In May 2024 we presented the all-new They Came From Beneath the Sea! Bundle featuring They Came from Beneath the Sea!, the RPG of drive-in B-movie horrors from decades past – of melodrama, science fiction, and farce – from Onyx Path Publishing. PLAY heroic humans driving back watery threats that seek to invade, destroy, or subjugate humanity! CAPTURE everything great about monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s – the thrills and (optionally) the campy humor – using the cinematic Storypath dice-pool system! GRAB your chocolate malt, turn on the jukebox, and ready your harpoons! Don’t be caught unawares when it’s revealed that They Came From Beneath The Sea!
They Came from Beneath the Sea! is a dramatic and farcical Storypath RPG of the wonder, horror, thrills, and humor of 1950s and 1960s science fiction movies. In a world under attack, you play strong-jawed war veterans, cunning and resourceful explorers, utterly insane scientists, and blue-collar heroes. Adventures range from the defense of a small coastal town to the liberation of a cruise ship infested with gill-folk, to the capture of an alien submarine and a journey down to the sea bed to take the fight to the invaders.
They Came from Beneath the Sea! mixes serious threats and unbridled farce. The book plays it straight with no winking at the camera. Still, your game will include ludicrous statements and events handled with gravitas. There are rules for incorporating Quips and Cinematics in a scenario. Drawn from decks of cards or rolled from tables in the book, Quips are your award-winning one-liners that allow your blow to pack a harder punch, make your rebuke more scathing, or just give you pithy last words before dying. Are they sometimes incongruous to the scene or inappropriate in any context? That’s up to you. The players and Director together discover the correct level of humor for their game.
Cinematics encourage metagaming. As you accumulate points to spend on inserting deleted scenes in your game, you can Cut to Black when the action gets too hot, bring in an Omniscient Narrator, apply Bad Dubbing to an alien’s dialogue to make them talk to you in English, or Summon the Stuntman to replace your scrawny scientist character when he has to run the length of an exploding submarine, crab-person baby in arms. Caught short without the clue or item you need? Insert a Deleted Scene that shows you set up that element earlier in the story.
Onyx Path’s Storypath system (the Trinity games, Scion) is a lineal descendant of White Wolf’s Storyteller rules: a narrative-focused d10-based dice-pool system, Attribute + Skill against a set Difficulty. Each result of 8+ counts as a success; 10s count double. Any success lets your character use a relevant Enhancement; surplus successes let you gain benefits by executing a Stunt (Infused With Science, Insanely Swift, Old-School Carnage, Impeccable Grooming, Inspirational Storyteller, Sudden Bravery); failure brings Consolation, which lets you affect the story anyway. Botches (rolls of 1 with no successes) earn you Rewrites, which are added to the shared Writer’s Pool. Use Rewrites to gain bonus dice, rerolls, or Cinematics.
Combat is intended to play fast and loose. Every character is Difficulty 1 to hit, but you can protect yourself with Defense Stunts that increase an opponent’s target number to hit you. Certain attacks have damage tags (Concealable, Grappling, Non-lethal, Returning, Shockwave, etc.) that improve their effectiveness. Most weapons have a damage rating of 1, but again, an Increase Damage Stunt can inflict greater injury. You have 10 Injuries, divided into four levels: Just a Flesh Wound, That’ll Leave a Scar, Last-Ditch Effort, and Don’t Forget Me. A dying player character gets one final action (with a hefty bonus) and an epic Death Scene.
This all-new They Came From Beneath the Sea Bundle included everything you need to explore uncharted South Pacific atolls or the Bermuda Triangle, uncover weird eggs in your storm cellar, ignore the warnings from Old Man Jones, battle the Oysteroid Menace and the Phantom of Sea Land World, and rock out at Monster Beach. There were six titles in our B-Movie Collection (retail value $58) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete They Came From Beneath the Sea! Core Rulebook, plus the Party Beach Creature Feature Jumpstart, the Beneath the Sea Quips and Cinematics Cards, and the Director’s Screen; the bestiary Monsters of the Deep! and the character book Heroic Land-Dwellers!; the scenario collection Tales of Aquatic Terror; and five “Tasty Bits” mini-scenarios that highlight the many places They Come From: The Bikini Beach Party!, The Bermuda Triangle!, North Herald Beach!, Outer Space!, and Plan 9!
