Gothic Earth 1998 - Reader Additions

[High Priest Mikhal]

I want to here some feedback on the idea of setting Gothic Earth not in the 1890's but the 1990's. What sorts of world events could be linked to the machinations of the Red Death? What new, modern monsters are real--like Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger, or someone or something else? What places in the modern world are hotbeds of paranormal activity and why? In other words, do you have any ideas you want to share? I'm all ears, folks.

For the purposes of timeline I'm going on 1900 to 1999. Just remember that some humans are/were so evil they need no help from the Red Death to be horrific monsters. They did a fine job all on their own.

[Manofevil]

Well, to start with, you might have your man comment on the Cold War. Admittedly the Soviet Empire is happening clear on the other side of the world, but let's face it, crime syndicates and dictatorships LOVED the Cold War. All they had to do was play one side off against the other and they could get away with anything they wanted. That HAS to translate into the mystical underground, too, somhow. Also when the wall falls in 1989, that's bound to shake things up. Even if your man doesn't note the passage in any particular way personally, he's bound to notice other people doing so. The Red Death is also likely to have it's fingers in the famines in Ethiopia and Somalia. Though I don't know how soon your man will be moving overseas.

And I can't stop laughing at your signature!!

[High Priest Mikhal]

Real world events like that will likely get only a cursory sentence or two in the fiction; there's just too much that the Red Death could be involved in to get into on my own. The famines are a good point; Africa is an old continent and the ancient magics there would likely pose the greatest threat to the Red Death. I'll have to mention them.

The Berlin Wall is coming up. I've avoided talking about the Cold War for the time being because it's down to a simmer as the Soviet Union falls apart from the inside. Once it falls I had planned on the relative peace of the 1980's to be shattered for the mundane and supernatural worlds as the Soviet Union collapses. Besides the real world issues, there's a wealth of things the Soviets could have been keeping in check. Lycanthropes and vrykolykas from the interior of Russia, ghosts and ghouls from the goulags running loose, and I'm not even going to try and post what you'd find at Auschwitz-Berkanaut and other concentration camps in former-Soviet territory here. That's for a whole separate file.

[Isabella]

Well, you mentioned Jason and Freddy, soooo... since the Masque of the Red Death draws on literary figures as well as historical for it's major NPCs, Masque 1990s would presumably do the same. I can think of one piece of popular 1980s media with heroes of the same vein...

The Ghostbusters.

I remember in the cartoon, at least, the entire North American Eastern Seaboard was a hotbed of supernatural activity - both normal ghosts and "tag-a-long" spirits that arrived with America's immigrants. I don't recall why it it stayed that way after Gozer, though; I don't think it was ever explained. As for the rest of America, the urban legend community is alive and well. I only know Bloody Mary and La Llorona off the top of my head, but I was never much into urban legends.

[DocBeard]

The Ghostbusters

/Awesome/.

I would play the hell out of that.

[High Priest Mikhal]

The Ghostbusters.

A little cartoony for me, but why not? Somehow I doubt there's going to be a publicly known group of ghost hunters, though. They'd be plowed by the Red Death or discredited by it and run out of business before they could ever start. As a secret society--even if it is just the guys--using technology to counter magic and the supernatural, now that's a thought. After all, aren't ghosts and other incorporeal beings just energy instead of matter? How they fund their work in secret is another matter.

Ah, yes. I'd forgotten about the urban legends. The ghostly hitchiker, the cannibal butcher, the organ thieves, the call from inside the house, and those are just some of the more American ones. Look at the Japanese horror movies coming out (some based on their own urban legends) and look up the legends behind games like Fatal Frame. Those fit perfectly with Gothic Earth. So would games like Silent Hill (I'm actually working on fiction and rules for that right now). In fact the crux of MotRD 1998 is a Resident Evil adventure I ran four years ago expanded to include the entire world.

The sources don't really matter. Video games, movies, books, comics, local legends, fables, things straight out of your own twisted dreams in a mind so sick that even the doctors wanted to lock you up (oh, wait. That's me ). To finish, that last one brings Michael Meyers to mind; not counting the goddess awful third, fourth, and fifth movies the mythology is just perfect. Rework the Unholy Scion template to lose the spell-like abilities and Maternal Charm but include Regeneration and heightened ability scores and you've got him in a nutshell.

[Isabella]

Depends on what you mean by "publicly known" - certainly they'll never be the heroes of New York like they were in the cartoon, but both Van Helsing and Sherlock Holmes are pretty big names that have done their fair share of monster hunting and avoided being squashed by the Red Death. They're probably the kind of guys you get quietly referred to when you have a problem. Three have doctorates so they probably use a university as a front.

(Incidentally, some of the cartoon's monsters were darker than you'd expect from a Saturday morning cartoon show.)

All of the Japanese movies are great because anything you watch has probably been turned into something Gothic by the Japanese. (Check out the horrible depressing ending to this otherwise upbeat film: http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article56.htm) I remember watching a movie where Godzilla, of all things, was the souls of all the people the Japanese committed atrocities to during the Pacific War and attacked Japan due to the government's constant denial of what had happened.

Zombie Godzilla. Really, Japan.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

There were a variety of supernatural menaces featured on the X-Files, many of which could be directly converted into adventures. While the "qabals" on that show were primarily scifi-oriented, it wouldn't take much work to make the "alien conspiracy" a supernatural one instead.

F. Paul Wilson's 'Repairman Jack' novels could be useful source material. They read more like action novels than horror, but the plots are spooky, and straightforward enough to translate into game scenarios.

For that matter, ransacking the horror racks at the public library or the cheap-paperback-trash shelves in any used bookstore might turn up a lot of ideas for contemporary-setting horror plotlines. You don't even have to take the books home with you: just jot down notes on the back covers' teaser-blurbs, and there's bound to be themes you can run with.

[Isabella]

Have you played Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube? That offers a slew of ideas for a variety of times and places.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Eternal Darkness is one of my favorite games, actually. It was the basis for the idea that the Inquisition was, in fact, a Red Death-instituted progrom to stamp out the last bits of magical knowledge (and commit all sorts of evil besides) in Europe in the core fiction I'm writing. Obviously it didn't fully work, but it helped do enough damage to make magic so rare in the modern era it's discounted entirely by the masses.

And yes, I know van Helsing and Holmes were famous and still managed to avoid the Red Death. That's sort of how I envision Spengler, Veckman, Egon, and Zedmore: four guys working behind the scenes. I can't incorporate them into my own fiction without diluting the story, but if someone wrote up something on them I'd likely put in a netbook. I've got the basic rules (and I do mean basic) down but they need some serious playtesting, which I can't do currently. Once I've got them ironed out enough to be feasible I'm planning on sending a copy to the FoS. They're on my website (http://www.geocities.com/hpmikhal/motrd1998.zip) if you're interested, as well as some fiction revolving around the RE games. Just presenting the Resident Evil saga is taking an inordinate amount of time and effort to make sure everything works, so I have to work on it almost to the exclusion of any other story.

That's another point to this post: I want to hear what others have to say/write about a modern day Gothic Earth. This is the same idea behind the Kargatane's (RIP) Books of S____. We all have a story to tell, an idea we want to share. Care to share yours?

[Manofevil]

Actually you repeated yourself there. the names of the Ghostbusters were:
Peter Venkman
Ray Stanz
Egon Spangler
Winston Zedmore.

[DocBeard]

Well, just the idea of a group of scientists trying to fight the supernatural on its own turf is, jokes aside, very Gothic Earth, I'd think.

Also, I'd suguest looking at shows like mythbusters, ghost hunters, and some Deadlands products for the intriguing idea of heroes fighting back a tangable, bodyless evil simply by doing /good/, bringing hope back to the people and giving the evil fewer places to corrupt.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Great ideas all, folks. But like I said: I'm too busy with the Resident Evil stuff to write up anything else right now. This is meant to be a place where you guys post stuff you've come up with. I must admit the Ghostbusters idea is really growing on me, and could be instrumental in an adventure I'm writing about the approach of the year 2000. Without getting into the whole new-millennium-not-new-millenium arguement it makes sense that this might be a time the Red Death tries to do something. We were all on edge that something might happen (Y2K, anyone?) and that's the sort of fear the Red Death wants sown.

[Isabella]

I don't know that any of us have anything already in existence for 1998 Masque. But a new thread could always be opened up on the boards to flesh out on the individual ideas we come up with in this thread; there are quite a few collaboration threads like that floating around.

[Manofevil]

I forgot this. Has your man ever lived under the threat of nuclear armageddon? I remember that being a very large part of growing up in the '80's. Paranoia, bomb shelters, survivalism, made-for-TV movies about nuclear destruction and America under communism. It was a part of almost every newspaper and high school government class. I must have written 30 different papers on it. It was everywhere back then. I can't remember if your man mentioned dealing with it or not. It's definitely something he would have to deal with on some level.