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Happy Halloween from The Hopeless Gamer!

Shocktober Day 15 - Horrors to Play - Sauna

So I've thrown out my themes for this last week of Shocktober in favor of throwing up a bunch of Horrors to Play movie reviews since everyone knows the best part of Halloween is a good scary movie. Where yesterday's movie, Pontypool, seems like a movie ready-made to play right out of the box, today's movie will take more work and just the right group to really be effective. I didn't want to let this difficulty level keep me from reviewing one of my recent favorite horror movies though, so here we are with 2008's Finnish historical horror movie, Sauna.

Sauna is a dark, quiet ghost story set in a no-man's land between Finland and Russia after a long, bitter war in the year 1595. It's a desolate, swampy, wet, muddy, and grey world, and our main characters are tasked with the responsibility of working with each other to develop a new border between the two countries. Even in the quiet, mundane moments (of which there are virtually none), the tension is thick between these two camps as they travel through a vast, unknowable swamp better left behind by both countries.

When I began watching this movie, it sucked me in immediately. The acting is immense, and since there isn't a whole lot of dialogue, the subtitles weren't even the slightest bit distracting. A little bit in, my wife looked up after I made the comment that it looked like it was a WWI film and not something set at the end of the 16th century. She replied that she thought it was a WWI movie. In other words, if you're familiar with the staggering depression and oppression of movies set in the late 1910's, and that's your thing, Sauna too will likely be your thing.

Really though, Sauna shines when it comes to the menace it presents in the unknowable. The movie is scary enough in the first portion of the film as we follow the exploits of the surveyor teams and see how they would operate normally if freaky shit wasn't happening. It's in this first leg of the journey though that we see how haunted the characters really are. In the second portion of the film, when we're presented with the eponymous sauna house in a bizarre village in the exact center of this epic swampland (think the Dead Marshes from Lord of the Rings, but with more trees and less smiles and giggles). Never before has a dark doorway ever given me such a feeling of dread.

After seeing Sauna, you will know why this is so scary.

I don't want to get into the details of the plot because I highly recommend seeing the movie for yourself, but let's just say that the horror of the movie comes from the characters having to face their own regrets and mistakes in a tangible way. It's cosmic horror in the late sixteenth century done without any real overtly supernatural aspects. It's a story Lovecraft could have written if he were in Finland in this time period.

As far as playing the game goes, there are plenty of aspects of the story that just seem off and will easily put your characters on edge. They're little things like peasants that look too clean to be living in the middle of the swamp or that there are no children around that will throw your players into a fit with the mystery of it all. Games where players have to intentionally create a history and well-rounded (i.e. more than just combat stats) character are perfect for Sauna as you're going to need fodder to throw at your players. Dread (my perennial favorite) often presents stories where the plot forces characters to look long and hard at their character's fears and past mistakes.

Sauna is a great example of doing fantasy horror. The characters have swords, knives, and extremely primitive firearms. They still wear a bit of armor, and use torches everywhere for light. When I got this from Blockbuster, It was described as "transcendental" horror. A lofty claim, for sure, but one I believe Sauna lives up to.

Shocktober Day 14 - Horrors to Play - Pontypool

Pontypool is a movie that encompasses everything great about the different themes I've been exploring this month. It takes place in a single location - an old radio studio in a tiny town in Canada - and is pretty much perfection when it comes to the one-shot kind of story I love to play this time of year using Dread or Call of Cthulhu.

Stephen McHattie plays the diminished shock jock-turned small town morning radio host Grizzly Mazzy on his first day of work in his new job. Everything is going just as boring as Grizzly must have feared as he pushed the boundaries of what the small town can handle and shows off (aided immensely by the amazing voie of McHattie) just why he may have lost his big syndicated gig in the first place. Everything's going fine, that is, until they start getting calls of people acting more like animals than humans as violence seems to be randomly breaking out all over the area.

That's all I'm going to say about the plot, because I don't want to spoil the really weird - and original - nature of the plot and the way it makes a lot of new, interesting rules for the genre of horror movie it would most easily fit into. The hook of Pontypool is the fact that the town itself is small and isolated, but then our characters (the cast is tiny with three main characters and a fourth interested late in the movie) are even more isolated in the large radio station building. They're helpless as they try to take in what they hear and get information back out to the people of Pontypool and make the horrific situation a little less terrible.

I want to play Pontypool in a game so badly. As I mentioned above, it does some things I could only see a one-shot story try to pull off. A lot of what makes the plot work would be very difficult to sustain in a long campaign or series of sequels. Obviously isolation is built right into the story as it's extremely dangerous to leave the radio station, which the players would find out really quickly if they attempted such a foolish act. More so, I think it would be a heckuva lot of fun to make some voice recordings before the game to be played as people call in and report what they see and experience. The definited roles of the characters - morning show host, producer, and technician - are also really well set up right away as player characters.

I recommend Pontypool to anyone who isn't squemish and is looking for something a little different. Everything about the movie shows a higher production value and level of talent involved than it probably has the right to. It's quick moving, and even though everything happens in the one building, it never feels stale because the director and cinematographer are constantly giving us new ways to look at things and different angles to throw us off guard. There are so many game-able ideas throughout its runtime, and it's frankly an inspiration to a GM who feels burnt out on running their seventh or fifteenth Halloween one-shot horror game.

Shocktober Day 13 - Horror Gaming Fodder - The One Shot

Perhaps there is no better genre of gaming than horror to choose for a one-shot game for a Friday night. The genre lives and dies (excuse the pun) with disposable characters that get torn to shreds physically or metaphysically beyond repair. While many of the greatest horror movies are actually franchises full of monsters and a lone protagonist who simply refuses to die, there are countless others where one movie is all you need. In these one-shot stories, they can often be more satisfying than a long, drawn-out struggle of a seemingly immortal serial killer and his perennial almost-victim. There's real resolution, an ending, and completion to one-shot movies, and the same applies to one-shot tabletop games.

There are exceptions, but some of the best horror games published are keyed in specifically to present a perfect system to run a one-shot game. The exceptions are notable - the World of Darkness games, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Unknown Armies - but for the most part, games like Dread and Call of Cthulhu don't care so much about otherwise important role playing mechanics like the silly idea of advancing a character and leveling up. No, these games focus on entropy and the eventual/inevitable loss of life, limb, and/or one's mind. What does hitting level 2 matter when Cthulhu is CL Infinity?

The one-shot game is a standard for horror gaming, and for good reason. For starters, it's just plain easier to plan a single night's worth of story complete with introduction, rising action, climax, and falling action. For another, it's pretty darn satisfying to play a one-shot because, unlike I would guess most campaigns, one-shot games actually finish. One-shots for horror specifically also mean you can raise the stakes to an appropriate level to really raise the tension and show your players that anyone can die (a necessary evil/joy to get across when GM'ing horror).

The big thing about horror one-shots is that they allow you to try really weird stuff in your games. You can be as far out as you want to be when planning a one-shot because the worst you've done is waste one game night and the best you can do is truly surprise, confuse, and disorient your players with new, weird mechanics or horror concepts they've never seen before. I chose In the Mouth of Madness for the image for today's post, because I think it represents this ideal perfectly. If you've never seen it, go watch it on Instant Watch right away. John Carpenter is one of my all-time favorite directors, and I believe Mouth of Madness is a cinematic version of Carpenter trying some weird shit just to see if it would work. In my opinion, it does, but it goes way out there before the credits roll. Carpenter took a chance with futzing with the narrative to tell an interesting Lovecraftian story, and the result is a disorienting series of creepy coincidents that turn out to weave a much larger tale.

This time of year always comes with people asking for recommendations for one-shot scenarios to play for some good old-fashioned Halloween gaming. Last Friday we played a Halloween themed Call of Cthulhu game in modern day which was a ton of fun. Beyond that, I would really recommend using Dread to run your game and introduce some new players to the hobby. There is no simpler game to bring new people in, and you can explain the game in a manner of a minute or two. You can download the quick version of the rules here on The Impossible Dream's website, but I would encourage you to try to find a copy of the book or download the pdfs of their two scenario books which work just fine with the downloadable free version of the rules - Dread: Tales of Terror - Wastelands and Dread: Tales of Terror - Precious Illusions. Otherwise, go read my review of the game to see if it's for you.

Shocktober Day 12 - A Flash of Horror - Masks

She was told Thursday night was always Mask Night, but that didn't make it any easier to accept the true creep factor of the tradition. It was a club she'd never been to in a part of town that made her uncomfortable with friends she had only meet a few weeks ago. What could possibly go wrong? Of course, she couldn't be too choosy since she had transferred to her new school months ago and just now, in a dumb stroke of luck, she had found a few people who fully embraced her quirky nature - or at least seemed to.

So after months of being homesick for her old university and not having any excuse to do anything fun, she was beyond excited for an opporunity to break out one of her dresses from an as-yet-unopened packing box and doll herself up for her first true night on the town with friends since the school year started.

Shocktober Day 11 - Retro Horror - Dreadful Buffy

(Today's Retro Horror post is a little different. I wanted to expound on the week's theme of suspicion, but didn't want to be quite as on-the-nose as I was yesterday in discussing the topic. Instead, I present to you one of my favorite examples of an unusual character. This is from a Dread scenario I co-GM'ed with my little sister, and, well, honestly... read through it and tell me - would you trust a character that was so deliberately useless and clearly a drag on the group? What is he planning?! Serious paranoia fodder going on here.)

So we played a game of Dread tonight, an original scenario written by Lil' Sis with my assistance. She's played several Dread games, but is not a fan of really spooky stuff so we based it in our hometown but in the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe, so lots of comedy. It was a very interesting game with both ups and downs, but I came away with a lot of good lessons co-GM'ing with the squirt in her very first GM experience. I played a lot of NPC's for my part co-GM. I got to play an idiot local teenager, an idiot local vampire, and some good-natured local priests, it was awesome. The best thing? This character sheet from the sister's boyfriend. This is how characters are made in Dread, by the way, you just fill out a character questionaire. I give you, the Nerd:

1. What talent do you have that people don't know about?

I can move in slowwwww motion.

2. You've done some independent research online about the supernatural, what's the weirdest thing you've found out that's actually true?

Slow people live longer.

3. Do you feel like you were meant for something more, why?

No. I was meant to be a pain the butt and slow everything down.

4. When you were a kid, you ran into the biggest, meanest wild dog you've ever seen. What happened and how did it affect you?

I overanalyzed the situation, debating about what I should do, accidentally moving in slow motion, and getting my arm chewed off in the process. (I asked him which arm and how much was left - he answered his entire left arm and he lost 3 ribs!)

5. What do you dream of some day being able to do to the bullies that tortured you in high school?

Sit down and have a coffee with them, listen to their life story, have the dog chew their arm off.

6. Would you ever use supernatural powers to aid you in your hunt, and if so, how?

No, my extreme slowness does nothing but make everything twice as difficult.

7. How did you find the hunter group to join up with them?

Someone texted me.

8. When intimidated, how do you carry yourself?

Curl up in the fetal position.

9. What keeps you fighting the good fight as opposed to just moving away and starting anew?

I was told by a higher power to fight the good fight?

10. What's your name?

Xerxes

Basically he just created the most nerfed Dread character ever, since your answers indicate your basic ability levels. He's slow, annoying, spiteful, and prone to falling into a fetal position in stressful times. He stayed true to character the entire game. Just awesome.

Shocktober Day 10 - Horror Gaming Fodder - Suspicion

So life intruded a little bit into my plans for my Shocktober posting, so to get caught up, instead of posting a Seed of Horror today, I'm posting an article about this week's theme - suspicion. I still want to get a Horror to Play post up before the end of the month about the movie I picked out for last week's theme of isolation, so I'll probably put an extra post up one of these weekends. Anyway, here we go!

Have you ever played a game of Diplomacy? It's one of the oldest board games that still gets played regularly at tables across the country, and it's pretty much a devastating set of rules that encourages lying and betrayal in its best players. You can't trust anyone in a game of Diplomacy, and it's always the go-to example of a game you should never play with a significant other. Sure there are other games where alliances are made and the only way a player can win is to break them, but nothing truly requires you to be a sneaky bastard like Diplomacy.

Shocktober Day 9 - A Flash of Horror - Intrusion

(I cheated a bit on today's Flash - it's more of a start to a longer story that I'll never likely tell, but I think it'd be a great foundation for a one-shot game)

Intrusion

The house has been abandoned when he broke in to put a roof over his head for just one night before moving out of town. He was evicted with practically no notice, and his apartment had been emptied before he got back from class. He never thought he'd have to break into some place just to get out of the cold, wet snow and survive a night on his own. Then again, he never imagined being kicked out for being just a couple of days late on paying his rent. He resisted the temptation to curse out his old landlord - even if he deserved it - as he pulled up some rough patches of carpet he cut up from the largest of the three bedrooms upstairs. He still remembered that day he broke his first rule of civilization to take what didn't belong to him. It was months ago, and for some reason, when broke the taboo, something in him just felt right. It was freeing and wonderful and terrifying all at once. The house was his through nothing other than having the will power to break open a window and the sense of calm necessary to allow himself to sleep in the stolen home. 

Shocktober Day 8 - Retro Horror -

(Today's post is the second in the series of retro Shocktober and general horror posts. Today features a review of my favorite horror RPG of all time - Dread. I'm a Dread evangelist, so the more I can talk about the game, the better. I chose this review for this week's theme of Isolation because Dread contains the best single essay on isolating your players for any kind of help I've ever read. It's a great little book that will open your eyes to a world of horror gaming.)


No matter what you've heard about Dread I guarantee you this: as a game, it will deliver a good time. Above all else, Dread creates an environment and conflict resolution system that keeps you on the edge of your seat. No single test is frivolous or out on its own with little impact on the greater story. Every action you take affects the plot and those around you.

Shocktober Day 7 - Seeds of Horror - Ring

(Today's Seed of Horror is my own little variation on a classic one-liner story that fits the week's theme of "Isolation" quite well. It's impossible to write a better story, but I wanted to do my best to give it my own spin.)

The Brewers were up by two - up by two - and the entire bar had grown silent. The station had to take a break for local news, which was clearly outrageous, especially to Jimmy. The feed switched to two empty chairs in Channel 11's studio, not that Jimmy noticed since his phone had started ringing. He stepped outside onto a dark, empty street. "Unknown Caller" had fantastic timing. Jimmy pressed the green phone button and was immediately hung up on. He ran back into the bar praying he hadn't missed a single pitch. Bursting through the door, the packed bar had somehow completely evacuated in about 15 seconds and he stood alone in the center of the room surrounded by huge flatscreen TV's displaying the two empty news anchor chairs of Channel 11. His phone rang. "Unknown Caller" was persistent. 

Shocktober Day 6 - Horror Gaming Fodder - Isolation

Safe from the flood, but what about the serial killer hidden in the house?

For today's Horror Gaming Fodder post I wanted to look at another key principle of what can make a horror game a true success. Last week I looked at the use of props in horror games which set the tone for the rest of the week's posts.  Horror games are full of tropes we all know and love. These common characteristics are so common because they tend to work, but nothing is more integral to making a horror game work more than isolation. Whether it's physical isolation that forces the characters into a location where they can't actually access help or it's psychological isolation that gives the characters that hopeless feeling that no one out there could help you or, worse, would help you if they could even understand the problem they faced in the first place, isolation is necessary to put characters and players in the mindset that no one is going to come to their rescue. 

Shocktober Day 5 -Horrors to Play- Session 9

It's day 5 of Shocktober 2011 which means I've made it through a full week of daily posts! Today is Friday which means a Movies to... AHEM... Horrors to Play post. In these posts it's a sort of hybrid between a movie review and inspiration for playing a one-shot game. Basically I pick out a movie I think would be fun to play as a one-and-done game. All this month on Fridays I'll be posting a horror movie that fits that description and matches the week's theme. This week I'll be reviewing the classic cult horror film Session 9 from 2001 since it's a great example of how props could be used in in our own games.

Session 9 is a nice small indie horror flick that has a small cast and is pretty much located in one location through out - an old abandoned mental hospital badly in need of renovation. That's where our characters come into play - they're the unfortunate crew of contractors hired to clean the place up in a week and make it basically livable.

There's a couple problems right from the get-go. One is that the five guys on the crew, while all are competent workers and seem to work together well on the surface have deep cracks that run between them. Another problem is that the crew boss is hiding some deeply unhinged feelings that are just waiting to burst through to the surface. And let's not forget the real problem - rumors of teenagers making trouble in the abandoned mental institute and that patients who were long ago de-institutionalized during the 80's have been found squatting somewhere deep in the halls of the asylum. These are all just rumors though, right? Maybe...

Session 9 is a tight film full of close moments in a very unsettling place. The asylum is broken down, hollow, and full of hundreds of little nooks and crannies where something - really anything - could be hiding. The threat is unnervingly elusive but also always-present. It's a movie with immense atmosphere that presents a workshop for all aspiring horror GM's out there. It's unrelenting and disorienting throughout. Just like with the main characters, the spirit of the place gets under your skin, and although there are times when certain characters do certain things that seem crazy, you can kind of understand where they're coming from. I know I couldn't handle being holed up in that empty(ish) asylum for a full week of 12 hour workdays.

But of course let's get down to the title of the movie. One of the characters discovers an old set of tape recordings from a string of treatment sessions recorded in the hay-day of the asylum. The subject is seemingly a young woman with multiple personality disorder, and the different voices that come up are chilling to hear when imagining they come from the same person through out. Here's where the true "to play" part of this post comes out, especially in regard to props. On Monday I wrote about several different forms of props to use in games, but one of the most interesting to me to experiment with is sound props.

There's pretty much nothing better that I could imagine to use for sound props than these session tapes. To think about them in more gamey terms, each tape/session recording could be its own fetch quest for the players. The tapes could reveal another tidbit of horribleness that is behind the game in the first place. It's a great conflict for the players to face. On one hand, it's an RPG, and everyone knows you have to complete quests to "win" a tabletop RPG. On the other hand, more and more terrible crap gets brought up, and the players are going to be confronted with the decision of having to keep digging or just finally get to the point where they throw their hands in the air and go "Alright, I've seen enough, let's get out of here!" Of course, if you're playing Session 9 using Dread (which I suggest doing so for all horror one-shots, but that's just me), the questionnaires should give each character a reason to keep pursuing the tapes and getting down to the bottom of the mystery.

It's that kind of compulsion that players will push up against that makes Session 9 such a playable movie. At any point the characters really should throw their hands in the air and leave, but there's a mystery to solve and character growth to attain! That, my friends, is a good sign for a powerful (and worthwhile) prop!

You can watch Session 9 right now on Netflix Instant Watch!

Shocktober Day 4 - A Flash of Horror - "Click"

(It's Thursday! That means you get a little bit of original flash fiction following the prompt of the week's theme, in this case "Props" - so here we go!)

Click

For some reason beyond Ken's understanding, the pen meant everything in the world to his brother. It was a simple thing, brown with little silver highlights where the different pieces joined and screwed into one another. Ken clicked it several times, turning it over and rotating it before extending the tip and retracting it. Ever since he picked it up at a tiny farmer's market just outside Munich - a place he'd visited almost every weekend to pick up his week's supply of vegetables and fresh meat - he regretted the purchase. He couldn't understand it, but at every step of the way he felt this compulsion to tell Michael about it.

Shocktober Day 3 - Retro Horror - Setting the Mood

Day 3 of Shocktober 2011 brings us to Wednesday, and Wednesday this year means Retro Horrors! Think of this as a "greatest hits" style of posts that give our newer readers a peak back into some of my favorite horror content we've ever put out on the blog. Following this week's theme of "Props" today's post mirrors Monday's gaming fodder post in discussing some more ways to utilize props in game. Today's retro post focuses on setting a feeling for a game. Hope you enjoy!

Shocktober Day 2 - Seeds of Horror - Just a Sip of Red

(Just a little header here - Tuesdays are Seeds of Horror days for this Shocktober! Essentially, I write just a real small bit - a sentence or four - that can get you going on a horror story of your own. Enjoy! For more of this, check out all of Shocktober 2009 since it was just 31 days of this)

I was new in town, and so when some neighbors invited me over for a wine tasting party, I couldn't see any harm in making some new friends. When I took the first sip, I knew something was off. I hadn't tasted it before, but I knew it was blood. The worst part was that none of the other party guests looked alarmed...

Shocktober Day 1 - Horror Gaming Fodder - Props

Welcome to the first day of Shocktober 2011! This is my favorite month of the year and my favorite gimmick of my blog. If you want to see what I did for previous Shocktobers, got check out Shocktober 2009 or Shocktober 2010. This year every day of the week has a column devoted to it. Check this post for more details.

It being Monday in Shocktober 2011, it's a day to look at the core of what Shocktober is all about - horror gaming fodder. I define my gaming fodder posts as posts that are useful to general role-playing whether it's D&D or Fiasco. Monday's this year are all about gaming fodder to enhance your horror games. In a loose sense, I'm going to take the opportunity each Monday in my horror gaming fodder to introduce the theme of the week. This won't be anything like last year's theme weeks, but I hope to have at the end of each week five posts of very different styles that all address the same general idea.

Review: Outbreak: Undead

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Your Zombie Survival Plan Will Fail.

This was the slogan that drew me into the Hunters Games booth down entrepreneur’s alley this past Gencon. I mean, who doesn’t have a game plan in mind in the event of a zombiepocalypse? (Mine involves a trek to my sister’s cabin in TheMiddleofNowhere, Northern Wisconsin – you’re all invited!). Outbreak: Undead is a self-proclaimed “Zombie Survival Simulation RPG” that allows you to play as yourself (take the 40-question self-assessment at the Outbreak Undead site for your stats) and test your mettle in realistic zombie scenarios.

Trust me: this is no superhero He-Man game where you’ll be taking down hordes of the undead solo. The creators consulted real-life experts in firearms, survival, psychology and search and rescue, and included variables such as panic, pain, and empathy to create as realistic a system as possible.

Contest Winners Announced!

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We recently ran a contest for PDF copies of Dread and the Monsters and Other Childish Things Pocket Edition, and we have our winners!

Congratulations to:

TheRPGrrl - winner of Monsters and Other Childish things
and
Ryan - winner of Dread

Your prizes should be arriving via email soon!

And as a consolation prize for all of our non-winners, we've compiled a list of everyone's favorite horror movies just in time for Halloween!

The original Night of the Living Dead won hands-down with the most entries.

Also on the list:
Reanimator
The Shining
The Thing
Alien
28 Days Later
Night of the Living Dead remake (1990)
Aliens
The Haunting (1963)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Silent Hill
Angel Heart
The Green Mile
The Others
Men in Black
Hellraiser: Inferno
Evil Dead

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Review: Monsters and Other Childish Things Pocket Edition

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Monsters and Other Childish Things (Monsters) by Benjamin Baugh is a game that gets a lot of buzz around gaming blogs and podcasts. The presents an very unique setting when it comes to role-playing while at the same time tapping into a deep tradition of childhood - the imaginary friend. Monsters is game that was built to use the One Roll Engine (ORE) originally created by industry stalwart Greg Stolze. Today I'll be reviewing the Pocket Edition of Monsters that I picked up at Gencon. It's a game I've had my eye on for a really long time. Keep Reading to see if it lived up to my stupidly-high expectations!

Only a little bit of time left for FREE STUFF!

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Me: Did you forget to enter?

Potentially You: Enter for what?

Me: You fool! You have until midnight tomorrow (Friday 10/29) to enter to win a free copy of Dread or Monsters and Other Childish Things pdfs.

Potentially You: That's sounds amazing!

Me: I know!

Potentially You: But how do I win? Do I have to survive a night in the old Westing House?

Me: Stop being such a fool! All you have to do is send an email to thehopelessgamer@gmail.com with your follower name, email you'd like the pdf sent to if you win, and th ename of your favorite movie!

Potentially You: I'm not a follower, how do I...?

Me: You're lucky I'm so patient! Check out the left column where it says followers, click "follow," and follow the instructions. WHAM! Now you're a follower!

Potentially You: But my favorite horror movie is Saw V, will you judge me for my poor taste?

Me: Yes! But not publicly, just inside my head and to all my friends (the ones outside my head, not inside).

Definitely You: I'm in!

*Bows*