This thread started with my desperate cry for help for a campaign (see the entire first page as well as the rest of the OP), but seems to evolve into a more general "what would be cool to include" kinda thread. So therefore, let's have this thread be the...
Selfproclaimed Official General Pulp/DieselPunk/Occult Nazi thread
Disclaimer: This thread is purely for RolePlaying purposes, and is not intended to diminish the acts or losses of anybody. R.I.P. to the fallen on both sides.
...where we can post good movies, series, books, RPG products and our own ideas related to pretty much anything in the pulp genre (that's kinda broad!), modern steampunk/dieselpunk (nazi walking robots for examples), Occult (relics, artifacts, demons, etc...) and/or Nazi (because they make such good villains after all - wether now or back during WW2).
I'll keep updating the OP with the stuff we come up with, so you don't have to search too much to find what you're looking for.
Keywords list:-Hollow Earth (SS digging in mines to reach it)
-Psionic Mind Control Devices (preferably epic-sized)
-Zeppelins
-Jet engines (on pretty much anything - automobiles, jetpacks, fighterplanes, rockets, etc...)
-Tesla (-coil Death Ray; -Remote Control; etc...)
-Big a*s robots and 'mechas'
---Walking Mechas (a SdKfz.221 on legs for example)
---Turning the Eiffel Tower into a spider robot
---Using the Sphinx's head on a big robot
---[please add to the list]
-Artifacts:
---The Shroud of Turin
---The Hilt/Shards of Excalibur
---Nails of the True Cross ('would be cool to have your armour be forged from the nails, huh?)
---The Spear of Destiny/Longino's Spear
---The Holy Chalice
---The True Cross (I've thought about having some nazis use a piece of wood from the holy cross to make a rifle or something)
---Slivers of the True Cross
---The Rosetta Stone
---The Arc of the Covenant
---[please add to this list ]
-Zombies/Undead
---Created thanks to chemicals and drugs from the bodies of fallen soldiers and untermenschen
---Revived germanic/teutonic knights in plate armour
---Vampires
-Ghost Killing Devices (sucking the undeath out of them to power something - which kinda pisses the ghosts of)
-The Blutfahne
-SuperHumans (genetically engineered superaryans)
-Jewish Clay Golems
-AmericaBomber (Silbervogel)
-[ideas anyone? - did I miss anything?]
Movie/Book/Serie list:-Hellboy (movie serie)
-Indiana Jones (movie serie)
-Sky Captain (movie)
-Hellsing anime (movie/TVserie/OVA)
-Blood & Relics (available as PDF)
-Thrilling Tales: Omnibus (available as PDF)
-Thrilling Tales: Zeppelin Adventures (available as PDF)
-Thrilling Tales: The Mummy's Revenge (available as PDF)
-Gear Krieg (available as PDF)
-Victory: War of Bronze (available as PDF)
-Weird War II: Blood on the Rhine (available as PDF)
-Weird War II: Hell in the Hedgerows (available as PDF)
Organisations List:-The Thule Society (real stuff)
Occult-interested nazis.
-The Iscariot Organisation (taken from Hellsing)
Holy overzealous warrior priests and paladins from secret sections of the Vatican, specialized in Exorcism and Assassination of heretics/demons.
-The Millenium (Hellsing)
Nazis building an army of vampires.
-The Wild Geese/General kinda Mercenary types
General guns for hire is always cool, and can make for fun characters/NPCs/villains.
-Unit 731 (real stuff)
Japanese covert chemical/biological weapons research facility of WW2. Noted in the Zombie Survival Handbook as having researched into zombie creation.
List of imagination spurs:PCDs -by Herbert West: How about a nazi plot to turn the Great Pyramid Of Giza into a massive 'Psionic Compression Device' (A fancy name for a mind control device)? However this time the plot twist is that the PCD on the pyramid is only a proof of concept model and that there are two others, one on the Empire State Building and one that is mobile (on a giant robotic spider/on a zeplin)
Hollow World -by Herbert West: The allies never payed Hitlers mad attempts to dig into the 'Hollow World' of their supposed ancestors much attention. Until now. An elite unit of SS soldiers have been deployed into one of the dig sites. What have they found? Could it be some ancient creature? Perhaps a Great Old One? Or have they really discovered the entrance to the fabled 'Hollow World' of the ancients, which has only been reffered to as Atlantis, Mu and Lemurai? One thing is for sure, the earth has a way of burying things which should never see the light of day.
Sphinx-headed Nazibot -by Orion: I just recently played a game where (I love this) a supervillain wanted to mount the Sphinx on the head of a giant fighting robot, because the Sphinx is an object of great mystical power. Can you imagine a giant Nazi-bot with the Sphinx for a head stomping around Warsaw or Paris or Prague? Great fun. Great, great fun.
Cavalry Charge -by Backstabbist: dust off the Mounted Combat rules and have some Polish Lancers & Dragoons, that have gone underground & low tech, thrown in the mix. Some folks might laugh, but that is till they find out the 6th level Lancers are using D&D Fighter class and are unbalanced death machines on horseback.
Ghoul Zeppelin -stolen from Thrilling Tales: A German passenger zep is damaged in a storm and forced to land in South America, due to deflated gas chambers. Down in the jungle, they send out expeditions to find food and water, and stumble across an ancient temple. The temple is, of course, dedicated to ghouls/zombies/monsters, and inside the temple are some exhausts blowing Hydrogen infected with Necrotizing Faciitis (ghoul disease). The crew decide to use the gas (not knowing that it is infected with anything) to reinflate their zeppelin (which takes a long time). During that time, a lot of the crewmembers start contracting the disease and die, only to reappear, attacking the zeppelin's passengers and crew. After some time, nearly the whole crew and passengers have been infected, some running off into the jungle, but the captain and some crewmembers finish reinflating the zeppelin, and head for NY, wanting to crash the zeppelin and spread the ghoul-gas (could make some interesting Apocalyptic stuff - WW2 Apocalypse, pretty cool, huh?). The US knows nothing about this, except that the Zeppelin is heading for NY, and the PCs are tasked with intercepting it and bringing it to an airbase.
Golem Extraction -by Herbert West: A Jewish preist has rediscovered the method of creating a Clay Golem. Unfortunately it is written that no golem may be perfect. He is using it to defend the Warshaw Ghettos from the Nazis but it is slowly becoming more and more violent and less contolable. Perhaps one day soon it will turn on its creator and those who it was built to protect, or perhaps it being bathed in so much human blood has caused it to gain sentience. Now all it wants is to end the killing and live out its life in quiet contemplation so it attempts to flee Nazi Germany in favour of remote South America.
Basically the Golem contacts the allies in the hopes that they can help it escape Nazi Germany. Basically think Roger from the Hellboy comics.
King Solomon's Mines -by Herbert West: The Nazis have discovered the legendary "King Solomens Mine" in Africa (It is rumoured that king solomon's mine was the source of his vast wealth hidden within darkest Africa) and have been mining it to give them an economic boost in the war. But that is not all they have found. In one of the deepest and darkest cavern they have discovered a great sealed brass door inlaid with the seal of Solomon. Perhaps this is where Solomon rebound the evil spirits after they were released from the brass vessel in the lake in Bablyon (Legend has it that King Solomon bound the evil spirits in a brass vessel and dropped it into a lake in Bablyon but the people of Bablyon, thinking there to be treasure inside it dregged it up and, apon opening it, released the evil spirits back into the world).
Luckily it can only be opened with Solomons Ring (A ring formed of twelve jewels presented by the four animals, the four angles and the four spiritual creatures who payed hommage to him when he became king of the world) which has been splint into its component parts and scattered across the world (Each bears a secret mark or character) which when recombined will give the wearer the power to command animals, angles and spiritual creatures to do his bidding. One stone is set into the copy of "The Greater Key of Solomon" owned by the British Musuem which will have clues inside it to where the others lie.
I think that a Nazi raid on the British Museum would catch the allies attention, especially if they only stole one, old medieval manuscript of questionable origins and no real worth.
Alternate Golem Extraction by BrokenOakleys: Perhaps the Allies need a secret weapon, like the Golem, to push through the hedgerows, and the team has been sent behind enemy lines in Poland to contact the Jewish underground and get the only known plans for the Golem. The Jewish underground is naturally suspicous, and wants the Players to prove their worth with a little mission....
[to intertwine both Golem ideas: I can see the PCs being tasked with extracting the Golem (after having made contact with the Jewish underground some time before), but receiving new orders (bringing it to battle in Normandy instead of England or USA) along the way back.]Nasty Undead in the Hedgerows by BrokenOakleys: Or maybe some nasty undead thing that lives in the Hedgerows has been woken up by the fighting, and is feasting on both Nazi and Allied troops. A German and Allied patrol are stranded together behind a hedgerow as something nasty picks them off one by one. Will the Waffen-SS and Jewish American Rangers learn to trust each other and defeat the nasty?
Polish Massacre by BrokenOakleys: In the RL Polish campaign in '39, 15,000 Polish officers were captured by the Soviets. Their fate was a something of a mystery* until around 1990, when the former Soviet Union admitted it had executed them in the Katyn forest. Perhaps the players are sent to investigate, and discover signs of some bizarre military experiment where the Soviets are turning the Polish Troops into super undead soldiers....
*Actually, everybody knew the Soviets did it. Despite the official Soviet position that the Germans were responsible, Stalin's son as much as admitted guilt when he said: "That's nothin'. We killed three million during collectivization alone!" That, along with some good CSI work at the massacre site, pointed the blame at the Reds.
Neue Schwabenland by BrokenOakleys: In RL circa 1947, The United States sent a task force to the South Pole to locate a secret Nazi base. They (officially) didn't find one. But what if it did exist?
This would be a great way to have a Zeppelin adventure. Perhaps the players go to the South Pole in one of the Los Angeles class Airships, which came complete with tiny scout planes berthed in the underside of the airship*. Airships could travel great distances: the Hindenberg routinely made trips from Germany to Brazil.
*In RL, three out of four crashed prior to WW2 due to bad weather.
[It was supposedly planned as a submarine base, but could include all kinds of cool stuff like the AmericaBomber, etc...]SuperPsychic by Herbert West/2000AD: On 'Anthrax Island', the most deadly plauge island off the English coast there is a military installation called 'The Vault' and 2 miles underground there is a single cell guarded by 20 men. Inside that cell is the greatest psychic of all time. Its never really shown what he does to get in the island, but in one part where you see him use his powers to to hurt this Nazi woman, her face melts. And theres another bit where he asks for a cigarette from his visitor, and then reveals that he has pyrokinesis. Frigin awesome.
Links:-
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NWBKSO4DvWk (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfSHV4zYMw (part 2)- really cool video, it has a NaziBot, a YankeeBot and a GookBot. Pretty awesome stuff.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpMWTFYfOYk&feature=user - same creator, cool video with rocket powered dragon robots. I guess something like this could be included easily in a SteamPunk Nazi setting.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZHk76Cl3fA&feature=related - short 'fun' video of a steampunk robot.
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http://dangeruss.deviantart.com/gallery/#Sci-Fi - some computer-made models of another guy's drawings (see next link).
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http://malaveldt.deviantart.com/gallery/ - a great artist. He has made a lot of futuristic, steampunk stuff, like Siege Walkers, and Gun Walkers, etc...
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6516392101427202574 - from the same artist, a walker/tank animation.
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http://s2ka.deviantart.com/art/Retro40ultralight-57846416 - an drawing of an ultralight airplane, a "war bird".
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http://dusty.deviantart.com/art/RAFUFO-2251220 - a drawing of a weird RAF UFO.
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http://www.fengzhudesign.com/gallery.html - Wow. Mostly futuristic stuff, but easily adaptable and a great source of inspiration.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97nyIePE07o - A documentary in German about the V3 vengeance/retribution weapon, a 130 meters, 150mm cannon that could fire projectiles at 1500 m/s. For information in English see this post:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=997.msg26868#msg26868.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqHzZKcyRqw&feature=related - A Discovery documentary about the Axis Weird Weapons of WW2. This is the first of several parts, the rest of which can be found under 'related videos' to the right.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCP2qbHDGIs -
A Gentleman's Duel, a CGI animation that's more Victorian Steampunk than anything else, but awesome nonetheless.
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http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3wNgXVPCrjIhttp://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=992.msg24711#msg24711That's all well and good, but what is in that file is what I really need to work on.
My ideas so far have been:
The PCs will be tasked to follow a group of Thule members (occult nazi group) who are trying to accomplish some fiendish scheme to help them in the war. This could be an artifact they are looking for, a ritual that needs to be accomplished, or something. Think Indiana Jones and Hellboy movies.
I've been looking at how an adventure/campaign should be set up, and I've come to this:
I'd like to include:
- A couple of Skill Encounters (climbing, sneaking, etc...) : around 2.
- Some Combat Encounters (Die Cultist, Die!) : around 5.
- A puzzle or a trap of some sort : around 1.
- A few roleplaying encounters (where Vasilij could use his diplomacy and good standing) : around 2.
- A mook encounter where the PCs get to gun down hordes of low-levels : just 1.
- Some sort of safe-haven (possibly someone Vasilij knows or someone who knows him and owes his father a favor or something) where they can heal up and possibly gear up on equipment : just 1.
- A big fish encounter, where it's just dangerous enough to be real deadly, but something that can be overcome by various ways (combat, sneaking, RP'ing, etc...) : just 1.
- Big Finale. Stop the ritual sacrifice, destroy or steal the artifact, etc... : just 1.
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Apart from that, I'd like to include some sort of Vehicle Combat - possibly tank or mecha (the PCs could very well be on foot against the vehicle), a chase (boat, truck, car) and perhaps an encounter that could be overcome by 1vs.1 defeating someone in close combat (to let Llowa shine - think "You can pass, if you can beat Mongo in single combat" ... "MONGO SMASH! *graawhr* "). Exotic countries could be cool too (again, think Indiana Jones - India, Sovjet, Greenland, South America, etc...).
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Edit: Look at the posts below to see what this has evolved to become.
Any help really appreciated, for some reason my brain has been completely unimiginative for the last couple of days and incapable of coming up with anything good. A :cc to anyone who helps out!
Edit: Don't worry, I've got 'em jarred, so yours won't get out (your friend's one might, though, but that's what you get for purchasing your Cthulhus otherwhere than here).