How would you plot a game that starts as pure sci-fi or cyberpunk with no overt signs of the supernatural, but that then turns into a ghost story that catches the characters and their players off-guard? What sort of paranormal happenings would be interesting juxtaposed in a futuristic setting? Do you supposed that such a twist be well received, or unwelcome?
Seed idea:
The player characters are a group of troubleshooters, either freelance or held on retainer, who are tasked by a mega-corporation to "clear out" a Kowloon-style apartment complex so that the company can build a new super-skyscraper. When they enter, they find the place seemingly devoid of life, but full of "anomalies" that harass and harm them, and won't let them leave.
Easton King
Pic related is how you do it.
Jose Jenkins
Mess with their electronics a lot. Let them believe it's a glitch at first, or it's interference from the building, or at worst someone got into their system or something. Until they start seeing things they can't explain away as glitches.
Of course if you're going with that seed you need a reason why they were asked to clear it out in the first place, if it's seemingly abandoned. Lights can be seen going on and off from the outside, voices can be heard, that sort of thing. It should look lively on the outside.
Oliver Peterson
>Of course if you're going with that seed you need a reason why they were asked to clear it out in the first place, if it's seemingly abandoned. Lights can be seen going on and off from the outside, voices can be heard, that sort of thing. It should look lively on the outside. Or, building on that, there could still be living people inside the complex, just far fewer than assumed. They can't leave either. And you don't want to know what happened to the rest.
Locals have long ago learned to go nowhere near the place but the uncaring corps were acting on outdated information, since no official has gone into it in years - they stopped sending them when they no longer came out, which was hardly unusual for a neighbourhood like that.
Owen Baker
There shouldn't be plenty of anomalies. If they show up often, they become routine and stop being scary. Make them rare. Try also to have a logical reason for them (ex. communication systems don't work well and get interrupted at moment > maybe it's a frequency jammer used by terrorists or a gang, lights flicker, go out, or turn on > old and unreliable wiring...). I don't know how futuristic you setting is and how light intensifiers/low-light visions systems are common, but make darkness something scary (ex. penalty to detect ambushes and traps). Don't give too many explanations in one time. Distribute clues along the building sparingly, hidden in notebooks, saved on computers, caught from enemy radio frequencies, etc.
Elijah Rodriguez
...
Noah Allen
Remember that even science cannot explain everything. Reality glitches exist. Ghosts could possibly haunt databanks, both of the spooky spirit kind and the I-uploaded-my-brain-but-now-I'm-dead kind.
Nathaniel Carter
...
Isaac Peterson
Just put 2501 in there somewhere.
Josiah Parker
...
Juan Foster
...
Jacob Perry
...
Kayden Morris
...
Nathaniel Cox
...
Benjamin Williams
...
Daniel Long
>The PCs think, at first, that their intel is out of date because the complex's layout doesn't match up with the floorplans they were provided. Slowly, however, they come to find that the building is shifting and reconfiguring itself around them.
>The PCs come across evidence of others that have explored the complex, and even some earlier teams of trouble shooters that the company that hired them sent. What's found indicates that these people never left, and that something unnatural befell them.
>A former resident or earlier explorer appears from time to time on computers and terminals scattered throughout the building to help the PCs along. Near the end of the game they discover that she is actually dead and that they have been speaking with her ghost or an incredibly lifelike AI she created.
Jordan Ortiz
I would make everything suggest a bugged AI, like a building automation monitor, except for one event.
Have an npc prepped to point it out, and let the players tear themselves apart trying to figure it out.
Ian Long
Have their handlers see shit from the video feed that the players can't. Don't go crazy on the descriptions, feed them just enough to make them think their handlers getting jumpy and looking for things in shadows. Maybe have them be a recovered junkie.
Andrew Morris
There is an SCP that basically goes to online forums, integrates itself into a community and if you friend it and talk to it at some point you die but your user will continue to interact in whatever forum it was in and give vague hints that the user is dead.
The idea of ghost interacting with technology or technology that causes paranomal activity in a sci-fi cyberpunk setting is woefully underexplored.
That said, I could also point to the first episode of Cyber City 808 where literally a dude hooked up his corpse to a mainfrain of a tower and took over the building to kill the guy that killed him.
Ryder Morgan
Have some old, outmoded androids stalking the hallways that, when examined, show no sigh that they should be able to run at all. Don't have them attack the party unless they're attacked. Just have them be odd. One looks like its going through the motions of building something without any tools, one that throws itself down the stairwell every hour, like three just hanging out in an empty room looking like they're drinking and having a good time, things like that. Then have the party come across newspapers or something about how such and such committed suicide by throwing herself down the stairwell and three dudes died of a gas leak during a night of drunken revelry.
Chase Bailey
Pull a FnaF where they are literally powered by the souls of people.
Camden Nelson
Have some standard paranormal shit happen, like opening/closing doors, chairs moving and the like. Don't let player see it right away, have their handlers report shit like "I think someones in apartment XX, there's something weird going on there". Then have them get glimpses, leading them on. Player see a chair slid across the room and a door slam and moves to investigate, but the handler is just yelling in their ear that he see nothing on the cameras.
Have mechanical shit behave erratically, glitch and shit. But have the timing be uncanny, the actions almost cheeky.
Austin Baker
you mean Key the Metal Idol, right?
Carson Reed
I'd also make their supervisor change the mission objectives as new clues get discovered.
h-1: We plan on reclaiming this contaminated area and build a whole district on it. You will go in undercover, recon the area to make sure nothing inside will hinder reconstruction. h+2: Yes, we know there is actually someone inside. A terrorist cell called Black October is hiding there. It captured a valuable asset of us three days ago. You must recover the asset at all cost and get out. We will send an AV to pick you up. h+3: Actually, you are not the first team we have sent. According to our indications two members of the previous team are still alive close from your position. Recover the asset has priority. Save survivors is secondary. h+5: kill... Blood... KILL THEM!!! KILL THEM ALL!!! h+6: The situation is out of control. A B-3C bomber is on its way and will drop a tactical nuclear device on the block in 2 hours, you better get out.
Nicholas Stewart
This is a good one. I’m stealing it.
Ryan Wood
No but i learned something new and got some neat ideas from it
Xavier Parker
>KB SOMA
Luke Peterson
Also. Play with ideas like VR, drugs, system error, hacking, de-synch of programming, psionic tech etc.
I once made up a setting with CP Megalopolis ruined in war. It was Cyberpunk version of Apocalypse Now kinda, in one sequence I had middle-high class civillians wired to VR stuff wandering ruined Mall thinking they are currently doing shopping, unaware they are dehydrated, wounded and starving husks of people.
Camden Brown
>PCs are hired to run a surveillance operation on an important Zaibatsu conference being held at the company President's mansion, built on a remote island remote island
>PCs infiltrate the meeting by posing as extra servants called in to help out during the party
>Company President is old and will soon retire, different factions within the Zaibatsu are currently scheming to try and take over the company
>However, a large portion of the Zaibatsu's funds are being held in encrypted accounts that required specially fabricated data-cores to access. No one will be able to take control without them, and the rumor is that the Company President has hidden them somewhere on the island
>A Typhoon blows in, everyone is trapped on the island until the storm passes
>The guests receive a letter from someone claiming to be a Witch, saying that all of them will die unless the data cores can be found
>One by one, the guests are brutally murdered under a variety of circumstances that are impossible to explain... unless the culprit really is a Witch
>The PCs have to solve the murder mystery and find the data cores before everyone is killed (or maybe it really is the work of a Witch...?).
Juan Cox
You could try Kuro. It's a game that is supposed to blend cyberpunk with Japanese horror (Ring, Dark Water, The Grudge...). Unfortunately, the author had the bad idea to mix in traditional Japanese folklore (tengu, kappa, etc.) which totally killed the game for me.
Juan Robinson
Honestly, a witch might actually be perfect. Haunted apartments are old hat and the players will probably guess what you're going for after a bit, but I don't think anyone would expect a witch using actual fucking black magic against them in a typical cyberpunk setting.
Jeremiah Johnson
Look up Siren, it's where I got the inspiration. The enemies in that game are so good.
Nathan Kelly
I like this idea, that mission control is a source of intel and a necessary lifeline to the outside world for the PCs, but at the same time keeps changing their mission objectives and knows a lot more about the paranormal nature of the complex than they are willing to share. Following mission control's instructions becomes a necessary evil if the PCs want to get out, unless they are contacted by that A.I. or ghost that offers them alternative advice and intel. You could make part of the game's tension a question on who the PCs should trust:
Mission control, who is an anchor to the real world outside but who has their own agenda, or the woman, who is clearly part of the weirdness but seems to care about them more.
Isaiah Brown
>The woman was a member of the last team >When the PCs find her body she's partially mummified in her armor with cables piercing her skull and snaking in and around her body
Aiden Adams
>While most apartments look to be long abandoned, some look like they've only been vacated moments before the PCs arrived, with TVs left on and ready-to-eat meals steaming.
>One of the previous strike teams set up a defensive perimeter in a large room, surrounded by evidence of a massive firefight that left no bodies.
Landon Martinez
And of course there's plenty potential for them to lose contact and have to re-establish it somehow. Maybe they hack into the complex's own communication grid to find a wire to the outside. Then when they make finally make it to the roof and find out they have reception again, they find out their handler has been trying in vain to contact them for hours. Who was phone?
Noah King
If augmented reality is being heavily used by the PCs in this setting, make them severely confused whether what they're seeing is happening for real or is an AR glitch. Are there actual ghosts in this place? Is someone trying to Scooby Doo the PCs and scare them away? Is it some combination of the two?
Maybe it all started as a ruse set up by a master-hacker living there, maybe the woman communicating with the PCs, to scare the megacorp's goon squads away and leave the place alone. The company sent a strike team in and killed the residents, but were killed themselves. Now the place is haunted for real by what happened, and the company has sent the PCs in to try and finish what the other teams started.
Grayson Bennett
>The lighting in the building is continuously on the blink, flickering and flashing on and off in some rooms. Between flashes, the scene sometimes changes, showing awful things.
>The walls are covered in graffiti, left by vandals who have gotten lost in the labyrinth of hallways and rooms. One of these graffiti artists may still be lurking around somewhere.
>There is one stairwell deep in the heart of the complex that seems to lack both a bottom and a top. The PCs can hear crying coming from somewhere above, but they can't reach it.
Brody Moore
The original Strike Team become vengeful spirits, stalking the halls alongside the twisted remnants of the residents they killed. The hacker feels terrible for the hand she had in the situation and as such tried to help the PCs.
