It’s a sunny day in 1953. Five friends go out to the beach for a sunny Saturday picnic. Little do they know that TERROR lurks beneath the waves. A couple nearby swimmers cry out in panic and go under. The brave beachgoers spring into action and save the poor souls with a little ingenuity and a lot of luck. When they get back to the beach and turn over the victims to the authorities, something isn’t quite right. The swimmers have been replaced by CRAB PEOPLE! Will our heroes be able to find solve the mystery of the crab people? Will they stop the red menace from beneath the sea before any more good Americans fall victim? Tune in to our next installment of “They Came From Beneath the Sea!” to find out.
They Came From Beneath the Sea is an upcoming rpg from Onyx Path Publishing. I got a chance to playtest it recently at Pax Unplugged. The playtest was an alpha copy with a limited rulesset and no artwork. My impressions are based on how the GM ran the game for our 4 hour session and not based on actual rulebook contents.
Much of what was present will be familiar to players of existing Onyx Path and White Wolf game lines. Fundamentally, the game is powered by the same d10 dice pool system that Onyx Path/White Wolf fans have become accustomed to over the years. When players attempt a difficult task, the GM will tell the player a combination of stats to test on based on the task. For example, shooting a monster is commonly Dexterity and Aim. The player will roll a number of d10 equal to two of their stats added together, and if any dice are an 8, 9, or 10 then the player hits. In our example, a player with dexterity three and aim one would roll four dice. Multiple successful dice indicate a greater degree of success.
The biggest departure from prior game lines is the addition of Quips and Rewrites. Every character has a few deliberately cheesy one-liners (Quips). If a player can work a Quip into the dialog in a way that the table agrees is entertaining, then they add a Rewrite token into a common pool. Players can spend rewrites to edit the world via rewriting the movie script. As in every good B movie the monsters have subtitled dialog, and with one rewrite the players can override the GM’s intended dialog with something more … interesting. With a greater spend of rewrites, the players can insert missing scenes or jump cut into the future. Being attacked by the 500’ shark? Just add a scene where you grabbed some Shark Repellant from the local hardware store. Too cheesy? Fine, just jump ahead until you’re out of immediate danger. Jumping ahead does have a caveat though, the GM gets to replace your immediate peril with a less urgent one. You may well end up resuming your adventure mid-battle on swallowed boats inside the shark’s belly.
The game we played was lighthearted, pulpy fun. The quips kept the tone comedic. We hit a groove once all the players started acting like this was more “Princess Bride” than it was “H.P. Lovecraft”. Everyone got into the quips and the rewrites kept the flow of play moving. On more than one occasion players spent rewrites to back each other’s actions. We spent some during an action scene for a “cheap set” that let the tough-guy of the group tackle a monster through the nearby wall into a more convenient location. Before the boss battle, we added an equipment building montage where we kitted ourselves out.
I do have some concerns that the rewrite mechanics may be too much player-control for some groups. This isn’t D&D where one player makes an overwhelming majority of the creative decisions. Giving players control in this way requires trust from the GM and some responsibility from the players not to make too much of a mess of things. I had good fun rewriting the crab people’s dialog to “Comrade Stalin sends us!”, but I only did so because the other players had talked about making the session into a cheesy 50’s anti-communist propaganda film. It worked because it played into fun that the other players wanted to have. That level of player control depends heavily on the players to restrain their choices, and there are players I know that wouldn’t do well at that.
Onyx Path launched this Kickstarter on December 18, 2018 and it runs until January 24th. I’m planning on picking it up as a way to run lighter one-offs when my players need a break from my regular game.
Official Trailer:
Official Blog:
http://theonyxpath.com/category/worlds/tcfbts/
Kickstarter:
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