Jeff Baker
CREATOR
about 15 hours ago
Project Update: Have Dangers Your Way
Hello good people!
I'm back with another update. Last time, I talked Dangers, and the previous two updates covered aspects related to PC creation. This time, I want to cover genre kits.
A genre kit is a collection of optional tools a GM and table can incorporate if they want to lean into a specific style or theme of play. By default, each kit includes a new Danger class, a new Danger ability, at least one new mechanism for play, and some rollable tables for generating genre-specific scenarios. Kits also re-flavor the attribute names to better reflect the types of PCs common to the genre.
I currently have five genre kits planned for the book. The names for each kit are in-progress, and could change. Each of these kits have already been drafted in full, and playtested.
- Ball Season. This genre kit offers tools and resources for playing Victorian, Regency, and Gilded Age scenarios. You might want to recreate Pride, Prejudice & Zombies, or try to run a scenario centered around the fog-covered streets of London or Boston in the 1880s. The kit introduces a standing mechanism for the PCs to track their reputation, and a schemer Danger class that could be anything from a mundane socialite aiming to destroy a PCs' social status to a devious vampire looking to seduce their next victim. Rollable tables help the GM identify fictional locales to set scenarios, and provide ideas for Dangers—from folk gods and devils, to more pulpy adversaries like aliens and Atlanteans. PCs focus attributes around propriety, stoutness, and yearning.
- This Isn't Happening. This genre kit focuses on post-apocalyptic scenarios. There are a variety of tables to help sort out the cause of the apocalypse, from classics like the undead rising or alien invasion, to more realistic dread like nuclear war or environmental collapse. And since every post-apocalypse story tells us that the real Danger is humans, there are tools for creating factions and landmarks to fight over. The kit offers mechanisms for collecting and spending resources, and for building barricades to help protect PCs during confrontations. The new Danger class is a demolisher, themed around destroying PC safehouses. Anything from a War of the Worlds tripod to a Left for Dead tank could work. PCs have the attributes instincts, endurance, and charity.
- Second Contact. This genre kit offers ways to infuse a little sci-fi into your horror. Fans of Alien, Event Horizon, Predator, or even Mars Attacks! could find some fun tools here. Rollable tables help the GM create different aliens and stage where the scenario might take place. The new mechanism is tech, which replaces the items feature in standard runs of We're in Danger. Tech offers dice manipulation like items, but the amount of tech you carry and the bonuses you get from that tech connect to your attributes. Want to play a space marine? Take an advanced assault rifle. Want to play a diplomat? Take a universal translator. Tech can protect you from eradication by the new overlord Danger class. Attributes are reflavored to science, culture, and muscle.
- Oldheart. This genre kit lets PCs play as the bad guys, or more specifically as folks led astray by a corrupting evil influence. If you like the stories of Lovecraft and Junji Ito, you can find much to work with in this kit. The new mechanisms include corruption and manifestations. If the PCs give themselves over to their evil masters, they gain benefits, but risk losing too much of themselves. The new Danger class is the defiler, who aims to inflict corruption and push PCs past their breaking points. Rollable tables help the GM create the Entity which currently has its literal or figurative tendrils buried in the PCs's minds, and a lodge the Entity uses as a playground for its foul deeds. Some PCs might lean into the opportunity to play evil, whereas others might fight back against the corruption. Either way, their attributes are hospitality, depravity, and fitness.
- Heckboy. This genre kit allows PCs to play non-humans, or humans with powers. Maybe you want to do something like Hellboy, Doom Patrol, Constantine, Dresden Files, or those seasons of Supernatural when Sam was hooked on demon blood. The new Danger class is the titan, which could be anything from a kaiju to an ancient god to something akin to an Omega-level mutant from X-Men. Titans are too strong a foe for regular humans, and so the powered PCs must take on these Dangers. Rollable tables help the GM create Dangers from a variety of categories, and develop haunts—locations that can turn as adversarial as the Dangers the PCs must face. The reflavored attributes are ferocity, aberrance, and savvy.
It's important to note that none of these genre kits are required for play, and there's no reason you couldn't use the base game to play them. These kits are merely if you want to be a little extra. I want We're in Danger to be flexible and hackable, which is why I've made these kits optional. Use, amend, and discard as you see fit. Or, create your own kits and variations of play. I'm planning a basic guide for building your own kits and scenarios, and for advice about how to smash different kits together.
And, I have other kits in mind for continued support of We're in Danger, including kits that could offer time-travel, Highlander-style executions, medieval fantasy horror, Jules Verne style adventure, and toys-gone-wild. But, no promises on those just yet!
If you want to see some of these genre kits in action, we have been testing them on our Adventures in Lollygagging channels:
BALL SEASON: Redcap Rampage
OLDHEART: The Pines Have Eyes
If you have questions about any or all of the genre kits, drop them in the comments, tag me on BlueSky, or better yet: Hop into our Adventures in Lollygagging Discord. And if there are topics you want me to cover in future updates, I'd love some suggestions.
Thank you to everyone who has followed the BackerKit so far, tried the game out on itch.io or RPG Trader, and shared the game with your friends and communities. My appreciation is unending!
Until next time,
—Jeff.
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