ShadowFinder Mundane Gear Rules Preview
Yesterday, I previewed a new type of feat coming in the Starfinder Infinite ShadowFinder book. (And the awesome cover!) Today, I’m teasing some general rules designed to cover the use of everyday mundane equipment.
[H2]Mundane Equipment Rules
Not everything listed as mundane equipment has detailed descriptions or specific rules associated with it. Mostly, this is because I assume we all know what a smart phone, alarm clock, and ball-point pen are. I certainly could go into excruciating detail on how long a line, in linear feet, you can draw with the ink in one ball-point pen, and the differences between disposable ones, refillable, and collectable. But I decided not to do that.
Because I don’t want to.
Seriously, modern gear mostly doesn’t need a ton of rules behind it. You have a pdf ruleset you had to be online to buy, so you have access to the Internet. If you need to know how many ounces of ink are in a typical ball-point pen, or the burn rate of scented candles, or if polypropylene rope floats (hint: it does), you can take 15 seconds online to look it up.
But while many games may end up needing to know one of those things, once, in a specific weird circumstance, the overwhelming majority won’t need to know any of the rest of the trivia I could fill a modern equipment section with. So, I don’t want to take the time, or space, or make people read through it all, just to cover the rare corner case with well-defined facts and rules.
Instead, I’d prefer to give some general rules on how to determine if a character’s effort to use a piece of equipment in a specific way works. That puts the GM and players on roughly the same page about the chances of success when you try something off-the-wall, and can be used regardless of what mundane equipment is involved. ShadowFinder is about facing weird threats in mysterious circumstances at strange locations, not careful tracking of modern mundania.
[H3]Professional Use
So, what rules DO I think make sense for modern gear we’re either all familiar with, or able to easily look up with the marvel of online search engines? Simply put, rules that determine if a character can successfully do what they want with a piece of equipment. To keep that short and simple, I’m going to use Skill checks as the baseline for gear success, breaking into XX easy steps for the GM to go through.
[H4]1. Is There Already A Rule For This?
Often, players will just want to use their equipment as a way to do typical adventuring things. If the attempted use is already covered by a Starfinder rule, just use that rule and assign a penalty or circumstance bonus as seems appropriate. Given how tight the success math is for most tasks, if you can attempt something with a piece of gear, it likely shouldn’t take more than a -2 penalty for being an off label use. Similarly, circumstance bonuses can be a little as +1 or +2, and should very rarely go above +5.
For example, E.Z.Wren is in a Parasol Consolidated Industries office waiting to talk to a compliance officer about evidence E.Z. has uncovered about PCI violating various consumer safety laws. Suddenly, instead of middle management, four chemghouls burst into the room. E.Z. makes a made dash for the conference room off the office, and gets inside and locks the door. But the chemghouls begin hammering the door, which won’t hold them long, and the only other way out of the conference room is the windows.
On the 23rd story.
E.Z. wants to smash a window open with a chair. That sounds like an improvised weapon, so the GM just treats the chair as an awkward club with a -4 penalty to attack rolls as with the standard improvised weapon rules. It takes a few swings, but E.Z. breaks one of the big window panes, and now has access to the outside of the building.
Unfortunately, it’s an all-glass sides modern high-rise and E.Z. doesn’t have any climbing equipment with him. Obviously, the building’s exterior isn’t perfectly smooth, but it seems likely to be a “relatively smooth surface with occasional handholds,” as defined by the Athletics skill (which covers climbing), so the GM rules it’s a DC 25 Athletics check, and given the height (240 feet, the GM decides), E.Z. would have to make a lot of checks to successfully make it to the ground.
[H4]2. Can The Equipment Be Used This Way?
(There are more steps obviously, but this is a TEASRER PREVIEW, not an entire rules section!)
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ShadowFinder Previews: Quirky Feats and the Cover WIP
Today, I am going to look at a new type of feat coming in the Starfinder Infinite ShadowFinder book.
Also, a peak at the W.I.P. cover for the Core Book.
Quirky Feats
Quirky feats are a special category of feats that represent something abnormal and strange, even when grading on the curve of exceptional heroes with extraordinary and magic powers. While combat and general feats can cover everything from having a bit of spellcasting ability (or enigma power), specialized training, or even a gaining a squox companion, Quirky feats are both more specialized and just plain stranger than that. Quirky feats like Branded By An Actual Artifact, Demon For A Hand, Doomed To A Horrific Fate, Literal Third Eye, and Skunk Stripe of Significance indicate some importance well beyond just the rule interactions they grant. A GM may well build cosmological details on Quirky Feats, such as having a door that can only be opened by a character who has the Demon for a Hand feat, or a creature that doesn’t get to use it’s DR and energy resistances against anyone with the Skunk Stripe of Significance.
Not all ShadowFinder games will have any Quirky feats. The GM and players should discuss if they want the kind of offbeat heroes these feats tend to create, and certainly don’t push the issue if a few players hate the idea. Try to make decisions that will help everyone enjoy the game. (In fact, always do that.)
Because Quirky feats are more attention-grabbing than normal feats, they follow some special rules.
First, a GM should feel free to give a character that doesn’t have a Quirky feat access to one as a bonus when it’s narratively appropriate. For example, if a PC tries to grapple the Shadowblastoi that is making off with the Amulet of Ra the entire campaign is built around, and fails, the GM might well tell the player their character can gain Branded By An Actual Artifact as a bonus feat, if the player wants. The GM should never force a Quirky feat on a PC without the player’s buy-in. They’re just too, well, quirky.
Second, a character that has a Quirky feat can’t select one using any of their normal feat choices. Once you are Doomed to a Horrific Fate, you already have plenty of weird, special things about your character. You don’t need to add a Frequent Heroic Breeze or Weird Eye That Means Something to such a character—leave some Quirky stuff for other people! Also, you can’t take a quirky feat another character in the same party has without GM approval, and the GM should get the other player’s approval. If everyone descended from the Witch Heather Spellgoode has a literal third eye, it makes sense for two characters that are siblings to both take it. But if one character ends up with a Demon For A Hand, it’s going to be weird if another character goes to Demon-For-A-Hand-R-Us and gets one for themselves.
In rare cases, a GM may have a plot point take away a Quirky feat that has previously been given as a bonus feat. If this is done, it’s polite to either replace it with another Quirky feat the player approves of (maybe being healed of the scar from being Branded By An Actual Artifact exposed you to energies that caused you to gain a Skunk Stripe of Significance), or grant a bonus feat slot the player can use to take anything their character qualifies for.
In even rarer cases, a GM might grant a character that already has a Quirky feat the opportunity to acquire another one, either as a bonus feat or as a feat they can select next time they gain a feat. This should only be done when it serves to drive the narrative forward, but GMs must use their best judgement on that.
Would You Like To Know More?
Want to ask questions about ShadowFinder? Would you enjoy access to a huge backlog of game stuff and articles? Simply want to support me creating more of these things? Check out my Patreon! This post has an Expanded Version on my Patreon as well, which talks a little about the design philosophy behind secret signs.
ShadowFinder Class Preview: The Enigma
Today, I am going to continue actual OGL rule examples of some material coming in the Starfinder Infinite ShadowFinder book.
I wanted a class to fill the “modern character with weird powers” niche so common in much of the inspirational media that has influenced the form ShadowFinder took. This is more than being a spellcaster, or even something the psionic themetype I wrote up can represent. I needed a class for firestarters, dead zones, shining, heckspawn, and mutants.
I needed a way for a PC to be an enigma. So that because the class.
Here’s a preview of some elements of this new, 100% Starfinder-compatible, character class.
Enigma
An enigma has power, but no one (not even the enigma) is sure why. Unlike spellcasters or combatants, it is not a trained or learned power, and unlike warlocks it is not part of some bargain for power from otherworldly forces. That doesn’t mean the enigma can’t train to use their powers more effectively, or that it might not have been bestowed by an entity beyond the enigma’s understanding, but no science or mystic research has yet to understand enigmas’ abilities, and the growing number of enigmas is seen by many groups as a rising threat.
An enigma has often had to hide for much of their life, at least early on. Their powers are hard to control when they first manifest, and can both disrupt the stability of a support group and attract attention from others. It’s not unusual for an enigma to be the product of some mysterious experiment who escaped, and to be hunted by their former keepers. Others seem to bloom with power on their own, but organizations exist who wish to find the source of that power, even if they have to cut it out of the enigma. As a result, many enigmas learn to be self-sufficient when young, both in urban and wilderness settings.
Once enigmas grow into their abilities, most groups consider opposing an enigma directly to be too dangerous, though organizations with more reach and resources may feel differently. An enigma does well to forge bonds with allies to ensure anyone interest in knowing how they manipulate energy, form, or even reality itself sees that the enigma is not alone, and has friends who will come after them if they disappear.
Hit Points: 6
Stamina Points: 6
Key Ability Score
Cha
While no one knows where the power that makes enigmas comes from, the fact that it fueled by their own force of personality seems clear. Enigmas may be bold or shy, honest or deceptive, friendly or hostile, but they all have the strong sense of self that makes them naturally apt at interpersonal relationships. Your Charisma determines the save DCs of your various enigma powers, and is thus your key ability score.
Class Skills
The enigma’s class skills are Bluff (Cha), Culture (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disguise (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Medicine (Int), Mysticism (Wis), Profession (Cha, Int, or Wis), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand(Dex), Stealth (Dex), and Survival (Wis)
Skill Points at each Level: 6 + Int modifier.
Proficiencies
Armor
Light armor
Weapons
Basic melee weapons, small arms.
(Yes, I am ending this preview before the class features table on purpose!)
Would You Like To Know More?
Want to ask questions about ShadowFinder? Would you enjoy access to a huge backlog of game stuff and articles? Simply want to support me creating more of these things? Check out my Patreon! This post has an Expanded Version on my Patreon as well, which talks a little about the design philosophy behind secret signs.
ShadowFinder Spells
Okay, let’s do an actual OGL rule example of some material coming in the Starfinder Infinite ShadowFinder book.
Since ShadowFinder is a new Play mode that focuses on a more modern aesthetic and theme, I want to add some things–like spells–that tie into that theme. These are simply ways for characters to feel more “Supernatural Kindred Stalker” than “Guardians of the Trek Wars.”
Here’s an example:
Secret Signs [Technomancer 2]
School divination
Casting Time 1 round
Range personal
Duration instantaneous
Casting secret signs can tell you whether entering a specific commercial or public space that has signage (such as a store, restaurant, library, subway terminal, and so on) is likely to be helpful for accomplishing a specific goal you wish to accomplish there (such as buying a specific item, being able to travel to a given destination, finding a friend of yours, finding a police officers, and similar goals). You must have the specific goal in mind when you cast the spell, and it gives you information above every public or commercial location in your line of sight by changing how you see their signs, indicating good results with positive emojis (smiley faces, thumbs up, etc.), and difficult or unlikely locations with negative emojis.
The chance for successfully receiving a meaningful reply is 85%; this roll is made secretly by the GM. A result may be so straightforward that a successful result is automatic, or it may be so complicated as to have no chance of success. If the secret signs succeeds, you get one of four results.
*Thumb’s Up (if the location will probably aid in the goal).
*Thumb’s Down (if the location likely won’t aid in the goal).
*Shrug (If the location may aid, but such aid is dangerous, expensive, or hard to find once within the location)
*WTF (for locations that have neither especially good nor especially bad results).
If the secret signs isn’t successful, you get the “nothing” result. A spellcaster who gets the “nothing” result has no way to tell whether it was the consequence of a failed or successful casting.
The secret signs can only predict about 30 minutes into the future, so anything that might happen beyond that time frame does not affect the result. Thus, the result might not take into account the long-term consequences of a contemplated action. Multiple castings of secret signs by the same creature about the same goal in the same region use the same die result as the first casting.
Would You Like To Know More?
Want to ask questions about ShadowFinder? Would you enjoy access to a huge backlog of game stuff and articles? Simply want to support me creating more of these things? Check out my Patreon! This post has an Expanded Version on my Patreon as well, which talks a little about the design philosophy behind secret signs.
ShadowFinder Adventure Sketch
The ShadowFinder Core Book won’t include a full-length adventure–there’s neither time nor room to get one crammed into that first book–but it WILL include some GM/Adventure support. There will be a section that talks about how to take typical Starfinder Adventure Paths and “reskin” them for the ShadowFinder Play Mode. And there will be some Adventure Sketches.
These are short outlines of what an adventure might include, with sections outlining “What It Looks Like,” “What’s Actually Going On,” “How Do PCs Get Involved,” “How Does It End,” and “Then What.” They are designed for GMs to use as inspirations and jumping-off points, with just enough details to explain what the adventure is about and how it may go, but without so many it’ll be difficult to mold into an existing campaign’s events. For example, while this adventure sketch mentions “the city,” it doesn’t tell you if it happens in New York City, Tokyo, or Absalom. That’s up to the GM.
I kinda hate to preview an Adventure Sketch–they take a lot of effort to write compared to their size and I see them as being a big part of what makes the ShadowFinder book work, despite their relatively small wordcount–but for exactly the reason I want them in the Core Book, I think they do a great job of showcasing what kinds of stories I think ShadowFinder is going to be great for playing through.
So, I picked one of my favorites — Save the City Beneath — and am showcasing it here.
Save The City Beneath
What It Looks Like: Water is mysteriously disappearing. From the drinking water system, reservoirs, even entire rivers and lakes are showing water levels way, way below what they out to be. The systems are all connected to the city’s drinking system, and if the loss isn’t stopped, the entire city is going to have a water shortage.
What’s Actually Going On: The city sits atop “The City Beneath,” a subterranean mix of old, unmapped sewers, storm drains, bootlegger tunnels, heating shafts, closed-off basements, cisterns, bomb shelters, previous cities, and secret underground complexes, natural caves, mined-out salt mines, where a civilization exists with only sporadic contact with the normal city above them. The City Beneath has actual physical portals to the Shadowblast, but also to demiplanes with less malignant residents and much ancient lore and preserved mystic libraries.
The City Beneath is not an inherently evil place. It’s a city, with good people, bad people, homeless people, gangs, unions, charities, arks, and everything else you’d expect to find in a big city—just all underground. But a powerful and judgmental person or group in the upper class of the “normal” surface city (we’ll call them F.L.O.O.D. – Friends of Law, Order, and Organized Democracy) has decided the City Beneath is an unacceptable danger. This group wants to find the City beneath, scour it of everything of value and power, and destroy it.
So, FLOOD are flooding the lower sections of their own city—uncaring that they are drowning the homeless, flooding out the dispossessed, and terrifying the vulnerable members of the lower class in the process—to follow the water drainage into passageways to the City Beneath.
Of course, in the process they are also waking up and releasing things the City Beneath locked away as too dangerous centuries ago.
How Do PCs Get Involved: If the mystery of a regionwide water shortage centered on a major city isn’t enough to get the PCs poking around, when some monsters start popping up in basements, abandoned bank vaults, old tunnel systems, and trendy secret clubs, the PCs can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, someone working for FLOOD might even try to hire the PCs to protect their water-trackers, hoping monster-hunters will blindly accept that the City Beneath must be “dealt with.”
How Does It End: The PCs figure out what FLOOD is up to, and either expose them to the public (which won’t result in anyone important going to jail, but will bring enough pressure for FLOOD to give up… for now), or hunt down and take out the FLOOD manager in charge of the deadly operation. FLOOD won’t be destroyed either way, but will decide such high-profile, headline-grabbing operations are a bad idea.
Then What: Assuming the FLOOD threat to the City Beneath is ended, the PCs now have access to an entire hidden society. In future adventures they can explore, train, use Coin of the Realm to buy magic items, set up bases, make allies, and go adventuring to deal with the City Beneath’s unsavory elements and gangs.
For inspiration on the City Beneath, look up the real-world locations of the Aldwych tube ghost statipn in London, England; Avinguda de la Llum in Barcelona, Spain; the Burlington Bunker in Corsham, England; the Cincinnati Subway in Ohio; Derinkuyu, Turkey; Dixia Cheng in China; the Estación de Chamberí abandoned subway station in Madrid, Spain; K’n-yan; Metro 417 in Los Angeles, California; Naours, France; New York City’s City Hall station; The Paris Catacombs, France; Poland’s Wieliczka Salt Mine; Portland Underground, in Portland, Oregon; Three Kings Catacombs in Tizimín, Mexico; and the Seattle Underground, in Seattle, Washington.
Want to ask questions about ShadowFinder? Would you enjoy access to a huge backlog of game stuff and articles? Simply want to support me creating more of these things? Check out my Patreon!
How to Use the ShadowFinder Book
I’ve made a big deal out of the upcoming Starfinder Infinite project called ShadowFinder being a Play Mode for Starfinder, rather than a separate campaign or ruleset. So, if it’s designed to create a different play experience, but is 100% Starfinder compatible, what do I expect people to actually do with this book?
Well, no shock, I write about that a bit in the book itself.
Okay, What Do We DO With This?
ShadowFinder is designed to be use a few different ways, depending on your interests.
First, it’s everything you need to start running adventures in a new Play Mode, with a focus on the aesthetics and tropes of modern urban fantasy, rather that the more scifi-fantasy of Starfinder. We present enough information to get you started, including a quick description of the planar scar known as the Shadowblast, and the two worlds it links – Lost Golarion, and Rasputin’s Legacy Earth. If you are the type of group who just wants some rules and a setting, or maybe also some adventure seeds, and then you craft adventures and storylines yourselves, you can get started right away.
Second, it’s a big set of additional options for any Starfinder game. The new classes, class options, feats, and spells are all designed for use in ShadowFinder, but since the rules are 100% compatible with Starfinder, if you want to add enigmas, warlocks, and even sword saints and technicians to a non-ShadowFinder game, they’ll fit right in. There are some options rules in ShadowFinder that aren’t designed for other uses, such as Heroic Defense, but I’ve carefully kept those separate from other player-facing material. That means if you want to play a ShadowFinder game with Heroic Defense, it applies to any PC (even those uses classes from other sources), and if you want to play a warlock in a game without Heroic Defense, the class remains balanced.
Third, and most excitingly for me, it’s a toolkit of ideas you can take and use to create your own Play Mode, unique campaign, or even related Starfinder Infinite products! This book is very much the product of exactly what I wanted to make, but I see that as a beginning, not an end. Now that these rules and ideas are out in the world, I hope you will take the opportunity to shape, mold, and build off of them to create whole-new things I could never dream of.
Want to ask questions about ShadowFinder? Would you enjoy access to a huge backlog of game stuff and articles? Simply want to support me creating more of these things? Check out my Patreon!
ShadowFinder Inspirations List
This week seems to be all about previews of some of the material from the ShadowFinder book I announced in my ShadowFinder Is Coming post.
So, what on Earth has gone into my head to lead me to want to write this book? Well… there’s a lot of it.
Appendix A: Inspirations List
This excerpt of Appendix A is not part of the OGL content of this site, and it not covered by any of the licenses this product is published under. It’s a separate, editorial list presented under fair use.
While ShadowFinder is not an effort to duplicate any specific piece of genre fiction, it absolutely does draw inspirations from a wide range of movies, shows, anime, books, and comics. While I simply do not have room (or time) to compile a comprehensive list, I did want to touch on some of the biggest contributors to the zeitgeek I’m trying to tap into. Very few of these represent exactly what I expect a ShadowFinder game session to look like, but most of them have elements that could easily inspire ShadowFinder plots, adventures, and characters.
This is just the film and television parts of the appendix from the book, which also has comics and literature… though wow have I wanted more tv and movies in the past 20 years than read books. 😛
In some cases, I have listed the original source of a franchise, even though something later in the franchise might be the first thing that that inspired me. In other cases, I list some later product, because it stands out in my mind from the rest of its franchise. There’s a reason both Dawn of the Dead movies are listed but not all the related zombie films, and Friday the 13th Part II and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday are the only two Friday the 13th movies listed.
Inclusion here is absolutely not a claim of quality entertainment, in value, theme, presentation, or diversity. A lot of these are bad, and the very fact they are bad sometimes is what caused them to spark ideas in my head. In particular, many of these things now make me cringe when I read or watch them, as they have tropes, attempts at jokes, and stereotypes that should never have been acceptable. Please, check reviews and content warnings before trusting them to be entertaining. There are some great ideas in these, but too often they are mixed with bigotry and bias. I know we can all do a better job when importing the cool parts into our own stories.
Also, a lot of them are horror-themed, despite the fact I don’t consider ShadowFinders to be designed as a horror genre. But modern supernatural stories often are horror, and part of the point is that slasher and monster-in-the-sewer films go differently when PCs get involved.
[H2]Film and Television
Alias. Created by J.J. Abrams.
Alligator. Directed by Lewis Teague.
Angel. Starring David Boreanaz.
Angel Heart. Directed by Alan Parker.
Assault on Precinct 13. Directed by John Carpenter.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Directed by John DeBello.
Attack the Block. Directed by Joe Cornish.
Battle Royale. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku.
Belphegor, or the Phantom of the Louvre. Directed by Claude Barma.
Big Trouble in Little China. Directed by John Carpenter.
Black Dynamite. Directed by Scott Sanders.
The Blair Witch Project. Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez.
The Blob. Directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.
The Blues Brothers. Directed by John Landis.
The Boondock Saints. Directed by Troy Duffy.
Brimstone. Created by Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris.
Bubba Ho-Tep. Directed by Don Coscarelli.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.
The Cabin in the Woods. Directed by Drew Goddard.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Directed Ken Hughes.
C.H.U.D. Directed by Douglas Cheek.
Cool World. Directed by Ralph Bakshi.
The Craft. Directed by Andrew Fleming.
Creature from the Black Lagoon. Directed by Jack Arnold.
The Crow. Directed by Alex Proyas.
Dark Angel. Created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee.
Dark City. Directed by Alex Proyas.
Darkman. Directed by Sam Raimi.
Dawn of the Dead. Directed by George A. Romero.
Dawn of the Dead. Directed by Zack Snyder
Death Valley. Developed by Eric Weinberg, Curtis Gwinn, and Spider One.
Deep Rising. Directed by Stephen Sommers.
Demon Knight. Directed by Ernest R. Dickerson.
The Descent. Directed by Neil Marshall.
Escape from New York. Directed by John Carpenter.
Equinox. Directed by Robert Day.
Evil Dead II. Directed by Sam Raimi.
Five Deadly Venoms. Directed by Chang Cheh.
The Fog. Directed by John Carpenter.
Friday the 13th, the Series. Created by Frank Mancuso Jr. and Larry B. Williams.
Friday the 13th, Part II. Directed by Steve Miner.
Fright Night. Directed by Tom Holland.
Fringe. Created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci.
From Dusk till Dawn. Directed by Robert Rodriguez.
Game of Death. Directed by Bruce Lee.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Directed by Jim Jarmusch.
Ghostbusters. Directed by Ivan Reitman.
The Golden Child. Directed by Michael Ritchie.
Halloween. Directed by John Carpenter.
Happy! Created by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson.
Hellraiser. Directed by Clive Barker.
Highlander. Directed by Russell Mulcahy.
Highway to Hell. Directed by Ate de Jong.
The Host (Gwoemul). Directed by Bong Joon-ho.
House II: The Second Story. Directed by Ethan Wiley.
House on Haunted Hill. Directed by William Malone.
Howard the Duck. Directed by Willard Huyck.
Hudson Hawk. Directed by Michael Lehmann.
In the Mouth of Madness. Directed by John Carpenter.
Infinity Train. Created by Owen Dennis.
John Dies at the End. Directed by Don Coscarelli.
John Wick. Directed by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Directed by Adam Marcus.
Jurassic Park. Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Directed by Stephen Chiodo.
The Kingdom (Original title: Riget). Created by Lars von Trier.
Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Directed by Gordon Hessler.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Creator Jeff Rice.
Kung Fu Hustle. Directed by Stephen Chow.
L.A. Story. Directed by Mick Jackson.
Labyrinth. Directed by Jim Henson.
The Lair Of The White Worm. Directed by Ken Russell.
Lake Placid. Directed by Steve Miner.
The Last Dragon. Directed by Michael Schultz.
The Lost Boys. Directed by Joel Schumacher.
The Lost Room. Created by Christopher Leone and Laura Harkcom.
El Mariachi. Directed by Robert Rodriguez.
Midnight, Texas. Developed by Monica Owusu-Breen.
MirrorMask. Directed by Dave McKean.
Monster Squad. Directed by Fred Dekker.
Mortal Kombat. Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson.
National Treasure. Directed by Jon Turteltaub.
Near Dark. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
Neverwhere. Created by Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry.
Nightbreed. Directed by Clive Barker.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Directed by Chuck Russell.
Night of the Lepus. Directed by William F. Claxton.
The Passage. Created by Liz Heldens.
Pi. Directed by Darren Aronofsky.
The Prophecy. Directed by Gregory Widen.
Predator. Directed by John McTiernan.
Prince of Darkness. Directed by John Carpenter.
Pumpkinhead. Directed by Stan Winston.
Puppet Master. Directed by David Schmoeller.
Quatermass and the Pit. Directed by Roy Ward Baker.
The Quiet Earth. Directed by Geoff Murphy.
Raiders of the Lost Ark. Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Rawhead Rex. Directed by George Pavlou.
Re-Animator. Directed by Stuart Gordon.
REC. Directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza.
Repo Man. Directed by Alex Cox.
The Return of the Living Dead. Directed by Dan O’Bannon.
Salem’s Lot. Directed by Tobe Hooper.
Sleepy Hollow. Created by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Phillip Iscove, and Len Wiseman.
Special Unit 2. Created by Evan Katz.
The Strain. Created by Guillermo del Toro, and Chuck Hogan.
Stranger Things. Created by the Duffer Brothers.
Streets of Fire. Directed by Walter Hill.
The Stuff. Directed by Larry Cohen.
Supernatural. Creator Eric Kripke.
The Swarm. Directed by Irwin Allen.
Them! Directed by Gordon Douglas.
They Live. Directed by John Carpenter.
The Thing. Directed by John Carpenter.
Thirteen Ghosts. Directed by Steve Beck.
Trancers. Directed by Charles Band.
Tremors. Directed by Ron Underwood.
Vampire Hunter D. Directed by Toyoo Ashida.
Vampires. Directed by John Carpenter.
Warlock. Directed by Steve Miner.
The Warriors. Directed by Walter Hill.
The X-Files. Creator Chris Carter.
Want to ask questions about ShadowFinder? Would you enjoy access to a huge backlog of game stuff and articles? Simply want to support me creating more of these things? Check out my Patreon!
ShadowWalkers
Continuing a theme, here’s another preview of some of the material from the ShadowFinder book! Nothing on this page is OGL. This is a post of Community Use content of Paizo materials, and is a follow-up to my ShadowFinder Is Coming post from earlier in the week.
ShadowWalkers: Not everything can move back-and-forth between the Material plane and the Shadowblast. No magic, technology, power, or effect can allow travel between the two for anything but random and sporadic inanimate objects, and the rare breed of creature who are ShadowWalkers.
All PCs are assumed to be ShadowWalkers, whether they know it or not. Any NPC or monstrous threat the GM wishes to be a ShadowWalker is one. Being a ShadowWalker doesn’t let you move to or from the Shadowblast with your own power. It just means you can use the spells, devices, and gates that would normally allow planar travel can take you both ways, if you happen to have access to it.
No one knows what percentage of creatures are ShadowWalkers. It could be 1-in-10, 1-in-1,000, or even 1-in-1,000,000. That’s for each GM to decide, and for ShadowFinders without their games to find out over time. It could even be that ShadowWalkers native to the Material plane are rare, and those native to the Shadowblast are common… or vice versa.
What is known is that the cleverest, most dangerous creatures of the Shadowblast generally aren’t ShadowWalkers, much to their annoyance. They are trapped in the Shadowblast, unable to move to any other plane of existence. Many such creatures were once freer entities, sailing Astral winds at a whim, and will do nearly anything to regain that freedom. Since the Shadowblast appears to be anchored by the Earth of Rasputin’s Legacy on one end, and Lost Golarion on the other, the little gods trapped in the Shadowblast often feel destroying one world, or both, is their best bet for escaping their gloomy prison. To do that, they craft complex plans that often involve sending ShadowWalker minions from the Shadowblast to one or the other world, perhaps to set up cults to perform rituals to find yet more ShadowWalkers among the denizens of the Material plane, to turn those into more minions, to start more cults…
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ShadowFinder: Rasputin’s Legacy Earth, The United States
Continuing a theme, here’s another preview of some of the material from the ShadowFinder book! Nothing on this page is OGL. This is a post of Community Use content of Paizo materials, and is a follow-up to my ShadowFinder Is Coming post from earlier in the week.
ShadowFinder assumes you are applying it’s Play Mode to one of two worlds — Rasputin’s Legacy Earth, or Lost Golarion. Both are at a similar point technologically, magically, and in planar terms, and both are based on worlds Starfinder players are likely to be familiar with (our own Earth, or Pathfinder’s Golarion). But both also have significant differences. In the case of Rasputin’s Legacy Earth, an incursion into WWI Russian by heroes from Golarion has caused both a leak of magic back into the world, and the formation of the planar scar known as the Shadowblast.
While obviously I can’t go into deep detail on the state of entire worlds, both Rasputin’s Legacy Earth and Lost Golarion are different enough from what people are used to that SOME amount of explanation is in order. Chapter Ten of the ShadowFinder core book is the “ShadowFinder Gazetteer,” talking a bit about the who, what, and where of the worlds you can adventure in.
Here is the draft of the entry on the United States of America, unedited, still with its formatting tags.
[H2]The United States of America
The U.S. is one of the worst-off major nations in the battle against the Shadowblast, and the reasons are varied and, in many cases, self-inflicted. The fact that early research into the Shadowblast was largely undertaken by the Soviet Union (and treated as a state secret), kept the U.S. in the dark through the 1930s. But encounters soldiers and observers had during WWII made it impossible for the U.S.A. to miss that there was a real, growing, supernatural threat.
Well, it made it impossible for everyone to ignore it. It turns out, willful ignorance and politics can often go hand-in-hand.
At first, the threat of the Shadowblast was simply considered too minor to be a priority in the rush to rebuild post-war Europe, establish political dominion over the Western Hemisphere, and flex the U.S.’s newfound worldwide clout. After all, the Soviets explored the Shadowblast first because those threats were local to them. Why should a country protected by two oceans worth of moat worry about local things happening in Europe and Asia?
In the next decades the problems caused by the Shadowblast spread into the U.S., though always quietly, in shadows and small towns, untracked wilderness, abandoned buildings, backwoods and dark alleys. However, political and religious pressures began to hold back any serious preparation by U.S. groups. The whispers of such threats were called communist plots, un-Christian efforts to promote magic, and drug-induced counter-culture hallucinations. Not only did federal and state forces refuse to take such threats seriously, they actively suppressed knowledge of them, ruined the reputations of those who tried to raise the alarm, and set up counterintelligence campaigns to ensure any rumors of supernatural events were seen as junk journalism.
This left U.S. institutions vulnerable to infiltration by more organized Shadowblast factions. Some factions even managed to place moles and even high-level administrators within federal and state law enforcement and bureaucracies. In the 1970s and 1980s, Shadowblast activity within North America skyrocketed, and the very systems designed to find and neutralize threats against the country and its citizens were more often used to cover-up the growing incursions.
Even so, the number of unsolved missing persons, eyewitness accounts, and unexplained phenomenon were so extensive that private groups and individuals stepped up to fill in the gap left by a lack of any official program. Many of these groups suffered terrible losses, and things they learned in dealing with the Shadowblast were often lost without being passed on to other groups. The system was haphazard at best, but it slowly expanded into a decentralized network of vigilante groups, community patrols, and secret societies, sometimes augmented by meddling kids on bicycles or teenage bands traveling by van.
As a kind of counterculture, the fight against the Shadowblast integrated at the edges of other fringe communities. People who were already mistreated by the government, or suspicious of indoctrination by orthodoxy, were more likely to both encounter these threats and decide if something was to be done, they had to do it. The chances of a hero rising to oppose the Shadowblast being from LGBTQ groups, carnies, oppressed minorities, punk, grunge, or metal music, disillusioned veterans, and fans of various forms of speculative fiction was simply much higher than from more mainstream groups. In many cases, they had little choice – if these communities did not protect themselves, no one else would.
This situation has evolved over the decades, but remains the norm in the current era. Specific parts of the United States can have different governmental reactions to Shadowblast threats. Alaska in general has a history and culture similar to Canada when regarding the Shadowblast, and there are areas along the southern border that are much closer to the situation in Mexico than the rest of the U.S. (especially further from major population centers). But, in general, even now governmental research of and resistance to Shadowblast incursions is generally haphazard, ad-hoc, and isolated. While the FBI has Taskforce X, the National Parks Service has the Cryptology Division, and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation’s “Directive 8” oversees the surprisingly well-informed K’n Yan Intelligence Section, for the most part officials aware of and working against the Shadowblast have to do so with little support from their organizations. Indeed, sometimes such efforts are actively hindered by officials that believe such efforts are a waste of time… or who are secretly on the Shadowblast’s side.
That level of hindrance is also why the ShadowFinder Society has no official presence in the U.S.A, forcing its members to work more clandestinely. They often organize regionally under the auspices of some smaller, local group, and use the term Torchbearer to refer to those who fight against the encroaching shadows. There is an unofficial “Torchbearer’s Circuit” of truck stops, diners, bus stations, taxi companies, union laborers, coal miners, loggers, local churches, firefighters, and environmental activists who are aware of the Shadowblast and, at least to some extent, the ShadowFinder Society itself.
But in the end, in the U.S., those who wish to oppose things that go bump in the night are likely to be on their own much of the time.
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