Is there a non-shitty way to do this to your players?

Is there a non-shitty way to do this to your players?

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To do what?

Silent hill monsters are basically social-workers playing "work through your problems with roleplay" with a very violent patient.

There is nothing to 'Do'

But if you really want to make a "The monster is a manifestation of your psych trying to help you cope" I suggest looking here: youtube.com/watch?v=UzIAHA2aOIw
Base an npc around Raven and let the players roll.

You're thinking of Silent Hill 2. That scene was from 3.

Oh...right....

I still like Raven though,
She's the epitome of an epic level sorcerer.

Or maybe Wilder?

Silent Hill's ambiguity wouldn't really work with a tabletop RPG. Too many eyes on too many things at once, too many characters able to operate independently of the 'rules' of the town and the manifestations, and the fact that different people aren't supposed to always experience the same things.

Although now that I say this it would actually be a pretty great application of PbtA mechanics because of the way the moves and playbooks would codify such different experiences and interactions for each character. Take enough care in outlining 'GM Moves' for each character type and/or dysfunction and you really could handle it faithfully.

Even if they were people, they were still trying to kill you.

Misses the point of the statement.

It wasn't about the morality of killing them, it was about Heather feeling like she was losing her sanity. She was already questioning what was going on, being honestly asked if she's delusional really fucked with her mind.

Silent Hill 2 is not the whole franchise or even the main focus of the franchise prior to the US developers shitting over it.

No. Most of them are just manifestations that hunt you and others because they are your negativity and what else does a disturbed person do if not lash at others? The town as a whole might try to do you good In it's own twisted way, but unless you have a deep seated desire to better yourself buried in that negativity, like pyramid head, all you get is a pained monster that wants to harm you. Except in 4 where they are just undead and horrid nightmares dreamed by an insane man

Heh. I'm having a good laugh because I started a thread last week about the work I'm doing on my Silent Hill RPG.
To give my answer to some of this, you have to remember that games take place in the "realm of imagination." When you're working on Silent Hill, don't tell the players it's a "nurse demon," tell them what they look like. They'll focus on the parts that interest them and their perceptions will be different based on their experiences.
If you want to play with the fact that players are seeing "monsters" but no everyone does, it's going to take some work. Lots of interactions and suggestions. As the say, the devil is in the details. So, focus on that. They'll follow if you lead. Then, you drop the fact that their perceptions are off. It's not easy but possible.

Unless that's what Heater saw them doing.

Interestingly, at first it's SHE that attacks the Closer in the cutscene, not the monsters attacking her.
So.... in the "it's actually all in her head and these are normal people" interpretation, one couldn't be particulary shocked to think that people are trying to stop a fucking serial killer.

Sadly this might be true. Only real solution would be having totally different stories, but then of course you'd have to play a pretty different game altogether, it's not just the usual "PCs don't need to be together" thing.

Maybe something like Polaris?

I'm not sure why most think he is implying that they are people all he is implying is that they don't look like monsters to him and considering the way Caudia talks about them odds are she sees them differently. Much like the cult as a whole one persons demon is another persons angel.

Play CoC. Have an NPC say "They look like monsters to you?".

I've had a GM S3 Plan my ass, tell me late game that I'd made my backstory up, and had fun, but he put in work and I made that character as an invitation to be fucked with anyway. How Vincent does it there should be fine, where he raises the idea, insists he was just kidding, implies a little bit he's not and trying to backpedal the obviously disturbing revelation, and it doesn't have consequence either way.

It's this. Heather sees them as monsters because they are her enemies.

>I'm not sure why most think he is implying that they are people all he is implying is that they don't look like monsters to him and considering the way Caudia talks about them odds are she sees them differently. Much like the cult as a whole one persons demon is another persons angel.

Well, if they weren't monsters, what else could they be if not people?

Kinda bullshit from a lovecraftian POV tough. His monsters... are monsters, shit is amusingly enough pretty materialistic

>Well, if they weren't monsters, what else could they be if not people?
Listen to Cladias words, "They've come to witness the Beginning. The rebirth of Paradise, despoiled by mankind." so to someone like her what would she see them as?

Although I will say not every monster is the same in this reguard there is a good chance that the Missionary and the Scrapper are humans based on their models but that's just speculation like most of this.

That's not the point tough. I'm saying that Vincent is implying to her that they are either monsters or humans.

Personally, I don't think they're humans (SR has monsters in truly improbable places), at least normally, but whatever.

Honestly I don't think Vincent is implying anything he's just fucking with Heather because he enjoys it, I would say he's doing it to stress her out but that would depend on how much he actually wants to trigger the gods growth.

It is kinda of implied it's a member of the Order. Remember Leonard, as well (tough where Heater finds him is another can of worms...). Which would mean the birth of paradise thing is either bullshit on Claudia's part, or some monsters aren't human and some are.
I tend to think the second -Alessa on the carousel is VERY difficult to be rationalized as Heater's seeing a person- but there probably is some even worse level of fuckery going on with the persons in the "limbo" like Stanley.
I assume that you can go with the usual "SH traps you in a peculiar hell"+something like "there is no real difference in SH from a real person to its resonance in the heart of others".
Which is pretty buddhist, in the end, but somehow even more horryfing.

Who the fuck knows? Claudia isn't exactly the most trusthworthy person even in the series, but at the same time she does know more than Vincent (the seal fiasco).

It's really hard with 3 especially as the others in the main 4 have explanations for their monsters, 1 they were the nightmares of Alessa, 2 they were therapy, 4 they were Walters psyche, 3 is the most vague but if you think about it that's what makes it the most scary.

Teraphy for Alessa. Kinda. Maybe.

What is difficult to grok for me is how the fuck Water managed to transform the apartament into Silent Hill: the handheld eldritch location. I mean, Alessa/Heater/Cheryl was carrying God, Walter was... I dunno still exactly what he was up, but the resurrection creating whole demiplanes/portals OUTSIDE of SH doesn't make sense.

Oh I actually have an explanation for this, basically Walter was a backup if the Alessa plan did work out, the ritual he is doing is another way to summon the god of the cult, he was supposed to do it on a native american rock that would act as the womb, but due to misinterpreting the teachings he believed the apartment was his mother so he did the ritual on the apartment. Long story short he was birthing the god in the apartment room and it was his psychic powers bringing it all about much like Alessa's bringing it about in SH1.

>2 they were therapy
I think that's a very lighthearted way of looking at it. They were representations of the shit going on in his head, and dealing with the shit in your head is therapeutic. And perhaps the shit in your head includes the desire to resolve it all in one way or another.

Although not all are his monsters, the Abstract Daddy is an example of Angelas nightmare leaking into his, I think it's the only case of this though.

Well, sure. I'm just saying that calling it a therapy session is probably too friendly a term. There's a good chance you'll just get the suicide ending, after all. Great therapy there. It seems more to me that different things represent different drives pulling him in different directions, as you'd expect from a deeply troubled and confused man. And of course there's a desire to end the confusion and pain. Either by running away with a delusion, just killing yourself, or properly facing up to it all.

So, it's not really therapy unless you make it therapy. Pyramid Head represents an executioner, judgement, so of course it's going to embody the idea that he should face his crimes.

Well it was mostly just a quick explanation but you do have a point. Also interesting fact the voice actor for James considers the suicide ending to be his canon ending he also said that the devs put the most into it, honestly I agree myself but that is just me and my interpretation of what James needs to do and that is what the therapy was for not to help james get better but to come to terms with why he was in silent hill in the first place. But honestly it's written in such a great way that any ending can be the best for him depending on your view of James as a person.

Maybe, but I don't think Silent Hill cares whether he comes to terms with it or not. It's James who cares about that on some level. The city's just making it solid.

The best ending was always self-evident.

Well I can't really argue with that.

Vincent probably did see them as monsters, given his line about god having bad taste.

>and the fact that different people aren't supposed to always experience the same things.

There is another reason this doesn't work in RPGs:

You, the DM, will be the eyes and ears of every party member.

This means that if something is unclear or weird or doesn't make sense, that's not horrifying at all because there's a perfectly good explanation: The DM is shit at keeping track of his world, just roll with it. John was impaled and now I'm talking to him? That's not uncanny, you just need to get your fucking notes in order broski.