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Old 12-07-2019, 10:24 PM   #51
Prince Charon
 
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Default Re: Best Fictional Settings for GURPS Horror [Horror]

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
In general, I avoid providing enemies that I have not stated up. At the very least, it means that I am consistent in using them. Does this mean that there is a greater likelihood that the players will kill the enemy? Perhaps, but that really depends on them having the proper tools.

For example, let us say that you have an enemy with ST 14, DX 14, IQ 10, HT 14, Ambidexterity, Combat Reflexes, Craftiness 4, Luck, Signature Gear (A Pair of Very Fine Balanced Long Knives), Stalker 4, Knife (DX+10), and Stealth (DX+10). For 276-288 CP (depending on the TL), you have a great candidate for a stealth killer for a horror game without any cinematic, exotic, or supernatural abilities. They are capable of running at stealth with an effective skill of 19 and can attack their enemies throats with DWA (Knife) at an effective skill of 16. With each successful attack, they will do an average of 16 damage to the throat, meaning that they will deal major wounds. A very scary threat despite having a stat line.
OK, you've created the guy from the Klingon proverb 'Four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man.'
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Old 12-07-2019, 11:42 PM   #52
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Default Re: Best Fictional Settings for GURPS Horror [Horror]

Technically, yes, but I think quality matters more than quantity for most horror games. Having the characters turn away from a NPC for a moment and, when they turn back, discovering him holding his throat to staunch the blood, and there is no one in sight that could have done it, that becomes horror. Having them suffer the same fate becomes terror.
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Old 12-08-2019, 08:16 AM   #53
Kromm
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Default Re: Best Fictional Settings for GURPS Horror [Horror]

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Stop including those people in your games.
Please bear in mind that my personal situation is a little unusual: I am known to be the employee of a games publisher and the developer of a product line, and I sometimes speak in that capacity at local conventions. I've had friends bring in people I don't know because they want to play GURPS (or other games) with me, and I've sometimes said "yes" because I have to consider how gracious I look. It's marketing, at least a little bit.

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If those are the only gamers in town... maybe understand that larger cities have a vastly easier time solving this dilemma.
I'm not sure about that. I came from a city of 300,000-400,000 people and now live in a city of 3-4 million people. The former would justifiably rate as small; the latter would not. My experience is that irrespective of city size, cities tend to breed a certain "culture of gaming." Yes, of course there are variations within an area as large as a city, and those variations are more pronounced in bigger cities, but statistically you're usually going to end up gaming with the "typical gamers" the area produces.

In my city (Montréal), that culture tends to be defined by what games have been written in or translated to French, which is the dominant language. It would be unwise to assume that people here are familiar with every English-language-only development in U.S. and U.K. game design, or routinely go to big English-language games shows like GenCon and Origins. There are certainly people who are and do, but they're a minority.

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But then you and I come at roleplaying from different directions. You enjoy what I call "method roleplaying". You like to feel what the character feels, think what they think, speak as they would.

Inversely I act. :P
This is why I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the rest. Above I was mostly discussing gaming as a GM. But as a player, I don't have to accommodate the majority view of a bunch of players, so I can play as I like . . . and yes, I vastly prefer to "become the character," complete with always speaking in the first person, at times using a special voice.

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And this is where your "Death of the Author" falls flat. The Storyteller system (at least the first couple of editions, I've been out of the loop for a decade), were very much about emotions, feelings, etc. They may not have always been run that way, the system could easily lend itself 'super-heroic monsters' rp, the setting was not designed with that intent.
You're making my point. :) You're absolutely correct about the intent of the design, of the author. But "They may not have always been run that way, the system could easily lend itself to 'super-heroic monsters'" seems to be what actually happens . . . whence my assertions about the art having a life beyond its creator.

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I agree though, if you want a multi-year sprawling, meandering 'horror' game, you are likely to end up running some flavor of MH or Action.
Again, we can only relate our experiences, but that has been mine. There are so few soi-disant "horror gamers" around that when they finally find a group, they seem to go off and run a campaign forever . . . I know of a gang of Vampire players still running their First Edition game with the same vampires as in 1991. Last I heard, the PCs ran the U.S.A., or maybe the world – I try not to sound too interested.
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Old 12-08-2019, 08:58 AM   #54
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Default Re: Best Fictional Settings for GURPS Horror [Horror]

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Again, we can only relate our experiences, but that has been mine. There are so few soi-disant "horror gamers" around that when they finally find a group, they seem to go off and run a campaign forever . . . I know of a gang of Vampire players still running their First Edition game with the same vampires as in 1991. Last I heard, the PCs ran the U.S.A., or maybe the world – I try not to sound too interested.
That makes sense: It always seemed to me like a lot of the various World of Darkness games, and maybe Storyteller in general, were designed specifically for short campaigns, at most, because of how fast advancement happens if the Storyteller isn't fudging that (Mage not so much, or maybe that was just the way we played).
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Old 12-08-2019, 09:13 AM   #55
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Default Re: Best Fictional Settings for GURPS Horror [Horror]

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That makes sense: It always seemed to me like a lot of the various World of Darkness games, and maybe Storyteller in general, were designed specifically for short campaigns, at most, because of how fast advancement happens if the Storyteller isn't fudging that (Mage not so much, or maybe that was just the way we played).
It's a bit of "preparing to fight the last war." A fair number of games designed during eras when "campaign" is practically a synonym for "adventure" or at most "adventure arc" are released during eras when "campaign" is more a synonym for "the same thing we've done every Saturday for years: spend all day in our made-up world." And vice versa. Storyteller was an early '90s system influenced by late '80s gaming, when gamers were living in the reaction to late '70s and early '80s gaming where RPGs went on and on and on until people had 49th-level characters.

All IMO, YMMV, etc. Perhaps things weren't like that all over.
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Old 12-08-2019, 07:39 PM   #56
evileeyore
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Default Re: Best Fictional Settings for GURPS Horror [Horror]

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You're making my point. :)
Actually I was contesting your opposing complaint/request... that it doesn't matter how a system is designed if it isn't played that way it can't be considered for that purpose (Death of the Author) and then stating that a system needs to be designed to support a specified purpose (Authorial Intent).

My actual point is that a system designs doesn't' really matter, rather what the Player's want (and that the GM is willing to cater to) matters more. Frex you can run/play horror using D&D if the group wants to.
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Old 12-08-2019, 07:59 PM   #57
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Default Re: Best Fictional Settings for GURPS Horror [Horror]

You know just because you have confident and capable protagonists doesn't mean that you can't get a little creepy. I was just reading volume 2 of the Durara Light Novel series, and while the protagonists are an unkillable Dullahan and an unstoppable superhero and they're both functionally immune to the insane erotomaniac mass mind which spreads itself by slashing people to infect them...it's still kind of disturbing
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Old 12-08-2019, 09:12 PM   #58
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Default Re: Best Fictional Settings for GURPS Horror [Horror]

Another interesting setting for a horror game is The Others by Anne Bishop. You have anthropophage shapeshifting monsters eating humans alive without fear of retaliation because they (and their even more inhuman elemental allies) control all of the resources and are willing to commit genocide if groups of humans misbehave. Individually, humans obey their rules or else they get eaten alive, though they might end up getting eaten alive anyway if they sleep with the anthropophage (or if the anthropophage is just feeling angry, hungry, bored, etc.).
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