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Ryusukanku
post May 12 2012, 05:57 AM
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I would like to suggest for the Hackers and Technomancers not to take all their links away from them. Just limit them.

Maybe the area they're in while being far removed from, or insulated against outside links, possesses it's own interior matrix.

Maybe it's spotty and glitchy as heck from some kind of damage but still workable for things like "I've managed to find some video logs. I've cleaned them up as much as I can but..." or "Gimmie ten more seconds, I almost got this bloody door shut!"

Personally I find it suspenseful when in horror movies the tech guys manage to get snippets of useful information or struggle to do what under normal circumstances would be an easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy act.

Event Horizon and Virus are good examples of such techno-wizardry becomeing a struggle but not impossible.

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Angelone
post May 12 2012, 03:25 PM
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QUOTE
I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.


QUOTE
I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving.


QUOTE
I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine.
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Vegetaman
post May 12 2012, 04:58 PM
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I love a good horror game... I always used to do one for my guys that was set in an old paranormally active castle in Germany. There were many entrances, many exits, and all sorts of horrible things inside -- as well as some puzzles they had to solve as they worked their way through the building. The makeshift morgue with the wall of slabs for bodies on it was a nice touch, I was told later, as was the mass of body parts from previous shadowruns to this location (step 1 was to find some artifact; step 2 was to figure what happened to the last guys... which turned out to be several sets of "last guys"), and torn off doors, collapsing floors, hell hounds [yes, I finally found a use for them]... It was like a horror nightmare. Though I have to admit, a Hellraiser/Nightmare on Elm Street/Halloween/Friday the 13th style monster would be a nice touch in one of these runs (though would have been overkill for that particular mission). I'll have to keep this in the cards for later on. But I always find that H.P. Lovecraft works (such as THE RATS IN THE WALLS) give me plenty of material to work with. And I didn't take anything away from the team, I just told them they had to take a plane so they had to choose their items carefully, so out of a fear of being overburdened or losing their gear -- they left most of the "good stuff" at home. Worked out great for me when some of them only brought pistols and SMGs and left the heavy rifles and shotguns behind.
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Sir_Psycho
post May 12 2012, 05:37 PM
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Has anyone considered a self-replicating nanite swarm for a horror game? Add a deus-like AI at the helm of the swarm and they can do anything you like sans magic. A swarm of nanites that can change could replicate almost anything, the effects of bioware, cyber, genetech, building strengthened keratin structures for armour (or bonding clothing to the skin), manipulating the nervous system like a move-by-wire system, allowing control of puppet zombie hordes with enhancements and cooperative abilities runners can only dream of. Depending on the intelligence governing the swarm, they could even infect a metahuman brain without him realising, and function as a trode net for ASIST reprogramming.

If you don't like zombies, nanites can infect electronic systems, effectively taking control of drones and vehicles directly. They can build or disassemble the environment, creating shifting mazes, or weakening the floor until it collapses under your weight. Depending how powerful you want them to be, they could add vehicle modifications on the fly, eg. the armoured vehicle that's been suppressing your team runs out of ammo, so it shifts it's form, adding special machinery (gaping maw), and starts cannibalizing nearby vehicles to add more mass and fuel.

To create such a game, you'd need to decide why/how the advanced nanites are in the environment (I'd go with radiation/pollution scrubbers or agricultural builder nanites), why they've turned malevolent (AI puppeteer, self-replication glitch, a genius nutcase with population control fantasies) and what their limitations are. For those limitations I'd suggest jamming disrupting their ability to coordinate as a swarm, so they need to possess hosts with enough integrity and mass to burn to create and power a faraday cage.

Also, consider buying Eclipse Phase. Not only is it geared towards horror scenarios, it has a system for mental stress effects. If you don't want to use a new system, it's good inspiration and a really polished product.

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Glyph
post May 12 2012, 06:18 PM
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I think vivid descriptions, dangerous enemies, and unknown factors can add a nice feeling of horror to a game. But like the game that originally inspired you, it is more of a flavor added to the existing mix, rather than a complete change of genre.

I would avoid too much railroading, especially for a horror game. If the characters don't have their toys, their powers suddenly don't work, and they find themselves facing something that shrugs off their attacks, they won't be scared, they'll be annoyed, and if any of their characters die, they will probably consider it to be because the GM was being a dick.

It's a collaborative game. Even in horror-themed games, the mood only works when everyone is on board with it. Adding horror unilaterally to the game only works if you are adding a bit of horror flavor to the game. Trying to change the whole genre of the game is less likely to work. People will call bullshit when their AP bullets don't harm the creature; someone will break up the tension with a corny joke; people will try clever tactics, then get sullenly apathetic when nothing seems to work.
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Angelone
post May 13 2012, 05:09 AM
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Giant versions of these:

https://www.google.com/search?q=scorpionfly...lient=firefox-a

https://www.google.com/search?q=assassin+sp...lient=firefox-a
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Paul
post May 13 2012, 12:22 PM
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Start them off an a run gone bad. Let them know up front things went south, and they're all wounded. Give everyone a randomly determined amount of damage; and roll from there with whatever crazy ass ideas strike your fancy. From a GM's perspective make use of cover, concealment, and visibility modifiers-but remember its a game and getting the PC's invested in it is the number one challenge. It's all drek if they don't care what happens when the bargherst howls.
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Neraph
post May 15 2012, 01:34 PM
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QUOTE (Angelone @ May 13 2012, 12:09 AM) *

The scorpionfly is more terrifying when you realize that that isn't a stinger - it's the thing's thing.
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Bearclaw
post May 15 2012, 03:31 PM
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About a year ago, I broke out DNA/DOA and ran it straight. Except... the tunnels used to sneak in and out of the facility had some extra, added tunnels and were home to a middle sized Ant spirit colony. So, coming out of the facility wounded and hurrying, they ran straight into a bug spirit recruiting event (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Kinda like Aliens, except for the immunity to normal weapons.
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Wounded Ronin
post May 15 2012, 07:18 PM
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Aliens demonstrated you can have firepower, fun, AND horror.

I fondly remember an SR3 game that demonstrated willie peet versus zombie hoardes.
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Dr.Rockso
post May 15 2012, 07:39 PM
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QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ May 15 2012, 03:18 PM) *
I fondly remember an SR3 game that demonstrated willie peet versus zombie hoardes.

Can't imagine that would be a great idea. They don't feel pain, and are likely to stumble around for a good while lighting everything ELSE on fire.
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Wounded Ronin
post May 16 2012, 07:52 PM
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QUOTE (Dr.Rockso @ May 15 2012, 03:39 PM) *
Can't imagine that would be a great idea. They don't feel pain, and are likely to stumble around for a good while lighting everything ELSE on fire.


That's why it's not a great idea, but an AWESOME idea.
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Dr.Rockso
post May 16 2012, 07:58 PM
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Sure, if you keep em contained. Otherwise....you burn down half of Seattle. Again.
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VykosDarkSoul
post May 18 2012, 04:48 PM
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::tapping foot and stroking goatee::
Now....how do I create Cthulhu .....OOO..and Nyarlathotep.....
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Neko Asakami
post May 18 2012, 11:29 PM
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QUOTE (VykosDarkSoul @ May 18 2012, 09:48 AM) *
::tapping foot and stroking goatee::
Now....how do I create Cthulhu .....OOO..and Nyarlathotep.....



If you have stats for those two, you're doing it wrong...
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Wounded Ronin
post May 19 2012, 12:39 AM
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QUOTE (VykosDarkSoul @ May 18 2012, 12:48 PM) *
::tapping foot and stroking goatee::
Now....how do I create Cthulhu .....OOO..and Nyarlathotep.....


I remember reading a write up of that someone did in the mid nineties. You can probably still google it.
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Whipstitch
post May 19 2012, 05:06 AM
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QUOTE (Glyph @ May 12 2012, 01:18 PM) *
It's a collaborative game. Even in horror-themed games, the mood only works when everyone is on board with it. Adding horror unilaterally to the game only works if you are adding a bit of horror flavor to the game. Trying to change the whole genre of the game is less likely to work. People will call bullshit when their AP bullets don't harm the creature; someone will break up the tension with a corny joke; people will try clever tactics, then get sullenly apathetic when nothing seems to work.


Bit late on commenting on this post, but yeah, the best horror run I've been involved with had us using low build point (and slightly caricatured) PCs that the GM had pre-genned and wrote up as part of a mini-campaign to play in the event that someone couldn't make a session, so we were essentially playing a new and different game in many important respects. Sure, we lost a bit of the apprehension that comes along with potentially having bad things happen to a character we had invested many sessions of play (and karma) into, but the flipside to that is that the potential for failure seemed simultaneously more plausible than ever but also somewhat less threatening in the big scheme of things--the GM could kill anyone in the group without mucking up our "real" campaign and we all knew it.
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Wounded Ronin
post May 19 2012, 01:47 PM
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This film is one of my favorite examples of mixing horror elements with a couple of monk-style action hero characters: http://youtu.be/ZOOhDWSyyos
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VykosDarkSoul
post May 21 2012, 04:11 PM
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QUOTE (Neko Asakami @ May 18 2012, 06:29 PM) *
If you have stats for those two, you're doing it wrong...


::Evil Grin:: Right?
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thorya
post May 21 2012, 06:36 PM
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QUOTE (Neko Asakami @ May 18 2012, 07:29 PM) *
If you have stats for those two, you're doing it wrong...


There are some appropriate stats. i.e. Cthulu consumes 3 runners per combat pass. If there are more than three runners, they may attempt to run.
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VykosDarkSoul
post May 21 2012, 06:43 PM
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QUOTE (thorya @ May 21 2012, 01:36 PM) *
There are some appropriate stats. i.e. Cthulu consumes 3 runners per combat pass. If there are more than three runners, they may attempt to run.



Addendum: If there are more than three runners, those that remain that are still sane, may attempt to run
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