Horror in Cyberpunk

[hal]

Hi Folks,
I'm contemplating on turning the tables on one of my players. My current Harn campaign got placed on temporary hold until one of the core players could rejoin the group. For another player, I engaged in a one on one cyberpunk campaign where the player originally intended to run as a net runner. Said character was supposed to have had the background that he was a special ops soldier whose unit was betrayed, and only himself, plus one other survived to become good buddies in Night City.

Then, for reasons I don't quite understand, the player wanted to go head hunting for the man responsible for betraying his unit to their messy and untimely demise.

That of course, shifted the entire campaign thrust from what I was prepared to deal with, to a more cinematic shoot'm up, and incidentally beefed up the character from its original 150 point character to something akin to 210 points. No biggie from my perspective, because the player more or less made a portion of his skills relatively useless to the campaign thrust he wants to take.

Then I thought "why not take a page out of Cthulhupunk, and make it a horror based campaign unbeknownst to him.

I've the perfect set up actaully. Two buddies of his are such that one is a love interest for whom the path of the gun was her schtick, and the other, a womanizing Irishman whose instincts are more of the "live in the present, for tomorrow may never arrive." Murphy as the Irishman, happens to have fallen in love with another NPC who used to be the communications team that worked with the special ops unit known as "Red Dogs".

So - here's the idea...

The man responsible for selling the Red Dog team, needed something from South America that could only be procurred from its owner, if the Colonel was willing to pay the price. The price, was the special forces team that was wreaking havoc on the Narcoterrorist drug labs in South America. That item being procurred, was part of an old Nazi treasure trove of occult books and artifacts prior to the end of World War II, being shipped to South America before the Fall of Germany. At this time, the occult artifacts were being investigated as a means of perhaps dishing out occult damage to the leaders of those free world nations opposed to Germany at the time. As fate would have it, Germany fell before the occult horror could be unleashed, and the man responsible for the research died unexpectedly - some say, mysteriously.

Now here's the rub. I'm not all to comfortable with trying to utilize GURPS POWERS or the other stuff from the main book. Then it occurs to me, that there are others who are more than happy to given free rein to their imaginations, to cobble up something akin to what I'm looking for...

[hal]

This is what I'm looking for:

Initially, the demonic creature that can be summoned into the mortal plane of existence, may stay no longer than one year plus a day. Said Demonic creature may not physically materialize in the mortal plane, but must instead, possess a victim specially prepared by an obscene ritual magic event, to be the host for the Demon. Upon possession, the Demon suffers from Dread where it can not come within 11 yards of any hallowed ground (which includes undefiled/undesecrated graveyards. Any holy ground, not just that of Christianity, is sufficient for keeping the demonic creature and his minions at bay.

Special items of note:
The demon's possession of a human host alters the body such that it becomes "Dead" for all intents and purposes. Claws extend from the hands, and the body gains inhuman strength beyond that of normal humans (ergo, a +10 or perhaps +20 ST) plus the acompanying hit points.

The Demon may be subject to exorcism, and upon loud utterance of the ritual of exorcism, the Demon is transfixed in agony - unable to move until either the ritual succeeds, or fails (whereupon the Demon generally goes beserk and kills that which inflicted such horrible agony upon it).

The Demon has the ability to attack with its claws, such that any human who is killed by the clawed demon, will lie in death for three days before they rise again as zombies.

The Demon's zombies become afflicted with their own "power" in that they can in turn, attack humans with bites, clawed fingers, etc - and any wounds they inflict suffer the following effects:

Victim automatically suffers a reduced HT (up to -4) directly prorportional to the damage inflicted/suffered from the attack (including subsequent damage from the infected bite). While infected, they may not heal damage until either the disease kills them outright, or they shake off the effect of infection. Victims who recover while on hallowed ground, do NOT suffer the -4 HT penalty. The disease will generally follow the normal rules for infections/diseases but for one thing: One must make THREE consecutive HT saving rolls to shake off the "cursed infection" instead of just one - or roll one crit success.

Example: Jon Sykes, is minding his own business when a prior victim of the demon stumbles upon Jon. The infected woman staggers towards Jon, and he goes to her aid unaware of what will happen next. Holding her forearm to keep her upright and steady, he is shocked when she bites down on his own hand VICIOUSLY. Inflicting 2 points of damage to his hand, poor Jon lets her go and backs away. At this point, Jon has been infected by the Disease. As it is supernatural in origin, regular antibiotics fail to make a dent in the disease, and Jon must roll at HT-2 to try and shake the disease. With a HT of 10, it is perhaps no surprise that Jon's hand gets infected. The next day, Jon, having informed the police of the rabid woman, seeks medical treatment. The doctor applies an antibiotic to the wound, dresses it, and tells Jon to call him if that doesn't clear up.

That night, Jon gains the +2 bonus from doctor care, offsetting the -2 for the supernatural aspect, and ignoring any benefits of the antibiotics outright. Jon feels better because he has an attending physician looking at his wound, and he rolls against his HT+2 -2 in an effort to shake off the infection. Rolling a 9, Jon succeeds at one of his consecutive rolls required. Jon however, goes home thinking nothing further about the bite mark of that crazed woman, and goes to work the next day. Since he's still infected, he can't roll to heal any of the damage done to his hand. Rolling against a HT-2 roll still (as there is no attending physician to work at the hand again), poor Jon unsurprisingly failed to shake off the infection. As a result, Jon suffers an additional point of damage. Now Jon has 3 points of damage, so his HT is reduced by 3 for his next roll. He succeeds the next day with a roll of a 5. The next day however, he's still rolling against HT-3, and fails. Day by day, poor Jon fails to roll 3 consecutive rolls to break the infection, and the doctors, mystified that Jon is not responding to Anti-biotics, slowly sleeps deeper and deeper into his fever and dies inexplicably. Taking a sample of the diseased organisms present in Jon's body, the doctors send a sample to the CDC, and place his body in the morgue. Three days later, the morgue attendant is attacked with multiple bite marks, and it takes multiple people to bring Jon down. By this time, some of those who brought Jon down, will become newly infected victims.

Thus begins the Zombie plague in a cyberpunk game world ;)

Any suggestions on making the Demon more horrific, or perhaps making the zombies more "interesting" would be gratefully accepted. The idea here is to have perhaps different types of zombies (slow types, fast types, mindless types, cunning types, etc).

The fun idea here is that like vampirism, the demon controls those zombies he creates directly. First contact zombies in turn, can control the zombies they thselves created, but not those created from their creations.

Demon <=> Zombie Master <=> Mindless Zombie

People who are bitten CAN recover if they can get to a priestly doctor, or can be treated on hallowed ground, or stay in a church as they attempt to recover from the infection. While on holy ground, the infection becomes a NORMAL infection and can be vanquished with only one HT saving roll. Problem is, by the time people figure this out, there will be a large number of zombies out there having fun ;)

[hal]

As an alternative? Perhaps the Zombie Infection is a cyclicic attack that works for a given number of symbolic days. Might be interesting to tie it in with the magic system from CABAL with decanic magic. Belbel for instance, seems to be tied to decanic energy associated with undead. Perhaps the "infection" will be cyclic until the first Tuesday after the infection is inflicted. Perhaps the infection is at its most powerful on a Friday, where the cyclicic nature is heightened to where the victim suffers three attacks. Something suitably arcane and obscure that only by looking at page 247 of GURPS THAUMATOLOGY might the player begin to realize just what he's up against.

[Maz]

I'm not exactly sure what kin of responses your after here.

But I would say forget about GURPS: powers. If you are creating NPC's you just do whatever seems right. No reason to waste time designing it using the rules.

Otherwise it seems like a perfectly normal zombie-horror story. Although, unless the supernatural has been present previously. The player might not like that it's suddenly introduced. Zombies fit fine into a cyberpunk world through Science Gone Bad (drugs, disease, biological warfare, nanobots).

Where is the zombie-encounters going to take place? If in south Americas jungle. Then instead of different types of zombies, you could have animal zombies to fill out the different roles. A jaguar-zombie, on the prowl. Monkey-zombies to swarm and attack from trees. Boar-zombies to charge mindlessly in. And so on.
[edit] Zombie giant anteater! Now there's an interesting zombie! It has really scary-looking claws. And a long tongue, to better suck out your brain! Now i know how some of the silly monsters of D&D turned up, hehe.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

I'd probably stick with ST +10 for the zombies unless the PCs are crazy combat monsters. That's more than enough to ensure that the big guy with the metal arm barely has a chance to get away once grappled, and anybody smaller is toast if they let it get that close.

Comic Relief Idea: Paranoid cyberpunk PCs will probably invert the zombie genre trope that the other survivors are the real threat, given opportunity, by capping them ASAP once things get really bad.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

....Paranoid cyberpunk PCs....

Are there any other kind?

:)

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Apache

Are there any other kind?

Dead or soon-to-be-dead cyberpunk PCs?

[hal]

Originally Posted by Maz

I'm not exactly sure what kin of responses your after here.

But I would say forget about GURPS: powers. If you are creating NPC's you just do whatever seems right. No reason to waste time designing it using the rules.

Otherwise it seems like a perfectly normal zombie-horror story. Although, unless the supernatural has been present previously. The player might not like that it's suddenly introduced. Zombies fit fine into a cyberpunk world through Science Gone Bad (drugs, disease, biological warfare, nanobots).

Where is the zombie-encounters going to take place? If in south Americas jungle. Then instead of different types of zombies, you could have animal zombies to fill out the different roles. A jaguar-zombie, on the prowl. Monkey-zombies to swarm and attack from trees. Boar-zombies to charge mindlessly in. And so on.
[edit] Zombie giant anteater! Now there's an interesting zombie! It has really scary-looking claws. And a long tongue, to better suck out your brain! Now i know how some of the silly monsters of D&D turned up, hehe.

Hi Maz,
What I'm after, aside from creating a set of zombies for use with the ongoing campaign, is a write up on how it would look overall via GURPS rules. You are of course, correct that I don't need to do the write up if all the monsters will be NPC's - but for the fact that the Zombie Lords could actually be the player character. See, the Demon can make his minions who have free will, but the minions of minons will not have free will.

Just a thought :)

[hal]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

I'd probably stick with ST +10 for the zombies unless the PCs are crazy combat monsters. That's more than enough to ensure that the big guy with the metal arm barely has a chance to get away once grappled, and anybody smaller is toast if they let it get that close.

Comic Relief Idea: Paranoid cyberpunk PCs will probably invert the zombie genre trope that the other survivors are the real threat, given opportunity, by capping them ASAP once things get really bad.

Either that, or the hope that SOME people survive the Zombie plague might stay the player's hand instead of capping the infected as soon as it is discovered. One of the NPC's in the campaign is a love interest ;)

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Dead or soon-to-be-dead cyberpunk PCs?

Some of use are too tough to die, and too dumb to live. :)