Campaign Pitch: NW Mounted Monster Hunters

In all of my years of playing, reading about and otherwise enjoying RPGs I have come across very few games or campaign settings that are set in Canada. There are definitely some out there, most notably as supplements for games such as RIFTS, oWoD and Deadlands; however none of them really have any kind of connection to the Canadian identity or history outside of superficial elements (cold weather and polar bears). Maybe there isn't much demand for games set in Canada, but as a Canadian I'd really enjoy a romp around our history with a good campaign. I have had an idea for just such a campaign percolating in my head for some time now and I'm going to hit you with my pitch.

NW Mounted Monster Hunters

It is 1880s Canada. The winters are harsh and the land is wild, dangerous and aware. The Northwest Mounted Police ride out to protect the land and its people. There are things out there in the dark forests and forgotten valleys, shadowy things spoken only of in the myths and tales of native peoples. There be monsters living out there in the wilds and they don't see any reason to hide from this latest wave of men trying to make homes in their hunting grounds.

The NWMP might act as a police force and they do police the land, but their real mandate is to hunt and kill the monsters that pray on men. The campaign would follow a group of new recruits as they hunt down monsters of all kinds and the campaign, should it last, would occasionally place the PCs at historical events which had been given a supernatural twist, such as the Klondike Gold Rush or North-West Rebellion. The game would also jump forward in time between hunts so that we could follow the characters as they get older and also so that we could hit more major events.

What Game Would I Use?

There are for potential games that I would use to run NWMMH. Whichever game I  ultimately picked would depend on the players I had sitting at my table. In no particular order the games are:

• FATE
• GURPS Monster Hunters 
• Call of Cthulhu 
• World of Darkness
• Dogs in the Vineyard

All of the above would require some adapting to make work. FATE would be the easiest to get going. GURPS and CoC would be the more deadly options, but would require the most work to get going. nWoD sits in the middle somewhere. DitV is a weird one that I hadn't been considering until I started writing this; however, I think that the style of the game fits with what I have in mind for this campaign. It would be trivial to replace Mormons with NWMP and go from there.

I guess Deadlands might work as well, especially if I used that supplement I linked to way at the beginning of this post. I'm not really a fan of classic or D20 Deadlands, though.

How Would I Run It?

I would want a game where it costs the PC's dearly to win the day, but not one that is hopeless. I see this as a game where limb loss is much more common than outright PC death. The game would be equal parts sight-seeing through Canadian history and action-horror. Think CoC, only most of the game is outdoors and the party is made up of highly competent rifle and frontiersmen. It would be Monster Hunter Alpha set in the late 1800s and without all of the American south trappings. The campaign would be episodic in nature, with each session being a self contained adventure surrounding a specific monster.

In a perfect world the game would continue until the formation of the RCMP and at that point I would like to retire the characters and the game. From there I would like to like to fast forward to a monster hunting RCMP unit in another point in time (Could be any interesting period of the 1900s or even present day.) or move on to an entirely different game.

Categories: Campaign Pitch, Canada, DitV, Fate, GURPS, Monster Hunting, Northwest Mounted Police, nWoD, RCMP, RPG

Fudge Dice & Hex Crawling

You might not know this about me, but I love a good hexcrawl. I think there is something to be said for a game in which the players just strike out across the world to see what they might find. If you're not familiar with hexcrawling then head over to The Welsh Piper, he has done a great overview.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been racing to put together a zombie hack for the always enjoyable Fate System. One thing that I really wanted to put into the game was some way to put together a city for survivors to wander their way through. This thought lead me to placing a hex overlay over top my city of residence and to the realm of hexcrawling.

The Collaborative Spirit of Fate

One of the really special things about Fate and the various games that use Fate is that they have a strong collaborative spirit. In Dresden Files the players populate a city with plot elements and characters. In Diaspora they create the very planets that they will visit. Just using a random table to populate hexes doesn't mesh with this collaborative philosophy that Fate has.

If a game of Fate is going to stay true to this collaborative spirit then the players need to be more involved with the hexcrawl.

  Hexcrawlin' With Fudge Dice

1. The players should choose a starting hex. This is their hex of origin, where they start the game from or where their Headquarters is.
2. Count the hexes adjacent to the origin and build a pool of fudge dice. The pool should have 3 fudge dice for each hex.
3. Roll all of the gathered dice.
4. Each player, in turn, selects a die and places it into an adjacent hex or notes the face value in the hex. Repeat until all of the dice have been used.
5. Each of the adjacent hexes should now have a number of +, -, and ■ in them.

You should now have something like this:

You may want to click to enlarge.

The blue hex in the middle is our origin/hq hex. In case you're curious, there is a university at that location. I've highlighted the surrounding hexes in red. Unless you're at the edge of a map, one of the hexes is unreachable, or one of the hexes is already explored you are always going to have 6 of them. That means most of time the group will need to roll 18dF. You might want to do things in such a way that each player rolls 1dF on their turn until 18dF have been rolled if you don't have enough dice.

I went and rolled this out and, as luck would have it, I rolled six of each face. I placed them each into different hexes, as you can see above.

The last step is to define what those results actually mean. I suggest that each result corresponds to a fact of some kind about the hex. + results are things that are potentially beneficial to the player. - results are the opposite, potentially negative things. ■ are neutral, something that could go either way or that is indifferent. You may wish to make  ■ results environmental factors. Players can combine like results together to write a fact that is more "powerful" or significant.

For a great collaborative experience you should write out these facts as a group, but if you want a more surprising game you could have the GM fill out the facts secretly. If you would like a middle ground then you could opt to have  ■  results be GM secrets and allow the players to fill in + and - normally.

Facts for the above map (starting with the topmost hex and proceeding clockwise):

1. There are friendly survivors here. There is a food source here. One of the friendly survivors is a carrier. There are many scavenged out buildings.
2. The coast guard regularly returns here to rescue survivors. The roads here have been barricaded.
3. A friendly group of survivors is trapped in an apartment building here. There are damaged boats here.
4. Zombie hoards roam this hex in large numbers.
5. There is a hospital here. The hospital is occupied by a dangerous cult. A burst water main floods the streets.
6. Zombies roam this hex. A fire has damaged many of the buildings here.

I stuck with the zombie apocalypse theme mentioned above, but this method could work with any setting. Actually, I think it would work much better with other settings. Zombie apocalypses are somewhat limited in their options.

You could also go a more traditional route and have positive, negative, and neutral encounter tables that you roll on after the values have been distributed on the hexes. This would require coming up with a new set of tables for every crawl, unless you made them very generic.

Categories: Adventure, Fate, Fudge, Game Design, Hexcrawl, Welsh Piper, Zombie