Gorgeous_B Posted September 15, 2009 Report Share Posted September 15, 2009 I have been told that my players want to do WWII, but spin it to where they are not on the front lines per say, but on the front lines of the Hellboyish paranormal activities of the nazi's and axis. I really need some ideas, I had finished up a devastatingly bad finish to a hard campaign with a comparably horrible ending, which I cannot say was my fault directly. I have no knowledge really of the time period and could use some help. None of my players are on the forums and I would very much appreciate it. P.S. I am leaving for the army in the middle of november, we are going to play weekly on wednesdays and the players want a full campaign by then, so I really really would appreciate it. Thankee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Serpent Posted September 15, 2009 Report Share Posted September 15, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Feel free to steal liberally from here: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70210 I would think you could take pretty much any WWII behind-lines film like Where Eagles Dare, etc. and add supernatural elements, or take any supernatural movie and put it into a WWII setting and make it work. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenbriar Posted September 15, 2009 Report Share Posted September 15, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! There were plenty of Golden age stories about keeping the axis from obtaining various mystic artifacts, spear of destiny, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jagged Posted September 15, 2009 Report Share Posted September 15, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Hi, A good place to start is to do a little research on something called the "Ahnenerbe". This was an "Archaelogical" society that you had to join if you were a member of Hitler's SS. I guarantee you that virtually any research you do on these guys will start campaign ideas springing left right and centre. Virtually everything they undertook was utterly mad. But then they were founded by Heinrich Himmler who thought himself to be the reincarnation of the tenth-century Saxon King Heinrich the first! And thats some of the sanest things you will find! The Thule Society ... Tibet ... ancient races ... secret histories ... mysterious expeditions. Its all there and more! You can't fail to read this stuff and come up with a mad conspiracy. Have fun! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csyphrett Posted September 16, 2009 Report Share Posted September 16, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! If this isn't going to be an extended campaign, I agree about using the movies. You can probably research a movie's plot somewhere like IMDB and write a bullet list of what you want to do. I would have a long list in case your players are cunning and devious enough to figure out shortcuts. As an example Escape of New York. 1 heroes are ordered/asked/lured into breaking into a prison on an island in the Pacific. Their goal is to find Dr. Pleasance and the material he was carrying. 2 Once there, they have to look around. Several people point them in the Direction of Hayes, a bad guy running most of the island in collaboration with the Axis. 3 The heroes have to get in Hayes's HQ. 4 They have to find the good doctor and get out 5 Car Chase 6 The heroes escape over/under/through the prison wall to a waiting ship ready to pick them up If the heroes get through that in the first session, take a break and write up another movie like Escape from LA, or Big Trouble in Little China to get through the night. CES Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csyphrett Posted September 16, 2009 Report Share Posted September 16, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! You could probably do all of the Pre Daniel Craig Bond Movies like this in one really long list and then have the satellite that shoots stuff from orbit be the same satellite under different management. CES Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted September 16, 2009 Report Share Posted September 16, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Hmm... sounds like you could use substantial work on a campaign done for you in a hurry. If that's the case, and if you're planning to use 5E HERO for your game, I suggest a couple of source books which could give you a lot of the necessary material (depending on what you'd like to run), and can be ordered directly from this website in hardcopy or PDF via the links below. The Fires of War is a huge collection of diverse characters for a WW II-based supers game, including many mystical and "weird science" villains: German, Japanese, and independent. The book doesn't spell out a specific campaign setting as such, although a common framework is strongly implied in the backgrounds of characters and organizations. You can read a detailed review of TFOW here. For a more supernatural horror-related campaign, there's Adventures Into Darkness, which blends the conventions of Golden Age (late 1930s/ WW II) comics with the style of famed horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. This book provides far fewer example characters than TFOW, but goes into considerable detail on how to combine supers and Lovecraftian horror in a game, which may be useful to you. And here is a review of AID. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Serpent Posted September 16, 2009 Report Share Posted September 16, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! As an example Escape of New York. That could be fun. But why not go ahead and use the President? FDR took some overseas flights for conferences during the war, maybe he crashes on some scary island along the way, with Dr. Moreau, a secret Axis sub base, King Kong, or even all three. Not wanting it to leak out they don't send the regular Navy in, instead sending the PCs. (example trip) http://www.historynet.com/president-franklin-d-roosevelt-flew-to-meet-british-prime-minister-winston-churchill-for-a-summit-in-casablanca.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Mackinder Posted September 16, 2009 Report Share Posted September 16, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Doesn't even have to be the President. For example, anybody with in-depth knowledge of Ultra ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra ) would serve extremely well as someone you would NOT want to fall into enemy hands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimble Posted September 16, 2009 Report Share Posted September 16, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Here are a few suggestions... Your PCs have to stop a group fo SS sorcerers from opening a gate to Hell...maybe in Allied territory. Or the ritual could summon a powerful demon lord and bind him to Hitler...or another Nazi who actually whats to take control of Germany and the World... I've always loved the Scavenger Hunt campaign. This is one I've used several times. Taken from and modified from Cthulhu Classics. Just take the Silver Twighlight cult and substitute a group of Nazi cultists...The gist of it is, the PCs have to stop the cultists from gaining the R'ley Discs (as many or as few as you like, but I usually go with 5 discs). After they have all of the discs, they must take them to a specific place in the South Pacific and perform a ritual. The ritual...if performed properly, will raise the island of R'ley...and awaken some nasty alien horrors that have been in a death/sleep for untold eons. The Nazis presumably believe they will find alien tech and allies on the not-so-mythical island...Unfortunately, if R'ley actually gets raised it's bad news for both the Allies and the Axis...and the few people not involved in the war. This is a globetrotting scavenger hunt. At each location, not only do your PCs want to be the first ones there, but there will be some supernatural treat there, as well. Serpentmen protecting the disc in Egypt...one of the discs is the center of the Cairn of a pack of werewolves...Have to compete a dreamquest to discover the disc at Ayers Rock...yetis or Tcho-Tcho people in between the PCs and the disc in Tibet Well there you go. I hope you can use somthing here. Good luck with the campaign! Grimble Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prometheus Posted September 16, 2009 Report Share Posted September 16, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Simple genre pieces revolving around items "too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands" might be the way to go, at least initially. If you keep the set dressing different each time, the players may not catch on to the recurring plot. A globetrotting chase to keep the Ark of the Covenant out of Nazi hands one week could be followed by a burglary investigation involving odd art objects- a "pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings", perhaps? Or how about a locked room mystery in a (reportedly) haunted mansion? "Weird Science" was previously mentioned and I have to emphasize what a plot goldmine that is. Guys like Baron Zemo were running around with death rays, disintegrator pistols, and even androids! With the state department and armed forces busy elsewhere, an enterprising mad (or weird) scientist might make his move at carving out a piece of the homefront for himself. The All-Star Squadron regularly fought mobsters and fifth columnists back home after all, you can just take it a step further. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimble Posted September 17, 2009 Report Share Posted September 17, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Oooo. Here's a good one that just hit me. Take Frankenstein and convert it into a WWII campaign. At the opening, a strange piecemeal creature comes to the group (or their government handlers), and tells them of experiments conducted by Nazi scientists of which, he is the first success. Turns out breeding a Master Race takes a while, so the Nazis are trying to build them using fallen soldiers and some very hinky science. The Creature will agree to lead the PCs to the labs in which the reanimated soldiers are being devoloped and built. Let them take out the facility...it's too late, anyway. The project has moved on to the next stage. They can gain clues leading them to 2 (or however many you want) "bio-factories" gearing up to mass-produce the Uber-Soldiers. Maybe let the PCs take them out, or let them take out a few, but there were biofacs that they didn't know about. Now they must try to stem the tide of super strong, undead Nazi grunts! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimble Posted September 17, 2009 Report Share Posted September 17, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Any of this working for you, G B? Has the campaign started? Tune us in, please. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimble Posted September 17, 2009 Report Share Posted September 17, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Here's another Idea that's perfect for a WWII game. Gremlins! Have the little tech disrupting menaces are plaguing an allied factory...the PCs are sent in to take care of the problem. A really scary task for any gadgeteers or powersuits in the group. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgeous_B Posted September 18, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 18, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Sorry about the non-response. I am planning the scavenger hunt campaign out with a little bit of lovecraftian adventure. So far we have three of the four player's characters ready. We have a defector SS agent linguist-telepath, a crazy scientist gadgeteer with a robot sidekick, a super-electric irish woman and the fourth character should be made in the next couple of days. I am developing a list of items that are going to power a golem that is deep inside the earth directly under the highest mountain in the tibet mountain range, just need some suggestions toward what parts/tibits they could be hunting for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prometheus Posted September 18, 2009 Report Share Posted September 18, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! DC comics had a trio of demons- Abnegazar, Rhast and Ghast- each of who were linked to a talisman that allowed them to manifest on Earth: a silver wheel, a green bell, and a red jar. That always appealed to me, granting an arcane significance to three otherwise mundane sounding items. They don't all have to be taken literally either; the "wheel" might be a small gear, the "bell" a gong or cymbal, and the "jar" might actually be any container. Adapting those to fit your golem storyline (and I’m assuming this is ancient, lemurian, mechanical golem) you might have something like this: The Silver Wheel - A precisely crafted gear and component of the golem. The Wheel has passed through the hands of Vitruvius and Leonardo da Vinci, influencing their work on proportions and forms. The Wheel is in France, where Leonardo lived out the last years of his life. If the heroes manage to find it the villains might still get away with the artist’s diagrams and construct a version of their own. The Green Bell - Once in the possession of an ancient Chinese wizard, the ages have covered this small copper gong in a green patina. The Bell grants its user control over the golem, or any properly prepared inanimate object. The wizard’s stronghold (and final resting place) on the Nepalese border is guarded by a small army of terracotta soldiers. An enterprising villain could use The Bell to set the soldiers on the heroes while they make their escape. The Red Jar - In actuality a lemurian reactor, The Jar glows red hot with strange radioactivity. Plugged into the golem, its weird energies give the construct life. It’s unearthed at the ancient lemurian colony in Madagascar, but after watching a few of the villains’ unprotected henchmen get melted by The Jar, the heroes may concede this one to the evildoers, instead following them to the final confrontation in the Himalayas! I don’t know that you would want to take those as they are (or at all), but hopefully they illustrate how you might work an item into something a little more interesting, and adapt it into your story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgeous_B Posted September 19, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 19, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Wow!! I'm going to use all of those if that is ok I was hoping to have maybe 2 or 3 more items if you can think of anything Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prometheus Posted September 24, 2009 Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Glad they could be useful. Those were honestly of the top of my head, but if I come up with anything else I'll pass it along. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgeous_B Posted September 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! So I have made the overall theme of my villain. Yes, just one, but he has a squad with him. His name is Colonel Wolfgang Konig, modeled after Heer Konig from Enemy at the Gates, great movie by the way, he will be an excellent sniper, with a squad of troopers that compliment his superhuman amount of skills, Colonel Konig being roughly 400 points and his troopers roughly 150-200 each. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Mackinder Posted September 25, 2009 Report Share Posted September 25, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! So I have made the overall theme of my villain. Yes' date=' just one, but he has a squad with him. His name is Colonel Wolfgang Konig, modeled after Heer Konig from Enemy at the Gates, great movie by the way, he will be an excellent sniper, with a squad of troopers that compliment his superhuman amount of skills, Colonel Konig being roughly 400 points and his troopers roughly 150-200 each.[/quote'] Not "Von" Konig? Seems like most high-ranking Germans in ww2 fiction went in for having a "von" in their name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgeous_B Posted September 26, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Not a bad idea, might have to use it... Wolfgang VonKonig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoreBrute Posted September 27, 2009 Report Share Posted September 27, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! If you want an interesting turn of events, let them use Metagaming knowledge for a session. See example: A new elected circuit judge has been kidnapped by Nazis/Mad Scientist's robots/Chtullu and so the heroes have been told to rescue him. But when they find the politician they are shocked when they learn his name. Joseph McCarty. Still a very young man in 1940s, he hasn't even thought of his trials. If he 'died' accidentally there would be no McCarthy trials and while it would be a tragedy he wouldn't be powerful enough or famous enough to become a martyr. If the characters don't want to use metagaming for their advantage (strange players indeed) Bring in a prophetic detective etc. Use people like this that they know will influence major events later on (The head researcher of the Manhattan project etc) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted September 28, 2009 Report Share Posted September 28, 2009 Re: WWII Spinoff Sort-of. Need help! Stuff you might find useful: Superpowered Nazi: http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationsanime/striker/strikerbo.html Sun Koh, the Nazi Doc Savage: http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationsbook/sunkoh.html Hellboy for Hero (incomplete): http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationscomic/comicchar.html#hell Call of Cthulhu creatures for HERO: http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationscreatures/creatures.html#RPG'>http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationscreatures/creatures.html#RPG Weird Creatures in General: http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationscreatures/creatures.html SS Oberfuhrer Reinhard Galt: http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationsrpg/coc/COCgalt.html Plenty of WWII vehicles (sea, land, air): http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationsvehicles/vehicle.html Two weird science fighting machines: http://surbrook.devermore.net/original/vehicles/runner.html http://surbrook.devermore.net/original/vehicles/mobilefortress.html And you gotta use the second one 'cause this is what it looks like: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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