Time of Monsters: A Setting for Fear and Panic
Time of Monsters is an original, pre-apocalyptic setting for horror game Fear and Panic.
"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."
-Antonio Gramsci [translated]
It’s a couple years in the future, and whatever veil, barrier, or masquerade separated the malign supernatural world from mundane reality has been slowly fading. It didn’t collapse in a sudden revelation and mass panic; it’s falling apart one piece at a time, so slowly you can’t say when it started. The emerging supernatural threats defy classification; some mirror the fears of folklore and fantasy, but most are novel abominations or insidious twistings of reality.
It’s not the end of the world. Not yet. There are portents in your dreams, but they could mean anything. There are deadly monsters in the night, but you don’t run across them often. People in positions of power were unmasked as inhuman things, but it didn’t change the world, not much. Most of them are still in power. A newfound belief in magic and superstition spreads by the day, fueled by objective evidence of the supernatural, but it is overwhelmed ten times over by the efforts of charlatans to peddle fake knowledge - and besides, four in ten people have always known witchcraft is real.
There are a lot more mysterious disappearances than there used to be, and you probably know someone who knows someone who met a strange and dark fate. Everything is more expensive, more worn out, grimier, less predictable. The world is getting threadbare. Emergency services take a lot longer to show up than they used to, but most places that had electricity and running water five years ago still do. There’s still food on the shelves at the store, but sometimes there are shortages of specific items.
The government no longer denies anything and the media no longer covers it up. Instead they acknowledge everything, then spit out nonsense announcements and the rambling opinions of quacks. They don’t do much to protect you or provide relief. Official investigations are rushed and discover little of value. Organized religions are schismatic. They often offer relief at the local level but are paralyzed by internal politics on the world level. The same goes for new and existing aid organizations. The stock market is higher than it’s ever been and most businesses do their best to pretend everything is fine, but they’re investing a lot in security and loss prevention.
Seven Rules to Survive
Two months ago a post called “Seven Rules to Survive” was widely shared on social media. This was the original text, but alternate versions soon emerged:
- Ask for help. You need other people to watch your back, warn you of danger, and show you how to do things you can’t do yourself.
- Help others. This isn’t just about being nice. If you have a reputation for helping people in need, you’ll get warned early about new threats, and people will be more likely to help you. Besides, the threat is coming for you next.
- Know your home. That’s the place you live, the land around it, and the people who live there. Know multiple escape routes and places to take refuge. Know what looks ordinary so you can tell when something has changed suddenly – that could be a sign of danger.
- Don’t hide the bite. If something is changing you for the worse, let people know. Work together to treat it and prevent it from hurting others. This doesn’t just go for the supernatural.
- Prep to a reasonable degree. If you can afford it, keep flashlights, PPE, a first aid kit, a radio, and two weeks of food and water stockpiled in your home. Rotate food so it doesn’t go bad. Duct tape, zip ties, candles, a paper notebook, and a small crowbar can come in handy in a lot of ways.
- Dogs are your best friend. They can hear and smell things people can’t, and they’re one more set of eyes looking out for trouble.
- Practice apotropaic magic. Protective amulets, marks, and blessings have been used to ward off evil for most of human history. We don’t know how or if they work, but they won’t hurt.
Many local organizations adopted some version of the Seven Rules. Wearing an apotropaic symbol in a prominent location (instead of, say, on a chain) became a way for people to signal willingness to be asked for help with supernatural threats. Most people use some version of a nazar or hamsa, since they are commonly used and recognizable across a wide variety of cultures, but there is no single standard.
When menaced by the supernatural, you first turn to your group chat for help. If that won’d do it, you look around for the nearest person wearing a stylized blue eye pinned to their lapel or sewn onto their jacket. And if you’re wearing an eye, then you can expect people to come to you with ravening nightmares hot on their heels.
Faction: The Dream Team
The Dream Team is an ad-hoc committee of politically connected individuals from across your government. It has no legal authority, but its members have been willing to pool their departmental resources to create responses to the growing unnatural menace. To avoid turf wars and the effort of personal collaboration, they’ve decided to organize their efforts by licensing an AI service known as Mentat from tech start-up Arrakis Labs.
One year ago, the Dream Team launched Operation Wolfpack to provide armed security against supernatural threats. Each day, Mentat is queried about where to deploy Wolfpack. Mentat assembles field teams from lists of available personnel, then provides locations and instructions. Teams will often include personnel from across contributing agencies: intelligence analysts, soldiers, law enforcement, prison guards, reservists, and the occasional out of place civilian expert. Wolfpack personnel are left to procure equipment from their own agencies. Sometimes Mentat appoints a leader or dictates an organizational structure to a Wolfpack team, but other times they are left to figure it out in the field for themselves. Wolfpack teams have no legal authority but are often told by Mentat that they do, and few people have the resources to hold them accountable.
Around 85% of Wolfpack operations report no or inconclusive evidence of supernatural threats, but the rest provide justification to continue the project. Wolfpack is effective against easily-distinguished overt threats that are vulnerable to firearms. Wolfpack teams are vulnerable to subversion. When they take casualties they escalate without regard to collateral damage. Wolfpack teams will be called off a target if anyone with sufficient wealth or connections contacts the Dream Team and pays the price. Wolfpack teams often provide detailed field reports, but the Dream Team has no organized archival system for storing or retrieving the information. All field reports are fed to Mentat, and then they languish in email inboxes and filing cabinets.
Adaptations
Scars are renamed as Adaptations. All Scars in Fear and Panic are valid Adaptations. Here’s a couple new ones:
Connected: You spend every moment you have trying to organize local responses to supernatural threats. It makes it hard to hold down a job, and any money you get your hands on goes to worthy causes. You can spend 3 Fear to know a useful person who is nearby and willing to help. Permanently reduce your Throw Money by 20.
Strapped: You never go anywhere without as many guns as you can carry. Permanently raise your Shoot by 10, and you always have another magazine or holdout pistol. Permanently lower your React by 20. It’s hard to move quick wearing that much lead.
Appendix N
Time of Monsters is World of Darkness if everyone stopped caring about maintaining the Masquerade. It's Esoterrorists if the Ordo Veritatis didn't exist. It's Delta Green if they stopped doing cover-ups; the Dream Team combines all the problems of Majestic-12 and the Program, with none of the merits. It's the month when R'yleh had risen above the water but Cthulhu had yet to awake. It's the song "Epitaph" (1969) by King Crimson or "2 Minutes to Midnight" (1984) by Iron Maiden - especially the original music video. It's Mad Max (1979), a world where there are still courts of law and ice-cream stores but also lawless wastelands and a bleak future ahead for Max Rockatansky. It's the Great Depression in the US or any number of uncertain interregnums from the annals of history.
I hope this provides some inspiration for your games!
Lyme, 8/22/2026