Schattenkrieg – Design Choices

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At the beginning of the year, Jonathan and I saw how much steam Nevermet had lost during the holidays so we brainstormed some ideas on how to feed the boiler so to speak. We concluded that first, the owners (Jonathan and I) needed to be excited and totally invested in whatever project(s) we undertook. Jonathan’s pet project became the Loaerth & Feywyrd setting and I had something dark & gritty in mind dealing with WWII.

This article is a look at how my own project, Schattenkrieg (my apologies to any native German speakers for slaughtering the language), a pulpy World War II supers setting (yeah, it’s a mouthful). It is meant to give a peek into why I made the design choices I did.

Those that really know me understand that besides gaming, I have also have a deep seated fascination with horror. I like some of the new stuff, but really love classic Universal Monsters, Hammer Horror, and pretty much everything from the 80s. My fascination has carried over into gaming; I have an extensive Ravenloft collection and absolutely love the World of Darkness (both versions). So, I decided my project definitely needed a large dose of the horrific.

I also wanted to break away from the fantasy scene, yet wanted something familiar where I needn’t create a whole world from cloth (and perhaps allow the game material to be used in established games). I was tired of dwarves, elves, gnomes. Well, it just so happened that I was watching a movie that involved Nazi zombies and the deal was sealed; I wanted an alternate history WWII setting.

When it came to selecting the rules that I would support with my project, I found that I really only wanted to use one system, Mutants & Masterminds. M&M, to me, is probably the pinnacle of what was done with d20 game design. It’s sleek, sexy, and point buy. Oh, and it uses a core mechanic most every roleplaying gamer knows. This reminds me, I need to send an email to the M&M Superlink crew to get approval before we publish any mechanics.

Anyways, I looked at all my design choices: a horrific, alternate history WWII setting that used the Mutants & Masterminds setting. The first thing that occurred to me was that it sounded very similar to the Weird Wars setting by Pinnacle Entertainment Group (publisher of Savage Worlds). It also sounded very niche (within a niche, within a niche).  So I opened up the audience a little by deciding the setting would be more pulpy (though there is still plenty of room for horror in pulp) and maybe it could be beneficial to support Savage Worlds, too.

There are a lot more details for the Schattenkrieg project (formerly known as Geheimkrieg), much of which plays out on the NMP content developer mailing list. We’re looking at a cold war scenario where the Germans were never defeated, as well as pre-war ideas. We have aliens, Oriental magic, artifacts, Tesla Death Rays, and many other ideas brewing, so be on the lookout for future Schattenkrieg content.

I stuck with much of my preliminary design decisions simply because that is what I want to create. If I can get a few content developers, mutants, or masterminds interested too, then it’s a win.

MB!