Morgan's Dead of Winter 2018 Excellent Adventures

This is the 10th Anniversary of Dead of Winter Horror Invitational (DoW). Next year, Matt says DoW will be open to non-horror games and it'll be the "next level" of gaming. Stay tuned as to what that means. 😊

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Sat 11am
Scenario Title: El Alisal
Game System: Delta Green
GM: Marty Caplan
Variations: Playing cards: 2 Suits, Ace to 10. Insanity Cards. Everyone Wears a Black Hat.
Power Level: Cussed Hard-Cases, Pinkertons, and Outlaws
Number of Players: 5 (Dovi, Liz, Rob, Skylar, Morgan)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: 1853, The California Gold Rush is in high gear. El Alisal is the outlaw shadow of San Francisco to the east. The omnipresent sycamore trees of this small town that is swollen with gold dust hides the dark deeds of Joaquin Murietta and his lieutenants (the PCs) as they recuperate. Only, nobody’s seen the “Robin Hood of El Dorado” for a few days… He headed out to the Diablo Range with a new lady he met, dark haired and strange. Some whores overheard them talking crazy, un-Christian talk about eternal life, raising the dead, and most of all bloody revenge on the white miners who raped Murietta’s wife when he got his first big gold claim jumped back in ’49! Maybe we should go check on the boss? The gold’s running out after a few days of R&R and it’s time for the next job to keep us all in liquor and women!

TRIGGER WARNING: EXTREME GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, SEXUAL SITUATIONS, NUDITY, TORTURE, RACISM, SEXISM, BLASPHEMY. The game will use the X-card system.

Tone: Hardcore 50/50 Horror with good ol’ western themes & other elements. Bad people doing whatever needs to be done, no matter who suffers.

This was a good game, but it really wasn't Delta Green. I think it originally used the Delta Green system until all the dice mechanics were replaced with cards. Hit points and Sanity were replaced with poker chips. As you draw cards instead of rolling dice (1st card 10's die, 2nd card 1's die), if you pull an Insanity card, it comes into play. A critical success (a success with matched colored cards) lets you gain a poker chip; a critical failure (a failure with matched colored cards) gains you an additional Insanity card to be shuffled into your deck. If you have a Bond, you can bet chips on the Bond's die roll. On a success, you double your bet; On a failure, you lose your bet. Overall, an interesting new mechanic.

We had a good range of PCs to choose from, based on real historical figures.

Overall, a good solid game.

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The creature was interesting, a variation of Sub-Niggurath, whose roots infest the world and creates root zombies that does its bidding. Only magic fire from the Indians can kill the creatures and its network of roots.

There were some small issues that Marty will fix in future runs. We kept on arriving after the evil killed its victims, so there wasn't much to do, other than be an observer afterwards. I recommended that we need to arrive just in time to maybe do something (small chance in the first few encounters), then as we are hot on its trail, have bigger and bigger chances to do something to save the victims (if we so choose to, some PCs had backgrounds more aligned to Joaquin's plan of revenge).

The plot was pretty much predictable, chase after the trail of bodies, arriving too late, but getting closer, then finally meeting the big bad and try to defeat it.

Highlights:

1. Root zombies - root zombie guard dog, our introduction to the fast root zombies.

2. Mining camp / Mine shaft fight - with more human root zombies and finding Joaquin enthralled by the Evil Lady in Black.

3. Final climactic fight in the cave with the lake - Joaquin falling apart like cottage cheese after we saved him and burned the infestation from his body. I dove into the lake to retrieve a lantern of magic fire (which was knocked out of our hands) and got a critical hit hucking it at the Evil Lady in Black and set her on fire.

Overall, a solid game, but a bit too predictable for me. I did like the variety of PCs and the creature. We basically arrived too late for the first 3 encounters and became passive observers, but having us arrive a bit sooner for the 2nd and 3rd encounter would make the PCs more involved and active.

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Photograph By:

Dr. Keith Vanderlinde, NSF

Sat 7pm
Scenario Title: Dark and Lonely Ice
Game System: Cthulhu Dark
GM: Jim Mathews
Variations Physical die and sanity die variant
Power Level: Intelligent and Skilled
Number of Players: 5 (Dovi, Gil, Jack, Liz, Morgan)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: The highest winds in Antarctica reach over 300 mph. The coldest temperatures drop bellow –100 F. The Sun will not rise again for six months and the closest humans are a thousand miles across difficult terrain. You are the winter crew of AmScott Station. Do your job, run your experiments, and try to keep Antarctica from killing everyone. Oh, and don’t ask anyone why they’re here. You all have your reasons.

Tone: Tense psychological horror in a deadly and isolated environment

A great game. Subtlety is what made this game great. We found all these clues and a lot of them were ambiguous and sometimes misleading until we did more analysis. This kept us guessing and in the moment. My favorite of the games I played in at DoW.

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First, Antarctica in the winter (no daylight) is trying to kill us by just being freaking cold. Then people start seeing things and it could be something like Ergot poisoning, or an evil experiment by the corporation, or mental issues like being stir crazy. Then we find weird stuff under the ice, like a burial pit with bones. Then weird runes drawn in blood. Then missing people. Then deliberate sabotage. Is our equipment bad because the corporation was cheap? Mismanagement? Deliberate? Is there a killer loose? Or someone just going crazy? WTF is going on?

All this stuff continuously ran through our minds throughout the game. It was great.

Two great moments:

1. The burial pit with bones. Aha! Cult stuff, right? Analysis showed that some lost South Pole expeditions might have come near where our camp is and the depth of snow makes it possible it's the remnants of a failed expedition. The bones belonged to dogs. Buried sled dogs or ritual sacrifice? Answer: remnants of a failed expedition.

2. Two PCs trudge towards a facility, but camp in the snow after being exhausted, suddenly they see the lights of a vehicle drive by. They jump out to catch it, but it didn't seem to see them and drives right by. Is it going to the other facility to help or kill people? Answer: To kill.

What was great was that throughout the game we were very much in the moment, trying to survive and trying to figure things out. Clues we found could be attributed to various things and we worked very hard to sort things out. All the clues were subtle. There wasn't some whack you on the head clues that pointed to what was going on and the quick easy solution.

I loved this game.

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Sun 11am
Scenario Title: Home for the Holidays
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed.
GM: Michael Ripley
Variations: Non-Mythos tale of holiday horror
Power Level: Various Citizens of Granite Falls
Number of Players: 5 (Gil, Jack, Jim, Matt A, Morgan)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: Description: Snow is on the ground and the town’s become a winter wonderland. Festive decorations are appearing on Main Street and the magic of the holidays is almost here. Time for the citizens of Granite Falls to put the finishing touches on their 100th annual Christmas Festival. How is it that no one has noticed the extra chill in the air or the unusually deep shadows once the sun sets? Why doesn’t anyone remember the stories of the first Christmas Festival and the dying curse of Old Man Talbot?

Tone: A tale of mounting terror and violence with a deceptively cheery backdrop of the Holiday Season.

Great pacing in this game. And Michael was extremely tolerant of our joking around. We made a lot of jokes and we had a really fun table. My second favorite game for this DoW.

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All the PCs belonged to the Granite Falls celebrative council, sort of a city council for promotion of historical and seasonal events. 5 other NPCs also belong to the council. 100 years ago, the city burned down and was rebuilt.

First our kids get kidnapped. Then members of the council wind up dead. Then murdered in full view of the citizens by small "children." We finally figured out who the killer was when we were down to only one NPC council member.

Highlights:

1. Santa Claus being decapitated by small "children" who then put his severed head on top of a x-mas tree.

2. Opening fire in a crowded church to take down a small "child."

3. The Mayor drives away and we find his car abandoned. There's some blood in the car and a doll attacks us. Is the Mayor dead in the woods somewhere? Is he safe?

4. We break into the Mayor's house and as the Sheriff kicks in a door in the basement, the Mayor opens fire with a shotgun and kills the Sheriff. We open fire and kill the Mayor. Behind us, the town's priest slams the door behind us, locks it, and sets the house on fire. Did the priest just freak out? Or is he the killer? Answer: He's the killer. And we had just accidentally murdered the Mayor. 😊 And why did we trust the priest? Because we thought we saved him from a killer doll in his church and thought he was going to be the next victim.

5. Final fight scene. Save our children or kill the supernatural Ragman? Answer: Do both. We had to slaughter a lot of creepy dolls and stop the priest from setting the church on fire with our kids in it. We pulled our kids out and WE set the church on fire instead. 🔥 Only 3 of the council members survived. Luckily, one was the Fire Chief. 😊

The handouts were great:

1. Michael hands us a handout. It's a xerox of an old newspaper clipping. Yep, instead of trying to mock up an old newspaper clipping and printing it on newsprint and aging it, he told us it was a copy of an old newspaper clipping. e.g. "You find a xerox of a newspaper clipping." and hands us a fresh piece of paper. Genius.

2. A NPC council member made a flyer with all the council member portraits as x-mas ornaments on a tree. As each council member dies, they're x-ed out.

3. A flyer with pictures of all our missing children with their names (because we really have problems remembering them in game.)

The pacing of this game was spot on and there was enough ambiguity near the end that we really didn't know who the killer was until we found the killer dolls waiting for us in church. It really played out like a horror movie with the right twists.

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Sun 7pm
Scenario Title: My Final Abode
Game System: Cthulhu Dark Ages, 7th Ed.
GM: Frank A. Figoni
Variations: Home brew Japanese variant
Power Level: Heh, you have none
Number of Players: 6 (Gil, Jim, John, Matt G, Morgan)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: It’s November 1586 and medieval Japan is in the midst of civil war, which the honorable Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi is determined to win and unify all Japan.  It’s at this time he puts out a curious summons to all loyal Daimyo to send their best warriors or scholars to Heian-kyō.  Some loyal Daimyo procrastinate, explaining their best are currently fighting for the honor of the Emperor, but most send their best and brightest.  What will the Shogun require?  Some warriors whisper they will become hostages, while others claim they will gain much glory.  Monks and sages claim they will find wisdom.  The Christian priests point out, “In the end, only God knows…”

Tone:  Get your honor on!  Much like Seven samurai, Shogun, or Ran this will test most players devotion to ones honor.

I ran a 16th century Japan campaign for 2 years and did a lot of research for it. One of the best resources for a Japanese game is Sengoku. The problem is that most RPG players' familiarity with Japanese culture is Legend of Five Rings (L5R) or D&D's Oriental Adventures (OA). Some may have watched Kurosawa's samurai movies, the Zatoichi series, or the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

The problem is that L5R is a mish-mash of Japanese and Chinese, so L5R is a bad representation of Japanese culture, just like McDonald's is a bad representation of a hamburger. OA is even worse.

The best parts of a samurai game are the social contracts and the consequences of breaking them. It adds another dimension to the game vs straight murder hoboing.

For each character, there should be an outward facing face that outsiders see, an inner family face, and a secret inside face. Most games don't go to that level. We didn't get this in the game.

So, the problem is how do you run an authentic feudal Japanese game without spending hours going over the subtle differences and issues. You can't just skin a D&D game with Japanese themes and call it an authentic Japanese game and do it justice. Or do you just don't bother educating your players and see what happens?

Frank had a quick two sheet description of some terms and the social hierarchy which helped, but it probably wasn't enough.

There were two parts of the game, a social part and a combat part. I really enjoyed the beginning of the game which was the social part. But the later half of the game just didn't work for me. I think others liked the later part of the game more. So, your mileage may vary.

Overall, for me, an ok game.

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At the start of the game, the PCs were summoned to Heian-kyō and were told the Daimyo was fickle and dangerous. So, we all went on our way trying to figure out what was going on before our audience. This part I really liked. Any misstep could lead to our deaths.

We meet the Daimyo's representative and he tells us to go to another province and pacify the roads for the merchants. Which some samurai thought was beneath them.

Then the Daimyo's representative was murdered and we were fingered as the #1 suspects. Still, so far so good. Then we're sent to investigate the murder and rectify it. Also fine.

On the boat ride up, we run into a disguised avatar of Nyarlathotep who tasks us to kill the White Witch. Out of game, I already figured out who he was. He showed another PC the ruin that would happen if the White Witch isn't defeated and the glory that would come to pass if we did his bidding.

We travelled north and wound up in the Dreamlands and face some supernatural powers and defeat the White Witch.

Where I had problems was that it felt like the first part (meeting the Daimyo's representative) was completely separate from the second part (Nyarlathotep, Dreamlands, and killing the White Witch). It felt like two completely separate stories just smashed together.

My preference was to actually go and pacify the roads and have adventures and make hard decisions while doing that vs the second part which was a standard action adventure quest.

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