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> Horror and SR, Do your players want scary?
2Claws
post Oct 3 2003, 03:36 PM
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Shadowrun has always been very cyberpunk oriented for me and admittedly I was getting a little bit blase with the same mix of street activity and run. That changed, when our GM decided to throw us a curveball, by adding an element we had not considered...horror.

The SR universe is full of things that do very...wrong things. Most aren't fully explained and, in our case, the GM developed some things beyond the books.

I'll give a brief overview of the game, but I'm interested if any of you have had the "SR as horror" experience.

The characters started really young. We weren't street kids, just kids from the bad side of town trying to get through a magnet high school.

We were in Chicago and we knew the GM was going to introduce the bugs, what shocked us, was how he did it. He changed the name of the UB and made it very very personal, with the new church-like organization (with lots of rich, influential backers, but no central personality) recruiting directly from the student body and wierding us out when they returned to the campus to recruit more.

During this time, the characters became mixed up with a local criminal element and recieved the requsite PC kick 'splode training. During this time as low level knee breakers we started running into low-level bug manifestations.

The experience stretched out over 4 years of game time. Our friends turned to cult zombies and we kept running accros "nests" of astral maggots that seemed to consume what ever went through them. The PC shaman was attacked by a mantis spirit during a hit on a mage providing protection for a rival group. We thought it was just another form of spirit because we weren't clued in. Add "goblins" (think really ugly disease and possession resistant dwarves) confusing the issue publicly by giving out Chic Tract like literature on the coming of the bugs and then bombing the religous organization and we had a major atmosphere of paranoia.

The adventure culminated in an Aliens-like invasion where lots of people died, the PC's ran like hell and Chicago was nuked (not just down town). But, of course, we learned that bugs had moved elsewhere, so we set out to hunt them down and spread the word...the US Govt was keeping a lid on the situation. The only thing the outside world knew was that Chicago was quarantiend(sp) because of an infestation by a "spirit disease" and then something went very wrong, very fast. ALL Matrix connections were severed and and the bomb was called a terrorist attack. The government is still trying to round up survivors and is funding shadow ops to find us.

And the game continues.
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DV8
post Oct 3 2003, 03:48 PM
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That sounds pretty good, and not at all outside of the realm of manapunk in which Shadowrun resides. Shadowrun is a pretty ideal game for horror and suspence if you choose to handle magic in a mystical and creepy way, instead of just another calculated tool with which the runners can blast their enemies to snot.

There's this one Tim Bradstreet picture - and I honest to god don't know which sourcebook or supplement it is that it's in; 10 points to the one to tell me - where you see an alley in which this regular but tough as nails looking middle-aged guy is squatting down on the floor, and is drawing a summoning circle with white paint and a simple paint brush. No comic book thrills or over the top IE style magic, but simple, down to earth mystical and faintly disconcerting.

And it's the last bit,...if you can get that last bit of disconcertion into your game, then it's wide open and ready to be turned into a high suspence horror game.

Kuddos for making it work, 2Claws. :)
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Siege
post Oct 3 2003, 03:50 PM
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I remember seeing it in the first SR main book.

-Siege
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Velocity
post Oct 3 2003, 03:50 PM
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QUOTE
2claws wrote:
I'll give a brief overview of the game

Wow, that sounds absolutely brilliant... what a great campaign setting! How long did it take to play through those four years?
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Siege
post Oct 3 2003, 03:53 PM
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I think this was the artwork in question DV8 --

http://www.volny.cz/shadowrun/files/bradstreet_25.jpg

-Siege
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DV8
post Oct 3 2003, 04:02 PM
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QUOTE (Siege)
I think this was the artwork in question DV8 --

http://www.volny.cz/shadowrun/files/bradstreet_25.jpg

-Siege

Damn, dude. I was just about to post that link. You beat me to it. :)
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krishcane
post Oct 3 2003, 04:52 PM
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I ran a fun, brief horror-based run using the Rockworms from Critters -- you know, those rock-eating tunnelers. A building collapses on a private corp facility, to reveal a massive underground network of tunnels that the worms have designed. Normally stupid, the Rockworm infestation seems to have been designed intelligently this time. Worse than that, some of the tunnels are big enough to drive a truck down, along with all the normal half-meter-diameter ones.

This turned into a creepy roam-the-maze underground setting for the PCs, where rockworms could break out of the walls at any moment. As they tracked the infestation to it's source, they discover that the worms get bigger and bigger until they meet the Queen -- an intelligent super-sized rockworm that isn't too mobile but uses telepathic control over her underlings to drive their tunneling and expansion.

Pretty standard setup -- the horror aspect is in the scene setting and descriptions. But what I found fun was that the things aren't anything soul-sucking or any kind of spirit -- they're "just rockworms". But in the dark, all around you, hundreds of them.... it did the job. It doesn't hurt that one of their powers is Regenerate. If you re-interpret that power to mean "it survives as two smaller rockworms" instead of "it heals its wounds instantly", it can get very creepy very quickly.

--K
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2Claws
post Oct 3 2003, 05:33 PM
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QUOTE (Velocity @ Oct 3 2003, 03:50 PM)
Wow, that sounds absolutely brilliant... what a great campaign setting!  How long did it take to play through those four years?

I think about three months. If the GM was pushing the payoff, it probably could have happened faster. However the players wanted to get in the experience of going to high school in the 2050's. I mean, we actually roleplayed football games and the resulting rivalries (the resident physad was a running back) and there were little conflicts between us and our parents and the "kindly old lady" up the block who got us into petty crime.

I was really cool playing through how the characters developed. It was also frightening seeing NPC with whom you've interacted for months, dissapear and change and come back saying "join us." Since we weren't shadowrunners we didn't think "Oh! They must be possessed! Or, let's bust in and get our friends!" We told the NPC"s "dude! That's so lame!" and promptly turned our backs because they were trying to get us to go to the same church that robbed them of their personalities.

The high school experience, instilled an emotional investment in the people of our neighboor hood and school mates. It also alerted us to the Church but subtlely turned us off too. When the bugs struck, the GM merciless pulled on all of those strings. It didn't matter that we had guns or magic, it became a matter of hoping that we can get everyone out, because we knew (thanks to a PC with a cobbled together uplink) that a bomber was coming.

It was harrowing, especially since it happened three months after graduation when we were about to head for University.
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seasong
post Oct 3 2003, 06:25 PM
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(Hi! I'm 2Claws' GM)

We started in June, and the horror payoff happened a few session ago, so 3 months sounds about right.

The goal, believe it or not, wasn't actually horror (although there were certainly horror elements), but character background. In Shadowrun, a PC may write a short summary, like:

"Grew up on the streets of Chicago, learned hard and fast about government corruption when the bugs came, and got out by the skin of his teeth. Now he tries to stay out of the government's way and safely zeroed, and does the only kinds of jobs left to the zeroed - the grey kind."

That summary represents a big package of neuroses, fears, sentiments, and motivations, but in game, it can sometimes feel a bit shallow. The players lived their brief bios, and that helps lend it more depth - 2Claws doesn't really have to think about whether or not he'll react badly to pudgy Cubans in game, because the bad associations they hold for him happened in game. And the hatred the characters have for bug spirits isn't just an excuse for a firefight :).

I love that kind of depth of characterization, and experiential prequels are a great way to achieve them.

The horror just kind of happened ;).

-seasong
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2Claws
post Oct 3 2003, 06:47 PM
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pudgy cubans
*Hiss*

I think that really sets this apart from other supernatural games I've played in. The sense of loss and of losing is palpable.

And, although seasong may disagree, it isn't over yet. We have scarred characters, most with severe abandonment issues, in a world that hasn't stopped changing. We're still early on the timeline and Seasong's interpretations really only seem to be beginning.

Things I'm looking forward to as a player, but not as a character: Vampires (SR vampires scare me. They aren't pretty things, they eat your essence and you rise later...although whether or not it's "you" is up for debate; more bugs, Dunkelzahn, Old Secret Things That Should be Under the Rug, and Shedim. (Seasong, if you don't know about Shedim, remind me to let you get the book from me.)


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seasong
post Oct 3 2003, 07:05 PM
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I've already flirted with vampires, although it wasn't a real one ;). The real ones hide better...

As for the Shedim, are they based on the Hebrew disembodied spirits and possessors, or the older demi-gods of the Assyrians? It might be interesting to include something like that.

-seasong
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2Claws
post Oct 3 2003, 07:35 PM
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Y'know Seasong, you hit the nail right on the head. That's just kinda scary.
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Velocity
post Oct 3 2003, 07:40 PM
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QUOTE
seasong wrote:
As for the Shedim, are they based on the Hebrew disembodied spirits and possessors, or the older demi-gods of the Assyrians?

The former. They're essentially incorporeal entities from beyond the pale capable of possessing "soul-less" (or, if you prefer, self-less) bodies. Corpses and astrally projecting mages are fair game for these abhorrent things.

That's right, your mage can go on a quick astral jaunt and return to find her body gone, hijacked by an unthinkingly malevolent spirit. Erk.
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seasong
post Oct 3 2003, 08:29 PM
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QUOTE
Velocity wrote
The former.  They're essentially incorporeal entities from beyond the pale capable of possessing "soul-less" (or, if you prefer, self-less) bodies.  Corpses and astrally projecting mages are fair game for these abhorrent things.
Heh.

Okay, that is a bit weird - the last session we played, I was tying in a relative of the demon ALJFL (Alehjafal transliterated, called Legion in the English New Testament), who is a prime example of the Hebrew meaning of the word Sedu/Shedim. I think this will work out juuuuust fine :lick:

-seasong
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2Claws
post Oct 3 2003, 08:34 PM
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o.O!!!!
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Drain Brain
post Oct 3 2003, 10:03 PM
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:please: I want to play with YOU guys!

I can emigrate! Honest!!!!!
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mehrkat
post Oct 6 2003, 05:23 PM
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:spin: Sorry couldn't resist that smiley.

I'm one of 2claws fellow players.

The games typically go about a year because it takes almost 1/2 of it for the character to grow up enough but it can be a lot of fun to play.

I spent a lot of time playing football practice and my character's quiet refusal to cheat on homework while in high school despite all the people who encouraged her to do so. Not to mention roleplaying her rivalry with the guy that was just a little better at everything than she was.

As to the horror elements. I think horror is defined by helplessness in the end. There were horrific aspects to what was occurring but the total inability to act and protect themselves wasn't present so I never really felt like it was a horror game.

My Thoughts
Mehrkat
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2Claws
post Oct 6 2003, 05:42 PM
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That's because you have too many heroic instincts Mehrkitty. The rest of us were craven preservationists. It was you who lost a hand to the bullet-time fleshforms.
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Omer Joel
post Oct 6 2003, 07:57 PM
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QUOTE (seasong)
I've already flirted with vampires, although it wasn't a real one ;). The real ones hide better...

As for the Shedim, are they based on the Hebrew disembodied spirits and possessors, or the older demi-gods of the Assyrians? It might be interesting to include something like that.

-seasong

Hebrew origion, definitely; "Shed" is a demon in Hebrew, "Shedim" is the plural form (and it was kind wierd to see it used as single). And the belief in similar beings was commonplace during biblical times.

Deuteronomy 21:22-23
"If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day, for he who is hanged is accursed of God, so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance."

An interpetetaion for this which I've read somewhere speaks about burrying the dead before nightfall so that "evil spirits" won't posses him. Makes you go "Hmm"...
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