Behind the Senes: Deathpact - Horror RPG Proposal
Added 2015-04-24 05:30:20 +0000 UTCYears ago, I had an idea for a different kind of horror RPG. Deathpact was meant to solve 2 common problems in horror games: death of PCs as a failure mode and the monster mash. In other words, throwing lots of monsters in a game just because you can.In Deathpact, the players are immortal but cursed humans fated to slay a single unique monster. They cannot escape or find peace until it is dead. The monster is a singularly powerful being. If a PC dies, they lose memories and other parts of themselves, becoming more like the monster they hunt. Plus, the monster can kill anyone they love and care about. I pitched the game to a few publishers, but no one bit. This was before Kickstarter was as popular as it is now and before GUMSHOE was OGL, so I might revive it at some point. Questions and comments are appreciated!
Comments
The idea reminds me a bit of the movie (and book) The Keep. Really brief synopsis (SPOILERS, though from a film from 1983): in "Ages Past"(tm) the forces of Order created a champion to defeat the champion of Chaos. The champion of Order triumphs but realizes if he kills his foe, the forces of Order will take his powers away, including immortality. Not wanting to die he imprisons his foe so he can live forever. Flash forward to the 1940's, add Nazi's and, well, you can watch the movie (or probably just guess) for the rest. Jürgen Prochnow is in it, if that helps. Anyway I could see a story of a Deathpact who actually like their powers they've gotten and instead of ending the monster, lock it away or even let it out occasionally for exercise, putting the people in the area at risk. Perhaps they even think keep their powers is even for the greater good. And now the above idea is going into my next Base Raider session.
Ben Meiklejohn
2015-05-06 05:23:52 +0000 UTCThanks for the comments. I'll probably revive the idea at some point, especially now that GUMSHOE is OGL. I might even merge it with Ruin.
Ross Payton
2015-04-28 05:44:18 +0000 UTCMechanically speaking, If you were using a Gumshoe variant, you could have the players lose their original sources of stability/sanity and have them replaced with something connected to the Monster. Something similar would probably work with aspects in a FATE adaptation - players lose an aspect at random and it is replaced with a copy of one of the Monster's aspects.
Richard C Beaulieu
2015-04-25 17:26:04 +0000 UTCThis is a really neat idea and it that hits on one of my favorite mechanical/storytelling ideas. What are the costs for a character when death is not the end? Eclipse Phase, WoD Immortals, DtF, Kult, and several other games use this to varying degrees of success and I just absolutely love it. I'm prepping a fantasy/horror game right now that deals with the theme, though not quite as heavily on the "Those who hunt monsters" angle. PCs who die simply see their misdeeds and failures manifest in increasingly horrific ways until they are well and truly damned. I'd love to see it at least proof of concept tested, doubly so if it is one of the Patreon games!
Gary R
2015-04-25 05:51:02 +0000 UTCVery interesting. For the memory loss thing, you could represent it mechanically using something like FATE aspects: you have bonuses that you can gain by drawing on your memories and experiences, which you lose access to when you suffer memory loss. So for example, you might have "Grandpa's hunting advice" giving you a bonus on tracking the monster, which you lose along with all of your memories of grandpa. I notice how you've been working with the idea of in-game character creation in Ruin, that you mention here. I really like this idea.
Ethan Cordray
2015-04-24 14:25:13 +0000 UTCyou could have normal skills (eg. shoot/stab/forge) and monstrous skills (eg. claw slash, see through walls, basically demonic supper powers). The more monstrous you become, the more monster skills you get, but using those power depletes your humanity/sanity/stability.
Will
2015-04-24 06:12:43 +0000 UTCNot sure how you'd do the losing memories thing as that's more reliant on the players not meta-gaming (maybe losing memories of loved ones or happy placers), but loved ones or skills/levels would work well. Just becoming more monstrous could lead to a rick of losing loved ones.
Will
2015-04-24 05:58:06 +0000 UTCGood idea, it sounds inventive and I would love to see it in some form.
Will
2015-04-24 05:48:32 +0000 UTC
