I'm hoping to run a horror one-shot based off The Thing for my group of players.
>be on space ship hurtling through void
>find something of possible alien design
>bring it on board
>shape shifter escapes
>terror
You know the drill. I'm thinking of using Unisystem for it (All Flesh Must Be Eaten) as that's the best system I know for ease of use, lots of options, and lethality.
Though I'm sorta stuck on how to keep the paranoia of players possibly being impersonated by the shape shifter when they meet (NPCs are easy). I'm thinking of when two or more PC's are in a general area I hand each of them a slip of paper with either "you are yourself" or "you are the Thing *insert goal*" written on it. If they get the latter when meeting with someone then they can try to lure them into letting their guard down, finding out about other survivors, etc. Completion of the goal or the possibility of being found out and I will take over and transform the character into the Thing. Of course this has its flaws. So straight to the point - what are Veeky Forums's suggestions for handling this? Ideas, better systems, ways to keep paranoia, etc
John Carpenter's The Tabletop Game
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Call of Cthulhu (BRP, made by Chaosium) had a book released during either 5th or 6th edition (currently the game is on 7th) that was specifically a splatbook for various monsters, and the 'Thing' was one of them. The generic monster form's stats are irrelevant, but one of its special features was that anyone who came into contact with it (at all) needed to succeed on a Luck roll or be infected.
I like that idea. The infection might take a while (longer than session time) before it does anything much.
But it would be great for when players reach the escape pod or whatever and then have to leave some people behind, or kill them.
How dare you fucking copy my campaign!? I’m designing it right now and if they think you’re me and this shit gets spoiled I will Peter Pan through the internet and drop kick your soul
6th
I Ran something very similar a couple years ago. I didn't use any system, but used cue cards and tokens for flame throwers, dynamite, etc. Essentially if the thing got you alone in a room you'd die. If you had a token you could kill it. If there was more than one person in the room you could escape without harm. It was pretty fun, but since we were running it in the back of a games shop it was hard to cultivate the atmosphere I wanted.
Oh, And take this!
youtube.com
It'll help set up some atmosphere.
Maybe you are copying my game??
Now our players must decide which one of us is the real user and which one is the impersonator.
Oh man all those planet sounds are incredible. Definitely will be used - thank you
Pitch it as a game of conspiracy right from the get-go. Corporate, military, scientific... whatever. The point is, the players should be subtly deceived into thinking that the reason for passing notes and secret messages is because everyone has an ulterior motive (which they might), but it should slowly come to light that the real reason is because -someone- is an alien shapeshifter that absorbs human prey and mimics them perfectly. When someone gets infected, give it a while and wait for an innocuous moment to let them know what's up.
That'd be the one.
...
Wondering how big of a ship it should be. I'm thinking of a corporate cargo hauler so I can easily work in a reason for passing notes like said.
I'm more so worried about it being too small since it's only one scene (spaceship) and will have to remain interesting for probably 4+ hours. I'm normally very sandbox-y with my other games and am used to that. I guess my main worry is it will be too small to provide an adequate play area for players to move around in with them having to see the same area over and over again.
Of course it can't be too large either. Otherwise no one will meet each other.
I've been spending some time looking at Traveller deck plans and so far nothing has felt large enough for me. I might have to mash two or three together or make my own entirely
I suggest you use Dread. It's numberless and diceless, using a Jenga tower as its mechanic. It's brilliant and SUPER effective. Tension is built right into the system. It's amazing.
Anyone got a DL link?
Wow!!!
Gonna give this a bump before I go out for a bit.
Reminder The Thing 2011 was meant to be 100% practical effects but the studio didn't like the looks of it because it "made it look like it was from the 80's." as tweeted by one of the producers. Thus many scenes had to be re-shot and cgi had to be added over a lot of pre-exisiting stuff.
I'd say run it as a one-shot. Give every player a note with a 'damaging secret' such as "You're being blackmailed by a rival company" or something, and your one pre-arranged mole in the group gets the 'you're a monster' note.
The practical effects from the old one look a little 'fake' but they also look like physical things which interact with the cast. Unlike most CG creations.
An alternative is Ten Candles. It's another storygame geared to horror and works very well for athmosphere and the feeling of paranoia. The main difference is that in Dread progressive elimination of players works better, but it wouldn't be hard to hack Ten Candles.
Do you have a .pdf for 10 Candles? No trouble if you don't as I can look it up tomorrow but something to read before bed is nice
5 room dungeons are more than enough for a single session dude
That makes me FUCKING FURIOUS that they ruined it by painting over things. FFFFFFFF
Need more inspiration? Try John Carpenter's Tales of Science Fiction. Got a nice old school feel to it plus his name alone promises you that someone will be body horrored in every issue.
First three issue story, Vault, is complete:
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Second story, Vortex, is up to issue 4 out of 8:
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I would establish that all of the players experience lost time. Nobody knows if they are infected. You know (as the GM) of course, but everyone else shouldn't find out till after it's over. You want that ending, where McCreary and Childs don't really know. That they're both sure (or pretending to be sure) that they're them.
Hell, you could keep it unknown, make sure every character has some time that they can't account for, and not only is it not public knowledge, it's not known *at all* until it's too late.