this plague and the happenings are actually the outcome of 2 Devil forces fighting for the territory? If they choose to dwindle the evil forces instead of focusing directly on restoring the Seal, they might find themselves over their heads when they actually find that they're fighting against just one side of the conflict...

[Cornelius]

Originally Posted by valerio.crini

I like this plague, simple and deadly.

Ji ji, Cornelius from what regions of Italy are you from? I'm from Florence, obviously :)

Forlì, right across the mountains, but the job leaves me so few chances to play...

[valerio.crini]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

I was in Piedmont until I moved to India for my job. Out of my joke about your group willingness to switch campaign, I would be happy to play by hangout/skype, for example. Playing GURPS in Italian is quite a rare opportunity!

If I'm able to find three more italian people that would like to try by hangout/skype I'll let you know, Ji ji.