Since this convention is focused on horror, I will try to explore what that means.
Minimum spoilers below about the games I was in.
1. Sat 11am-3pm. (game ended 2 hrs early) Bryan Hitchcock's Camp Wicakini (Savage Worlds Horror).
The counselors at Camp Wicakini didn’t sign up for pissed-off spirits and zombies, but that’s what’s in store for them in this Slasher/Zombie homage. Got brains?
So, was this horror? There were horror tropes such as dead bodies, undefeatable evil, over-sexed teenagers, misbehaving camp counselors, and indifferent adults. The shock of "Friday the 13th" comes from the unexpected and gruesome deaths. This taken to the extreme are the "Final Destination" movies. But this is shock horror, akin to throwing a cat in your face, a quick adrenaline rush, but quickly forgotten. So, it does fit in the horror genre, but it was Hollywood teenage slasher horror, not something deeper that mined the psyche.
Once upon a time, I played in a Cthulhu game and we complained that is wasn't scary enough, so the GM took it into his head to start killing characters. Well, my response is, that isn't horror. I can kill droves of characters in D&D and it wouldn't be horror either.
The scariest moment for me in the game was when some characters found a blood trail and had to follow it to a refrigerator. I wished the game proceeded to crank up the spookiness, but instead it headed into action, so all the creepiness switched to action. I found that certain descriptions and situations create a horror atmosphere. Having just a dead body laying on the ground isn't very scary, but a blood trail from a body having been dragged around a corner is -- and having to follow it because you cared about that person and wanted to know/not know what had happened to that person.
The game ended with a TPK (total party kill).
2. Sat 7pm-1pm. Gil Trevizo's Black Site (Delta Green)
There’s a black spot on the map, a dark corner of a war of shadows. The black site is older than this war, its concrete walls having borne witness to “sharpened interrogations” and “dirty work” long before the CIA arrived with its “Human Resource Exploitation.” Its gates are never opened, and the men in black hoods and orange suits taken out of Gulfstream jets and marched inside never see sunlight again. After tonight, neither will anyone else who remains inside the black site.
Gil tread the thin line of realism and torture porn and was able to stay on the correct side of the line. This is where the horror came in. Do you do what you know to be wrong as a human being? Would you buck the system and be punished for it? Would you do bad things for the greater good? People tell white-lies to smooth situations over. Does this extend to torturing people to save lives? What would you do? What would your character do?
The best two moments for me in the game were:
A. The Mexican standoff between various characters as the situation started to go out of control.
B. Hearing June G. select torture elections like items from a Chinese take out menu: I'd like a cold room, no lights, white noise, sleep deprivation for 60 hours, shackles, and maybe some light slapping. And this was for a prisoner that they "knew" was innocent.
The game ended with a TPK.
The horror, the horror...
-- from Apocalypse Now
3. Sun 10am-4pm. Eric Zimmerman's Strings Attached (Little Fears: Nightmare Edition)
Mumble Monsters, the latest craze sweeping the nation. Robby Winthrope, the kid who has everything was the first to get one. Now everyone is getting one. It’s the only thing on your Christmas list. They’re cute and adorable. And they talk to you at night. The puppets just want love and warmth. And they’ll rip it out of you anyway they can. Hey, does anyone know why Robbie’s been absent?
This is one of those games where the players made the game a wonderful experience. I thought everyone was Excellent (as in Bill and Ted). I played a kid obsessed with cowboys and wore a cowboy costume even to school -- his name was Budd America and he was born on the 4th of July. June G. had the smartest 6 yr old in the world -- she was able to hack into the Toys R Us inventory and billing system. She was smarter than all the other characters put together. Patrick I. was the soccer jock who got into 8 fights in 2 days and sent to the principal's and nurse's office multiple times per day. Tom I. played the responsible 11 yr old, our voice of reason. Nik G. played the angry kid who was most likely to grow up to be a drug dealer-- "Wanna buy a Ho-Ho, buy a Ho-Ho for a dollar?" My favorite was Kris M.'s not-so-bright big/outcast kid -- the big quiet kid who could beat the crap out of you and threw snowballs loaded with rocks.The plot was pretty simple. The kids want the latest expensive toy even though they may be dangerous exactly like Ralphie in "A Christmas Story" who wanted the Red Ryder BB Gun and everybody tells him, "You'll shoot your eye out."
The game was a lot of fun and definitely a G rated movie, appropriate for everyone. Was this horror? Was "Bride of Chucky" horror?
The game ended with a ZPK (Zero Party Kill).
4. Sun 6pm-10:30pm. (game ended 1-1/2 hrs early) Morgan Hua's Dread of Winter Horrible Invitational (Dread)
You are invited to the First Annual Dread of Winter Horrible Invitational located in the Brokedown Lodge — so poor and rundown it can’t afford an “N”. You arrive at night during a thunder storm. There are five tables in a log cabin with seven people per table – you sit at the one with the unnatural cold spot. A roaring fire burns in the gigantic fireplace that sends smoke into your eyes. The power goes out. Despite all of this, you begin to play a game and everything starts to go wrong, horribly and dreadfully wrong, and there is no escape from the Brokedown Lodge.
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| Modified Brookdale Lodge Sign |
Shannon told me at the 2nd Dead of Winter, the rooms were better and things were fixed up and the kitchen was open and they actually served a decent meal in the Brookroom. WTF. So, I wanted to bring back the horror to The Dead of Winter. It would be wicked fun to run a game about the Dead of Winter at the Dead of Winter. I wanted to run the game in the last time slot, so people would have a chance to explore the whole place. I wanted the table at the Cold Spot. I was going to use all the ghost stories about the place, the rumors, the history, the lies, the truth, and some GM glue to make some sense out of it.
I wanted people to relive the horror of the 1st Dead of Winter and for those who missed it, to experience it for the first time -- in a bad way. The players will play themselves and the character sheet asks for the First Name only. I did this just for players that were uncomfortable about playing themselves and wanted to have some distance from really playing themselves. I didn't ask for the Last Name. If a player said they were uncomfortable playing himself or herself, I had an out by saying that they're playing someone with the same first name and is very similar to them, but it isn't them. Also somebody might get really weird-ed out if they died. But I did put a "Next of Kin" on the character sheet to re-enforce the idea that they might die and to make them think it was them.
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| Another recent fire at the Brookdale |
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| The Brookdale in a recent fire |
I'm going to describe the process I went through in designing the game in detail. If you plan on playing in it, you should skip the Spoiler Section marked below.
The game went very well, but we ended 1-1/2 hours early. I could have thrown more obstacles at the players to extend the game, but Gil T. turned into a Jenga pulling monster and I sensed that everyone else had become very much afraid of pulling, as we already reached 25 pulls. So, if I sent more obstacles, Gil would be the only one pulling and that wouldn't have been fun for anyone else.
In the end, it was another ZPK and everyone got to go home.
I felt honored that both Gil T. and Jack Y. (he play tested since he was running his game opposite of mine at DoW) wanted to beat me up at the end of the game -- for putting them through so much horror.
Spoiler Section Start
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| Brookdale Lodge, way back when |
From this, I got a list of locations and ghosts. Prominent in the stories were room 46, gangster tunnels, and the sad story of Sarah Logan, a little girl who's ghost plays in the Brookroom and appears in the bar, asking strangers if they can find her mother. I wanted to tie these major elements together.
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| The Brookroom |
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| Alphonse "Al" Capone |
I then hunted the internet for pictures of period gangsters and period people for the ghosts. I have these craft scissors that leave a wavy edge when you cut paper, when you use these scissors to cut out pictures, they sort of look like over-sized postage stamps.
I also didn't want the ghosts to be one-dimensional. If I were a ghost and stuck at the Brookdale, I would want to do as much as I can to escape. So, I decided some of the ghosts were victims and not necessarily hostile. Manifestations could be a cry for help or a hint to visitors as to the solution of their escape.
The next step was to figure out all the relationships between the ghosts and the "event." I decided something horrible had happened and something was holding all the spirits here. Where this anchor was had to be hard to find and hard to get into. I decided it had to be in the gangster tunnels and underneath the Cold Spot. The Cold Spot was a manifestation of the anchor. People have explored the gangster tunnels before and had sealed it off because it was dangerous. So, the anchor had to be hidden behind one of the walls in the tunnel, otherwise other people would have found it. Well, we have Al Capone, and I remembered Geraldo Rivera's hunt for Al Capone's vault all those years ago. So, it was going to be Al Capone's vault.
Next was to figure out what was in the vault. Well, we're dealing with ghosts here, so it had to be something horrible that was done to someone. But who would Al Capone hate so much that he would put in a vault instead of just whacking them? Someone he loved. Someone he loved that had betrayed him. But if Al Capone just put his wife there that would just create a ghost, but not some anchor. Then I realized, Al could bury both his wife and her lover in concrete (cement overshoes) together, but apart, always inches apart from each other, never able to touch.
This want and desire that was unfulfilled would fuel the ghost anchor. It would hold all the ghosts here even Al Capone's when he dies.
I then had to tie all the other locations and ghosts to this event. Why is room 46 and room 45 so haunted? Well, what if the ghosts are just trying to give a clue to visitors? Well, the vault has a combination lock. What if the ghosts were trying to give hints to the safe's combination?
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| Log Cabin/Game Room |
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| George the Lumberjack |
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| Axe in Log Cabin / Game Room |
In the Mermaid room, a girl was said to have drowned there and because of that, the pool was drained and closed. Her ghost is supposed to haunt the Mermaid room. Well, at the 1st DoW, the pool was not drained and it was filled with scummy water. A window in the Mermaid room looked into the pool and condensation ran down the window and algae grew on it. Drawings of gangsters, people in cement overshoes, mermaids, men in old fashioned diving suits, and a bad drawing of Humphrey Bogart decorated the mural walls. The Mermaid room also has an entrance into the Gangster Tunnels, but bricked up and hidden inside a cabinet (for real, I didn't make this up).
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| Mermaid Room |
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| Drowning Girl re-enacting her death |
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| Drowned Girl |
The bar in the Brookdale was a favorite hangout during DoW.
Also Sarah's ghost is supposed to approach strangers there and ask for her mother. It's pretty sad, considering that Sarah's mother is buried in the vault. The little girl will never find her mother without the player's help. I decided that once Sarah is re-united with her mother by touching both her mother's and mother's lover's hands (maybe it's her real father, maybe it's George?), the anchor would be drained, the Coldness would dissipate, a smell of gardenias (which sometimes appears in the Brookroom) will permeate the vault, and all the ghosts can be freed.
The gangster ghosts would be led by Al Capone and he would do anything to keep his vault secret. Once Al Capone, showed up at the Brokedown, he pulled other gangster ghosts to him and now runs the Brokedown as his little ghost kingdom. I could use gangster ghosts every once in a while to keep the players on their toes. I could also use them to threaten the players if they were close to finding the vault. The solution was to whack Al Capone first. Once Al was dead, the other gangster ghosts, now outside of Al's influence, may want to be freed, unless another gangster ghost steps up to the plate and takes over.
This is the main plot, so how does that tie in with the players?
I wanted the players to relive their 1st DoW. I had them travel to the Brokedown Lodge and arrive in chronological order. Those who arrived in the afternoon could explore the Lodge and experience some of the ghosts. Those who arrived at night had the fog, thunderstorm, and washed out roads to contend with. Expensive room rates, lousy rooms, uncomfortable beds, etc. At night, I would get to haunt them and give them a restless night.
In the morning, they would head for their first DoW game. To be really screwy and meta, they sit down to this DoW game. I start explaining the rules again, etc. But this time I tell them that the ghosts will not let them leave the Brokedown Lodge. They are stuck and if by the end of the game they do not escape, they are stuck here forever with the other 49 ghosts.
To explain why they can't interact with the other people at DoW, I had to phase shift them into a "ghost" plane of existence.
If someone died, I didn't want to totally knock them out of the game, but I didn't want to tell them that explicitly. If a player died, he/she would become a ghost and can could help or hinder the other players when they drew from the Jenga tower.
To help the players, I gave motivations slips to them which told them when they can earn a "reward" token that allowed them a free pull. The motivations slips actually gave them hints as to what to look for and as each motivation slip got resolved, the players got a sense of accomplishment and advancement in the plot.
I also wanted to hand out spook points. As they saw horrible things, I gave them spook points. Every three must be turned in for a random insanity.
One fun trick was suggested at the play test. When the players realized that they were in a game, in a game, and the GM disappeared. Jack Y. asked if the GM notes were available for reading, so they can get out of the Brokedown Lodge. Of course, I can't give the players the notes, that wouldn't be fun. But either Jack or someone else asked, "What if it was just pages of 'You're going to die'?" That was a stroke of genius. So, in my GM notes, after I explain to the players that they're stuck in the Brokedown Lodge, I put two pages of "YOU ALL DIE" repeated over and over again, inter-spaced with a smattering of "THERE IS NO ESCAPE." The remaining GM notes, I kept in a different folder.
Spoiler Section End
