The SCP Campaign

We’ve decided what we’re playing over the summer. Dorf is running a Spirit of the Century game that we started last night–and might I say, that system is damn awesome. We have a master-of-disguise art thief, a ninja, an ex-Bolshevik ex-soldier Russian, and a scientist with a jetpack and a tommygun working together in the pursuit of riches and fame. Good game.

Today–in about four hours, actually–I’m running something completely different. It’s an idea Brett and I had while at RIT. He’s running a version of it with his group (here’s his campaign wiki, if you’re interested), and I’m going to be running it with mine. The general idea is thus: the SCP Foundation (or some derivative thereof) exists in a relatively low-magic fantasy world. The players are search and retrieval agents working for it. Every adventure starts with the GM (me) rolling dice and choosing a random SCP that will be the players’ target. Their job is to go out and retrieve the anomalous object for the Foundation.

I was told last night at about eleven that we should totally start playing this today. Which means I’ve got about four hours now to prepare. Let’s do this.

System: Warhammer Fantasy 2nd edition. I’ve been told by a usually-reliable source that this would be a good system for a horror/high lethality game like this is most likely going to be. Hopefully character creation is fast. I’ve got a feeling that people are going to be dying a lot. I haven’t used this system before, so I’ve got four hours in which to learn it.

World: Low magic, predominantly human. If it were high magic, a lot of the SCPs would lose their impact, I think. The mystical and mysterious should be something to hide rather than openly exploit. Which would, I think, tend to rule out my usual D&D world. It’s hard to justify wanting to secure, contain and keep secret some ancient magical evil if the mage-tinkers of Verdan create worse things in their workshops every week. So I’ll need to start creating a fresh world for this. I’m thinking a dozen or so kingdoms, perpetually shifting alliances with each other, with the Foundation stretching across all of them, snapping up anomalies before the kings and warlords can get their hands on them.

Plot: There are things in the darkness that the world should not have to know about. We are all that stand between humanity and that darkness. We bring torch and steel into the night and fight battles that the kings of this land will never hear of. We have fought gods, demons, nightmares from the dawn of the world and things that have risen from beyond the veil. We have never faltered.

We are the Foundation, and, for the sake of the world, we must not fail.

“Classified Material Beyond This Point
Unauthorized access will be monitored, located and dealt with
This is your sole warning”

-Warning at the top of the SCP Foundation website

Let’s get to work.

Kingdoms

List of kingdoms and short descriptors, written as fast as I can think of them, freewrite-style:

Lorena, the Fifth Reign of the Godking

Cerdia, Crazy Samurai

Fallak, Righteous Knights

Cordenellac, Hidden Mountain Fortresses

Jutember, Fur-Clad Berserkers

Ymmil, Deep Forests and Strange People

Pollonque, Excruciatingly French

Radin, Deserts and Scimitars

Teudiman, Oppresive and Dour

Macdon, Sails of Pirates on the Horizon

Semda, Islands Rich in Spices

The Gelldaphon States, Corrupt and Rich and Foul

Specific Locations

Foundation Secure Facilities

• Overwatch HQ: Foundation headquarters. Top-secret, even from the majority of the Foundation. The location of Overwatch HQ is known only to the Founder and O5-level personnel. Known most of the time simply as “Command” or “Overwatch.”
• Site-17: The base Foundation site that the players will be operating out of.

All right. That should give me enough to work with. Time to pick the SCP that my players will be facing off against first. For this first adventure I’m drawing from a list of Safe and Elucid-class SCPs. After the first adventure, though, I’ll be drawing from the full list. Any assignment could be a Keter-class end-of-the-world scenario. I’m going to stop writing now so my players don’t know what they’re up against. I’ll let you know how it goes later.

Secure. Contain. Protect.