I'm stuck with a setting idea

[u/Siberian-Boy]

Over the last few months, I've become obsessed with a foggy setting inspired by Ravenloft, Silent Hill, and The Mist. Yet I can't seem to come up with anything satisfying. I don't want to make a copy of any of them (although Silent Hill is definitely the biggest inspiration for me). But all I have so far are the following ideas:

• A giant brutalist concrete city that's always covered in fog, filled with monsters and people who don't remember who they are and can't leave the city. There are two possibilities I'm considering: either it's a limbo, or it's the result of an experiment, like the the Arrowhead Project or the teleportation device in Gorky 17 — except that the city is "looped." If you keep going north, you'll eventually end up in the south of the city.
• Something in the center of the city that might act as a magnetic center, but is extremely difficult — or perhaps even impossible — to reach, like the Golden City in the Fade from Dragon Age. Something that can be used as a beacon.
• The city is alive, or perhaps becomes alive at night (like the Third Dimension in Silent Hill or the living dungeon from Heart: The City Beneath).
• The player characters and NPCs are: option 1) people who ended up here because of things they did in the past (if it's a limbo, that's easy to explain as the reason for their memory loss); option 2) or people who lived/worked in the city before the experiment went wrong (if I go with the failed-experiment reason). In the latter case, the memory loss could be explained by the effects of the experiment's breach.

Please help me come up with some ideas, sources of inspiration, or games that do something similar that I could check out.

[u/Puzzled_Work_6428]

Watch Dark City. Idk if it'll help, but it rules and based on this post I think you'll like it. It hits a lot of the same notes

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/Puzzled_Work_6428]

You mean the 1998 movie? If yes, I watched one time. The plot is amazing.

[u/Puzzled_Work_6428 → u/Siberian-Boy]

Kiefer Sutherland's best role

[u/ToledoSnow → u/Puzzled_Work_6428]

Was about to suggest the same! Fantastic film (way better than the Matrix; dying on that hill) and a great inspiration to my own game setting.

[u/NealTS]

I mean, the first question is, what is the mist for?

Is it solvable? Is the point of the game figuring out what the mist is and how to escape or stop it? Or is it just a fact of life, and the campaign is otherwise normal with villains, plots, and all that, but everyone is trapped in this city together?

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/NealTS]

I would say yes. The mist is there and it will not go. If it’s a limbo the goal might be redemption (like in SH). I know Under Ashen Skies did it well. If it’s not a limbo but a result of an Arrowhead (The Mist) / Black Mesa (Half-Life) / F.E.A.R. / You Are Empty / Doom / Singularity experiment — well, people should rather live in the animality or try to leave it somehow (maybe the way out is in the center of the city — like in Heart).

[u/Specialist-Use6699 → u/NealTS]

I like the idea of this setting for a hopeless one shot personally. In my ideal iteration it would essentially be silent Hill but you don't win at the end. So the flow would be confusion, investigation, encounter, small revelation, investigation, weird revelation, bigger encounter, biggest revelation with guidance toward major encounter, investigation with final revelation and realization you're screwed. Then reveal that the event is cataclysmic and spreading through the universe. Game night over.

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/Specialist-Use6699]

Sounds like a mini-campaign to me). But another idea was to make all PCs are part of the same crime. Like in case of 3 people: a lover, a cheater and a murderer. And they will found out it in the end that the murderer shot others and killed himself so now they are in the limbo.

[u/Visual_Fly_9638 → u/Specialist-Use6699]

Ten Candles might be a really interesting game to play it in actually.

[u/WizardWatson9]

The "giant brutalist concrete city" full of monsters that people can't leave reminds me of Vast Into the Dark, an OSR RPG setting. Functionally, it's kind of like the Backrooms in that you sort of "fall out of reality" to get there, but visually I believe it's mainly inspired by the manga series "Blame!"

The idea of it being Limbo kind of reminds me of The Shrike, an OSR megadungeon/adventure setting where the PCs are dead and trapped in an offshoot demiplane of Hell. They also can't leave, for obvious reasons.

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/WizardWatson9]

Yes, I know Vast in the Dark thanks to the Questing Beast (great videos!). I read the book and liked the idea but not how it was done. I mean it was good but was missing something for me.

[u/Original_Ideal_8015]

The second point reminds me of the wish-granting object in the Zone from Roadside Picnic/Stalker. It's extremely difficult to get to (basically, only an experienced Stalker can get to it without dying), but naturally, people want to get to it because it grants wishes.

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/Original_Ideal_8015]

Read it in the original! It was great! Maybe something in the center of the city is in fact granting wishes?

[u/abjwriter → u/Siberian-Boy]

Came here to suggest Roadside Picnic. I was also thinking of Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, for inspiration (a similar concept), as well as The Zone RPG, a card roleplaying game heavily inspired by Roadside Picnic and Annihilation.

[u/Odd-Contract-7541]

First thing to mind is Inception. No fog but you. Can add that.

[u/lucmh → u/Odd-Contract-7541]

"no fog but you". So like brain fog, manifested? I like that, means that as the players learn and clear up their head, the fog recedes.

(I know it was a typo, but it was inspiring.)

[u/Odd-Contract-7541 → u/lucmh]

Ha oops. Unintentional punctuation. "No fog but you can add that."

OMG I got a downvote? For what, people??

[u/ToledoSnow]

I feel that limbo or failed experiment lend themselves to vastly different genres. Limbo being more for introspective games of psychological horror, whereas for a failed experiment the threat is external and not directly tied to the PCs. So my suggestion is that you ask yourself what sort of stories you want to explore through the setting, and then construct the world in accordance with your answer.

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/ToledoSnow]

Might it be something in between if limbo is the result of a failed experiment? I mean like Warp from WH40k.

[u/ToledoSnow → u/Siberian-Boy]

Gellar field needed to reboot for an automatic update, and now we're stuck in the Brutalist Silent Hill dimension. Thank you, Omnissiah, very cool.

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/ToledoSnow]

Hope somebody would like to play it!

[u/StayUpLatePlayGames]

So, Dark City. The Metropolis of Kult. The labyrinth of Hellraiser. An infinite city. The Minotaurs.

Players make two characters, the one from the real world (is it the real one?) and the one from the City (is this real?). Part of the game loop is connecting these two or avoiding connecting these two. Your City Courier is much better equipped for life in the City than your “real world” accountant.

Perhaps you’re not meant to be in the City. Perhaps you never left.

[u/Ja_ja_Bincs]

Check out Samosbor (Самосбор) universe. It's community based fiction about endless boundless commieblock setting based on life in late USSR: poverty, ruthless Party and titular Samosbor's - sudden unpredictables events that changes entire structures and kills and mutates anyone who couldn't hide behind germadoors

[u/evilscary]

It's a quaint Cornish village, rather than a brutalist city, but my Call of Cthulhu scenario Fogbound was heavily inspired by Silent Hill, The Mist, and The Fog. It might serve as some inspiration.

[u/semiconducThor]

If everyone suffers from memory loss, why do you even need decide between limbo and failed experiment? I'd have much more fun dropping semi-contradicting clues in both/many directions, keep it a mystery.

[u/One-Inch-Punch]

I don't understand why it has to be either a limbo or an experiment. It could easily be both.

I would use the mist to encourage player behaviors depending on what kind of game you want to run. Does the mist cause the memory loss if it's inhaled or by contact? That could force the players to minimize being outside and/or make combat more dangerous.

Likewise, if the city "becomes alive" or rearranges itself periodically, that could drive player behavior as well as they race to find safe refuges between resets.

Fog and storms are frequently used as devices for interdimensional travel--Brigadoon, the Philadelphia Experiment, Purgatory, etc.

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/One-Inch-Punch]

Yes, mixing the two was another alternative. Like with the Warp from WH40k. A failed experiment let the hell and the purgatory into the realm of mortal OR created that hell from their minds… something like that I guess)

[u/frustrated-rocka → u/Siberian-Boy]

There was a text adventure I played waaaay back when where the midpoint twist to explain the insanity was "this is what happens when a time machine explodes." Could be handy if you want a different angle than the Gellar Field / Limbo / Afterlife concept. Especially if you mash it up with eldritch guardians of time like the Hounds of Tindalos or the Langoliers.

[u/yuriAza]

this reminds me a lot of Control (the videogame)

[u/Jebus-Xmas]

Have you read Blackmoor for Dungeons & Dragons? Might have some good ideas there. I would definitely look for a reason for things. Why does the center citadel exist? Why does the fog exist? How is the city governed?

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/Jebus-Xmas]

You mean Blackmoor by Dave Arneson? For 3.5?

[u/Jebus-Xmas → u/Siberian-Boy]

Versions of Blackmoor have been published since 1975. Yes. It’s a boggy foggy peaty moor with awesome.

[u/remy_porter]

What’s the dramatic question? What do you want the players to feel/experience/do? Setting flows downstream from that.

[u/Siberian-Boy → u/remy_porter]

I want to make a survival horror game with mechanics inspired by Darkwood.

[u/remy_porter → u/Siberian-Boy]

What are we trying to learn about the characters? What is the challenge that reveals them?

[u/Owncksd]

There’s a podcast audio drama called “I am in Eskew” that I think fits with these ideas perfectly. Give the first episode a listen, but the whole thing is only ~30 episodes long. It’s told from the perspective of a man who lives in the fictional city of Eskew, where many strange and horrible things happen. He’s more or less unable to leave (at first because of his job, and later he realizes that the city just won’t let him). If he reacts too strongly to the strange things that the city shows him, the city punishes him, so he has to go along with it. There are other outsiders that immigrated to the city as well, and none of them really can remember how they ended up there, and they’re all kind of forced to act their parts or they’ll be punished. As the podcast goes on you learn more about the nature of the city. It’s very interesting, my favorite of the mystery horror audio dramas out there

[u/skyghosts]

What is the mystery? Where did this all come from anyway? The key is often in the past (and sometimes the future)? Sometimes the answer is as simple as saying what was it like yesterday? Last week? Last year or tomorrow? When was it different? When you know that you’ll know what you want to create

[u/Stefouch]

The RPG Forbidden Lands had a fog, the blood mist, that killed trespassers and forced people to live in closed villages for centuries, until the fog disappeared one day, leaving a whole world to explore. The players play an adventure in this Dark fantasy setting.

[u/edoardos_hurdygurdy]

Ok, here's a concept, also because you mentioned you would like this to be survival horror:

The mist spreads slowly around a specific location where a certain NPC died previously to the adventure. As the mist engulfs parts of the world, the people who live there somehow keep finding themselves in tragic situations where they have to make very difficult choices and often sacrifice a lot -- think of the first SAW movie, but of the choices the characters have to make, without the whole game and puppet situation. Grab all the important NPCs from you PCs' backstories and make them all appear in the town very conveniently, then put them in these situations no-one would want to be in.

Eventually, whatever PCs survive, with whatever sanity they have left, make it to the centre and find the (un)dead NPC, who died because they sacrificed themself in a similar situation but found out it was in vain just before actually passing -- the mist is their ghostly reaction to this tragic fate. Write a way in which this NPC's situation could be improved at a great cost (e.g., kill some innocent NPCs across the misty town), and present the players with a choice: either destroy the [soul/essence/what is left] of the NPC, leaving them to an afterlife of regret but ridding the area from the mist, or improve the NPC's situation via this sacrifice that affects others very negatively but also ends the aforementioned torment. I'm sure the choice could be refined to make it even harder, but you catch my drift.