Morgan's Dead of Winter 2016 Excellent Adventures

Dead of Winter Horror Invitational 2016

This year's DoW was the 2nd best DoW; the best being the first one I attended in 2009 where I was introduced to Dread by Kristin S. and had the legendary way-over-the-top game with Matt A., Matt D., Matt G., Mike M., Shannon M., and I. As a side thought, the first DoW happened before I was blogging about my RPG adventures and it was such a memorable experience, I should write it up before old age sets in and I forget everything. DoW? What? Who? Eh? What that you say?

This year, I didn't run a game, but decided to try for the Player lottery. DoW GMs automatically get a seat, but the remaining seats are filled in a first-come, first-served basis and are generally filled right after registration opens in the first day, if not the first few hours. All the games I was in this year were excellent, not good, or fair, or bad, but excellent, like three Michelin stars excellent, a gourmet gaming experience bonanza. So, in this article, I'm going to focus on the GM chef tricks of the trade that I noticed which contributed to the experience.

I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked. 

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Dec 10, Saturday 11am
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 7th ed.
Scenario Title: And For My Next Trick
GM: Aaron Vanek
Number of Players: 6 (Mike G. / Alexis G. / Bill L. / Josh C. / Shannon M. / Morgan H.)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: In the 1920's, Scientific American magazine offered a reward of $2500 to anyone who could definitively prove they possessed psychic abilities. Their investigative team included: Dr. William McDougall, a founder of modern psychology; Dr. Daniel Comstock, the inventor of Technicolor film; Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, an Episcopalian minister; and Harry Houdini.

The magazine rescinded the offer after internal strife regarding “The Margery Incident” and the team went their separate ways. But the managing editor of SA, J. Malcolm Bird, is putting the group back together for one more investigation. Pre-generated characters are these historical figures, including Houdini.

I really enjoyed this game due to the interaction between the players and the nice buildup of tension and action.

Trick 1: Do research, but use it as a jumping off point, not as the template for the game.

This game was very well researched. But the research material is only the jumping off point for the game. Some GMs make the mistake of using real history as the template for the whole game and try to railroad the players into playing out the historical events. That is a big mistake. Instead, Aaron started with the historical events having already happened and the game starting afterwards. The other thing Aaron did was to tell us, that though the characters are historical, once the players get their hands on them, we can do as we want and ahistorical events could happen. e.g. Houdini can die early.

The famous historical event that already happened before the game started was Houdini and Margery. You can read about it in the links below (I dug this up after the game):

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mina_Crandon
• http://www.prairieghosts.com/margery.html
• http://mentalfloss.com/article/53424/houdinis-greatest-trick-debunking-medium-mina-crandon 

Trick 2. Randomize hidden die rolls.

Matt S. uses a technique for hidden die rolls. He has players roll a series of 1d100 for hidden rolls and have them written down on a sheet of paper. For instance, instead of asking a player to roll a Spot Hidden, he just looks it up on the sheet and crosses it out. This prevents the players from meta-gaming a roll when they fail a roll. How many times has a GM asked a player to roll a Spot Hidden and after a failure, the other players ask to make a Spot Hidden also? Well, Aaron has a nice variation on this. He had each of us roll a series of ten 1d100 and have us write it down on a single shared sheet of paper that's handed to the GM. Then instead of going through the pre-rolled numbers top-down, he rolls 1d10 and selects that pre-rolled number, so if a player had memorized their rolls, it's now randomized. Nice.

Trick 3. The third technique he used which I want to talk about is in the Spoiler section.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The game starts off with "getting the band back together again." After the falling out between Bird and Houdini, another psychic medium is found and Bird invites the old Scientific American investigative team for dinner at a posh restaurant. His task is to convince the team to investigate and if possible certify the medium as genuine.

Of course, there's history between all the characters and that provides some role playing opportunities as they hash out their old differences and colors their interaction.

What I really enjoyed was that we were able to do two seances: One at the medium's place and one inside our control location.

The first seance followed the standard darkening of the room, candles, holding hands, and contacting the spirit, the ringing of a bell by a ghostly spirit, and asking the medium questions from the spirit world. Other than the possible manifestation of a shadowy rat thing, everything we noticed could have been a sham.

The second seance was where Aaron shined. We did a seance in our own controlled room. Supernatural things happened. When the "spirit" took over the medium, he grabbed my hand tightly which reflexively caused all the other players in the circle who were holding hands to do the same thing, creating a wave of clutched hands, then he did a great booming "transformed" voice. This made us all jump. It was a well done piece of theater.

Trick 3: Know how people react physically and use it well in game (squeezing the hands tightly and a shocking loud voice). Another example of this is how people react to the Jenga Tower in Dread.

The players were convinced the event was real and the medium took the prize money to pay off a strange Oriental gentleman to get an urn of ashes. She then proceeded to summon a "demon" which the players were unable to stop which gathered her up in its arms and flew away.

The build up of action was good, except I found the start a bit too slow, we took an hour getting ready for our first scene. We had to read 3 pages of character background and also another 2 pages about the tiff between Bird and Houdini (for those who knew about the details). Then there were numerous GM / Player meetings. So, when Aaron asked if he should take into account a lunch break or we would just power through, we voted for powering through. We wanted more play time. I think that's one of the dangers of too much research, the GM wants to show the players all the wonderful work he's done and some of it isn't necessary for the game.

I did like that the scenario ended the way it did. Too many scenarios ramp up to the ending of the world and the players trying to stop it. It did look like it was headed that way due to an opening vortex above a high rise apartment building. This time, it was just a disturbance that went away, but the investigators got to gaze deeply into the unknown.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Dec 10, Saturday 7pm
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 7th ed.
Scenario Title: The Road
GM: Aaron Teixeira
Power Level: US Army Engineers
Number of Players: 6 (Bill L. / Morgan H. / Matt R. / Mike E. / Chris O. / Skylar W.)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: February 6th, 1942, the US Army, with authorization from Congress and President Roosevelt, approved plans to build a road from the Dawson Creek, British Columbia through the Yukon to Delta Junction, Alaska. Ten thousand men are cutting their way through the frozen North where the muck and mire reach up to swallow their tractors and eyes watch them from the darkened forest.

Again really good research into the dark history of WW2 - pun intended. The character interactions were great and there was a really good buildup to the spectacular ending. A minor spoiler, but it's a reveal in the first ten seconds of the game, the engineering group we're playing belongs to an all black battalion.

Here are links to the historical event that I found after the game:

• http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/science/in-alaska-black-soldiers-defied-armys-prejudice.html
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/alaska-men/

Trick 1: If you want to build camaraderie, put them in a situation that they must work together.

Aaron was able to create camaraderie between the characters through shared hardship. It all started with man vs nature, not man vs man, so we had to band together to beat nature and our initial man vs man issues.

Trick 2: Know when to ignore game system rules.

Aaron doesn't play by the rules. One of the main rules of most RPGs is that the GM decides which rules to apply and which to ignore. A lot of GMs forget this number one rule. Aaron lets players push and burn luck at the same time to avoid critical failures (a big no-no in CoC 7th rules), just so they can survive and be a band of brothers to face the finale together.

Trick 3: Understand your game and what serves it best. Not all games must run in real time.

Between set pieces, Aaron was willing to let days if not weeks go by for the characters. More about this in the spoiler section.

Trick 4: When a PC is going to die, give them a choice as to how they want it to end.

Sometimes PC death is unavoidable. But when my character was going to bite the big one, Aaron gave me a choice of Everywhere, Down, or Up.  I picked Up. So, instead of just dying in some horrible way and just becoming a blood splattered corpse which I expected to happen, I got to choose, which was very cool.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The characters are members of the 97th Engineering Battalion responsible for building a road through the frozen north in Alaska. The issues they face are not only the elements, but lack of equipment and discrimination as an all black battalion.

We had various Mad-Lib forms to fill out to create some Man vs Man connections between the characters (there are friend and foe connections). So we start our characters with some Man vs Man issues.

The game started with a lot of save throws against the environment such as the cold and insects. As things went from bad to worse, we wound up having to work together to survive and by the time it was ready face the big bad, we were a cohesive team.

Aaron had various set pieces and the standouts were: Building a bridge and it's failure. Stealing bulldozers. A group that commits a crime together sticks together. :-)  And of course, the finale.

Trick 3: Characters went to the hospital between set pieces because that served the game best.

After characters got hurt, they went to the Army hospital and rested until they're ready for active duty - which made sense. But you still needed to survive the set piece in order to get to the hospital. What was important was that the characters bonded and faced the final terror together, so allowing the characters to heal up served the story better than just grinding the characters down and making them suffer which is a different type of game. So, the GM trick was to understand your game and what served it best. In this instance, letting the characters completely heal, served the story verses having some battalion commander order them out into the field while injured to face more danger.

We were bulldozing a stand of Aspens, and of course, as we headed towards the heart of its creation, we found a ritual tree with a protective circle.  "Tree got Freddie" and Tree got bulldozer.

One of the best moments was in the finale when the team attacked the big bad, a Dark Young, with bulldozers, gasoline, and dynamite. After the gasoline and dynamite went off (which we were so ready to see the thing die and the game end. "Game Over Man, Game Over!"), nothing happened to the big bad which was immune to those things. Yes, Aaron gave us those things at the beginning of the game and of course, we thought that was what we needed to kill it. There's some gleeful GM cackling happening somewhere.

We did finally manage to kill it with the bulldozers and that big bad fight was incredibly satisfying.

Shaking hands over the final link of the highway.

Trick 4: Everywhere, Down, Up.

I think Everywhere is being in the explosion when the dynamite went off.  Down is being thrown with the bulldozer like a rag doll and becoming an impact weapon against the white road building team. And Up, which is what I chose, was to be taken up into the bosom of The Mother, Shub-Niggurath, and turned into some abomination to survive for all time.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Dec 11, Sun 11am
Game System: Nemesis | ORE
Scenario Name: The House that Jaeger Built
GM: Jack Young
Variations: Modern day, no Madness Meter, minor hacks
Power Level: Experienced special agents and consultants
Number of Players: 6  (Jill S. / Matt A. / Aaron V. / John C. / Jason M. / Morgan H.)
Characters Provided: Of course
Description:
New York occult author Lucy Kane is missing.  The Psychological Crimes Division of the FBI handles cases of an occult, serial, or unusual nature and your team has been called in to aid in the investigation.  Will a decrepit Bronx hotel give up its secrets . . . or its dead?

I'm a big fan of Jack's games and I had heard great things about this game, so I was excited about playing in it. The thing about Jack's games is that they never finish on time. They always run long. So, this time, Jack worked on speeding things up and kept the meat of the game. Afterwards, someone who had played in this game before told me this game should really be a 9 hour game. But kudos to Jack, we finished in 6.5 hours.

Trick 1: Don't be afraid to tell players things and emphasize it is not a GM trick.

To cut various investigative leads out and to save time, Jack told us, these things were already done and by trusted people. Just to give us a flavor, the asked us what we would look at and just narrated the fruitless dead ends that we ourselves ran into. So, we shortcut to the House that Jaeger Built where our adventure really begins - and it's no secret since it's in the game title and game description.

Trick 2: Don't be afraid to shorten combat to save time for more important scenes.

At one point, Jack was going to let one of the major bad guys get away and extend the combat, but we were already short on time, so he was brave enough to ret-con himself (which a lot of GMs are afraid to do) and said, "Let me change this. You actually shoot him in the head and he's dead." Which was ok since the PC did do a head shot, but it was a tie between the bad guy and the PC. Initially, Jack was going to rule that the bad guy got away (probably with some reduced damage), but changed his mind. There was still going to be more major action to come, so it was a trade off between lessening the events at this point, but allowing time for the finale.  What would be worse would be running out of time and having to narrate the finale.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

In this game, our only existing lead was to a rundown hotel in a bad neighborhood and two names. We find one of the names on the mailboxes in the lobby and proceed upstairs.

No one answers the door and as we discuss the legality of breaking and entering, a person with groceries shows up. After some questioning and no legal cause for entry, we get ready to leave when a cat slips outside the apartment with a "Help. I'm being held note" tied to its collar.

So, we break in and start a gun fight. Which leads to a secret room with Nazi paraphernalia and our kidnap victim, an occult hunter looking for ghosts. But we find out too late that something bad has happened and the whole building has been transferred edge-wise to a different dimension and we find out we need to find and kill an old ghost that is the anchor to this reality. (It's actually more complicated than this, but you get the picture.)

There are also ghosts sprinkled throughout the building and we had researched their histories and hauntings earlier. In the finale, we get help from the ghosts in defeating the big bad and we succeed and also windup freeing the ghosts in the building. As players, we can tell we probably should have spent some time interacting with some of the ghosts earlier on in order to get their help, but as this was a quick version of a Jack game, we never got to do that. We did talk to some kids playing in the building and got some clues as to where some of the ghostly behavior was occurring, but once we broke into the apartment, all the investigation stopped.

This game was very well constructed with clues sprinkled throughout the game and some tough puzzles and issues which we somehow with our top notch team of investigators (and good players) figured out. The ending was very satisfying and we only wished we had the full 10 hours to play this game in its entirety.

I got to play a doctor and wanted to do a different spin on it. He took his Hippocratic oath seriously. Even though he had a gun, he only fired it at supernatural creatures, and spent most of his time playing coroner and healing people. During the gun fight, he called NYPD and notified them that the PCD of the FBI was in the building and that shots were being fired and to send an ambulance. When faced with a person who seemed supernatural, but he wasn't sure, he zip tied him instead of shooting him. I got to dig through garbage bags and check dead bodies.  Good times.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Dec 11, Sun 7pm
Game System: The Veil (Evolved)
Scenario Title: Meat
GM: Matthew Grau
Variations: Splatterpunk
Power Level: Transhuman (of a sort)
Number of Players: 6 (Aaron T. / Lis H. / Morgan H. / Frank F.)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: Fall in the Midwest. What a wonderful time to go camping with your friends! The leaves are just starting to turn, the crisp air is invigorating, and the summer bugs are gone. You’ve got your tent, your flashlight, and a cooler stocked with cheap beer and meat for the fire. The venison burgers are already smelling good. Yup, this is just about as good as it gets.

This is a Body Horror Splatterpunk-style game, which means lots of violence and gore. I’ll do terrible things to you, and you’ll do terrible things to others. I’ll be making custom characters based on who is playing, so that the horror can be a little more personal. This game is also diceless, so you’ll be actively participating in crafting the narrative. Just want to be up-front in case any of this isn’t your cup of tea.

OMG, I laughed through all 6 hours of this game.  Lis and Aaron were amaze balls in this. I don't think I can describe any part of this game without getting into trouble (I'll put some of the more tame stuff in the spoiler section), so the only thing I can say is that it was definitely xXx-Rated for sexual content. Lis and Aaron carried most of this game and I was happy to watch the most amazing game ever.

Trick 1: When great scenes eat up your time, let them run, don't cut them short, but steal time from follow-on scenes or throw scenes out and only keep the essential ones.

Matt had a lot of scenes and encounters and I think he threw out at least half of what he had for us and only kept the bare bones.  We finished in time and had a great time. I think letting the narrative flow go until a natural stopping point worked very well. Instead of cutting a scene short, Matt just threw away scenes he probably spent a lot of time working on to adjust for the time we were taking in each scene.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Game starts with us at a DoW reunion beach camping. I suggested playing Flaming Dread with giant 2x4 pieces and having Kristin run the game for us.

Well, after finding a weird body on the beach, we all wound up getting killed and we wake up with our bodies modified in an alien lab.

So, the whole game was about escaping the lab and running into alien weirdness and mad science.

As the game progressed, we got to upgrade our bodies.

The game was brilliant. To get out, we kept on putting on more and more extreme body modifications.

Lis and Aaron become a symbiotic creature that seemed like a Dark Young / Shub-Niggurath creature.  Frank and my character became a Master Blaster team. I was just a head and Frank was the Frankenstein-like creature. But my skills started to evolve into hyper-scanning and speed. Eventually, the body modifications allowed me to actively scan and send out x-rays and other energetic particles to scan for things and my gaze could start to unravel matter and my speed increased so fast it could reach the speed of light and effect time travel. Yes, I was starting to be a proto-Azathoth whose gaze destroys all and bends time and space.

The person responsible for our changes as this mad scientist who looked human. He said he had great power, but after the game, I'm convinced that he was Nyarlathotep.

Mike M. missed the game and he was supposed to start as a proto-Shoggoth.

Highlights:

Jet propulsion via ram jetting sewage through Aaron's orifices.

Glow fetus on umbilical cords as light source.

Vagina dentata as a weapon.

Aaron's description of how his 5 stomachs processes DNA for re-insemination.

Lis as the Mother with fetus mortar rounds.

Skinned fetus as tattoo map.

Fetus as hot air balloon.

Fetus wall.

Did I mention sex? Well, there was a lot of sex.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===