I'm not a fan of World of Darkness or Chronicles of Darkness, but they hold a monopoly over the urban fantasy market. There are some other urban fantasy games, but nothing approaching the level of setting detail as the White Wolf games.
Anyone interested in brainstorming different urban fantasy settings?
My interests are solidly in the 'horror' end of the fantasy pool, so I'd start with pulling some inspiration from various Thomas Ligotti stories... and Michael Cisco... just to get off the 'vampires and werewolves' track.
Less of a clearly delineated 'mythos' but recurring themes of corporate horror, urban wastelands, isolated mysteries that don't necessarily peel back to show a larger onion. So maybe a bit more disjointed, like Chill vs. Call of Cthulhu.
Shadowrun and Buffy/Angel (Unisystem) can both be used for urban fantasy.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1105622I'm not a fan of World of Darkness or Chronicles of Darkness, but they hold a monopoly over the urban fantasy market. There are some other urban fantasy games, but nothing approaching the level of setting detail as the White Wolf games.
Anyone interested in brainstorming different urban fantasy settings?
What kind of Urban Fantasy were you thinking of? Kitchen Sink or something more specialized? Brother's Grimm or Disney? I'm a fan of a few Urban Fantasy novel series, so this might be up one of my alleys.
A starting place is whether or not the monsters are mostly out in the open (True Blood) or hiding in the shadows (WoD).
Would you be more interested in a world which was recognizably our own, or an alternate history where fantastical elements were present from the beginning or revealed at some point in the past, or a completely secondary world?
Charles DeLint version of Urban Fantasy would make an interesting setting.
Some key points to remember about most urban fantasy series:
- They're tremendously dependent for atmosphere and plot elements on the specifics of their primary setting city; the city has to be, itself, almost a character.
- As a series, that setting usually only changes gradually over the course of the stories. Therefore the stories tend to focus on small- to medium-scope plots, and are seldom high-destruction or high-consequence tales of city-wide violence or war; most of them are mysteries of one stripe or another focusing on wainscot intrigue, usually with a decent side-helping of romance.
- In keeping with the focus on mysteries, if any of the protagonists have supernatural powers of their own, those powers usually have to be very well-defined so that the protagonists don't become plot-breakers. To quote Brandon Sanderson: "It's always more interesting and important what your magicians can't do than what they can."
- Protagonists are almost always extremely limited in the social resources they can draw upon; even if they have friends among the police or are police, or have rich family members or patrons, there will always be reasons why they can't simply flash their badges or buy or telephone their way out of trouble. (This isn't a given: the show Castle often played with the fact that mystery-writer-turned-detective Rick Castle was rich and connected enough to solve a number of problems his police friends would have been stymied by, but this was often done for comic effect, and never used as the primary way to resolve a plot.)
- They're not always outright noir, but they are likely to employ a number of noir tropes, ranging from the prevalence of dirty secrets and corruption among official authorities (whether mortal or supernatural) to the ease with which one can be betrayed by an apparent friend or ally. Even trustworthy colleagues may possess startlingly dark hidden pasts, and are seldom 100% up front about their reasons for any given choice. The flip side of this is that when loyalty and trust do exist, they can be very powerful character motivations.
- Almost every plot is driven by somebody not knowing, or guessing wrongly, about something else that is going on or about what somebody else is doing, or why they are doing it. On large scales, this can produce effects like magicians being shut out of gainful employment for distrust and working to form a union behind the scenes; on small scales, the local thug who's suddenly stepped up his protection racket may be risking the local boss's boot because his mother needs money for a healing.
- At least one major character has to be a Deadpan Snarker or other form of wiseass.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1105622I'm not a fan of World of Darkness or Chronicles of Darkness, but they hold a monopoly over the urban fantasy market. There are some other urban fantasy games, but nothing approaching the level of setting detail as the White Wolf games.
Anyone interested in brainstorming different urban fantasy settings?
The Dresden Files RPG is pretty detailed, because of having the books. That's the most common other urban fantasy that I see. I wasn't thrilled by the system, but I think it works well as a setting. I prefer it to World of Darkness.
I actually been trying to make a fork to Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness with my own game. I can give you guys a link to my discord if your interested.
I highly recommend NIGHTBANE by Palladium Books, regardless if you use the system.
A+ urban fantasy where you play heroic monsters.
Quote from: jhkim;1105640The Dresden Files RPG is pretty detailed, because of having the books. That's the most common other urban fantasy that I see. I wasn't thrilled by the system, but I think it works well as a setting. I prefer it to World of Darkness.
I was going to mention the Dresden Files RPG. Mostly as I love the novels and the world in general.
But I really don't like the FATE system. It's just clunky and very abstract. Not to my tastes.
It's a shame really. The Dresden files would make a GREAT Urban Fantasy setting.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105652I actually been trying to make a fork to Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness with my own game. I can give you guys a link to my discord if your interested.
I am.
I actually like the setting of World of Darkness... generally speaking... the whole 'gothic noir' of it... but less the 'cool' vampires. Hunter, Geist, and Changeling were much more interesting from the Player perspective.
Nephilim has been popping up in my windscreen a lot lately, and that's one I never really gave as much attention as I should have.
Quote from: GeekyBugle;1105666I am.
Sending you a link to my discord server now.
Quote from: Simlasa;1105672Nephilim has been popping up in my windscreen a lot lately, and that's one I never really gave as much attention as I should have.
I picked up a copy of "Nephilim" in a gaming store quite recently. It came with the main book is very good condition and even the GM screen.
I got it for AUD $25. Quite a bargain.
I remember running this RPG years ago in the 90s and is was a decent game.
Fun to run with the right players.
Quote from: Simlasa;1105672I actually like the setting of World of Darkness... generally speaking... the whole 'gothic noir' of it... but less the 'cool' vampires. Hunter, Geist, and Changeling were much more interesting from the Player perspective.
Nephilim has been popping up in my windscreen a lot lately, and that's one I never really gave as much attention as I should have.
I don't like the "cool vampires" trope either, and WOD is not the only (or worst) offender. I remember I was buying/reading some Urban fantasy series and the vampires weren't the bad guys, then out of nowhere it became porn, not erotica, not sof core but hard core porn with very explicit descriptions of what where, how and who. That was the last book I ever bought of that author.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1105637Some key points to remember
Nice analysis. I can tell you've thought about this in some detail.
Quote from: Bren;1105684Nice analysis. I can tell you've thought about this in some detail.
Long time Dresden Files fan, and got through the first nine books of Anita Blake before the character's fundamental unlikeability defeated me.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1105637Some key points to remember about most urban fantasy series:
- They're tremendously dependent for atmosphere and plot elements on the specifics of their primary setting city; the city has to be, itself, almost a character.
- As a series, that setting usually only changes gradually over the course of the stories. Therefore the stories tend to focus on small- to medium-scope plots, and are seldom high-destruction or high-consequence tales of city-wide violence or war; most of them are mysteries of one stripe or another focusing on wainscot intrigue, usually with a decent side-helping of romance.
- In keeping with the focus on mysteries, if any of the protagonists have supernatural powers of their own, those powers usually have to be very well-defined so that the protagonists don't become plot-breakers. To quote Brandon Sanderson: "It's always more interesting and important what your magicians can't do than what they can."
- Protagonists are almost always extremely limited in the social resources they can draw upon; even if they have friends among the police or are police, or have rich family members or patrons, there will always be reasons why they can't simply flash their badges or buy or telephone their way out of trouble. (This isn't a given: the show Castle often played with the fact that mystery-writer-turned-detective Rick Castle was rich and connected enough to solve a number of problems his police friends would have been stymied by, but this was often done for comic effect, and never used as the primary way to resolve a plot.)
- They're not always outright noir, but they are likely to employ a number of noir tropes, ranging from the prevalence of dirty secrets and corruption among official authorities (whether mortal or supernatural) to the ease with which one can be betrayed by an apparent friend or ally. Even trustworthy colleagues may possess startlingly dark hidden pasts, and are seldom 100% up front about their reasons for any given choice. The flip side of this is that when loyalty and trust do exist, they can be very powerful character motivations.
- Almost every plot is driven by somebody not knowing, or guessing wrongly, about something else that is going on or about what somebody else is doing, or why they are doing it. On large scales, this can produce effects like magicians being shut out of gainful employment for distrust and working to form a union behind the scenes; on small scales, the local thug who's suddenly stepped up his protection racket may be risking the local boss's boot because his mother needs money for a healing.
- At least one major character has to be a Deadpan Snarker or other form of wiseass.
Actually rereading this I notice how my game is more a deconstruction, or full out rebellion against these things. Not that I oppose noir, but man I hate Onyx Path with a passion. Though that is with all the shit the devs, owner, and the audience that they want had done. No I love the Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness for the setting. It is the outside factors that drive me to make my fork.
EDIT: Actually I should explain how Weird is so different.
The first point I completely agree with, but that might not be a thing for me as the majority of my testing had been road trips. In fact most of the time had been on the road. Which I will say that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a great influence. Now I have plans on doing supplement that focus on cities, but that is book number two as I need to get the core book done.
I agree with number two mostly. I, however, don't think you really need romance. That said I had ran Chronicles of Darkness chat sites as a GM for most of a decade and seen way too many horrible romances that even Twilight is better. So perhaps my biases is showing here.
Yes yes yes with point number three. You want that mystery and even more mystery even when you reach the end of the entire campaign. This is what Weird certainly has in spades.
Does Castle even count as Urban Fantasy, or is it just a romance comedy that is disguised as a detective show? I lean on the later. Though I do agree with your real point that key information should be hard to find.
Funny thing about Urban Fantasy is that it stems from Gothicpunk which is what made Vampire the Masquerade. Gothicpunk stems from Cyberpunk. Finally Cyberpunk stems from Noir itself. Razorfist makes a valid argument on the subject in this video.
[video=youtube;E_JxmCZKF-w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_JxmCZKF-w[/youtube]
Which yes I agree with that point as well.
The second last point I also agree with. The information you got should be questionable at best even if it is truth. NPCs should have wrong information even if they are telling the truth. The truth should be sought, but not always dependable.
Finally your last point... ehh.
Dresden Files is a fantastic setting, but like the others I think Fate isn't the greatest system. The last time I ran it, I used Mutants and Masterminds and that worked really well. I could see Cinematic Unisystem being a good fit, too.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105652I actually been trying to make a fork to Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness with my own game. I can give you guys a link to my discord if your interested.
Count me in.
I was considering something similar, but there is already a plethora of rules systems so that's not a pressing concern. Urban Shadows, Feed, Liminal, etc.
Hence why my topic is about settings and not rules.
I'll post a more detailed response later.
EDIT: In response to the various responses in this thread:
I'm open to discussing a variety of settings. Cosmic horror a la
Call of Cthulhu, monster hunting a la
Chill, public knowledge a la
True Blood, public knowledge in a cyberpunk future a la
Shadowrun...
I think the first question you have to ask is 'who are the PCs', because a lot of your fundamental assumptions are going to stem from that. You get a very different game if your players are normal people investigating supernatural crimes (a la X Files) versus if they are supernatural creatures COMMITTING supernatural crimes.
Once you've established who PCs are (or determined that you're supporting the full spectrum) you should decide if there is character advancement. A big problem with Vampire was that PCs didn't necessarily have the suite of powers that was part of the player's concept of a vampire, and they couldn't really get power. In D&D people tend to accept that you go from 1st level to 15th level in like 3 months, tops, but Vampires are often supposed to be ancient creatures so accruing power feels like it should take decades; but that doesn't really work well in a game.
At that point, I think it's worth talking about how accepted the supernatural elements are. You can have people know that things are weird but keep that generally secret (that's the X-Files Approach) and works in a number of games, or you can try to make it completely a secret. If it is supposed to be a secret, you have to have clearly worked out ways that it STAYS a secret.
That's going to drive what the play space is. If you're a supernatural creature and your existence is a secret, you're mostly going to interact with other supernatural creatures. If everyone knows about supernaturals, well, there's no reason not to rule over a piece of the world in a fallen world.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105696The first point I completely agree with, but that might not be a thing for me as the majority of my testing had been road trips. In fact most of the time had been on the road. Which I will say that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a great influence.
So like Hunter S. Thompson only even bleaker? :)
QuoteDoes Castle even count as Urban Fantasy, or is it just a romance comedy that is disguised as a detective show? I lean on the latter.
You'd be correct; I cited it mostly as one counterexample that you can still have wealthy, well-connected PCs without removing the mystery. This does, however, change the stakes, so it has to be accounted for if included.
QuoteFinally your last point... ehh.
That's more an observation of practical inevitability than anything else. I don't think urban fantasy
needs a deadpan snarker, but as you note, the noir ancestry means that where humour's present, it tends to the black and gallows variety for the most part. I don't remember ever reading a single urban fantasy story (I mean that quite literally, not one) that didn't have at least one major character with that kind of snarky wit.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1105622Anyone interested in brainstorming different urban fantasy settings?
Beyond the Supernatural
Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1105738Beyond the Supernatural
That raises another good question, which is: how powerful can PCs become, in theory? Part of what makes horror settings horrifying is that even the most competent protagonists/PCs are vastly outmatched in any direct confrontation by their foes. If the setting wants to tend towards horror over fantasy, protagonist/PC power has to be fairly strictly limited.
Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1105738Beyond the Supernatural
No need to go beyond, there's also the Supernatural game from MWP. See if your game can last as long as the show...
And another point which occurs to me: To make the world an interesting place for sustained games, there has to be a lot of different places to explore and plot hooks to follow.
One starting hook might be something as simple as: When a major international sex trafficking ring is taken down, the social workers working on repatriating the surviving victims are constantly told that there were more girls and children than the takedown rescued. The forensic accountants can find odd lacunae in the traffickers' records, but no hint of what might be in them. However, the higher-ups are out of time, money and patience and want to move on to other operations. Where did these disappearing victims go? What took them? And if the FBI doesn't want to stick with it, does the local police precinct know a helpful psychic they sometimes call in on the down low?
Or another hook: Why is the suicide rate in a small obscure college town three times the national average? More worryingly, why hasn't anybody noticed or tried to do anything about it?
Or to throw out a hook idea for a setting where the supernatural is publicly known: A well-known candidate for Congress, or other significant political office, is a lycanthrope who hasn't yet "come out of the doghouse". You work for this candidate's campaign. What are you willing to do to protect his (or her) secret? How do you try to convince the candidate to 'fess up, if that's what you think is best?
Quote from: Brand55;1105697Dresden Files is a fantastic setting, but like the others I think Fate isn't the greatest system. The last time I ran it, I used Mutants and Masterminds and that worked really well. I could see Cinematic Unisystem being a good fit, too.
Yeah, I'm not a Fate fan at all although some people seem to really like the DFRPG (both the "old" Fate version and the newer FAE version).
I've thought about running a DF game using GURPS as it has several magic systems that I think emulate DF's casting frameworks nicely, but honestly I haven't read much of the series anyway so I'd be stretching the limits of my knowledge trying to simulate its universe.
The Supernatural universe, on the other hand, I know very well having watched the entire series through several times (save the very last season). I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but I don't feel particularly guilty about it...:cool: It would make GREAT fodder for a GURPS Monster Hunters game. I mean, along with shows like Buffy it's pretty much exactly what the line is meant to do. It's such a kitchen sink-style monster of the week show that it would be trivially easy to justify adding, removing or editing material as desired. Hell, they do it in the show all the time (though some may consider that a flaw...).
I would like to explore cliques. World of Darkness' popularity seems to revolve largely around its cliques. Vampire bloodlines, werewolf tribes, wizard orders, etc. Seems like you could do a lot with cliques.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105652I actually been trying to make a fork to Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness with my own game. I can give you guys a link to my discord if your interested.
Count me in too. I've considered hacking the Opening the Dark retroclone rules to create something that emulates World of Darkness, The Everlasting, WitchCraft, etc.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1105763I would like to explore cliques. World of Darkness' popularity seems to revolve largely around its cliques. Vampire bloodlines, werewolf tribes, wizard orders, etc. Seems like you could do a lot with cliques.
Combine urban fantasy with high school (like buffy) and ther cliques bit can go crazy.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1105763I would like to explore cliques. World of Darkness' popularity seems to revolve largely around its cliques. Vampire bloodlines, werewolf tribes, wizard orders, etc. Seems like you could do a lot with cliques.
In
Night's Black Agents Ken Hite wrote that he thinks a player group can generally handle (in terms of paying enough attention to keep track of and care about) three to five factions invested in any one adventure.
The WoD games usually had from nine to thirteen major group options by player type, often subdivided by operating mode focus (Werewolf the Apocalypse had thirteen tribes, three breeds and five auspices, for a total of 195 possible combinations). The new CoD games all have a five by five "clique grid", for 25 options each per game. Conversely, antagonist factions were usually always presented in a much simpler and more unified fashion.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105652I actually been trying to make a fork to Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness with my own game. I can give you guys a link to my discord if your interested.
Sure, I'd take a link too, at your own convenience.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1105819In Night's Black Agents Ken Hite wrote that he thinks a player group can generally handle (in terms of paying enough attention to keep track of and care about) three to five factions invested in any one adventure.
The WoD games usually had from nine to thirteen major group options by player type, often subdivided by operating mode focus (Werewolf the Apocalypse had thirteen tribes, three breeds and five auspices, for a total of 195 possible combinations). The new CoD games all have a five by five "clique grid", for 25 options each per game. Conversely, antagonist factions were usually always presented in a much simpler and more unified fashion.
The appeal of cliques seems to be similar to that of character classes, or houses in Game of Thrones. They determine your beliefs, personality, and your superpowers if any.
The vampire cliques in particular had several liberally ripped from various works of fiction like Nosferatu, Necroscope, and Conan the Barbarian. Similar ideas for bloodlines appeared in Warhammer Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, Legacy of Kain, and American Vampire.
The LoK vamps had bloodline-specific physical transformations. One turned into bug-like monsters, another into giant bat-like monsters.
Warhammer had vampires turn into bat-like monsters as they lost control of their hunger, but this happened to all bloodlines.
In American Vampire, traits could vary quite dramatically between bloodlines. New bloodlines could mutate from existing ones.
In an RPG, you want members of every group to work together. In Vampire, you can think of each clan as a 'class'. You don't want a group of 4 fighters or 4 wizards; if you have one player of each class you're 'optimal'. But Vampire never really anticipated that.
If you want people from different cliques to work together, you can't make them all at war. If you want all the players to be from the same clique, you can't make the clique rigidly define their appearance and character options.
Quote from: deadDMwalking;1105855In an RPG, you want members of every group to work together. In Vampire, you can think of each clan as a 'class'. You don't want a group of 4 fighters or 4 wizards; if you have one player of each class you're 'optimal'. But Vampire never really anticipated that.
If you want people from different cliques to work together, you can't make them all at war. If you want all the players to be from the same clique, you can't make the clique rigidly define their appearance and character options.
I agree with you. There has to be a common cause why everyone would be working with each other.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105857I agree with you. There has to be a common cause why everyone would be working with each other.
I believe Liminal included a section devoted to explaining why the party works together.
An idea I had as an alternative to global monster-hiding conspiracies is that supernatural creatures generally live in other worlds and only rarely come to Earth.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1105915An idea I had as an alternative to global monster-hiding conspiracies is that supernatural creatures generally live in other worlds and only rarely come to Earth.
That's a plausible explanation, but one possible downside is that it may make it too easy to "offload" the consequences of the game's events. If the supernatural PCs don't live in the same setting as the non-supernatural PCs, or can freely travel back and forth, it may be hard to give them a sufficiently common set of shared stakes. (Unless the supernatural worlds are explicitly defined as depending on the mundane one in some way, perhaps.)
Conversely, if the reason the supernatural PCs do spend most of their time in the mundane world is that they're exiles from their own, the logical implications have to be thought through -- they will probably be quite rare examples of their kind, they're unlikely to have support from others like them, they may be disproportionately powerful in-game due to their rarity, etc.
And it should be borne in mind that most players find conspiracies and secret societies far more interesting for their basic coolness than for their supposed plausibility.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1105928That's a plausible explanation, but one possible downside is that it may make it too easy to "offload" the consequences of the game's events. If the supernatural PCs don't live in the same setting as the non-supernatural PCs, or can freely travel back and forth, it may be hard to give them a sufficiently common set of shared stakes. (Unless the supernatural worlds are explicitly defined as depending on the mundane one in some way, perhaps.)
Conversely, if the reason the supernatural PCs do spend most of their time in the mundane world is that they're exiles from their own, the logical implications have to be thought through -- they will probably be quite rare examples of their kind, they're unlikely to have support from others like them, they may be disproportionately powerful in-game due to their rarity, etc.
The PCs could be liminal beings, still invested in human affairs and unwilling to leave Earth entirely.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1105928And it should be borne in mind that most players find conspiracies and secret societies far more interesting for their basic coolness than for their supposed plausibility.
It's more the globe-spanning secret societies with many thousands of secret members, and no apparent system of bureaucracy, that break my suspension of disbelief. (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Logistics) Not small scale societies limited to local reach, those seem fairly plausible to me. It's also much easier for me to wrap my head around small scale organizations because they don't have anywhere near the bureaucracy needed to keep larger organizations running.
Plausibility is a flexible thing. If most people are simply unable to observe/recognize the paranormal, then it becomes a lot more plausible for secret societies to keep their paranormal nature hidden. Criminal activities, on the other hand... If you drop the supernatural aspects, then a lot of these conspiracies are clearly organized criminal syndicates. The more people who are aware of the conspiracy, then the harder it is to keep secret.
If the tone of the setting leans more toward campy than pretentious, then I can more easily accept extremely implausible things.
Ok, so this is how I did it. I took the rules from Witchcraft/AFMBE, the playstyle of Cthulhu/X-Files of mortal investigators, I kinda stole the Werewolf the Forsaken mythology of dark animism and the Hisil (basically bad stuff over here leave an imprint in the spirit world and that attracts bad spirits who in turn do bad stuff, which leads to more bad imprints etc.) and I use a lot of random tables from Silent Legions and Dark Streets and Darker Secrets for setting creation. I use Chicago as a setting, but I think any (former) industrial city would work. The city is haunted, shit gets worse over time. The game seems to be mostly split between the spirits, the mortals who hunt or investigate and the mortals who use magic or worship supernatural beings. So in three broad factions. It's geared towards investigation, because I don't give a toss about politics. For things I got rid of in this setting were cliques (because hardly any politics) and vampires and werewolves, because I felt they were overdone. The rest of the setting is pretty stock.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1105998Ok, so this is how I did it. I took the rules from Witchcraft/AFMBE, the playstyle of Cthulhu/X-Files of mortal investigators, I kinda stole the Werewolf the Forsaken mythology of dark animism and the Hisil (basically bad stuff over here leave an imprint in the spirit world and that attracts bad spirits who in turn do bad stuff, which leads to more bad imprints etc.) and I use a lot of random tables from Silent Legions and Dark Streets and Darker Secrets for setting creation. I use Chicago as a setting, but I think any (former) industrial city would work. The city is haunted, shit gets worse over time. The game seems to be mostly split between the spirits, the mortals who hunt or investigate and the mortals who use magic or worship supernatural beings. So in three broad factions. It's geared towards investigation, because I don't give a toss about politics. For things I got rid of in this setting were cliques (because hardly any politics) and vampires and werewolves, because I felt they were overdone. The rest of the setting is pretty stock.
It's for a potential Storytelling System retroclone based on Opening the Dark (https://www.scribd.com/lists/2653023/Opening-the-Dark), but I had an idea for a monster PC setting inspired primarily by Nightlife, World of Darkness, The Everlasting, and WitchCraft.
(Aside: if I wanted to play investigators, then I would go with one of the many investigation games that already exist like Call of Cthulhu, Cryptworld, Monster of the Week, and so forth. There's no shortage of them.)
It's still in the planning stages, but right now I had several ideas for character options:
- Vampires, but more diverse a la Nightlife. You aren't limited to a quasi-Ricean chassis. This includes concepts like corpse-eating ghouls and youth-sucking whatever.
- Werewolves and other shapeshifters. How you become a werewolf is variable, and you can have other or additional animal forms a la Exalted's lunars.
- Mages and mad scientists and such. All characters can pursue some manner of sorcery, but these guys get additional options based on the Osirians from Everlasting.
- Ghosts, projectors, reapers, revenants and such. You can play as dead people trying to finish their unfinished business, a ghost who sells their services as an exorcist or spy, professional ghost busters, a combination of Dead Like Me and Tru Calling and Final Destination, etc.
- Fairies and changelings. You can play as an inhuman fair folk toying with mortals, or as a changeling who exists somewhere between human and fairy and perhaps worried about the evil queen's huntsman. I considered making genies their own option, but decided it made more sense to fold them into fairies.
- Demons and other fallen divinities. To reflect a less Christian worldview, this includes Greek titans, Norse jotun, Hindu asuras, Persian daevas, etc. It's also agnostic: there's no evidence of what demons were before they escaped "hell" (which may just be the astral plane anyhow) and they have to cobble together their own worldviews, so you can play a demon trying to earn redemption through good deeds or a demon who thinks God put you on Earth to tempt mortals and punish them for sinning.
- Hunters. Pretty much the same as Hunter: The Vigil. Hunters are essentially normal people who hunt down paranormal phenomena, and sometimes they have paranormal abilities of their own that blur the boundaries between hunter and hunted. That blurring is why I cover them here rather than ignore them as being part of the opposing investigation subgenre.
- Mummies. You can play as a mummy from any historical period, whether that be the mythical Irem or a celtic bog mummy. I may fold this into the ghosts category.
- Animates and re-animates. This includes both prometheans and zombies a la Zombie: The Coil. PCs were created by sorcery or super science to be artificial people, slaves, guardians or whatever, but now they're free and seek their own fate. Any homunculus, golem, or zombie created by the powers of other splats can potentially ascend to this state. This category may include spirits bound into physical vessels, like the gargoyles from The Everlasting.
- All-purpose freaks. This includes things like CoD's deviants and similar fansplats like Pathogen: The Infected, Outsider: The Calling, and Hunchback: The Lurching (yes, that was a thing someone tried). I may fold this into the animates and re-animates, since the only difference is (maybe) the presence of a soul. PC freaks may be on the run from whatever evil organization created them (assuming they didn't do this to themselves or contracted it from the woodwork), or created/employed specifically to help the party. Yes, you can play as the Igor (or whatever) to the party's Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein, and Wolf-Man.
- Angels. The flipside of demons. Basically, you get to play Touched by an Angel or whitelighters from Charmed. The setting is agnostic, so you don't have to be a literal Christian angel. You could have been born from the astral plane or resurrected by wiccans.
- Mythic heroes. Basically Scion, except agnostic. There's huge overlap between this and Hunter, so I may well fold them together.
- Generic monsters. They might have survived from ancient times or literally waltzed out of a nightmare. This covers Beast: The Primordial, Levianthan: The Tempest, Dragon: The Whatever, and the Possessed from The Everlasting. You have the option of embracing your monstrous nature and terrorizing humanity, or defying it and becoming a monster hero. Other character types can become this as a result of becoming too evil or whatever.
I intend on balancing these using a point buy system of some kind (like this one (https://ruscumag.wordpress.com/white-wolf/)), so these categories are essentially arbitrary anyway.