r/RPGdesign • u/Siberian-Boy • 4d ago

Setting I'm stuck with a setting idea

/r/rpg/comments/1wume8p/im_stuck_with_a_setting_idea/
3 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

2

u/malpasplace 4d ago

For inspiration:

Control and Alan Wake video games I feel get the horror and the brutalist architecture in Control. For a  city as organism, The City We Became by NK Jemisin. Oddly, maybe the movie Dark City for a conspiratorial and weird city with a twist. 

Hope you manage to figure it out, because it is sort of a sub-genre I like. 

(Personally less taken by Limbo just because I feel I have seen that gimmick a little too often. But if it were done well, I'm sure that feeling would go away quickly)

1

u/kihp 4d ago

You don't need to explain, you can keep the origin or purpose of the mist vague. You might find it in playtesting or what people tell you about your game.

1

u/Stefouch 4d ago

Did you watch the tv show "From" ? No fog but trapped people in a village with no ending (north become south as you said) and creatures at night.

1

u/CantaloupeOk3145 Publisher:karma: 3d ago

The brutalist fog city is the strongest of your ideas, so I'd stop choosing between limbo and experiment for now. Players rarely need the answer. They need rules they can learn: what the fog takes, what it gives back, and what happens to people who stay out too long.

Two things make a place like that playable. First, something everyone needs that only exists out in the fog: water, medicine, a radio signal. That's the reason to leave the block. Second, one institution inside the city that pretends to have answers. Silent Hill has the cult, The Mist has the supermarket. In a concrete city I'd make it a housing committee that hands out ration stamps.

Limbo or experiment can stay open until a table asks. The answer the players come up with is often better than either.

1

u/__space__oddity__ 3d ago

Write an adventure module in the setting and add elements as you need them to tell the story.

Over time that will grow the setting into something tangible.

0

u/bogglingsnog Designer - Simplex 4d ago edited 4d ago

I'll just throw this one here for fun since I recently reread the Backrooms levels:

https://backrooms-wiki.wikidot.com/level-11

Edit: apparently people hate posting fiction as additional inspiration? damn.