Quote from: Aglondir on May 07, 2023, 08:05:48 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 07, 2023, 06:33:47 PM
The Bureau isn't a governmental agency, it was funded by the Knights Templar, it has had many different names at different places and times...

Excellent! I love the Templars. But I read somewhere that if you like them you're fascist, or something. Is that really a thing, or is it just woke hysteria?

In current year anything and everything is fascism or leads to it. The only connection I can think of is some white identitarians stealing the Deus Vult war cry, and even then I'm not sure that was a Templar exclusive thing.

Lets assume the fascists really like the Templars... So what? Hitler was a vegan and loved dogs, nazis drank water...

I refuse to allow the woketards to gift everything to the fascists just because they hate me.

If they start Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeing once I publish it... Well, that's free publicity.

Just a random reference, the Templars feature as good guys in Katherine Kutz's modern fantasy series, The Adept.  What I read there make some think well of them.  (Of course it's fiction...)

The Templars are the one "good" faction in the Secret World MMORPG, where they're disciplined monster hunters and crusaders trying to protect humanity from the supernatural evils that plague the unsuspecting world. I use them as inspiration to a certain extent for my own Templars, in an urban fantasy setting I've been working on, on and off, where they're one of the few "good" secret societies in the world. Though, all secret societies are shady to some extent or another.

But my Templars are more like Gnostic mystics in possession of ancient esoteric lore and religious artifacts that they collected during the Crusades, and are heavily involved in occult practices and such, with monster hunting being an important, but somewhat secondary role for them to dealing with esoteric lore. The principal Christian secret society in my world is called Gladius Dei, which was the (made up) monster hunting arm of the Inquisition, and still secretly works for the Vatican in investigating and purging supernatural threats. They tolerate the Templars, but keep them at arms length, for being heretics and dabbling in the occult.

I was thinking of having two groups of templars, one good and one evil. The evil branch descends from the priests who opposed Akhenaton, who was trying to convert Egypt to Christianity but failed and was assassinated, causing his allies like Moses to flee Egypt with their faith and become the ancestors to nomadic peoples like the Bohemians.

Anyway, the same models I described for designing vampires can also be applied to other urban fantasy characters. Is there one type of hunter/werewolf/magician/whatever in the world, or several?

Copyright prevents me from just copying Hunter: The Vigil (though I doubt Paradox would care enough to sue if I did), but I do liberally take inspiration for concepts in my listing of monster hunting organizations. For example: one of my organizations is basically Cheiron with added zoanoids from Guyver, and other references like to Resident Evil (history of causing small scale zombie apocalypses when experiments go disastrously wrong) or Hellsing (artificial vampires created and monitored using magic microchips).

I haven't really delved deep into multiple vampire types for my world, since mine is supposed to be a more broad urban fantasy setting, where vampires are really not the focus, but more like one more out of many types supernatural creatures. And I don't want it to get too bogged down with details. But I do plan on including Feral vs "True Vampires", as part of a transitional process people undergo when transforming into vampire, where those who fail to adapt completely (likely more than half the time) go feral and turn basically into glorified ghouls. And only the top candidates manage to achieve true vampire status.

There are more types of shifters, focused on different animal types, like wolves, bears, rats, cats, ravens, etc. But all shifters are humans who have become infused with an animal spirit that they struggle with and transforms them into shifters. And that spirit may pick people due to qualities observed in them, if they kill a sacred animal of their type or best a shifter in single combat, or when called through special rituals. But the selection process is uncertain and spirits may reject candidates for any number of reasons.

Each shifter animal type has their own variant bonuses along with certain stats common to all shifters, as well as variations in their culture and society. With wolf shifters/spirits generally being more focused on close knit family groups with strong familial bonds. While cat shifters tend to be independent spirits who pick whatever individual strikes their fancy and have little social organization outside of occasional "litters" formed for protection. And rats shifters are notorious for fooling random homeless people, street urchins and outcasts into becoming shifters by performing spirit calling rituals on them without their knowledge of what's going on, etc.

Fey have a bunch of different types, cuz they're a whole category of otherworldly creatures, including elves, dwarves (Nordic style), sylphs, goblins, jinn (Middle Eastern fey), ogres/oni (Japanese ogres), etc. And fey society is divided into regional kingdoms located within realms in overlapping sections of the Otherworld ruled by a king or queen, allied to a Fey Court (factions), including Light Court (light fey), Shadow Court (dark fey), Domestic Court (domestic fey) and Wild Court (elemental and sylvan fey).

I haven't gotten into specific hunter organizations yet (other than Templars and Gladius Dei, which are more like secret societies that also hunt monsters, and I only have cursory details on for so far). But I did work out some common types of monster hunters (which may sometimes overlap), in terms of theme or focus, including:

Clinkers: Monster hunters specialized in hunting fey. Reference to clinking sound of metal, such as cold iron used to hunt fey.

Exorcists: Monster hunters specialized in hunting demons.

Hunter Incs: Monster hunters funded by big corporations.

Lab Baggers: Monster Hunters specialized in capturing supernatural creatures on behalf of labs that conduct secret experiments.

Ragtag Gangs: Monster Hunters without specialty, who will hunt anything that crawls in the night.

Skinners: Monster Hunters specialized in hunting shifters.

Stakers: Monster hunters specialized in hunting vampires.

Undertakers: Monster hunters specialized in hunting undead creatures other than vampires.

Witch Finders: Monster hunters specialized in hunting cultists and magicians.

Most of this stuff is still a work in process and may undergo changes and renaming over time.

Neat.

I'm working on some stuff, and aside from unpredictability in monster hunting, the multiple kinds of vampire thing is useful for devising side quests. Just watch a bunch of vampire movies or read reviews, then use that as inspiration. The multiple types conceit means you don't even need to work very hard to integrate the idea.

For example: a side quest where you help the head vampire of a vampire gang find his soulmate before he turns 100 and he and his gang spontaneously die. Why does he think this will happen? Who cares, it's funny!

As you can well imagine, the tone of my campaigns is campy and tongue-in-cheek. There's no way I'm playing this genre seriously.