Pathogen: The Infected

Works for me.

I suppose it's a bit like Catches, yeah- autoactivating the power in the sort of situation where a catch might apply. In fact, no ATP cost when it happens is a good way to make it more ambiguous as to whether this is a good thing; if you occasionally get screwed over by your body not being entirely under your control, it's an "AAAAARGH HORRIBLE" thing, whereas it occasionally helping that it happens this way creates delicious, delicious uncertainty... "It helped... but it's not me. "

edited 16th Feb '11 6:35:08 AM by MorkaisChosen

I wonder what you'd think of doing this not major game-line, but supplement style.

Let me tell, you, there are few thigns as painful as a certain type of Wo D gamer who thinks that every type of character needs to be a major splat. And from this are born "Blah: The Blahblah" monstrosities such as "Hunchback: The Lurching".

There is such a shortage on good fan-made more general supplements, everyone seems to think that your characters aren't worth it if you don't try to make them into a major gameline. We could be a breath of fresh air in that regard.

This does not mean that the major Infected splat needs to be excluded. Nor does it main that a minor splat can't be played as the hero of the game. But it'd make it possible for storytellers to pick from tips that best fits their game.

For example, a set-up like this:

• a section on how to design fictional diseases for your chronicle, even ones that can give a templated-up character some difficulty. A step-by-step pathogen creator (origins, vectors, symptoms, virus goals and strategy), and information on the various type of Infected monsters (Chimera).
• minor infections: humans with an Infected "Minor Template". Ideal if you are only planning to put the characters through the transformation for the duration of one story or want to make it about getting themselves cured.*
• "The long road": becoming a vampire or a werewolf is usually something in a player's backstory: short and painless. With this hack, S Ts can apply the Pathogen rules to make that transformation slow, painful and truly terrific, and possibly last the duration of an entire chronicle.
• the major part, which contains the "major splat"(s) It gives many "permanently" Infected to choose from, and all of the Subversions and Wings, and how these characters related to the rest of the book.
• stories in body horror: everything Pathogen related that does count as an infection. (body transforming magics, medical horror, organic tech, etc.)

Also, these chapters do not have to exist as or feel separate. Most Wo D books make a good job making you feel that the different angles listed still exist within the same universe. Especially true if you're playing the major splat, since most of what's in the other chapters will be your game "universe". For example, the other types of body horrors can be implemented as resources that the Wings possess, or the first section to personalize your symbiote.

(* One thing I was wondering about if some infections (not The infection, just any that a ST wants to put into their story) would work better through the so-called "minor template" (ghouls, ensorcelled humans, or psychics and thaumaturge "low mages" ("Wo D: Second Sight") etc.). One advantage of these is that the player is not making a commitment, because the transtion from ghoul-to-mortal or vica versa is built into the mechanics, a unlike vampires, mages or weres they do not become a different "species". This seems closer to what a human with the Infection is like.)

edited 22nd Feb '11 1:37:33 PM by Vree

Vree, that sounds like a plan, why not call the minor Pathogens "Strains"? And as for minor-template humans, call them "Marys", as in, Typhoid Mary. They are mostly asymptomatic, showing only a few minor signs, perhaps even seemingly in 'Remission'?

And as for the Long Infection, I figured that's what Infected were already doing! The Story of an Infected who gains their powerstat is one of a slow succumbing to their Pathogen. It gains more foothold, it weakens and strengthens them at the same time. Until, eventually, they loose it all or they manage to find a balance.

Which actually leads me to my next round of blathering, which a friend helped point out. Our 'Catches' shouldn't work like Changeling catches, but instead, be like a Mini-Frenzy, one for each power you use. When the Catch is met, you can roll Stamina+Resolve with a modifier based on your Powerstat to resist the Pathogen's activation of the power.

Which yet again brings me to the point of how I think powers should work. In esseance we're cribbing heavily from Geist here, but there's not a problem in that, right? Okay so here's how it goes, you want to use BIO ELECTRICITY (The Power) to do so you use it via MUTATION (The Method), at a certain RANK (How Many Points You've Sunk into this Combo), say RANK 4. This creates the power PLASMA SCREAM: "A horrid mouth opens somewhere on your body and with an ear-piercing scream, releases a bolt of white hot energy" with the possible REACTION (Our Catches) to High Freaquency Sounds (The Echolocation of a Chimera... or SWAT gear that does the same)

Possible Powers: Blood, Bone, Bio-Electricity, ???? Possible Methods: Mutation, Induction, Parasite, Manipulation

edited 17th Feb '11 9:36:26 AM by NightmareWork

Ooooh. I like that idea. A two-way power-building thing.

Are we talking improvisational powers here? "I have three Mutation and four Blood... BLOODWHIPS!"?

Well, that'd be a way of doing it, but actually, I was thinking statting out each power, because we'd also have to create a Reaction for each power. Or should the Reactions be left up to the Player/ST?

EDIT: You don't buy ranks in METHODS like Mutation, you buy ranks in things like Mutation+Blood

edited 17th Feb '11 8:48:48 PM by NightmareWork

Suggestion: Give each Power/Method combo a set of five scaled powers, with each new dot both providing access to one new power of your choice and scaling up the other powers in that tree, so buying Blood/Induction 2 not only gets you INTERNALIZED TOXIN (2), it also upgrades your IRON BLOOD (1) to IRON BLOOD (2).

Think of it like getting a new cell for the cluster. Basically the individual combo trees advance in grids.

edited 17th Feb '11 9:05:36 PM by WonSab

I have only skimmed this thread, and haven't read the original (and I freely admit, have never designed a game before). That said, I'm a World of Darkness player, and love the idea. I wanted to express my admiration for every one who's trying to make this work; when you've got it I'll be the first to download it.

On a hopefully more helpful note, there's something I was thinking about. Earlier someone had mentioned Birkin from Resident Evil 2, and how he mutates more with every injury he takes. Would it be possible to work that into the game mechanics? Maybe something along the lines of an ability that would let a character recover one lethal damage, at the cost of a disfigurement? In story terms it would be something along the lines of, "congratulations on healing that hole in your stomach, but now you've got a great freaking tentacle hanging out." Said disfigurement could be lost after a while, whether through necrosis or further mutation, or could be permanent.

Also, somebody had mentioned the concept of a parasitic infection earlier. Would it be possible to have a character type who, instead of physically mutating, has a parasitic invader who is systematically rewiring their body to serve its needs? The host could be for all intents and purposes physically dead, but with the brain still active and trying to fight the parasite for control. Some of Geist's rules could be incorporated perhaps? On a physical note, maybe as the host was damaged more and more of the parasite would show throw; mechanically the character might take less damage from attacks than a regular infected but at the garuntee of a disfigurement (and possible morality loss) if it gets bad enough. A character goal would be finding a way to either eject the parasite (which could easily be something rather different from the standard finding a cure) or, failing that, coming to an accomadation with it and preventing further damage.

Thematically, something like this would provide something a little different from a regular Infectee. If a normal Infectee feels like they have voices in their head, or another creature living inside them, a parasitic Infectee legitimately does. They'd likely be far more prone to cannabalism, predation, and other major sins, if for no other reason than they're not fighting themselves for control, but another being who has its own agenda and hungers. Perhaps giving into one's Vice too frequently (or alternately, going to long without satisfying it) could lead to the parasite attempting to wrest control? As far as abilities go, they'd be likely to be physically tough (if for no other reason than the fact that there's some serious mind/body disconnect going on here) but not necessarily dexterous (same reason), and might well be prone to abilities that allow for a real feeling of control loss and Squick: implanting tentacles or offspring in people's minds, extendable jaws, tongues, digestive tracts you name it. They'd likely be spread through deliberate infection; each parasite might have a tube that can attach to a victim's body and deposit eggs, live young, whatever.

To sum up, I think the whole parasite thing could make for an interesting character type. Maybe something like the Zeky in Promethean: slightly more powerful physically and ability wise, but with serious moral drawbacks that make playing as one far harder, but not impossible. Thematically it would make for a change from those who are physically mutating themselves. I'm sure people here who are much better at this than I am could convert this into a game mechanic if they wanted to. If someone wants a write-up from me though, I would happily provide one.

Anyway, not demanding any of these ideas get used at all, but I thought I'd post them in case you find anything about them interesting. Good luck!

EDIT: Rereading an earlier post I see that some of the stuff I said has already been discussed. Apologies about that. To clarify what my concept of a parasite infection would be like it basically boils down to this: a regular Infectee (if such things can ever be called regular) is changing because their body is physically mutating. A parasitic Infectee is changing because parts of their body are dying, rotting away, being torn off and the parasite is replacing them with parts of itself. In order to better connect it to the rest of the game, maybe the parasite was a Chimera or some other creature infected by the Pathogen, or The Virus, or whatever you want to call it, and its mutations force it to bodyjack other people and animals, slowly absorbing or discarding all of the body save the cenral nervous system and other parts that it graducally absorbs or works into itself.

edited 20th Feb '11 10:56:06 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Zeky Parasites.... now there's something I hadn't thought of... I'd been treating Parasite as a Method one could manifest powers through, simply treating it as a special method you can buy into, just like it's more mechanical twin, Induction. To have a parasite would be having the Flaw of DELICIOUS ATP AURA, but your powers might be cheaper/a touch more powerful, because once you had Parasite, you couldn't have Induction.

I really need to make more methods.

What is this Induction thing you speak of? I did not quite follow...

I don't really get it still how parasites are related to having more ATP either but hey 0_0 Maybe I will eventually.

edited 25th Feb '11 8:09:32 PM by Vree

Induction is the power of absorbing technology into your own body, I believe it was in the original book. I used it as one of the Methods for manifesting powers, so you could make cybernetic horrors out of your character.

As for Parasites and ATP, they don't give you more, just make you more delicious seeming to Zombies and Chimeras. This is mostly from the idea that eating Pathogen Infected Parasites gives you ATP.

Oh, you mean Incorporation. I copy.

I think that part about eating a parasite referred to consuming the catalyst of the infection, I don't see why an unrelated parasite (a Chimera) would be worth bonus ATP. "Parasite master" type characters may work them as regular abilities (in which case they are not worth ATP at all) or by self-created Chimeras whose ATP cost they for with their own (in which case they probably have the same amount of ATP as regular low-level Chimeras).

I have kind of mentally separated what you call "methods", ie. ways that physical changes and transformations can manifest, and other abilites (Subversions) as well.

I've read into Saturnine Nights, and it's surprising how little use they make of the whole machine man idea. It's practically just one five-dot merit. We can definitely do better than that.

^^^Ideas are very much appreciated. (From whoever decides to comment.) At this stage, collecting clichés and tropes is what takes priority (something that TV Tropes can help a lot with).

EDIT: Another shard I have found: Mirrors p. 158-159 has a short section on biological catastrophes, icluding a short section on rolls to create vaccines.

Vaccine

Anyone with medical knowledge can try to create a vaccine. Though it will only help those who aren’t yet infected, that can still be a massive boost. Dice Pool: Intelligence + Medicine + equipment Action: Extended (35–50 successes needed, each roll takes one week)

Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The character becomes infected with the pathogen. Failure: The character makes no progress. Success: Depending on the pathogen, a vaccine can take anywhere between 35 and 50 successes to create. The character synthesizes enough vaccine to inoculate five people. Attempts to replicate the vaccine take half the required successes. Exceptional Success: The vaccine leads the character to believe he can use it to make a cure for the infected.

It also gives me some ideas on immune people (these are people who are unaffected by the Pathogen). So far what I considered on them is that they are rare, and probably hunted by those who seek a cure for the Pathogen who'd like to know what makes them resistant. Something that the text makes me realize is that anyone who's proven himself to be immune will probably be expoited by many other ways by their fellow survivors in an outbreak situation since they can move into infected areas without a risk.

I have made a home-rule before that any and all final cure or vaccine only cures one particular strain of the Pathogen - the mutagen may mutate on itself so far that it does not have anything in common with the original form of the disease. Apart from spreading, is one of the goals of the Pathogen probably while they are in a host.

Mechanically it would probably work similar to Bloodline creation in "Vampire" - a Pathogen can create a new strain if its host has reached a certain level of Resonance.

Something I have been experienting with, actually - inspired by some of the comments here - is a Humanity/Morality - Fusion - Resonance set-up. The idea is to make Humanity a measure of the human side, Resonance a measure of the pathogen's influence, and Fusion a balancer between the two. Everything the pathogen can do will be limited by its Resonance, while the character will use Humanity to resist. Fusion would substract from both if they try to work at cross-purposes, and add itself as a bonus if the character and the pathogen work together. It still needs a lot of work, though.

edited 6th Mar '11 10:46:36 AM by Vree

Here's something. If you were adding an nWoD splat step-by-step, how'd you do it?

We'd be starting with a mortal template, just like every other book does. Then gradually add everything.

That'd mean that:

• weaknesses are added gradually: light hurts a vampire less in the beginning, before he takes full damage for it later. (Symptoms?)
• Morality is replaced by respective stat bit by bit (Fusion?). any advantage that the modified stat offers is also bought in the process.
• bonus dots to any Attribute due to template are (probably?) added immediately after the infection, and are lost if the character is cured.
• characters can start buying abilities depending on his template. However as long as his transformation is still in progress, he must pay additional exp for the abilities that he buys, depending on how far he is from the final splat.

Something like that. Suppose that you are playing your favourite book and want to add these traits slowly, what else would you note?

@NW

That'd be great.

I think the guys in the "Virus" thread on rpg.net (which is unfinished) were working on something similar. Tell me more.

edited 20th Mar '11 4:40:02 PM by Vree

Here is a suggested hack that allows a Geist to possess its host if they are in disagreement. Useful stuff.

Here is another thread where I got some ideas from others on gradually adding templates.

And here are some more ideas on non-conventional infection types.

More thinking on how @NW's Methods would work; for example

• Evolution: the Infected unleashes the potential locked away in his genes, acquiring the traits of the life form that he needs to be
• Adaptation: the Infected allows her body to adjust itself to its surrounding enviroment, gaining a form that can fit seemlessly with whatever situation she is in
• Mutation: the Infected allows the infection to run wild, intsilling their body with greater strenght, transforming their appendages or growing new ones
• Assimilation: the Infected absorbs other things into her body from her enviroment

- Adaptation -

Adaptation gives you resistance against a certain type of damage, usually some enviromental hazard. The power does not "shiled" you from taking damage, rather it reduces the damage already taken by a certain percent.

Alternatively (this being in the Wo D) Adaptation downgrades a given type of damage (Killing to Bashing, Aggrevated to Killing). Adaptation can also downgrade damage tied to Symptoms, except for one. (There always has to be an "Achilles heel" that deals Aggrevated damage to the character.)

If there is a roll involved, then Adaptation downgrades a number of health dots equal to the number of successes reached.

Damage types that can be influenced by Adaptation: - Electricity - Acid - Poisons (note that extremely corrosive poisons also count for acid damage) - Cold - Heat - Fire - Laser

- Physical damage: the character has to select one type of attack (eg. "immune to bullets"). The ability only influences that damage type (eg. a character who cannot get stabbed will still be vulnerable ). Resistances already purchased above apply though (so a person who cannot be hurt by fire can still apply it to an attack with a flamethrower).

Types avaliable for this are:??? Falling, Bullets, Explosions, Crushing, Cutting, Piercing???

Drugs and disease: Resistance against these two types is handled as a single ability (the character is more resistant to other diseases, but medicine does not affect him anymore either; and they need more drinks or drugs before they can feel anything as a side effect) that is possessed by every Infected, regardless of whether they practice Adaptation or not. Drugs that count as poisons count separately.

Sleep: the time that the character can go without Fatigue penalties starting to apply is doubled (24 hours to 48 hours, 48 to 96 hours, etc.) for each level. Cannot be purchased if the character's leading Symptom is Insomnia. Hunger: the time that the character can go without Deprivation penalties starting to apply is doubled. Cannot be purchased if the character's leading Symptom is Phagomania.

Advanced adaptation: if a character decreases the damage he would have to take below Bashing (so that he effectively takes no damage from it at all - note that most damage types can be upgraded by direct exposure, eg. a Killing shot upgraded to Aggrevated by a gun to the head) and takes yet another level in Adaptation for it, he's in for a treat. Rather than damaging him, suffering that type of damage is going to hel him instead. Any damage that the character would take is converted into an equal number of Bashing health dots that he gains back instead. Two points of Bashing can be exchanged to heal one Killing. Three points of Bashing can be exchanged to heal one Aggrevated. You can only heal one type of damage one turn, and you have to start with Bashing, then continue with Killing and finally Aggrevated. You cannot begin healing greater damage after all of your previous Bashing or Killing damage is gone.

By the way, isn't the Iron Stamina merit a bit too powerful? Compared to its low price, it influences nearly every type of negative modifier that the character can possibly gain.

Also, just some chunk ideas:

1, skill tree: Infection

Infection allows you to pass on a mini-parasite to others.

Killing: The victim's body deforms in a way that kills them. Perhaps stuff grows out of their eyes and mouth and they choke.

Impregnate: A Chimera begins to grow in the victim, which like a time bomb, breaks free eventually.

2, possible X-splats (though they let you choose what you become...)

Cyborgs (used-up men, Tetsuo): Incorportation (can operate any technology that they absorb) Zoonotics (atavists, (Gregor): can resemble any Earth animal when using Evolution, or assimilate animal parts Imitators (Hyde): Zombies: (can eat or assimilate dead matter, and stay alive even after taking Killing damage to the extent of their maximum Aggrevated damage)

3, Promethean's Disquiet: gotta make a note to make some sort of system for the paranoia that the Infected can create when they know that e is present and not human, but no-one knows who is The mole (and probably pick the wrong person first, usually...)

edited 26th Mar '11 3:46:38 PM by Vree

Aand the current topic is, "mortal templates to supernatural templates". I think I have posted a link to my thread on White Wolf one post above which shows that at least the transition of one morality stat to another is doable, even if it requires a bit of work with each splat. The big question is whether this can be done for every other aspect of a splat in a relatively easy way, and if we can use that recognition for something.

Did people drop this project, by the way? For a while I've seem to have only been arguing with myself

Feel free to work on any section or claim them as your own. With the current set-up there is plenty to go around.

I'm here, I just can't think of what to add .

The way I see it, the areas that could use work are these:

- work on the "infection system" - the add-on that allows you to convert a mortal splat into a supernatural splat gradually. This is probably my own biggest interest right now, given that it will affect what stays under the major splat: Symptoms, for example, will almost certainly get moved here; the Morality transformations will probably make mental conversion and some or all related conflicts (Blackout, possession, body control sharing) work at least partially through this, as well.

- work on the "Infected splat(s)". We seem to have a pretty good idea about what the "major splat" should be like (that's where we have started, after all) but it can always use more input and tweaking. One of the considerations is going to be how easily it can be used together with the above "infection system": we can't help it if an existing splat (Vampire, Werewolf) does not mash with it perfectly, but the "official" one should work smooth. Ideally, a player should be able to use the system both as a list of add-ons for existing games, and a major splatbook on itself; although this seems like a promise that'd be too much from Santa himself.

There is also room for "minor splats" that you'd like to see, or perhaps splitting the major one into five+ "minor splats" (or allowing it to be used as both one big splat and five smaller ones - that'd be swell), depending on how well it goes.

(One of my goals is to allow a character to "rebuild" a splat bit by bit, and even deviate from it. So, a character may use the system to go from human to Requiem Vampire, or may build a different sort of vampire entirely. This requires a certain freedom of movement between splats and an understanding of how those work, and may in the end be too complicated to be worth it; but the nWoD is really so flexible and crossover-friendly that I at least would like to try it.)

-work on the Subversion system. People seem to like making up new abilities and we have had several great suggestions on the earlier pages. These will be all used in some form if we can help it. @Nightmarework and others have proposed a new more mosaic-like system which could yield many interesting results too. If you check the "Virus" thread on rpg.net, I think they were working on something similar before they were cancelled.

One of the things worth mentioning here is that we do not know how many of the character's abilities is going to be "theirs". Stuff like not alowing you to access your own ATP points, abilities that only the Pathogen may use, and similar stuff may make it in if people decide to get creative. One of my own personal ambitions is to force the player into a bizarre partnership of sorts, where he is working at cross purposes with the Pathogen in their private life, but forced to cooperate and pool their control over the body in danger or battle. This may have an affect on the abilites, althgough it is only one of many possibilities on itself.

Ultimately, if you know a cool ability, send it in. I don't want to change anything unneccessarily so we may even stay on the old system.

- Work on body horror equipment and goodies. While this is meant to be usable on its own, one of the ideas is to also assign the categories to the five Wings, and a player who is roleplaying as an Infected will be given easy access to these by just buying up his Wing Status.

The topics are: - medical horror - organic technology - organic magic

(inspiration can be drawn from the Consilium, the Evolutionaries and the Annunaki, respectively)

- work on the bestiary (body horror monsters you'd like to see); these will probably get added as "Chimera" (player-created monsters, or monsters created -from- the players). These may map to the existing Infected types (zombies, transformed animals, etc.) in which case they may get incorporated into how those work, or may be entirely standalone creatures on their own right.

some ideas that have been mentioned this far:

"Tetsuos" - machine-men "Gregors" - ani-men "Hydes" - people turning into other people (including identity-stealers, sex-changers and paedomorphs) infected zombies - the not-yet-dead dead undead. share some traits with nuclear mutants, too. ?swarm druids - creatures made up from smaller creatures ?other - people turning into spirits (well, this IS the Wo D...) and elemental forces; shrinking/growing men; Human Vapours or Incredible Melting Men; etcetra.

- other infections: if you have a different idea how a pandemic or supernatural disease could be brought into a story without bodily transformation being involved, I'm preyy sure that there is a way to incorporate those too, especially those that'll go well with existing Wo D games.

- create game fiction or terminology. Are you a med student or just someone who likes old Carpenter movies or a regular on bogleech.com? You can contribute a lot by sharing your writing and ideas. Are you (no way!) an artist? We do not technically need pictures (definitely not at this stage) but we would like to see your visual aids Are you an experienced RPG system writer? I'm sure that there are many oppotunities and system unbalance issues that we have missed.

- anything else you'd like to see. I was thinking of adding a bonus Appendix called "Quarantine", for ideas that do not make it in but are just too cool to get thrown away. Not everything that's body horror can be fit under the idea of "infection", but if it fits the genre it should be in here.

Sorry for disappearing, I get distracted easily. Now it seems I have a lot to read, I hope you'll forgive me if I'm no good with mechanics, but I can get right back to fluff writing. Though my thoughts on the Tetsuo's, Moreau's, and Hyde's are very simple, prestige classes. Like a Vampiric bloodline or a Promethean refinement, only with a hell of a lot less control... You never decided to follow this path, it's just the way your Pathogen strain evolved. As far as 'organic magic' goes, I feel we should shy away from it... It might make the whole thing feel to fantastic instead of a sort of down-and-dirty paranoia theme I seem to think this game goes for. But, that's probably just my stubborn head again.

edited 21st Mar '11 11:32:16 AM by NightmareWork

... Weird as fuck left-field idea for an alternate option.

Play as a mind-affecting disease, rather than the people infected with it.

Wouldn't have that as the main thing, but it might be interesting to look at.

As interesting as that sounds, there's sort of a problem, in that, diseases are hard to make into characters. Good thought, might deserve some thought, but let's work out the Main Splat before we worry about anything else.

Technically you are doing that. You are playing as a character who is an amalgam of a host and a pathogen.

edited 24th Mar '11 1:26:13 PM by Vree

Though on the one side I really like this idea, and would almost call it "What WW was trying to do with Promethean, but done right," I also want to say that this would do better to move away from the traditional World of Darkness style of writing, with splats and such, and go in its own direction. It fits the theme of the World of Darkness, certainly, but it almost feels like it would work better on its own, without the baggage of such a world.

Do you mean doing it for another game system? Or sticking with the rules, but make the world more sci-fiesque outside the normal Wo D?

I don't think anyone had planned this as anything more than a Wo D add-on. I mean, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I don't think that the idea is strong enough to be able to stand in itself. xD Rather than just being baggage, having a system and a setting to back things up takes off the even more huge workload that doing those in addition tho the central character would mean. (And, while this might be a tad selfish a reason, it probably wouldn't be recognized as much in the first place if it wasn't labelled Wo D.)

I'm always curious about more ideas about what people think could be done with something, though. xD If you feel like you could elaborate more on the topic.

Oh, the system is fine. I'm fairly sure you could get along with using this system as it is — if there's a problem doing that, others could be used instead, but I'm fairly sure die-pool target-based systems aren't that uncommon anyway. I haven't thus far seen or heard anything that requires the setting to be White Wolf's World of Darkness, aside from explicitly cross-venue stuff.

Well, if anything, the existence of templates is exremely helpful. It means that anyone making a fan gameline only has to create the special abilities in the given framework (the usual standards: there is a new Morality stat, a power stat/power point, a system of learnable abilities to spend those on, and some special drawbacks/advantages (eg. each race has an "achilles heel" it takes more damage from, but they also tipically have a "Health hack", like not dying so easily or regenerating fast)). Once you're done you just pull it on a mortal template as with all the other races and you are done.

But for this game, this set-up is also useful because the area between mortal human and some other creature is where our focus, the unwilling transformation, takes place.

Now, do you need to use the same setting, as well? Well, you technically don't, but why wouldn't you? The core rulebook really does not have anything other than a present-day setting for horror adventures, which is where I assume one'd mostly play. It can be debated if it also needs to be compatible with the other gamelines, and again, technically no. But allowing crossovers at all is optional for the other gamelines as well.

EDIT: I think I need to admit that my stance on how closely to do things to the usual "gothic horror" has changed since we have started on this too. Now I'm more inclined towards allowing more original Vectors and incorporating elements from a wider range of stories.

And the Promethean parallel is spot-on - while things are not made with the intention to rival Promethean, a lot of elements that Promethean had shunned or avoided can be saved and made work within the limits of this one. Pathogen has parallels with more books that just Promethean, but it is the closest to it among the official gamelines.

edited 25th Mar '11 7:19:45 AM by Vree

Promethean done right? But Promethean already did what it meant to do, question what makes humanity human and explore the varied and myraid problems that come with trying to attain enlightenment of any sort. Pathogen, to me, is more about the slow corruption of self and the absolute unfairness of life, with hearty dashes of paranoia instead of ennui.

As for not having it in the Wo D, it's easy enough to write it as part of the Wo D. If you don't want crossovers, don't have them. The Infected don't have any good lines of communication or true investigation, if they meet a supernatural, they might just assume it's a different strain. Or hide in the closet until the screaming stops. Either really works.