JBPuffin
2015-12-29, 12:06 AM
Since this thread has seen traffic but not answers, I decided to change its purpose some. Instead of just me asking a question about one system for one game, I invite my fellow Playgrounders to ask for the same help with any campaign ideas they're unsure of. With that in mind, I'm adding another campaign with a question, and invite y'all to do the same.
I initially put this idea up on a page where other people could post crazy campaign ideas they had (which is now lost to the bowels of page 3) and while I can't sleep I thought it'd be interesting to see what the easiest system would be for this sort of game. I was thinking FATE Core could work, maybe even Accelerated, but to get the feel I imagine it would be a piece of work.
Here's the pitch:
Two words: psychic. zombies.
Well, okay, it's more elaborate than that. Essentially, a "zombie" outbreak starts when a guy suddenly falls ill with some seemingly benign ailment. Out of nowhere, he goes crazy (albeit unable to leave his bed due to weakness) and while flailing around he touches someone in the room. That person is now carrying, not the illness, but a bizarre psionic pseudo-parasitic being manifested straight from his/her ethos and thought patterns. He/she, realizing what's happened after a couple of days, starts selectively zombifying people - close friends, lovers, children, whomever - by simply touching them. This leads to a what you could call a superhero 'verse - people getting superpowers - albeit with a serious drawbacks, as the power always destabilizes them somehow.
The powers themselves aren't standard powers - no flight, super strength, or lasers. They are certainly superhuman, however; some, who we'll call Carriers, after first being unlocked gain the powers those they infect receive in addition to the one they start with. Carriers don't necessarily always transmit the infection - they can limit it with practice - but for a while they've got to be super careful who they infect as non-Carriers don't have such control. There'd be people who can optimize their actions to achieve the outcome they desire with the least amount of effort, those who can boost the capabilities of others simply with their presence, individuals who can brainwash people into (guess what?) mindless servants, etc. There'd be a lot of infected folk whose only power instills a specific emotion as well as passes the infection - guilt, lust, anger, joy, any emotion under the sun - and Carriers might find themselves loaded with combinations which make absolutely no intelligible sense. The final result being, Carriers cause a lot of mayhem wherever they go.
The best part? The original infected is locked down, so it all starts with that first person, who, guess what?, is a Carrier. Oh joy.
PCs would all be infected, most likely - possibly all Carriers, if we want to get crazy. The plot? Depends. If a mind controller ends up making an ACTUAL zombie army, the PCs might want to take it out or get a piece of that ability. If they're attached to a specific place, they'll act as the local supers squad, able to replace their numbers when needed. They could be villains, mercenaries, champions of a cause - whatever they are, they're among the most powerful of the infected.
Of course, they could start asking where the powers come from; that is, if they aren't preoccupied trying to deal with the mess of a life they're now leading. See, these superpowers? They make your brain go ape****. No joke, every person infected acquires some form of mental disorder if they don't have one. These range from mild Asperger's to extreme schizophrenia, dyslexia to their IQ dropping into the teens, eternal rage to a constant need for encouragement or they'll die. And of course there's the problem that everyone in the party's gonna have these problems, so...yeah. This could be a blast.
4th edition Dungeons and Dragons offered the idea that psionics were a result of the Far Realm(Lovecraftian psychic horror-creatures from being any geometrical design; essentially DnD aliens) bleeding into the Material Plane, and possibly others, because a mysterious deity ballsed up and opened a tightly-shut portal. My take for Psychosis? This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened - more than once, portals have been opened into a similar plane of mind-wrenching horrors. Most of the time, however, a more benevolent extraterrestrial sealed it from the the inside with the help of a champion (after a while, usually months or years). Our "heroes" aren't so lucky this time - the gate was opened, then shut, specifically to release this psionic virus by an ever-hungrier being desiring to take Earth for itself once it's all gone to hell. In other words, I don't want this to turn into a "save the world" setting; I want this to be a crapsack world where the people best suited to save it can't do anything about it - there's no one on the other side willing to save them. It's the end of the world caused by Earth's biggest threat: people.
So, with all that said, does anyone know of a more suitable way to pull this off than a modded FATE? Thanks in advance.
In short, I'm writing a story centered around Final Fantast Tactics Advance, and I was wondering if there's a good system where each player could run part of or, for a single-player campaign, an entire clan. I have no idea where to start, so this needs quite a bit more help than the former.
I initially put this idea up on a page where other people could post crazy campaign ideas they had (which is now lost to the bowels of page 3) and while I can't sleep I thought it'd be interesting to see what the easiest system would be for this sort of game. I was thinking FATE Core could work, maybe even Accelerated, but to get the feel I imagine it would be a piece of work.
Here's the pitch:
Two words: psychic. zombies.
Well, okay, it's more elaborate than that. Essentially, a "zombie" outbreak starts when a guy suddenly falls ill with some seemingly benign ailment. Out of nowhere, he goes crazy (albeit unable to leave his bed due to weakness) and while flailing around he touches someone in the room. That person is now carrying, not the illness, but a bizarre psionic pseudo-parasitic being manifested straight from his/her ethos and thought patterns. He/she, realizing what's happened after a couple of days, starts selectively zombifying people - close friends, lovers, children, whomever - by simply touching them. This leads to a what you could call a superhero 'verse - people getting superpowers - albeit with a serious drawbacks, as the power always destabilizes them somehow.
The powers themselves aren't standard powers - no flight, super strength, or lasers. They are certainly superhuman, however; some, who we'll call Carriers, after first being unlocked gain the powers those they infect receive in addition to the one they start with. Carriers don't necessarily always transmit the infection - they can limit it with practice - but for a while they've got to be super careful who they infect as non-Carriers don't have such control. There'd be people who can optimize their actions to achieve the outcome they desire with the least amount of effort, those who can boost the capabilities of others simply with their presence, individuals who can brainwash people into (guess what?) mindless servants, etc. There'd be a lot of infected folk whose only power instills a specific emotion as well as passes the infection - guilt, lust, anger, joy, any emotion under the sun - and Carriers might find themselves loaded with combinations which make absolutely no intelligible sense. The final result being, Carriers cause a lot of mayhem wherever they go.
The best part? The original infected is locked down, so it all starts with that first person, who, guess what?, is a Carrier. Oh joy.
PCs would all be infected, most likely - possibly all Carriers, if we want to get crazy. The plot? Depends. If a mind controller ends up making an ACTUAL zombie army, the PCs might want to take it out or get a piece of that ability. If they're attached to a specific place, they'll act as the local supers squad, able to replace their numbers when needed. They could be villains, mercenaries, champions of a cause - whatever they are, they're among the most powerful of the infected.
Of course, they could start asking where the powers come from; that is, if they aren't preoccupied trying to deal with the mess of a life they're now leading. See, these superpowers? They make your brain go ape****. No joke, every person infected acquires some form of mental disorder if they don't have one. These range from mild Asperger's to extreme schizophrenia, dyslexia to their IQ dropping into the teens, eternal rage to a constant need for encouragement or they'll die. And of course there's the problem that everyone in the party's gonna have these problems, so...yeah. This could be a blast.
4th edition Dungeons and Dragons offered the idea that psionics were a result of the Far Realm(Lovecraftian psychic horror-creatures from being any geometrical design; essentially DnD aliens) bleeding into the Material Plane, and possibly others, because a mysterious deity ballsed up and opened a tightly-shut portal. My take for Psychosis? This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened - more than once, portals have been opened into a similar plane of mind-wrenching horrors. Most of the time, however, a more benevolent extraterrestrial sealed it from the the inside with the help of a champion (after a while, usually months or years). Our "heroes" aren't so lucky this time - the gate was opened, then shut, specifically to release this psionic virus by an ever-hungrier being desiring to take Earth for itself once it's all gone to hell. In other words, I don't want this to turn into a "save the world" setting; I want this to be a crapsack world where the people best suited to save it can't do anything about it - there's no one on the other side willing to save them. It's the end of the world caused by Earth's biggest threat: people.
So, with all that said, does anyone know of a more suitable way to pull this off than a modded FATE? Thanks in advance.
In short, I'm writing a story centered around Final Fantast Tactics Advance, and I was wondering if there's a good system where each player could run part of or, for a single-player campaign, an entire clan. I have no idea where to start, so this needs quite a bit more help than the former.