Okay, so let’s detail the setting.
Based off of Resident Evil, I picture a mansion in the
English style. Art décor abounds in the
posh sections, while doors mark off the servants’ quarters. For setting reasons, no PC can be one of the
servants, and I will explain why when I detail the masters.
The masters’ quarters are posh and well furnished, but ill-kept
and messy. A pungent odour hangs in the
rooms like that of a kennel. We could
use zombies, as I said yesterday, but Victorians had a more setting appropriate
fear, of Jekyll and Hyde transformations, of opium dens turning men into
beasts. I choose to take those fears literally,
working an illegal drug (though legal in the master’s private estate) into a
deadly vector for transformations.
The master and his family need not physically change. They can still be anatomically human. They will let their hair grow in, and their
manners will change drastically to act as though wild and feral. Rooms can be described with words like
pungent odors, smell of offal, and eerily quiet. This also hints at the greatest change from
Resident Evil. You are stuck in a
mansion with zombies and a gun with no ammo.
Zombies need a lot of bullets, or headshots to make them stop moving. Redskulls are zombies who get back up even
after all of that. It is terrifying, but
also predictable.
The masters will have beast intelligence. They can’t fire weapons or use tools, but any
thrown object or planned ambush is still available to them. I don’t want to cut too close to Los Gannados
either, so let’s have them retreat when overpowered. They are smart and deadly, as beasts go, and
they will change the environment to ensure that player characters cannot just
leave. They will bar doors and set
traps, and without fail when the PCs stop to rest, they will wait for the
moment and then strike. Most
importantly, leaving will not be easy, so the masters will take their time, be
patient, and attempt to wittle the PCs down.
This actually works very well for the purpose, as few PCs
will take kindly to this treatment, but they will be long into the game before
they start feeling really scared. At
some point, the front door needs to be barred.
This prevents the PCs from “taking their chances” with whatever monsters
are outside. If the DM is challenged
over this, he needs simply to stage a scene where the monsters outside and the
masters are working together. The opium
affects them both, and makes them comfortable allies. The masters could have slipped out the back
way and casually and safely barred the front door from the outside, locking the
PCs in, and forcing them to go find the back door.
Or make a new one.
Hmm, that’s another thought that needs to be addressed. And a country manor is going to have ground
floor windows. In order to keep the PCs
in the mansion, they have to believe that there is going to be a safer exit
somewhere inside than just booking it out the front door. Even with the front door barred, the back door
isn’t a better objective because it too leads out into the woods with all those
monsters. We need a monster that can
scare the PCs into the mansion but that they can eventually get away from by
finding something inside.
In RE1, that was the Cerberus BOWs, who can’t fly. The helicopter could. In RE0, you had a cliff outside the front
door, a train wreck at your point of entry, and an exit through a cargo
elevator. We can work with the cliff
idea, but the train and elevator are both modern machines that don’t lend
themselves to the setting. In RE2, the
way out of the Police Station was a ladder in the attic leading down into the
sewer. Sewers are a great idea, but
remember that this is out in the boonies and not in downtown London. Escape underground requires tunnels dug for
some unfathomable plot reasons.
In RE3,
Jill and Carlos were never safe, and escape led them to every possible means
they could find. Without a central room
or hall to build around, RE3 is not going to be helpful here. Escaping Rockfort Island was courtesy of the
Ashford’s great love of military hardware, a cargo plane, an Antarctic ATV,
even a fighter jet. You might be able to
adapt this one, recalling that 19th century warfare relied very
heavily on movement at sea. An idea is
percolating that draws from Resident Evil Code Veronica together with Super
Mario 64! I love the symmetry!
The mansion is up in the cliffs, rather than hills. The monsters outside have you penned inside
the Mansion. In the first act you can
hear them paw, scrapping, howling and whining to be let in at you. If you open the door, they surge
forward. In the second act they have
settled down, but like my hound, they are camped out in front of the door. The PCs cannot physically move the door
without disturbing one, who is lying right up next to it. Escape in the final act means breaking
through to the underground harbor, a natural inlet of sea water that they
sometimes use to bring in victims. There
is a convenient boat tied up down there!
And there is an obligatory underwater monster to defeat before you can
leave. All of this is hinted at with
recoverable notes, documents, and reports from before the master’s fall to
beast hood. I love every part of it, and
it makes for some exciting and terrifying escapes.
More on character options tomorrow.