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General Category => RPGs => : Wooberman October 21, 2012, 04:22:48 PM
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Obviously Halloween is not far away and my group has tasked me once again to come up with a satisfying Horror game session.
Unfortunately I find myself with a tiny bit of writers block and thus far am having problems with coming up with a good scenario to put my players through hell and probably leave their characters bloodied, dying and scrabbling after the shreds of their sanity.
Ideally I'd love to run Fear itself, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu or even All flesh must be eaten. I know that the Fear itself- Invasive procedures adventure is pretty nasty (As the boys at RPPR have no doubt shown thus far) but I cannot spare the capital at the moment.
Does anyone have any examples of a nasty simple Scenarios using any of the above systems?
Anything at all will suffice.
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Have you looked at the scenarios at Hebanon Games?
Also I based a one shot from this video game http://lonesurvivor.wikia.com/wiki/Lone_Survivor_Wiki
seemed to work pretty well
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I second the Hebanon Games suggestion. It is run by a great writer...who is also super handsome...and humble.
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Do "The Fall Without End". It will waste any normal group of players, probably before they find the monsters.
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John Wick's Digging up a Dead God, it's $5 or so so not costly but not free. It's more or less Lord of the Flies except the players are Nazis who have enslaved a village in Africa.
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easy one shot horror?
make pregens
isolate the pcs from the rest of the world
imply rather than show the big baddie
and watch the players scare themselves!
one of my favourite one shots was just having the PCs have to take shelter in an old, rundown abandoned inn with outbuildings...with graves in the back and all sorts of signs pointing to vampires (garlic cloves, etc)...the big baddie was a Slithering Tracker...the entire 3 person party ended up all dying...i had the scenario take place during a heavy rainstorm, so the Tracker could have many places to hide...
Have fun!
ps here's an awesome example of how someone can scare themselves http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_187418&feature=iv&src_vid=6MjoknnWX1g&v=JthULY_xS1Y
and i here is the master -- i wonder how much he'd charge the RPPR gang for him to Ref a game? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzduOQsuYX4
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Update -
I ran the horror game last Saturday. My players wanted me to run it through Fear Itself and I decided that I would jump into the deep end and run it without published materials barring the Fear Itself core book and the Book of unremitting horror for inspiration. I started with a vague concept of the players being at a Halloween party on that exact day when the power cut out.
I'll simply put that the game didn't go to plan. For the Players it was hilariously fun and they had a great time. For me it was a horrifying display of cat herding and I questioned ever running a horror game for this group again. In short, I lost more stability than any of the players and I was running the damn thing.
I'll add more in a later when I have more time.
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Update -
I ran the horror game last Saturday. My players wanted me to run it through Fear Itself and I decided that I would jump into the deep end and run it without published materials barring the Fear Itself core book and the Book of unremitting horror for inspiration. I started with a vague concept of the players being at a Halloween party on that exact day when the power cut out.
I'll simply put that the game didn't go to plan. For the Players it was hilariously fun and they had a great time. For me it was a horrifying display of cat herding and I questioned ever running a horror game for this group again. In short, I lost more stability than any of the players and I was running the damn thing.
I'll add more in a later when I have more time.
Man. The Book of Unremitting Horror is, second only to Findley's 'Van Ritchen's Guides' series, my absolute FAVORITE take on a 'monster manual'.
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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.
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It happens Wooberman. Sometimes scenarios just explode into booze and fun.
I ran the Haunting for a couple of buddies (third time running the Haunting) and they spent most of the game buying drugs off one of the janitors at Miskatonic U. At first I was all disgruntled but the scenario ended with their first characters in the hospital and then the second pair dynamited the house ontop of themselves.
One of the players ran into me in the bar and said he was listening to the AP the other day and wants to turn it into sound poetry, so I count that as a win. When i realized things weren't going to be as serious I just kind of went with it and matched asshattery with asshattery. Even in the simplest scenarios things can go gonzo, I suppose its all part of the social contract thing, establishing beforehand the tone of the game you want, why you want it and what everyone can do to help.