Yesterday was an epic day of Halloween gaming, in which we played three Lovecraft-inspired RPGs.

Yesterday was an epic day of Halloween gaming, in which we played three Lovecraft-inspired RPGs. I wanted to share my thoughts on each, and to say thanks to everyone who participated throughout the day. 

Cthulhu Dark

We started with Graham W’s Cthulhu Dark. For the second time, I  put together a scenario using the Dark Depths supplement, which works very well in terms of helping the Keeper organize the pace of the creeping horror. I also took some inspiration from Graham’s Stealing Cthulhu, in which he advises we not simply go with the normal old tropes we have come to associate with the Mythos. To that end, I set my story about Glaaki in the modern-day pacific northwest of the United States. I was going for a Twin Peaks/X-files vibe, rather than a straight Lovecraft vibe, and I think it was pretty successful. 

The PCs were an interesting mix of traditional and new. Andy played an older woman who was a mystery novelist in the vein of Agatha Christie or Jessica Fletcher. It was a very traditional move, but role-played so beautifully I can hardly argue with the choice. David played a cryptozoologist with the surname ‘Ward,’ a fine nod to Lovecraft. And Philipp played a private investigator with a modern twist; he used drones and other web technology to conduct his investigations (and there was a great running joke in which every NPC immediately told him they didn’t have any extra money to help out with his inevitable startup). 

The session had a great pace. I like that Cthulhu Dark has the characters inexorably moving forward; it allows the players to focus on roleplaying and atmosphere, as opposed to trying to figure out the best way use the game’s mechanics to overcome obstacles. We had a set of parallel climaxes; one which had our novelist reading The Revelations of Glaaki in a luxury chalet ringed by cultists; the other with characters in a dark cave, the walls of which were scrawled with hieroglyphics and differential equations, and filled with gibbering green zombies. 

It was all madness and regret in the end, and I loved it. Big thanks to everyone who played: Andy Hauge Philipp Neitzel and David LaFreniere. 

Lovecraftesque

For the second game of the day, Eadwin facilitated a session of Becky Annison and Joshua Fox’s  Lovecraftesque. For those of you who backed their recent Kickstarter at my urging, let me assure you I did not lead you astray. This game is excellent. The thing that shines brightest is how incredibly simple it is. Becky and Josh have found the most direct path to Lovecraftian horror in an RPG; a marvel of restraint and refinement. 

It takes a scene or two to get the hang of it, but I really love the way the narrative responsibilities are divided between the Narrator and the Watchers. It goes like this: the Narrator for the scene explains to the Witness (the player playing the protagonist for that scene) what is going on, then waits a beat so the Watchers can add an extra detail or two to what he just said. The Narrator then continues with the narration, occasionally stopping to let the Watchers add details, and calling for the Witness to respond to events accordingly. It has this really beautiful flow to it, and feels very much like the group is writing a horror story in real time. I loved it. 

I’d also like to mention Special Cards, which can be triggered at certain times, and allow players to subvert the narrative rules of the game. We got one that was particularly devastating (in a good way!) called Replace the Witness. For most of the game, we were following the story of a young codebreaker from Bletchley Circle wandering about an unfriendly, Innsmouth-like hamlet in the English moors. But then David played Replace the Witness, and our protagonist was killed by the townspeople in a gruesome cult ritual! The card required us to make a new protagonist, and so we upgraded a sympathetic NPC, who took up our heroine’s tale in an attempt to get to the bottom of what was going on and avenge her. The scene where we lost the original protagonist was very suspenseful while it played out, and downright shocking in its conclusion, but we ended up with this really cool story where the perspective shifted partway through, much like it does in movies like Psycho. Brilliant. 

It was a great time. Thanks to everyone who played that one: Eadwin Tomlinson Isa Wills and David. 

Society of Dreamers

The final game of the day was Matthijs Holter’s Society of Dreamers. We have talked about this one a lot, both on G+ and the podcast, so I’m not going to spend much time going over the mechanical particulars. I’m mostly interested in how this session compared to previous sessions, since SoD is something of a Halloween tradition at The Gauntlet. 

We played this one over Hangouts, and I have to say some of the game’s magic is lost over that format. A big part of the game is the table ritual that helps create a certain play environment, and we take that a step further with playing by candlelight. There were still moments of genuine creepiness and dread, but it didn’t have that quiet, dream-like quality our previous games have had. 

That said, I really enjoyed our story. The game brings a lot to the table outside of the creepy ritual. The dream-dive scenes are still amazing over Hangouts, and possibly even better if you’re the dream diver, since hearing a tinny voice giving you instructions over your headphones sounds a lot like what it might if you were actually doing such a thing in real life. We also had a lot of fun with the Love scenes, and the halting, blossoming romance between two of the characters was a highlight. And the limitations of Hangouts improved the story in some ways. Since we weren’t as submerged in the whispery darkness of FtF play, I think it gave us permission to actually think about the story we were telling, and to make it coherent. Our previous SoD stories were a little abstract and mysterious, which has a lot of charm, but last night’s story was one I would want to actually read or watch. It had a narrative tightness that had been missing from previous sessions.  

All in all, great fun, just a little different to what I had become accustomed to. Thanks to everyone who played: Ryan Poe Derek Grimm and David.