Killer Shrike Posted March 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters The write ups for the vampires are very different from the package deal which I whipped up a while back. Yours is much more dead than mine. ;-) But yours works works very simply and elegantly. I would like a text explanation of what the vampire bite powers are meant to simulate. Makes crunching the power dynamics easier on the intellect. . I've got a couple of base templates for Vampires up, sans distinguishing skills and signature abilities: Joe Vampire Joe Vampire (Experienced) I added on personalizing abilities for the typical Vampire stunts...though not metamorph abilities such as changing into bats or wolves or mist, which I've never been particularly keen on. And yes, this version of Vampires is quite dead. The infectious bite can basically turn people into Vampyrii if they aren't killed immediately, such as Nikole Thrace, the iconic. If they die, they turn into vampires. I added a text block to that effect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted March 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Here is a very loose thought on a vampire scenario, a very minimal seed of an idea... Corpses have been showing up in the city bearing clear evidence of a vampire. The evidence has been sufficiently clear that it has been with some difficulty that the nature of the attacks has been kept under wraps. This vampire represents a threat not merely to the victims they choose, but also to the secrecy of the Accords. Stopping it is a high priority. What is not obvious to the players when they start is that there is not just one vampire, or rather it is one 'rogue' vampire that a cabal of hitherto unknown vampires are also trying to stop, lest he reveal their existence. The rogue vampire has even been turning some choice victims into more rogues, so stopping him is an even higher priority for the cabal. The Cabal in turn is a secret society of vampires that exists to support a feeding network of blood slaves. Vampires that feed normally and leave corpses are too obvious and too easily hunted. They have learned that the easiest way to not be found out and hunted is to do what is necessary to not leave corpses. This does not make them any less evil by nature, it is just a practical matter. The cabal is quite happy to 'eat' a normal human if it can be done without risk of exposure. L'Éminence Nocturne Act I: the Pledge The Hunters become alerted to the existence of a rogue Vampire in or near their main city and start the Hunt. A two-man team of FBI Section M Agents is also on the scene looking for the rogue...and maybe something else. They are playing their cards close to their chest however. While technically on the same side as the FBI Agents, if the Hunters don't bag the Vamp by themselves they'll get assed out on the Bounty, so they are incented to find the Leech and cap him before the Agents do...but without inciting an official reprimand for working against the common interests. However, when the Hunters have zeroed in their target and go in for the kill...they catch a glimpse of another (and far more dangerous) Vampire slaying their quarry! The mysterious and unexpected Vamp doesn't play around, he immediately escapes in a blur too fast for mortal eyes to truly follow. If the Hunters give chase, the Agents catch up with them and call them off. If they don't give chase, the Agents want to question them about what they saw. Either way.... Act II: the Turn The FBI Agents reluctantly let the Hunters in on their investigation...they weren't really looking for the original Vampire; they were watching him waiting to see if something more dangerous would be drawn out by it's predations...and it was. They swear the Hunters to secrecy, and lay out a chilling conspiracy tale involving a dark sect of master vampires who have adapted to the new order of the post-Accords world and rather than attempt to fight against the veil of secrecy instead hide behind it, using it to their own advantage. These dark arch-fiends are much more dangerous than mere leeches preying on hapless victims. They do their feeding behind closed doors among the rich, powerful, and various groupies. They have their dead fingernails hooked into many a crevice in the precipices of society and industry. The Agents don't have much (or aren't willing to reveal much) other than supposition and hearsay, but they are pretty sure that this shadow cabal calls itself L'Éminence Nocturne. It is believed that these evil masters deflect attention from themselves by killing off rogue Vampires that hunt carelessly and bring down unwanted heat from Hunters and the Feds. They aren't quite nutsy enough to take on Feds directly, but there is evidence that they do also take steps to prevent knowledge of their hidden society from proliferating amongst Hunters. According to the Agents, now that the Hunters have seen one of the members of this alleged cabal, statistically speaking their odds of survival are not great. But good news, the Agents have a lead and they could use the Hunters' assistance following it up! TODO: come up with a good lead Act III: the Reveal The Hunters take the fight to the cabal or vice versa, and maybe take down some Vampires and survive. However, the organization is not taken out of action, and now the Hunters a) know about a chilling new threat that they were previously blissfully unaware of and have a shiny new enemy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted March 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters L'Éminence Nocturne Characters: Joe Vampire (done) Experienced Joe Vampire (done) 2 FBI Section M Agents, one experienced and one baseline Experienced Agent: Billy "We Don't Talk About Waco" Harker: "Special Agent In Charge", Professional, man of action, well rounded, focus on survivability Baseline Agent: Ethan Brooks: a "special talent", TBD A big bad to head up the local L'Éminence Nocturne society: a nasty ~600 point Master Vampire, more of a mover and shaker than a beater...he has "people" to do most of the dirty work. +1 additional character to round it out...probably related to the "good lead" in Act 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted March 24, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters L'Éminence Nocturne Dossier Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted March 25, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Mystic Skills Options first pass is up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panpiper Posted March 26, 2010 Report Share Posted March 26, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Hi KS, Sorry, I've been very much distracted the last few days by more than just my usual distractions. I've not checked in till just now. I really like where you took L'Éminence Nocturne as it permits interfacing with this world, pretty much any and all other vampire society mythologies the GM might personally find appealing. Shoot, one could even go the full 'Underworld' route with war between vampires and lycan, and then throw in Blade, and it would work with how you've outlined this. Just one little tweak. In your Dossier, on a occasions you write; "The L'Éminence Nocturne", which to someone who speaks French reads very badly. The 'L' in front of L'Éminence Nocturne means 'the' in French, so I read this as; "the the nocturnal eminence". I think simply leaving out the 'the' will work just fine for the readers. I also really like the mystic lore skills. You folded the effects I was looking for very nicely into also addressing the downside for a player who actually invests in knowledge skills that typically get short thrift in most games. Nice job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted March 26, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 26, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters What can I say, I am The The. I'll add "remediate molestation of the ancient and grand French language" to my "TODO" list Glad you like where I took your Lore skills ideas; it turned out to nicely cover one of the types of magic I had originally described under Mystic and then later removed for lack of a system - Warding. So it turned out to be all around efficient. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Suave Posted April 7, 2010 Report Share Posted April 7, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters So once, for a Paranormal DC game that I never actually played in, I was getting around to building a character that would be incredibly appropriate for this game genre. He was a renowned professor who stumbled upon an ancient magic while investigating some ruins in South America. I was going to model this as "rune magic" because I really liked the idea of him carving glowing runes into thin air, and then cool things happening. I kept calling this "fear magic" because I wanted all of the spells to be based on creating, dispelling, or otherwise manipulating fear in humans (or monsters). I may give Dr. Edwards another shot, he might make a great villain (or PC!). I may need some assistance in writing him up with some of these newfangled abilities and rules that you've created (all of which are awesome). The GM for that game had us build "100 point normals" for the game, and give us the concept of what we wanted them eventually to develop into (aka runic fear mage), so here is the character sheet for Dr. David Edwards, pre-magic. I'll get to work on some spells and such and get back to you guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted April 7, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 7, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Cool; I'll review soon. I've been extremely maxed out at work this last couple of weeks as the application I architected and lead the development of over the last 7 months finally went live on April 1st. I'll hopefully be back to what passes for a normal schedule soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Makiaveli Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters I read the first couple pages and decided to hit the main site to look around as this sounds like an awesome resource. Unfortunately the link in the OP is dead as well as the killershrike.com link. Is there an alternate link? Thanks **edit** killershrike.com has a small box that says the page is unavailable, not a 404 type error. Google has a cache from April 8th so I take it the issue is a very recent one.... All the sub pages say there is a error in the "/" application. Just FYI.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted April 14, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters KillerShrike.com is down (temporarily) I took the site down Sunday due to detecting a successful hack against the charactermaster and effectmaster subsystems. It sucks, but safer than leaving a potentially infected site up and running. I don't want to be the source of XSS attacks against my users. To the best of my awareness it's just those two aspects of the site that were affected, but I've had very little time to look into it since then so I can't be sure. I also need to find the vulnerability that was exploited and block it. And finally, I need to repair the corrupted data. It just takes time, but time is what I don't have right now. I'll get it back up as soon as I safely can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Makiaveli Posted April 14, 2010 Report Share Posted April 14, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Well that sucks. And I fully understand the lack of time so no worries there. I will keep checking back as it sounds like a awesome resource. **EDIT** I really gotta start reading the links before answering the posts Good to hear you are getting things back up and I'm crossing my fingers for you on the thumbdrive issue. I had the same problem a while back and I guess I got lucky as nothing bad happened. Made darn sure to use the pw wiping feature on my new one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnotherSkip Posted April 21, 2010 Report Share Posted April 21, 2010 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters A few idears how about a beastmaster sort of character Since monsters may be preying upon the animal population (perhaps as a way to sustain them selves until they are forced to prey upon humans? Adding a variable to the cycling of a series of monstrous urges.) Another thing Wizard Comics noted a comic called Necessary monsters. sounds pretty relevant to the basics of the campaign.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted December 27, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 27, 2011 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters I had some time to kill over the holidays, so on a whim I revisited Here There Be Monsters and finished the Vamprii write up... Vampyrii Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
薔薇語 Posted December 27, 2011 Report Share Posted December 27, 2011 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Cool! I've been debating introducing HERO to a couple friends here and using HtbM as the backdrop for a mystic/horror HERO game. La Rose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted December 27, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 27, 2011 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Excellent; if it happens I'd be interested in hearing about the outcome. happy holidaze! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted May 23, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 23, 2012 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters I added a few more custom Abilities available in HtbM; several immunities to specific supernatural effects like being turned into a vampire or lycanthrope, and "Lucky Clue". Immunity to Possession was already available, but it was listed on the "Exorcism" page and might have been missed, so I duplicated it here as well. I'm also hacking out some fiction using the material available. It's slow going as time and muse are seldom available, but it's there to be read in it's current state (such as it is). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted June 12, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 12, 2012 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Joshua Lake, Psychic Vitruvian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted June 17, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2012 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Drew Altman, Psychic Luckster Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted January 7, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2013 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Ezra Albright Jones, Believer Crusader Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted January 7, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2013 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters JB Rochefort, Professional Veteran, EMT, Rock-climber, Outdoorsman, Adrenaline Junky, and Hunter of Monsters Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted January 7, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2013 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Briana Blake, Mystic Occultist; White Witch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted January 8, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2013 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Amani, Innati Djinn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted January 9, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2013 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters I updated the Iconics page with the five newest characters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted January 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 11, 2013 Re: Urban Fantasy Setting: Here There Be Monsters Jake Donaldson is up. I noticed an accounting error in Jake Donaldson's Resource Pool allocation; he was paying too much for his vehicle pool (5 points, in fact!). He had also paid for a flashlight bought as Images (the "correct" way to do it per RAW), but at some point in the past I had decided that the cost for flashlights built this way is absurdly overpriced and instead allow a simplified version for less points, so I gained some points back from that. I used it to buy the following special ability in his Professional Pool: 2) Good Shooting Technique : Area Of Effect Accurate (1m Radius; +1/2) for up to 40 Active Points of RKA (20 Active Points); OIF (Pistol of Opportunity; -1/2), Extra Time (Full Phase, -1/2), Only While Using Brace Maneuver (-1/4) Notes: Real Cost: 9 points Finally, I swapped out his Browning Hi-power pistol for a heavy revolver. The Hi-power had lower damage, higher clip capacity, but with Jake's low speed a heavier hitting weapon is more important as he needs to make every shot count if he finds himself in a firefight, and the lower bullet capacity doesn't affect him much anyway also due to lower speed. These two tweaks are useful individually, but also synergize. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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