Welcome to Silent Hill(So the PC's go to Silent Hill)

[Vknight]

To put it simply
My group is going to be in Silent Hill in the next session or 2 from now
If your in my group and you know what this is about say nothing

Here is a list of the characters and all their own emotional issues I could exploit

Spoiler

Show

Charlie(Is a kid turned into a cat)
-Cat
-Unsure of what he is and what he was. Won't admit it


Issac(Queen of Ravens wants him as mate)
-Find what he is passionate about
-Always has succeed at athletic areas.
-All his driving force has been his father not him. Wants his son to surpass him in wrestling
-Always done whatever his father has told him.


Peter(Has a alren bug which replaces his lost arm)
-Find the truth
-Accept your loss
-Try everything because you're not limited by just how you view yourself as a person
-Had no hope at all without Becky


Dragari(Half-Dragon)
-Poor Family
-Weak/Overprotective feeling, towards others
-Could not protect others when she most needs to
-Thinks she will be never be treated like a normal person.
-Sees herself as a freak


Joseph(Kidnapped by aliens can fly and laser vision)
-Find the truth
-He was kidnapped by Aliens


Bree(Queen of Spiders best friend)
-Overly Sexual
- Ok you got emotional abuse
-Bitch as a defensive action
-She tries to not be slutty and gets defensive about people saying that because she does not think she is slutty


Simon(Inner Hero Manifests as Kamina)
-Be a hero of your own story
-Stand up for yourself
-Assert yourself don't let others control or assume who or what you are
-Get over your families death they don't want you to fall apart simply from that


Edna(Pocket Dimension City with Goblins)
-Ego really pompous
-Does not like Bullies
-Thinks she can fix everything herself
-Is nothing without the Goblins how she see's herself
-Was bullied a lot

So considering all that lots to work with
They may split up into groups. Get divided into solo's depending on where, when, who, and how they are doing.
The group is composed of teenagers and they are all freshmen to Highschool
I've also listed there weirdness
The weirdness's are not known to the public. And they want to keep them hidden.
I have 2 weeks to 4 weeks before the first session in Silent Hill because sessions are every other week

I need suggestions and/or ideas for the characters and there Silent Hill bad stuff

Edna
One of the best ideas I have for Edna is
Kobayashi Maru forcing her to realize she needs others and can't always get the best answer
I need to make it so she has to take a No Win scenario and try it

Note
She almost had that in a mini-session where she met Death. Take Supernaturals Death + Discworlds Death for an idea of what this one is like

Bree
Bree I'm thinking making her have to deal with the fact she enjoys being watched and wants attention but really just wants a stable something.

Note
She is also a rebel without a cause and thinks she is perfect and has skipped classes in game

So I got some things but I got a large group
A big cast of NPC's to help get it across. Several NPC's that can be introduced in Silent Hill and 2 to 4 weeks to plan out the who, what, where, when, were, and how.

I need help thanks guys

The darker more depraved to the enlightened and coming to terms with ones issues all will be appreciated

[zorenathres]

well ill just jump right in, some of the PC's have some good motivations, but the Silent Hill theme plays off of the characters darker/ unconscious side & their negative motivations (monsters in silent hill are manifestations of that characters phobias & inner compulsions), for example, in the 2nd Silent Hill the main characters motivations for entering Silent Hill stem from his guilt about his wife's death (& he then receives a letter from Silent Hill, calling him there).

Silent Hill is a place that attracts lost souls, people harboring darkness in their hearts (if you pay close attention, in the games, everyone see's what they want to, you think you see a monster & another person see's a human you just killed, also, the more things you kill in game, the worse your ending turns out). An excellent example of this conundrum is expressed in this excellent movie, Stalker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_%281979_film%29, an alien place that is rumored to fulfill anyone's deepest desire who reaches the heart of "The Zone" (as in Silent Hill, the place manifests not what you want, but what you innately desire deep within your soul, which could very well be something terribly evil).

Example; The main character from Silent Hill-2 was overcome by his guilt about his wife & secretly desired to be punished for his actions, & upon seeing the picture of Pyramid Head on a wall, Pyramid Head manifests through his innermost desire to punish himself for his guilt.

I apologize for the long-ish post but a silent hill game requires a lot pf preparation if you want to simulate the feeling of the games, if you can, I would getting some more background for your PC's, what are they running from?, what dark secrets/ motivations do they possess? do they have a specific reason for coming to silent hill? are they looking for someone taken/ missing in silent hill?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39468877/Silent-Hill-d20

This is an excellent d20 resource for running a silent hill game, YMMV (its d20), but it has it down in terms of the overall concept & creeping out your players with their dark pasts made manifest, rules for making custom aberrations keyed to your players worst fears. One excellent note this book makes is the many different theories concerning the nature of Silent Hill (Silent Hill as Purgatory, as a Terrifying Hallucination, as a Manifestation of powerful occult rituals, as an alien experiment, etc...).

[Vknight]

No problem on the longish post

Well they are all Highschool students and since Silent Hill is still a small town that has people living in it with a beach. With cheaper rates the school decided to do a lake trip to the town.
But they all went on the trip because they 'felt they should'

I'm seeing it as bringing out the worst ideas, fears, emotions and inner desires for you to confront and/or realize whatever your faults manifest as.

More I'm looking for suggestions for things to say, do, send after, visions to cloud there judgement.

But more information on each of the characters should help and I appreciate what has just been given.
They are used to the weird thanks to either their power or friend

Spoiler

Show

Charlie(Is a kid turned into a cat)
-He went to Silent Hill[before] and if you come close to learning your lesson but fail to grasp it, then your trip through silent hill repeats over and over and over again. That is what happened to Charlie.
The part wandering around as a cat manifested his desire to belong with a family. A friend in pyramid he judges and protects from others. A corgi as a rival but funny guy. A tentacle as a boss telling him to watch others
A strange family but a manifestation of Silent Hills will and his want of friends

Issac(Queen of Ravens wants him as mate)
-Issac just has no drive or passions and since he has always been told what he will do where he will go what he will wear from childhood, he has no real identity

Peter(Has a alien bug which replaces his lost arm)
-Lost his arm nearly a year back. Becky the bug acts as a replacement limb when around. His lost arm was his drawing one and all his life, his dream career passions and life revolved around the ability to draw and create and now he can't and instead can destroy. He has lost what his plans, ideas, and ideals for the future were

Dragari(Half-Dragon)
-Picked on by kids for being weird(uses her powers a lot and has almost gotten found out several times). She is generally unaware of her place in the world and has no knowledge of her parents are or who they were outside of Uncle Quang

Joseph(Kidnapped by aliens can fly and laser vision)
Got kidnapped by aliens. Nothing emotionally crippling or major


Bree(Queen of Spiders best friend)
-She was emotionally abused, and may be suppressing other abuse of a darker kind that happened to her that she may just vaguely remember. It wasn't her parents but others that did. She does not have memories of the events or knowledge if her parents are aware. She may suspect they know and that is why they sent her away but that is merely doubt


Simon(Inner Hero Manifests as Kamina)
-Lost his parents. Lived with his grandparents. Has self doubts and believes he was the problem and why his family is gone
Wants and strives to be the hero which helps others self-sacrificing and bombastic the fighter, when he is the thinker he see's himself as useless


Edna(Pocket Dimension City with Goblins)
-Was bullied and struck back at them with pranks etc
Has a no nonsense thing from her time as the victim and wants to help others but thinks she has to command, lead and be in control/charge.
Her older brother is 25 so she is basically a only child. Her parents are rich and dole out large amounts of money to her though she loves them in game stats she has no relationship with them[relationships can be called upon to represent a time you did something with that person or trying to impress or help them]
This is a big problem cause all the egotism of Captain Kirk
From how things are she will probably blow up is the others try to do things in a way different then how she would have
She also holds grudges and things

[zorenathres]

as for things to send after your PC's, I would make them each choose a single phobia to start (spiders, clowns, creepy kids, cramped spaces etc...), & use that as a basis to fluff your monsters especially for that character (the guy who is afraid of kids is confronted with a lot of mumblers & other child-like aberrations, or becomes trapped in an abandoned school or something...).

If you cant get them to create some dark secret or other haunting past traumas or dark deeds, go off their chosen phobias to create the scenes (in SH2, the monsters are all manifestations of the characters inner desires, notice the nurses are more "dolls", the bloated head-things represent his guilt w/ suffocation, each monster should represent some specific trait or characteristic of that PC's fear & phobias, if not their darkest nightmares).

If you are pressed for time, use premade monsters that fit the bill of a concept you are trying to accomplish, & just refluff them to fit the setting. Dont forget to play up the isolation, the smog & mist always obscuring everything, the NPC's should be difficult to deal with (their all feeling the isolation & facing their own demons as well) & some of them should be descending into their own dark environments, sometimes drawing other people in.

That D20 resource I posted has a nifty map of silent hill, your hotel could be on the other side of the river, where "civilization" still exists, & just over the river is this burned, cloaked in smoke & ash ghost-town.

[Coidzor]

So far Joseph sounds sort of like Harry, in that he's someone without any real demons who is along for someone else's ride.

[Vknight]

@zorenathres Umm Silent Hill is not abandoned its full of people. It has 3 dimensions
1 Normal. 1 Mist. 1 Horrible Nightmare World or Death[Other-world]
People live in the normal one. Its a town with people it used to be a big town but then it died off. And most of the cult lived in the nearby place. So most of the residents are not even cult members

Correct Coidzor correct. He only wants to understand why the aliens kidnapped him. After asking Peter's alien arm her creators did not make him. He's Mulder but he is at peace with what has happened with his life

I'm thinking for Edna more a challenge like the Kobayashi Maru. Make her accept she can't always be right, or win, or get away without a sacrifice
Something that pushes the idea that she can't win.
Cause her desire to do so by herself almost got her killed.

Bree I'm thinking a small monster with a larger one wrapped around it in something of a vague sexual nature. Along with something like the nurses+the children monsters from the first in skimpy outfits

Peter armless monsters that just ram and smash things with spike covered bodies

Dragari human dragon abominations and mixtures of things like that to show off the weird and fears of what she could become and her freak status

Simon strip him of his ability to summon Kamina style guy and make him rely on his wit to help or something like that

So I got some basic ideas for all looking for more.
And I don't have any for Issac
and I don't have any for Charlie cause he is kind of living it right now

[Mewtarthio]

I'd consider straight-up stripping away a character's powers to be "cheating." Silent Hill forces you to confront the worst aspects of yourself. It forces you to face whatever you've been running from, while all your guilt and fears and shames take physical form and haunt you. It toys with its victims psychologically; directly crippling them seems a little out-of-character.

It's fine to screw with someone's powers if you need to enforce the Closed Circle, of course. Silent Hill loves enforcing its Closed Circle. Ideally, though, this should be in the form of surreal, supernatural interference preventing the character from escaping (say, they try to fly away, but the mist gets so thick they can't see the sky, and when it clears, they're still on the ground).

Thus, Simon shouldn't be rendered completely unable to rely on Kamina; instead, relying on Kamina should be made creepier. For instance, Simon could constantly run into reminders of his inadequacy as Simon. Sure, he could keep summoning Kamina to deal with everything, but the more he does so, the less relevant he becomes. Eventually, Simon may fade away altogether, to be completely replaced by Kamina. Something like that.

[Vknight]

I'd consider straight-up stripping away a character's powers to be "cheating." Silent Hill forces you to confront the worst aspects of yourself. It forces you to face whatever you've been running from, while all your guilt and fears and shames take physical form and haunt you. It toys with its victims psychologically; directly crippling them seems a little out-of-character.

It's fine to screw with someone's powers if you need to enforce the Closed Circle, of course. Silent Hill loves enforcing its Closed Circle. Ideally, though, this should be in the form of surreal, supernatural interference preventing the character from escaping (say, they try to fly away, but the mist gets so thick they can't see the sky, and when it clears, they're still on the ground).

Thus, Simon shouldn't be rendered completely unable to rely on Kamina; instead, relying on Kamina should be made creepier. For instance, Simon could constantly run into reminders of his inadequacy as Simon. Sure, he could keep summoning Kamina to deal with everything, but the more he does so, the less relevant he becomes. Eventually, Simon may fade away altogether, to be completely replaced by Kamina. Something like that.

I like that after all Kamina is the embodiment of all the good things he see's in himself and other people. And he feels that non of that is really in him.
His whole story is coming to terms with things like that stand up for himself do the good things trust people etc.
Give him some stuff dealing with trust issues would also be fun

[Vknight]

Come on guys the more help the merrier. They may get to Silent Hill as early as this Saturday!

Also they became aware I was asking for suggestions but have not found and have promised to not read if they find the thread until after Silent Hill

[CowardlyPaladin]

well ill just jump right in, some of the PC's have some good motivations, but the Silent Hill theme plays off of the characters darker/ unconscious side & their negative motivations (monsters in silent hill are manifestations of that characters phobias & inner compulsions), for example, in the 2nd Silent Hill the main characters motivations for entering Silent Hill stem from his guilt about his wife's death (& he then receives a letter from Silent Hill, calling him there).

Silent Hill is a place that attracts lost souls, people harboring darkness in their hearts (if you pay close attention, in the games, everyone see's what they want to, you think you see a monster & another person see's a human you just killed, also, the more things you kill in game, the worse your ending turns out). An excellent example of this conundrum is expressed in this excellent movie, Stalker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_%281979_film%29, an alien place that is rumored to fulfill anyone's deepest desire who reaches the heart of "The Zone" (as in Silent Hill, the place manifests not what you want, but what you innately desire deep within your soul, which could very well be something terribly evil).

Example; The main character from Silent Hill-2 was overcome by his guilt about his wife & secretly desired to be punished for his actions, & upon seeing the picture of Pyramid Head on a wall, Pyramid Head manifests through his innermost desire to punish himself for his guilt.

I apologize for the long-ish post but a silent hill game requires a lot pf preparation if you want to simulate the feeling of the games, if you can, I would getting some more background for your PC's, what are they running from?, what dark secrets/ motivations do they possess? do they have a specific reason for coming to silent hill? are they looking for someone taken/ missing in silent hill?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39468877/Silent-Hill-d20

This is an excellent d20 resource for running a silent hill game, YMMV (its d20), but it has it down in terms of the overall concept & creeping out your players with their dark pasts made manifest, rules for making custom aberrations keyed to your players worst fears. One excellent note this book makes is the many different theories concerning the nature of Silent Hill (Silent Hill as Purgatory, as a Terrifying Hallucination, as a Manifestation of powerful occult rituals, as an alien experiment, etc...).

Holy **** you've seen Stalker, thank you so much, nobody around me knows that movie.

Anyways, the closest paraell to Silent hill is most likely Ravenloft. The purpose of Silent HIll is somewhat unknowable, in a way you can use the town to overcome your emotional issues, however it also seems to earnestly hate its participants. Imagine Silent hill as an Extremely passive aggressive person who alternates between wanting to help you overcome your problems, and wants to simply give up and screw with you.

[Mewtarthio]

Anyways, the closest paraell to Silent hill is most likely Ravenloft. The purpose of Silent HIll is somewhat unknowable, in a way you can use the town to overcome your emotional issues, however it also seems to earnestly hate its participants. Imagine Silent hill as an Extremely passive aggressive person who alternates between wanting to help you overcome your problems, and wants to simply give up and screw with you.

I pretty much abandoned all thought of the town being anything but pure evil after I spent a minute looking at Angela's room in the labyrinth. The way I see it, the town gets its power by taking all your repressed guilt and pain and dragging it to the surface. If you manage to find catharsis in that, Silent Hill has nothing left to exploit and can no longer harm you. It's not letting you go; you're escaping.

That being said, I agree that Silent Hill is inherently alien, and its motivations shouldn't be nailed down concretely. Still, I think it'd be wrong to portray it as a helpful entity.

[Shadowknight12]

The problem(/wonderful thing) with Silent Hill is that it's a different thing for every person, and that includes the game developers, artists and writers. Every person envisions SH as something slightly different, so the town vacillates between plain old hell, "tough love" therapist, psychically reactive (but mindless), genuinely sentient, the mind of a traumatised little girl, a dying hallucination, a haunted place, the mind of another traumatised girl, and a demonically possessed genus loci.

Personally, I am of the mind that SH is not a place, but an experience (or a state, if that suits you better).

This is something that you kinda have to work out with your players, since it's really dependent on each of them. You can't just spring Silent Hill on them. You all have to build SH together (because it's not a place, it's an experience; and in this case, a shared experience).

[Vknight]

Silent Hill is alien to one's mind but how I'm having it work

You must confront what makes up your worst, memories, fears, guilt, issues, etc.

Failure is not accepting them and breaking down
Near Success but Repeating(Charlie); If knowing your fault but not saying I will fix it. Charlie wanted friends so he got some like how in 2 the third best ending is leaving with the women and she starts to get the same disease as your dead wife.
Complete Success is acceptance, repentance, acknowledgment and/or confrontation. Or close to it

My general idea is it gets worse the closer you are to almost winning and get better the closer you are to slipping and falling

The point being the PC's have to acknowledge there faults or delusions

As stated above me that is my point
There is a town called Silent Hill. But the experience of the other world that trauma that is the unique cusp of creation that makes everyone see the place through different eyes