I'd like to run a shadowrun-type game starting on the day of the biblical rapture and going through the seven years of...

I'd like to run a shadowrun-type game starting on the day of the biblical rapture and going through the seven years of tribulations. I just have some questions on:
>Potential quests?
>Any other biblical themes?
>What would the world be like when the rapture takes place?
>Should the rapture just be every saved man, woman, and child dissapear into thin air at the exact same second or should it be more cinematic like link related?
animation: youtu.be/pIj47X960pw

>>Potential quests?
Stage a coup to steal a company from the only saved CEO in the country after his dissapearance.
>>Any other biblical themes?
Mark of the beast, the anti-Christ, and general persecution against Christianity.
>>What would the world be like when the rapture takes place?
The world nearly has one currency and a man is coming into power who will convince people he is the second coming of Christ (anti-Christ)
>>Should the rapture just be every saved man, woman, and child dissapear into thin air at the exact same second or should it be more cinematic like link related?
That animation has horrible voice work, but it could work either way. Here's a quote from revelations: “After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.”
Revelation 7:1 NIV
This kinda means you can get away with a little cool stuff. If the Angels just zap down and grab the saved then make it so no video can record them.

In some interpretations everyone who is raptured leaves behind everything they were wearing, so when it happens they'll be piles of clothes or videos of a Catholic school's soccer game ending with all the players and all but four of the spectators suddenly dissapearing, the ball still in air from a now-missing kicker.

Fuck yes.

God is Team Instinct.

You could do Illuminati type shit with a bunch of the enemies having the symbol of Satan hidden on their right forearm with the leaders having it on their fore heads. The Beast of the Sea, The Beast of the Earth and the Seven Headed Dragon could replace the shadowrun dragons pretty well I think

The more exciting thing is everything predating the rapture. It's supposed to be a total shit show what with Satan taking over, war, conquest, famine, & death riding out and taking huge chunks of the world. The party could meat the physical manifestations of these things as well

There'd most likely be a period of great sorrow immediately after the rapture due to, and I quote from Revelation chapter 7 verse 9 , “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands." The great multitude were the people saved by the rapture and leaving behind everyone else and all other unsaved Christians who know of what is written in tribulations. Mainly the part where if you are living through the rapture you can't be saved.

There is no Biblical Rapture. The word Rapture doesn't even appear in the Bible. The entire seven years of tribulations concept is expanded from apocrypha and speculation.

I'd imagine that you could borrow heavily from The Stand

A while ago /co/ had an idea for a mid-tribulation Bibleman Beyond story. Basically, the protag had become a Christian a couple months after the Rapture shortly after he found the Bibleman suit (left absent since its original user left for Heaven). He takes up the mantle and fights a guerilla resistance against the forces of the Dragon.
Then OG Bibleman shows up at the very end when the saints come marchin' in.

>"Rapture" is derived from Middle French rapture, via the Medieval Latin raptura ("seizure,kidnapping"), which derives from the Latin raptus ("a carrying off").[17]

>The Koine Greek of 1 Thessalonians 4:17 uses the verb form ἁρπαγησόμεθα (harpagisometha), which means "we shall be caught up" or "taken away", with the connotation that this is a sudden event. The dictionary form of this Greek verb is harpazō (ἁρπάζω).[18] This use is also seen in such texts as Acts 8:39, 2Corinthians 12:2-4 and Revelation 12:5.

>The Latin Vulgate translates the Greek ἁρπαγησόμεθα as rapiemur,[19] from the verb rapio meaning "to catch up" or "take away".[20]

Do you plan to have only Christians be saved? Which ones? The knock-on effects on world religions will be huge, even in Shadowrun.

this is pretty good inspiration for a shadowrun style approach

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Only Christians and only the devoted and saved ones, and no non-Christian religions will see their followers caught up in the rapture. I mean seriously.

Could do a main quest using the Jesus model.

Not sure I grant the similarity, especially since it apparently happens four times instead of once.

Come way out of left field. Revelations is by turns mystical, serving a particular agenda in terms of commentary and criticism, and and not really particularly literal.

There are any number of ways what happens could not be what your players expect at ALL, what they perceive as the End Times (or a lot of people in their world do anyhow) not really being that, or just generally be strange and difficult to fully comprehend even if it is like Revelations if you squint hard enough and say " Well, I guess that's an Angel?" or "Wait, that Horseman isn't right!"

You might also have the commonly accepted rules apply, but in a way that is confusing to the players. It might be that about 99 percent of Christianity is wrong. The only people who are "right" or at least worthy to carry the mantle of Christ are the truly dedicated and radically humble. The people who wave signs. The people who wander around living righteously, and also living as the Disciples did, on charity, and spreading the word of God.

You could also pick your early Christian sect, and have them be partially or entirely correct even though they seemed like crazy people.

>party are butthurt edgelords on a quest to get everyone to believe it never happened

Cliff notes about the mark of the beast: many of the details coincide with the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian and his relationship with the city of Ephesus. To get tax revenue, Domitian set up a huge statue of himself at the entrance to the city market, and wouldn't let anyone into the market unless they paid to burn incense to him as a divine god. People who paid were marked on their arm with a blob of wax, slaves and children were marked on their forehead. Because some of the vision was recognizable at the time but other things made no sense to people of the time (the firebelching creatures resemble tanks), people think it will happen again in another form at the end of the world.

You could emulate this in Shadowrun by locking Shadowrunners out of commerce altogether, requiring them to go underground, steal, or barter because they're not in. They could quest for a license, only to find that they have to commit some gross evil to get in, because the powers that be need everyone to get dirty. Maybe 666 Corp took up maintenance of most of the routers in order to control trade, and were accepted because they provided a muchneeded service in that. But because their leaders are already dirty, they need everyone else on board to get dirty as well, lest they be ratted out. The runners having plenty of surplus loot at this point, they might set up their own trading system. Perhaps out of the back of a van, having to move product in or out of various places and concourses, perhaps smuggling (including tri-Ds of religious teachings), perhaps moving to unusual jackpoints to upload or download paydata.

continuing, As things heat up, they discover they need to get to a safe haven. Some end-times scholars think that the 666 crew will try to exterminate the Jews, who will escape to a cliff fortress known as Petra. Perhaps the runners first hear about the safe haven from vid junkies, then they quest to learn if it's real, where it is, then to safely get to the area, then to get past the besieging weaponry and into the haven via a series of tunnels. Then a quest to be allowed in, a quest to be trusted. Then maybe they have to decide whether to defend the haven in a last stand, or to betray everyone by linking up with an infiltrator, or to stop the infiltrator from betraying the haven. In considering the choice, the party might take into account whether any of them might not have a future because of their past trading experiences. Someone might offer to surgically remove a wrist or forehead and replace it with bionics to remove "mark" taint, whether this is necessary or works is up to you.

I think I might have posted about this on Veeky Forums once before, but I had an idea a few years ago for a Rapture-based game where the PCs were all Satan's lieutenants, each one a mortal that was picked as the best representative of each of the seven deadly sins and probably make Lust an NPC to troll the That Guy.

Game would be set immediately after the seven years of Satan's ownership of Earth, when the forces of God show up again for the final purge. Each of the PCs would have their own stronghold that they had set up in the previous seven years, and maybe superpowers provided by Satan (not sure about this one).

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