After reading a thread on here quite a while back, I sought to fix what was wrong with Nephilim and started thinking of ways to associate a system that would encourage the sort of play I'd like to see in Nephilim.

The idea was to bring Players into a modern occult setting in which they interacted with secret societies, subtle magic and that sort of thing.

Obviously, this was nothing more than an idle project to run for my gaming group.

In the process of formulating these ideas, I realized I could apply the same sort of ideas to Kult, etc.

Basically, I've decided to let this experiment develop into its own Modern Occult game. I intend to use this thread to keep track of ideas and see what sort of feedback/ideas they can generate. (I'll probably be double posting a lot, sorry).

Ok, let's begin with the outline for the game's goals:

+ The Players Characters are a bunch of folks who pretty much start out as 'normal' folks. Sure, they might have an inkling for the occult and a general interest in the supernatural, but the idea is that they have not dedicated their lives to delving into mysteries "bigger than them".

+ The Player Characters have the ability to link to past life memories, which in turn grants them knowledge about the game's mystery (by mystery, I generally mean the focus of the adventure, as determined by the GM, more on that later), propels them into an existing mystery or grants them something akin to a skill they had in a past life (mechanically speaking, a bonus on rolls).

+ The Player Characters are the only ones who can do this. No GMPC, no mentors, none of that. The focus is the PCs' development and progress along the mystery created for the game.

+ When the Player Characters use the past life memory mechanic, the GM sets a point aside, makes a notch in his notebook, or whatever (still working on the mechanics, obviously). Those points, or notches, are used to create antagonists, that will work toward keeping the mystery secret, destroying the PCs, making their lives miserable, you name it.

+ The Player Characters eventually are able to influence the world around them in subtle ways. The supernatural elements people might call magic are not flashes of light, illusions, sprays of acid or fire, etc... The idea is to keep things subtle: coincidences, two regular event meeting to create a supernatural outcome.

+ Again, when the Player Characters affect the world with these 'coincidences', the world pushes back. Notches are made, points are set aside. The idea here being that the PCs make things happen and are rewarded with conflict. The GM is of course responsible for unleashing the conflict upon them.



I'm working on formulating the resolution system/basic roll mechanic, but for now I'm trying to make everything promote the things listed above.

Go watch the movie Frailty, build from that common seed.
Without spoiling it--I think doing something like that would be an awesome game idea.

Thanks, I'll check it out this week! Anything specific I should look out for?

When I focus on creating the game, I think I focus on a few movies as well, but it's good to have many sources to base this on. Other titles the game should be able to emulate are Pi, the Ninth Gate, Twin Peaks (the TV series, not the movie), and although it's not a primary source of inspiration, the Da Vinci Code (the book) is the first thing my wife thought about when I spoke to her about my ideas.


I got stuck on the combat system for a good couple of weeks, but I think I got an idea that might work nicely, a couple ideas actually, and I'll be playtesting the basic system and combat system soonish. Not ready to test the antagonist building system yet.