Review: GURPS Infinite Worlds: Nightreign

 GURPS Infinite Worlds: Nightreign is a setting book for the larger Infinite Worlds setting and is specifically a Horror themed work.

The Infinite Worlds setting was designed to showcase the versatility of GURPS by letting adventurers travel from world to world. It is both a time travel and a parallel worlds type setting, allowing the creative GM to create all sorts of genres and mix it up to keep a campaign fresh. GURPS Infinite Worlds: Worlds of Horror written by the popular author Kenneth Hite is a broad setting book with a lot of small horror settings seeds. This book is a full length worked horror setting based in a divergent history of 1700's America, after the American Revolution.

Concept

During the American Revolution an opening into another dimension was created that infected the eastern seaboard with a dark miasma called "The Bleak", plunging the region into darkness or twilight. The classic horrors emerged and slaughtered thousands, forever changing that worlds history.

Magic is available to the PC's, though it often has a dark price.

Nuts and Bolts

I really liked this setting, its dark but teases some hope and in some ways is post apocalyptic. The Bleak is a good well explained concept that makes use of the Corruption mechanic described in GURPS Horror, though you wont need that book to understand its effects.  GURPS Magic is the default assumption but rules are included to use Ritual Path Magic, Book/Path from GURPS Thaumatology, and some other subsystems. In my opinion it currently has the best description of shamanism as well. The authors worked with existing material from GURPS Thaumatology, GURPS Monster Hunters 6: Holy Hunters, and even my book GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits that works out very close to my own Shamanic Powers based magic (not published or even approved yet). Though we disagree on a few points, such as the implementation of Spirit Empathy the overall feeling is very similar, which I appreciate and have been waiting to see in print for a very long time. The authors also expanded on modifiers found in GURPS Powers which is a welcome addition and I may implement some of those ideas myself.

Included is a good explanation of the history since the divergence with a good explanation of its effects on the political situation and of course life as a whole.

The Enemy

The obvious enemy here are the unhuman and other types of monsters, but plenty of other options exist as well.  From rival world jumpers to local politics a campaign in this setting can go in many directions and keep things fresh. I like the set up here if the Bleak, its effects (subtle and otherwise), and the various monsters. Vampires and Werewolves are given a page or so each with enough information to give the GM ideas and references for the actual stats. A few new monsters are introduced as well but the bulk of this supplement is background material. It really leverages prior works such as GURPS Horror to fit in as much new content as possible.

Going Insane from Terror

Once upon a time I built some sanity rules for a Horror setting based on the radiation rules in GURPS, These updated rules are being posted because I saw a post on a similar idea with different mechanics. The ideas originally came from the Lovecraft Mythos, derivative works and various games including CthuluPunk.

These rules treat sanity loss as mental damage and were designed so I could have madness inducing attacks.

New Modifier: Madness

This modifier does 1 point of  Corruption (GURPS Horror) or madness per point of base damage rolled, regardless of DR. It is +25% on an Innate Attack that does Toxic damage or +100% on Terror.

It replaces the normal effects of toxic damage or adds to the effect of Terror doing 1 point per -1 penalty.

The Onset of Madness

Every time a subject is exposed to an attack with the Madness modifier they must make a Will roll to resist its effects. The effects are based on the total current accumulation of madness at that point. For Corruption effects use the rules in GURPS Horror see Power Corrupts pp. 146-148.

Accumulated Madness	Will	Crit Success	Success	Fail	Crit Fail
1-10	+0	No Effect	No Effect	A	B
11-20	+0	No Effect	A	B	C
21-40	+0	A	B	C	D
41-80	-1	A	B	C	D
81-160	-3	A	B	C	D
161-800	-4	A	B	C	D
800-4,000	-5	C	D	E	E

A Roll on the Short-Term Conditions Table.
B Roll on the Medium-Term Conditions Table, treat hours as minutes and days as hours.
C Roll on the Medium-Term Conditions Table.
D Roll on the Long-Term Conditions Table, plus stunned for 1 turn per margin of failure.
E Roll on the Long-Term Conditions Table, plus stunned for 1 minute per margin of failure.

Recovering From Madness

Any subject can slowly recover from this stress by making a Will or Meditation roll once per day that incurred no new madness damage or fright checks. Success recovers 1 point of accumulated damage.

The care of a competent (skill 12+) psychologist (Psychology (Clinical) or Physician (Psychiatric)  adds +1 to the roll, and they can attempt a roll against their skill once a day to reduce yet another point of damage. In some cases Theology might suffice, but the subject must believe in the same religion. For permanent effects a successful roll by the therapist or priest can grant 1 point on success or 2 points on a critical success towards buying off the mental disadvantage.

New Advantage: Stubborn Reality

Variable

Whether through deep religious beliefs, divine protection, or stubborn ignorance and rationalization you can reduce the effects of madness attacks. Each level reduces the damage taken from attacks. See Radiation Tolerance (B79) for costs and the divisor.

New Modifier: Mental Regeneration

-60%

You can recover 10 madness or corruption points from attacks (Not that used to power your abilities) for each hit point you would recover. This is a -60% limitation on Regeneration for only healing mental damage.

Balance Notes

Compare to a Toxic attack with the Radiation modifier an effect of A has an effect of burn damage, Low Pain Threshold for a week with possible additional complications. B level effects adds Nauseated, Hemophilia, and possible attribute loss. It only gets worse from there!

An Innate Attack would cost 4/level with +25% for the Madness modifier and need to do 21+ points of damage before permanent effects start to occur, even on a critical failure.

In some settings you can combine Madness attacks with radiation damage (in which case the Regeneration and Radiation Tolerance variants above work against both effects) for things so outside reality that they destroy both body and mind!