Last year was my first attempt at a Halloween game - and it worked great! It was a Unknown Armies oneshot set in our local area, and - though this was our first game of UA2e - everyone loved it.
This year I'll probably give my players the choice between several games:
1. Snarkhunters (inspired by GURPS Horror 3e)
Many years ago you learned the sanity-blasting truths of the Madness
Dossier: our reality is brittle and fragile, history is a lie, a thin veil
that separates us from the horrors of History B, the Annunaki, and the terrifying alternate earth known as Nergal. We are the descendants of slaves, obedience still branded into our very genes, our brains and languages by creatures so powerful that they have every right to be called gods. But we are human. We will not release the weak hold on this world where we are free.
The men and women of Project Sandman have fought the remnants and servitors of the Annunaki for
decades - but now a new generation enters the war: brought up in remote monasteries, the deep wilderness, or the chaos of the worst slums of the planet, and taught and raised by crazy taoist martial artists, zen monks, semi-autistic mathematicians, drug fiends, weird mediums, and the strange psycholinguistic AI known as Alice, you are ready. You possess powers of mind and body mortal men know only from legends and modern action movies. You transcend the rules and boundaries we all carry like chains in our minds. Some call your
abilities psionics, some call it wuxia, some call it a hoax - it doesn't
matter: Yours is the power to finally wipe the spawn of the Red King from this universe and nothing will stop you!
[GURPS, 500 pts.]
2. Frozen
Our great-great-grandfathers still lived in freedom. The Lords teach that
mankind was a constant threat to itself in those days, always warring and fighting with each other, raping the land and killing the beasts - but that is a lie. Before their high mages called the ice to crush our empires, all man were free and brave. And the Lords lived hidden in the remote wilderness.
But then came the darkcloud, the great famine, and the War of Winter - and mankind lost. Rome fell, Byzantium fell, even the norsemen, the persians, the huns, and the legendary empire of Cathay fell. Today we live as servants to the Lords: the sidhe, the elfs, the dwarfs, the goblins, the giants, and the djinn.
They use us as workers and slaves, the men as warriors, the women as whores, the children as food - and they say it is just. But we know it is a lie, and we will vanquish them!
[GURPS, 100 pts.]
3. The Prophecy of the Fist (inspired by the BoVD)
In the darkest writings of the ancients, hidden or forgotten long ago, there is the recurring tale of five beings who will appear before the end. Those five were sometimes called the Nightbringers, the Lords of Destruction, or Those-Who-Walk-In-Black. The elves called them the Galédhrul, or the Unbound, the dwarves whispered of the Khoraz-Gai, which means something like Stone Killers, and the giants of old spoke of a band of creatures known as the Horekk, translateable today only as Breakers. But the name most often associated with those apocalyptic entities is just the Fist, a rough translation of the draconic name Xogushaq, which literally means something like "the raging hand/claw".
The prophecies also gave names to each of the five, names which may say something about the very nature of each of these beings:
The Members of the Fist are known as: The Silent, the Savage, the Learned, the Driven, and the Dead.
Now, *you* may get to play those guys! You will start out as a high-level "neutral/evil" party - and then we will see what happens next...
;-)
[D&D3.5, Level 13]
4. Inhuman Space (inspired by Pitch Black, Alien, Event Horizon, Predator, GURPS Black Ops and Transhuman Space)
2258: Mankind has reached the stars - but out there it is cold, dark, and
deadly. There are dozens and dozens of colonies but very few truly
earth-like planets. Technology has taken a "safe-tech" path since the days of Transhuman Space. FTL travel must be spend in nanostasis to avoid the madness known as Zenon syndrome, FTL radio doesn't exist, and no sentient aliens have ever been found.
But *something* left various strange ruins and artifacts on planets
and moons in Sol's vicinity, *something* must be the cause for the greatest UFO craze of the last 300 years, and *something* just might be the reason for the high numbers of seed ships and private scouting missions declared "lost" or MIA...
This is a dark future of Transhuman Space and GURPS Black Ops. In it the contents of GURPS Black Ops are only somewhat true: they are just what the descendents and inheritors of the Company still remember of the war their forefathers fought and won - forefathers who in truth were just the best and most secret special ops in Earth's history, but no action hero demi-gods straight from late 20th century cinema. But, in all likelyhood, the Prima and their creations are still out there - as are the Greys...
[GURPS 200 pts.]
