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My friends, I ask of your help once more.
I need to start a campaign that would most likely be considered BTS. Basic Presmise: PC's are priests with theRoman Catholic Church in the 1930's. They are veterans of WWI. Officially they are Exorcists and Vatican Inspectors (proving and disproving miracles). Unofficially, they know that there are demons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and whatnot on earth and it is their "crusade" to rid the world of them while also keeping them secret.

The PC's want a strong emphasis on Vampires and Werewolves, but they don't want to turn into a Twilight or Vampire: the Masquerade thing either...more like Bruce Willis in Last Stand...except instead of a hitman fighting mobsters, it's priests fighting Supernatural.

What exactly did you want us to do for you? That's something we need to know in a message with the subject of "Help Me!!!"

Pitch me some ideas. I'm not too good with the BTS type stuff. I can GM Rifts, Robotech, PFRPG, but the Heroes Unlimited, BTS, and other "X-Files" type stuff I'm not too smart with.

I thought that the excorcists and inspectors were from different departments. Oh well, this is your version of the Vatican anyway. The fact that they are all willing to roleplay as the same profession seems very fun to me. I would like to see how different players interpret the same character concept.

Here are some thoughts off the top of my head. There is a Preist OCC for first edition BtS in Rifter #1 if you have that. Otherwise, the Parapsychologist class from either edition is a good match. Or, you could make an Priest Occupation and stack that on the player's choice of 2nd edition P.C.C. The Demon Hunter Martial Artist from Mystic China is always fun in a monster hunting game. Regardless of which class you use, I would allow the characters to have a version of the Exorcism power which is not psionic.

If you are seeking some historic sources and inspiration, there have been periods according to medieval documents in which the Vatican worked with supernatural creatures. Warrior priests (probably Jesuits) would capture the monsters, fortune them into repenting, and then using them as assassins to take out other monsters. Examples include the Bennedanti and the Hounds of God. A discussion of some types appears in this podcast: http://jimharold.com/the-paranormal-pod ... dcast-160/

Well, that's a start anyway.

If you can GM Rifts, you can GM BTS (BTS is effectivly the father of the Rifts).


Im at a relative's place right now and dont have my books at hand... next chance I get at home I'll try to come up with an idea or two to help out.

There is an anime called Chrono Crusade that might offer inspiration. Its set during the 1928 and follows members of the Catholic church as they fight demons.

Chrono Crusade - $29.99

First you might want to answer a few questions to help build the setting.

1. Why are there demons, ghosts, vampires and werewolves, etc. in your world.
2. What are they up to? Do they mostly work alone or are there factions? Do they fight among themselves?
3. How much is known about them by the church, governments and public?
4. Why does the church want them destroyed? Do they see them as spawn of Satan or a threat to humanity?
5. How common is magic and psychic powers? Also the same question as #3.

Answering those questions should help you start developing your setting.

Yeah, what they wrote.

As for a specific adventure hook, first try looking at some of the published adventures in BtS 1st edition and Boxed Nightmares. Most of them have monsters which can easily be switched out for vampires or were-creatures. For example, in the game where players are hired to flush a monster infestation out of a South American plantation, we could replace the Death Weaver demon with a were-jaguar and the Sowki infiltrator with a daywalking half-vampire. The hitchhiker game from BtS1 with a Possessing Entity could instead of becoming a serial killer use the host for canabalistic blood drinking murder -- thus you have an somewhat original monster who is very unlike Twilight and the priests have a good chance of using their skills as exorcists.

If you want a techno-thriller twist, maybe your version of the Vatican created these monsters as experiments which got out of hand. The were-creatures could be clones of beasts which were killed during the Great Flood, or genetics crossbreeds with Nephalym (please forgive the spelling) from Genesis, or a drug treatment attempting to recreate the Dogs of God. Perhaps the vampires came from an attempt to understand the mechanics of the Lazarus miracle, a combination of nanite technology and genetic treatments derived from Lazarus' corpse.

I just had another thought. Maybe it isn't all silver which kills these monsters. Maybe only specific pieces of holy silver or some unknown metal whichhas been mistaken for silver. The recently discovered Book of Judus suggested that Judas was following the instructions of Jesus when the betrayal took place. In our revisionist and apocryphal version of biblical history (applicable only to this thread), the flaming sword of the angel which guarded the garden of Eden was melted down and made into thirty coins. Judas was a monster hunter who found a monster he could not put down, perhaps Legion. Jesus instructed Judas to sell him out in exchange for those thirty coins (and for the whole saving the world from sin thing too). Then instead of hanging himself, Judas uses the silver to kill the monster. As Peter founds a lineage of clerics who will become the priests and popes of Catholicism, the followers of Judas become their own secret line of warrior-priests who answer to the line of Peter. Mix in some Templar or Jesuit conspiracies, and you have an adequately convoluted backstory.

Shawn Merrow wrote:First you might want to answer a few questions to help build the setting.

1. Why are there demons, ghosts, vampires and werewolves, etc. in your world.
2. What are they up to? Do they mostly work alone or are there factions? Do they fight among themselves?
3. How much is known about them by the church, governments and public?
4. Why does the church want them destroyed? Do they see them as spawn of Satan or a threat to humanity?
5. How common is magic and psychic powers? Also the same question as #3.

Answering those questions should help you start developing your setting.

1. They are in our world to do general evil.
2. They kill people, trick and tempt people, and the sort. There are factions, mostly you have the Vampires and Werewolves as groups. Demons are generally individuals but on the same team, and Ghosts, which do their own things.
3. Church knows quite a bit. Governments know not too much, and the General Public believes in them about as much as they do right now.
4. The Church has been in a secret war with the supernatural evil since a few weeks after the Council of Nicea. There are some not too evil creatures that they occasionally work with in order to destroy a greater evil. Demons are the spawn of Satan, the others are a threat to humanity and to the church (Preach immortality in the pulpit, or forsake all that is good and become an immortal vampire).
5. Magic and Psionics exist but aren't very common. The Church is well aware of it, governments suspect things, and the people are completely oblivious.

Watch the Movie "Constantine" for some good ideas too!

The main thing I'm thinking of is that this is taking place in the 1930's. With the Third Reich on the rise and the wonders of the Great depression and WWII looming close by, just how much fun can your monsters of choice have in this tumultuous time period? Was Hitler inspired by a demon in disguise, telling him of a world just waiting to be conquered by a charismatic young man like himself, for example? Perhaps vampires and werewolves are preying on the weak and downtrodden in the Depression era slums of the greater American cities, giving your heroes a nice little supernatural safari run through the streets of 30's era New York or Chicago? For that matter, the Depression itself may have been the reason so many ghosts now exist in the first place with suicides running rampant and making a perfect breeding/feeding ground for them.

Consider this angle... Various Demon kin finds Hitler so in tune with their destructive nature that they begin to willingly serve his cause. Not a hard stretch of the imagination to consider with the the amount of blind hatred and cruelty taking place at the time. No doubt some would serve in advisor positions and task master positions and other roles as needed. Should provide a LOT of opportunity for gaming.

mrloucifer wrote:Consider this angle... Various Demon kin finds Hitler so in tune with their destructive nature that they begin to willingly serve his cause. Not a hard stretch of the imagination to consider with the the amount of blind hatred and cruelty taking place at the time. No doubt some would serve in advisor positions and task master positions and other roles as needed. Should provide a LOT of opportunity for gaming.

Great idea. What I like best is that it doesn't diminish Hitler as being a demon pawn, but a fully-self aware "normal" human so evil that demons are willing to follow him!

Consider this angle... Various Demon kin finds Hitler so in tune with their destructive nature that they begin to willingly serve his cause. Not a hard stretch of the imagination to consider with the the amount of blind hatred and cruelty taking place at the time. No doubt some would serve in advisor positions and task master positions and other roles as needed. Should provide a LOT of opportunity for gaming.

I like this idea, but perhaps expand it somewhat. It's easy to think of WW2 as good v. evil, but I feel it's more interesting to blur the line a bit. For example, maybe the bombing of Dresden had some infernal 'nudging along' to result in all of those deaths. Any number of mortal and not so mortal fiends could have been taking advantage of the meat grinder that was the Eastern Front, especially in say Stalingrad. Speaking of Stalin, what -did- happen to all of those people he purged?

Less related to casualties is the amount of experimentation that went on, most notably by the Nazis upon Jews and other undesirables, and the Japanese upon the Chinese. It's easy to take a more supernatural spin to what they were doing to people.