Missed Settings

somasatori

Actually, everyone in Small Town knowing about the supernatural enough that the Masq/Veil/whatever is lax, but also somehow forced to not tell outsiders about it… feels like it has legs? Now you can idly chat in the bar about your werewolf’s cool kill and maybe get looks because murder/death is gross, more so than because it’s a horror from beyond reality.

But it’s also not giving ‘reality, but secret monsters’, because the monsters aren’t really secret.

This definitely would be fun, though to some extent it steps away from canon in oWoD games – I would say specifically, since CofD/nWoD often feels a little looser with the various Masqs with the exception of certain groups that have a personal stake in upholding the Masquerade or Veil or whatever like the Guardians of the Veil.

But yeah, I think this would be interesting! Fictionally/genre-wise it would probably feel like True Blood or Twilight, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just a thing.

Ominous

This may have already been brought up, but I’m too lazy to scroll up and see.

A setting in the X-Files, Delta Green, SCP, Control, Triangle Agency, etc. vein. You could even include World of Darkness stuff, but the setting would mostly from the viewpoints of a government agency of “Hunters” and the occasional Mage, Vampire, Werewolf, whatever that decided to work with the agency. The server is mostly PVE as PCs work together on missions they take, but the server could also can go the Paranoia TTRPG route by having some NPCs and PCs belong to secret societies, have ulterior motives, be given contrary secret missions from the Directorate, etc. to keep people a little uneasy and wary. Operations could be investigations into weird shit, neutralization of weird shit (more tactics and combat oriented), covert ops (cause weird shit to happen so we get a funding increase), etc.

bear_necessities

@Ominous I tooled around with a Delta Green concept MUSH for precisely half a minute, mostly couldn’t figure out a centralized location where everyone would interact with one another since (I think) the whole idea is that you have a Normal Life until you are called in to Do Stuff and then you go back to your Normal Life? And I didn’t want to run a town mush.

somasatori

@bear_necessities said in Missed Settings:

@Ominous I tooled around with a Delta Green concept MUSH for precisely half a minute, mostly couldn’t figure out a centralized location where everyone would interact with one another since (I think) the whole idea is that you have a Normal Life until you are called in to Do Stuff and then you go back to your Normal Life? And I didn’t want to run a town mush.

Take the guiding principles behind a West Marches game for this: make the standard town area be your home base where people get refueled and are generally safe. The plots and scenes run by GMs/Keepers/player-STs-if-you-allow-PrPs are where the danger comes in. All of the in-town stuff is handled by players and any player ST reps you have, the only staff involvement in plot stuff happens when you assemble investigatory teams to search out the Mythos lore. You wouldn’t be running a town MUSH, the players would just be doing their social RP and whatnot while you occasionally (weekly or semi-weekly basis) come in to run mythos stories.

bear_necessities

@somasatori sounds like a lot of work

somasatori

@bear_necessities Well, true. What was that old fairly toxic staff motto? It’s not work if you enjoy it?

You could also offload a lot of the ST duties to players and have them run PrPs, which would probably suffice, especially if you don’t have a particular grand narrative you want them to follow.

MisterBoring

What about turning the West Marches into a game somewhat inspired by The Last Ship? The main section of the grid is a large naval vessel with plenty of room for people to spread out and do their social RP, but the plot bits come when the ship moors somewhere, and the grid extends to include a chunk of land, or another abandoned ship, and the PCs organize to go deal with the ST plots and find resources. If the ship isn’t moored somewhere, the exits are just removed and the players have to stay on the ship.

Pyrephox

@Ominous I would LOVE THAT so much. There was a game that briefly tried something like that set in London, but it never quite launched. But yeah, a society of spooky investigators, whether it was ‘official’ or not, would be great if you can find a way to keep the ‘missions’ coming, knowing that 80ish percent of players will not run anything.

Jennkryst

@MisterBoring said in Missed Settings:

If the ship isn’t moored somewhere, the exits are just removed and the players have to stay on the ship.

This is smol boat/helicopter erasure!

Ominous

@somasatori said in Missed Settings:

@bear_necessities said in Missed Settings:
Take the guiding principles behind a West Marches game for this: make the standard town area be your home base where people get refueled and are generally safe. The plots and scenes run by GMs/Keepers/player-STs-if-you-allow-PrPs are where the danger comes in. All of the in-town stuff is handled by players and any player ST reps you have, the only staff involvement in plot stuff happens when you assemble investigatory teams to search out the Mythos lore. You wouldn’t be running a town MUSH, the players would just be doing their social RP and whatnot while you occasionally (weekly or semi-weekly basis) come in to run mythos stories.

This is what I was going to say. In my vision of the game, the base the agents are stationed at is like Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project, Groom Lake (Area 51), or something. The base is the town and has facsimiles (bars, restaurants, a theater, etc. staffed by soldiers or their family members) and no one leaves except for missions, until they and their family, if any, are “decommissioned”. Mages, vampires, werewolves, etc. can’t be decommissioned; well, they can, but the agency uses the sun, silver bullets, etc. instead, which probably adds to the uneasiness people have around their supernatural allies. Just how allied are they, when there is no opt out option?