Welcome to Halitech (Call of Cthulhu plus Inception)
Jun 28, 2013 21:32:04 GMT -8
Post by henryhankovitch on Jun 28, 2013 21:32:04 GMT -8
A few years ago I saw a forum discussion on the idea of transplanting the ideas of Inception into the world of the Cthulhu Mythos, via the Dreamlands. That nugget has been floating in the back of my cranial bowl for a while now, and I think I've got the basis for a good campaign.
The idea is that the players are new employees of Halitech Security Solutions, a private contractor aspiring to serve the bloated apparatus of Homeland Security with "new solutions for interperson intelligence collection and humane methods for interrogation enhancements." The company presents their technology (as in Inception) as just a fancy brain-scanning method that allows other people to observe and interact with an individual's sleeping consciousness. What is actually happening is that the players (and their subject) are slipping into the Dreamlands.
At least initially, the campaign will be structured around "missions," where the PCs are assigned to a subject and expected to produce useful intelligence. Hopefully opening up more in the later campaign as they have to deal with the various threats emerging from their actions.
I've also been thinking of making some mechanical changes while they're in the Dreamlands. Sanity and HP can be lost as usual; however, when the PC awakens they'll find their HP to be normal and their sanity mostly restored. (As the horrors they witness in dreams seem less real upon awakening.) But some "waking" sanity will accrue as bad things happen to them in the Dreamlands. (Go mad, or be brutally killed in the Dreamlands? Lose SAN points on waking up. That sort of thing.) Eventually they'll learn that they can actually assert inflence over the reality of the Dreamlands--again, Inception-style. Though doing so, like using magic in the real world, causes significant SAN loss.
The idea is that the players are new employees of Halitech Security Solutions, a private contractor aspiring to serve the bloated apparatus of Homeland Security with "new solutions for interperson intelligence collection and humane methods for interrogation enhancements." The company presents their technology (as in Inception) as just a fancy brain-scanning method that allows other people to observe and interact with an individual's sleeping consciousness. What is actually happening is that the players (and their subject) are slipping into the Dreamlands.
At least initially, the campaign will be structured around "missions," where the PCs are assigned to a subject and expected to produce useful intelligence. Hopefully opening up more in the later campaign as they have to deal with the various threats emerging from their actions.
I've also been thinking of making some mechanical changes while they're in the Dreamlands. Sanity and HP can be lost as usual; however, when the PC awakens they'll find their HP to be normal and their sanity mostly restored. (As the horrors they witness in dreams seem less real upon awakening.) But some "waking" sanity will accrue as bad things happen to them in the Dreamlands. (Go mad, or be brutally killed in the Dreamlands? Lose SAN points on waking up. That sort of thing.) Eventually they'll learn that they can actually assert inflence over the reality of the Dreamlands--again, Inception-style. Though doing so, like using magic in the real world, causes significant SAN loss.