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Gamma Phase Location WorksheetDue April 25th!

Below is everything you'll need to give people a clear vision of what sort of vision you have for Exit Void's Delta Phase. You don't need to write a huge dissertation on any of these topics, but the more you include the better people will be able to see what you have in mind. Feel free to link to images of locations, monsters, or anything else. Of course images aren't necessary.

Hook

Silent Hill meets Spirited Away! Maybe Totoro can make a cameo.

Themes and Goals

With the next phase shift, it seems some prayers have been answered. Roughing it in the prohibition era hasn't given the inhabitants as many resources as they might have liked, but with a new technology bump, perhaps more could be done in an effort to fight back against COMPASS?

That is, if COMPASS still didn't have their hands in everything. Much like Zelien, most of the world around them is non-functional at first. At least, during the day. But at night, what seems dead comes alive. The town transforms, using it's broken self as a base for what once was a bustling town and thriving residence. This switches between a more congenial town of otherwordly ghosts and nightlife and something hellish with the simple intent to drive someone mad.

The latter is when the cultists come out and seem most active. It sure is strange the creatures during those bad nights avoid them all together. But the phantoms during the more pleasant nights don't ever seem to have heard of the other side of the town, the Mr. Hyde. It's like two towns living in the same place, one constantly trying to take over the other. And the cultists? They seem to want to welcome in the other. Are the creatures their gods? Perhaps servants of the nethermost deities?

Whether COMPASS intended this to happen or not, it's difficult to tell, but although the day time is prime for regrouping, it's also the time where COMPASS can make the most impact. The spirit worlds, whatever one may call them, make COMPASS suspiciously silent. Maybe they can be used to the advantage of finally bringing COMPASS down? Or maybe something even worse is on the horizon.

Setting

Overall



You've seen one town and you've seen them all, right? Except this is a serious step-up from Zelien, if only the street lamps and phone lines hint that we've rejoined the 21st century. It would be great if it seemed like it worked. The town, as a whole, appears to be completely abandoned. Modern conveniences don't mean much if they're nonfunctional, and where is anyone to run them?

This is the city (UNAMED) during the day. But at night, everything changes. The buildings don't necessarily repair themselves, but the ghosts of what they once were overlay their skeletal structures. Stores, shops, restaurants, even public transportation suddenly comes to life, run by otherworldly creatures. They're not familiar figures, though. Formless blobs may beckon you inside for a drink or offer you the day's paper, but they seem friendly, or at least ambivalent for the most part. That is, almost every day of the week. There are warnings in the shadows, some faces that scratch in and out of your perception and give way to something much more macabre. But they're flashes, something easy to overlook.

Except once a week.

Sometimes when you roll the die, you get snake eyes. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to it, but instead of nightlife, restaurants turn to literal meat lockers with personages that might look too familiar. What had been passengers on ghostly buses are misshapen creatures that lumber towards whatever moves, not necessarily to eat, but simply to kill. The longer one stays out and active in this world at night, the more they confuse the friendly phantoms during the downtime as their distorted counterparts. Eating the food the ghosts offer helps. Or, at least that's what they seem to say.




Base Camp



All the comforts you will learn to forget again in an abandoned theme park properly named Cool Zone. None of the rides are working, but they're standing, and that's what matters, isn't it? Besides, who hasn't wanted to camp out in Cinderella's castle? Food courts lay unused and unsanitary, but they could be cleaned up and made functional again. There are public restrooms in disrepair but it's better than laying down piping for the first time. The ferris wheel stands as a beacon in the center of the park. The largest roller coaster weaves in and out of the skyline. The tracks are old and rusted, and there appear to be a few cars stuck at the top.

At night, however, the park comes alive. Broken lamps turn on their own accord and previously empty popcorn machines are suddenly overflowing. The rides move on their own, despite their mechanical failures. How strange!

The biggest plus of the amusement park? When the world all goes to hell, the creatures seem to generally stay away from it, especially on the specific rides. Who wants to teacup for seven hours?

Life and the Living

Natives

The "natives" may actually be dead, but they are active at night. They can be in the shape of anything; people, alien creatures, even plants, but more often than not they don't seem to have any specific discernible shape at all. Eyes by any number can be made out on most of them, and mouths may form out of their semi-transparent bodies when eating or sometimes when speaking. They come in a variety of colors, but most are dark and shadow-like. A good number of them are friendly and want to share food, drink, stories about their lives (past or present), and even some are willing to listen to your woes if you buy another round. Most are neither interested nor disinterested. Very few are outright hostile. Unless you steal the last dinner roll.

A on the bad nights there is a different crowd entirely. Grotesque monsters take place of the more amicable phantoms. They can't communicate, but they clearly take notice. They're drawn towards anyone moving around them and their only intent seems to be to massacre. Some wander around aimlessly until they happen across someone stupid enough to cross their path, others lay in wait.




NPCs

- Cultists from before? We've built them up so they should still have a place
- Maybe a few specific phantoms? Especially one or two that may run rides in the theme park
- A few specific monsters on the bad nights




Monsters and Wildlife

Possibly grotesque and deformed creatures like you'd see in the Silent Hill games, or monsters that reflect something from character's different worlds? Things that seem familiar but are twisted into something they're not.

Gameplay

Game Mechanics

- POTENTIALLY use the rides in the theme park to transport characters to other worlds for rift-like events. Like the roller coaster suddenly working during the day and sending people off into the nether. Haunted house ride? The tunnel of love gone horribly wrong?
- Could also make use of eating the phantom's food. What side-effects could it have?




Possible Events

- Like above, eating the phantom's food. What side-effects could it have? It could trigger any number of things from hallucinations to body horror if anyone wanted to go in that direction. Maybe turning people into phantoms themselves?
- Some survival aspects because characters don't start out with everything they need, but they are better off than how they started in Zelien. Getting technology to work again would be very important.
- Consequently since they aren't in dire need of supplies at all times, this could give potential rise to more time and ability to pin down COMPASS. At least in the off hours (aka daylight).
- The cultists actually making serious contact with their gods. Perhaps making people go insane? Trying to get new members of their cult. Maybe some characters could make deals and bring them sacrifices for their own safety or join because they don't have anything else to believe in.
- Have monsters themed on people's home worlds, look like loved ones and attack, etc.

Direction

I would really love to give more autonomy to the players as a resistance, give them more physical resources while simultaneously giving them a whole new set of problems to deal with. Is this a new set of experiments, or is COMPASS starting to lose it's grip? What happens at night, it's difficult to tell if it's intended or a large oversight. If it's the latter, making COMPASS NPCs more accessible as they scramble to get things back in order could lend to more player involvement in trying to put the pieces together. Let some instances of characters relying on their own ingenuity as opposed to getting everything from COMPASS. Maybe COMPASS can't restrict them in every way they could before? Maybe the actual scientists or whoever is behind it have to take a more active role?

There's also the cultists who have been a big player in Gamma. Potentially, we could pit COMPASS and the cultists against one another? Characters could pick sides; the lesser evil, if there even is one, or force them to fight and take each other out and just not get caught in the crossfire.

And also, of course, the WTF IS GOING ON aspect of monsters and ghosts and things that go bump in the night. The survival aspect of the survival horror portion of the game doesn't necessarily have to be setting up camp (although at the start of everything that is a factor), but surviving the actual horrors around them. How drastic things can get can either bring people together or tear them apart.