The biggest threat to any gaming group is scheduling conflicts. Oh sure, the BBEG for tabletop RPG'ers, or the utterly broken tournament list for the wargamers, both are fun-killers, no doubt. But the one thing that stops the fun cold is a serious case of "the 5th isn't good for me", which of course happened to my D&D 5e Eberron campaign for this month. Between losing one player due to family medical emergency for the short term, and 2 other players having completely opposite availability schedules for the entire month, my once-a-month game crashed to the ground on fire. So I did what I could and grabbed one of my players from my other once-a-month game (Cyberpunk Red), and ran the combined group through a SWADE (that's Savage Worlds Adventure Edition) one shot, specifically a surprise intro to the Monster Hunter International setting.
First, a little about the MHI fiction itself so maybe I can explain why I have long been intent to introduce my players to the MHI SWADE setting, sight unseen - the first book, oddly enough titled Monster Hunter International, starts off with everyday accountant (also super gun nut, shooting competitor and champion, and former street fighter, who used his size and street fighting skills to pay for his accounting degree... but still, just an everyday, ordinary guy {end sarcasm}) in his dreary, dead end corporate job. Working late one night, our protagonist is set upon by his horrible boss, who turns into a werewolf!!! The three exclamation points are because for our protagonist, monsters and things that go bump in the night are just stories, not real, fables even, but here before his eyes, his boss is most definitely turning into what can only be called a werewolf. A fight ensues, and even though he is badly wounded, our protagonist triumphs in the end.
That's when the next surprise drops out of the sky like an Acme branded anvil - he wakes up, but not in an ordinary hospital, one that big, ugly (yes, bigger and uglier than our protagonist is) government agents run, from a three letter agency that doesn't exist, the Monster Control Bureau (MCB). These government agents are watching our protagonist nervously, because he was mauled pretty bad during the attack, and it finally comes out the MCB agents are worried he will turn into a werewolf. Luckily, our protagonist was not bitten by the werewolf, just mostly killed through other means, so he does not turn into a werewolf (and the big, bad, scary government men don't have to kill him right there). So yes, monsters like werewolves, zombies, vampires, all of the fabled creatures do actually exist in this world and there are even large government agencies (the MCB for the US of A) that exist for fighting these monsters and keeping the public from knowing that they exist. Not only that, but they pay people who kill the particularly bad monsters, which is where these private contractors, a family owned, multigenerational corporation called Monster Hunters International, swoops in and hires our protagonist. Yes, it's a job with a short life expectancy, but until the unfortunate day, the pay is astronomical, and the tools of the trade are generally better than what the military issues your average grunt.
Isn't that a cool intro to a "hidden world" kind of setting? Which is what I wanted to give to my players. Now, not all characters can be huge, former street fighting, competitive shooting champion, accountants, and RPG parties are just that, made up of multiple members, so you can't generally tell a solo origin story for a party, you need to do it for a group. How do I make multiple capable pre-generated characters for this surprise intro adventure, and give them a fighting chance to survive the encounter? Much less, how do I bring these superheroes walking amongst other mere mortals to face this threat? And where is this going to take place?
I started with the axiom, write what you know. I used to be a member of the Missouri Army National Guard, and with all due humility, we were just a collection of ultimate badasses. How can I type that with a straight face? Because hardly anyone will ever read this blog post, that's how. Anyway, so we were (I guess still are, but I've been out for a minute) pretty well trained to handle various weapons, fight with just our hands, and keep our cool when the fecal matter hits the air mover. Not only that, but being Guard as opposed to Active Duty meant we had all the training of the Regular Army folks, but nowhere near the commitment, as we did not live on or near an Army base, didnt have a chain of command breathing down our necks 24/7, and generally had lives away from the military, so Guard folk are easier to explain why they're away from the military doing non-military things. Now, being in the MOGuard, I regularly went to Camp Crowder on the edge of Neosho, MO, to perform the annual weapons qualification test. Next door to Camp Crowder is Crowder College, and while I never wandered over there to check out the coeds, like many of my fellow Soldiers did, I've long thought college campuses are great settings for those dabbling in the supernatural in urban fantasy settings. The folks over at Pinnacle agree with me so much they put their modern urban fantasy/horror game on a college campus too, and called it East Texas University or ETU. Who knows what dark mysteries are being researched in those labs, science or the mysteries of the unknowable? On top of all that - my familiarity with the location, a valid reason for a group of Army Guard Soldiers to gather, a reason for them to have access to heavier weaponry than your average civilian, and a lot more leeway when it comes to their personal lives - this is a real world location. I don't have to draw a map, I can literally point my players to the location on Google maps, and they can get a satellite image of the area they are in.
So my intrepid band of players sorted through the pre-gens i had made up, chose the ones they wanted, and we were off. All they know is a time and date, who they are, and that they are at this location to perform the Army's weapons qualification. And immediately they guess there are going to be some monsters popping out of the woodwork. "But this is the real world, guys, you don't think monsters don't exist!" I protested. "The cook sure does," they replied back, as I had made each pre-gen a different Army career, and gave each a little bit of personality to work with, and the cook was convinced Bigfoot ate his aunt's yappy dog. "Yes, but you're pretty sure he's crazy." Yup, they still did not buy it. I had forgotten that, while you are reading a book, you are giving the author some benefit of the doubt, and go along with the characters and their beliefs (trusting the narrator), because you have no say in the proceedings, what is going to happen is going to happen. In a game, however, your character (and by extension, you, to a much lesser degree) is in danger and you control their thoughts and beliefs. I did not surprise my players one bit when the zombies started streaming in from Crowder College next door, chasing after college students, they immediately swung in to the attack, and began gleefully mowing down the restless undead. Oh well, at least I tried.
I am still playing around with the idea of contacting the publishers of the MHI setting, as well as Pinnacle themselves, and securing permission to publish the adventure on Drive Thru RPG, not because I think my adventure making genius is such to make me all the money, but because I think it is a fun adventure and I'd like to share. It was a fun adventure, even with my party seeing right through my intended deception and figuring it out rather quickly, still enjoyed themselves, both with the setting itself and the new rule set (a few of us had played Savage Worlds before, or one of its ancestors, but not a lot or recently) so I think I have a shot at making some money off of it. I need to take some of the satellite views and redraw them so I'm not using Google's branded images, plus give some other locations some maps to give other GMs info that I know that they don't, and then type it all up to make it readable and the info accessible. So my dream of being a published RPG author is not going to happen anytime soon.
Enough for now, folks, hope you can get out there and play some games with your friends.
