Good morning peoples of the net.
I am running a D20 modern game set in Japan, the Village of Yishimo dissapeared and a tourbus full of people has "rediscovered" it (albiet by driving off a cliff)
the heroes have to find their way home...
I got the idea from a game called Siren, but it's evolved far past it's base.
info: Yishimo is on another plane of existance, unless they destory the plane there is no going home. It's always raining and the town in in ruins, things from japanese legend exist here, worse yet an anchant evil lies sleeping...
Special: Red water, the local water is cursed, it heals your body but deadens your soul, one can recover from it, but if ever fully immersed you become a Shibito.
Main enemies:
Shibito: "the Drowned Dead" unlike their western counterparts these zombies work togeather and talk, they hunt for "Those not beholden to the master" they consist of Workers, Synapses, and Brains, each smarter than the first. who or what they serve they do not say. They try to capture not kill their victims, and throughly embrace the red water, meaning unless you burn the corpse they will eventually get back up. even if you blow their head off. Template will come later. they were adherants of the local faith, one night the air raid siren sounded and they all drowned themselves turning into shibito.
Kami: spirits of various kinds, they aren't evil just curious and deadly. a Kitsune pup brushing against your leg might light your pants on fire for example.
Oni: Demons...need I say more
Kajin: in Japanese mythology if a body is not cremated it may become poessed by a Kami or Oni, these are called Kajin or Oijin, the new creature retains all memories and skills of the base creature but has a Kami or Oni as the soul, and after a few renovations the spirit lives a new life through it's new toy. Their intent can range from a homicidal, to telling all your dirty secrets, exploring their new senses doing things such as eating and drinking to excess.
The story I came across was a Kami poessessing the body of a dead soldier and returning to it's family, keeping his face hidded due to being "disfigured in battle" it lived the soldier's life for years before being found out and exorsized.
a Kami or Oni can also poessess an Unconsious character, but they cannot rennovate their new home. they cannot poessess a Shibito so if the base creature must be somewhere dry for this to happen. The Victim must be at 0 HP, not magically enduced sleep.
the main villian is the Shibito's god, "The Corpse God" the players have to kill it in the three eras it was summoned by the local cult.
in the fudal era they summoned it to protect them from local warlords
in the 20s to turn back the allied tide when japan began to lose the 2nd world war
in the 70s to try and repel the "Gajin invaders" and their culture.
there are survivors in the 70s people who did not belive in the cult, doesn't matter if they converted to Christianity, were practicing Buddists, or belived in a diffrent Shinto idea than the local one. if they weren't cultists they were unaffected.
in the Fudal era the Warlords still fight on, each dead samurai being stiched back togeather by local priests and the unending war continues.
in the 20's the shibito rule completely and utterly.
sound good, I'll post more later, feel free to give suggestions
Well, in modern Japanese "Yi" is a non-existant syllable. Thats my only little nitpick. 
Edit: Also, Japan started to lose World War 2 in the 40s, not the 20s.
Otherwise I like your idea, and Siren is an awesome game. But I have to ask, is the world itself accustomed (to a degree) to the fantastic? Like, you mention the shibito have made various apperances through history, how has the world reacted? Or have they gone largely unnoticed?
well my idea was the town did not advance from the 20s, meaning they were essecencly a backwater town sending sons off to war. most of the older buildings were built during the war by the imperal government. so the hospital and school are new, everything else was built in the 20s.
have some major buildings.
Yishimo Elementry: a small school built in 1929, suhrvived the avalanche and was refurbushed in 1967, a section of the basement was walled off during the process.
Yao hospital: a war hospital built during world war 2 it added a new wing and third floor in 1963.
Lung Meng Motel: small motel built to accomidate those with loved ones in the Yao hospital.
Water Lilly Hotel: a resort built for tourists near the amusement park, it closed after a string of deaths in 1967
"Happy Fun Time" (translation) amusement park: one of the many themeparks built and then abandoned by companies in the 1960s, now a rotting rusting husk, when Water Lilly died the park died soon after.
Yishimo Historical musiem: built in 1954 it houses artifacts from the local past, meaning stuff from WW2, shogun, and fudal eras.
The Mines: the old salt mines have been around for a long time, eventually being abandoned in 1995
Holy Rebirth Community Center: built by missionary funding, part church part recreation center, it is the only building still standing in 2009.
The Manna Shrine: Local shinto shrine
Manna Chruch: a christian church built by early cathloic missionaries, later abandoned in the shogunate era, put to new use in the 20s by the local Manna faith.
New Foes I came up with:
Spider Shibito: they come in the controled and uncontroled versions, the Shibito's arms and legs have snapped backward into a crabwalk position, spiderlike eyes and a fanged maw have grown out of the top of the head. they are ambushers, uncontrolled ones are more like sadistic spinsters, only uncontrolled ones (those not bound to a Shibito Brain) give birth to crawlers.
Crawler: they spin webs that their parents cannot, about a foot long they are a dark blue colored spider, they have a stinger below their jaws and their webs are acidic to living flesh.
Bloodsuckers: largeer than normal misquetos, they would only be annoying if not for their increased abilities along with their size. they drain 1 con point if they bite you, but they usually aim for the neck, the anti-coagulent (spelled wrong) in normal misquetos causes a small itchy bumb. if they bite your neck the increased swelling can cut off your windpipe and cause a minor stroke due to nerve damage if the bite is close to the spine.
Well, in modern Japanese "Yi" is a non-existant syllable. Thats my only little nitpick.
Edit: Also, Japan started to lose World War 2 in the 40s, not the 20s.
Otherwise I like your idea, and Siren is an awesome game. But I have to ask, is the world itself accustomed (to a degree) to the fantastic? Like, you mention the shibito have made various apperances through history, how has the world reacted? Or have they gone largely unnoticed?
not exactly they never appeared in our world, people and slices of history were dragged into Manna(their god)'s plane of existance every time the human population of Yishimo tried to summon him/her/it.
this is what happens when you read the summon spell backwards.
anyway new character I forgot
Oricale35: an online master of the occult, Ringo the tech savvy survivor has made contact with him (well Oricale35 started it) he's a support character. he's currently locked up in an asylem in Maine, and can only talk to them when he has his internet time.
Is/was there a prominent Chinese influence in the community? I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining, but the names you are selecting for things are not Japanese or Japanese-influenced at all, it is supposed to take place in Japan, right?
Anyway, the old cult/church mixed with the shibito god gives a very Silent Hill feel (this is a good thing). I think it could be very eerie if you played it up as seemingly normal on the surface, but the longer you stay there, the more apparent the strangeness becomes. You could even go the Shadow Over Innsmouth rout and maybe have the community be very elusive and xenophobic towards out-of-towners.
actually the Cult was chinese orignally, something like a shadow over innsmouth happened, when the Han Empire's local army decided to "remove" the strange town a long time ago around 162 AD. they migrated to Japan.
The second wave of Western Missionaries that arrived in town in the 60s and 70s faced a twisted version of their own scriptures when it came to converting the local populace.
my players will have to kill the Shibito God in each era, then finish it where it began, meaning getting to the proper timeslice, then crossing the massive Black Ocean that surrounds Yishimo and finally putting an end to it.
I'm going to give them a choice when they kill it in all three eras, go home and let someone else deal with it, in which case I'll have a sequal on my hands, or put the Shibito God down for good.
at later levels the players do have access to the FX abilites, one of my players is going that route.
My Magic rules:
1: Neo Pagan stuff does not work, that falls into the shamanistic catagory, not Magic.
2: Words are Power: magic is the use of words to bend the powers of the land to your will, anything connected to the land (Kami, Animals, Shibito brains) will get a warning light if you cast spells. spotcheck to notice, +1 per level of spell cast
3: Dusty spell book No more: since the to be wizard is a techie, he can use his laptop as a spellbook. "Mydocuments/magical stuff/Spellbook.Pdf"
Faith spells: there is a god, he created the universe and set it on track. the buck stopps there, everyone squabbles over who said what and what he'd be thinking. power comes from the Almighty and is given to those who truely belive in good things regardless of weather they are priests or not. Domains are persional philophy not that of the Divine. the Shibito god can grant spells but can only give one to each follower. All gods but the creator are creations of man's mind given form. When they lose enough worshippers they wind up in this sunless sad realm.
The Shibito God was created by the cultists... not the other way around
Black Ocean: not actually black the water is so deep and there is such a lack of sunlight in this world that appears to be. There are many horrors hiding amid the deep water and grey green reefs. But also a couple of helpful things.
I have hundreds of horrific things for the Black Ocean I might as well name the few friendly things. it's faster that way.
Selvenus: a humanoid race that evolved in the Black Ocean they are carnivores like everything else down there, they however are much smarter, and have a natural curiousity. They would remind a human of a Humanoid tigershark. They are intelligent and utterly selfserving. they might strike a deal with players.
162 AD is an awfully long time ago as far as Japanese history is concerned, the Yayoi period is probably far too early to have any surviving cultural influence to still be clinging to. Little is known about that era at all except what can be gleaned from random artifacts and a few vague mentions of some place called Wa in Chinese texts.
But this is, of course, not taking into account the influence of an ancient god. Heh.
true, I don't have a perfect understanding of japanese or chinese history. I was going for a vauge time in the past.
Everytime the cult was getting weak, they would try to revive it by summoning their god, instead because the shibito god can't get out, he drags a slice of time back with him, they've layered up like a cake. if they want to kill it for good, they have to go to the timeslice the cult was founded and kill it at it's inception.
I'm adapting things as I go, changing details before they come up and all that, learning more about eastern history in the process.