Quote from: Dumarest;974223What would be an example of it being done well?

Most Urban Fantasy (which as I understand it is the name for this genre now) is tripe.  I'm not a fan of the Dresden Files books, as they feel like bad RPG fanfic to me.  The works I consider best in this genre tend towards the hardboiled/neo-noir, I think inevitably; a core part of neo-noir is the dirty secrets everyone is hiding, and "holy crap vampires" dials that up to eleven.

Cast A Deadly Spell (open supernatural)
Brimstone (hidden supernatural)
Nightside (technically Wainscot Fantasy; all the supernatural stuff occurs in a pocket dimension)
Books of Blood, Cabal (hidden supernatural)
Hellblazer (hidden supernatural)
Jack of Kinrowan and the Newford series are non-noir hidden supernatural based on Anglo-Celtic fairy tales and legends.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is an open supernatural alternate Victorian England.
So is the Bartimaeus sequence.

The early Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books are very well written but devolve into bad porn around book 5 or so.

I would call all of these works "well done" in the sense that they're well written and present a well-thought-out, coherent setting. Whether you like the genre as presented is a matter of subjective opinion.

EDIT: FWIW, I also think the Buffy-related shows and the Harry Potter franchise are terribly overrated.  They're an awful example of what this genre can be.

I thought Barbara Hambly's James Asher/vampire series dealt with this very well. In those books a major city like London may have approx. half a dozen vampires max. Both Asher books and Hambly's version of vampires are excellent.

Perfect Creature is an example of a non-masquerade setting I didn't find too ridiculous... but it's just vampires, not an entire magical menagerie. Its world is significantly altered by their presence IIRC.

I definitely prefer hidden horror. WFRP 1e over the 2e where the horror is in your face.

Corruption from within is always a more interesting subject to deal with in game I think. Especially, as the players start to unravel the truth which gets progressively more horrific each time. I think if you know too much about the horror from the off it loses the impact (or if it's constantly ever-present, etc.).

Vampire works well with this... Even when the players are your average Vamps (who know very little) then they suddenly meet up with some old Tzimize with hideous war ghouls, they will be in for a nasty surprise.  

The best thing about the hidden supernatural concept is that we can all fool ourselves to think "hey, it could really be out there" whereas for the open supernatural we know it isn't. I'd like to think that there is magic out there, even though the scientist part of my brain knows it's total B.S. :-)

Quote from: The Exploited.;974282I definitely prefer hidden horror. WFRP 1e over the 2e where the horror is in your face.

Well, even with vamps and whatever coming out of the closet there's still plenty of room for secrets and mystery... lack of full disclosure by some/most/all paticipants.
I do prefer the earlier take on Chaos in WFRP though... and the Skaven. Less of an open threat to the entire world and something that needs to stay hidden for its own interests to proceed.
With vanilla fantasy I think it's a fun idea to put some things BACK into the shadows... like elves and dwarves, which have had all the spooky mystery sucked out of them.

Quote from: Simlasa;974355Well, even with vamps and whatever coming out of the closet there's still plenty of room for secrets and mystery...

Yeah, that's true... Vampire has such a large basis of lore from which to draw from. So, you could easily play it as an open existence and yet reveal more horror as the game proceeds. It's just my personal preference to keep things below the surface. Or that only a tiny specialist part of a government knows the exsistance of such creatures, etc.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974251Cast A Deadly Spell Bartimaeus sequence. (open supernatural)

Have to check these out based on the others on the list.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974251Brimstone (hidden supernatural)

Criminally underrated show.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974251Books of Blood, Cabal (hidden supernatural)

Horror Classics.  This brings up a good point, a whole lot of Horror is essentially "Hidden Supernatural".  Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dean R. Koontz, etc. Pick your favorites.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974251Hellblazer (hidden supernatural)

One of the best.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974251Jack of Kinrowan and the Newford series are non-noir hidden supernatural based on Anglo-Celtic fairy tales and legends.

Never checked this out, thanks.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974251Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is an open supernatural alternate Victorian England.

Not too big on "Open Supernatural", but I quite enjoyed this.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974251The early Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books are very well written but devolve into bad porn around book 5 or so.

Yeah, gets stupid after a while.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974251EDIT: FWIW, I also think the Buffy-related shows and the Harry Potter franchise are terribly overrated.  They're an awful example of what this genre can be.

Yeah, pretty much.

Quote from: trechriron;974184Day Walkers was a good example in my mind of what happens when the vampires come out and no one hunts them down. It seems logical to me that superior beings created from an infection would eventually rule everything. Unless they have some incentive to be benevolent. I wouldn't mind trying out a modern supernatural game where all the supernatural was "out"; dealing with how everyone reacts/copes. Not sure I would be enamored with it as a longer term game.

Day Walkers is really underrated, a full sf imagining of 'if the vampires won.' Kim Newman's very good Anno. Dracula is also a good take on the idea.

Depends on the setting.

I tend to lean to liking the hidden side. But one of my old favourite novels was Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson which posits a modern setting were magic and the supernatural are fully intigrated into the modern.

but overall I lean to the settings where the supernatural is hidden and possibly for good reason. Or like in Deyond the Supernatural the weird stuff is out there and damn hard to prove as they both tend to leave few witnesses and probably no body either. And/or someone/something occasionally covering it all up.

I actually have more of a problem with the believability of hidden supernatural than public supernatural. For example, if there really are vampires, then it's probably fairly easy to prove their existence. In the original Vampire: The Masquerade, all it would take is one hunter to successfully stake a vampire and drag off its torpored body. They would then have concrete physical proof that they can take around to show and document with dozens of private medical professionals and/or journalists. It takes an unbelievably massive conspiracy to shut this down.

This is especially relevant in an RPG, because the PCs have the choice of whether to go public with what they find. This leads to either (1) them wondering why the hell no one did this earlier, or (2) the GM bending over backwards to thwart their efforts. There are some schemes that get around this. The Veil in Werewolf: The Apocalypse is where it is an inborn psychological feature that most people ignore or deny the real supernatural. This is at least more consistent.

I have a slight preference to the supernatural being recently opened - so there isn't a lot of time for society to change, but the GM doesn't have to shut down any attempts at going public.


I can maintain some suspension of disbelief in settings, of course. In terms of fiction, I rather liked the Buffy series (though didn't care for Dresden Files or Harry Potter much), but I would also recommend Hellblazer, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, and others.

Quote from: jhkim;974610For example, if there really are vampires, then it's probably fairly easy to prove their existence.

I think you greatly underestimate the societal forces that work to preserve the status quo.

As an obvious example, there are almost certainly vast numbers of unusual species on the planet that are completely unlike anything we're familiar with.  We even have biological specimens of some of them, although usually in poor condition.  But cryptozoologists aren't taken seriously, no one's interested in doing in depth research on these specimens, and those who are can't get funding because it's considered crackpottery.  It only takes one Piltdown Man to cause serious credibility problems for an entire discipline.

And this leaves out the possibility of active suppression of such evidence, either by other vampires or organizations who would like to control this kind of power or just panicky civilians who think the damn thing ought to be incinerated before something horrible happens.

Quote from: daniel_ream;974636I think you greatly underestimate the societal forces that work to preserve the status quo.

As an obvious example, there are almost certainly vast numbers of unusual species on the planet that are completely unlike anything we're familiar with.  We even have biological specimens of some of them, although usually in poor condition.  But cryptozoologists aren't taken seriously, no one's interested in doing in depth research on these specimens, and those who are can't get funding because it's considered crackpottery.  It only takes one Piltdown Man to cause serious credibility problems for an entire discipline.

And this leaves out the possibility of active suppression of such evidence, either by other vampires or organizations who would like to control this kind of power or just panicky civilians who think the damn thing ought to be incinerated before something horrible happens.

There is a huge difference between a partial bug carapace or footprint cast and a complete, living, and demonstrably supernatural human-like body. If someone actually had a complete, fresh bigfoot body - damn straight it would make the news and be taken seriously.

In Vampire: The Masquerade, essentially any medical professional can confirm that a captured vampire is supernatural. It's not a subtle thing that might or might not be a hoax.

So to be able to prevent any whistleblowing, you need a worldwide conspiracy that reaches to every doctor's office in the world. That's tough on believability - and even if not, it makes play feel pointless since it's hard to make a difference in the face of that sort of power.

Least in WOD theres an in universe force that keeps editing perceptions. So even if you brought out a vampire people would dismiss it as a disease, a one-off. Or even reality edit it into some street bum you just shot because you believed it was a vampire because that makes more sense than a real vampire.

In other settings theres sometimes a "decompose" mechanic in effect.

In others chalk it up to disbelief. So you claim you have a real vampire? Looks like a normal person? (especially if they can hide the fangs) Some of the others may blip on the media then be forgotten or dismissed as fake footage #1000000000 because the media is flooded with fakes on a nearly daily bases.

Quote from: Omega;974665Least in WOD theres an in universe force that keeps editing perceptions. So even if you brought out a vampire people would dismiss it as a disease, a one-off. Or even reality edit it into some street bum you just shot because you believed it was a vampire because that makes more sense than a real vampire.

That sounds like the Veil from Werewolf: The Apocalypse - which I mentioned in my previous post as a more consistent explanation for keeping the supernatural hidden. As I recall, it wasn't a part of the original V:tM, though.

More generally, there is plenty of urban fantasy that doesn't have this sort of perception-editing - which this would apply to.

Quote from: Omega;974665In other settings theres sometimes a "decompose" mechanic in effect.

In others chalk it up to disbelief. So you claim you have a real vampire? Looks like a normal person? (especially if they can hide the fangs) Some of the others may blip on the media then be forgotten or dismissed as fake footage #1000000000 because the media is flooded with fakes on a nearly daily bases.

I would agree that the supernatural wouldn't become open simply because of a video of vampires on the Internet. If that was the only evidence the hunters had, then I agree it would just be a blip.

However, in most of these supernatural settings, there is plenty of tangible evidence of the supernatural that the PCs can get their hands on. A staked vampire corpse might pass for normal at a casual glance, but a medical examination will easily reveal differences - most obviously the fact that it doesn't decompose. For that matter, many games have options for the PCs themselves to have verifiable supernatural abilities. I can ignore this side of things, but it can be a strain at times.