One week from the game and I can finally talk about it.
Firstly introducing the group -
- Holly Knight, the oblivious sexy girl journalist who was involved in a hit-and-run once before.
- Francis Millar, the vengeful burnout benefit claimant who tortured small animals in his childhood.
- Claire Fraser, the protective brain Doctor/surgeon who had also been involved in a hit-and-run.
These were the serious characters, Then there were -
- Father Doyle, the horny catholic priest who once sold children to africa as slave labor. Please don't ask.
- Travis Daglass, the sceptical 70's policeman with a drinking problem who watched his old partner die and didn't do anything to help him.
- Jeff Denim, the thrill-seeking good guy tour guide from Australia who helped cover up an accident that involved a tourist being eaten by a Crocodile.
To help the players get involved with the game I let them make their own characters. Normally for a one shot such as this I would have made pre-gens and I quickly realised why this is but by then it was too late. I would like to add that I purposefully kept the "worst things you ever did" completely up to the player, as you can tell by Father Doyle that this was a bad idea.
The Premise- It was a Modern Day Scenario where the group would meet up at Claire's house for a Halloween party. The Power would cut out near to midnight and then the fun would happen. The fun being that somewhere in my diseased mind I conjured up the idea that the fabled Ocean Game of the Mystery Men (see Book of Unremitting Horror) involved a twisted combination of Silent Hill and the Hunger Games. The Ocean game would take place in a pocket dimension containing an almost exact replica of their surroundings, very much like Silent hill. Unbeknownst to the Characters, they are being observed by a pair of competing Mystery men who aim to turn them against each other to their own amusement. Also An Ovvashi by the name of Gilligan has also taken an interest and wishes to tip the odds to his favour giving each character the means to kill the other by means of a Faustian deal. I was considerably impressed with myself with this as I effectively pulled it out of my arse.
The Execution - In a word? Eesh. I decided to keep the scenario in an area we all knew well so it was based in our mutual home town of Plymouth, Devon. Claire's house would be in a heavily populated area of the city. Nice enough for a well-to-do Doctor but not too much to outclass the area. This was to make the players immediately realise that its highly unusual for there to be no-one around on a Saturday night post-blackout. That took some time as once the blackout happened and they found that although they had a full signal on their phones they couldn't call out, they opted to getting some candles and continuing partying. This was pretty much the theme of the night. I was required to be heavy handed when it came to rousing the characters. Maybe I wasn't on my game that night but here's a full list of events -
- The group stumbles into a blood ghoul draining an unfortunate student. Player reaction - He's getting a BJ!
- Father Doyle is attacked by the same blood ghoul, doesn't attempt to fight it off and instead preaches loudly exlaiming "what is wrong my son?"
- The group manages to fight off the ghoul but Father Doyle is left on 0 hp and desperately needs blood. Quest Journal is updated "Find a Hospital to get Father Doyle blood".
- Hobo with shark like teeth and black eyes addresses Holly, informing her that if she kills Father Doyle she would be free'd from this nightmare and will become Chief Editor for People magazine. She takes this very well... obliviously well... I left that conversation realising that her character wouldn't know she was on fire until someone told her.
- Each of the characters are approached by the Ovvashi, in different forms, and told to kill one other character to get out of this and be rewarded with whatever they wanted. Francis to kill Travis to win the National Lottery, Travis to kill Holly for a nice retirement package and so on.
- Finally they reach the hospital and after some minor events involving their "worst things" they were ready to get Father Doyle some aid.
- Claire tells Holly to get the blood to my glee.
- During this time the players are getting wasted, booze was a bad idea.
- Holly successfully poisons Father Doyle killing him outright.
- Holly vanishes, Travis' player doesn't understand what this means but continues playing.
- Claire's player (my wife) is tired and retires from the game.
- I pass Claire to the player of the recently deceased Father Doyle.
- Travis and Claire suddenly have sex.
At this point of the game everything blew up and everyone decided to just out and out kill each other Killsplosion Style. Everyone died with the exception of Holly, Francis and Jeff although Jeff was trapped in the limbo world to be tormented by the Mystery men where the other two killed their targets and got what they wanted.
So then, what do you think? In hindsight I really should have seen the bullshitting coming but the players had fun and that's what counts I guess.
