Advice/Help Horror Survival Advice

[Lovable Dark-side]

What I am about to post is a first draft and will be edited and refined before it is turned into an actual Rp. I need constructive criticism and world advice because I want this role play to actually live to receive an actual ending. Which lets be honest does not happen as much as we like it too. What I need help on currently is really giving this world "meat". Right now it is basically just rice and beans. I also wouldn't mind help with fair mechanics for the players. As of now I have a small list of rules for the main game concept.

• You can't stay on sacred ground (Temples, Churches, Blessed Earth...etc.) for longer than one night. That means one night for the entirety of the game.
  
• Sacred pendants are allowed but have limited uses before they are considered tainted.
  
• If you tell anyone about the game that is not currently in the game they will be executed and the game will be lengthened by 2 days.
  
• There can only be one seeker at any time.
  
• If found you can use the bribery of another's location to re-hide, but this time only last as long as it takes to find the person you threw under the rug. This can be used multiple times for a price.
  
• Each night the non-seekers will be given a new challenge to tackle along with the basic task of hiding in order to keep things interesting.
  

Sample Plot


Rumors. They are fickle creatures that grow the more they are spoken about, but such is the nature of such a beast. They often serve a double purpose and leave one either amused, utterly annoyed, or if you are the focus of said rumor angry. Now while most of the time rumors are used to slander another person's name or add mystery to someones life. The current one around is about a game rather than a person. A childhood game in fact one as old as time itself. Hide and Seek. Now of course this isn't just a normal game of hide and seek. That would be wanton. Who would start a rumor about that? No! This hide and seek has a bit of the twist. Where none of those in the starting group are the seeker. The seeker, a demon, must be summoned and the summoners must simply survive for a short amount of time. In return for the game the demon will grant the remaining people at the end of the game a prize. But that is just a rumor who would believe that?


I guess humans are fickle creatures, also.


There is a rumor going around on the campus of Oklahoma University. Nothing truly scandalous just one of those “spooky” occult urban legend type things that pop up on occasion. The ones that people pretend to do, then get bored of them and let them lay for a while. Only to have them pop again in the next few years in order to scare the newbies on campus. It's basically just the new Bloody Mary. You don't take it seriously, no one does. Its Oklahoma for pete's-sake the only exciting thing that happens here is the occasional cow fart. But when a letter suddenly ends up in your possession inviting you to join this ritual trepidation is not far off. But you attend whether its for the thrill or out of morbid curiosity who knows. But what's the danger its only hide and seek.


I ask that you please give me honest feed back and help me expand. Thank you!

 

[Axel The Englishman]

I'll give you some advice! Pray to yourself you're not the only black character, because this story may not know it's in 2017! It could still be living in the 80s!

 

[Lovable Dark-side]

Okay, so I should work on adding more modern concepts to the story?

 

[Axel The Englishman]

MOST DEFINATELY

 

[Lovable Dark-side]

MOST DEFINATELY

Okay, so if you were writing this what would be some changes that you would make? 

 

[Axel The Englishman]

Stay clear away from the tropes. You want something original, something nobody sees coming, but also still interesting and unique in it's own aspect,

 

[Lovable Dark-side]

Stay clear away from the tropes. You want something original, something nobody sees coming, but also still interesting and unique in it's own aspect,

Those aspects would be more things handled in the actual running story compared to the starting plot wouldn't it?

 

[Axel The Englishman]

Those aspects would be more things handled in the actual running story compared to the starting plot wouldn't it?

Well, more also to do with the lore, setting, placement, etcetera.

 

[Lovable Dark-side]

BUMP!

 

[Beckoncall]

I'll try to help you, but frankly there isn't a lot of scaffold yet to attach things to.


"Hide and Seek" is a very ambitious mechanic to try to incorporate into a PBP game... either everyone always finds a hiding place or nobody does ever, unless there is some kind of trick or hook to it. 


If I were you I would adopt a kind of "GURPS/Ninja Burger" type element to the game where everyone has different skills from 3-18, (the sum of 3 dice) and these skills could be used creatively to allow players in locations to come up with creative hiding solutions, then roll dice to see how well they hide/perform. Look up "Ninja-Burger" on google images and they have examples of characters that will give you a good idea. 


Everybody can have a Stealth and a Hide/Disguise skill, but there can be a bunch of other skills to choose from "Climb", "Drive", "Computers", "Combat" -- but you only get to choose a certain number of them.


At least one should be really esoteric so it's cool or amusing how it works itself into the game. "Faustian Bargaining" could replace "Customer Service" in that it would deal with how players force demons or other players to share hiding places (or information about other people's hiding places as you've implied this is a game element.)


But what if you want to climb and you don't have it as a skill? Everyone gets an "other stuff" skill which should generally be determined off of 2 dice, or maybe 1d6 + 6. Whatever crazy idea you have that doesn't fit into a skill you use would be rolled on "Other stuff." You could also allow players to choose a slightly higher "other stuff" if they elected to make their "Stealth" and "Hide/Disguise" worse.


When I mention disguise I not only mean disguising as other players, another demon, or somebody not playing, but creative people will learn to effectively disguise themselves as lamps or potted plants or whatever else might save their behinds. Disguise is BEING a lamp, Stealth is hiding in the shadow of that lamp.


So that's my suggestion for mechanics, or for you to come up with something like that.


As for "Meat" of the story... you could take this in a lot of different directions. Lets say the hide and seek game takes place in a forgotten antiquary under the college that only the students have known about and passed down knowledge of from year to year, class to class. It's not easy to get to, but it's quite large, and the reason why it was forgotten is that it was used in a far earlier era as part of an "Occult Studies Program" that frankly turned out to be an embarrassment to the university, even outside of the scope of the disappearances and all the other stuff swept under the rug.


The antiquities wing happens to contain a number of portals to "The Dreamlands" or perhaps various other strange dimensions -- it is from here the demons come from and if desperate, where players can go to (as it is the quickest way to throw a demon off your scent -- and exactly where you'll appear in the other dimension is uncertain.) -- no doubt there are PLENTY MORE demons in the other dimensions and if you don't quickly find your way back to the material plane you're going to be cornered or wind up caught by yet another demon -- in fact abuse of the portals may propagate larger numbers of seekers! But I think that would be a cool setting.


Let me know if any of this appeals.