SCP Foundation
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The SCP Foundation is a writing site focusing on scientific descriptions of terrifying, confusing, or just plain weird monsters, events, locations, etc. Expect plenty of REDACTED all across the website. The community prioritizes quality writing over pretty much everything else, and as such it is THE place to go if you like top-tier horror fiction writing. The fucking huge critical community within will RIP'N'TEAR bad articles to pieces. (On the flip side, if you want to read some hilariously bad writing, go to the lowest-rated articles page. You will know the true meaning of stupid.) The SCP Foundation is primarily GRIMDARK, but there has been an appreciable trend toward a lighter tone in the community, if only to stave off apocalypse fatigue.
While the descriptions on the SCP Foundation website and the hinted-at setting loosely binding the different articles together are not directly related to any specific traditional games; the whole thing is a goldmine of ideas for your horror games from Delta Green to World of Darkness to Call of Cthulhu and everything in between; or even if you simply want to throw something weird at your players to deal with for a change.
Origins
The SCP Foundation started when the Creepypasta archive of 4chan eventually was inspected by a bunch of people, who imagined a worldwide conspiracy to suppress said creepypastas. In this universe, Creepypasta Events like: "If you visit the ninth floor of a certain apartment at midnight, a spirit will assrape you and split your head open" are very much real, and the Foundation finds them and uses a black cheque to isolate them for the good of the world at large. Said fictional organization would send agents to survey existence of supernatural phenomena, contain it if possible for safety purposes (and experimentation later), or destroy if deemed too dangerous using any means necessary, up to teleporting the item to an alternate universe.
It eventually shaped into a fictional wiki, where thousands of these "SCP"s (items, phenomena, or persons) are contained, by ludicrous force if necessary. Extensive descriptions and containment procedures are the most favored parts of the writings, as well as UTTERLY FUCKING TERRIBLE REALIZATIONS that your world is a clusterfuck of horror which out-edges Warhammer 40K on several metrics. For example, SCP-682 is a compleyely invincible draconic creature that continuously attacks everything in existence because it enjoys things completely deadly and horrible to humans, and it can only barely be kept at bay via complete immersion in corrosive acid. There are also writings about the personnel within the Foundation, logs of fictional excursions to capture SCPs, and experiment logs to comb through as well as weapons and personnel that surpass "legit" human authorities' power by magnitudes: Extrasolar bases across the universe are the only a fraction of it, we are talking about bases in alternate dimensions for inventory and endless resources dug from a plain of white rock.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. One SCP is a genetic phenomena that makes the dreaming person's dreams real. That's right. Everything in reality, from World Wars to history of empires *and* new SCP's (there is a rumor that this phenomena was the start of everything) is rewritten in one night's sleep. The Foundation's obvious response is to capture, detain, drug them into complete and total amnesia, use them as disposable Keter-grade SCP destroyers and quietly kill them afterwards. Obviously this genetic trait is so intense that the organization will authorize the genocide of "every population that may exhibit the phenomena above average." Another is Nikolai Tesla's Reverse Entropy Tesla Gun that will DESTROY EXISTENCE in a few centuries, with NO WAY OF STOPPING IT. There's also a rock eating fish that eats California's seabed, slowly destroying one-half of United States, and the foundation failed to kill them.
And there are thousands more, and more to come.
Classification
Every SCP has a classification. It's basically a handy way of labeling them as to whether they have the power to totally assfuck you or not. Some of them may even have circumstantial benefits for you interacting with them, goodies like healing or granting you (usually abominable) powers. These classes are:
Primary Class
Typical shit. The initial labels given to any anomaly by the Foundation. Many of the SCP's still have these labels after a long time. We never said they were easy to neutralize, man. Box metaphor.
- Safe: There is a good understanding about the object/entity, or it's easy to contain. Can still fuck people's asses if someone isn't careful with it. Think of it like a loaded gun: it's "safe" if you know what you're doing. Generally speaking, if you stick it in a box, it'll be fine.
- Euclid: The object/entity is unpredictable and the Foundation has very little background on or understanding of it. They will totally fuck your asses, but it's an existential threat level that pales in comparison to the Keter below. Euclid entities might also be sentient, or may try to stab you in the back if you aren't careful, so they are generally locked behind many doors and walls of very thick metal. Sticking this in a box and leaving it is a bad idea and will kill you, and a few dozen around you.
- Keter: The good shit. OMFGYOUARESOFUCKINGDEADTHEWORLDISGONNAEND tier entity/object. They must be destroyed immediately, once the Foundation has found a way to actually do so. At the very minimum, they're
containedactively guarded from getting any worse by walls tougher than an Imperial Class Battlecruiser, protected by a non-national military host armed with future weapons and a legion of researchers, bureaucrats, and shadowy agents. These things, if they ever manage to breach containment, will inevitably make the world unlivable in one of innumerable horrible ways. Lucky for us, the Foundation has ways of mitigating these risks. Put it in a box and it will escape and destroy the world if you don't watch it constantly and follow all the rules.
Secondary Class
Replacement labels for things re-classified from the Primary Class. Given to SCP's that the staff of the Foundation have a comprehensive understanding of. True safety.
- Neutralized: SCP entities/objects that are dead, destroyed, disabled, or otherwise no longer a threat. Often-times these were former Keter-class SCP's that the Foundation managed to dispose of. Their only remains are what can be gleaned from the heavily-edited documentation and records that the Foundation keeps. No one really wants to keep a doomsday device around, right?
- Explained: SCP entities/objects that are no longer considered to be abnormal, which may be due to the Foundation mistaking something for an anomaly before closer examination, or due to advances in science allowing it to be understood, or due to an anomaly becoming so widespread that it has become the new normal.
- Irrelevant: Like the former Apollyon, it means simply. "Fuck it." It's gonna happen one way or another.
Esoteric Classes
The following Object Classes fall outside of the purview of standard classification.
- Thaumiel: Anomalous material or entities that can be used by the Foundation to contain or counteract the effects of other highly dangerous anomalies. Sometimes the best thing to do is fight fire with fire. Since its introduction, it's become an unofficial primary class, and is the fourth most-used containment class on the site. This is not put in a box. It is the box or it helps you clean up the mess when something else gets out of the box.
- Apollyon: First used by SCP-2317, Apollyon is often derisively referred to as "Super-Keter." This class is only used for anomalies that present an apocalyptic threat that the Foundation has no way of stopping or slowing down. For example: in one alternate timeline the sun became an Apollyon SCP when something caused the sun to start turning any living thing exposed to sunlight into blob monsters. This included trees, keters, ANYTHING. It is impossible or too late to put it in a box and we are all doomed, time to push the reset button and start over.
- Archon: One of the more popular esoteric classes, Archon denotes items that would do more damage contained than uncontained. If you leave it in a box it'll get angry and kill everyone. If you leave it outside, it'll be fine.
- Hiemal: Also growing in popularity, Hiemal-class objects are anomalous systems composed of separate anomalous parts, usually with one containing the other. If you try to put it in a box then something worse will pop out of a different box.
Famous SCPs
- SCP-087: A seemingly endless stairwell with a voice crying out for help that never gets closer no matter how far down you go. If you go down it too long a floating face will suddenly appear and scare you to death.
- SCP-096: A humanoid with abnormally long arms and a very large mouth. Normally it is docile, but if anyone sees its face, it goes berserk and hunts down those who have seen it until they are all dead. How exactly it kills its victims is censored so it must be something horrible. And once you have seen it's face there is nothing that can stop it. Even getting its organs blasted out by a tank round won't slow it down. And you don't even have to see its face directly. Even looking too closely at a photo containing just a few pixels of its face will set it off.
- SCP-106: A old man who can walk through walls, corrodes everything he touches, and can teleport victims to a pocket dimension where he tortures them.
- SCP-173: The Statue (AKA the Original) - A statue that kills you if you don't look at it and causes a mixture of blood and feces to mysteriously appear on the floor of the room it is kept in. Started the whole thing, and yes, Whofags, it came before the Weeping Angels. Was inspired by a creepy photo of a sculpture by a Japanese artist.
- SCP-213-7: The last surviving member of seven young women who were kidnapped and impregnated by a satanic cult. If she ever gives birth it will cause the apocalypse. The only way to stop her from giving birth is to regularly submit her to something called Procedure 110-Montauk. It isn't revealed what Procedure 110-Montauk specifically is, but it is something absolutely horrifying, probably some form of disgusting sexual torture. And the Foundation regularly erases her memory to make sure she doesn't get used to it because the trauma of the procedure is required for it to work. The horror doesn't come from the threat to the world she represents, but how far the Foundation is willing to go to keep the world safe. If you had to torture an innocent person to keep other people safe, would you be able to do it?
- SCP-294: A coffee machine that can dispense anything you request from it as long it can exist in liquid form.
- SCP-354: A bloody red lake that spawns many terrifying monster 24/7. It spawn many varity of monster that can only be seen in movies and fictions like killer robots, lizard people, elemental monsters and a frigging krakens. The foundation put up a good fight but decided to abandoned the fuck out and nuke the site because they can't kept up the pace and fighting endless wave of monsters to a stalemate. The pool also sentient and will psychically attack you if you try to drain the pool.
- SCP-682: The Hard-to-Kill Lizard - A FUCKHUEG lizard that hates all organic life (except SCP-053, an immortal child who drives humans insane, for some reason) and cannot be killed. There is a LONG list of attempts, none of them successful. It will either become immune to what you tried to use to kill it with, or will copy the effects and turn them on you.
- SCP-895: An empty coffin which causes any camera recording taken too close to it to be filled with horrifying images that can drive you insane.
- SCP-914: The Clockworks - A massive clockwork machine that has 5 settings: Rough, Coarse, 1:1, Fine, and Very Fine. Put something in the box, choose your setting, and pray the result isn't too radioactive. The two lowest settings take objects apart. The middle setting transforms the input into something similar, like maybe turning an apple into an orange. The second highest setting turns the input into a better version of itself. The last setting is similar to the previous one but is extremely unpredictable. The output will usually have a similar function the input but taken to an extreme, and often be anomalous.
SCPs with minimal tabletop relevance
- SCP-3973: An Ultramarines miniature that is sentient and has the ability to control which side dice in its vicinity land on.
- SCP-1974-EX: A d20 dice that gives players hallucination. Sadly judging by the -EX ending, meaning it isn't much of a exciting SCP meaning it is probably a fake or dud. Turns out the dice is covered in some kind of hallucination chemical. Never the less the article itself contain many references to /tg/ memes and related games, which is why it is listed here.
Other Factions
The SCP Foundation is not the only organization that deals with the supernatural, they have several rivals. Here is a partial list of notable factions.
- Chaos Insurgency: Originally this faction was part of the Foundation, a covert deniable ops team simply named the "Insurgency." This group operated under the fictitious pretense of being a group of rogue agents who assassinated and kidnapped on behalf of the organization, without their actions leading back to the foundation. They answered directly to the O5 Council, with little oversight from any other part of the Foundation. That changed however when they really did go rogue, releasing various euclid and keter-class SCPs. What their goal is remains a mystery, as is the reason for their defection. It's suggested that rather than contain SCPs, they want to proactively control and weaponize them. Whatever the case, they're a threat to everything the Foundation works for.
- Global Occult Coalition: The GOC is an organization funded by the United Nations that also works to protect humanity from anomalous threats. Unlike the SCP Foundation, they are far more willing to use anomalies to fight against anomalies, and instead of imprisoning anomalies to study them, they prefer to destroy any anomalies that they consider a threat. The Foundation and the GOC are allies with each other although they are very critical of each other's methods. Many of the other factions strongly dislike the GOC and see them as Nazis due to them destroying harmless anomalies for refusing to join them. However, they also have better relationships with some factions than the Foundation does.
- Horizon Initiative: A religious organization formed from an alliance of Jews, Christians, Muslims and several other religions that work together to protect the world from the supernatural. They are particularly hostile to cults like the Church of the Broken God and the Fifth Church.
- Serpent's Hand: The Serpent's Hand is a loose organization of humans and other beings that fights for the rights of intelligent anomalies. Their base of operations is a magical library between universes. They especially hate the GOC and call them bookburners. Although they do not like the Foundation and often work to rescue imprisoned anomalies from the Foundation, they occasionally work with the Foundation against bigger threats.
- Church of the Broken God: Basically the Adeptus Mechanicus mixed with Gnosticism and a little bit of Chinese mythology. The CotBG is a religion of machine worshipers that wants to find and reassemble the lost fragments of the god of machines. Although they aren't all evil and sometimes work with other factions, if they were to succeed in their goals it probably would cause the apocalypse.
- Sarkic Cults: Sarkic Cults are the antithesis of the CotBG. Basically a horrible mixture of Nurgle and Slaanesh worshipers. They want to achieve godhood by using Fleshcrafting sorcery and devouring the gods. Most Sarkites are horrifically depraved monsters who should be killed with fire.
- The Fifth Church: Scientologists in all but name. They worship stars and have an obsession with the number 5. Most of the other factions consider them to be a joke, although they once nearly destroyed reality by selling a book that gave readers reality warping powers at the cost of causing insanity. It has been theorized that the whole religion is actually is an interplanetary scam started by aliens.
- Doctor Wondertainment: Seem to be a company that produces supernatural toys for children, which usually are very dangerous if they are not used properly. They often send their products to the Foundation as gifts. For some reason they also created a line of anomalous humanoids called the Little Misters that they challenge the Foundation to collect.
- Are We Cool Yet?: A organization of artists/terrorists with a weird sense of humor that produces usually dangerous pieces of anomalous artwork for laughs or for making political statements. Things like paintings that drive people that look at them insane.
- Gamers Against Weed: Anomalous Internet Memes & the like. Love taking the piss out of the other GoIs; split off from AWCY? at least partly because they found the idea of murder problematic, and believing your own bullshit stupid. Usually used as comic relief.
- Marshal, Carter, and Darke Ltd.: A club that collects anomalies to sell to the rich.
- Manna Charitable Foundation: An organization that tries to exploit anomalies for humanitarian purposes, often with disastrous results.
- Herman Fuller's Circus of the Disquieting: A circus that travels between dimensions to put on their shows and recruit more freaks. Since Herman was overthrown it is now lead by a pair of lesbian clown monsters.
- Shark Punching Center: Began as a joke for mocking people who misspelled SCP as SPC. The SPC is a completely insane version of the Foundation from another universe that is dedicated entirely to protecting the world from selachian entities by punching them.
- SAPPHIRE: An organization of militant atheists who seek to destroy all anomalies even though they are in complete denial that anomalies exist.
- ☽☽☽: In an alternate timeline, the earth was saved from destruction by being teleported into an afterlife known as Corbenic and became a third moon. From there, the people of that earth work to try to save other versions of earth from going down the same path that to their destruction.
Drama
When you get a group of people to do something together, drama is inevitable. The SCP community has a number of big-names calling the shots, and what they say goes. They set the tone for what's allowed and what's not, and if you piss off the wrong person for a trivial thing or hurt someone's massive over-inflated ego, you can expect your stay on the website to be short. They are no stranger to massive internal strife either; fights between the big boys resulted in a lot of content being discarded at one point. It kind of mirrors TVTropes: the front end has a lot of nice reading but the community side is a dumpster fire of misery, egos and dicks. We do not prefer to give examples, but utterly retarded articles written by a newcomer cute girl may stay a lot while longer than they should (and any criticism thereof will result in a ban until someone with clout does something).
Early forms of alleged SJWism have also started to surface, with articles spotting unusual genders without them being played for horror, or commented upon at all for that matter. Given a lot of SCPs are frequently not of this Earth/dimension/etc., there's at least SOME reasoning for it.
Furthermore, as the community around the SCP Wiki has evolved over time, the tone of the works has shifted. In the first few years of the wiki, there was more of an inclusion of levity and humor, especially in regards to test logs and the antics of senior staffers. Over time the wiki has included less and less of this, as the community broadened and namefags or otherwise notable contributors left, taking their influences and in-universe characters with them. Circa 2018, the wiki is redoubling its efforts to be purely clinical horror, with fewer jokes (for better or worse).
(That being said, there's still room for somewhat "silly" SCPs, you just have to make them the product of an appropriate silly person or group, and make sure to (A) write it up clinically and (B) have something interesting besides the joke. See, for reference, the products of the group "Gamers Against Weed".)
See also
- Delta Green - The closest thing to a SCP game made.