IsabellaRose

All of those character options sound like they'd fit pretty seamlessly! For the vampire-esque character, you wouldn't even need to retain any of the actual weaknesses of a traditional vampire. You just "look" like one, so superstitious common folk assume you must be one. You're just an eccentric inventory/scientist who has fled persecution in Europe/back east and setup shop in this town, because you can get anything you need via the railroad in town, and you get the privacy to conduct your experiments without someone looking over your shoulder. But of course, rumors abound about what exactly it is you do in that big house all alone, and what are those big boxes you receive, and why do you never let anyone into your house beyond the parlor...? As a GM I can build some very fun drama around that misunderstanding.

Okay, so far I have... INCLUDE Ashborn: Prudence to have existed in our past and to have left her legacy of defending love in all its forms. With that comes the oppressive social and religious pressure that drove Prudence to condemn her lover. gunfighters in dusty streets Airships aesthetically, I would prefer zeppelins! and hot air balloons government agents in luxury train cars with odd, clockwork and steam-powered gadgets magic being a thing in the setting in the right, mystical, unobtainable doses (The big bad dabbling in something they don't understand and we won't either) automatons, or at least clockwork cybernetics of sorts, emblematic of the blight of progress, pushing out simple folk and making their lives harder while the wealthy robber barons control their manufacture and use from distant cities. I'm thinking *The Octopus* but with clockwork track-layers, coal shovelers, and even steam-driven oxen pulling Union-Pacific branded plows while the simple farmer behind on his payments to the land baron can only watch in dread at the technology in the next field slowly tilling him under with every row. The tension with Automatons can also go into John Henry veins and even spur Luddite groups to acts of sabotage and explosive, dynamite-fueled arson to fight back. minor supernatural stuff. More classics like werewolves, vampires, etc. Or, perhaps having been created by some sort of experimentation. Not a one-off, but probably a limited amount in the world the Army performing horrific and unethical experiments to better combat the First Nations The Invisible World: a strange, alien dimension overlapping the material world. perhaps some weird-science steam-tech has created a way to use the dimension for fuel, scientific study, or even the first stirrings of worm-hole travel It could be that the folk magic of the era or the exploding Spiritualist movement of the late 1800s is actually tapping into this invisible world without realizing. Spiritualism of the late 1800s: supernatural spookiness that contrasts the clockwork, steam, and steel. Some hucksters and charlatans, but also based in some reality (minor supernatural stuff) Gold/Resource Rush: We could use the almost magical ore mentioned in the original thread (coal that doesn't burn or burns with supernatural efficiency), or we could use actual gold, but I think having some resource rush (or the aftermath of one) gives us interesting tension points with desperate prospectors, sketchy land claims, and people who stand to win or lose fortunes on how quickly they act on whispered rumors. Balls: The working men and women contrasted with the rich land and business owners holding events like they're in the center of civilization, far from the frontier. Heists: a complicated plan with little to no chance of going off correctly. Horses: Work horses and steeds for riding would be important. Gadgets freedom to cobble silly gadgets and such together with that steampunk aesthetic. Saloons Steampunk prosthetics an element of the supernatural Lawlessness THINGS TO TREAD CAREFULLY WITH Monsters: minor monster stuff, there's not packs of werewolves in the canyons, but there's THE wolf man who haunts the old swamp. vampires are folklore, but people still hang garlic wreathes and draw crosses inside carriage doors, the creature that's half-man half-fish dwells in the Rio Grande, ready to pull unsuspecting bathers to its subterranean I'm ok with them not being strictly 'evil', but think it works best if they are decidedly 'monstrous’ Minor Supernatural Stuff: folk magic so subtle that most people don't believe in it anymore, but it is very much real. The gris-gris actually keeps ghosts away and might steer that bullet meant for you into the steel flask in your breast pocket. EXCLUDE Full furries Real Historical figures Automobiles Planes Zombies Werewolves Vampires THINGS TO THINK ABOUT First Nations the US Army and what frontier forts look like and how they act on the world around them POTENTIAL SETTING Large-ish town: a slightly larger town, perhaps built up around the church, with a sheriff and their deputy, a few shop owners, two saloons and a brothel that draws in enough visitors to the town from the nearby fort, mining claims and mountain trappers that everyone knows they need it.

I think there's room for everyone to have a presence in town. I'm imagining the various factions being sort of like the warring powermongers in Deadwood (the HBO series) - they are all in town, all trying to establish themselves in positions of power due to (resource) being abundant in the area and this being the main railroad stop closest to the mine, ruins, spring, or whatever source of (resource) we decide is nearby to create a gold rush feel. They need the people to follow them, to see them as the power in the area. I can imagine the schism church trying to exert its power, to spread its influence back east. I can also imagine other powerful organizations, individuals, etc. all trying to lock down their control over this town, and thus lock down their control of (resource). The aforementioned resource could be gold, the "new coal", or something else. Whatever this unobtainium is, it is valuable and rare enough that people will kill for it.

So I'm thinking about Prudence and her Ashborn, and given the setting... Prudence would very likely still be active. Perhaps her protection is a sort of frontier legend. Some people who say they've been protected by her have spread her legend, and some directly affected have now started a new faith, one of love and protection. This new faith draws all sorts of followers and is rapidly growing. Perhaps one of their first, or their very first, chapel is in the town where the players are based... Just a thought, given her wild west themed origin.

Okay, so... not a lot of discussion going on here. I'm going to post my lists of what I imagine for this setting and you guys can work from there. Things I Imagine Being in an 1880s/Wild West/Steampunk/Weird West Flavored Game Dusty boomtowns, saloons, and lawless frontier towns. Railroads, train robberies. Airships. Cursed mines. Traveling carnivals and bizarre expositions. Mad scientists in brass-and-copper laboratories. Automatons and clockwork men questioning their humanity. Creepy experiments. Tesla coils, pneumatic weapons, and steam-powered contraptions. Strange inventions with unintended consequences. Poe-style hauntings and spiritualism (séances, mediums, spirit boards). Folk religion and superstition (totem cults, skinwalker legends). Themes & Drama including Progress vs. Peril – new technology brings danger as often as salvation, and Law vs. Chaos – marshals, outlaws, and vigilantes clashing. Things I Don't Imagine Being in the Game Romero-style zombies (mindless hordes shambling about). Goofy slapstick steampunk tropes (overly cartoonish tech). Overly modern politics or moralizing that break the 1880s frontier feel. Alien invasions from outer space (though alien fossils, crashed remnants, or hints of otherworldly influence are fair game). High fantasy elves/dwarves or Tolkien tropes. Stick to Gothic, Weird West, and pulp science. Overt superhero tropes (no caped crusaders or spandex heroes, this is pulp adventure, not comic book). Pure comedy tone. Humor is fine, but the core is dramatic, atmospheric, and weird. Work from there - add to the lists, delete stuff from them, alter and edit. Let's make something interesting!

My preference would be to lean away from vampires. A vampire implies someone who turned them into a vampire, which implies other vampires, which implies hunters, which implies more than I personally wanted to include. But, a note to consider: the players don't all have to be friends. They have Relationships with each other, but they don't have to be good relationships, they just have to involve strong feelings. Consider that the original game setup for the Smallville game this system was originally designed for included pre-generated characters for both Clark Kent AND Lex Luthor. Dramatic entanglements between rivals can be even more fun. Just sayin'. This is why I like the town idea proposed earlier by WNS. There can be a bit of everything, and everyone can have widely different relationships to the same members of the community. The mid-sized town is an ideal setup for drama and passion to mix. It can be our own little steampunk Deadwood, but further west with more dust and less mud.

Prudence broke from a very harsh religion that imposed their righteousness through capital punishment of blasphemy. I think they may not be the religion that offers sanctuary, but the one many need sanctuary from. Perhaps there are at least two main religions, one old and established, seeking to bring the light of their god to the masses, including the savages. They mean well, but don't understand how oppressive they are to other beliefs, and offer sanctuary. The religion that Prudence belonged to is a very harsh, extra double plus Puritanical version of this older religion, a group that seeks to cleanse the evils of the world with fire and blood. Maybe they have their own enigmatic "prophet".

The way the system is built is why I want to hash out what the worlds look like first, then settle the players in the worlds that sound most interesting to them. If Group 1 decides no animal hybrids or a very specific implementation of them that doesn't appeal to the some players, and group 2 decides to include JRPG style animal hybrids who are there for reasons, then I want a player to have the opportunity to move to the group that contains the themes and elements they want. Which is my nice way to say: "get cracking, Group 2!"

As we build the worlds, if one goes in a direction that appeals to players in the other group, we can change groups. I can accommodate up to 6 players per game, so there's room for movement to/from either game. That's the risk you take with any TTRPG, really. Finding a group willing to commit to the long term game is difficult. I've started more online games than I can count on multiple sites and I've only ever finished a handful. That's just how it goes. But I'll never stop trying.

Honestly, I could see this working as an almost Jekyll/Hyde formula type thing. Injected with "Essence of Bear" for strength, "Essence of Wolf" for tracking/pack hunting, etc. The effects are initially temporary as the experiment begins, a boost to the soldiers for a single offensive, something that wears off. At the same time, the effect is designed to be used as a gas, dispersed over a large area to affect multiple targets at once. But these were things more like a drug, designed to weaken their opponents... "Essence of Tortoise" to slow them down, "Essence of Rabbit" to make them skittish and more likely to run than fight. Obviously there are unintended side effects. Effects last longer than predicted, subjects display physical transformation characteristics instead of just abilities, subjects of the predatory strains become violently addicted and desperate for another "fix" of the essence that gives them powers, subjects of the prey animal strains develop defensive traits of their source animals... And then one of the lab assistants steals the research for a rich, land baron zoophiliac and tries to create a harem of animal hybrid women for his own pleasure. Details of the research details are returned to Washington where actual test begin on other variants - aquatic soldiers, avians, large predatory cats... but the experiments are shut down, the soldiers euthanized amid a flurry of human/animal rights protests that end with them becoming a protected subspecies of humanity, or perhaps hybrids deemed "too dangerous" are rounded up and put into camps or preserves. Hybrids become folk legends, some feared as monsters, some exoticized as curiosities, some romanticized as tragic heroes. Traveling circuses and sideshows exploit them, billing them as things like “the Wolf-Man of Wyoming” or “The Mermaid Girl of Mississippi.” Prejudice mirrors racism and xenophobia of the time... like laws barring hybrids from towns, signs outside saloons that say, “No Beasts, No Natives, No Irish.” But it's not all negative. Some settlers and tribes believe hybrids are skinwalkers, spirit-kin, or a form of divine punishment. Cults arise worshiping hybrids as totem spirits reborn in flesh. Hybrid communities themselves splinter, some embracing their animal natures, others struggling to “cling to humanity.” Predatory hybrids addicted to their essence seek out smugglers or rogue scientists for a fix as the “essences”, now perfected into something more tolerable by humans, become contraband and are sold like opium or whiskey, used by outlaws for short bursts of power. Rival powers (European empires, secret societies) race to steal samples or recreate the formula. Some hybrids begin to breed true, even if mating with full humans, passing animal traits to their children, even if weaker or unstable. Others mutate unpredictably, creating feral, monstrous forms beyond what the scientists intended or ever imagined. Is it disease? Evolution? Or something stranger that the “essences” unlocked in human nature? Okay. I'll shut up now. Sometimes my brain goes just a little bit too far.

Ir doesn't affect the entire lore. I have decided to split the games into 2 separate, if similar, worlds. It's just easier all around. That way one can retain the gritty, darker tone that was originally intended and one can go whatever route the players wish.

Let's move to the individual game threads and start building these two, separate worlds!

Like I said earlier, those ideas were touchpoints, thematic suggestions for how I imagined the world to be. We're not copying Wells' Moreau verbatim, nor any of the referenced works specifically. Those were a vibe check, an idea of the kinds of things to expect in the world. Weird science gone awry, tampering with nature and the potential dire consequences thereof, humans struggling to bring order in the wilds... anyways, I don't know what that is. But from here, let's head to the individual threads to build out the two separate worlds. And by all means, if one world sounds better to you and you're not in it, we can swap players between groups until we start Pathways. Once we do that, you're locked in!

This is for Group 2, consisting of @SataiRolePlayingGuy, @AsBloodTurnsEverCold, @Warning, and @DreamsnThings. We're still working from the basic setup premise as described in the original "Interest Check" thread: "My favorite game system is Cortex, or more specifically, the Cortex Drama system originally developed for the Smallville RPG, improved with suggestions in the Cortex Hacker's Guide, and then brought all together in the latest version of the system, Cortex Prime. I'm considering running a dramatic game centered around a small group of PCs and their connected NPCs set in an 1880s wild west / steampunk / weird science world. Imagine someone combined the works of Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, and HG Wells, added in a dash of Nikola Tesla, a pinch of Indiana Jones (without the Crystal Skull nonsense), mixed in Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday and all the wild west tropes you can imagine, maybe added a bit of mad scientist and supernatural weird west nonsense, and dressed it all up in steampunk finery... and you're looking at the general idea for the setting. There will be over-the-top villains, square-jawed heroes, and buxom babes a plenty. Obviously, given our site, there were be lewd content and a deviation from the more buttoned-down, puritanical ways of the colonial western expansion and Victorian era, and I expect most characters to "get some" on a regular basis. In fact, I intend to add a mechanic that will make it imperative that you keep your honey pot stirred or your wick well dipped regularly in order to keep functioning at your highest level." Let's start with the basics of worldbuilding. Working from that original description: Write down anything that YOU WANT to be in this game, concepts, set pieces, species, tech, etc., for you to enjoy it. If you want there to be Automaton's write it down. If you just think they'd be cool, but you don't really care one way or the other, don't write it down. This is the list of "I want this to be in the world!" Write down anything that you DO NOT WANT in the game. If zombies will ruin the setting for you, let us know. Once we get input from everyone, we'll move on to the Pathways system.

This is for Group 1, consisting of @MagnificentBastard, @WickedCadrach, @Chiyako, @WritesNaughtyStories, and @StarlitSiren. We're still working from the basic setup premise as described in the original "Interest Check" thread: "My favorite game system is Cortex, or more specifically, the Cortex Drama system originally developed for the Smallville RPG, improved with suggestions in the Cortex Hacker's Guide, and then brought all together in the latest version of the system, Cortex Prime. I'm considering running a dramatic game centered around a small group of PCs and their connected NPCs set in an 1880s wild west / steampunk / weird science world. Imagine someone combined the works of Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, and HG Wells, added in a dash of Nikola Tesla, a pinch of Indiana Jones (without the Crystal Skull nonsense), mixed in Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday and all the wild west tropes you can imagine, maybe added a bit of mad scientist and supernatural weird west nonsense, and dressed it all up in steampunk finery... and you're looking at the general idea for the setting. There will be over-the-top villains, square-jawed heroes, and buxom babes a plenty. Obviously, given our site, there were be lewd content and a deviation from the more buttoned-down, puritanical ways of the colonial western expansion and Victorian era, and I expect most characters to "get some" on a regular basis. In fact, I intend to add a mechanic that will make it imperative that you keep your honey pot stirred or your wick well dipped regularly in order to keep functioning at your highest level." Let's start with the basics of worldbuilding. Working from that original description: Write down anything that YOU WANT to be in this game, concepts, set pieces, species, tech, etc., for you to enjoy it. If you want there to be Automaton's write it down. If you just think they'd be cool, but you don't really care one way or the other, don't write it down. This is the list of "I want this to be in the world!" Write down anything that you DO NOT WANT in the game. If zombies will ruin the setting for you, let us know. Once we get input from everyone, we'll move on to the Pathways system.

Yes, we are still talking, and nothing has been decided. That's why I was trying to clarify tone and intent. I had a vision for a game which I thought I outlined fairly well in my initial post. If the references were not familiar or seemed "ancient" then perhaps my idea is not something in which you'd be interested. I guess that's the part that confused me the most - why join a game if you don't even really understand the premise or themes involved? If you posted saying you were going to start a game based on Wild Arms, even if some of my friends were joining the game, I'd just pass it by since I don't know anything about Wild Arms. Regardless, I just want to keep things from going too far off into the weeds from my original idea. I'm planning on running a game around the themes I outlined using Cortex rules, but I also have to be into it, or running it will not be enjoyable for me. We've come up with some amazing ideas for how to include things I would not have included in this game that can still fit into the tone and themes I envisioned. DreamsnThings' idea about an experiment gone awry, a population transformed, that's exactly the kind of weird science craziness that works. We'd have to figure out how or why people received specific animal traits, perhaps come up with a limited list of animals that were involved in the experiment, etc. I'm confident that we can create a game we'll all enjoy. But if we can't or if something just seems off, that's fine, too! If it feels like our ideas just aren't compatible, or my idea is limiting your creativity, or some of us just won't have fun, I'd encourage anyone who wants to spin this off into their own game with their own ideas to do so! I am not possessive of the initial idea, or any of the ones we've built up together. This site is for fun, escapism, entertainment, and we all share the same hobby! I want us all to have fun, and if it's not with me running this, you won't hurt my feelings :)

It's not necessarily an issue. It's just that I had a general idea of what kind of game I wanted to run, which I put out there with tons of references to give everyone an idea of what I wanted to run and see who would be interested in specifically that type of game using the specified rule set. So you can see where I might be slightly confused when it starts to change away from that and into something entirely different. Like I said, I enjoy being collaborative. I like anthros; I'm building a game with someone else that's almost exclusively anthro player characters. It just wasn't my vision for this particular game. I imagined something a bit more... science gone wrong, possible supernatural evil that might also just be mundane evil appearing supernatural... darker, maybe. More gritty with a more realistic take on steampunk tech and possible supernatural issues. All that being said, I definitely feel like the two groups should be in completely different worlds. So I'll break the discussion and create a Cortex Game 1 OOC Discussion for the players in Group 1 and a Cortex Game 2 OOC Discussion for the players in Group 2. We can build the separate worlds with the realities each group wants in those individual threads.

I'm not trying to sound confrontational, but I'm afraid I might sound that way, so please just take this as an honestly curious question, because that's what it is. If you weren't familiar with the references I posted in the original interest check, then what made you interested in joining this roleplay?

My first post specifically said: "set in an 1880s wild west / steampunk / weird science world. Imagine someone combined the works of Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, and HG Wells, added in a dash of Nikola Tesla, a pinch of Indiana Jones (without the Crystal Skull nonsense), mixed in Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday and all the wild west tropes you can imagine, maybe added a bit of mad scientist and supernatural weird west nonsense, and dressed it all up in steampunk finery... and you're looking at the general idea for the setting." If you look at the authors I cited, they all used speculative fiction to examine the rapidly accelerating scientific and industrial progress of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and they were often inspired by contemporary scientific ideas. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley addresses the ethical dilemmas of scientific experimentation and the potentially monstrous results of "playing God," a concern later explored by H.G. Wells in The Island of Doctor Moreau. Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires featured incredible, scientifically grounded inventions like the submarine Nautilus, but Lovecraft and Wells often portrayed technology as a gateway to horrors. Adding in the real-life wild west heroes, the often outrageous and futuristic ideas of Tesla that blurred the lines between science and fantasy, the adventure and hints of supernatural power of Indiana Jones, mad scientists and weird west (supernatural horror) were all meant to evoke a specific image of the setting which we seem to be moving away from. The main thing about most of those sources is that the protagonists are all very human, even when dealing with very supernatural, alien, or horrific threats. The mysterious, the magical, the monsters and otherworldly entities, they're all things the characters have to come face to face with, to deal with, to survive, sometimes to defeat, sometimes to live with... So you can see where this is moving away from my original idea for the game. I'm not saying I don't like some of those ideas, just that we're moving away from the setup, and some other players may be less interested in a world of cute floofy anthros since that wasn't part of the original pitch. SO... maybe the two games aren't in the same world. I've heard from most of the Game 2 players who seem to enjoy similar setting and character ideas, but not from most of the Game 1 players.

OMG! Remind me to tell you about my bunny girl sometime. I'm playing her in a similar setting, but as part of a traveling circus/ "freak" show that also ends up having secret "adult" shows after hours where the pervy settlers can watch horse anthros fuck bunny girls... and more!

This might work as your origin, but as we step through character creation in the Pathways system, you'll be connecting your character to locations, NPCs, the other player characters... the entire point of the game is that it is focused more on the dramatic interaction between characters rather than the nuts and bolts of combat or exploration, or the details of inventory management. So if a character starts out as a lone "I don't know anything" kind of person, they'll know something and have connections to various places, events, and people by the time we're ready to start playing. That's a perfect thing to add during the Pathways process! Everyone will create NPCs during the Pathways game creation/ Character creation /game setup process. But then I'll play them as the GM. Cortex is more or less a traditional TTRPG from the perspective that you have a character and the GM plays the rest of the world.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about! I don't specifically mean things need to be "exactly" like the sources I mentioned, but give me a plot hook, a piece of history, an NPC, a setup... something I can work with. The setting is generally the "real world" of 1880s, altered with steampunk tech, and adding in some supernatural "weird west" ...weirdness, I guess. Anyone different, who looks different, etc. Is going to probably be treated as such by the settlers. Think of old western movies, tv shows, and books. People who were different were feared. Now, that's not to say that somewhere in the recent past something happened (WNS's "Farmer" experimenting) that created many hybrids, and they could have even been around long enough that people have heard of them, so maybe the "holy crap what ARE you" fear is slightly mitigated. But in general, we're looking at a population of settlers with mixed education, many religious and superstitious, who might see anything different as the work of "the devil". At least that's how I'd probably run it, unless we come up with a good reason to have them be accepted as a normal part of society.

No one would need to actually play that character, unless they wanted to, but knowing that they were out there, and what their goals were, would give me things to work with from a world-building perspective. Having a "you experimented on me" NPC out there, or a "my father made you" son of said NPC, could lead to some interesting emotional interactions.

One thing I'd request is that the origin of any and all animal/human hybrid type characters be the same. For worldbuilding reasons I'll need to know "why" they exist, how they were created, and where they come from. Having a limited number of them from a single source I can work with. But having them "just because" won't work for me. Because this is a shared world, so they will exist in both games, even if none of the players in the other game play them.

I don't mind yuri characters at all. Keep in mind that the game premise includes sexual situations, and the core mechanics use your relationship with other PCs and NPCs as a primary trait when rolling. So if you want a lot of yuri storylines, you'll want to include NPCs that you can get involved with and see if any other PCs are up for that. I personally didn't imagine kemonoimimi in the setting, but if the group says "hell yes, let's include them!" then we can and will! Also, consider the wild west, weird west, steampunk setting, and some of the fictional works I referenced in the opening post. The Island of Dr. Moreau comes to mind. You could have characters who are essentially kemonomimi but are survivors of a Dr. Moreau-esque experiment. They don't have to look like experiment survivors, they could just look like girls with animal ears and tails and maybe have some vaguely animal-like traits. I'm a HUGE fan of reimagining things to fit the setting. I think we can make almost anything work, unless its just hands down going to ruin the setting for others.