Game Mash-ups:

Game Mash-ups:

Game Mash-ups:

Friday the Houston finger of The Gauntlet played a one shot that was a Frankensteinian mash-up of three old favorites Final Girl, Dread, and Funnel World. The group played retail employees during the Christmas rush at Houston’s Galleria mall. Using a mall map printed from the facilities website the players chose their place of employment which would dictate their starting positions at the beginning of the game.

Their characters consisted of a single name, place of employment, and one non work related skill. Outstanding examples included Maya the Disney Store cast member and shutter bug, and Ben the mall maintenance guy and renaissance combat reenactor. Each player created 4 of these basic character in the Final girl style and then each set up a scene which the group played out to build bonds. Once each player had set a scene we then took the characters with the fewest bonds and killed them off one by one to introduce the main threat which was a mob of Black Fridyesque Christmas zombies.

For every death the player in control of the newly deceased character had to pull a block from the Jenga tower. Once the chaff had been killed off the remaining “main” characters were chosen from by the players in order until everyone had the same number of characters to play with. These characters were then given stats in the same manner as Funnel World with additional +1s given if an action fell into the arena of the character’s former employment or personal skill.

The players were then given missions to complete for the good of the survivors in preparation for their escape. Every time that a mission was failed or a character died another block was pulled. Once the series of missions were complete the remaining members attempted their final escape. In our session the tower fell just before they made good their escape. The tower fall in this instance was represented by a fire becoming out of control killing any that fell behind. In the end only 3 of the 16 characters survived watching a forth reach out to the ascending helicopter for help as the mall rooftop burned and fell away from beneath her feet.

I really enjoyed what we put together and I only wish we had had more time to flesh out the story a little more. Has anyone else put together a game from quick mechanics from other games in this fashion? I am looking for more opportunities to play around with mechanics for a unique gaming experience.

18 thoughts on “Game Mash-ups:”

  5. That sounds great!

    I ran a game of InSpecters where we used Millenial Apartment Hunters in the first session to get a feel for the setting and characters and find office space for the PC’s paranormal startup. It was very effective.

  6. That sounds great!

    I ran a game of InSpecters where we used Millenial Apartment Hunters in the first session to get a feel for the setting and characters and find office space for the PC’s paranormal startup. It was very effective.

  11. Sounds amazing. Towards the end of a Dungeon World series I changed a session to be a Dread session, once. In that case the PCs ran into refugees, which I randomly made from Short Order Heroes cards (Calico Games), and then “assigned” one to each PC. The session turned into a chase where the PCs were trying to escape, and when the tower fell the first time the attached NPC would die, but the next fall would be the PCs death. This let me have the pace a little faster without the players being upset that their long-term DW character would just die off due to one clumsy move (instead it had to be two clumsy moves!) Otherwise I made up pull numbers pseudo-based on their stat modifiers (ad hoc).

    My favorite part was having the NPC-killing tower fall play directly into being the fault of the PC. One ranger PC dropped the tower trying to attack some Orc lord, and the arrow missed and hit her attached refugee straight in the chest.

    But that’s about as close as I’ve come to Dread-game mixture.

  12. Sounds amazing. Towards the end of a Dungeon World series I changed a session to be a Dread session, once. In that case the PCs ran into refugees, which I randomly made from Short Order Heroes cards (Calico Games), and then “assigned” one to each PC. The session turned into a chase where the PCs were trying to escape, and when the tower fell the first time the attached NPC would die, but the next fall would be the PCs death. This let me have the pace a little faster without the players being upset that their long-term DW character would just die off due to one clumsy move (instead it had to be two clumsy moves!) Otherwise I made up pull numbers pseudo-based on their stat modifiers (ad hoc).

    My favorite part was having the NPC-killing tower fall play directly into being the fault of the PC. One ranger PC dropped the tower trying to attack some Orc lord, and the arrow missed and hit her attached refugee straight in the chest.

    But that’s about as close as I’ve come to Dread-game mixture.

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