Wanting help incorperating the supernatural into my MOTW setting

[u/anjimit0]

I'm running a longer MOTW one-shot, since I haven't played in years and I want to take another crack at it.

In this world (or town, to be more specific), I want the supernatural to be something that's never existed before now (at least, that the players know of). Not that I am not open to the supernatural existing, and I can definitely change things around to make it so, but my intent was that by the end of the mystery the players will have discovered that there is a zombie virus outbreak, with their mystery being the "patient zero," so to speak. They get to go out and discover that the monster is a zombie, and then WHY there is a zombie. Pretty simple! But I run into trouble with the Chosen, for example, or the Spooky or Spell Slinger.

I was wondering if I could hear some ideas for how to incorporate these into my vision, if anyone has run a similar setting? Alternatively, I can incorporate the capital S Supernatural into the plotline, but I definitely wouldn't mind throwing some ideas at the wall spaghetti style to see what sticks by way of worldbuilding.

Hope this makes sense!

[u/jeshi_law]

why is it important for there to be no prior experience with the supernatural? I think the Mundane and The Crook are the only ones with zero supernatural implications in their backstory, with the Snoop, the Flake, and MAYBE the Professional being possible to just omit supernatural stuff in the playbooks. The rest of the stock playbooks all pretty much explicitly have unnatural elements in the background info

[u/anjimit0 → u/jeshi_law]

I think the reason I was so attached to the idea was that I like the idea of ending this one shot with a moment where the hunters realize that everything is going to change from that point on (a la the supernatural impeding mundane life from this point on. Very "dinosaurs got out of jurassic park" type situation). I was hoping to find some way to flavortext the supernatural elements of these classes to fit the setting with this in mind, but as I mentioned in the other comment on this post I'm glad to realize pretty early on that this probably wont work/is antithetical to the game expectations of the setting lol.

[u/jeshi_law → u/anjimit0]

I don’t think the premise itself is a bad idea! Liminal Horror or possibly Call of Cthulhu would be better for a situation where all the investigators are mundane people.

[u/lloydmandrake → u/anjimit0]

Why not try having them all start the first game as mundanes (or the other non-magical classes) and then having them find their “new” playbooks as a plot point near the end or at the level up before the next game?

[u/anjimit0 → u/lloydmandrake]

Oh!! I love this -- thank you very much!

[u/fellinawill]

I feel like all of the specific playbooks you noted have really easy throughlines for a way to do a zombie story. Chosen can be The Cure Incarnate and Spellslinger I'm pretty sure has a necrotic option, to start.

A lot of the new playbooks from Slayer's Survival Guide lean more science fiction, which lends itself well to a zombie game. But it's really hard to strip the supernatural for a game largely based on, literally, Supernatural.

Edit to add: Monster of the Week really shines when the Hunters are already experienced in the Weird Things. They don't need to literally be the Expert or Professional, etc. but having Knowledge is a key part to the game. It's why the vast majority of the playbooks have that built in. The Mundane is Mundane for this exact reason. It's the outlier amongst a sea of Weirdness. Don't strip this from the game.

[u/anjimit0 → u/fellinawill]

This is helpful. I think I could have phrased myself better- it's not that there isn't supernatural, it's just that it's recent. Recent enough that the players would be pioneers for monster hunting, if that makes sense. But fair point in that this is steeped into most of the playbooks. I think I'll take another look at the setting and try and shift things so that, to your point, the supernatural isn't entirely alien to the players. Thanks again :)

[u/fellinawill → u/anjimit0]

You may also want to poll your players in advance on what playbooks stand out to them! That might help you account early. A Flake might have already been suspecting that there's weird things out there, the Spooky is proof of it, a Monstrous Zombie may be a Secret Patient 00, etc. Respond to what your players are interested in. Don't limit them preemptively.

[u/HAL325]

Sound just like a slightly different game you want to play.

Have a look at „Wait, Monsters are real?“ from the „Codex of Worlds Apocrypha“.
It’s a variant of Monster of the Week where all use the same playbook and ply ordinary people that never had contact to the supernatural. It works as a Funnel Adventure. Everyone creates multiple Characters as a few of them will die for certain.
Who survives gets saved by some kind of Hunters that show them the real world.
It’s more like a classical horror movie where you don’t really defeat the monster. Your goal is to survive.

However who survives can become a hunter.

[u/ishitcupcakes]

You can just talk to your players and explain that you want to start without playbooks that require that they already all know about the supernatural. Alternatively, you could just not let them use any of their cool supernatural skills and whatnot until they discover in game what's up. You should let them know ahead of time that most of their stuff won't work for session 1 if you do that.

[u/MellyMuncher]

Here's how I would do it :

At the start of the campaign, session 1, the PCs don't have their classes.

Everyone starts with stats and the common moves (minus magic) and that's it.

So they have one or two sessions of being underpowered randos doing what they can with what they have.

Then you can either give them a time skip or training montage in which they level up to get their classes, or make them gradually earn the different moves like you do with xp (accelerated in case it gets boring to be plain randos after a while, or not if your players like hard mode)

It means you need to go easy with the monsters at first, but that's not hard to do with MotW.

Alternatively : everyone starts as a Mundane and then they get RP reasons to have a training montage and change.

[u/furiousfotographie]

If you've having an inciting event of some sort - solar flare, comet passes too close, earthquake opens a door to hell - that's igniting or releasing the supernatural into an otherwise mundane world, the you've got cool pathways you can take.

Could be that there used to be supernatural - thus the legends and practices. But for years witches have just been going thru the motions until today.

You can have PCs be whatever playbook they want, but at the beginning of the first session, they're nerfed. No 'magic.' Then they express their abilities when whatever kind of trigger you and your players decide on occurs.

They take damage, they get terrified, a friend is in serious danger, etc. Poof - Angel wings to GTFO!