Shocktober 2010 Preview

Last year I challenged myself to come up with 31 horror hooks for the 31 days of October. It was called Shocktober 2009, and some of it worked while some of it didn't. I did get through all 31 days and it felt like a nice little accomplishment. Now that I've got Chuck and Andrea as regular writers I thought I'd spread some of the Halloween and horror love around. We also have a TON of different topics we want to talk about this month. Let's face it, there's no better month than October. Since we're planning on rolling out theme weeks and today is Saturday before the first official week of October begins, I thought it'd be a good time to give a little preview for the different weeks we want to host. Keep Reading to get in on the action!

Dread

Time and again we've talked about how Dread was our first RPG and how good a job it did to slowly introduce us to tabletop role-playing. It occurred to me that we haven't really done the two big things you usually do on a gaming blog when talking about a game you love. So we're going to amend this situation. We'll provide our first actual review of the game as well as its supplements. We'll also be providing some of our original scenarios and questionnaires (Dread's equivalent to character sheets) for anyone to use. Basically you should be able to try out Dread with the free sample rules and what you find here - as long as you have yourself a sturdy Jenga tower.

 

Lovecraft

There's really no better example of horror mixing with tabletop gaming than Call of Cthulhu. The Basic Roleplaying System (B.R.P.) is a very easy to understand system that you can teach to almost anyone regardless of previous role playing experience. It's great in how it isn't actually that tactical. We'll be looking at Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos in several different media with a focus on how it's spread its tendrils slowly into other genres and gaming platforms.

Horror Sampler and Outbreak: Undead

The third week is going to be a bit of mishmash. Call it our "sampler week" for horror gaming. There are a lot of really great horror board games and smaller RPG's out there, so look forward to seeing a lot of days dedicated to one game here or there before we move on to the next one. The surprise hit for me at Gencon was Andrea's intense interest in a little indie zombie game with huge production values called Outbreak: Undead. Don't get me wrong, she loves zombies like any other red-blooded American, but for some reason this is the first RPG she ever really felt compelled to learn and teach everyone to run her own game. Just awesome, and you'll see more about it here.

Movies to Play

Back when I was writing for Eye of the Vortex I began a regular column called Movies to Play where I would pick a movie that appeared to have very good potential for a GM to take and run for his or her players. I've done it a couple of times here as well. The last week in October is reserved for the best part of the Halloween season: horror movies. Andrea and I will be marathoning some of our favorite horror movies (and a couple we haven't seen yet) to write up some brand new Movies to Play articles each day culminating on the 31st to celebrate Andrea's birthday with her favorite all-time horror movie (which to be honest, is actually a very good comedy as well). As the week gets closer we'll try to post a list of the movies we're going to be writing about if you want to follow along with our little horrific marathon.