Modern Horror/Action/Secret Fantasy in Boston

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ciaran

This setting is GURPS Cabal: Ken Hite has already done all the heavy lifting for you. I'd simply use his work.

Unfortunately, I don't own GURPS Cabal.

Originally Posted by Ciaran

That said: if vampires exist and you want your setting to be plausible, they operate under draconian rules of secrecy. They are likely diverting from the massive unregulated US and Chinese blood markets rather than feeding directly. A little googling on this yields fascinating reading btw.

Sounds right.

Originally Posted by Ciaran

No combination of uneasily coexisting supernatural conspiracies could long remain undiscovered in today's world without some sort of overarching treaty, ruthlessly enforced. In my Cabal campaign, the PCs are those enforcers - supernatural beings charged by the Grand Masters with keeping the Secret and tracking down rogue agents. Stealing an idea from Nightwatch, their 'police' units are divided by the hours of light and darkness: Ordo Lux and Ordo Tenebris, two sides of the same coin charged with the same mission, but serving different Masters.

Hmmm... overarching treaty.

I understand what you're saying, but for dramatic purposes, I'd quite like it to be possible for one secret organisation to be unaware of other conspiracies and consequently believe that it is the only one.

After all, the fact that magic has worked erratically if at all for the past century will have made many of these conspiracies toothless and irrelevant, with only eccentrics continuing to observe 'mysteries' that don't work. When magic did start working again, it must have come as quite a surprise for some of those people.

I'm leaning toward monsters of all sorts having been all but eliminated from this world, but there being some dimensional pathways where they can enter it now that magic has come back.

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Unfortunately, I don't own GURPS Cabal.

I can't recommend it highly enough. The single finest piece of work on a modern supernatural setting in gaming, and with a magical framework written into it that is not only based on Western occult tradition but which handily explains and addresses the issues you have been bringing up in this thread.

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I'm leaning toward monsters of all sorts having been all but eliminated from this world, but there being some dimensional pathways where they can enter it now that magic has come back.

Are you familiar with the 'mana cycle' concept from the Shadowrun setting? It sounds a lot like what you're thinking of, on a much longer (thousands of years) schedule.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by rosignol

Are you familiar with the 'mana cycle' concept from the Shadowrun setting? It sounds a lot like what you're thinking of, on a much longer (thousands of years) schedule.

I first heard of it in the Dark Matter setting for Alternity, but I suspect that this is a common conceit in works of fiction where it is desired to introduce the supernatural, but keep the world mostly unchanged.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I first heard of it in the Dark Matter setting for Alternity, but I suspect that this is a common conceit in works of fiction where it is desired to introduce the supernatural, but keep the world mostly unchanged.

My "pulp secret magic" campaign, the myths and legends used to be real, with Atlantis being the magi-tech civilization that arose from reliable magics. The initial adventure is the one from the back of Places of Mystery, with a bunch of hopping from ancient crumbling ruin to ancient crumbling ruin.

Anyway, my rationalization, long story short, is that at some point in the past, the atlantians (and other civilizations like them) either removed themselves or were removed from our world, along with the ability of magic to work and most legendary critters. With modern day archaeological techniques and the easy accessibility and correlation of modern data, at some point a bunch of occult scholars realize that there are certain commonalities to ancient ruins/rituals/etc that can't be explained, so they half jokingly stitch together some of the old rites, and something happens. Not anything powerful, but completely unexplainable by science.

In my campaign, I was planning on having a world-spanning ritual to bring magic (and atlantians and other unpleasant critters) back that gets botched by the interference of the PCs, resulting in only partial success. But once the genie is out of the bottle, it comes to the attention of various organizations and governments and research/weaponization begins, leading to a magical arms race.

You could do something similar, with less gov't involvement on a little less of an "Indiana Jones/Hellboy" scale.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Does anyone have ideas for important power groups and how they tie into what 'mundanes' believe to be the real power structures? I'm looking particularly for plausibility, as far as conspiracy fiction can be plausible, at least.

Have you looked at the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn?
Gentlemen's Clubs
The Knights of Columbus have lodges all over the place.
The Lions Club.
The Elks Club.
The Rotary Club.
The 4H Club.
The Free Masons, namely the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, 3rd oldest in the world, which has some worldwide jurisdictions, including China.
There's also the independent co-ed version of the Free Masons.

[trans]

And these guys:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcellian

[trans]

Check this out, too:

http://hacks.mit.edu/

[Lorka]

Was just reading a Harry Dresden book (still not sure I like em even tho its the 7th I'm reading atm hehe) - anyway there was a really good idea for how to include magic and still have it mostly not working and/or really secret.

The more that know, the less a ritual works, since you are taking from a 'mystic' source when only one instance of a ritual is used there is a lot of power, but when the same ritual is used be everyone it cant even fizzle most of the time.

Now instead of 3 witches casting an evil curse it is every other teenage girl playing with a book of magic from the library - the rituals and spells are quite real but the more that are known and used the less effect.

[SonofJohn]

Originally Posted by Icelander

You are a wonderful human being. My players curse you, but I thank you.

Its an honor to help such acomplished man gamer and skandinavian, so here is
the Wikipedia entry on the story...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horror_at_Red_Hook