Game in the Brain

Gaming Craving: GURPS Mist

The Movie the Mist has a great feel and mood desirable for an RPG, especially with that Cthulu-esque suspense. As a Gaming Craving, a great quick way to prep and wolf down this kind of adventure is to gather a themed set of monsters and set it loose on the adventures who are stuck in a supermarket.

The fun part to start with is asking a bunch of other gamer or gms to suggest some monsters, imagining how they work and how they would react if a portal to another world, with softer and easier prey, opens up.

DnD monsters that come to mind are Aberrations. Especially when they appear least like any of the terrestrial creatures found on earth, except for the most disgusting vermin.

Even with old-DnD monsters converted to GURPS, set out against mundane humans with realistic levels of lethality, off set by “fudge” points that allow PCs to survive by creative elements of chance or fate (justified by how character death can derail the fun and slow down the pace of the game, yet the limit of fudge points make death still a possibility).

Even if everyone in the table has watched the movie would not derail any fun to be had or suspense, it might even enhance it. Anyway, the GM is basing the creatures actions based on their abilities and what would consequently occur. It is practically an new and open ending and just arbitrating the monsters closing in (monsters with limitations in their abilities, no improvised abilities “for effect” and function with their basic predatory instincts and intelligence)

My idea is setting the adventure in Baguio, a mountain province where there is a former US military base, beautiful landscaping (thanks to American colonial city planner Burnham, unlike the urban manila is today), and the natural foggy and misty climate.

Players play mundane characters, they each make a character based on an officemate with some extra points, then Pass the character sheet around clockwise/counter-clockwise. So the characters are not themselves but someone else they, ideally, at least respect enough to write up to do justice (or they may have a crush on).

Materials are easily found in Google maps, tourist maps, and old declassified 1940s barracks and military installations.

The nice expectation is to leave it open ended, record the sessions, manage the breaks, and kick back and have some fun. I think researching and finding the material would take me 10 hours.

Character creation should take less an hour per player. The Players also provide roster of archetypes and personality traits from and circles for fodder and tables with names for the GM to roll , a week in advance so that he can have a lot prepared by game day.The can all fill a spreadsheet then the GM cuts and pastes then uses the spreadsheet to generate the values for rolls.

Some considerations: Roll IQ per day, the more sane the character the more difficult to grasp the situation and they cannot act on the impending doom (they must deal with the more immediate needs). So IQ+6 and the GM makes this roll. -1 per day and per instance of life threatening terror, until they fail their IQ and realize the madness of their circumstance.

What monsters would be best for such a GURPS adventure?

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