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Welcome to the ISIDH interest check! This roleplay draws inspiration from Stranger Things, Lovecraft, Welcome to Night Vale, Silent Hill and This is the Police 2. I am planning to begin running the game Early-Mid August, with a definite first IC post by September 1st. In short - we have hella time to worldbuild and work on applications, even from as early as the interest check. (see more below)

ISIDH will be a semi-sandbox RP taking place in the odd town of Delville Heights. Players will play average civilians within the town during the 80s. As stated in the teaser, it's a town that people end up at. The Delville Horror, a cosmic entity that lurks somewhere in the area, lures individuals in to stay. A fog in the surrounding woodland that leads escapees back into the town itself keeps the population within very controlled and calculated. Sure, there are tourists - visitors - that crop up from time to time but you can usually tell them apart from the locals.

Potential applicants will have to be comfortable with minor DMing as they go along. The Co-GM and I will drop prompts through Delville Radio, and I'm hoping that we'll have an extensive list of encounters for the OOC before we start. Certain 'cues' in the prompts will open up the possibility of several encounters, and then it's up to one of you guys to take the reins for whoever's in the area and RP it out. These encounters range from hauntings and combat with monsters to strange phenomena and happenings.



There IS an overarching storyline to all of this though. We're going to put in the work on NPCs, locations and histories only for me to come in and start 'removing' them piece by piece (you'll see when I get to it! Have faith). So with the town starting to get wiped out, the threat of being unable to leave starts to become increasingly worrying. I'm hoping the eventual destruction of the entire town and its populace would be a good incentive for our team to band together and look into who, or what, is pulling the strings in Delville Heights.


This one's going to be a little different from what you might be used to. You will NOT be judged via CS, though a sheet with some basic info about your character is necessary before you start your interview.

Since I'm looking for people who can take initiative and are within Advanced level in terms of roleplay, not writing, we will be doing a short scene in PMs using the character you want to join with. In this test, I'm not looking at post length or quality of prose (though, naturally, I expect a decent grasp on grammar and writing). Instead I'll be looking at how you put your spin on things as a mini-DM - how you control the NPCs, how realistic your character and the events you create turn out. In other words, I'll lead you in with something to work with and I expect you to DM for me. As such, I'd rather see one or two paragraphs that keep the RP moving instead of large passages of introspection with very little action. (You are free to RP in the IC however you like, but if you're going to take the wheel on an encounter I'd expect to see the same proactive writing style that I saw in the interview. Don't keep people waiting!)

So technically, applications are open already. The RP that happens in the interview process is NOT canon, though, so we don't get a full cast of players that all know the same chick they met earlier.







A cluster of shops and other necessities that cling to the main road running through Delville Heights.




The residential area for most inhabitants of the town. The most likely place for your character to live. Also houses a few amenities to really get the community spirit going.




The unofficial term for the part where the buildings start to thin out around the edges. There are VERY few houses out here, and the ones that still stand have been boarded up. It's bad luck to live so close to the wilderness.




(GM CONTROLLED AREA. Try not to venture out here without one of the (co) GM's characters with you.) Surrounding Delville Heights is a vast expanse of woodland, a long and winding river and a lake made out of an old, flooded quarry. By far the most dangerous part of town. Cordoned off with an old chain-link fence and plenty of warning signs - but there are many holes and entrances into this area.





Below you will find a list of possible encounters to use during the roleplay. They are separated into four different categories:
Phenomenon, wherein something strange or out of the ordinary happens on the Material Plane (AKA our world) that doesn't involve spirits and has no combat element to it.
Combat, wherein a variety of creatures may need to be killed or subdued.
Haunting, wherein the spirits of the recently departed wreak havoc on the town.
Dimension, wherein the inhabitants of the area are teleported into a familiar yet slightly different version of Delville Heights and must escape.

The Compendium itself is split by cues - almost like symptoms of the encounter's presence. For ease of reference, if the post mentions any of these cues you essentially have a mixture of different encounters you can establish and get to choose one.

Below are the current cues and their encounters:

Tagging a few people who might be interested in joining! (Hopefully they're still around, some of these GMed or played in RPs I was in like half a year ago lmao)
@Sad Ogo @Lord Orgasmo @MissCapnCrunch

This prompt intrigues me. I know my accounts brand spanking new, but I DM all the time for roleplaying games and I'm absolutely fascinated by this idea of a hybrid DM/Player combo.

I have a character sheet written up with the requisite information filled out, but before I post it, I need to ask if it's okay for the character to be a visitor to the town? If it helps, he will be there for as long as he needs to be, due to his background. I was just wondering because the prompt made it sound as if they had to be a resident.

Well the only difference between w visitor and a resident is that the visitors are actively pushed out of the town, one way or another. Either they get fed up and leave or something kills them, drives them mad, forces them out by any means necessary. That's because the Horror is busy collecting people without any ties to the rest of society, but that's not even set in stone. Post your CS and let me know why you want to make a visitor and I'll work with you.

I want to play an outsider to the town for a few reasons. An outside perspective (someone who doesn't live in the center of evil) is always a good perspective on how wicked something is. It also allows the GM to elaborate on the world, because things that are a given in the town to the locals would have to be explained to this outsider who doesn't know any better. Also, depending on how the story goes, who's to say that the town isn't "recruiting" its next resident? But, since you're the GM, of course you have the final say on whether or not playing a visitor is permitted.

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Name: Thaddeus (Thad) Montague Ziegmann

Age: 27

Gender: Male

Occupations: Freelance Paranormal Journalist, Freelance Photographer, Exorcist (fraud)

Personality: A cynic at heart, Thad is a lying, conniving, man who spends his days researching paranormal activities that he can make money through his work as a journalist for the nationwide magazine morbidly named RIP Weekly. He does not believe in the supernatural, thinking it to be the result of paranoid and overly emotional beliefs and he has no shame exploiting these supposedly "weak" people. Despite being relatively wealthy for a journalist, he is incredibly cheap and the only thing he splurges on is his camera equipment, due to the fact that his articles have earned him vastly more money once he started including pictures of the phenomena that he reports on. A college dropout, Thad's incredibly religious parents made sure that he always attended the most devout Catholic schools. Bored by the tedium of education, the only subject that ever intrigued him was the teachings of what demons and angels were capable of doing and the studying of miracles. Don't be misled, however, Thad completely lacks religious belief, thinking it to be a scam. However, this does not stop him from wearing priest’s garbs and carrying religious iconography so that he can sell his lies so much more effectively to the common folk.

History: Thad dropped out of college on his twenty-first birthday and quickly took up various journalism jobs, most of which he quit after only a couple months. When he was twenty-four, he took the job of paranormal journalism and has stuck with it ever since, due to the significant pay bump compared to the other low-level jobs. Shortly after taking the job, Thad studied the "art" of exorcism so that he can not only earn money from RIP Weekly, but also from his victims who are usually willing to pay out the ear for what they think is legitimate blessings and wards. Over the last year, Thad has started to become bored with his job as every article written becomes routine. He is quickly running out of a backlog of articles that he can give the magazine, so with only three months remaining before he's officially out of material, Thad has been searching high and low for a story that will not only intrigue his readers, but also himself. One day, his colleague, who writes the culinary page for the magazine, came back from a day trip to Delville Heights complaining how the stories that thrill the neighborhood children were horrendously misleading and that the town itself was incredibly boring with nothing to see. Remembering the tall tales that his friends and he used to tell each other about the "Devil's Heights" as they called it, Thad felt the sudden and overpowering urge to pack his bags and go debunk Delville Heights' myths and legends. If he plays his cards right, this will be the article that just might win over the nation.

Skills: Highly skilled at photograph composition and development, Thad is also an incredibly competent liar who knows a lot about the mythos of the paranormal activity that he reports on. Something of a conman, Thad is highly charismatic and is skilled with the pen. He has almost too-perfect handwriting and is quite skilled at forging signatures so that he can always prove his "authenticity" to the common folk.

Weaknesses: Thad is overly analytic and will often try to disprove and disarm threatening situations, rather than simply running away or defending himself. He is arrogant, so he will often underestimate his opponents and he has no real combat skills to speak of. As a con man, if he is ever in a situation where no one believes him or is willing to trust him, his abilities rather quickly diminish, though he is not above attempts to trick people over to his side.

Ahh I get you. Well, I was going to encourage potential applicants to make new arrivals anyways. Maybe your character's just a new local?

I'll read the sheet and get your encounter ready tomorrow, I'm off to bed now. Thanks for the sheet though!

Well, I wouldn't say he's a "new local" at the start, he's definitely an extended-stay visitor (because he's willing to spend at least 3 months working on his story). He's still potentially a future resident, but that's not his mindset at the beginning, if that makes sense.

Night!

Holy wowww. I'm delighted and intrigued by this whole premise. Working on a character now!

Well, I wouldn't say he's a "new local" at the start, he's definitely an extended-stay visitor (because he's willing to spend at least 3 months working on his story). He's still potentially a future resident, but that's not his mindset at the beginning, if that makes sense.

Night!

Ahh, now I get what you were aiming for. Ironically enough it looks like, from the sheet there, that the Horror intentionally dragged him over to DH. Probably wants to turn him mad trying to uncover the truth, that pesky godlike entity. I'll rustle up a prompt for you in a few hours and we'll see how you fare.

Holy wowww. I'm delighted and intrigued by this whole premise. Working on a character now!

Nice to hear! I'm hoping once I got maybe three or so interested people we can work on adding more to our town. I mean, I got ideas and all, but a big chunk of it would have to do with the cast joining. You can own your own shops, churches, whatever. It'd really bring a lot of life to the town.

Speaking of, Sasha - what do you think about maybe an overcluttered desk in the town hall for Thad? DH uses the radio for most of their news but I can see them taking pity on the journalist and letting him write up newsletters and what not. I don't think they have a dedicated building for journalism so you can go ham on what town hall is like, maybe make a few NPCs to go in it like the mayor and some secretary.

Sav


I had heaps of fun writing her, I hope she's okay!

I like her! My characters probably going to relate hard to Sav. I'll PM you as well, once I work on Sasha's prompt.

Edit: come to think of it - is she a visitor or a local? Fresh to the town either way, right?

Oh, this looks super cool! One question though: how common is it for someone born there to leave? The answer isn’t gonna influence my interest or anything, I just wanna know for backstory’s sake.

Love the idea that Delville Heights would accept Thad as a journalist. If you don't mind, I'd love to base the local paper off of my irl neighboring town's LP, where the paper is only around 5-6 pages long and is mostly advertisements for sales of the local businesses with one or two flavor articles thrown in.

You're trusting me to design town hall and it's NPCs? Sweet, I'll work on that (assuming I pass the PM test).

Oh, this looks super cool! One question though: how common is it for someone born there to leave? The answer isn’t gonna influence my interest or anything, I just wanna know for backstory’s sake.

A wonderful question! One that I don't even know the answer to. Probably very unlikely/impossible, since there's all sorts of weird shit going on in Delville Heights that the Horror goes to great pains to cover up. Which does bring me to another thing I was thinking about - the more one lives here, the more...acclimatised they might be to the things that go on here? Again I reference WTNV for that sort of vibe. Maybe not completely nonchalant, but I think a born local who's never experienced anything else, and can't leave anyhow, might end up shrugging their shoulders or knowing their way around things.

Prompts are almost ready to go, I'll finish them up then head to bed.

UPDATE: Prompts are done! I've decided to go for the same prompt for everyone, and it's just a matter of changing the names and pronouns. Do let me know if I messed up somehow. Tomorrow - more locations and the start of our Encounter list.

Edit edit: @SashaThePanther, thank you for tolerating my mistake of carefully double checking the PM...then copying Luneras over and completely buggering the whole post when I meant to just do a paragraph. It's now super late here but I'll fix it in the morning, lest I continue to screw it up. XD I'll reply tomorrow too.

I like her! My characters probably going to relate hard to Sav. I'll PM you as well, once I work on Sasha's prompt.

Edit: come to think of it - is she a visitor or a local? Fresh to the town either way, right?

Looking forward to working on it!!

And she's not local to the town but the general area, having grown up in a town a few K's away. So she's grown up hearing about the weirdness of Delville her whole life. She probably went to school or the boarding home with one or two people who visited there or vanished. But she never really thought much of it or believed any of the weirder theories.

Added a few new locations - a school, a town hall and a jail/police station. Not too sure how to organise the Encounters though. Should I do it by cue, or categorise them into things like monsters, hauntings, parallel universes?

My recommendation is definitely organize them by cue. Whether they're monsters/hauntings/parallel universes is self-explanatory once you read them.

@Stitches Gotcha, I’ll get started on a character sheet now!

@Stitches Alright, very interested in both the premise and the PM/application system you got going on. I’m thinking of a character from out of town as well but I’ll stew on it for a bit.

Related question to one asked earlier: How often to town residents leave, “recruit” people, and return? I imagine that the horror wouldn’t let its subjects go, but would it be able to choose people it knows will come back and allow them to leave to gather “fresh blood?”

Good question. I think if some of them feel they can lure in new people, and the Horror (being almost godlike in its abilities) knows they'll come back, then they can leave. Co-GM agrees and thinks that maybe certain residents are sent out for up to years at a time, even starting families, with that inexorable tug to return once they need to find somewhere to 'settle down'.

I'd want to restrict visitor applications if possible and go for residents. Visitors don't have as much of a presence in the story and it'll make things clunky as we progress, because the Horror will almost definitely start making visitors move out once it smells trouble.