Some of the best ideas come from players loudly announcing their theories. :) For a different approach, think about what fear or horror trope you want your players to feel and focus on that, rather than any specific details about Them. Like the feeling of being hunted, body horror, not knowing who to trust, etc.
Part of the game’s appeal is the mystery of the unknown, so it’s important to not get to detailed in explaining what They are. However, I think you’ve nailed the major categories. I think you’re painting with too broad of a brush though. “Aliens” can cover a wide range of themes. Little green men, John Carpenter’s Thing, Xenomorphs, 40k’s Dark Elder, Cthulhu Mythos creatures, higher dimensional beings, all of these could be considered alien, and would fit the role of Them, but their motivations and behavior would play out quite differently.
I agree, this reads like a reporter interviewing someone to get them to define terms they made up. This didn’t sell me on why I should want to use one style of play over another, just wistful “torturing” themself wondering if anyone still uses this mysterious style of play. It’s not mysterious. As you said, it’s just Play to Find Out.
I think it would be more useful to show the strengths and weaknesses of PtFO and as well as more scripted gameplay, because each has a place in RPGs, and knowing when to use one over another is a great skill for GMs to practice.
I would avoid running any combat where the party is forced to lose. That would make any time spent on it feel like a waste. A short narrated vision would be fine, but if you want to make this a bigger encounter, you should give the party a goal that they can actually accomplish. I can think of a few ways you could do this:
I’ve been using the Pathfinder 2E Beginner Box, and it’s the first time I’ve run a premade adventure. I’ve been customizing it quite a bit in terms of the story to better match my players. I expected the adventure to feel stale and on-rails, but what I found was that it gives you a safe baseline to work from. If you find any parts of session planning stressful, you can just leave them at the baseline and devote more of your time toward the things you actually enjoy.
In my case, I was still learning the system, so it was nice not having to worry about balancing encounters, drawing maps, or distributing treasure. Instead, I was able to spent my prep time on modifying the story.
I’m in the exact same boat. I’d like to use some of the monster lore and trying to convert the action oriented bosses to be used in PF2e. I’m thinking it would be pretty easy to just treat the Villain Actions as costing two actions in Pathfinder. I think the minion rules would transfer over as well.
I’m really interested to see where this goes. I love the unsettling tone of the podcast, and it will be challenging to try and recreate that as an rpg. I think one thing that will be difficult is concluding stories in a way that is satisfying to players. Many of the mysteries in The Magnus Archives don’t get resolved, they just “are”. That’s fine for a fine footage audio story, but players will be driven to keep going until they solve it.
I find feats like this, along with all of the creature type specific ones, are really campaign dependent. You either take them reactively once it becomes clear that it would be really handy to speak, say, Gnomish, or you need to metagame a little bit with your GM to know which languages won’t be dud picks.
In my game, I would also find it totally reasonable to retrain a language that hasn’t ever shown up, using less downime than it would normally require.
Glad everyone had fun! I think you are right about introducing “Them” a bit sooner. If their current location is clearly unsafe, then the city would start looking like a better option.
I think the fantasy setting gives you some added challenges as well. Most of the scenarios the genre comes with are modern-ish setting, and I think that helps set the stakes for players without having to mention it. A window breaking nearby is scary because you know what it would be like if it happened to you and you know the fear of stepping on glass, but describing a whole village burning down in Mörk Borg is less scary because it’s so far removed from daily life. For your story, you just need to do some extra legwork to make the threats more personal.
I can’t help with Baby Yoda Basilisks though. :)
This is great advice. I like how this shares the narrative burden with the other people at the table. Mini-encounters like these give you some insight into a characters values, it’s less railroad-y, and there’s always the threat that it could turn into a big encounter if handled poorly. Plus, the players discussing what they want to do takes up some real world time, and that makes the travel seem less instantaneous.
It’s entirely possible to play in a game where there are nonviolent solutions to every encounter. The main thing is that it would require buy in from the GM and the rest of the table. It depends on the genre of game your GM wants to run. Similar to how a hard boiled detective would be out of place in a game centered around a travelling carnival, a pacifist would be out of place in a dungeon crawler. That’s not to say you can’t do it, but you would have to accept that your character would be a fish out of water.
A pacifist could work well in a few genres though. A murder mystery, a spy thriller, or political intrigue story would probably feature little to no combat.
The Player’s Guide for Abomination Vaults includes a ton of information about the major players in Otari: https://downloads.paizo.com/AbominationVaults_PlayersGuide.pdf
That said, don’t worry too much about contradicting the official lore. This is your game, and if something in the guide contradicts something you made up, just don’t present it to your players, they will never be the wiser.
Take a look at the Roseguard section in the pdf though. That should give you an understanding for why this town exists, and informs some of the politics that are currently going on.
If you are planning to run Troubles in Otari later, you should be aware that it consists of three short adventures dealing with the lumber industry, the delivery service, and an abandoned fishing shack just outside of town. If you want to ease your players into these quests, you may want to introduce them earlier.
Looks like I’m little late for this one. How’d your game go, OP? For anyone else, I’ve played in a couple games and GMed a few as well. Here’s what I’ve learned:
I’ve found this trope works best when all players know the secret, but the characters don’t. If it’s a cool, interesting secret, everyone can play into it and enjoy the dramatic irony.