Metal Gear Solid 5, and Until Dawn - Monsters to Inspire Tabletop RPG Monsters

Alright it's taken me a while to figure out what to write about, and I figured I'd talk about a couple of different games.

I picked up Metal Gear Solid V from Steam using the last bit of money I had saved up at Gamestop, (I bought a gift card).  Now while I enjoyed Batman Arkham Knight (even with the lag) it has nothing on Metal Gear.  The game starts with a bang and its first hour grabs you and doesn't let you go.

More over your first mission introduces you to a new and relentless enemy.

The Skulls are a frightening creation that you meet early in the game.  There's no fighting them at that point so you have to out maneuver them, or out run them.

But its obviously not the only time when you will face them.  Later during a mission to recover a missile launcher you have to face them again, but this time you have the means of fighting them.  But its not easy, they teleport, attacking with blades and rifles.  More over the enemy soldiers that were present are now apart of their ranks, though they are easier to deal with than the actual enemy soldiers.

The enemies appear out of a mist, and if you manage to evade them they vanish along with the mist.

The Skulls are an enemy that would make a great opponent in a table top game - a frightening monster that can appear in mist and pursue its target relentlessly with in the area of the mist.  Their an enemy even super heroes would have a hard time with to a degree.  The mist obscures vision, and then the enemy, already quite fast, are unaffected by the mist, and they can teleport making it even more difficult to discern their location.

First off if you haven't played the game yet, and have a system that can run it, then its worth a buy even if you don't like how Konami is running things at the moment.


Be sure to check out my YouTube Channel to watch my playthrough of Metal Gear Solid V.



Next up is Until Dawn.  Now I never played the game but watched Tetra Ninja doa  perfect playthrough for the game.  Now keep in mind there are spoilers here so stop reading if you don't want things ruined for you about this game.  But if you don't care about spoilers then keep scrolling down.

Still here, then the next pic explains what you will face...and there's more than one.

While the killer in the game is scary its not frightening as he never actually kills anyone except through their own bad decisions.

Rather what really is a threat to the characters are the Wendigo's.  Now while I won't go into details too much about how they came to be in the game, here is what you should know about these monsters.

This is from wikipedia:

The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody [....] Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.

Not a bad description as this almost mimics the appearance of them from the game.

Now here is what the Until Dawn wiki has to say about their description.

A typical Wendigo is hideous in appearance. Their skin is taut against their body. Wendigo also have spinal disfiguration, giving them a hunchback-like appearance. Their teeth become sharper and disfigured. A Wendigo also has their sight changed to be able to see only movement. Their limbs become much longer, giving them the ability to climb up walls, and make small jumps from spot to spot in mere seconds. They also lose their hair, and throughout time, they eventually lose their male and female characteristics, and become skeletal in appearance.

A Wendigo is known to have some sort of set pattern. This begins with the tracking of the prey. This can take up to several hours. It seems they like to hunt prey that end up by themselves, than in packs and are shown to have great predatory skills. They seem to not lose their humanity completely as they can use some human-like tricks to lure their prey.

Their main way of communication is by screeching. They use this screeching as a way to scare prey into moving, leading to a gruesome kill. It's interesting to note however, that they have the ability to mimic the voice of someone they hear. It's unknown how this happens.

Despite their frail appearance, Wendigo are incredibly strong, capable of crushing a human skull with their bare hands. They seem to favor brutal, deliberate methods of killing their prey, such as gouging out the eyes of their victims or impaling them on hooks rather than simply slashing them with their claws, indicating that Wendigo are sadistic rather than merely animalistic killers.

There is also some other things about the monster from the game not mentioned in the other wiki.  Keep in mind there are some more spoilers here about the game.

• The Wendigo may attack each other if they're the only ones moving.
• The transformation into a Wendigo happens over about a three day period. Each day they become more monstrous and lose their humanity.
• When a Wendigo bites or feeds, it becomes stronger. It's interesting to note that in the endgame when the Wendigo battle it out in the cabin, Hannah is able to overpower every single one of them. This is probably due to the fact that Hannah fed on Beth.
• According to The Stranger's journal, a Wendigo's skin hard like armor, cannot be cut, stabbed, or pierced by bullets, though a shotgun can slow them down. The only surefire way to hold them at bay is to use fire, making their skin weak, though he doesn't advise finishing it off, only as a last resort, as death releases the Wendigo spirit.
• Despite being undead-seeming mutant humans, Wendigos are not zombies, nor do they have an infectious bite; a person bitten by a Wendigo will not become one due to the attack, only if they eat human flesh while a Wendigo spirit is free to possess them.
• It's likely the Wendigo can mimic other people's voices into luring their prey to kill them. Ashley claims that she heard Jessica calling for help within the mine, but Jessica says during her interview with the police that she didn't call for help and managed to escape. If Ashley chooses to follow Jessica's voice in the mines, she will be attacked and decapitated by a Wendigo if she opens a trap door in the floor.
• It seems they retain some kind of traces of humanity in their behavior, as one of them used Jess' mobile phone as a bait to get her attention.
• This is further supported if Josh notices Hannah's tattoo, she will kidnap him and turn him into a Wendigo instead of killing and eating him, implying familial bonds can still be partially recognized by the human side of the Wendigo.

Least to say that this is a terrifying enemy that can make its way into zombie RPG's, or even superhero RPG's, or well just about any RPG.  The Wendigo is virtually unkillable by normal tactics and even then, do you really want to kill it?  From a tabletop game stand point the Wendigo is an interesting enemy in that it is a smart hunter and it can only be killed under certain conditions.  Its incredibly lethal when it attacks, and survival requires quick thinking and knowing just how to deal with them.

Now while I could write up some rules and stuff for the Skulls and the Wendigo I am not going to do that at this time.  Instead I wanted to point out some possible elements that they can add to their games to spice things up and add an element of fear and/or dread to their games.  But either way these two opponents are interesting, and got me thinking about how they can be used in table top games.

The Skulls
Now I haven't gotten far enough into the game yet to know more about this unit.  But the idea here is an environmental hazard for players to deal with.  They can stealth around these opponents if they want, but ultimately it's better to run and evade getting hit by their attacks to get out of the mist.  While in the mist anything killed will fall to the Skulls control joining their ranks.  The skulls however cannot pursue opponents out of the mist.  So depending on what the players decide to do, and where they are can determine the difficulty they face.  Attacking the problem head on is one option as well, but it should be made apparent that the players should never stand their ground as it makes them an easy target.

Now the players could attempt to attack the Skulls, but it shouldn't be easy to take them down.  They leap around quickly, and teleport, vanishing from sight.  So its not a fight that a character should be able to easily win and thus should be a taxing fight.  The characters may even need special gear in order to pull this off.


The Wendigo
Sorry, I kind of got sidetracked by things so I didn't have chance to get back to this.

Now while the Skulls represent an environmental threat, the Wendigo is a more tangible threat.  Their strong, fast, but they have weaknesses.  In games like D&D and Savage Worlds a Wendigo would just be treated as a regular monster, possible a threat that either a single party member might be able to deal with or perhaps a threat that requires the whole party if there are more than one of these things.  Wendigo's in the game are fast, stealthy and when they strike its often with the attempt to either subdue (so they can eat a person alive later) or to kill in one strike.

For super hero games however the Wendigo in the game would pose a risk only to low end type heroes, or street level heroes (as they are called), but this also depends on how they are built and the exact system they are used in.  For example in Hero System a Wendigo would be built just like the player characters, as such it could pose a threat.  But this may not be the case in other super hero type game systems.  For example, in Champions most characters can easily handle a monster like this, so you kind of have to up things.  Maybe if the curse possess a normal person you get a "normal" Wendigo.  However if they manage to possess a superpowered person then things get dicey.  They become a Wendigo that not only has the powers of a Wendigo, but they retain all of their powers.

Imagine if Dr. Destroyer some how ended starving on a cursed mountain and just happened to have the bodies of his foes laying around.  Yeah that is a situation that is just not going to work out well for a lot of people.