How to run Secret World like campaign?

GURPS would be pretty solid for this. Ritual Path Magic or Sorcery can easily handle the mojo, and Imbuements will do the weapon powers.

GURPS Monster Hunters (modern supernatural) would be just about perfect for the power setting, character templates and rules options to use and has a lot of appropriate gribblies.

Toguro 100%

not gunna lie if I were still a normie in tsw I'd go full Draugur

Best painting of best girl in best demons place

Do you want another Orochi, user?
Because this is how you get Orochi.

That's pretty brutal, without the Buzzing's help it takes ages or a ridiculous R&D budget to wield enough power to fight TSW-level opponents.

Immortality can work fine in games even if you don't have it cause level or point loss - because most problems are very time sensitive.

Players are immortal anyway, so there isn't much difference between making new characters and keeping the old one. It affects risk analysis, but that's an opportunity for interesting roleplaying.

>tfw Secret world setting with Archer cast members.

Delta Green
Alternity Dark*Matter
Shadowrun

It's kinda sad that such a great game with a setting like this got so few attention from people. Fan art and projects like this are pretty rare.

That's because the gameplay blows. You just go through the story once or twice, have a great time, and then you're stuck with sucky instances and gameplay.

The gameplay isn't that great but the dashes and skillshots were still better than something like WoW. And i played heavily to both.
Lack of content didn't help, but a medium compagny can only go that far.

I played The Park, a rather creepy walk simulator, and it inspired me to do a WOD evil theme park. Does the actual game ever go into much on that place? Why it's so fucked up?

How has no one said Chronciles of Darkness?

Secret World is already practically a WoD game. Hunter: The Vigil in particular.

Would have been a lot better if they borrowed more heavily from the first Guild Wars.
It looked like they were trying to do something similar with skill system and gameplay but it seems like they spread it too thin. There were so many abilities they had to be watered down to keep balance. So while in theory you could play around with all sorts of abilities and builds, they usually ended up feeling kind of samey.

I think a tighter, more diverse set of abilities mixed with faster paced combat, quicker charge times on enemy attacks and less health/more damage would have done the game wonders.

>Hunter: The Vigil in particular.
I would have figured more in the way of Mage what with the characters' super-kung-fu-bee-magic.

Eh. I know nothing about Secret World, to be honest. But Hunter can facilitate that kind of thing. It'd just take a bit of homebrewing.

Mage is a pretty high powered game, about investigation and unraveling the mysteries of the universe.

The original owner performed a ritual (implied to be with Satan, but could be any number of outside forces) to give him immortality at the cost of warping his park and turning himself into the Bogeyman. One of the quests is disrupting this so that his son can't follow in his father's footsteps.

Yup, in the second zone of the game there is a park.
On top of what said, there is a lot of shit going on in the neighborhood :

Multiple curses related to indians and/or vikings upon the land, wraiths of victims of the park, wendigos creeping around...
On top of everything else, the whole place is currently overrun by draughs, regular undeads and creatures corrupted by an extra-plannar agent. And i probably forgot some.

The game is really generous when it comes to threats to your general safety.

It's very Mage the Ascension to be honest.

Dragon: whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Akashic_Brotherhood

Templar: whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Knights_of_the_Temple_of_Solomon

Illuminati: whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Technocratic_Union

Still I'd use Mage 2e's ruleset seeing as its rules are actually consistent.

Actually the park itself was one massive magic siphoning machine, meant to eventually make the owner immortal. Powered by the life force and trapped souls of the people who lived and died there, like a giant siphon.

It was designed by the Dragon, or someone they know

I met my wife while playing TSW. I have wanted to run a game in the setting for a long time. WoD is the obvious choice (Hunter or Mage), but I'll probably use Cypher system to be more representative oh how character abilities work in the game. That, and it's a system my players know.

I've envisioned a world that the pcs actually make worse without knowing.

Yeah, you are right about the immortality part. Hmm... Maybe some kind of limited access to Buzzing or Orochi tech could be the mechanism for using magic. I need to think about this.

I'm actually thinking of trying to combine the 2 weapon mechanism from TSW and making it work on table-top, but I need to check out the rulesets that were mentioned here already.

>Mage is a pretty high powered game, about investigation and unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
Add demon punching and you pretty much have secret world. You play as dude who has been drafted into the earth's immune system to stop an extra-dimensional threat.
Your body is now effectively immortal thanks to being filled with bees and you can use mystical energies to enhance your murder abilities.

Then you march around what are quickly becoming the ruins of our world solving mysteries and killing monsters.
Of course even the army of bee-powered terminators are only just barely hold off the apocalypse.

The Tokyo combat is shit. Really, most of the combat is terrible, since DPS output is so low, but Tokyo is where I had to call it quits.

>filled with bees
wut

You're introduced to the Secret World when a magical golden bee enters your mouth.
Lore you can find in the game goes deeper in it and everything, don't want to spoil for people who haven't read it yet.

O sweetling, once our voice came to you so faintly. No more. Now we thunder down the varicose, fiberoptic ley lines that fill the World Tree's limbs stretching here and there and everywhere. Your anima-antenna head quickens. The Goddess Machine pulses.

She gave you strength to rend the lion. Now eat the honeyed entrails, because it is good, because it is sweet, because it is terrible. Initiate the Samson Prerogative. Out of the eater comes what is eaten, and out of the strong comes what is sweet.

We are the Education Protocol. We climb the twisted ladder of your cells; we haunt your digital text; we hide in your hat. We are the jagged teeth that trip the tumblers of your mind. You will not know our triggers. For all the world's a cypher. And everything is true.

Be not afraid. Be terrified. The dark days are here.

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

why are bees so lewd?

A magical bee crawls down your throat

you develop magical powers

as long as your bee, your connection to Gaia is unharmed you can regenerate, are ageless, and can disentigrate and reintegrate at dragon lines or ley lines. Whatever words you want to use.

3 seconds until respawn.

Even Loki himself is pissed because he can't kill you permanently.

honestly one of the harder parts of translating the game to tabletop would be making Bee tactics fun since 'throw yourself at it till it dies' is a viable tactic.

You come back, they usually don't.

Same issue with Dark Souls.

This game sounds weird. Wouldn't most things that would gib or disintegrate you kill your bee?

It isn't really. Mobs respawn rather fast too, and those you merely hurt are back to full health fast, IIRC.

I'm pretty sure it's mentioned that dismantling you so hard each and every of your atom fucks off in a different direction wouldn't be enough.
But really, it's magic, I ain't got to explain shit. Go ask Gaia.

It's not a bee anymore. It's a part of you.

Buzz Buzz

connect to the network, fly along the leylines

Gutted, Decapitated, Burned, Poisoned, Shot, Stabbed, Bashed, Smashed, Drowned...

Don't frown, spawn, respawn, despawn.

It's a sunny new day. Just keep an eye on the shadows.

Any ideas on how to make the bees work besides saying that resurrection takes a long time?

If you go by the game's mechanics, bees only take you to fixed points (which also are linked via Agartha).
So, make the players lose time. Even if the respawn itself is instantaneous, by the time the players are back to where they were, the bad guys left or did what they wanted to do.

This. Just because PCS can't die doesn't mean they can't fail.

I'd really like to cultivate feeling of dread in the pcs and make them worry about getting killed, which is why I was thinking of going without the bees.

>Just because PCS can't die doesn't mean they can't fail.
I wish people understood this, even in games where you *can* die.
Death is a cheap cop out in a lot of RPGs. It shouldn't be the only fail state. Especially when its often the least interesting fail state.

fixed spawn points, players are gonna need mounts or vehicles posted at the spawn point if they want to get things done and are having a hard time.

God knows I had to throw myself at Loki like twenty times to defeat him.

Just take the old 'they knocked you unconcious and left' to it's next logical step.

On another note I fucking love that trailer just because of how control that guy is.

One of those "You're trapped in here with ME" moments.

TSW is still horrifying. But it's Lovecraftian cosmic horror or Gothic psychological horror rather than a slasher flick. It's also knowing that just because you can't die, you also can't save everyone.

You could give your players limited times to resurrect or that their fate would is to be trapped or tortured somewhere indefinitely.

Have the bad guys kill Carter.

...

Most horrifying thing I could think of, desu.

PCs can still be captured and tortured.

I'm sure there is some sort of "worse than death" attack that mangles them without killing them.

While supernatural stuff doesn't effect their brains as much as it does with mortals, I'm still pretty sure they can be mentally broken.

Not to mention they probably have mortal friends and family who are so much more delicate than they are.

Plus the players are acting on a grand stage, earth is in a state of siege from terrible forces. Every failure is horribly costly. The apocalypse should be within earshot so every setback fills them with dread.

you fucking asshole, that's like shooting a trident warhead you'll kill us all

Some sort of sanity stat might be nice. I'm trying to think of concrete ways that the DM could make life hard for characters that are going insane from losing sanity due to not taking care of their characters.

If a beeman's captured and tortured, he can just jump off a cliff and respawn, though.

that requires the capacity to jump and an available cliff.
He could just be locked in a box and left there.
Throw him in a hole and bury him.

Nail down his torso and go to town on his eyes and extremities.
Trap him in an ichorous egg sac while parasites live off him.
Or sewn into some writhing biomass, keeping his vital organs alive while warping the rest with cancerous mutations.
break his arms and legs and force him to play FATAL

Or bolt them to a table and cut their legs off.

Then you throw a fireball at yourself.

Heya, chuck.

I'm not sure bee magic is that easy. IT's described more as a mystical martial-art and seems to require a focus and somatic components.

You know, a Sanity meter might be a good way to do Dark Souls in an RPG. You can die over and over, but your Sanity needs to be restored through more difficult means (ideally carrot/stick scenarios where you get more Humanity from doing story pushing things). When you're so Crestfallen that you lose the will to live, you become Hollow, which isn't death, but becoming an NPC (and probably then death, or at least not being a problem anymore).

in game you can type a command to kill your character so you can respawn, especially useful if you goof and wind up in the wrong area or just want out of wherever you are.

I'd imagine bees can will themselves to death.

>Secret World is already practically a WoD game. Hunter: The Vigil in particular.

Honestly, I'd say it's closer to GURPS Monster Hunters using the Cabal. But then both have similarities to WoD, so it's really just that the fluff is a bit tighter and the metaphysics has more depth.

This assumes that the guy torturing you doesn't know about the respawn points and doesn't have a setup where the respawn points dump you right back into the torture. Which, while often the case, is not always so. Some of the bad guys in the game are actually clever. Orochi Tower, Vali Omega floor in the game itself has a setup like that. Eternal resurrection-vivisection loop sucks a lot.

>Instance in Blue Mountain
>Quickest way is through the Akab forest
>Fuck that shit

Use Conspiricy X as a system to run it. Its probably more on point than CoC.

dropbox.com/s/ae1afuyztya58wt/Conspiracy_X_20_(8971755).pdf?dl=0

What is the most annoying mob in the game?

>fight TSW-level opponents.

But you dont fight them. You work out the secret runes to seal them away.

You never "win", dear lord what would Lovecraft think?

>BUG HUNT
>U
>G
>H
>U
>N
>T

But even the bees have no hopes of winning. It's Emma that's the chosen one.

...

Could just stop them from respawning until the next session, with things getting harder every time because the villain is learning how to better counter them. Throw in the sanity mechanic if the players are dumb enough to try corpse-scumming it anyway.

For my part: Dresden Files RPG works surprisingly well with a few house rules. I basically just lifted the three core factions and threw them into my game as background elements, with the very much NOT immortal PCs having to contend with bee-powered hitmen from the Big Three. Good times were had by all.

>play templars
>get cool black bro, and nice old lady

>play illuminati
>get silver foxette
>and memebro computer and/or that guy from the lone gunmen

>play dragon
>get a baby
>but really its a jackass woman
>and i guess a blowjob

no lie though, when i played in the beta, my client had a bug. It played two of the intro videos at the same time, with each scene transition taking place (video A changes, it stays on that until either A or B change camera)
with the subtitles of one scene, and the audio files of the other.
but it fucking synced up perfectly, because it was the video where you go to talk to the guy in the lobby and he is is saying "lel chaos, butterfly effect, choices and shit nigga" while my character also choses to ignore him, goes upstairs, gets oral, and becomes a dragon instead.

hands down better than what they currently have ingame

>Throw in the sanity mechanic if the players are dumb enough to try corpse-scumming it anyway.
Why put a stop to that?
I mean, I honestly don't even see the problem with that.

I feel that taking something where death isn't an issue and then making it so that death is intentionally an issue is sort of... uncreative? Instead of working with limitations, you're instead going "well I can't think of a creative way to up tension without death, so I guess you're not immortal, even though that was a big part of the game".

>tsw doesn't sell like 80% of the merch they designed for ingame products/stores anymore
>you cant dress up as your character, going to XXXX college or your favorite YYYY pub
dont even bother

doesn't beaumont threaten literally this?
if the game was ran, you absolutely DO need to worry about being taken alive. your SOUL is immortal, your body isn't, nor is it impervious. the PCs would be like budget wolverine from x-men. they're strong, but completely breakable, and since its not a vidya, you can actually fail things/shit is timed, like other anons said

while i agree it is pretty shit to just take away immortality to up the tension, i think ingame some villians do threaten the capability of killing without bees, but that is massively difficult, expensive, and pretty much just annoying to do.

Beaumont honestly probably could've killed the PC if he tried but as you said actually killing a bee is so time intensive it would've ruined his plan to take that cursed god sword.

Bees can solve a problem by just throwing themselves at it willy nilly and that should honestly be a solution in some cases. Nothing quite so terrifying for normals as a remorseless drunken illumunati blood mage swordsman with monogrammed pistols who would rather blow his own brains out and respawn than walk a hundred feet to the agartha portal.

Thats awesome! i'm running a SW campaign right now and we're having a great time! Granted, its more 'Foucault's Pendulum' then 'secret world' right now, but that's only because we're at the start and my players haven't found the filth and zombies yet.

I've found that stretching the horror of the setting is the most fun. I've set up a bunch of "mysteries" that my players can find and solve to get cryptic clues for what else im planning later in the game. It lets them feel like they're discovering something.

For a system I've glued together parts of Wushu and Fate to give us something great for beginners that encourages role play and team play, while keeping NPC generation quick and easy. Even the environment uses the same system and can be used to hinder the players for extra creepyness.

The dragon was such cool idea but so poorly executed. They spend all their time talking about chaos theory and shit but never really walk the walk.

Main base should have been a warehouse that almost entirely empty except for a TV, couch and coffee table. An old korean lady sit on the couch flipping the channels, seemingly at random. Her teenage grandson attends to her and gives the player their missions. Apparently he translate for his grandma but we never hear her speak.

The mission complete messages would be recordings from game shows, wrong numbers, telemarketers and the like. Each would seem related to the mission in theme and would hint ominously at the results.

The dragon is literally a social organism. It is composed of societies. By joining the faction you are becoming one of it's organs. It's some kind of eldritch monstrosity but one that has grown from the seemingly random interactions of humanity, so at least it has stake in our existence.

Threadly reminder that Gaia will lose in the end.

Also, have TSW CYOA.

...

Unknown Armies is pretty much perfect for TSW.

this is part of why I lost interest in the game.

>Make player trudge through a world filled with suffering and have them try to help only for it to be naught or the results negligible at best
>Drive home the battle is fruitless anyway at every opportunity and that they are completely powerless to affect any change in the greater scheme of things or even in the small picture

I'm sorry, I guess I'm just a fucking filthy casual who feels that in fiction, a person's efforts should genuinely pay off and not smack them in the face repeatedly and ask "why didn't you do this?" when the game conductor never presented that as an option even if it was pointed out or noticed by the player.

I thought the Phoenicians were the ones behind that shit.

they tried to use it after the fact and failed

He didn't have time to kill you permanently. He could have, but he just didn't have the time at that moment to grind you to atoms or one of the more intensive processes that would get the job done.

>thinking beaumont is loki
>when "he" specifically tells you he loves to build people up just to smash them down
>and "he" jobs at the end to some 20something skank
>who had little to no power, and yet outsmarted and outplayed the "current" reincarnation to a "depowered" god thats been around for only 400 years
cass was loki all along

it was none of them you fucking mumps.

It was designed by a deranged magnate who spent his fortune on building a place that would steal the souls of children that he would use for fuel as an immortal ghost.

This is one of the earliest plotlines in the MMO. You kick his ass, disable the soul machine, free the ghosts and get his son membership in the illuminati/your conspiracy of choice.

The Orochi Shield Drone. Akab aren't even close.

I mean there was a reason John tells you he can tell you who Beaumont really is. He wouldn't need to do that if you already learned.

This is actually very similar to how I would depict the Dragon in my version of the setting. Not that exact example obviously but the conspiracy itself would be very organic and incomprehensible compared to the other two.

The Illuminati would be a lot more esoteric, but pretty much as depicted.

The Templars would be pretty much the same.

But there would be other choices as well.

>Orochi
Whats the most popular form of transport for Orochi?
Bodybags

Am I the only one who really loved Egypt? Of course it wasn't on the level of Kingsmouth, but I really liked the change of pace from New England Investigation to basically fighting the Cultist Arab Spring, with a healthy dose of Indiana Jones and the City of Madness.

As much as I like the overarching story theme that Gaia is going to be overrun by Filth in the end, I really appreciated that the setting handles pulp adventure pretty much just as well as the existential eldritch horror.

Nassir best character.

That never gets old.

>best
>not Carter
Get out.

honestly i just felt the areas went down in quality as it went on, and if op actually runs a pen and paper, he needs one massively important thing

memorable npc's

seriously, i can name like, 20 fucking random pointless quest givers from tsw. i cant do that for any other game

HELL i have trouble remembering that in d&d game im in

Said > Nassir > Deputy andy > im not going to bother listing people anymore

Carter isn't even the best Academy character. Montag's missions were fantastic.