If you've ever seen the classic John Carpenter movie "The Thing" then let me ask you this: how do you write rules for a creature like that? It would have to be an NPC/enemy for the players to fight, sure, but what if it takes over a player? Any way to handle it so the other players don;t know that their ally is now on the other side? Also if it absosbs memories and such so well it can pass for a person, doesn;t it just keep gaining skills at an obscene rate?

I've never really seen RPG rules for "the thing" in any system except the phoenix command system, and it was hanbdled more like a tactical wargame than a RPG.

The thing could be an excellent adversary, but the rules for it would be incredible unless the GM just runs if by fiat. Any ideas?

I would run it by player fiat.  Basically, after one or two NPCs is infected, I'd start passing notes to the PCs, one of them would be "the Thing" after being alone, and it whould be his/her job to then take out the others.

It would be hard to do, I think. Maybe impossible.

A lot of the horror in the movie takes place when the characters don't know what the Thing is, how it behaves and what it can do. In order to have PCs being taken-over by it, though, the players need to be briefed on this prior to starting the game so that they can play their characters appropriately after the switch. This is going to minimize fear of the unknown right off the bat.

Furthermore, gamers will want to game. They won't want to make the same sort of "stupid" mistakes that horror movie characters do. As soon as they know there's a shapeshifting menace on the loose, they're going to take the very unrealistic tactic of "From now on, we all stay together at all times, even when somebody has to take a shower or a shit."

And how do you determine in-game that a PC has been taken-over? You can't take the player aside from the group and play-out a seperate section of game where his character is attacked, because everyone will immediately assume that he's "turned" once he rejoins the main game and probably immediately gang-up and kill him just to be sure.

Very difficult.

Quote from: joewolzI would run it by player fiat.  Basically, after one or two NPCs is infected, I'd start passing notes to the PCs, one of them would be "the Thing" after being alone, and it whould be his/her job to then take out the others.

Yeah, I've seen this done before. Some players take perverse glee in playing the villain. Espeically if the normal table or campaign rules prohibit playing such characters.

Of course the player playing the thing would have to tell the other characters out of character that he was intending to kill them, and make sure it was okay with them first.... :rolleyes:

:ref:

We did something similar with a 150-player LARP (it was part Bodysnatchers and part Thing, but in a pseudo-Napoleonic world)

The players went for it like a pack of rats.  It was very, very scary

Quote from: Caesar SlaadYeah, I've seen this done before. Some players take perverse glee in playing the villain. Espeically if the normal table or campaign rules prohibit playing such characters.

That's what makes mind control/charm abilities so fun/scary.  Some players get a gleam in their eye and attack much more viciously than I would have with NPCs.  Sometimes, there's a bit of underlying group tension being worked out.