Monster Hunters by Gaslight - Whitechapel, London, Hell?

[Lameth]

The game is a monster hunter game set in the real world, just more cinematic. I have CORPs and space travel to Luna and Mars also, with Corp tech being TL 9 and some odds and ends, but its limited or underground.. sort of like the show "Fringe". So it’s basically on the edge of very pre Transhuman world. But mixed in with the neon lights and modern day is a powerful backdrop of Old Gods, cults, magic, secret societies, a secret history of the world, and with monsters of all types.

The PCs are a female Stage Magician with some real magic/occultist, trained by a very powerful oculists teacher that just died and left her everything. A modern day Witch from a big witch family. And a male that went to a prep school outside Princeton and since he had no family, he would stay there in the winter and summers alone...and one winter he found a secret room of books and soon found magic was real, to become a self-taught Sorcerer. They gathered together for a dear old man’s funeral that they all met at camp when they were 10 years old,,, and this man said things to them that changed their lives and gave them advice to live by. He was well loved.

Now it’s a monster hunter like game... the players are coming to terms with a bigger world and banning together to save those that need help and to keep the supernatural world from spilling into the real world and hurting more people, like it did to that nice old man that formed their younger years [killed by a former camp mate that became a Wendigo].

So....honestly, this is my fear… I would love to bring in some more fantastic elements.. such as time travel (going back to Victorian London, or even the 1920 or 1930s) for an adventure.. but I fear adding these things removes the "real world" feel of the game and the feel of it being a Horror game. Advice on how to make this fit a horror game and still keep the “feeling”?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

I would suspect that for one of sufficient social status, this isn't a problem.

You either summon servants to set up/remove a bath in your room, or simply commandeer the common bath for your ablutions. Who's going to argue with two mild-mannered but large servants (from their elegant attire, servants of a powerful & well connected person) when they politely suggest that you use the facilities on a different floor? It's England, not America, and Andrew Jackson's ideas on equality aren't welcome, thank you.

The character in question is Wealthy and Status 2, but chiefly for his military success, modest fame as an explorer, ethnographer, linguist, translator of poetry and cartographer. In so far as Victorian society allows social climbing, he has successful climbed.

He was an Oxford man, but while there was money for him to attend, he had no social distinction at the time. At the time of the Crimea, several years before Oxford, he was a camp follower and a boy bugler, being a natural son of an army officer. His embarrassing birth has been obscured by success and a deliberate effort on his part, but he is definitely no aristocrat.

He also keeps no full-time servants, being a world-striding adventurer with no fixed residence. I suppose he has tried a succession of valets, but only military batmen have managed to stay with him for any length of time, and he is now retired from active service.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Lameth

haha.. of course. I merely pointed out that your idea of the game sounds very interesting and creative and close to mine that i am running. I wanted to know if you could share some advice...

If I can, I will. I'll get to your other post later, as I have to go to some meetings today and will be home in eight hours or so.

Originally Posted by Lameth

How are you approaching real world magic, like instant/on the spot spell casting sorcery, Runes, rituals, ect?
And are you using more than one overall system for all magic, or are you mixing and matching?

I am using Ritual Path Magic for the first time, being used to Path/Book magic. I did not allow PCs to start with Ritual Adept and the only one who started out with knowledge of the occult has only a dabbler's familiarity with magical Paths, which were mere curiosities in the world as it was before the start of the first session of play.

I'm leaning toward the idea of having at least some of the rituals from Path/Book magic available as lower energy cost alternatives to more flexible RPM-style rituals that the caster makes up on the spot. The lack of flexibility and inbuilt restrictions of the pre-built rituals would then be compensated for with the lower energy cost of rituals that had been made more efficient by centuries of experience*.

So far, most NPCs with ritual magic have been using Hermetic magic with decanic modifiers, which could use pretty much the default RPM system. I haven't needed any modifiers beyond that yet.

*The concept of magic in the setting is one where it has been waning for millenia and over the last few centuries has been relegated to secret curiosity, rather than much of a force in the world, but something happened to change Very Low Mana (-8 to -10) to Normal Mana at the start of play.

Originally Posted by Lameth

And I’m sure we would love to hear some of your plot ideas that you have or are using now in the game. I am looking for more inspiration for my game.. I kind of hit a little wall. Your first paragraph of your overall game was a great read btw.

As I recall, you asked if that was all from one session or if some of it was backstory.

The events related in the first post come from the first two sessions of play. The way it happened was that I was roleplaying with my players, in an entirely different campaign and genre. We had been playing from noon until dinner and then we went out for ribs. On the drive home from dinner, we were discussing various roleplaying genres and we came up with Victorian monster hunters. As a challenge, we decided to start a game of them that night.

Arriving home at ten-ish, I demanded and got character concepts, which I fleshed out into GURPS characters using GCA while coming up with a situation. We started play at midnight, with the characters still half-finished. During that session, which lasted until five or six that morning, about half of the events related happened.

The next session took place a couple of days later and the rest happened then. It ended with leaving the town house where the shocking events took place and taking around ten survivors to look for a save haven in a church.

[Icelander]

Or I could get to it now, since I'm here and the meeting isn't started yet...

Originally Posted by Lameth

The game is a monster hunter game set in the real world, just more cinematic. I have CORPs and space travel to Luna and Mars also, with Corp tech being TL 9 and some odds and ends, but its limited or underground.. sort of like the show "Fringe". So it’s basically on the edge of very pre Transhuman world. But mixed in with the neon lights and modern day is a powerful backdrop of Old Gods, cults, magic, secret societies, a secret history of the world, and with monsters of all types.

Interesting. I would think that it was difficult to combine a future setting effectively with wainscot magic and horror, since much of the impact from secret magic comes from the familiarity of the other surroundings, but you evidently make it work.

Originally Posted by Lameth

So....honestly, this is my fear… I would love to bring in some more fantastic elements.. such as time travel (going back to Victorian London, or even the 1920 or 1930s) for an adventure.. but I fear adding these things removes the "real world" feel of the game and the feel of it being a Horror game. Advice on how to make this fit a horror game and still keep the “feeling”?

What I would do to keep the 'feeling' is to have the method of time travel be mysterious, not a replicable method like a time machine, but instead a portal through dreams or something similar. If the PCs reach Victorian London or Pulp Africa through shared dreams remniscient of the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, it will feel much more suitably horror-esque than if they travelled there in a device with gleaming anti-septic walls and bright dials with year numbers on them.

[Icelander]

Right, the heroes have now reached the church with the refugees and picked up another one, a badly wounded woman who, along with a male companion*, were attacked by the horses drawing their carriage after they had been infused with demonic energies and grown to massive size and girth, sprouted teeth and a massive tail, as well as grotesquely small wings.

The woman was crushed by the onrushing monstrous beasts and her back was broken, as well as several bones broken internally around her pelvis. She appeared to be dying, but Father MacManus asked God to save her and discovered the power Lay on Hands, with Costs Character Points. He spent one, and all his FP, to cure her broken back. She is now sleeping inside the St. Botolph Aldgate church, after having received First Aid and Succor as well.

The monstrous creatures were destroyed by the intrepid heroes, as well as a new player in the drama, the well-respected local hard man, George 'Teapot' Frankton, the arch rogue and captain of a powerful gang near the Mitre. When things started to unravel, Mr. Frankton declared that while he might be a right hard bloke, he'd be damned if he'd see demons overrun our local church! So festooned with knives, cudgels, belts and buckles, his sixteen hardest fighters took up position around St. Botolph Aldgate and allowed any passerby to seek shelter there.

Mr. Frankton likes to dress like a swell, but is unfortunate in appearance, being an albino with total alopecia. He's respected among his peers, for toughness and fairness, and feared by all with any sense.

*Who didn't survive.

[Lameth]

Great!
Btw thanks for advice.

[Icelander]

What would a Wealthy expert rifleman with an interest in custom gunsmithing and modern weapons have as his dangerous game gun in 1888?

I'm looking for something that would have been realistically available, but more exotic and cooler than a Winchester lever-action. Custom order is okay, i.e. perhaps an unusual but possible chambering for a well-regarded action, like the Mauser or Mannlicher.

Requirements are at least Shots 5+1, with higher being better, and a 300 grain bullet at 1,500 fps, with 405 grains being prefered and higher velocity certainly not frowned upon. ST can be up to 14 and while Rcl 3 would be nice, up to Rcl 5 is okay. Acc 4+ is very desirable.

The budget is around $20,000 for this one gun. Bolt-action is cooler than lever-action, but it's not a deal-breaker either way.

My current idea is a Turkish Mauser M1887 in 9.5mmx60mmR, but I certainly wouldn't object to more robust chamberings, if any repeaters at 1888 can realistically handle them.

[Lameth]

Icelander or anyone else..another question. But this one might be a little stupid or foolish. In a secret magic campaign the supernatural supposed to be distant and thin and far between..behind the normal world ..like Dresden or hellboy. But how do you keep the players occupied on a day to day basis without making it seem like the hidden world and creatures are everywhere? Or do you have long lags in the game "well three weeks pass". What approaches do you take to make it seem like it's hidden and special without becoming everyday? Or do you not at all?

[johndallman]

The answer used in the Laundry campaign I ran, and the Occult Secret Service WWII game I play in, is a mission framework. The characters work for an organisation that watches for signs of weirdness over a large area and sends the party to investigate.

That allows time - in varying quantities - to pass between scenarios fairly naturally: the characters have other work or training to do between times.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Lameth

Icelander or anyone else..another question. But this one might be a little stupid or foolish. In a secret magic campaign the supernatural supposed to be distant and thin and far between..behind the normal world ..like Dresden or hellboy. But how do you keep the players occupied on a day to day basis without making it seem like the hidden world and creatures are everywhere? Or do you have long lags in the game "well three weeks pass". What approaches do you take to make it seem like it's hidden and special without becoming everyday? Or do you not at all?

Can't speak to my methodologies (haven't done much GM'ing, and certainly not in such a setting), but there are a few ways you can do this. The first is to indeed have intervening times, which you can handle either with a "3 weeks later..." approach or by actually having them game out some of what they're doing. If the characters are PI's/detectives you can actually give them mundane cases which, thanks to the fact they're capable of dealing with vampires and werewolves, they end up solving rather rapidly. A typical kidnapping or covered-up murder isn't too difficult to solve when you're a rather skilled Ritual Adept (Seek Person for the first, and for the second probably a sequence of Sense Body to determine cause of death, Sense+Strengthen Crossroads to allow you to visualize a "link" to the murder weapon, then some more Information spells on that to find the murderer). Actual multi-session story arcs would consist of singular supernatural cases (or a small group of related cases), and in between you could have a single session where they solve half a dozen or so mundane cases. Such cases should be quick (your players signed on for hunting monsters, not tracking down petty thieves), and possibly emphasize just how much easier it is to deal with normal perps than supernatural ones.

Another option would be to have the supernatural not be rare, but rather be hidden. Buffy did this, as did the Hellboy movies. Occasionally, settings like this are set up where "crossing over" to where you become involved in the supernatural makes you no longer really part of the mundane world. The webcomic Finder's Keeper's did this rather effectively (although I haven't read it for quite some time), even having the formerly-mundane character eventually end up in her friend's apartment. Said friend at first didn't even recognize her, then made a throwaway comment about having been worried about her (seemingly only just realizing the character had been missing for some time), and afterward ignored her and completely forgot she was there. Essentially, mundanes only notice something supernatural when it's rather disruptive and thus can't be ignored (like a sudden hole appearing in your roof and a woman falling through), but then promptly forget the disturbance as soon as possible.
If you opt for this latter scheme, pretty much everything the characters do will indeed be part of the supernatural realm - because they no longer fit in in the mundane world. You can still maintain the secret nature of the supernatural by having their occasional interactions with the mundane be surreal (like everybody keeping their distance but not noticing when you're wielding a knife that unmakes reality and fighting a freaking werewolf; in that case the character's friend/protector actually steals a silver necklace off a passerby to use a garrote on the werewolf, and the passerby is like "Hey, where'd my necklace go?" while there's a werewolf being choked with it in the background).