The first overview of The Silence. A setting in the works using the WaRP system.

The world we live in, the reality around us, is but one of many. Other worlds, parallel dimensions, other realities, whatever names they are given exist along side our own. Just a hairs width away separated by a boundary to keep us isolated from each other. But over time that wall has weakened and slowly broken down. Allowing others to pass into that space in between, a sinister place that mirrors the darkest aspects of the realities around it, a place known as The Silence.

In this setting the players take on the roles of people who are sensitive to areas of weakness in the boundary between our reality and that of The Silence. They feel a draw to these areas or may even cause the cracks that already exist to open up even more. What they choose to do about the horrors that they keep stumbling across is up to them. But one thing is for sure, the things that reside on the other side want in our world for various reasons. They may be the only ones who can stop them.

The Cracks in the Boundary.

The areas where the wall is the weakest are called cracks, but they are not all the same. There are different levels of breakage and how the other side is manifested can be different from site to site. Also the areas along the Boundary next to our world are mirror images, copies if you will, of each other. Although those over there tend to be a much more broken, dark and horrific version. Where everything is in a constant state of decay and despair permeates the air.

Sound does not travel the same either. In the open air most sounds are completely gone within a hundred feet, so somebody could be screaming for help close by and nobody could hear it. Hence the name that it is given, The Silence. Inside structures such as buildings it is more chaotic, noises far away may sound like they are right in the next room while your friend down the hallway may be getting violently murdered and you hear nothing.

Now lets look at the various types of cracks and how they are categorized. But do note that this isn't a science and they may manifest in completely unforeseen ways as well.

Crosspoint. These are completely open doorways that exist between the two worlds. You can't see them until you've already walked through. Once several feet in the air will go very cold and you won't hear any noises. Then you will see the entire reality around you slowly peel over into the dark mirror version of itself. Paint will peel away, glass grows cracks, blood soaks up through the floors, barb wire creeps across open windows. If the one has been paying attention they may be able to retrace their path back through the Crosspoint into our reality and escape... unless something blocks their way.

Snap. This is an almost violent cross over to the other side. The person will feel a shock of cold that is slightly painful and their muscles will tense up and cramp for a moment usually bringing them to their knees. When they recover a second later they find themselves on the other side in the mirror version of where they were. But there is no path back to follow.

Bleed. Sometimes the crack only works one way. With a bleed creatures and residents can be pulled over into our reality. But it also starts to leak that negative energy that permeates the Silence as well. Slowly buildings will start to take on the appearance of their mirror counterparts and fall into disrepair while feeling constantly drafty and cold. These spots can be very dangerous as somethings like to take up their nests near a Bleed while hunting out around it.

Ritual Breaks. These are deliberate breaks in the Border to allow passage back and forth between the realities. Usually achieved after the culmination of a long and arduous magical ritual. Sometimes these are done by unwitting cultist in search of power and knowledge, other times they are done in order to rescue someone who is trapped. These passages only last a limited amount of time dependent on the type of ritual used to open them. Some of these rituals cause such a disturbance in the Silence that they attract the attention of those that reside there. Something very bad for those who aren't prepared for the horrors that lurk in the cold. Most of the time these rituals open up in the mirror of the spot where they are performed although there are some out there that creak a passage to very specific locations.

Areas of The Silence

Broken City.

Most of the cracks that form are in this area. A massive apparently unending city that goes on and on, sometimes looping back in on itself even. Containing the mirrored structures of the present and the past all crammed together. One will also notice that all because two building are beside each other in our reality doesn't mean they will be next to each other in the mirror of the Silence. One could crossover and find a huge collapsing cathedral between them or a canal on filthy water. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to how they are placed.

Some areas appear to be completely empty of life in any direction. But don't let that fool you, the creatures here know that staying hidden can be a key element of survival and will only show themselves when the odds are in their favor. But the kind of life you stumble across may not be human at all as there are things from realities yet unknown that have crossed over into this place in between.

Wild Lands.

This is a much more rare section to stumble into. A heavy dark jungle like forest that, like it's city counterpart, goes on forever. While the noise silencing is still there the cold is not, instead replace by a constant humid heat that will not let up. But the mirrors here are also different, you could stumble upon an area that clears up and a heavy fog rolls in only to discover that you have wandered into the copy of a World War One trench warfare site complete with zombified soldiers still fighting each other for inches of dirt. Or the deep jungle warfare of the Pacific rim during the Vietnam War era, massive stone temples piled with bodies of human sacrifices and a tribe still living there following their old ways hoping to be released into the world their ancestors came from.

What you will find is another mix of things from other realities that have made this area their home. Things of nightmares that creep just behind the bushes no longer afraid to step on a twig because you will not hear it.

Skinners - A creature for your horror games.

Skinners

Hiding in the dark of those abandoned places that so few ever venture to explore. Watching and waiting for a lone victim to wander in to close. Razor like claws itch for flesh to sink into while their minds crave the euphoria that your terror provides them. Wanting two things above all else, your skin and your screams.

“I can't even close my eyes at night without seeing them. Those bodies, four or five of them, it was hard to tell. Piled in a corner with their skin gone. Two of them were smaller I remember that, they were probably children. There was blood everywhere. It was all over the room upstairs, practically soaking in it. Then the trails of it where I guess the thing drug them downstairs to the... pile. What? Yeah I saw it. Some kind of dead thing I think, still walking around, God it stank. It had knives or something and it tried cutting me from behind. But I had my vest on and it stopped most of it... still got twenty stitches out of it though. It was on me fast, but then the back up I called came running in the other door and it shrieked and ran off. I'll never forget that night. Or that two of them were children.” Officer Donald Haskins, Chronicle PD.

Appearance

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to humans in both height, proportion and general body movements they are anything but human. Residing a rung above us in the food chain we are what they prey on. The differences in appearance set them apart if seen uncovered. Thinner limbs and center mass they look built like somebody with an eating disorder in that regard. With skin that is almost blood red, with a raw look covered in hundreds of small thorn like extrusions. Possessing no body hair, ears or lips they have a slit for a mouth and a row of jagged sharp teeth behind it. Their fingers end in claws that are flat, almost like double edged razors, and roughly two to three inches long.

However they are rarely seen uncovered except on an autopsy table in some dark back room someplace. Read the section on Physical Feeding to get an idea of how they are usually seen out in the world.

Behavior

Sunlight is a bane to these creatures when they are uncovered. With skin that is easily burned they hide out in abandoned buildings and subterranean locations that still have a chance of humans making their way into (old subway tunnels, large storm drain systems, etc). Hiding in the shadows and watching from a distance when they spot a potential target you rarely see them unless they want to be seen. If there are out numbered they are rarely attacked, but then again they also don't more in groups very often. Most encounters reported are of the one on one type. It is very obvious that they possess an almost human level of intelligence and are capable of using just about any weapon to some degree.

Attack

Even when possessing a strength and speed greater than that of a typical human they still prefer a sneak attack. Everything from a straight forward hit from behind to some sort of trap, anything they can think of. Only one catch, they do not kill outright and intend to make the target suffer as much as possible before ending their life. One of the most reported methods is to immobilize the person through stunning or just by over powering them and then using some sort of restraints on them (ropes, handcuffs from previous victims, etc). Once they are unable to fight back their claws are used to slice open a long stretch of skin, then to work them up under the flesh and slowly skin the victim alive.

Emotional Feeding

The skinners feed off the pain they cause in others. A necessary part of their mental nourishment. Without it they will eventually grow delusional, with emotional out of control fits of anger and an inability to sleep. At some point this will cause them to either grow bolder when searching for victims or, in most cases, to become even more seclusive until they suffer a brain aneurism which will kill them. When receiving the emotional rush of the pain they have created it acts like a drug, euphoric and never enough, leading them to drag out the tortures for as long as possible.

There is, however, one very unique and strange weakness to this. It only works when they are the cause of the pain. If someone or something else that they had nothing to do with causes the pain then there is a severe mental backlash causing a great deal of agony on the Skinner itself. The greater the pain the more it forces them back. This is also the believed reason as to why they are rarely found in groups as the attack of one would drive the others away.

Physical Feeding

This is where the skinning part comes into more importance. Those thorn like things on their skin are actually part of their digestive system. Once a person has expired they finish removing the layers of skin and then cover their body with the pieces. The thorns hold them in place like hundreds of small hooks while they also release a digestive enzyme which breaks the flesh down. This is then absorbed through pores in the skin providing the creature with substance. The process may take weeks to finish leading to encounters where people think they are being attacked by something undead as the layer of skin is rotting on the outside.

Afterward

Once they are finished and their meal is dead they will generally drag it off to some other section of their chosen lair. Usually the furthest point away from where people usually enter from. They are absolutely not interested in doing any other kind of clean up at all. Blood is left where ever it hit the floor and even bits and pieces are left lying about. They simply wait for their next food source as they soak the in warm feeling of their emotional feeding for several days.

Silence - rough base mechanics

Okay working on the basic mechanics for Silence (my Silent Hill inspired rpg I want to run).  I really want to keep it very simple, as little note keeping, detail tracking, etc as possible.  So I wrote down a sort of outline of how I want the rules to work.  This is a completely rough draft with no actual meat put into it whatsoever.  Just me dropping down idea onto the blank page. 

Here is the thoughts on traits, combat and a bit about challenges.

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Four base traits. MOVE, FIGHT, THINK and HIDE.  Rated from zero to three.

Use just ten siders with the goal of rolling high.

At a zero roll two dice and keep the lowest

At a one roll one die

At a two roll two and keep the highest

At a three roll three and keep the highest

Goal is to roll higher than the difficulty of the action.

In hand to hand you roll FIGHT vs FIGHT. The amount you roll over your opponents roll is the amount of damage you do. Weapons will add a set amount more.

There is no initiative roll. If the GM thinks you surprised them then you roll vs a target number for damage or give you a extra die in your FIGHT roll.

HIDE will almost always be vs THINK

MOVE vs MOVE when trying to outrun something. Can also be used vs target numbers to make jumps, get out of the way of something quickly, etc.

THINK will commonly be used vs target numbers.

The Other Side: Skill resolution mechanics

Skill ranking and mechanics idea. One main goal is to just use six sided dice since they are my preferred die type and easily available.

Most likely I'll be using cascade style skills like out of Unknown Armies or broad traits like Over the Edge. Either way there will be three rankings when you choose them skilled, adept and expert. This will tell you how many dice you roll. But you only keep one, the highest. Unless you are trying something you have absolutely no skill, in that case you keep the lowest.

unskilled roll two dice and keep the lowest
skilled roll one and keep the highest
adept roll two and keep the highest
expert roll three and keep the highest

Some skills would be listed as NA for unskilled and impossible to do without possessing it.

Target numbers would depend on the action. Some would be based off a preset difficulty. For example with lockpicking the lock would have its own number that needed to be reached. 2 for the easiest and 6 for the hardest. Others such as dancing would depend on a number determined by the GM, with 2 being easy and 6 being the hardest.

Target numbers for hitting somebody would depend on the weapon and range/actions of target. Examples: Long range would add one, moving target would add one, duress would add one, weapon is low quality adds one, things like this. So if you are trying to hit a perfectly stationary target at normal range the difficulty would be 2. But a target at long range that is running and you are being shot at also (duress) would be a 5.

Of course this could make combat pretty deadly with expert fighters. But then again, shouldn't it be that way?

Thinking of some sort of instant success choice with easy task. Like the take 10 and take 20 rules from 3rd Edition D&D. Where a skilled character spends extra time to make sure he is doing it correctly and is careful.

The Other Side: The Sight

The Sight

In the world of The Other Side there are people who have a gift of sorts. It's a gift that allows them to see what most others cannot, they can see through the veil of our reality. The structure of our world has a tendency to try and protect those who reside in it. First step in protection is simply hiding what does not belong. So the cracks in the walls, creatures who have slipped through, people who have figured out how to use powers that are seeping in; all of these, they are covered up. Only those with the Sight can see or detect them.

They, of course, are the player characters.

Hopefully this will allow the game to be ran in a few different ways by game masters. From a group of monster hunters, to a occult detectives and people thrown into the power struggles between beings from another world who are using our reality as a battleground. It will also add in the extra antagonists of law enforcement agencies and such who will see an assault against an otherworldly humanoid predator as an assault on a strange acting homeless man. So there can be plenty of material to work with.

Now of course not everybody can see as good as the rest. The Sight will have a skill rating and anything that is hidden by the veil will have a difficulty number to beat in order to see. But everyone with the site can see the cracks, of course that's not necessarily a good thing since by seeing them you risk getting pulled though without a choice.

Why some people are able to see like this and others are not is a subject of great debate... among those who know of it. Common theories are human evolution in defense against a growing enviromental threat, influence by some as of yet unknown race from the Other Side who are secretly aiding us, even some think that it's caused by the amount of dependency that we have on avenues of escape from the world on a daily basis. The actual truth is nobody really knows. I don't even know and I'm never going to make a set reason. This is something of the cosmological setting in the game that will be left open for GM's to fill in for themselves if needed. Or they can use the same answer I will be 'nobody knows'.

The Other Side - The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Pulling the name from my never finished system for Dark West on this one. I've always been a fan of having advantages and disadvantage in my games. It helps add depth to the characters and gives the GM a bit more insight into what the players actually want to do with them. So nearly any system I come up with is going to have these. Just sometimes how they work may vary a bit. Here are some details on how I see them working in The Other Side at the moment.

The Good and the Bad.

First thing out of the box I am not going to allow these to give the PC's any sort of financial or material gains. Turns it into more of a 'look what I get to start with!' situation. Instead they will be about their actual body of the character. Things that will affect their physical, mental and social abilities. They will be subdivided down into those three categories as well (hat off to the old WoD on this).

Now what I haven't decided on is how to figure out how many of each the players can choose. There is always the point buy method of varying degrees. Massive point pool to buy the entire character with, but this doesn't fit how I see the rest of character generation. Point swap, where the Bads would give you points to buy the Goods with, this has potential. Then there are a few random methods as well. Rolling dice for the number you get is an easy out but lacks flair. Or maybe even the lifepath set up that is used in games like Cyberpunk 2020. I just want to make it match the feel of the game somehow, exactly how to do this is the big question.

The Ugly.

Now this idea is lifted pretty much straight from the Kult rpg and honestly it's probably the main thing about character creation that I loved in it. Every character has something they don't want others to know, part of their past that makes them what they are today. They all have a dark secret. Nearly anytime I've ever ran anything horror related other than Kult I wished that I had put this into it. So much to use is just handed over on a silver plate to the GM. So I am damn sure going to be putting this into The Other Side.

Now I always like it when players make their disadvantages/advantages all cross into each other and with their dark secret. Suffering from nightmares from when they were the victim of a medical experiment, cold blooded because years back they were in a situation where they had to kill other people to survive, these sorts of things. So I'm going to work in a way to reward players for doing this. Depending on how I end up making the resolution mechanics it may be chances to reroll per game, extra dice in die pools, or bonuses. Maybe even all of them based on how the relation is done.

I want character generation to make the players think about how they want their characters to really be. All the way to the core. This seems to be a good step in that direction.

The Other Side visuals

This is what you find when you make your way to the other side. The bleed was at an amusement park, one minute you were walking through the crowds of people smelling of popcorn and sweat. Then you saw the crack and you stared at it a few seconds to many. Then in a blink the people are gone and all you can smell is the mold and stagnant water.

You really don't want to be caught there once the sun goes down.

The Other Side - quick overview.

A few notes about 'The Other Side' which I'm currently getting ready to start working on. It's my own personal little horror setting with influences from a bunch of different places. Some of the terms I have used before with other ideas or in various discussions about games I've ran. But they all seem to just lead right back to one place.

The reality we know is only one of many. They sort of exist like a spiders web, all tied together by various strands. Some exist right next door to us while others we have to cross more than one world to get to. Problems arise when the walls between these realities begin to weaken or crack and they start to bleed into each other. This also allows for things to travel between them.

Our little world is nearest to one that most simply call 'The City'. It mimics that which bleeds into it better than most others. Most of the surface is covered entirely by a city in various states of ruin and disrepair. Through it is how we gain access to others, but it's a dangerous place and many do not live to tell of their travels there.

Humans have souls, something that sets them apart from many other... things out there. Although there is no heaven and hell or angels and demons as we know them. There are, however, the places and creatures that provided the inspiration for the stories about them.

The characters will be those who are able to see the cracks in the walls of reality. For some unknown reason their minds are able to catch a glimpse of what others cannot. A few think this is an a sign of evolution, others think it's the laws of another reality bleeding into ours, many wish they never had that sort of sight at all. Because when you can see the cracks it tends to be easier to accidently slip over to the other side of them.