After playing Deus Ex, I'm wondering what a setting chock full of /x/ stuff would be like. Skinwalkers, abductions, strange lights in the sky, ghosts, ancient conspiracies, dead gods, demons, supernatural killers, all those things. I think this would be a fun exercise.Hard mode: keep it all fantasy - no scifi. Dark fantasy would be my go-to.
I'm thinking of having fae fill in for aliens. Mysterious, barely-understood creatures that haunt the wilds and abduct people, resulting in lost time.
Shadow of the Demon Lord might have some stuff you are looking for.
>>94758363Modern or pseudohistorical?
>>94758363First of all, read the RPG Conspiracy X. If you run it, use 2.0 (the unisystem version)Second of all, I recommend watching the first three seasons of the x files. It's an old series so it's EASILY torrentable and the files are tiny.The first 3 seasons give you hooks into the "conspiracy mythos" plot arc, but without the eventual problem the conspiracy myth arc had (that being, they never planned it out in advance, every answer came with two new questions, and there wasn't the kind of foreshadowing that is GOOD because, again, it wasn't planned out in advance)There are both some excellent "oh god it's all connected" episodes in the early conspiracy myth arc AND some excellent monster of the week episodes in there.Season 4 is where the stitching at the seams of the myth arc starts to show, but it's still decent. Individual people will give you their personal recommendations, and I understand this is a lot of TV to just say "oh watch it lmao", 3-4 seasons at 24 episodes each, 45 minutes per episode. That's still 2-3 days of viewing.so I'll give you a few other things to consider.>Quatermass and the PitBBC television serial from 1958 that got remade as a movie in 1967. Either version is worth watching, from what I understand. A Colourised version of the TV serial is available online fairly easily. Deals with unearthing an ancient conspiracy that is dead and buried, but still active. Can be thought of as "what if Dr Who went full horror, and the doctor WASN'T a magical spaceman?", blends sci-fi and historical myth in a fun way.>Dark Cityhonestly just a fun watch for the villains. Again it's sci-fi, but could EASILY be spun into fantasy. Be aware the theatrical cut spoils the film in the opening voiceover, so either watch the director's cut OR mute the film until you see someone close a pocket watch. Either works. The villains are fun. Based on the same sort of "what if everything is a lie" fears as the matrix, but in a different direction.
>>94758456I don't think OP asked for rampant scat fetishism.
I tried a something similar once but my players weren't too much into it so we stopped. It was also my early GMing days so maybe I didn't run it particularly great. Used Delta Green for the most part.In my opinion you have to think about what tone you want to set. Is it going to be a serious undertaking and with real stakes or is it going to be more of a goofy monster of the week type of thing that your group encounters. That should make your first steps easier in choosing a system you want to use. >Hard mode: keep it all fantasy Very hard indeed. /x/ stuff is mostly depends on it being rooted in a reality without magic. Backrooms skinwalkers are something scary to us because it's not natural. When you are in a fantasy village and wizards are a possibility it becomes mundane. >scary stuff in the woods? Yeah of course, don't go there. >repeating rooms for miles even though my neighbors shack is only 10x12 meters? Must have been the witch again. A lot of stuff things can and will be handwaved with magic lol and the eeriness will dissipate. Try to avoid that if you have to set it in fantasy.
>>94758363Read Digger, the webcomic. It's a fantasy setting where gods and prophecies are common as piss and you can't throw a rock without hitting something weird. The protagonist is (unwillingly) sent on a divine quest to destroy the still-beating heart of a dead god, and even in-universe people aren't super concerned about it. It's the dead god from just down the block and the live god that wants it dead is mostly just concerned he'd be a dick if he came back.
>>94758363Unknown Armies.
>>94758363I like the idea that the Moon is the egg of some creature.
3D players enter a 2D world through the alien angle. Players can’t interact directly with the 2D NPCs because the 2D people aren’t able to perceive 3D. But the shadow cast upon the 2D world by the Players as they move around makes the NPCs go mad and they spawn frenzied delusions which manifest themselves as 3D entities which are often hostile to the Players, sort of like antiobodies trying to fight back against the invasion from the 3rd dimension, Perhaps Players can even communicate in some fashion with NPCs via these delusion entities creating mad prophets and Lovecraftian cults amongst the NPCs.
>>94758363>/x/-tier settingSo it's a bunch of lonely incels trying to summon a succubus? You could probably use the rules to Gang Rape for that one.
>>94759224>>94759251Holy shit this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you SO MUCH!
>>94758363You would have huge swathes of the human population dedicated to summoning succubi
>>94759998>literally all of the power is in the woman's handsIt's fit to purpose for summoning a succubi but holy shit what a fuckup for what seems to be the purpose of the system
>>94758363Get that Kevin Crawford modern horror game (silent legions I think) and roll dice until you have a setting.
>>94758363World of darkness
>>94759224As someone who only ever played the CX OG release, what's different about that new version? I assume that it would involve streamlined 'franchise' mechanics as it sounds like you're talking about a "d20 system" type of deal, iyswim?
A setting to be actually played in?
>>94765827Yes. And hopefully someday, for actual publication too.
>>94765831Hmm in that case I'd think of how the setting interacts with / produces the game's mechanics first and foremost. If you don't want to make your very own game (which is hard) then you need to choose a system to design your setting around so that players and GMs can make use of it meaningfully. More than just a backdrop for the existing published material I mean.Like what use is it to plant dozens of faux chekhovs guns?Like >>94759512The moon could be an egg.... and?What do the players of any given system care?If you don't think this through, it will just end up as a reflavouring of D&D 5e with 0 mechanical impact - which isn't inherently bad but probably not what you want.
>>94765856I'd agree with this anon; the problem with a typical fantasy setting is that ... well, a lot of /x stuff is baked in. Mystic occult powers? Check. Weird beasties out in the woods? Check. Strange cults and political factions vying for influence in the shadows? Check.The conspiracy or the denial, if you'd prefer, is the central conceit. Unfortunately few players will wholeheartedly play 'normies', if that's the angle you're going for. You could try to fool your players so they don't metagame (the old story of the GM who got his players thinking they were in a Gangbusters! campaign as 'Untouchables' during Prohibition then slowly revealing that the weird 'freemasons' they were unravelling were ACTUALLY playing Call of Cthulhu comes to mind), but I find it hard to imagine where you'd go with this beyond something like Warhammer; yes, you have your standard fantasy kitchen sink, but eldritch horrors are trying to actively subvert civilisation, and you get to root the cults out. Again, though, how is that fundamentally different to many campaigns?Regarding the egg, >>94759512 , how about - it means nothing itself. A World Dragon is hatching; an eagle does not care what the beetles in the tree below its eyrie think. But what said beetles get up to hearing the unhatched chick call, or the 'great stone' behaves oddly from their point of view, is the theme.You could go darker of course; go phoenix. For the egg to hatch, the mother - the game world - must die. And she is (Dark Sun, or Neverending Story, anyone?). People are trying to stop it - maybe they can, maybe they can't. Does anyone know why the world is dying? Are they trying to accelerate it - or move THEIR kingdom over to the wyrmling, and screw everyone else?
>>94765794I've also not played original ConX, but everyone I have spoken to has said that the second iteration of the system is a better system.Unisystem is one of the many generic systems of the late 90s/early 00s, but it's not a bad one, and importantly the "power level" is about right.What I mean by that is that the balance of importance feels right, between "character stats and modifiers" and the dice. At least that's what I remember it being like, I last played ConX in probably 2012, maybe 2011.
Scifi is fantasy.
>>94758363Conspiracy X?
>>94758363For modern day I'd say Kult, it's literally "What if all schizo conspiracy theories were true: The RPG">Skinwalkers, abductions, strange lights in the sky, ghosts, ancient conspiracies, dead gods, demons, supernatural killers, all those things. Hard mode: keep it all fantasyUnironically all exist in Pathfinder
