S T E A M P O W E R
P U B L I S H I N G
CREDITS Writing Andrew Kenrick
Additional Writing Scott Dorward, Mark Latham, James Mullen, Joe Murphy
1st Edition & Game Design Andrew Kenrick & Merwin Shanmugasundaram
Illustration Paul Bourne
design & layout Paul Bourne
Editing Malcolm Craig, Scott Dorward, Gregor Hutton, Matt Machell, Iain McAllister, James Mullen
Playtesting Ian Ackerman, Dave Ballam, Kevin Barthaud (Mr. Toad), Andy Coles, Mark Dewhurst, Scott Dorward, Johnathan Ellis, Jez Gray (Jonny Gray’s brother), Sue Lee, Mark Long, Iain McAllister, Elaine McCourt, Ian McClumpha, Louisa McGuinness, Seana McGuinness, James Mullen, Matt Nixon, Stephen Plummer, Robin Poole, Steven Pretlove, Mick Reddick, Mik Reed, Matt Sanderson, Claire Stansfield, Adrian St. John, Graham Walmsley.
Special Thanks To the members of the Collective Endeavour for your continued help and support, to Ron Edwards for championing the first edition of the game, to Scott Dorward and his big bag of horror movies, and to Ruth for putting up with me while I wrote the second edition. No Thanks at all to Gary Bowerbank. © 2010 Steampower Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews. Steampower Publishing is a registered company in England and Wales, company #04894085
Steampower Publishing www.steampowerpublishing.com
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CONTENTS Introduction
04
Getting Started
05
ONE: CREATING YOUR VICTIM
07
Concept
08
Attributes
09
Specialisations
19
Bad Habits
22
TWO: THE RULES OF SURVIVAL
25
Standard Checks
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Conflict Checks
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Risk Checks
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Describing the Outcome
31
Claiming Initiative
31
Who Rolls the Dice?
32
Survival Points
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THREE: TENSION
37
Determining Tension
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Managing Tension
42
FOUR: MAKING A MONSTER
47
What’s my Motivation
48
Monstrous Archetypes
50
The Unstoppable Killer
52
The Vengeful Dead
54
The Hunter
56
The Beast Within
58
The Corrupter
60
The Impostor
62
The Puppet Master
64
The Horde
66
The Formless Horror
68
The Thing From Beyond
70
By The Numbers
73
Monstrous Specialisations
73
FIVE: GENRE
79
Slasher
81
Monster Movie
84
Splatter
86
Vampire Movies
88
Werewolf Movies
90
Ghost Stories
92
Asian Horror
95
Zombie Apocalypse
98
Psychological
100
Lovecraftian Horror
102
Black Comedy
104
Body Horror
106
SIX: TOOLBOX OF TERROR
109
Liberation from Preparation 111 Customising the Game
122
Scaring Yourself Silly
127
SEVEN: SCENARIOS
139
Unhallowed
141
Cold Fusion
151
Dust
160
When Johnny Came Home
170
APPENDICES
179
Mediography
179
Index
181
Character Sheet
185
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INTRODUCTION Dead of Night is a roleplaying game of campfire tales, slasher movies and b-movie horror. It is a game of tales told to scare the bejeezus out of your friends when sleeping out under the clear night sky; of tales of beasts and monsters and murderous psychopaths; of tales that might just turn out to be true. In Dead of Night players take on the roles of characters within a horror movie - the screaming victims, the fearless monster hunters and sometimes even the slavering monsters themselves. They play the characters about to be thrust into whatever peril the games master has planned. Whilst the players play out their roles within the horror movie, the games master has no single role to play instead he sets up the story, describes the locations, plays the rest of the cast and controls the monster.
Dead of Night is all about the monsters - the werewolves, the ghosts and the ghouls. It is meant to scare the players, to make them jump at their own shadows and the clatter of the dice. It is meant to unsettle and disturb, to make them think twice before turning off the lights. It is meant to be light hearted at times, when the horror movie clichés flow thicker than the blood. Above all, it is meant to be fun! Dead of Night is designed to be quick and easy to play, with rules that help you tell horror stories without getting in the way of the fun. The rules are simple and straightforward to learn, yet offer a variety of options and depth to allow you to customise the game however you like.
You Will Need
To play Dead of Night each player will need a character sheet, a pencil, two 10-sided dice and a handful of coins or counters.
Terminology
In Dead of Night, the game is ran by a games master (the GM) and the players play characters within a horror movie. The main threat comes from the monster. Ten-sided dice (d10s) are used to resolve actions. Players use (and lose) Survival Points to influence events and represent setbacks; each time they do so the Tension cranks up by 1, allowing the GM to pile on the pressure even more. The game is designed to emulate a horror movie, so survival is not assured.
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GETTING STARTED A game of Dead of Night is quick and easy to set up, allowing you to start playing as soon as possible.
Create your Monster: Every game of Dead of Night has a monster of some description at its heart. Come up with an idea for your monster or pick a classic horror movie creature. Decide on the motivation for your monster. Turn to Chapter Four: Making a Monster for more about monsters.
Set the Scene: Once you have decided upon your monster, you need to create a compelling situation in which the story will take place. This might be as simple as picking an evocative location or coming up with a premise that demands action right away. Turn to Chapter Six: Toolbox of Terror for more about devising a situation and setting the scene.
Set the Tension: Before you start play, give some thought to the genre, mood and atmosphere you want to convey in the game. You can emulate these in the game by use of the Tension mechanics. Turn to Chapter Three: Tension and Chapter Five: Genre for more about using Tension. Introduce the Victims: After devising a monster, a situation and the mood for the story, all you need now is to introduce the cast of characters. If you have a strong idea about the story you want to tell and the cast of the movie, you might want to make the characters yourself. Otherwise, set the scene for the players and ask them to generate characters tied into the situation. Turn to Chapter One: Creating your Victim for more about making characters. Play! With the characters created, it’s time to set the scene and let the horror commence. The rules for playing the game can all be found in Chapter Two: The Rules of Survival.
Find out More To find more scenarios, advice for running games as well as to download character sheets and play aids, go to our website at: www.steampowerpublishing.com
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CHAPTER ONE: CHAPTER ONE:
CCRREEAATTIIN NGG YYOOURUR
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In Dead of Night, a player can take on any conceivable role found in a horror movie. Characters are sometimes referred to as victims, which might give you some clue as to their life expectancy and role within the game. Whether your character is a clueless cheerleader or a grizzled vampire hunter matters not in this game - both are just as likely to wind up on the buffet cart as they are to slay the monster. Sometimes the GM will provide you with an appropriate ready-made character, but sometimes you’ll get to make your own victim in a process that won’t take more than a minute or two.
CONCEPT The first thing to do when creating a character is to come up with a concept. This should take the form of a one line description of your character that you can use to quickly explain who the character is and what they do.
For example, ‘Alice is a no-nonsense vampire hunter’ or ‘Laurie is a teenager getting ready for her first prom.’ Once you have decided on a concept, you can flesh your character out some more. Ask yourself the following questions:
Who are you ? What is your involvement in the situation? What is your relationship with the other characters?
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ATTRIBUTES All characters are described using four pairs of attributes. An attribute represents the general competence of a character in a wide variety of circumstances and situations. The attributes are intended to be broad and flexible, and several may be appropriate in a given situation. The pairs of attributes represent the most common character concerns in a horror movie: knowledge, cooperation, escape and conflict.
Individual attributes are rated between 1 and 9. The total of an attribute pair always adds up to 10. The higher the attribute the better. Attributes are used to help a character accomplish things as part of Task Checks, wherein they are added to the roll of 2d10. If the result is 15 or more, the character is successful. The attribute pairs are as follows: Identify/Obscure - to find or conceal information. Persuade/Dissuade - to convince other people. Pursue/Escape - to get away or chase. Assault/Protect - to fight or defend. Decide how high you want each of your attributes to be - remember that each pair must add up to 10, so if you want one attribute to be high, its counterpart must be low. A character can also have a Specialisation, which gives them a higher ability in an area of expertise, but at the cost of lowering their other attributes. Specialisations are described in more detail later in this chapter.
So, Alice winds up with the following attributes: Identify: 7 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 6
Obscure: 3 Dissuade: 6 Escape: 5 Protect: 4
A more detailed look at these attributes is on the following pages.
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Identity Can I figure out what’s going on? Identify is the attribute used to uncover important facts, whether by meticulous research, careful observation or simply your own experience and innate knowledge. It is used to gather information about the goings on in a scenario, slowly uncovering background, motivations and other important happenings. When you set out hunting for clues or desperately looking for a way to slay the monster, Identify is the attribute you will turn to. Failing at an Identify Check won’t lead to a dead end, but it might make your investigation more complicated or dangerous. Identify is opposed by Obscure, representing enemies and rivals deliberately trying to conceal information from you.
Use Identify to: Know or learn about people, places or things through research and observation.
You might roll Identify to: Uncover a monster’s vulnerabilities.
Your GM might ask for an Identify Check to: Find a clue.
Example Specialisations: Crime Scene Investigator, Insatiable Curiosity, Librarian.
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Obscure Can I conceal information? Obscure is used to prevent others from obtaining information, either by carefully covering your tracks, providing some sort of distraction or hiding it really well. It is used to stop your foes from finding out where you are and what you are doing, stalling investigations and leaving them in the dark. When you are trying to hide yourself or an important object, or attempting to throw a rival off your scent, Obscure is the attribute to use. Failing at an Obscure Check will normally lead to your discovery or your enemy getting one step closer to the truth. Obscure is opposed by Identify, representing your foes uncovering information that you want to keep hidden. It might also be used to distract a foe from Pursuit.
Use Obscure to: Conceal yourself, others or objects from discovery.
You might roll Obscure to: Leave a trail of false clues to throw a monster off your scent.
Your GM might ask for an Obscure Check to: See if the artefact you hid has been discovered.
Example Specialisations: Discrete, Hide in Plain Sight, Look Over There!
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Persuade Can I convince others to help me? Persuade is used to get people to help you out, arguing that there are advantages to helping you, delicately negotiating an alliance or manipulating them into providing aid. It is used to get someone to do what you want, as well as to get an inanimate object to do something. Whether you are trying to sweet talk a security guard into letting you go or picking a lock to get you inside the research facility, Persuade is the attribute to roll. Failing at a Persuade Check will either lead to you failing to make your case, or actively turning your target against you. Persuade is opposed by Dissuade, representing your target’s reticence to provide assistance.
Use Persuade to: Convince people, creatures and items to cooperate with you.
You might roll Persuade to: Convince a rival to temporarily join forces.
Your GM might ask for a Persuade Check to: Start a generator before darkness sets in.
Example Specialisations: Charmer, Mr Fix-it, Position of Authority.
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Dissuade Can I convince others not to resist me? Dissuade is used to stop someone from being a threat or getting in your way, whether by physically roughing them up or intimidating them into submission. It is used to get someone to step aside or leave your presence, as well as to stop an inanimate object from working. Whether you are trying to threaten your way past a snivelling hall monitor or stop the generator from working, you will turn to your Dissuade attribute. Failing at a Dissuade Check might lead to a loss of face, or force you to stand aside instead. Dissuade is opposed by Persuade, representing your victim’s innate force of will or charisma to stand in your way.
Use Dissuade to: Influence people, creatures and items to react negatively to your presence.
You might roll Dissuade to: Rough up a potential snitch.
Your GM might ask for a Dissuade Check to: See if you can sabotage the car.
Example Specialisations: Intimidating, Saboteur, Thug.
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Pursue Can I catch my target? Pursue is used to stop a target from evading capture or getting away, either by physically stopping them or by following them. It is used to prevent a foe from escaping you. If you are trying to rugby tackle your target to the ground or carefully follow their tracks, Pursue is the attribute of choice. Failure at an Pursue Check will lead to the quarry escaping unscathed; although you may be able to pick up the trail again later, it may be too late by then. Pursue is normally opposed by Escape, representing your target’s skill at evading capture. It may also be opposed by Obscure, if the target is hidden from you.
Use Pursue to: Track and follow a target using whatever means available.
You might roll Pursue to: Track a wounded monster back to its lair.
Your GM might ask for a Pursue Check to: Stop the villain from escaping justice.
Example Specialisations: Headlock, No Escape, Trailblazer.
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Escape Can I evade my pursuer? Escape is used to get away from a pursuer, either by breaking free from their grasp or by outrunning them. It is used to prevent a foe from catching you. If you are trying to flee through the woods to safety or break out of the underground research facility, then you will roll your Escape attribute. Failure at an Escape Check will lead to your capture or restraint, possibly putting you in great danger. There will (usually) be another opportunity to escape, though. Escape is opposed by Pursue, representing your foe’s skill at tracking you. If your opponent is not trying to catch you so much as harm you, it may be opposed by Assault.
Use Escape to: Avoid capture, direct confrontation or a hazardous situation.
You might roll Escape to: Break free of handcuffs.
Your GM might ask for an Escape Check to: Flee from a horde of zombies.
Example Specialisations: Getaway Driver, Houdini, Run for your Lives!
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Assault Can I inflict harm on others? Assault is used whenever you seek to injure or slay an opponent, either with your bare hands, a weapon or more esoteric means. It is used to damage, incapacitate or slay an opponent by direct and unsubtle means. If you are trying to chop an opponent up with a sword, douse a monster with holy water or ram them with a car, you will use your Assault attribute. Failure at an Assault Check will give the opponent the upper hand, almost certainly causing you harm. Assault is opposed by Protect, representing your opponent’s ability to defend themselves from harm. If your opponent is trying to flee from danger, it may be opposed by Escape.
Use Assault to: Harm characters, monsters or items.
You might roll Assault to: Drive a stake through a vampire’s heart.
Your GM might ask for an Assault Check to: See if the explosives you set go off.
Example Specialisations: Fisticuffs, Gun Totin’, Vampire Slayer.
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Protect Can I prevent others from causing harm? Protect is used whenever you attempt to stop another from causing injury or harm, whether to yourself or another character. It is used to prevent damage by whatever means possible. If you are trying to defend against a frenzied attack, jump in the way of an attack meant for another or replace the pin on a live grenade, your Protect attribute will come into play. Failure at a Protect Check will mean that you are unable to prevent harm or injury. Protect is opposed by Assault, representing your opponent’s ability to inflict injury.
Use Protect to: Prevent injury or harm to yourself or another.
You might roll Protect to: Get between your girlfriend and the werewolf’s claws.
Your GM might ask for a Protect Check to: See if the masked psycho injures you with his knife.
Example Specialisations: Bodyguard, Dodge, Holy Sacraments.
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SPECIALISATIONS A Specialisation is an aspect of an attribute where a character excels, but at the cost of performing more general activities. Attributes paint a character in bold swathes; Specialisations add detail and flavour. Occult Lore, Sneaking and Shotgun Trained are all examples of Specialisations. A Specialisation can be almost anything - a skill or proficiency, an item, profession, place or even an individual. They should be flavourful, adding something to the character in the form of background or a character quirk. They might reinforce the character concept decided earlier, or add a new detail to the character’s background. Specialisations can be as clever and resourceful as the player and are only as limited as their imagination. A Specialisation represents a whole raft of bits of information and abilities associated with that area of expertise, but is less useful outside of the area of expertise.
For example, someone specialised in Moor University, might know many of the professors by name, be able to navigate the tunnels beneath the library and know some obscure fact about its murky past. It will not be useful, however, if the character finds himself fleeing from a monster in downtown New York or in a bar fight in London. Similarly, someone with the Specialisation of Movie Flashlight might be able to use it particularly well to find things in dark places, fix it when it breaks or even to whack someone round the head with it. It will not be useful, however, when trying to hide a book from discovery or escape across a crumbling rooftop. As a rule of thumb, if a particular Specialisation is useful more than half the time, it probably shouldn’t be a Specialisation.
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Adding a Specialisation A Specialisation is always associated with an attribute pair. There is no hard and fast rule as to which Specialisation goes with which attribute pair; the GM and the player should agree on the one that makes the most sense. The associated attribute pair represents the area of skill that the Specialisation will be most useful in, but it does not limit the Specialisation to that area.
For example, Alice’s Vampire Hunter Specialisation might be associated with Assault/Protect, but when the character is hunting for its crypt, she might use it in place of Pursue. Just as an attribute has a value, so too does a Specialisation. The value is based on that of its associated attributes.
The value of any Specialisation is always 2 higher than the highest attribute in its associated pair. No Specialisation may be higher than 10. So if Alice had an Assault of 6 and a Protect of 4, Vampire Hunter would start at 8 (6+2). However, taking a Specialisation does not come for free - by focusing on a specialist area, the character’s more general abilities suffer.
The associated attributes in a pair must be lowered by a total of 2 for each Specialisation. Either one of the attributes is lowered by 2, or each is lowered by 1. It’s up to the player which she chooses, but the total of the pair must be lowered by 2. No attribute may be reduced below 1 when adding a Specialisation.
So, in the example above, the Assault/Protect pair must be lowered by 2 to add the Vampire Hunter Specialisation. Assault could be lowered by 2 down to 4 or Protect could be lowered by 2 down to 2, or both attributes could be lowered by 1. Alice’s player eventually decides to drop both by 1, giving her Assault 5/Protect 3/Vampire Hunter 8. A character can have more than one Specialisation, so long as they lower the associated attribute pair each time. The value of the first Specialisation associated with an attribute pair is based on the initial stats, but the second Specialisation’s value is based on the lowered attributes.
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For example, Alice has a second Assault/Protect Specialisation, Holy Sacraments. She currently has Assault 5/Protect 3/Vampire Hunter 8, so her new Specialisation will only have a value of 7 (5+2), as her highest attribute is now only 5. She must then lower her attributes by 2 again, giving her Assault 4/Protect 2/Vampire Hunter 8/Holy Sacraments 7. Take care when buying Specialisations, however - a character with an attribute of 2 or 3, or a Specialisation of 9 or 10, can be very onesided to play, all-powerful in some circumstances, whilst crippled in others.
Maximising your Specialisations When buying Specialisations during character generation, you can get the most bang for your buck by setting the lower of the attribute pair to the final value you want it to be, and then paying for the Specialisation with 2 points from the higher value. This ensures that the value of the Specialisation is as high as possible.
Using Specialisations A Specialisation can substitute for any attribute, so long as it is appropriate to the situation. A Specialisation can be used instead of another attribute, so long as the player can describe how it is useful convincingly. It can be substituted for attributes outside of its associated attribute pair as well, if appropriate.
Gaining Specialisations in Play Character creation is not the only time that a Specialisation can be gained. During play, 2 Survival Points can be spent to buy a Specialisation then and there. When this is done, all the normal rules apply for buying a Specialisation - it must be associated with an attribute pair, and that pair must be lowered by 2. This cannot reduce an attribute to less than 1.
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SURVIVAL POINTS Every character has a stack of Survival Points. Survival Points represent several things: they are hit points, sanity points and drama points all rolled into one. They are a measure of a character’s luck, their resources, their ability to prevent death or injury, and their ability to protect anything that is meaningful to them. Each character begins the game with 5 Survival Points, although some stories might dictate more or less. This value will fluctuate over the course of the story, as a character’s fortunes wax and wane. During the game they can be spent to gain certain benefits, lost when events turn against them and gained for playing in a manner fitting a horror movie.
You can find more about the uses for Survival Points in Chapter Two.
BAD HABITS There’s always one character in a horror movie who decides to go out for a smoke just as the werewolf is sizing up the cabin for a midnight snack, or who decides to make out with her boyfriend right there in the crypt. These traits are called Bad Habits, and they reward the character for causing trouble and acting to type. Think of them as personalised clichés, little foibles or follies that cause problems for the group and put the character - or her friends - in danger. A character might not have any Bad Habits, or they can have a few - one or two is about right. Sure, they give a character an extra way to get Survival Points, but she has to put herself at risk to take advantage of it. A Bad Habit could conceivably be any quirk, behaviour or foible, so long as following it is contrary to the laws of survival, causing problems or putting others at risk. A Bad Habit might be a physical habit, such as sneaking off for a cigarette. It might be a propensity to do something under stress, like abandon the others to their fate.
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It might be a horror movie cliche, such as run off and find somewhere to hide. Alone. In the dark. Or it could even be something esoteric such as one of the seven deadly sins made manifest. For more examples of Bad Habits, take a look at the sample characters included throughout Chapter Seven: Scenarios. Regardless of what the Bad Habit is, whenever it crops up in play and causes a problem, complication or challenge for any of the characters, the player gains a Survival Point. Keep an eye out for opportunities to use your Bad Habit in play, and don’t be afraid to point out to your GM that you are using a Bad Habit.
For example, Alice is headstrong, so takes the Bad Habit of ‘Recklessly charges on ahead.’ Whenever Alice recklessly charges into a situation and her actions put herself or others in danger or generally causes trouble for any of the characters, she gets a Survival Point.
Alice Concept: Vampire Hunter Identify: 7 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 4
Obscure: 3 Dissuade: 6 Escape: 5 Protect: 2 Vampire Hunter: 8
Holy Sacraments: 7
Survival Points: 5 Bad Habits: Recklessly charges on ahead.
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CARLOS HAGAN PRESENTS A FILM BY NICOL WILSON aJETZ BARNEKOW nLYNDON PATTERSON oSTEVEN FERNE gALASTAIR KENNY p I.M. MCALL jCATHERINE STRONG vCHRIS & PETER BACON kRICK CAMPBELL
IN THE FINAL BATTLE OF GOOD VERSUS EVIL...
...GOOD
LOST
THE RUL RULES THE ES OF OF
CHAPTER TWO: CHAPTER TWO:
SURVIVAL
Nothing is certain in a horror movie; not who dies first, who gets the girl or whether the monster can even be killed. This is just as true in Dead of Night as in any horror movie. Whilst much of play will be taken up describing what you’re up to, talking in character and getting yourself into implausibly stupid scrapes, whenever your character winds up in a situation where they might end up in peril, or whether they succeed or fail at an action is important, dice are rolled. In Dead of Night, it is not so much a case of survival of the fittest, but of survival of who rolls highest. Rolling badly might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it’ll certainly take you one step closer to ending up as a monster’s lunch.
TASK CHECKS Roll 2D10 + attribute and compare the result to the target number. When something needs to be done, be it a wall to climb, a werewolf to track, or an enraged psychopath to avoid, a player makes a check. Roll 2D10, add the relevant attribute and compare the result to a target number, referred to as the Target.
For standard, uncontested task attempts the Target is 15. If the roll is equal to or greater than the Target, the task is successful and the player accomplishes what he was setting out to do. If the roll is less than the Target, the task is failed and the player does not accomplish what she was setting out to do.
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For example, in her search for the vampire’s crypt, Alice is trying to break down the door into a basement. She rolls two dice and adds her Persuade score of 5 and needs to score 15 or more. Alice rolls 12, which added to her Persuade 5 equals 17 – more than the Target. She breaks the door down without trouble.
Extended Actions A Task Check need not be used for a single action – it can easily represent a string of related activities leading towards a single outcome. A single Task Check could be used to break a window and take only a matter of seconds or it could be used to complete the investigation of a crime scene, taking hours or even days.
Let it Ride Something to bear in mind is that once a player has made a check, whether successful or not, they should not be required to make another check for the same task unless something changes. This is an important rule to remember, so as not to bludgeon characters to death with unnecessary dice rolls, making the players keep rolling until they fail a check.
So if Laurie succeeds at an Escape Check to avoid the werewolf, she should not have to make another Escape Check until her circumstances change – she might cut her leg scrambling down a hillside, the scent of fresh blood potentially alerting the monster, for example. Likewise, if Alice fails an Identify Check to spot a bloody handprint in the library, the opportunity to find the clue is lost unless some new situation arises. The GM should not keep asking Alice to make an Identify Check to spot the clue until she succeeds at a check.
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CONFLICT CHECKS The Target for any Conflict Check is equal to 10 + the opponent’s attribute. Many checks involve direct or indirect conflict with another individual, tasks where the outcome depends as much on the skill of the opponent as it does of the character attempting it. In these situations a Conflict Check is called for. A Conflict Check is made in the same way as a Task Check, but the Target is equal to 10 + the opponent’s attribute. Most often this attribute will be the partner of the attribute used by the player, but this does not always have to be the case. If the roll is equal to or greater than the Target, the outcome is positive for the player making the check and negative for her opponent. If the roll is less than the Target, the outcome is negative for the player making the check and positive for her opponent.
Continuing our previous example, Alice has broken down the door to the basement but the vampire attempts to flee. Alice gives chase, using her Pursue of 5. The vampire has an Escape of 4, so the Target is 10 + 4 = 14. Alice rolls a 9, which, added to her Pursue 5 = 14, a success. Alice catches the vampire, although she might soon wish that she hadn’t!
Indirect Opposition Although a Conflict Check is often in direct opposition with an opponent, it does not have to require their presence – tracks made earlier in the day still require a Pursue Check to follow, for example, even though the opponent is not physically present. Similarly a Conflict Check might be made only indirectly against an opponent. A rockfall blocking pursuit will require a Pursue Check against the prey’s Escape attribute to circumvent, even though it is the rockfall slowing the pursuit rather than the skill of the prey at avoiding the pursuers.
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PROD V -JR-JR ATOZO A SD EG KAL ONOV ENTS OL MIR T PRES IUM EN a EONID ONKRE PREM JONF bL V K VERY ALEXI ONOVA uKIE ILI ZYST E M BY TALYA L VAS KI A FIL NA NLES k n URI A TIN URLIV gKONSTAN j
RISK CHECKS The loser of a Risk Check loses a Survival Point. Although failing a Conflict Check can inconvenience a character, it rarely endangers them directly. Yet there are plenty of situations in horror movies that lead to a character’s early demise, such as the attack of a vicious monster, a character stumbling whilst attempting to escape, or a dread ritual being undertaken. Such situations are deemed Risky, and are handled by Risk Checks. Before the dice are rolled, the GM can designate any check to be Risky, making the check into a Risk Check. A Risky situation is one in which either participant could be endangered in some way, whether directly as a result of the action or indirectly as a result of the consequences of failure. A Risk Check is handled in the same way as a Conflict Check, with one exception – the loser of the check loses a Survival Point, in addition to any other negative outcome. Checks made using Assault or Protect will almost always be Risk Checks, but checks using other attributes might be Risk Checks too, such as an Escape Check to escape a crazed killer or an Identify Check to try to uncover a foe’s weakness in a darkly forbidden grimoire. Under normal circumstances a single Risk Check can only result in the loss of a single Survival Point to a particular individual, although some Monstrous Specialisations and Vulnerabilities can cause more to be lost.
For example, Alice confronts the vampire, but is in for a nasty shock when the vampire attempts to attack her. Alice attempts to make a Protect Check to fend the vampire off, but John, the GM, announces that it will be a Risk Check – if Alice fails, she will lose a Survival Point. Alice has a Protect of 4 and the vampire an Assault of 6, making the Target 16. Alice rolls a 4, which, added to her Protect 4, is only 8. Alice fails the check and must lose a Survival Point. John describes the vampire throwing Alice to one side like a ragdoll, breaking her arm.
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Later in the adventure, Laurie is waylaid by the vampire too. Laurie promptly flees, attempting to Escape the monster. John says that the check will be Risky, as failure will lead to the vampire catching Laurie. Laurie has an Escape of 5, the vampire a Pursue of 6. Laurie rolls a 12, which, added to her Escape 5, equals 17 – a success. Laurie not only escapes the vampire, but lures it away from its lair where it becomes more vulnerable. The vampire must lose a Survival Point.
DESCRIBING THE OUTCOME It’s up to the GM and the players to decide who gets to describe the outcome of a task. Often it will be the GM who describes what happens to the players, but you might prefer to allow the player who succeeded at the check to describe their success, or allow another player to describe their failure. You can even swap between methods of narrating the action as appropriate – both are right. Lavish narration should be saved until after the dice have been rolled – this saves both players and GM the trouble of expending all their creative energy before the outcome of the conflict has been decided.
CLAIMING INITIATIVE The player who states an action his character intends to take claims Initiative and gets to act. Under normal circumstances, players determine the order that actions are resolved as a group. In a tense situation, however, it can be very important to determine who gets to act first, or last. In these circumstances, the player who states an action his character intends to take claims Initiative. The player to speak next gets to act next, and so on. A player who blurts a course of action out as his action gets to act, which can mean that a particularly cruel GM may well insist that he keeps to his action, no matter how rash!
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If players cannot mutually and quickly agree upon the order in which their actions take place in a scene, actions occur in order of descending Survival Point totals. If the characters are in conflict with a monster, the monster always claims Initiative.
For example, Laurie and Alice are in conflict with a vampire. The vampire claims initiative, as it is a creature, and leaps upon Laurie. After it has acted, Laurie says ‘I’m going to hit it with a shovel.’ Laurie may then act. Alice then says ‘I’m going to try to stake it.’ Alice then acts, and so on.
WHO ROLLS THE DICE ? A player should normally roll the dice, but no player may roll the dice for two consecutive actions. In a conflict, it is not always apparent who makes the check. If one character is chasing another, who rolls the dice; the predator or the prey? Whenever possible, a player with an active character in the scene should roll the dice, rather than the GM. If both protagonists are characters, then the character who initiated the action should roll the dice. However, a player or the GM may not roll the dice for two consecutive checks.
Building on the example above, although the vampire claims Initiative and attacks Laurie, it is Laurie who gets to roll the dice as she is the active player – she rolls her Protect against the vampire’s Assault. Laurie acts next, but because she has just rolled the dice, she may not do so again – therefore the GM rolls instead, rolling the vampire’s Protect against Laurie’s Assault.
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SURVIVAL POINTS Survival Points represent how close a character is to being written out of the story. Every character – including monsters – has a stack of Survival Points. Survival Points represent several things: they are her hit points, her sanity points and her drama points all rolled into one. They are a measure of a character’s luck, their resources, their ability to prevent death or injury, and their ability to protect anything that is meaningful to them. Each character typically begins a story with 5 Survival Points, although some stories might dictate more or less. This value will fluctuate over the course of the story, as a character’s fortunes wax and wane. Ultimately, a character’s stack of Survival Points represents how close a character is to being written out of the story, whether by death, insanity or some other means. So long as a character has any Survival Points remaining, she is safe(ish). Once she has run out, she enjoys no such luxury. A character with fewer Survival Points remaining than her comrades will find things starting to go against him – monsters that may have overlooked him before begin paying him more attention, or her hiding place may turn out to be a dead end. The loss of a Survival Point at any time might represent superficial or serious injury, loss of consciousness, a companion’s untimely death, equipment failure, loss of supplies such as fuel or ammunition, or any one of a host of negative consequences. In essence, anything that hastens a character’s end or that reduces her chances of survival, results in the loss of a Survival Point.
Running on Empty If a character already reduced to 0 Survival Points is required to lose a Survival Point, she is written out of the story. When a character is reduced to 0 Survival Points, her time is very nearly up and her luck is running out. She may have suffered grievous wounds or a mental breakdown. GMs are encouraged to inflict all manner of nefarious effects upon characters with a low number of Survival Points. C H A P T E R
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If a character already reduced to 0 Survival Points is required to lose a Survival Point by whatever means, she is written out of the story – she might die horribly, go irrevocably insane, turn into a monster or is otherwise permanently removed from the scenario. Luckily, the demise of a character does not have to end a player’s involvement in the game. A player can easily roll up a new character, take control of an NPC or even join the GM’s side as a monster.
Spending and Losing Survival Points A player can voluntarily choose to spend a Survival Point, or she might be forced to by adverse circumstances. A character’s pool of Survival Points constantly waxes and wanes over the course of a story. A character may choose to spend Survival Points to survive dangerous encounters, as well as to give him an edge when needed, or to sway the course of the story her way; or she may be forced to lose a Survival Point if things go against him.
When a character is on the losing side during a Risk Check, she loses a Survival Point. A character may also choose to spend a Survival Point to make use of one of the following effects:
Inspiration - The character may flip an attribute pair for the duration of a scene. To return attributes to their normal values before the end of a scene, she must spend another Survival Point. That Never Happened! - The character may re-roll a single check. She must abide by the results of the re-roll, although may continue to spend additional Survival Points to re-roll the re-roll. If a character is on the losing side in a Risk Check, she loses a Survival Point, so why spend a Survival Point to re-roll the check? Simply because success forces the opponent to lose a Survival Point – sure, you’ll lose one either way, but this way you might get to take your opponent down a peg or two into the bargain. Of course, if the re-roll doesn’t go your way either, there’s a chance you might end up losing two Survival Points instead of just one!
Vying for Attention - A character may spend a Survival Point to interrupt another character’s action or to gain the Initiative. By spending a Survival Point, a character may even roll the dice twice in a row.
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Hold It! - A character can spend a Survival Point at any time to negate the effect of another character’s Survival Point expenditure. Of course, this action can also be cancelled by Survival Point expenditure, possibly provoking a bidding war! The person who spends the last Survival Point gets to dictate whether the action did or did not take place. What’s This? - A character can spend a Survival Point to introduce a new element into the story, such as an important clue or hitherto unspecified fact about the setting or monster. I’ve Got Just the Thing! - A character can spend a Survival Point to find, own or otherwise acquire a useful item of some description. The introduction of the item must be in keeping with the established fiction – a character cannot simply find a rocket launcher in a bar fight, but might pick up a discarded knife, for example. Make Me Special - A character may also spend Survival Points to gain additional Specialisations during play. A Specialisation costs 2 Survival Points to purchase, and the character must lower the associated attribute pair by 2 as normal. Adding a Specialisation in play must make some degree of sense to the story, either by virtue of a training montage, a hitherto unmentioned proficiency or a mystical artefact.
Gaining Survival Points A character can gain Survival Points almost as readily as they lose them. A character gains Survival Points in the following circumstances:
Fortune’s Favour - If a double is rolled for a successful check, the character gains a Survival Point.
Running with Cliches - A player who puts their character in perilous or inconvenient circumstances by following horror movie clichés gains a Survival Point for their efforts. Exactly what constitutes a cliché depends on the Genre of the game - see Chapter Five: Genre. Bad Habits - A character might have a Bad Habit, a personalised set of stereotypes and clichés that can get him into trouble. If you inconvenience your character by following your Bad Habit, you gain a Survival Point.
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Artistic License - A player that describes her actions or setting in a particularly dramatic, evocative or cool manner may gain a Survival Point, at the GM’s discretion.
Well Rested - A character that spends a full scene resting and relaxing gains a Survival Point. Characters can never rest for two consecutive scenes, nor can they exceed 5 Survival Points in this way. I’m Still Kicking - A character that survives a scenario regains 2 Survival Points. This means that a character that nears death in one scenario might start another fairly badly mauled. This is fitting, of course, as recurring characters do not necessarily survive long into a sequel! Unlucky for Some - When the sum of any dice rolled equals 13 (only the numbers on the dice, not the check), fate turns against the good guys. A creature of the GM’s choice gains a Survival Point and the Tension goes up by 1. Worse still, the GM can make life a little more uncomfortable for the character.
CHAPTER THREE: CHAPTER THREE:
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Managing suspense is difficult in both literature and film. Explaining how to manage suspense in a roleplaying game is even trickier. In order to help the GM manage suspense, Dead of Night includes a mechanic to make his life easier. This mechanic is closely tied to actions taken by the players, and takes the form of a single GMmanaged variable called Tension. Tension is used as a rough gauge of the atmosphere and tension within the game at any given moment. The Tension scale runs from 1 (relatively innocuous) to 15 or more (positively Lovecraftian) and varies as the story unfolds, going up as chilling details are revealed and the horror manifests, or down as evil is bested. Tension is not only used to help the GM narrate the scene, but also to pace the story and guide the horror along a more dramatic course.
DETERMINING TENSION Starting Tension Points for a story can range anywhere from 1 (relatively innocuous) to 10 (disturbingly macabre).
The Tension Point value increases by 1 each time any character or creature uses or loses a Survival Point. Tension Points Lovecraftian).
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Using Tension to Describe Scenes All scenes in a horror movie incorporate anticipation or suspense to some degree. Players and the GM can use the current Tension as a guide to introducing a similar sense of foreboding when describing scenes. A higher Tension will result in more frightening descriptions in a scene, regardless of whether there is actually anything for the characters to worry about. For example, the following descriptions are all based on the same image. The perceptive differences are all down to the Tension:
Tension 5: In a shadowy corner of the library, two lovers embrace. The man grips the woman tightly to his chest, stooping slightly to kiss her passionately.
Tension 10: The shadows of the library deepen, hiding all manner of secrets in the darkness. In the gloom, two lovers appear to embrace. The man grips the woman tightly, before plunging his sharpened teeth into her throat. She groans in pain and passion but does not pull away.
Tension 15: The darkness of the shadows seems to writhe and move of their own accord, threatening to smother the remaining light source. In the darkness, a tall and skeletal figure grips his victim tightly. His razor-like fangs tear open her throat and a worm-like tongue greedily laps up the blood. She does not struggle, overcome by ecstasy even in her death throes. In the example above, consider the “truth” to be portrayed by the Tension 15 description. Lower Tension might indicate a character’s willingness to disregard the truth or rationalise away their observations. For example, with a successful Identify Check, a creature might be mistaken for a cat or a shadow if the Tension is low. A wary character must investigate further because their perception of reality might not justify the paranoia of their player. Therefore the Tension acts as a guide for the GM as to how much horror to inject into the scene, as well as how much to give away to the players.
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Using Tension to Dictate Pace As the movie winds its way towards its climax, so too does the Tension. The GM can use the Tension as a measure of pace, using it to decide when to escalate the plot, when to reveal clues or plot twists and when to start wrapping the story up. Every time the Tension hits a new threshold - 5, 10, 15 - the atmosphere and horror leaps to a new level, the story ramps up a notch and the whole plot takes a step towards the climax. When planning a story, rather than plotting out the minutiae of the plot, the GM need only give some thought to what happens at each Tension threshold, jotting down some ideas as to how the plot can escalate at each stage. The GM can also decide at which threshold the story will hit its climax - 10 or 15. This isn’t set in stone, but it does provide a good guide as to when the GM should begin to wrap things up.
Using Tension to Modify Checks As well as dictating pace and the description of horror, Tension Points also directly affect the ability of the PCs to accomplish their desired goals, helping or hindering them depending on the circumstance. How many times has a movie character investigated creepy noises and flung open a door to find something as innocuous as a cat? How many times has the cat turned out to be the creature in disguise? Tension Points can be used to influence events in either direction.
The GM can spend a Tension Point to add or subtract 1 to a check for any character or monster. The GM can expend Tension Points to cause a character’s check to succeed or fail, depending on the needs of the plot at a particular moment. He can spend any number of Tension Points to modify the result of the check by an equal number. The Tension is used to help the GM guide scene descriptions, but only Tension Points are used to modify checks.
For example, the Tension Points are currently at 10. Alice is attempting to sneak up on the vampire. She makes an Obscure check and needs a 12 to succeed - she rolls an 10, which, added to her Obscure of 3 is a success. Alice is about to narrate sneaking up on the vampire when John spends two points of Tension to reduce
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the check by 2. The check goes from a success to a failure, and John describes how the vampire turns around at the last minute, leaping towards Alice with a snarl. The Tension drops by 2, and Alice had better run!
Monsters & Tension When a GM spends Tension Points, situations become less frightening. Fear of the unknown and anticipation are usually much more dread-inspiring than confrontation... usually.
When a monster is present in the scene, the Tension increases by the value of the monster’s current Survival Points. This helps to keep a scene suspenseful and scary even after expending Tension Points to guide characters to a particular outcome. However, a monster’s Survival Points add to the Tension for the purposes of descriptions only - they do not directly increase Tension Points and so cannot be spent by the GM to modify checks.
For example, the current Tension is 6. Laurie is studying late in the library, researching the best way to slay a vampire. It is late and the library is full of shadows, Laurie the only one there. The GM describes how one of the shadows detaches itself from the wall - the vampire is here! The vampire has 5 Survival Points. The Tension is still 6 for most purposes, but here and now in the library, the effective Tension for descriptive purposes is 11. The GM describes the sudden movement of the shadows in unison, the windows rattling and the lights flickering, mist spilling in from the air vents to surround the figure of the vampire. Although the Tension is normally capped at 15, the presence of a monster can take it soaring above it. If this is the case, the GM should feel free to push his descriptions into the realms of the surreal or insane.
For example, the current Tension is 12. Laurie is trying to escape from the vampire through a graveyard that the GM has already described as being thick with shadows and looming silhouettes of gravestones. As the vampire has 5 Survival Points, its presence in the scene sends the Tension climbing up to 17. The GM describes Laurie’s descent towards madness as all of the shadows seem to come to life and the gravestones tower above her. Suddenly one of the mortuary statues topples towards her - it is the vampire!
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MANAGING TENSION Most horror literature and films maintain a certain mood dictated by their genre and atmosphere, as well as a consistent style of tension. Keeping tension within five points of the starting Tension rating helps to stabilise this mood, whereas inexorably climbing towards Tension 10 or 15 will lead to a relentless escalation in the mood. It is perfectly acceptable to indulge in wild gains and expenditures of Tension and Survival Points, but be prepared for the story to go through a strange roller-coaster ride of moods as well. Tension can be a very versatile mechanic, allowing the GM to evoke a particular type or genre of horror. There are four major considerations for managing Tension: mood, circumstance, intensity and genre. Mood is used to determine when and why Survival Points are gained, encouraging the players to emulate the type of horror the story is emulating. Circumstance dictates when and how Tension Points can be spent, helping the GM simulate the feel of the horror. Intensity specifies how many Tension Points can be spent in one go. The final consideration, genre, fills in all of the gaps, colouring the situation and adding flavour to the scene.
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Mood Mood refers to the freedom or constraint used by the GM to dispense discretionary Survival Points. I Did It!, Running with Clichés and Artistic License are all awarded at the discretion of the GM. If the GM awards Survival Points sparingly, characters have less chance to survive a scenario and Tension tends to increase gradually and slowly. If the GM is generous with awards, Tension can significantly and rapidly increase. Mood is not necessarily a rigid mechanical restriction, but a guideline for how frequently you want Survival Points to be handed out and the Tension to rack up, as well as the sorts of play that you want to reward. Some possible constraints include:
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Limit I Did It! and Running with Clichés to heighten the sense of impending doom and decrease the traditional schlock horror approach.
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For a deadly serious game, Survival Points should not be awarded for anything resembling humour or clichés; instead award Survival Points for characters placing themselves in imminent danger.
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Award bonus Survival Points for describing particularly gruesome scenes in a splatter movie.
Circumstance Circumstance refers to the specific situations Tension Points can be used in. Without circumstantial considerations, Tension Points could be used on a whim - at any time, for any effect and either for or against player goals. When Tension Points are used in a haphazard or inconsistent manner, players never know what to expect. The consequence is often a chaotic, unfocused story. By limiting the use of Tension Points the story can take on a very focused structure. By encouraging certain types of check to succeed by forcing Tension Points to be spent on them, a certain genre or feel can be emulated. For example, in a zombie movie, flight from the relentless hordes is a trope of the genre, whereas fighting them is likely to get you killed. By limiting Tension Points to increasing Escape checks and decreasing Assault checks, the behaviour prevalent in the movie is encouraged.
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Similarly, by restraining Tension expenditure until the Tension rating has exceeded a certain level, the suspense can be allowed to increase slowly and relentlessly, before being blown on a big climax. Conversely, by forcing expenditure at every opportunity, the scenario will have more twists and turns, but the Tension is unlikely to mount overly. The circumstances under which Tension is used in a scenario is determined before the game begins, either by the GM or by player consensus. Some example circumstances are presented below, but any combination or variation is possible. Experiment with different circumstances to achieve different effects:
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Can only spend Tension Points when at least 10 points of
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May only spend Tension on checks made against players.
Intensity Intensity refers to how much Tension can be expended on a single check. By setting this number high, the GM is free to turn an outstanding success into a miserable failure, giving him a great deal of control over the outcome of the players’ actions. Conversely, by restricting the amount that can be spent, the GM is only able to nudge the dice in the direction he wants, turning narrow failures into narrow successes.
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By a similar token, intensity can not just cap how much Tension can be spent but mandate it. This has the effect of regulating the flow of Tension, taking some of the choice out of the GM’s hands and causing the Tension to drain away. This can cause a relentless rising and falling of the Tension. Some examples might include:
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down to 5.
Genre Genre is the final consideration, tying the other three settings together into a coherent whole. It is the flavour and feel that translates the mechanical precision of the rules into a living, breathing horror movie. Genre takes Survival Points and gives them meaning in the game, making them more than simple tokens. It takes the Tension guidelines and uses them to emulate a specific type of horror movie in the game. In short, it is the means by which the mechanics can be translated into story. There are many different genres of horror movie, each with its own unique tropes, clichés and flavour. Some example genres include:
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Slasher, in which Survival Points represent injury and the
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Psychological, in which Survival Points represent insanity
attentions of the monster, and clichés flow freely.
and delusion, and clichés and success are rather more limited.
Genre is discussed in more detail in Chapter Five: Genre.
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Putting it All Together Scenarios can be fine-tuned by applying various mood, circumstance and intensity guidelines. In fact, the same scenario will play very differently with variations of guidelines. Similarly, different groups of players may enjoy different guidelines more than others, finding that some fit their play style or preference of horror better than others. There is no ‘right way’ to determine the best Tension guidelines for your group or for a particular scenario - try experimenting with different settings and see which produces the more enjoyable results. Chapter 5: Genre, delves into this in more detail, suggesting guidelines to emulate various horror genres.
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BRIAN HEDLIN PRESENTS A FILM BY STEVEN VINCENT aVINCENT HEALY nGUY WINSTON JR. oELLEN C. BLACK gJEFF HANN p GEORGE NELSON jGILL MOYES vPAUL STEVENSON kDAVID WONG
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CHAPTER FOUR: CHAPTER FOUR:
MAKIN KINGG AA MA
MONSTER
At the heart of every scary horror movie is an equally scary monster. Sometimes that monster is the haunted house or the characters themselves, but more often its some manner of gribbly such as a werewolf, a vampire or a zombie. When planning a Dead of Night game, your first port of call should be your monster. A good well-rounded and cleverly thought-out monster will help out immensely, informing the plot, driving the story and generally making the whole thing hang together. Sometimes all you’ll need to do is come up with a good monster; everything else will fall into place naturally.
WHAT’S MY MOTIVATION? When designing a monster, there are three questions you need to ask yourself:
Why does it act ? How does it act ? How can it be stopped ? Of these three, the first question is perhaps the most important, for it establishes the monster’s motivation; its reason for existing, acting and for coming into conflict with the protagonists. It might
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also be the reason that it is a monster at all. Motivation gives a monster a reason to act, rather than simply reacting to the presence or actions of the protagonists. Its actions towards achieving its goals, no matter how animalistic or simplistic they may be, can really help to drive the story, not to mention to add a sense of danger and menace to the proceedings.
For example: The monster must feed on the blood of others to keep its flesh from decaying. For example: The monster takes sadistic delight in tormenting others. The second and third questions are far more practical in nature, and invariably draw upon a monster’s motivation. Once you have decided how it acts towards its victims, you’ll begin to have a clearer idea as to how it operates, how it hunts its prey, what it does to them and the sorts of abilities it might have. A monster that slays by consuming a victim’s breath might well be stealthy, sneaking into its victim’s room and killing them in their sleep. A monster that dismembers its victims and consumes the chunks of flesh might have huge blade-like appendages, or else tote a rather large axe.
For example: The monster kills its victims by draining them of their blood, using a sharp pair of incisors. For example: The monster captures its victims and tortures them with elaborate traps in its underground lair. Considerations as to how it can be killed further solidify the concept, both offering a way that the story is likely to end as well as to give you ideas as to the sorts of defences the monster might employ to prevent this. A monster that can only be killed on the 13th Friday of the 13th year of the new millennium is likely to act as though it is invincible, whereas a monster that can be slain by the uttering of its true name might be a bit more careful, jealously guarding the book that contains its name.
For example: The monster can only be slain by decapitating it and burning the remains. For example: If the victim can survive the traps and escape the lair, the monster can be confronted and slain.
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MONSTROUS ARCHETYPES In Dead of Night, monsters can be grouped into one of ten archetypes, each reflecting a broad category of traditional monster. Each archetype lends itself to a different play style and story, as each has different strengths, weaknesses and powers to slay their victims. Monstrous archetypes are only intended as loose guidelines to help you design your own monsters, and there is likely to be a great deal of overlap between archetypes. Each archetype describes how the monsters within it act and operate, provides some literary or movie examples, as well as suggesting some Specialisations for each. A sample monster for each archetype is presented here too.
The Unstoppable Killer – a relentless foe that can neither be reasoned with nor killed. As seen in, Friday 13th, Halloween.
The Vengeful Dead – an entity that returned from the grave to haunt the living. As seen in, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Ringu. The Hunter – a monster that might pass as normal, but feeds upon us. As seen in, Dracula, The Silence of the Lambs. The Beast Within – a creature with two faces, which cannot help the monster it becomes. As seen in, Dog Solders, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The Corrupter – a creature that wields malevolent power on those around it. As seen in, Hellraiser, The Omen. The Impostor – a monster that masquerades as somebody else. As seen in, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, The Faculty. The Puppet Master - a monster that controls others to do its bidding. As seen in, Invaders from Mars, The Island of Dr Moreau. The Horde – an implacable, endless tide of monsters. As seen in, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later.
The Formless Horror – the environment itself is the monstrous horror. As seen in, The Mist, Silent Hill.
The Thing from Beyond – an unknowable alien entity with an unfathomable motive. As seen in, Alien, The Colour Out of Space.
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THE UNSTOPPABLE KILLER The Unstoppable Killer knows but one thing – murder. It is an implacable foe, relentless in its desire to kill. It can neither be reasoned with nor killed, for whatever drives it gives it unnatural strength. Only cunning, trickery or over the top destruction can defeat the Unstoppable Killer, and even then it might well be back. An Unstoppable Killer might be a supernatural serial killer, a scientific experiment gone awry or some oversized beast. At first glance its motivation might be little more complicated than to kill everybody in its path, but often there is an underlying reason to its killing spree – a misplaced sense of being wronged or a desire to exact revenge on the victims, for example. The antagonists in many a slasher or splatter movie fall into this archetype, but so too do the creatures in many monster movies. The Unstoppable Killer makes for a relentlessly paced story, as the victims struggle to escape its clutches no matter how far they run. Whilst its murders might be a source of mystery to begin with, it should not be long before the victims identify the foe – from this point on it will be all they can do to escape it, let alone stop it. Classic movies that include Unstoppable Killers are Friday the 13th (or rather its many sequels, featuring Jason Voorhees), Halloween (Michael Myers) and Scream (Ghostface). More esoteric killers include the eponymous monsters featured in The Terminator, Godzilla and Jaws, all unstoppable killing machines (literally, in the case of The Terminator) with little on their mind beyond murder. Survival Points:
5
Suggested Specialisations:
Implacable, Deadly, Indestructible, Sequel.
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Masked Psycho The masked psychopath is the classic slasher movie villain. Masked, wielding a knife or sickle and in the midst of a murderous killing spree, this monster is out for blood. He has come to this small town to put right a perceived wrong - perhaps he has been wronged by the town’s citizens in the past or he sees himself as a crusader against the immorality of its youth. Whatever his messed up reasons, he has decided to take it out on the college kids, picking them off one by one until the town has paid its due. Identify: 3 Persuade: 1 Pursue: 6 Assault: 4
Obscure: 7 Dissuade: 9 Escape: 2 Protect: 2
Steady Pace: 9 Deadly: 9
Sequel: 8
Survival Points: 5
Steady Pace: As long as its victim is on foot, the Masked Psycho may keep pace in a leisurely and terrifying manner, regardless of obstacles or impeding terrain. Deadly: Whether through brutal slashing attacks with its blade or surprise ambushes, the Masked Psycho is a deadly foe. This Specialisation can be used when the Masked Psycho is attacking its victim. It can be triggered immediately after the monster wins a Risk Check to increase the amount of Survival Points lost by the victim to 2, so long as the check revolved around combat.
Sequel: A slave to its masters, the monster cannot be slain, instead returning in a series of increasingly tenuous sequels. If the monster is reduced to 0 Survival Points and the Tension has yet to hit 15, this Specialisation may be triggered to bring the monster back to life on 1 Survival Point. If the Tension has hit 15, then the monster is still brought back to life, but after the credits have rolled...
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THE VENGEFUL DEAD Everything you need to know about the Vengeful Dead is expressed in its name - it is out for vengeance and it’s, err, dead. This spirit’s revenge kick might be misguided or misplaced, exacting its fury upon any nearby victim, or it might have a genuine grievance and is out to get its own back. Either way, it’s not stopping until it’s got its justice. But can justice be found before it’s too late? By its very nature, the Vengeful Dead is supernatural in origin, but there’s more to it than that. It could be a formless ghost, lashing out at the living using the world around it as its weapon. It could be a far more tangible form, an undead monster that staggers implacably towards its prey. Whatever its form, the spirit is back for unfinished business in the mortal realm, driven to revenge of the murderous variety. This could be genuine revenge, as the ghost is denied death by the escape of its murderer, or it could merely be baseless vengeance, as the killer lashes out at the descendants of those that saw it hang. The nature of the Vengeful Dead will inform the story. A subtle monster, such as a poltergeist or ghost, might lead to a more evenly paced psychological horror or ghost story, perhaps more akin to a supernatural mystery than outright horror. Equally, as many a JHorror has proven, such a monster can easily pitch the plot into the realm of the sinister, visceral and horrific. Either way, until the source of the perceived injustice can be found, such as the killer brought to justice or the victim’s remains found and buried, there can be no defeating this foe. A more tangible threat, such as a murderous corpse returned from the grave, might have more in common with a slasher movie, with the monster seemingly unstoppable until the source of its power uncovered and destroyed - the one surviving piece of its corpse or the magical amulet that gives it strength. Most ghost stories or haunted house movies fit the bill for the Vengeful Dead, such as Poltergeist or the Haunting. Similarly, many modern Japanese horror movies feature the Vengeful Dead, such as Ringu, Dark Water or the Grudge. A Nightmare on Elm Street presents a slightly different take on the monster, with Freddy Krueger the vengeful spirit out to slay the children of those who killed him. I Know What You Did Last Summer performs a similar trick, albeit in the land of the living rather than the dreams of the victims. Survival Points:
3-4
Suggested Specialisations:
Controller, Formidable, Implacable, No Escape.
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Ghost A ghost is the restless spirit of a dead person, unable to pass on because of unfinished business with the living. The ghost is linked to the mortal realm by its unburied physical remains or by strong emotions, such as those of vengeance towards its unpunished killer. The targets of the ghost’s vengeance might well be the source of its anguish, or they may be innocent victims who have gotten in the way. Their only chance at survival is to find out what stops the ghost from reaching its afterlife and putting it to rest. Identify: 2 Persuade: 2 Pursue: 5 Assault: 5
Obscure: 6 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 5 Protect: 3
Secrets of the Grave: 8 Fright: 8 Possession: 5 Implacable: 9
Survival Points: 4
Secrets of the Grave: The dead have many secrets and they do not reveal them easily. This Specialisation can be used in place of Obscure to prevent another character from discovering the ghost’s Vulnerability.
Fright: The ghost can move objects about or appear as a spectre, terrifying the living and scaring them off. Possession: The ghost can attempt to possess the living for a short while, forcing another to do its bidding with a successful check. Implacable: The ghost is insubstantial and physical attacks pass right through it. This Specialisation can be used to defend against physical attacks or to negate other circumstances that might cause the ghost harm. It can be triggered immediately after the ghost loses a Risk Check to negate the Survival Point loss, so long as the loss stemmed from physical damage.
Vulnerability: Dormancy (Mortal Remains) - If ghost’s physical remains can be found, salted and burned, the ghost enters a state of dormancy. Whilst dormant the ghost is reduced to 1 Survival Point and may only take defensive actions. Dormancy does not count as resting for a scene. The ghost immediately regains its Survival Points plus an additional one should the remains be disturbed.
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THE HUNTER Outwardly the Hunter might appear human, but within its heart it harbours a deep need to feed on its chosen prey - us! The Hunter might consume the flesh of the living to sate its hunger or drink the blood of a man to keep its flesh from rotting. It is cunning and subtle, patient enough to wait out its victims before closing in to feed when they least expect it. Before it can be slain a Hunter must first be identified, its weaknesses uncovered and its lair found. Only then can its trail of victims be put to rest. A Hunter could be supernatural in origin, such as a vampire, or it could be more mundane, although no less sinister for it, such as a serial killer with an unusual appetite or a mad scientist with a desperate need for body parts. Although at its heart the motivation of these creatures is to prey on the living, the reasons for such a desire can be many and varied; from physical need to perverted desire. The Hunter has a great deal of cross-over with the Beast Within - both are potentially predators who can pass as human, but the key difference is that whilst the Beast Within cannot help what it is, the Hunter has made a choice to feed and does so with relish. And sometimes other condiments. The inclusion of a Hunter can make for a traditionally paced horror story that starts off slow-paced, as victims slowly turn up one by one, their cause of death possibly innocuous at first before the sinister realisation that they have not merely been murdered but fed upon dawns on the protagonists. Then it becomes a race against time to find and slay the Hunter before it feeds again! Perhaps the worst fate a protagonist can encounter when facing the Hunter is to become its next meal... The classic literary example of the Hunter is Dracula, who poses as a human aristocrat to get closer to his victims. The titular monster in The Mummy fits this category too - he might not be able to pass as a human when first encountered, but as he consumes the body parts of his victims he regains a normal appearance. Perhaps less obvious Hunters include the monsters in The Silence of the Lambs - both Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter look human, but preyed on men and women for their skin and flesh. Survival Points:
4-5
Suggested Specialisations:
Controller, Deadly, Consume, Mark Prey.
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Vampire Perhaps the most enduring and entrancing of myths, the vampire is master of the night and lord of the undead. A vampire is a predator like no other, a beast that walks with the shape of a man and the power of a demon. Although a vampire needs naught more than fresh blood to survive, it craves much more, seeking control over others. A vampire is not without its weaknesses, however, for it is unable to tolerate sunlight, rendered powerless during the daylight or slain by direct exposure. It is during the hours of daylight that its foes stand the best chance of slaying a vampire, if they can find its crypt and drive a stake through its heart whilst it rests. Identify: 2 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 5
Obscure: 6 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 5 Protect: 3
Supernatural Disguise: 9 Hypnotic Gaze: 8 Consume: 7
Supernatural Disguise: Through a combination of supernatural glamour and a retention of its human appearance, the vampire can blend in amongst the living. Hypnotic Gaze: A victim that has the misfortune to gaze into the bloodshot eyes of the vampire can become entranced and susceptible to the suggestions of the monster. The vampire can use this Specialisation to hypnotise a victim long enough for it to escape, using it in place of Dissuade, Escape or Protect, or it might use it to render a victim insensible, using it as a Risk Check against the victim’s Dissuade.
Consume: The vampire draws unholy vitality from the blood of its victims. This Specialisation might be used when the vampire is attacking its victim. It can be triggered immediately after winning a Risk Check against its victim to increase its Survival Points by 1, or to add +5 to its next check.
Vulnerability: Inhibition (Daylight) - A vampire is powerless during the daylight hours. During the day, the vampire’s Assault and Protect, along with its Consume Specialisation, are reduced to 0. This Vulnerability does not result in the monster losing any Survival Points, when this Vulnerability causes the monster inconvenience the Tension goes up by 1.
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THE BEAST WITHIN The Beast Within is a creature cursed with a monster lurking within its heart. It cannot help what it has become, perhaps even struggling to stop the monster from escaping, but that does not make the things it does any less horrific. Once the beast is unleashed, anyone who crosses its path is considered fair game. And once it has fed, it will only be sated for so long. Perhaps the innocent victim can be saved, the Beast Within destroyed or driven out. Or perhaps the victim must be destroyed entirely so that others can be spared. A Beast Within might be a supernatural foe, such as a werewolf or a man possessed by a demon. It could be a mortal foe, such as a man harbouring a psychopathic split personality or a normal person who is unwittingly a sleeper assassin. The innocent part of the Beast Within might be aware of their alter ego, struggling to stop it from escaping or hiding - even locking - themselves away so that when the change occurs they do not hurt anyone. Or they may be unaware of the beast that they become when the moon is full or the bindings released. Including a Beast Within as the foe can make for a more emotionally charged, morally ambiguous horror, as once the monster’s innocent persona is discovered the characters will have to wrestle with whether they slay it or attempt to save it. It can just as easily make for a more straightforward horror movie too, as a trail of victims leads them to the door of a seemingly innocuous party. For a twist, the Beast Within could transpire to be one of the characters, who may or may not be aware of his actions. The Beast Within is a staple of horror movies, from the werewolves in An American Werewolf in London, Wolfman or Dog Soldiers, to the murderous psychopath in Shelter. Perhaps the most famous of all Beasts Within is Mr Hyde, from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Survival Points:
4-5
Suggested Specialisations:
Alter Ego, Deadly, Formidable.
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Werewolf Part man, part monster, all beast, werewolves are humans afflicted with the curse of lycanthropy. A werewolf is a slave to the lunar cycle, and when the moon is full in the sky the beast within them stirs and the man turns into a monster, half man, half wolf. Identify: 4 Persuade: 3 Pursue: 4 Assault: 5
Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 5 Escape: 4 Protect: 3
Alter Ego: 7 Spawn: 8 Wolf’s Senses: 8 Deadly: 8
Survival Points: 5
Alter Ego: The werewolf can change form to hide as a regular human. This Specialisation may be used whenever the creature is attempting to disguise or hide itself, or otherwise take advantage of its alternative form. It may be triggered to flip the werewolf’s Assault/Protect and Persuade/Dissuade stats. Spawn: Those wounded but not slain by a werewolf are afflicted by the Curse of Lycanthropy, doomed to change into a werewolf when the moon next rises. Whenever the werewolf succeeds at a Risk Check using its Spawn Specialisation, this Specialisation may be triggered. The victim is infected, gradually getting hairier and feeling hungry for raw meat. If the victim is subsequently reduced to 0 Survival Points or less, this Specialisation may be triggered again and the victim changes into a werewolf. The victim uses its existing stats, but replaces any existing Specialisations with the same Specialisations as the werewolf.
Wolf’s Senses: Whether in human or beast form, a werewolf retains the wolf’s keen sense of smell and hunter’s instincts.
Deadly: When in bestial form, the werewolf is a deadly foe, all taut muscles, powerful jaws teeth and sharp claws. This Specialisation can be used when the monster is attacking its victim. It can be triggered immediately after the monster wins a Risk Check to increase the amount of Survival Points lost by the victim to 2, so long as the check revolved around combat.
Vulnerability: Assault (Silver) - The werewolf is particularly Vulnerable to weapons made from silver. If the werewolf loses a Risk check to a character armed with a silver weapon, the werewolf loses an additional Survival Point.
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THE CORRUPTER The Corrupter is an insidious monster that turns us into our own worst enemy. The Corrupter preys on our arrogance, greed and hubris, tempting us to our own doom. The Corrupter might seek to destroy us to feast on our souls or our flesh, it might do so out of misery and suffering or for the pleasure of inflicting pain itself. The Corrupter might very well hide in plain sight, but it is hardly defenceless - it has its corrupted victims to protect it, after all. The Corrupter is typically supernatural in origin, using magical powers or otherworldly charms to lure its prey to a bitter end. It may be a witch, seeking to gain power over their victims in exchange for unearthly promises. It may be some manner of demon or spirit, offering great rewards in exchange for the souls of those it tempts. Its motivations could be esoteric, desiring to sup upon the soul of a pure-hearted individual cast from grace, or it could be more prosaic, desiring to drain the lifeforce of another through the corruption it has wrought. Or the monster might act out of emotion, its desire to corrupt the innocent and the beautiful fuelled by jealousy or envy. A story involving a Corrupter is likely to start innocuously, the monster remaining hidden whilst it works its corruption. The initial horror often stems from some of the victims’ own descent towards corruption, as they are tempted to engage in ever more horrific activities until they become monsters themselves. The horror is often psychological in nature, although it can swiftly become far more visceral and real. To defeat a Corrupter, first its malignant influence must be identified and then undone, or else it may well turn its corrupted victims upon those who would stop it. Often a Corrupter can be defeated by its own machinations, its own powers turned against it. The siren of Greek mythology is a corrupter, as is the witch from medieval fable. The Cenobites in the Hellraiser series are Corrupters, tempting men with promises of pleasure and pain. The titular monster in The Blair Witch Project is a Corrupter, leading the filmmakers to their deaths. The antagonists in Rosemary’s Baby - the coven of witches - are all Corrupters too, tempting Rosemary’s husband, Guy, to give up his baby in exchange for fame and success. In many ways, Mrs Baylock, Damien’s nanny in The Omen, is a Corrupter, for she subverts the household and attempts to corrupt the child to her master’s ends. Survival points:
3-4
Suggested Specialisations:
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Controller, Corruption, Consume, Curse.
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Witch Coven Whether stirring the fates of kings upon a wind-swept moor or twisting their husbands to do their bidding over a coffee in 1950s suburbia, the coven of witches is a deadly foe. Always to be found in threes, a witch coven is most powerful when it works together to corrupt a single victim, pulling him this way and that with their magic until he is utterly theirs. And it almost always is a he... men, so easy to tempt. Identify: 4 Persuade: 5 Pursue: 5 Assault: 3
Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 3 Escape: 5 Protect: 5
No One Will Suspect a Thing: 7 Corruption: 9 Curse: 7
Survival Points: 6 (two for each witch)
No One Will Suspect a Thing: The disguise adopted by the coven is subtle, planting themselves in the heart of the community. And no one could possibly suspect three gossiping young women, could they? Corruption: Using a combination of magic, seduction and womanly wiles, the witches slowly corrupt a man’s soul, twisting him round their little fingers. The witch coven may use its Persuade attribute as a Risk Check. If successful, the victim swaps one of its Survival Points for a corruption point (use a different coloured token), which may be spent by the witches in place of their own Survival Points. If the victim only has corruption points left, it becomes a willing servant of the coven. Curse: With blood magic and evil charms, the coven can afflict a victim with the evil eye. With a successful Curse Check against the victim’s Protect, this Specialisation may be triggered. The coven can modify the victim’s next Conflict Check up or down by 5.
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THE IMPOSTOR The Impostor is a slippery customer, for it replaces or disguises itself as its victim. The Impostor preys on us just as surely as any other monster, but it does so disguised as our neighbour, our husband, our child. The Impostor might disguise itself so that it can slowly spread from host to host, taking over the world one person at a time. Defeating the Impostor is a race against the clock, for it is only a matter of time before we too are replaced. Appropriately enough the Impostor can take many forms. It might replace its victims entirely, consuming their bodies to create its disguise. It might instead infect its victims, using their body as a shell for its parasitical form. What the Impostor wants will vary from monster to monster. It might seek to feed on our emotions, enjoying sensations and experiences that it cannot otherwise enjoy. It could be hellbent on seizing power, taking control of the world by replacing authority figures. It might want to use us as incubators for its young, or it might just want to replace our race entirely and have the Earth all to itself. A story featuring the Impostor might start out as almost psychological in nature, before descending into a paranoid conspiracy where no one can be trusted. This ambiguity can be played up throughout, with the question of whether it is all in the protagonist’s mind never fully answered. The starting point for such a horror is not so much the discovery of a body, but discovering that someone has changed in some way. Identifying the presence of an Impostor is the start of a very slippery slope, as more and more victims are replaced until it is too late. Perhaps defeating the original Impostor will destroy all of its spawn, or perhaps it is enough simply to avoid being replaced yourself. There have been some very memorable Impostors, from the pod people in the various incarnations of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the shape-shifting monster in The Thing, both of which consume their victims before assuming their identity. The alien parasites in The Faculty and the vaylen in the Iron Empires comics are both good examples of Impostors that simply take over their victims’ bodies. Survival Points:
3-4
Suggested Specialisation:
Alter Ego, Consume, Formidable, Imitation.
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Black Ooze Bubbling up from beneath the Earth’s crust, disturbed by sea bed drilling, the black ooze is a cunning, malign creature that consumes its victims and assumes their appearance. In its natural form the ooze appears as a pool of crude oil, but it is rarely seen in this state. As the ooze envelops its victim, suffocating them in its grip and dissolving their body, it takes their form, absorbing their memories and personality. With access to the victim’s memories, the ooze can pass itself off as human, integrating itself into their life until it finds a new victim. Certain high frequencies of sound render the ooze incapable of maintaining its form and force it to return to its amorphous state. Identify: 4 Persuade: 6 Escape: 4 Assault: 5
Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 4 Pursue: 6 Protect: 3
Imitation: 8
Alter Ego: 6
Consume: 8
Survival Points: 5
Alter Ego: The black ooze in its natural state is an amorphous blob, able to stretch or shrink to fit through any gap. This Specialisation may be used whenever the creature reverts to its natural form. It may be triggered to flip some or all of the monster’s stat pairs for a scene. Consume: After slaying or incapacitating its prey, the black ooze absorbs the victim’s body to gain sustenance and a new disguise. This Specialisation may be used when the monster is attacking its victim. It can be triggered immediately after the monster wins a Risk Check to increase its Survival Points by 1, or to add +5 to its next check.
Imitation: Once a victim has been consumed by the black ooze, the monster can adopt its mannerisms and personality. This Specialisation may be triggered to act like the victim. A successful Identify check, opposed by Imitation, will detect a subtle flaw or giveaway, such as black liquid in the ears or dripping from the nose; otherwise the disguise is indistinguishable from the real thing. Vulnerability: Inhibition (High Frequencies) - High frequencies render the black ooze incapable of maintaining its disguise. When exposed to such frequencies, the black ooze’s Obscure attribute and Imitation Specialisation are reduced to 0. Although this Vulnerability does not result in the monster losing any Survival Points, when this Vulnerability causes the monster inconvenience the Tension goes up by 1. C H A P T E R
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THE PUPPET MASTER The Puppet Master is a monster that controls others to do its bidding. It might dominate others through money or fear, or it might control their minds directly. The Pupper Master seeks to expand its dominion of others, using its minions to extend its control. The Puppet Master must be slain or else its minions will keep on coming. A Puppet Master might be entirely mundane, a boss monster controlling well-armed goons and henchmen. More likely they are supernatural in nature, controlling unwitting victims through its prodigious psychic powers or some sort of infestation. It could be that the Puppet Master makes its own minions, a mad scientist whose laboratory churns out bestial creatures to do its bidding. The Puppet Master ultimately seeks power over others. No matter how many it controls, it always wants more servants to do its bidding. A Puppet Master can be readily used in conjunction with other monstrous archetypes, representing a sort of boss at the end of the scenario. By changing the monster combinations, you can change the feel of the story. A Puppet Master controlling a Horde might represent a necromancer raising the dead or a scientist unleashing his mad creations on the unsuspecting world. A Puppet Master controlling Impostors, however, might be a sinister alien intelligence taking over the townsfolk one by one. When finally cornered, the Puppet Master is easily stopped. Notable examples of Puppet Masters include Quatermass II or Invaders from Mars, wherein an alien intelligence takes control over unwitting victims. The Island of Dr Moreau features a different type of Puppet Master, featuring a scientist who creates strange beast-men hybrids to terrorise others. Survival Points:
3-4
Suggested Specialisations:
Controller, Corruption, Minions, Spawn.
6 4
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Alien Intelligence The last survivor of an alien race, the alien intelligence crashlanded on the outskirts of a remote town. From its hiding place below ground, its psychic tendrils worm their way into the minds of the townsfolk, controlling them to do its bidding and lure more victims into its power. Little more than a brain in a jar at the centre of its spaceship, the alien intelligence is near defenceless, relying on its minions to protect it from harm Identify: 4 Persuade: 6 Pursue: 6 Assault: 4
Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 2 Escape: 4 Protect: 4
Hidden from Prying Eyes: 8 Controller: 9 Minions: 8
Survival Points: 3
Hidden from Prying Eyes: The alien intelligence remains well hidden, its spaceship-lair concealed underground.
Controller: With prodigious psychic might, the alien intelligence turns unwitting victims into its mindless slaves. This Specialisation can be used to persuade the target creatures, as well as to use them to attack others or defend the monster from harm. It can be triggered to initiate a Conflict Check when the monster attempts to control a character. Minions: The alien intelligence is protected by the psychically controlled townsfolk, who will fight without fear to destroy any threat. The townsfolk are represented by either a Horde or Impostors, depending on whether they are attacking en masse or individually. When the monster loses a Risk Check, this Specialisation may be triggered. Another monster or minion also present in the scene loses a Survival Point instead.
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THE HORDE Some monsters pose little threat when alone, but when gathered in great numbers they can be deadly. The Horde is a mass of lesser creatures who, individually a lesser threat, are dangerous en masse. The Horde is implacable, for when you kill one of its number another two take their place. It is difficult to survive the Horde, much less defeat it. The Horde can take many forms, some of which could easily be regular monsters in their own right. It could be a supernatural threat, such as a Horde of zombies or a ravenous mob of ghouls. It could be a mundane creature, such as a baying pack of wolves, a flock of killer birds or overgrown, mobile plants. The Horde might be controlled by a single driving force, such as a hive mind or puppet master, and work towards their goal. Or it might have a shared, but not necessarily unified goal, such as eating peoples’ brains or spreading across the surface of the Earth. Stories with Hordes at their centre are likely to lean towards survival horror, with the Horde presenting an insidious threat that must be escaped and survived rather than defeated. Sometimes a Horde can be defeated, whether by destroying whatever is controlling it, finding a cure or some other means to destroy it en masse. It is unlikely to be defeated by physically slaying all of its creatures. A Horde should be treated as a single entity, with each of its Survival Points representing one or more monsters. The most common type of movie Horde is the zombie, as seen in Dawn of the Dead and its sequels, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil and so on. Other Hordes include the vampires in 30 Days of Night and I Am Legend, and the triffids in Day of the Triffids. It’s perfectly plausible that any one of the monsters in those films could be an individual monster in their own right (and vampires and, to a lesser extent, zombies often are), but in a Horde it is the mass of creatures that makes them a real threat, not the individual monsters. Survival Points:
6-7
Suggested Specialisations:
Consume, Implacable, Legion, Spawn.
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Zombie Mob At first glance a zombie appears to be an easily avoidable threat; a shambling corpse, slow and stupid. That is, until the realisation dawns that there are so many of them, shambling ever onwards. Most zombies have a predilection for tasty human brains, perhaps to make up for the fact that they have none of their own. The real strength that a zombie has is that it is rarely alone, and it takes a hardened monster hunter indeed to evade, let alone beat, dozens upon dozens of zombies crowding in from all sides. Identify: 5 Persuade: 2 Pursue: 5 Assault: 6
Obscure: 3 Dissuade: 6 Escape: 5 Protect: 2
Smell Brains: 7 Frightening Visage: 8 Spawn: 8
Legion: 8
Survival Points: 6
Smell Brains: Zombies have a keen sense of smell, able to smell the scent of the living from some distance. Frightening Visage: The sight of a shambling, decomposing corpse is really not very funny, enough to scare people quite to death.
Spawn: The bite of a zombie is infectious, causing those who die after having been bitten to rise again as one of the undead. Whenever the zombie mob succeeds at a Risk Check using its Spawn Specialisation, this Specialisation may be triggered. The victim is (unwittingly, perhaps) infected. If the victim is subsequently reduced to 0 Survival Points or less, this Specialisation may be triggered again and the victim turned into a zombie. The victim uses its existing stats, but replaces any existing Specialisations with the same Specialisations as the zombie.
Legion: They... just... keep... on... coming. Whenever successful in a Risk Check, this Specialisation may be triggered to force every opponent present to lose a Survival Point as well as the original target.
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THE FORMLESS HORROR Sometimes the monster is not a single creature, nor an uncountable mass, but the environment itself. Such a malignant terror provides a deadly threat, for it is lurking everywhere we turn, ready to slay us without us even realising it is there. The Formless Horror might be driven by powerful magic, a rupture in time and space, or raw evil itself. Because it is so pervasive, the Formless Horror can be difficult, nay impossible, to slay. The Formless Horror could be confined to a specific locale, such as a haunted house, or a larger location, such as a town where malignancy lurks behind every doorway. It could be a more widereaching environmental effect, such as an all-pervading fog that hides a multitude of horrors. What the Formless Horror wants might vary too; it might have murderous intent or it might simply want the trespassers to leave. Much like a scenario featuring the Horde, stories involving a Formless Horror are likely to be survival horror, with the unwitting victims who have been ensnared within its grasp just trying to escape or survive. Often escape will prove the most difficult, as the Formless Horror has a tendency to ensnare its victims or keep them from leaving in some way. Sometimes they will be physically trapped, the exits sealed, whereas at other times their escape will be made dangerous by the Formless Horror itself. Many a good haunted house movie provides a good example of the Formless Horror, such as Thirteen Ghosts or, to some degree, The Shining. Perhaps the best example of a Formless Horror can be found within The Mist, wherein the mist is a malevolent entity concealing all manner of lesser monsters, or the Silent Hill video games. Although all of these examples feature a multitude of lesser evils and individual monsters, it is the overarching malignancy that poses the greatest threat. The Formless Horror should be treated as a single entity, with each of its Survival Points representing individual threats, lesser monsters or an aspect of the greater monster. Survival Points:
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Formidable, No Escape, Imitation, Legion.
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Haunted House There has always been something wrong with the house at number 13, ever since its first occupant murdered his family in the basement and hanged himself in the front room. Over the years the house has seemed to bring misery, suffering and death to all who live in it, almost as though it feeds on the blood spilt on its floorboards. Of course, this time it will be different. This time the new family might actually survive the night, regardless of the building’s best efforts to trap them inside, kill them or make them turn on each other. Identify: 4 Persuade: 3 Escape: 1 Assault: 4
Obscure: 6 Dissuade: 7 Pursue: 7 Protect: 4
No Escape: 9 Just Bricks: 7
Legion: 6
Survival Points: 6
Just Bricks: The house is still a house, regardless of the haunting, and it takes more than a sledgehammer to inflict real damage to it. No Escape: No matter how far you run or how hard you try to get out, turn around and you’ll find yourself right back in number 13. Whenever a victim successfully escapes the house, this Specialisation may be triggered. In the next scene featuring the victim, they find themselves back in the house, no matter how far they ran or how implausible it might seem. Legion: The house can lash out at everyone caught within its walls, causing cutlery to fly from draws and bricks and mortar to fall on its victims. Whenever successful in a Risk Check, this Specialisation may be triggered to force every opponent in the house to lose a Survival Point as well as the original target. Vulnerability: The Bodies in the Walls - If the bodies in the basement walls can be exhumed and buried properly then the house is placated, entering a state of dormancy. Whilst dormant the house is reduced to 1 Survival Point and may only take defensive actions. Dormancy does not count as resting for a scene. The house immediately regains its Survival Points plus an additional one should the remains be disturbed.
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THE THING FROM BEYOND The Thing from Beyond is an unknowable, utterly alien threat, a monster from beyond the stars - or beyond the veil - that kills for its own reasons alone. It might kill to feed, to procreate or to slowly take over the world, but more likely its motivations are impossible to discern. What is known is that the Thing from Beyond is a threat to all of us. The Thing from Beyond is alien in nature, either from another world or a different dimension. It might be a chitinous alien beast that impregnates us with its eggs, or a scuttling creature that eats our bones. It could even be a strange, otherworldly creature that exists only out of the corners of our eyes, slaying us only when we spy it directly. The reasons that such monsters hunt us are equally as alien - the short term goals might be obvious, but their long-term plan is not. The Thing from Beyond makes for an exotic monster, simply because it is so alien in nature. It might kill its victims in a particularly unusual or horrific manner, unsettling players from the offset, or its form might be so unnatural as to throw them off kilter. But the plot of the story need not be so unusual, and the horror movie is far more likely to be traditional in nature. The characters, on discovering some of the grisly and strange deaths, must find the alien creature that is causing them, before they too fall victim to it. This works just as well in a high school as it does an Antarctic research base or deep space mining ship. Notable Things from Beyond include the eponymous monsters in Alien and its sequels, who want to procreate in the most destructive way possible; and many of the alien creations in Lovecraft’s works, such as The Colour Out of Space or At the Mountains of Madness. Survival Points:
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Consume, Deadly, Formidable, Imitation.
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The Shadow from Outer Space Visible in the unseen corners of rooms and out of certain corners of the eye, the Shadow from Outer Space is an entity alien not only to this world, but this reality. Hunting through time and space for its victims, the Shadow lurks within its prey’s own shadow, sowing seeds of panic and terror in its victim as it does so. When the victim has suitably ripened, his fear that he is being hunted reaching near maddening levels, the Shadow pounces, consuming the victim whole and leaving naught but an ashen stain on the wall roughly in the shape of a human silhouette. Identify: 2 Persuade: 4 Escape: 3 Assault: 3
Obscure: 8 Dissuade: 6 Pursue: 5 Protect: 3
No Escape: 9 Implacable: 8
Deadly: 6
Survival Points: 4
No Escape: The Shadow disguises itself within the shadow of its prey, so even when the victim thinks he’s escaped, the Shadow may still be hiding right next to him. Whenever a victim successfully escapes the Shadow, this Specialisation may be triggered. The Shadow may immediately appear in the next scene with the victim, regardless of where their victim has escaped to.
Implacable: Insubstantial and barely existing in our reality, the Shadow from Outer Space is difficult to injure. This Specialisation can be used to defend against physical attacks or to negate other circumstances that might harm a regular guy. It can be triggered immediately after the Shadow loses a Risk Check to negate the Survival Point loss, so long as the loss stemmed from physical damage.
Deadly: With tenebrous teeth, claws made from the ether and the ability to drive its prey mad with fear, the Shadow is a deadly foe. This Specialisation can be used when the monster is attacking its victim. It can be triggered immediately after the Shadow wins a Risk Check to increase the amount of Survival Points lost by the victim to 2, so long as the check revolved around combat.
Vulnerabilities: Inhibition (High Noon) - At the middle of the day, when the sun is at its highest in the sky and not a shadow is cast, the Shadow from Outer Space becomes suddenly obvious to all. The Shadow has its Escape/Pursue and Identify/Obscure reduced to zero in the presence of the midday sun or particularly bright, sterile lighting. Although this Vulnerability does not result in the monster losing any Survival Points, when this Vulnerability causes the monster inconvenience the Tension goes up by 1. C H A P T E R
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FROM THE GUTS OF HELL COME...
CERT. X
ombie z t s e f e “Slimick of the year!!!” fl zine a
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BY THE NUMBERS Once you have made a few decisions about the monster’s motivation, as well as thought about how and why it kills and the sort of creature that it is, you can get down to the fine point of assigning numbers to the monster. A monster has attribute pairs and Specialisations just as any other character. Just slot in numbers and buy specialisations as you normally would. As well as mundane Specialisations, a monster might well have special abilities, called Monstrous Specialisations. Pick one or two that fit your theme, and buy them in the same way as a normal Specialisation. Some monsters also have Vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are weaknesses that can hasten the end of a monster, but also help ramp up the climax of the story quickly. Not every monster has to have a Vulnerability, but consider including one if you’ve bought a couple of Monstrous Specialisations. Finally, decide how many Survival Points your monster should start the game with. This will typically be 5, but slightly less powerful creatures might have as few as 3 or 4, and creatures designed to work in packs might only have 1 or 2. Gargantuan beasts or nigh unstoppable hordes might have as many as 9 or 10. The number of Survival Points is not necessarily a measure of the power of the monster, but instead dictates the length of the scenario. Scenarios featuring a monster with a lot of Survival Points are likely to be lengthy affairs, offer only the chance of escape rather than victory to the victims or else see the demise of the victims long before the monster succumbs to its injuries.
Monstrous Specialisations A Monstrous Specialisation is similar in many ways to a normal Specialisation and can be used in a check in the same way as those Specialisations possessed by other characters. In addition, Monstrous Specialisations have special effects that break the rules of the game. These come at a price, however.
A Monstrous Specialisation can be triggered by spending 1 or more Tension Points.
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Listed below are a selection of Monstrous Specialisations that you can add to your own monsters, but you should feel free to modify them to suit or come up with your own creations. In parentheses next to each is a suggested stat that the Specialisation might belong to. By changing the associated stat and the description of what it does, you can easily modify these Specialisations to represent radically different abilities.
Alter Ego (Obscure): The monster possesses a supernatural ability to change its form. This might be a physical change, as the creature’s body ripples and grows, or it might be a supernatural disguise or glamour weaved by magic. This Specialisation may be used whenever the creature is attempting to disguise or hide itself, or otherwise take advantage of its alternative form. It may be triggered to flip some or all of the monster’s attribute pairs.
Consume (Assault): After slaying or incapacitating its prey, the monster can consume its victim to gain sustenance. The monster might physically consume its victim, gobbling down chunks of flesh torn with its fangs, or it might merely drain the life essence of its prey, leaving its victim a lifeless husk. This Specialisation might be used when the monster is attacking its victim. It can be triggered immediately after the monster wins a Risk Check to increase its Survival Points by 1, or to add +5 to its next check. Controller (Persuade): The monster possesses the ability to control other creatures, be they as mundane as rats and bats, or rather more sinister such as people. For some monsters this is an innate ability or form of kinship with the creatures, for others it is preternatural charisma or supernatural domination. This Specialisation can be used to persuade the target creatures, as well as to use them to attack others or defend the monster from harm. It can be triggered to initiate a Conflict Check when the monster attempts to control a protagonist.
Corruption (Persuade): The seeds of desire, arrogance and greed are easy to plant in the heart of its prey, and once nurtured turn its victims into willing supplicants. The monster may use its Persuade attribute as a Risk Check. If successful, the victim swaps one of its Survival Points for a corruption point (use a different coloured token), which may be spent by the monster in place of its own Survival Points. If the victim only has corruption points left, it becomes a willing servant of the monster.
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Curse (Dissuade): Through sorcerous powers or a debilitating attack, the monster can inflict the victim with a potent curse. With a successful Curse Check against the victim’s Protect, this Specialisation may be triggered. The monster can modify the victim’s next Conflict Check up or down by 5. Deadly (Assault): This monster is a particularly dangerous opponent, either because of a natural ferocity or the use of deadly weaponry. This Specialisation can be used when the monster is attacking its victim. It can be triggered immediately after the monster wins a Risk Check to increase the amount of Survival Points lost by the victim to 2, so long as the check revolved around combat. Formidable (Protect): This monster is an especially nasty foe when backed into a corner, able to take advantage of any opportunity either by cunning or brute force. This Specialisation can be used to defend when a monster is cornered or outnumbered, or otherwise on the ropes. It can be triggered to add +2 to its next Risk Check, or subtract -2 from the next Risk Check made against it.
No Escape (Pursue): Whether due to preternatural senses or otherworldly abilities, no victim can escape from the monster. Whenever a victim successfully escapes the monster, this Specialisation may be triggered. The monster may immediately appear in the next scene with the victim, regardless of where their victim has escaped to. Imitation (Obscure): The monster can disguise itself as another creature, either by a magical glamour or by physically changing shape. This Specialisation may be triggered to assume the form of any other creature. A successful Identify Check, opposed by Imitation, will detect a subtle flaw or giveaway in the monster’s disguise, such as an extra finger, a strange smell or an odd mannerism; otherwise the disguise is indistinguishable from the real thing.
Implacable (Protect): This monster is difficult to physically injure because it is supernaturally resilient or already dead (or undead), and wounds that would slay a mortal have little effect on it. This Specialisation can be used to defend against physical attacks or to negate other circumstances that might harm a regular guy. It can be triggered immediately after the monster loses a Risk Check to negate the Survival Point loss, so long as the loss stemmed from physical damage.
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Legion (Assault): The monster is either so large or so numerous that it can attack many victims at once. Whenever successful in a Risk Check, this Specialisation may be triggered to force every opponent present to lose a Survival Point as well as the original target.
Minions (Protect): The monster is protected by bodyguards or servants, lesser minions that die to protect their master. When the monster loses a Risk Check, this Specialisation may be triggered. Another monster or minion also present in the scene loses a Survival Point instead.
Sequel (Protect): A slave to its masters, the monster cannot be slain, instead returning in a series of increasingly tenuous sequels. If the monster is reduced to 0 Survival Points and the Tension has yet to hit 15, this Specialisation may be triggered to bring the monster back to life on 1 Survival Point. If the Tension has hit 15, then the monster is still brought back to life, but after the credits have rolled...
Spawn (Assault): The monster may procreate by turning its victims into monsters. Whenever the monster succeeds at a Risk Check using its Spawn Specialisation, this Specialisation may be triggered. The victim is (unwittingly, perhaps) infected. If the victim is subsequently reduced to 0 Survival Points or less, this Specialisation may be triggered again and the victim turned into a monster. The victim uses its existing stats, but replaces any existing Specialisations with the same Specialisations as the monster.
Vulnerabilities Some monsters have a weakness, a unique flaw that a budding monster hunter might be able to take advantage of.
A monster’s Vulnerability can be discovered by a character with a successful Identify Check. This may be a Risk Check, depending on how the character sets out to acquire the information - field testing their theory or invoking long-dead magicks can be treacherous, after all. Knowing a monster’s Vulnerability hands an advantage to a character fighting it - sometimes it allows them to inflict extra damage on it, other times using a monster’s Vulnerability is the only way to kill it for good. Different Vulnerabilities have different effects, but all have one thing in common:
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Whenever a creature loses a Survival Point to a Vulnerability, the Tension goes up by 2 instead of 1. Think of it this way - at the point in the movie that the victims learn of the creature’s weakness, it doubles its efforts to stop them and the film hurtles ever faster towards its climax.
Starvation: Some monsters must constantly feed on fresh prey, and risk growing powerless if they go for too long without a tasty meal. For every day that passes without the monster feeding, it loses a Survival Point as well as a point from each of its Specialisations. The monster is not slain if reduced to 0 Survival Points this way, but does fall into a helpless torpor, leaving it at the mercy of others.
Assault: Some monsters, particularly those powerful, seemingly unstoppable ones, are particularly vulnerable to a certain material or type of attack. A creature with this Vulnerability is subject to extra damage from one type of attack, such as fire, silver, a particular ritual, its true name, the tears from a dying man and so on. A creature that loses an appropriate Risk Check to a character armed with its weakness loses an additional Survival Point. If the weakness is particularly rare, it will lose another additional Survival Point. Dormancy: Monsters animated by potent sorcery or technological wizardry have the potential to be rendered dormant under certain circumstances. Whilst such a state does not destroy them, it does leave them vulnerable to harm. A monster with this Vulnerability enters a state of dormancy when exposed to a set trigger, such as a codeword, a magical binding, the removal of a key component or something as mundane as daylight or birdsong. Whilst dormant the monster is reduced to 1 Survival Point and may only take defensive actions. Dormancy does not count as resting for a scene. The monster immediately regains its Survival Points plus an additional one when it recovers from its dormant state. Inhibition: Certain substances can render a monster powerless when used against it, such as a protective pentagram, running water or holy symbols. A monster with this Vulnerability has one of its attribute pairs reduced to zero in the presence of a particular item or circumstance. Although this Vulnerability does not result in the monster losing any Survival Points, when this Vulnerability causes the monster inconvenience the Tension goes up by 1.
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aaaa “Amazingly Brutal”
aaaaa “Zombie-tastic!”
SLASHER WEEKLY
MY BRAIN HURTS PRESENTS A JUGHEAD PRODUCTION A FILM BY DANIEL VAPID aB WEAEL nG & E RAE gLIZZY EVEN jSTEVEN C QUINN kSTEFAN BASSETTI JR
FILM GRUNGE MAGAZINE
CHAPTER FIVE: CHAPTER FIVE
GG E N R E Horror movies incorporate a wide variety of themes and styles, including action, suspense, morality, mystery, tragedy, comedy, gore and so forth. By altering the prevalence of one theme over another, one horror story can be made to feel very different from another. Different flavours of horror movie can be grouped together for ease of reference by genre, running the gamut of everything from slasher (heavy on the gore) to psychological (heavy on the suspense and mystery). In the same way as horror movie genres encompass films that share similar combinations of different themes and styles, in Dead of Night the concept of genre is used to quickly define the feel and flavour of a game, grouping stories that share the same basic premise, set-up and Tension settings. Genre is the final consideration when setting the Tension for a game, tying all of the mechanics into the story with a consistent flavour, but is often the first thing that a GM will decide upon before preparing to play. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at different horror movie genres, examining the traits that stories in such a category have in common and offering some suggestions on how you might set your own game in this genre. For each genre an example story is given, complete with advice for running it as a game and preset Tension circumstances. The chapter is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but to merely help you customise the mechanics and gameplay to run any conceivable type of horror story.
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SLASHER Slasher movies typically focus on the murderous rampage of a serial killer, whose victims tend to be teenagers or college students. As the film progresses, their deaths occur with increasing brutality and inventiveness to shock and scare the audience. The golden age of the slasher movie was in the 1970s, and includes such films as Halloween, Friday the 13th and Black Christmas. Films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced supernatural elements to the genre, but strictly speaking the perpetrator of a slasher movie should be human. More recently, films such as Scream have given the genre a new lease of life, culminating in countless remakes of classic slasher flicks. Along with the monster movie, slasher is the default genre for Dead of Night and can be readily replicated by playing the game straight. Create your serial killer of choice, typically wronged in someway by the victims themselves, or their relatives. Pick an anniversary or holiday which the killer has decided to commemorate with acts of gratuitous violence, or that has somehow rekindled his powers or rage. Pick a suitable location, such as summer camp or leafy suburbia, round up a group of hapless young victims, none of whom are truly innocent, and let the bloodshed commence. The monsters in a slasher game tend towards seemingly human serial killers, typically male. Such killers are often preternaturally resistant to harm or injury, recovering from seemingly mortal wounds, but are not overtly supernatural in origin. The Unstoppable Killer archetype was made for this genre. A slasher game can be played by the rules - the loss of Survival Points represent the victims finding themselves cornered or hunted by the killer. Clichés can run thick and fast - there is no cliché too corny or hackneyed for a slasher game, whether the girl running off into the woods in high heels or the group deciding to split up to search for a missing friend. If you want to up the body count, have a couple of players create a few victims each, but share the Survival Points between them.
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JOHN COWLEY PRESENTS A BODIE DOYLE PRODUCTION A FILM BY TERENCE MCANN aART DALEY & DAVE WINCHESTER nS. FRANCIS & STUART HALL gA. MULLARD u’THE MAJOR’ jMARTIN CAINE lF. P. HARRIS kNERIS B. HUGHES
Hide Riding the new wave of slasher movies, Terence McAnn’s 2005 slasher movie, Hide, purports to be based on a true story. Centred around a hiking expedition in rural America during the 1960s, the story is unusual amongst slasher movies in that it features an all-female cast, the serial killer, Alice, included. The movie is fairly standard slasher movie fare, save for the grim realism it imposes on the whole affair, in stark contrast to the often implausible nature of other movies in the genre, including a killer who succumbs relatively easily to the heroine, once she is finally brought to bear. To run Hide as a Dead of Night scenario, have the players each generate one or two of the hiking party. The monster is Alice, the axe-wielding serial killer who spends the movie hunting them down, one by one; Alice can be effectively represented by either the Hunter or Unstoppable Killer monstrous archetype. The scenario starts when the party realise that they are lost, and the surroundings take on a sinister and slightly surreal turn as darkness falls. Much of the scenario should be spent fleeing from the serial killer and trying to escape her elaborate traps and snares. Escape Checks should dominate, as should Assault Checks for when Alice catches up with the girls. Survival Point loss can represent the hikers losing ground to Alice, getting further lost in the woods or getting caught in her traps, as well as physical injury.
Tension Points Circumstance: May only be spent on Escape and Assault Checks.
Intensity: May spend up to 5 on any check. Starting Tension: 3. The girls are alone in a remote and somewhat sinister area of forest. Mood: Grim and gritty, yet fairly faithful to the tropes and clichés of the slasher genre. Award Survival Points as normal.
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MONSTER MOVIE The other staple genre for Dead of Night is the monster movie, that classic genre popularised by Hammer Horror and Universal Pictures. At their heart a monster movie is really very simple - there is a monster that must be stopped. The monster movie can be distinguished from the Slasher movie by virtue of a more ambitious, monstrous foe, a wider scope of setting and the motivation of the monster not necessarily a moralistic one. The earliest iteration of a monster movie was the saga of Beowulf, which carries many of the tropes familiar to modern adherents of the genre. Classic examples of the genre include Frankenstein, Aliens, Predator and Jaws. Movies such as Cloverfield or The Host also fall into this category. As with the Slasher genre, the monster movie is easy to recreate in Dead of Night simply by playing the system straight. Create your monster; devise your situation, ideally one in which the characters are trapped in some way; create some characters and go wild! The monster in a monster movie could conceivably be anything, but they should be monstrous in nature - regular human psychopaths make poor monsters. The monster could be physically monstrous, possessing great strength, size or bulk; it could be subtler in nature, a supernatural opponent with exotic powers; or some sort of alien hunter with a variety of natural weapons and hideous abilities. The monster might well be sympathetic in some way, but there should be no doubt about its monstrous nature. Most of the Monstrous Archetypes can be used in a monster movie without too much trouble, in particular the Unstoppable Killer, the Hunter and the Beast Within. A monster movie can be played by the rules, complete with classic horror movie clichés all round. Survival Point loss is likely to be immediate and physical, rather than subtle or psychological. It can easily be equated to death and dismemberment of the character or their companions. The loss or failure of equipment at key moments or the character becoming cornered or trapped by the monster are also suitable for Survival Point loss.
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Grendel, Alaska Grendel, Alaska is a modern retelling of the saga of Beowulf, inspired in part by ultramodern monster movies such as The Host or Brotherhood of the Wolf. It centres around the attack on the eponymous town by a monstrous beast and its more subtle but no less monstrous mother. The brutally violent attacks on the townsfolk are intercut with a conspiratorial plot concerning the bargain struck by the mayor with the monster’s mother, and when the monster is slain the horror takes a turn for the psychological as the mother attempts to strike a new bargain. To run Grendel, Alaska as a scenario, have the players create characters intrinsically tied to the town and its inhabitants. They should be related to one another through blood, love, friendship or rivalry, to heighten the impact of the monster’s killing spree. One of the players can play a monster hunter, returned to his hometown to rid it of the beast. The scenario begins with the discovery of the first - or latest - victim and the ensuing investigation. The monster should attack repeatedly, but its mother and her insidious schemes can be worked in as the scenario progresses. To foster a sense of savagery and flight from danger, both by the monster and its hunters, Tension may only be spent on Assault and Escape Checks. Loss of Survival Points can represent the injury of the characters or the loss of weaponry. It can also represent the death or endangerment of their friends and family.
Tension Points Circumstance: May only be spent on Escape and Assault Checks.
Intensity: May spend up to 5 on any check. Starting Tension: 5. The first victim has just been found. Mood: Isolated and tense, with the constant threat of bloody violence at the hands of the monster. Award Survival Points as normal.
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SPLATTER The splatter genre focuses on the portrayal of excessive gore and the mutilation of the human form, often to the exclusion of story, plot or character development. Notable films in the splatter genre include Blood Feast, Braindead, Bad Taste, Re-animator and, to a lesser extent, Cannibal Holocaust, all of which display a morbid curiosity with the human form and its dismemberment or disfigurement. Modern interpretations of the sub-genre are often referred to as torture-porn, and include some of the most successful horror movies of the past decade such as Saw or Hostel, all of which revel in the graphic portrayal of violence, nudity, sadism and mutilation. Splatter is a difficult genre to portray in Dead of Night, partly because its gratuitous nature can make for uncomfortable material for a game; partly because much of the horror relies on the visual impact of torture and mutilation; and partly because the horrible and often exploitative ordeals that the victims must undergo is not terribly fun. Pure splatter movies tend to focus on gore at the expense of plot - not typically making for a good game - but by introducing a semblance of a plot alongside the heightened gore, you can up the splatter quotient and still make for a fun game. Monsters in splatter horror tend towards the mundane - serial killers and mad scientists who take an obscene delight in the torture of others. Instead it is the situation that is surreal and abnormal. Often the monsters cannot be directly confronted, at least not until the situation itself has been escaped from or defeated. Sometimes the defeat of the monster represents a race against time, as the characters attempt to kill the monster before it can inflict any further harm to its victims. In a splatter game, the loss of Survival Points is visceral in nature, representing at their most extreme the mutilation of body parts and other horrible acts of torture. Survival Points can also represent the death and dismemberment of others, each death placing the characters ever closer to danger themselves. A ready stock of disposable victims and instant characters is a good resource in a splatter game, with each player potentially having 2 or 3 victims sharing the same pool of Survival Points.
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Vorkuta Block 9 The movie that was so controversial upon its initial release for its horrific, near pornographic, acts of violence and bloodshed that it was banned for 25 years, Vorkuta Block 9 continues to exude an air of mystique and reverence that it perhaps doesn’t truly deserve. Set in the eponymous tower block in the heart of Moscow, Vorkuta Block 9 centres on the block’s janitor as he snaps after being taken for granted one time too many and embarks on a horrific murder spree. The film has no real hero to speak of - just a series of unfortunate, unsympathetic victims, each of whom dies one by one in increasingly inventive and nasty ways. At times hard to watch, Vorkuta Block 9 set new depths of bloodshed, violence and depravity, yet keeps the thrills and chills to a maximum as it does so. If you can bring yourself to run Vorkuta Block 9 as a game, have the players generate several characters each to represent the residents of the tower block, each with only 1 or 2 Survival Points. The monster is the unnamed janitor, and the Unstoppable Killer archetype represents him rather well. The scenario starts with establishing scenes with a few of the residents, and you should go to some pains to make them unsympathetic. The janitor can be introduced here too. The scenario starts proper when the first of the victims fall prey to the janitor’s traps and the other residents realise that they’re trapped in the tower block. You’ll have to get inventive - and unpleasant - with the murders, but get your players to help you out if you get stuck for ideas, rewarding them Survival Points for helping think up messy ends for the other victims. Assault and Pursue Checks should dominate, so spend Tension on those like it’s going out of fashion. Play up the gratuitous gore, with Survival Point loss representing the deaths of other (non-player) residents, the victims stumbling into traps and the general loss of limbs and blood. Whenever a victim finds itself cornered by the janitor, it should get bloody, quickly.
Tension Points Circumstance: Must be spent on every Assault Check. May spend it on Pursue Checks too.
Intensity: Any amount. Starting Tension: 2 or 3, but is likely to leap skywards rather quickly. Mood: Deadly serious, relentlessly gory. Survival Points should not be awarded for anything resembling humour or cliché, but rather for dramatic irony and for characters placing themselves in imminent if oblivious danger.
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VAMPIRE MOVIES Dark and brooding, sexy and ubiquitous, vampires suffer somewhat due to overexposure (and we don’t just mean to the sun). Vampires are everywhere, and not just in horror movies, leading to their portrayal as smouldering sex symbols or kickass action heroes, but rarely as the genuinely terrifying monsters they really should be. Whether its Blade, Underworld or even Twilight, vampires stopped being monsters as soon as they became protagonists. Good examples of genuinely scary vampire movies include Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu, Frostbitten, Cronos, and Let the Right One In (which, despite the vampire being a sympathetic character, still manages to keep the horror and shock value inherent with the monster). Part of the problem with running a vampire game in Dead of Night is that much of the mystery surrounding the vampire has long gone - the audience, and hence the players, know the dozen and one ways to kill a vampire, lessening the scare factor somewhat. The trick, therefore, is to keep the mystery in place for as long as possible, either disguising the vampire movie as a slasher flick, or by hiding the monster’s true nature so that the players do not instantly twig to the reality. By obfuscating the true identity of the monster, the suspense and horror of the players can be held for as long as possible. As in other games set in the monster genre, Survival Points in a vampire horror can represent fairly immediate dangers, such as injury. The threat of ending up the vampire’s next dinner could be the ultimate end when a character runs out of Survival Points, as could turning into a vampire themselves. In a film like Near Dark or Frostbitten, in which any contact with vampire blood leads to the victim’s eventual transformation, the first Survival Point lost might represent the initial infection, and each subsequent loss takes the victim a step closer to vampirism, with cravings for blood and an aversion to daylight manifesting along the way.
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All Teeth One of the cleverest tricks directors Trevor Higgins and Lars Peckram pulled in this under-rated vampire movie was convincing the audience that it wasn’t about vampires at all, a similar trick pulled by Danny Boyle in 28 Days Later. Of course the monster at the heart of the movie is a vampire, but the way he is portrayed is downright scary, chilling and oft-times brutal.
All Teeth is in many respects a slasher - even a splatter - movie, revelling in the gore factor and lovingly, sometimes even tenderly, focusing on the murder of the monster’s victims. For much of the movie the audience would be forgiven for writing it off as a slasher movie. It is only in the latter half of the movie that it dawns on them that the monster is indeed a vampire, as he is revealed to not just slay his victims, but to drink their blood and consume their innards first; the revelation at the end of the film that the ‘lucky’ survivor might not be so lucky after all, as she begins to crave blood herself, is a proper kick in the teeth. To run All Teeth as a scenario, you will need to pull off a similar trick to that used by Higgins and Peckram. The players can portray the victims, the innocent folk caught up in the path of the monster. The monster himself is a vampire, but for much of the game he will simply appear as a deranged killer. Only later in the game should you reveal some of his more supernatural abilities or traits, such as the need to drink blood or the ability to shrug off an unholy amount of damage.
Tension Points Circumstance: Can only be spent on Obscure and Assault Checks.
Intensity: No limit. Starting Tension: 5, and ramp it inexorably up with each death. Mood: Scary, chilling and brutal. Play it straight as much as possible, so limit Running with Clichés a fair bit.
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WEREWOLF MOVIES Although rarely as sexy as their more popular, bloodsucking counterparts, werewolves instead retain an air of cool, of rugged machismo and the danger of the beast within. Unlike vampire films, werewolf movies often focus on the monsters as protagonists, innocent victims bitten by a werewolf and forever cursed to wrestle with their monstrous persona. Often the curse of lycanthropy will be used as a metaphor for real life, such as puberty and adolescence in Ginger Snaps or Teen Wolf. Classic werewolf movies include The Wolfman, Dog Soldiers and An American Werewolf in London. A werewolf movie can be run in Dead of Night in much the same way as any other monster movie, with one notable exception: one or more of the characters is likely to wind up as a monster themselves. Typically the story will begin with the characters off in some remote location, whereupon they are attacked by a beast of some sort. Some of them may die, but at least one will survive and return to civilisation. It is at this point that the beast seemingly follows the survivors back home, for the animal attacks continue. Whether the players know that it is one of them that is the monster or not is up to you - the reveal of such a twist can be exciting, but consider letting at least one of the players in on the secret so that they can enjoy the fun of playing the monster for a while. You can turn the schlock horror up a notch if you like, revelling in the monster movie aspect of the story, but it can often work better if you play to the angst, guilt and general struggle associated with battling the beast within. It should be obvious enough that the monster at the heart of a werewolf movie is a werewolf, best represented by a Beast Within or a Hunter, but the exact form they take is left up to you - there have been as many iterations of the werewolf legend as there have been werewolf movies, after all. Survival Points can represent injury at its most visceral, but perhaps more interesting is to use them as a measure of how the curse of lycanthropy is spreading. When a character loses all their Survival Points, they might permanently surrender to the beast, or perhaps it only takes a single lost point to infect them, and each subsequent loss forces them to change form.
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Coyote Creek Part slasher horror, part werewolf movie, Coyote Creek follows the clichéd trail of a group of college students on a road trip across the States. In a particularly remote part of the mid-west they decide to stop at Coyote Creek, an out of the way campsite and local landmark marked on their maps. They pull into town, finding it full of boarded up buildings save for the diner and gas station, wherein they are told that the creek lies up in the hills a day’s trek away. Coyote Creek itself, in true horror movie fashion, turns out to be built on an old Indian burial ground, but the twist in the tale is that the Indians are still very much alive, roaming the hills as werewolves and preying on backpackers. After a tense, nervy night camping, during which they are attacked by the monsters, the students face a daunting flight back downhill, even as their own number begin to turn...
Coyote Creek is easy enough to adapt to a Dead of Night game. Simply have the players generate up a car or camper van full of college kids and drop them in the town with a map to the ruins. They won’t be able to resist. The monsters are nominally a pair of werewolves haunting the ruins, but as the story progresses and the kids are attacked, one or more of them will join the ranks of the werewolves. You can keep up the tension by passing notes to the infected, notifying them that their palms are hairier or their back is itching, and so on. Assault and Escape Checks should abound, as should Identify Checks as the characters sniff around for clues. Survival Points represent that most basic of things - life and limb. They can also be used to denote the onset of lycanthropy, with the character with the least Survival Points the closest to turning.
Tension Points Circumstance: May only be spent to increase Assault Checks made against the characters, and Escape and Identify Checks made by the characters. Intensity: May spend up to 5 on a check. Starting Tension: 5. Mood: Schlock horror all the way, with plenty of blood, gore and a fair amount of tongue firmly planted in cheek.
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GHOST STORIES Ghost stories are often seen as the forefathers of modern day horror, the works of Washington Irving, MR James, Henry James and Edgar Allan Poe the real precursors to today’s horror industry. The modern-day iteration, the haunted house movie, remains a firm fixture of the genre. Modern ghost stories tend to fall into one of two camps: the innocent family who are haunted by a ghost, such as The Amityville Horror or Paranormal Activity; and the haunted house movie, where a group find themselves, either by accident or by design, trapped in a haunted house, such as The Haunting or The House on Haunted Hill. Both these categories of ghost story can be readily recreated in a game of Dead of Night. Often the story will unfold slowly, with the victims becoming aware that something is wrong. At first these suspicions will be dismissed, until they occur again. The paranormal activity will build up to a crescendo, often with the victims under siege from the supernatural. The victims will then have to find out why the ghosts are haunting them, delving into their history to find a solution to put them to rest. Classic ghost stories will often be more subtle in nature, often blurring into psychological horror, whereas modern haunted house movies are often far more over the top and sinister. Monsters in a ghost story will inevitably be supernatural in origin, bound to the domains of the living by some perceived injustice or unfinished business. They can be easily represented by the Vengeful Dead or Formless Horror archetypes. In a ghost story, Survival Points can be treated as normal, representing a mix of physical damage inflicted by flying objects to the steadily growing insanity that the characters steadily succumb to.
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Path Lab Path Lab, the debut film from directors Tom Scholtz and Bert Altzmer, is superficially very different from a classic ghost story. Set in the pathology laboratory of a Chicago hospital, at first the story seems to be a classic whodunnit, a tale of a doctor and detective on the hunt for a serial killer murdering patients in the hospital. It’s only at the midway point of the movie that you realise the horrible truth - it’s a haunted house movie, but instead of a house it’s the hospital itself that’s haunted, and the ghosts that are the killers. From then on it’s an edge-of-your-seat horror movie, as the protagonists find themselves trapped in the hospital when the power goes out and the ghosts come out, trying to enact their own horrific deaths on the living over and over again. Unpleasant, scary stuff. If you run Path Lab as a Dead of Night scenario, the players can play the detectives and doctors on the search for the killer. At first have them think they’re on the trail of a mundane killer, before pulling the bait and switch on them midway through when you reveal the first ghost. The ghosts themselves are the monsters, and the Vengeful Dead archetype works very well for them. The ghosts kill people in the same manner that they themselves were killed, and the trick to stopping them is to find what started it all in the first place - easier said than done. As much of the scenario revolves around investigation, Identify Checks should prevail, mimicking the unravelling mystery of the story, as should Assault Checks as the ghosts come out of the walls. As the Survival Point loss should represent the all-too real injuries inflicted by the ghosts, from scalpel wounds to blunt trauma. No subtlety required.
Tension Points Circumstance: May only be spent on Identify and Assault Checks.
Intensity: May only spend up to 3 on any check. Starting Tension: 5. Mood: Clinical and procedural to start with, before the serious business of the haunting kicks in. Hand out additional Survival Points for innovative interpretations of clues or solutions to problems.
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SOLJANKA PRESENTS A GETZ MULLER PRODUCTION A FILM BY T SCHOLTZ & BERND ALTZMER aPETER SCHRIBER & ALEXANDER BRAUER nBERND BAUMANN gGERTZ HUTTON uRIVERSIDE STUDIOS jDAGMAR FULTONN kARNIM KRUEG DOHN
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ASIAN HORROR As crude as it might be to distinguish a genre purely by culture, the genre of Asian horror (sometimes referred to as J-Horror, short for Japanese horror) remains distinct and highly influential, spawning many a Hollywood remake. Asian horror often stems from the traditional Japanese ghost story or urban myth, albeit updated to the modern day, often employing technology as a core part of the horror. The psychological element is core to the horror, with films often drawing out the tension over a protracted period of time, before hitting the viewer with an explosive shock. Films like Ringu, One Missed Call, Ju-On: The Grudge and Audition are most representative of the genre. Asian horror can be readily emulated in Dead of Night, taking many of its cues from a regular ghost story. The key to a successful scenario is to create a scary monster and a compelling situation. Focus on the ghost at the heart of the tale and the reason for their haunting, as well as a strong tie for each of the characters to be involved in the situation. Consider bringing the monster bang up to date with a contemporary twist, such as a possessed television, a haunted website or a monster created by pollution. Monsters in an Asian horror game are often ghosts and spirits, returned to exact vengeance of the living. They have often been victims of murder or suicide, and remain tied to the place of their death through a sense of unfinished business. Sometimes they are able to communicate with the living, but often they are overcome with madness or sorrow. The Vengeful Dead archetype is ideal for this genre, as is the Formless Horror. Survival Points can represent all manner of things in an Asian horror game. They can represent regular injuries inflicted by the monster, or they can have a far subtler effect, such as coming to the attention of the monster, the loss of self-control or freedom, or a relative or friend coming under the creature’s sway.
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Dust The original Dust, a film by Matarokurô Nariaki, was such a huge hit in Japan that it was bought up and translated by a Hollywood studio straightaway. The translation transposed the action from an apartment block on the outskirts of Osaka to a brownstone tenement building in New York. The plot remained largely unchanged for the translation, telling the story of the residents of a tenement block haunted by the ghost of a little girl and her mother, who were murdered there a year before. The film drew on many of the same inspirations and trappings as Dark Water and The Grudge had before it, and Hollywood actually managed to make a half-decent job of the translation, capturing both the tension and mood of the piece. The climax, in which the house begins to be consumed by flames as the vengeance of the dead literally boils over, is a fantastic blend of special effects and psychological nastiness - especially the bit where one of the residents, Jessica, stalks through the flames, gun in hand, her eyes set firmly on the true villain, the murderer himself. Before running Dust as a scenario, take some time to create characters closely tied to one another and to the situation at hand. The characters should all be residents of the apartment block, but should all have a reason to become emotionally attached to the ghosts and their predicament. The story should unfold completely within the confines of the house, to capture the confined feeling of the film. The ghosts themselves can be represented by either the Vengeful Dead archetype or the Formless Horror archetype. Obscure and Dissuade Checks should be prevalent, with the victims unsure as to what is going on but thoroughly creeped out. Survival Point loss should represent psychological damage and insanity, as well as physical injuries caused by the ghosts lashing out.
Tension Points Circumstance: Can only spend Tension to increase Dissuade and Obscure Checks or to reduce Identify Checks.
Tension Intensity: No more than 3 points of Tension can be spent on a single check.
Starting Tension: 3. The story starts perfectly innocuously. Mood: Slow-burning and simmering tension, the supernatural elements juxtaposing with the mundane comings and goings of the residents. Running with Clichés should be rewarded sparingly.
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CRETEAFILMS PRESENTS A HENRIQUE PRODUCTION A FILM BY ANDRE DE HENRIQUE & PAULO BOURDAIN aNICOLE BOULEJUNOIS nFRANCOIS RUE gALEKSANDR DMITRIOV uBUBBA ZINETTI & CGSHQ jMATHAIUS MATCHELLO kRICARDO STOKINI C H A P T E R
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ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE One of the few genres of horror to be invented purely for the cinema, the zombie apocalypse is now a firm fixture in the horror movie landscape. Often encompassing a far larger scale disaster, the zombie apocalypse typically picks up after the event has happened, focusing on a small band of survivors and their struggles. Survival and escape, rather than victory, is the only likely outcome. Night of the Living Dead, its sequels and remakes are great examples, as is 28 Days Later. To run a zombie apocalypse game in Dead of Night simply dial down some of the schlock elements of horror and instead replace them with a creeping hopelessness. You can set the game before the onset of the apocalypse, having the characters overtaken by events as the story, and the apocalypse, unfolds. Or you might prefer to start the game in media res, with the characters holed up somewhere. Whatever the start point, the situation you should present to the players should motivate them to get out there and act, rather than battening down the hatches and hoping to ride out the storm. If they start in a bunker, have the food run out or the generator pack in. If they start up in the mountains, have them hear of possible survivors down by the coast. The monster in a zombie apocalypse should be far greater than a single zombie, instead encompassing entire hordes of them at any one time. The Horde is a good way to represent this foe. Survival Point loss might represent more visceral damage, as the zombies lay into the victims with their teeth. It can also represent the loss of equipment and other goods needed to survive in the post-apocalyptic world, such as the loss of supplies or the last clip of ammo being used up.
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Incubation Incubation was made in the aftermath of 28 Days Later, and it shows - we have abandoned cities, mysterious plagues and tense stand-offs between bands of survivors. The main difference is that the plague remains highly contagious in Incubation, forcing the protagonists to wander around in hazmat suits or toting gas masks; hardly the easiest things to do when they’re being chased by hideously mutated plague victims. The movie distinguishes itself by playing up the tension between the survivors to the max, especially the uncertainty of who is infected and who is not. As much of the horror stems from the necessities of life under quarantine, especially the cruel and callous choices forced upon the lead characters. The horror of the plague victims’ fate plays second fiddle to the human horror. To run Incubation as a game, have the players create a band of misfits who have holed themselves up in an old air raid shelter beneath Westminster in London. They should have gotten to know each other well, for they have been down here for close to a month now. Food and water are running out, but surely it is safe to leave by now? The monsters are the plague victims, pretty much zombies in all respects except that these guys are altogether nippier. Escape Checks should dominate, as should Persuade, Dissuade and Identify, to handle the day to day problems of survival in a world on the edge. Actual combat with the plague victims should be kept to a minimum as the infection spreads through bites and bodily fluids. Therefore Survival Point loss should represent a loss of other things rather than injury: loss of resources, allies and safety; creeping insanity and despair; and a gradual diminishing of places to escape to.
Tension Points Circumstance: spent to increase Escape Checks and decrease Protect Checks.
Intensity: Whenever the GM spends Tension he must spend at least 2 or 3, to heighten the sense of calm after a storm.
Starting Tension: Surprisingly high - 10 or so, to represent the really nasty and tense starting point of leaving the safety of the bunker when you know there’s horrible things out there.
Mood: Should be very bleak and irrepressible, interspersing scenes of frantic fight and flight, with scenes of emptiness and calm. Limit Running with Clichés to heighten the sense of impending doom and decrease the traditional schlock horror approach.
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PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR Psychological horror primarily deals with the mental or spiritual destruction of its protagonists. A common factor is the disintegration of the barrier between the character’s internal state and the outside world, with their internal nightmares apparently taking external form. Protagonists in psychological horror stories often provide an unreliable point of view, unable to differentiate between their fears and the real world. The ambiguity of their mental state, as the world falls apart around them, makes the story all the more unsettling. While some films and stories exist as pure psychological horror, it is more usually used as an element of another genre. Two very different examples of how psychological horror techniques can be applied to, say, a vampire story are Martin and Let the Right One In. In Martin, we have a protagonist who believes himself to be a vampire, but may just be a very disturbed young man. The tension caused by this uncertainty turns a simple tale of self-destruction into something quite disorienting. Let the Right One In, on the other hand, shows the effect that meeting a real vampire has on a psychologically damaged boy, taking his mind down a dark path. Some examples of a more pure style of psychological horror film include Session 9, Jacob’s Ladder and The Innocents. The threats in a psychological horror story are personal to the characters, and the largest threat may turn out to be the character himself. At the very least they should be drawn from the character’s fears, insecurities or inner conflicts, maybe symbolically or possibly in a literal form. If a character is tormented by failing to save their brother from drowning, then they should face threatening bodies of water, nightmares of being pulled into the darkness and not being able to breathe, or whispered pleas in their brother’s voice. If a character is unsure whether they are responsible for a bizarre rash of murders that happen when they have blackouts, then they should constantly encounter conflicting evidence, such as a bloody murder weapon in their bedroom or a midnight phone call from someone who promises to tell them who the real killer is. To create a psychological horror game, you could define Survival Points as representing the characters’ mental fortitude. Risk Checks then become about self-control, resisting corruption, retaining sanity or seeing through delusions. You should use descriptions that are based on the characters’ mental states rather than what is really happening in the game world and use ambiguity wherever possible.
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Whispers The characters awake to a world that has fallen apart. The sky is dark, there is no electricity, television or radio, and the rest of humanity is either dead or a handful of shell-shocked survivors. People’s inner fears have come to life and are driving them to selfdestruction; they are accompanied by living shadows that flow across the landscape, whispering to people, preying on their secrets and nightmares. Some survivors that the characters encounter may believe that they are in Hell, that this is the apocalypse, that the dead have risen and are punishing the living for their sins, or even that alien entities have invaded and are using our fears to destroy us. One of these may be true, but the setting is more sinister if there is no clear answer. As part of character creation, a few additional things should be defined: another player character that the character loves, and why; another player character that the character hates, and why; the character’s greatest fear; the worst thing that character has ever done; the one thing the character has to live for. All of these will provide the raw materials for the private hell the character has to fight through. Survival Points in this are purely risked by conflicts with manifestations of a character’s fear or guilt, and represent the character’s resistance to self-destruction. If they drop below zero, the character will go irrecoverably insane, lose the will to go on, or die by their own hand. They can fight back by having conflicts with the manifestations that represent overcoming their fear and guilt, and finding reasons to live.
Tension Points Circumstance: Can only spend Survival Points once Tension has reached 10.
Intensity: No limit on the amount that can be spent. Starting Tension: 5. Mood: Deadly serious. Running with Clichés should be kept to a minimum to reduce the schlock horror.
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LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR Lovecraftian horror, a genre named after its originator, HP Lovecraft, focuses on the psychological element of horror of the story and the slippery slope towards insanity. Although Lovecraftian horror contains a heavy dose of the supernatural, it is very much the psychological aspect that is the centre of attention. The common theme for a Lovecraftian horror story is the thin veneer of reality, beneath which lies a horrific, sanity-breaking other world, the Cthulhu Mythos of his creation. Much of his protagonists doom stems from their own actions, as they investigate things best left undisturbed, delving into that which man was not meant to know. Classic Lovecraftian tales include the short stories The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror and the Call of Cthulhu. Lovecraft’s works have been adapted into films on a number of occasions, but rarely successfully (The Curse) or authentically (Re-Animator). Some of the problems with recreating Lovecraftian horror on the tabletop stem from the original source material. Lovecraft played up the isolation and detachment of his protagonists, often depicting them as loners. Similarly, the themes of helplessness and hopelessness dominate, and it is from this combination of detachment, helplessness and hopelessness that much of the horror stems. Obviously, a game where all three of this themes dominates can lead to a rather futile, frustrating scenario where the players are powerless to have any impact over the proceedings, and so the impact of any horror elements are lost. Still, it is possible to play Lovecraftian horror in Dead of Night. You can play up the isolation aspect by stranding the characters in a remote locale, as Lovecraft did in At the Mountains of Madness, and play up the insanity aspect of the stories, whilst playing down the helplessness motifs, at least until the story’s denouement. Survival Point loss should almost always represent the loss of sanity or the unleashing of some terrible thing. The monsters in Lovecraftian horror are often particularly hideous, all-powerful alien entities from beyond space and time. Fighting them directly is usually futile - the one chance the characters have is banishing it back whence it came, or shutting the door and hoping to escape. The Thing from Beyond best represents many of Lovecraft’s monsters.
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The Shadow from Outer Space The little-known Robert Edmund Hallcroft was inspired by the body of work produced by Lovecraft and his contemporaries, and enjoyed a small amount of success in his lifetime with his own, similarly themed stories. His most famous story, The Shadow from Outer Space was printed in Macabre Motives magazine in 1938. A fan-made adaptation of the story won the Moon Silver Award for short horror films in 2001, although it remains fairly obscure. The story tells of a professor of astronomy, Professor Edwin Montfort, who inadvertently makes contact with the eponymous Shadow when exploring the heavens with his psycho-scope. The Shadow is a malevolent interdimensional hunter that lurks in the corners and shadows of the world, stalking the halls of the library and feasting on the students it finds there after hours, apparently driving them to suicide as it does so. Much of the story chronicles the Professor’s internal angst, but it breaks with the traditions of the genre by involving his fellow faculty members as they attempt to find the creature and send it back from whence it came. Although they succeed in this, it is not without loss, as the Professor succumbs to his insanity.
The Shadow from Outer Space makes for a good Lovecraftian horror scenario, for it involves a cast of characters as well as the possibility for a proactive, if not happy, ending. The characters should be the Professor and his colleagues, investigating the strange murders within the library. The Shadow itself can be a Thing from Beyond, an alien creature with little obvious form or motivation. Much of the scenario should revolve around Identify Checks, as the characters slowly unravel what is going on, and Protect Checks as they fall prey to the monster. Survival Point loss should almost entirely represent the loss of a character’s sanity, with characters forced to lose their last point teetering on the brink of going utterly mad or taking their own life as the Shadow feeds on their despair.
Tension Points Circumstance: Spent to increase Identify Checks or decrease Protect Checks.
Intensity: Whenever the GM spends Tension he must spend at least 2 or 3, to heighten the sense of calm after a storm.
Starting Tension: 5. Mood: Should be very cold, emotionless and clinical. Limit Running with Clichés to heighten the sense of impending doom and decrease the traditional schlock horror approach.
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BLACK COMEDY The last genre to be discussed is black comedy, also known as comedy horror. Comedy horror movies might be no less terrifying than other horror movies, but are often self-deprecating and selfreferential, encouraging the viewer to laugh at their fears. The comedy in a comedy horror can veer between black comedy all the way to slapstick, and anywhere in between. Notable black comedy movies include Braindead, Cemetery Man and the Evil Dead series of films. Running a black comedy requires you to tread a fine line between humour and horror; between the comedy enjoyed by the players and the fear experienced by the characters. Whilst the characters might accept the difficult situations that they find themselves in, the players can happily suspend their disbelief and laugh along at the absurdity of it all, leading their characters into ever more dramatically ironic circumstances for the horror and humour therein. In many respects, black comedy games can be ran as a regular slasher or monster movie game, with Survival Points representing everything from death and dismemberment to the loss of supplies or sanity. That said, in a black comedy, physical consequences are more likely to prevail than any subtle psychological trauma. Horror movie clichés should flow thick and fast, and additional Survival Points can be handed out to reward humour around the table or characters finding themselves in such absurdly horrible situations that the players cannot help but chuckle. A monster in a black comedy movie could conceivably take any form, although they are less likely to be subtle foes than in other genres. Psychopathic killers, supernatural terrors and flesh-eating zombies are all common monsters. The Unstoppable Killer, Hunter and Horde make for good monsters in a black comedy.
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Off Season British director Martin Nicks has had a long career of making films that cash in on current trends, and his recent work, Off Season is an obvious attempt to cash in on popular black comedy/horror films such as Severance, Botched and The Cottage. Off Season is set in a run-down seaside town on the east coast of England. It follows the misfortunes of a group of misfits, as they travel to the seaside for a stag party for their mutual friend Dave Cardiff. When they arrive at Elmsport, though, they discover that it is a seedy, run-down little town with little more than a fishing fleet, a single pub and a bed & breakfast. Worse than that, Dave goes missing immediately and as his friends search for him they discover that the degenerate townsfolk have a long history of luring unsuspecting tourists to offer them up to the sea. The village is filled with characters like the B&B’s ageing femme fatale landlady, who lures unsuspecting men down to her cellar dungeon where she imprisons them in oversized lobster pots; the local children who will happily set fire to anything that doesn’t move and quite a few things that do; and the old fisherman, who prepares the offerings in his shack by the sea and is a deadly hand with any fishing implement he can lay hands on. Nicks doesn’t spare the gore, and you will never look at a fishing hook in quite the same way again. If you adapt Off Season as a game the characters should be the stag party, with the opening scene taking place the morning they arrive at Elmsport and discover that they’re lost the groom. The players should be rewarded for splitting up and discovering the various traps that the locals have left for them. All the weaponry and tools that the locals use should be related to fishing - boat hooks, fishing knives, harpoons and so on. Almost from the word go, the locals will try to kill the characters, and the Tension will build up as they discover that their bus has been sabotaged and they have no way out of town. The locals’ ultimate goal is to lower any survivors (including the missing groom) down to the shoreline in over-sized lobster pots and wait for the tide to come in to present them as offerings to the local sea life.
Tension Point Circumstances: May only be spent to lower Protect and Escape Checks, and increase Assault Checks. Tension Intensity: Any number may be spent on a check. Starting Tension: 5. Mood: Comedic, with plenty of over-the-top violence and gore. C H A P T E R
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BODY HORROR Body horror is a genre where the horror derives from the body itself, specifically its uncontrollable degeneration, decay or mutation. Key films in the body horror genre include the Fly, the Brood, Tetsuo: the Iron Man and, more recently, District 9. The genre exacerbates a sense of loss of control over that fundamental centre of being - your own body. It has a lot in common with the psychological horror genre, except whereas in that genre it is the loss of sanity and mind that is at stake, in the body horror genre it is a loss of your own body. Body horror can stem from all manner of places, from viruses and exposure to weird radiation all the way up to infestation by alien parasites. Likewise the transformation can manifest itself in different ways - almost all of them slow-burning - such as the slow decay of body parts or strange mutations to the replacement of the flesh bit by bit with metal or alien physiology. Sometimes the victim is unaware of the transformation, but more often than not it is painfully apparent to them, if not to anyone else. In a body horror game, the loss of Survival Points represents the slow change of the body. With every Survival Point lost, something about the character changes. His fingernails might mutate into scalpels, his face begin to rot away or he might feel the alien growing inside him. The final loss of Survival Points might entail that the character has finally succumbed to the mutation, changing in mind as well as body into something else, or succumbing completely to the embrace of change. Monsters in body horror games are often the instigators of change - scientists whose experiments have triggered the change in their victims, or aliens whose spawn is slowly growing inside unwitting hosts - or they might be past victims of mutation, whose minds and bodies have degraded so much that they are monsters themselves. Sometimes there are no monsters at all, but those which the players become.
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Symbiote Symbiote is one of the more unpleasant - yet painfully stylish and darkly humorous - body horrors, following in the footsteps of the multitude of Spanish horror movies to appear in the late 00s. Ramone and Leanna Baharanda’s movie centres around a pair of scientists sent to investigate a virus outbreak in a remote Spanish town. There they discover that the townsfolk are falling victim to the symbiote of the title, a horrible macrovirus that warps the victim’s body and drives them insane before finally slaying them - all shown in hideous detail, of course. Although the film’s poster shows the end result of the infection, the special effects showing the inside of the victim moments before death remain some of the more creative, yet gory, uses of CGI to date. The real twist in the tale was that there were two twists - both writers wrote their own endings (Ramone favoured a supernatural explanation, whereas Leanna’s ending was firmly rooted in mad science), and both were filmed and released, to the frustration and delight of cinema-goers. When running Symbiote as a game, pick a couple of the players to be the scientists. The rest of the players play the townsfolk. The monster in question - the symbiotic macrovirus - can be represented in a couple of different ways. It might be a Formless Horror, representing the virus’ spread as a whole throughout the population, or it could be a Corrupter, twisting the virus’ victims until they snap or die. The game is a slow-burner as the magnitude of the threat becomes apparent, so Tension should build up slowly. One trick you can pull is to use tokens or beads as Survival Points, mixed in with a number of distinctly coloured tokens. When players gain a new Survival Point, get them to draw from the bag - a coloured token indicates that the victim has become infested. They can’t spend these coloured tokens, and the more they have the more the virus spreads, driving them increasingly insane. Once all they have are coloured tokens, they snap, going on a psychopathic rampage before passing on the virus and dying. Messily.
Tension Points Circumstance: Only spend when Tension hits at least 10, and then only on Identify and Escape Checks.
Intensity: Must spend at least 3 Tension whenever able to. Starting Tension: 5. Mood: Darkly humorous, with plenty of horrific moments. Reward with bonus Survival Points for describing particularly gruesome scenes
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Hay un infierno. Y está dentro de ti.
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ROBERTO FRANCINI PRESENTS A RAMIREZFILM PRODUCTION A FILM BY RAMONE BAHARANDA aRAMONE & LEANNA BAHARANDA nSTEPHANO TARRINI gMARIO MANCIO uTHE RENDER STORE jERNESTO FULLER kRAMA EL HEFE
CHAPTER SIX: CHAPTER SIX:
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Up to now you’ve been given everything you need to know to run a game of Dead of Night, from the rules for creating characters and monsters to guidelines for telling stories in the horror genre you want. You can happily play Dead of Night without reading another page, but in this chapter are some techniques, tricks and tips for getting the most out of the game, from advice for crafting a good one-shot scenario to a list of horror movie clichés, and everything in between. Think of it as a veritable games master’s toolkit, a selection of props and devices that you can dip into and use as the situation demands. Of course, this is a far from exhaustive list and there is no right or wrong way to play the game - this is just a selection of techniques that have worked well for us in the past. You can find more advice on running Dead of Night at our website: www.steampowerpublishing .com
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LIBERATION FROM PREPARATION Dead of Night works best when you don’t have a strict storyline in mind; when you have a strong set of characters, each with their own agendas and motivations; and when you place them in an intense situation. Focus on crafting these aspects of the story, rather than a tightly plotted story, and your game should zing along under its own steam, rather than requiring you to force it along a pre-written path. And, luckily for the workshy GM (for whom this game was written), that requires the smallest amount of work. This section takes a look at how to set up and plan a game of Dead of Night, whether you’ve got four weeks to prepare or four minutes.
Preparing One-shots, by Scott Dorward Whether you’re looking for a filler game when a session of your regular campaign falls through or you’re running a game at a convention, you can often find yourself in the position of needing a short, single-session game that can be prepared quickly. The techniques for preparing and running such a game are slightly different from running a game that lasts multiple sessions, but this is where Dead of Night comes into its own. Most games of Dead of Night will be single-session one-shots, so the advice below should come in handy whenever you sit down to prep a game. Some of the techniques mentioned are explored in more detail later in the chapter.
Premise Most one-shots start from a single, simple idea that acts as the foundation for everything else that makes up the scenario. This may be a random thought, like I’d really like to try a zombie game set during the Crusades; a deliberate combination of ideas, such as noticing that your group likes science fiction and ghost stories, and deciding to set a game on a haunted space station; or taking inspiration from a film, book or comic you enjoyed, such as setting a game using the rage virus from 28 Days Later in your home town. Don’t feel that whatever you come up with has to be original. By the time you have come up with a few characters and locations, and the players start playing around with these elements, you will end up with a game that has its own flavour. Also, don’t be afraid to change the idea fundamentally as you start developing it if the new ideas you or your players have seem more interesting to you.
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Improvisation vs. Preparation When preparing a scenario, it is sometimes easy to fall into the trap of looking at it as a story and trying to plan a series of events that will happen in a particular order. In practise, not only is this generally unnecessary work, but it can actively work against the enjoyment of the players. The players will almost certainly go to locations you had not considered, want to talk to NPCs you haven’t designed and tackle problems in completely unexpected ways. Learning how to react to these events and create the game elements you need on the fly is a crucial skill for a GM. Two classic pieces of advice from improvisational theatre can help here. Firstly, if a player assumes something about the game world that you had not planned, instead of just saying “no”, look for ways to build on it and complicate things. Sure there is a police officer on the beat nearby, but the vampire got to him first and he’s now very hungry. Secondly, as with coming up with ideas for the scenario itself, don’t worry too much about being original. The first idea that pops into your head is probably good enough, and may well not have occurred to anyone else. Learn to trust your instincts.
Dead of Night makes it easy to improvise characters and threats: when a conflict you haven’t anticipated crops up, simply set the Target number for rolls to 15. Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, assume all NPCs have attribute pairs of 5/5. If you do need a monster with stats, just grab something that looks right from the book and call it whatever you want to make it fit the situation. None of this is to say that preparing a scenario is a waste of time. By coming up with the elements mentioned below and being prepared to make up incidental details as required, you can create a dynamic, memorable game.
Characters It can be easy to come up with an idea for a game, then flesh out details such as the monster and NPCs, leaving the role of the characters as an afterthought; the problem is that this can lead to a flat, uninvolving game. As with a good story, the protagonists should be at the centre of events, and the situation should give them a strong motivation to take action. Whether you are pre-generating the characters for the game or asking the players themselves to create them, you should have a good idea of what kinds of characters and motivations will tie into the scenario and share them with the players.
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This can be something as simple as giving the monster a reason to stalk the characters, such as revenge for a past misdeed, or having the characters’ home, family or something equally important to them threatened. Creating characters with ties to each other also helps make for a strong game, especially if the ties are complicated. Having a mix of love, friendship, rivalry, mistrust and even hatred can encourage the characters to interact in interesting ways once they are under pressure. Human relationships are rarely simple, and the more complicated ones are the stuff of drama.
Isolation Most effective horror stories rely to some degree on isolating the protagonists from possible sources of help and comfort, making sure that they have to deal with the threat on their own. This isolation can be geographical, such as setting the action on an island or in a remote farmhouse; social, such as the characters being homeless, children, mentally ill or any other group whose stories are unlikely to be believed; or situational, such as using a war, natural disaster or apocalypse as a setting, ensuring that non-player characters are too preoccupied with their own situation to offer easy assistance. It is perfectly possible to run a game that doesn’t rely on isolation, but at the very least you should give thought to why the player characters won’t simply call the police, or run away from the problem, rather than assuming they will stay involved because it’s a game.
Locations You will need to come up with a few basic locations that will be key to the game. These may include places such as the characters’ home, a crime scene, the deserted summer camp, the monster’s lair, and so on. In general, you only need to have a rough idea of what they look like; maps are rarely necessary. A few sensory descriptions will give the players enough to fill in the blanks themselves.
For example, ‘The house has largely stayed standing since the fire, but there are holes in the walls big enough for a man to step through. Everything still reeks of smoke, and you can hear the charred beams creaking around you. Looking through the hole, you can see that the living room floor has collapsed into the cellar. There is the sound of something moving in the dark.’
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Don’t worry about pre-populating locations with items; just use your experience and common sense to decide whether it’s logical that, for example, there should be a payphone in the hotel lobby. If a player asks whether a particularly useful item is around, remind them that if they spend a Survival Point on I’ve Got Just the Thing, it will be there. If you have to make up a location on the spot, try to draw on locations you know and throw in a few descriptive details about them. Again, a few bits of information go a long way.
Non-Player Characters
As with locations, non-player characters can be very loosely defined. Generally, you can get by with a name, a motivation and a physical description. Adding some mannerisms or an accent can help make the character more real to the players, but is not necessary. You won’t normally need to provide stats for NPCs; unless they are particularly special, or a monster, just give them 5/5 in all attribute pairs and no Specialisations. Each NPC you plan to put in a scenario should serve a particular purpose. Maybe they are allied with the monster and pose a threat to the characters; they could be pursuing their own agenda that will complicate the situation; one or two may need to be rescued; some will be there simply to die and demonstrate the nature of the threat. If you anticipate having to create some NPCs during the course of the game, it can be useful to have a list of names, and maybe brief descriptions, that you can allocate as the need arises.
A Strong Opening Scene While you do not need to plan every scene in the game, you should spend a bit of time trying to work out how to make the game open in a way that will set the tone for the game and kick the characters into action. This does not have to be a big action scene - it can be appropriate, especially with a mystery or ghost story, to open gently and build the mood - but it should at least present the players with some indication of the problem they face and give their characters a reason to act.
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For example, if you were running the zombie game set during the Crusades mentioned earlier, you may want to start with a group of NPC knights, feared lost in battle, returning to the fort late at night. They are battered and bloody, and some seem to be stricken with an unfamiliar disease. One of them is clutching a small clothwrapped bundle under his arm and drops it as he collapses. He moans something about Baphomet as he loses consciousness. As the player characters gather round, the bundle begins to scream... At this point, the characters are presented with a mystery, a possible threat and an indication of the kinds of problems they are facing. As a GM, you can now start reacting to their decisions and build on them.
An Escalating Sense of Menace Your main job as the GM from this point onwards is to build up the pressure on the player characters, making their situation more dangerous and horrifying by degrees. Some of this can be prepared ahead of time and some will have to be improvised. Possible material you can prepare includes:
Hard choices - one of the corpses the mad scientist has reanimated is the dead wife of a character; does he spare her, or help her find peace? A chain of events - unless stopped, the killer will systematically murder all the crew, leaving the cruise liner unmanned as it nears the reef.
Clues - the family photograph albums go back for over fifty years, but uncle Roger looks the same in every picture. Complications - the colonel has just been discovered with his throat ripped out, and one of the player characters is covered in someone else’s blood.
Threats - the beast has left a trail of blood back to its lair, but this is just a ruse to get its hunters into the cave before it collapses it on them. You don’t have to use all the material you prepare, especially if the story seems to be going in a different direction than you anticipated, and don’t rush to use the next bit if there is still fun and tension to be gained from the current scene. Throw in threats and complications whenever it feels like the game is beginning to slow, even if this just means having the monster attack unexpectedly.
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Don’t Wait for the Good Stuff Most single-session games, whether a convention game or just a group of friends gathered for the evening, will run for 3-4 hours. If you take character generation, explaining the rules and general chit-chat into account, you may only be left with about 2 1/2 hours of game time. This means you have to try to pack as much fun into this time as possible. For the GM, part of this will involve keeping people focused on the game and cutting digressions short. You should also keep an eye on scenes that are going nowhere, such as players discussing plans of action and going round in circles; don’t be afraid to jump in and ask, ‘So what do you do?’, or simply cut to a new scene involving different characters. As the GM, the most important thing you can do, though, is not to hold back on the good stuff. If you have an idea for an exciting scene or conflict, don’t make the players work for it or try to stretch out play to build tension. You just don’t have the luxury of time. This doesn’t mean that you should just launch into the climax as soon as possible, but you do need to keep up the pace. If the players are floundering a bit or aren’t quite sure where to go next, bring the threat to them or have them uncover a clue that will lead them into danger. The worst thing that can happen to a game is for the players to get bored.
A Cathartic Climax Quite often, a scenario will have an obvious climactic scene; if the characters are hunting a vampire through the Transylvanian countryside, you might expect the final scene to be a showdown with the vampire in the crypt of his castle. On the other hand, a player may decide that her character is going to offer herself up as bait and try to trick the vampire into staying out of its coffin past sunrise. If this is the case, and the game feels like it is reaching a natural conclusion, you should happily abandon all plans you had and accept this as the climax. Knowing when a game has reached a climax comes down to a number of factors. The obvious one is if you have a time constraint, as you might at a gaming convention, you should try to push towards a conclusion before you run out of time. Survival Points provide a useful guide as well: if the monster or the characters are nearly out of Survival Points, then you should start angling for a climactic scene.
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Mostly, though, knowing that the game is coming to an end is a matter of assessing the story that has been created and the players’ feelings; if they have discovered that the wraith’s body is buried under the church and are digging up her remains at midnight to lay her to rest, this is the time for her to throw everything she has at them. Given that the game is a one-shot, the characters do not have to be successful in order for the ending of the game to be satisfying. As long as the ending is definitive and emotionally powerful, most players will enjoy having their characters die spectacularly. The history of horror films is filled with unhappy endings. If the last surviving character is struck down by an insane cultist just as he tries to throw the ritual scroll into the fire, and lies there dying just long enough to hear the words spoken that will call the dark gods back into our world, the players will probably remember the game every bit as fondly as if that last roll had succeeded. Don’t be afraid to let the bad guys win.
Zero-Preparation Games, by Scott Dorward Sometimes not everyone in your gaming group can make it for a scheduled session, or you are together with a group of friends and you decide that you are in the mood to play an game. While Dead of
Night is not explicitly designed for pick-up games, there are a few simple techniques that you can use to put together a game on the spot. The first stage is to have a quick brainstorming session with everyone involved. By harnessing the creativity of everyone at the table, you will come up with a rapid succession of ideas quickly. One person, usually the GM, should take the lead by asking a few questions, coordinating the responses, and making some notes which will form the foundation of the game. Whoever is asking the questions also needs to make sure that everyone present is happy with the ideas presented. Sometimes all it takes is that one quiet player who didn’t really want to play a game about zombies to suck the energy out of the group. Also, don’t be afraid to ask the group for consensus about any new ideas that don’t seem to fit the tone or facts you have established up to that point.
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Some of the questions you could use to get the ideas flowing are:
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Where and when is the game set? Is it something that resembles the real world, or something more fantastical? Is it set in the present day, or is it a historical or science fiction setting?
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What is the tone of the game? Is it light and funny, or serious horror? How dark should the game be allowed to go? Are there any topics that should be off-limits?
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What horror genre are you using? Is this going to be a ghost story, a slasher flick, a monster movie or something stranger?
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Are there any specific influences -- books, films, TV shows or comics -- that you want to draw on? Don’t be afraid to steal ideas wholesale; by the time you have come up with ideas for characters and location, your premise will start to feel more original.
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What kinds of characters are involved? You should try to come up with about two characters per player, and then decide which ones should be the player characters. The others can then be used as antagonists or general NPCs.
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What ties the characters together? This could be as simple as them all being teenagers at the same summer camp. The important thing is to give them a reason to interact with each other and with the threat, when it appears.
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What kind of threat do they face? Don’t be too specific here if you want a sense of mystery. Maybe you are in the mood for a game about werewolves, in which case deciding the threat is a werewolf, or that a werewolf is involved, will be fine. If the players want a bit more suspense, then just saying, for example, that it’s something from the characters’ past come back for revenge will prove more atmospheric.
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What reason do the characters have for not simply running away? Maybe they are geographically isolated, such as on an island where the next ferry isn’t due for days, or maybe someone they care about is threatened and can’t be abandoned.
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This will give you a basic outline for the game. You can now move on to defining the specifics.
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What do Survival Points represent and what is a Risk Check? Is survival in this game simply about avoiding physical dangers, or are there threats to the characters’ sanity or souls?
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What specific clichés will apply to this game?
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What relationships exist between the characters? This applies to both player characters and NPCs. It can be as simple as, ‘Jeff used to go out with Mary before she got together with Jake, and now he wants her back’. The point is to create strong bonds that will bring people together or drive them apart as things get tense, and give player characters a reason to care about other characters and risk themselves to help when others are in danger. Drawing a quick relationship map, which shows links between characters as lines with short notes to explain the nature of the relationship, can provide the GM with a useful tool to create tense scenes, and gives the players a quick visual reference to who is who.
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Are there any specific factors that hook individual characters into the backstory you have created? If the game is set in an old dark house, for example, is one of the characters unknowingly the last descendent of the old master of the house, and so subject to the family curse?
At each of these stages, if you think a particular question won’t help make this game interesting, or a different one will, make any changes to the questions that you see fit. If anyone comes up with a great idea outside of the questioning process, add it to the list. Don’t be afraid to have too many ideas to work with, as long as they are all compatible; once the game starts, the players will generally focus on some of the ideas and ignore others depending on how well they fit what happens during play. Once you have all this information, the players should generate their characters. While they are doing this, the GM can give some thought to the threat and how it ties into the situation that everyone has created. It is usually enough to pick a suitable monster or two out of the book. Sometimes you may need to make some minor changes if you have decided on a threat that is not listed, but you
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can usually just make a change or two to an existing monster and call it something else. For example, if the players have decided the threat is a banshee, and you don’t have stats for one, you could just use a ghost and give it an Assault/Protect Specialisation of Deadly to reflect its cry. Any other NPCs can be assumed to have 5/5 in attribute pairs and no Specialisations. You are now ready to start play. Having a strong opening scene which immediately places the characters in danger or identifies a clear goal, such as getting off the island before the zombies eat everyone, will get the game moving swiftly. From this point, the game runs pretty well like any other, with the GM building the threat and pushing to a climactic scene. If play stalls at any stage, the GM shouldn’t be afraid to ask the players for ideas for scenes or complications. The GM should also encourage the players to spend Survival Points on adding elements to the story, along the lines of What’s This?, but with a bit more power. It would be helpful, for example, for a player to spend a Survival Point on establishing that his character is the great-grandson of the local witch whose history the characters are exploring and that he has dreams of her. The GM could also suggest such elements, but where they directly affect a character, the player would need to OK them, and he or she should not be docked a Survival Point for bringing them into play.
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NAKAMURA-YEBISU PRESENTS A MASAYOSHI YAHURO PRODUCTION A FILM BY KENDO NAGASAKI & HIROMI TAKENO aAKIRA HIGUCHI nAKIRA HIGUCHI gCLOE NIKORU uMUNETAKA INC. jNIIHARA MONISHI kNURIKO ‘CATWEASEL’ TAKASAKI & MUNETARA HITOMI
PULLING THE LEVERS: CUSTOMISING THE GAME One of the aspects of the game that is often overlooked or underestimated is the ability to customise it to the needs of the story and the group. I’m not talking about house rules here, but about the various levers and switches within the rules that can be tweaked and pulled to get different results and make the game feel very different. Survival Points are the easiest lever to pull: by adjusting what they represent, sometimes on the fly, the tone of the game can be changed. A frantic fight against aliens where Survival Points represent dwindling ammunition will feel different to a splatter game where losing a Survival Point equates to physical maiming of the character. The second lever to pull is more of a control panel: the Tension mechanics. These mechanics are determined before the game, and by changing the various settings - when Tension can be spent, how much can be spent, what checks can be modified and so on - different effects can be created. The Genre chapter delves into this in far more detail, but make sure you give it some thought before you start play. The final lever that you can pull is a part of Tension, but deserves a mention in its own right, and that is mood. Mood determines when Survival Points are gained and, in particular, which clichés will net a player Survival Points. For a classic slasher movie, mood can be suitably camp, netting Survival Points for getting busy in the graveyard with your boyfriend or for running into the woods in high heels. For a darker, more Lovecraftian horror, the mood can be switched appropriately, and instead Survival Points might only be handed out for relentlessly pursuing hidden knowledge or reading the big, black-bound tome. So, don’t just use the various mechanics unthinkingly from game to game - give the levers some thought, and play about with them to get the desired effect. The rest of this section takes a look at just a few ways that you can get the best out of the rules to make the game deliver exactly what you want.
Playing with Survival Points Survival Points are an incredibly fluid mechanic, able to represent a multitude of different things; from physical injury and mental stability to the loss of resources or allies. Survival points can be tweaked yet further, tagging their loss or gain to additional mechanics.
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The loss of a Survival Point might trigger a wild hallucination, drawn randomly from a deck of different visions, or it could result in the character exhibiting a new symptom of an alien parasite, as defined by a sliding scale of different effects. There are all manner of different effects, conditions and other gimmicks that you can attach to the loss or gain of Survival Points. Here are just a few ideas to get you started: One way to add uncertainty - and no small element of fun - to the proceedings in a body shock game is to write down several different mutations, each in the form of a Specialisation. Cut these up and put them in a hat. Whenever a player loses or gains a Survival Point, they succumb yet further to rampant mutation; get them to draw a random Specialisation from the bag and incorporate it into their character at an appropriate juncture. The Specialisation has its value determined as normal, reducing the total of an attribute pair by two in the process. Should one of a character’s attributes be reduced to 0 through excessive mutation, they succumb completely to the creeping horror and become little more than a monster themselves. Another tweak to Survival Points can be seen on page 151, in Cold Fusion. In this scenario there are two types of Survival Point red and blue, drawn randomly from a bag whenever a new one is gained. Blue points are bad, representing the victims succumbing to the cold. When all their Survival Points are blue, they become frost zombies. Similar tricks could be used to represent the progress of a flesh-eating zombie virus or a character succumbing to the onset of lycanthropy or vampirism.
The Survival Point Economy The thrumming engine at the heart of Dead of Night are Survival Points and Tension. These twin mechanics work together to drive the suspense and peril of the game, feeding off one another to crank up the horror. A good GM will exploit these mechanics to their full, using Tension at key moments, staking Survival Points on Risk Checks and handing out points for good use of horror clichés. The real trick, however, is not to overtly worry about the mechanics at all, certainly not to consciously harness them in the game.
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Set-up right (and there are pages of advice for tinkering with Tension in the relevant chapter, and plenty of examples scattered throughout the book), Tension takes care of itself. By configuring the tension circumstances at the start of the game, you’ve already given yourself guidelines as to when to spend Tension points. Keep one eye on the guidelines and one eye on the game, and whenever a suitable circumstance pops up, spend Tension accordingly. This should cause the characters to sweat as the vice tightens, but also to fill the players with trepidation whenever they spend a Survival Point, knowing that doing so hands the GM a real advantage. Survival Points give players an investment in their character, a tangible track of the peril they are in. They have a certain measure of control over how fast or how slow the Survival Points are used up, either by burning through them to earn re-rolls or flip-flop stats, or by hurling themselves into dangerous situations in the hope of scoring points back through clichés. One thing that the Survival Point economy does not reward is inaction. A player who sits back and does nothing in order to marshal their Survival Points may find that they die slightly slower than everyone else, but equally won’t be engaged in the game and won’t be given the same opportunities as active players to earn Survival Points back. Reward active players, inventive actions and playing in type by being free to give out Survival Points, and they in turn will feel that they can spend them freely. Act stingily and not only will players hunker down and try to conserve Survival Points, but you’ll find your Tension will grind to a halt too. Give a little, scare a lot!
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Make Them Pay Around my gaming table one of the most commonly heard replies by me is, ‘If you spend a Survival Point...’ I utter this phrase whenever a player asks if they have a flashlight, if the alleyway has a door at the end, if their gun has a spare clip. In short, whenever a player asks me whether they have anything, or can find something, the answer is always ‘yes, if you spend a Survival Point.’ I don’t give anything away for free, except perhaps the odd clue, but certainly nothing useful like an escape route or a gun or a torch. That’s what Survival Points are for, after all.
And there comes a time where players stop asking me those questions. And it’s not down to frustration or annoyance at my answers. Instead of asking the question, they just hand me a Survival Point and declare that they’ve found a spare bullet or a flashlight or a door through which to escape.
Piling on the Pressure One of the ways that Dead of Night keeps the pressure piled onto the players is via the initiative system. Innocuous enough, the Initiative system works by three rules: the monster goes first, whoever speaks up goes next, and no player may roll the dice twice in a row. Simple. So how can you use this to pile the pressure on? Well, because no player can roll the dice twice in a row, no one player can dominate the scene, but that’s not the heart of it. More than that, when the game is boiling down to Initiative and dice are being rolled, they’re inevitably being used for Risk Checks. So you might want to act, but acting has a very real chance of causing you to lose a Survival Point. So there’s a conflict for the players between what they know they must do and the possible consequences for doing it, which piles the pressure on. Everybody wants to do something, yet nobody wants to go next. But somebody must go next. Why? Because if they don’t, the monster will roll the dice. And nobody wants that.
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a jon anderson film
every parent should be proud of their child no matter what
ALEXANDER L FERGUSSON PRESENTS A KENMILL AUKERMAN PRODUCTION A FILM BY JON ANDERSON aSTAN BUTLER & JACK D BLAKE nJACK D BLAKE gJONAS BLUE uBT BJORN jS. E. GOLDBERG lJ. BALL kALEXANDER L FERGUSSON
SCARING YOURSELF SILLY When running a horror game, there comes the inevitable expectation that it will contain horror. Players will arrive at the table wanting to be scared and with have certain expectations that bad things will happen to their characters. Sometimes these expectations can be for the good, ensuring that all of the players buy in to the idea that their characters might not survive the game and actively playing into the hands of the horror. At other times, because players are expecting bad things to happen, there’s no surprise or shock there, diminishing the horror itself. There’s a whole raft of different techniques that GMs employ to scare their players and ensure that their horror game remains horrific, yet the responsibility for creating a suitable atmosphere does not rest on the GM’s shoulders alone. It is the players’ responsibilities to not only play to type, acting as though they were in a horror movie, but to help build and encourage the horror. Sometimes this is as simple as not telling a bad joke as the GM is describing the monster, but other times it falls to the players to willingly put their characters in danger or narrate chilling descriptions of their own demise. This section offers some advice on running a horror game.
Scare the Players, by Joe Murphy Despite all the advice I read through the 90s, you’re not trying to scare the characters. You can’t even try to scare the characters, as no matter how much detailed backstory a player throws at you, or how cleverly you tie the monster to some dark happening 30 years previously, the character doesn’t exist. There’s nothing to scare. Instead, it took one hapless guardian spirit who got hacked into pieces just because he looked like a house-sized spider to teach me the lesson: scare the players. It’s easy to get distracted by the trappings of a film or book, so if you’re talking about shared scares, ensure you’re getting in deep. You need to be really specific in your pre-game discussion. Is it the madness or the isolation in The Shining? Is it the suddenness of Psycho’s slayings or the tension beforehand? (Or all the stuffed birds?) If someone gets chills at ‘the unnatural’, do they mean angles that don’t add up or the uncanny valley of Realdolls? And what’s really going on with those poor souls who have phobias of buttons or knees?
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That’s not to say you should grill every prospective player and feed them a horror story based solely on their hang-ups. If nothing else, you have a lot of mouths to feed. But if you focus on one or two fears at the table, at the very least you can be pretty sure the guardian spirit is going to get chopped up. And that twitchiness is awfully infectious.
Creating a Chilling Atmosphere, by Mark Latham One of the things I like best about horror roleplay, and the reason I always come back to the genre as a games master, is the opportunity to create a genuinely chilling atmosphere. Sure, there are times when it doesn’t quite work, or your players are the kind who won’t be truly scared by events around the gaming table, but when it does work – when the players can at least understand the horror that their characters face, and act accordingly – that’s when the rewards for the games master are, in my opinion, greater than in any other genre of game. So, how do I achieve this end? Well, my preferred method of creeping out the players is actually a lot of hard work for the average games master. It involves research, and preparation. The idea is to create a world so real, so accurate, that the players have an easy time immersing themselves in it. Heroic, cinematic, derring-do is kept to a minimum. Instead, I like to create a world in which the characters have very human limitations, and where there are very real – often mundane – consequences for their actions. The realism is laid on thick in my games. When I run a Victorian-era Britain campaign, I provide period location maps, use real historical figures as NPCs, show the players photos of their surroundings. If they pick up a newspaper I’ll give them a photocopy of a real historical edition of the Times. If they search through a journal I’ll hand it to them in prop form. This is painstaking detail, and I pride myself on the fact that if the players went away the same night and Googled my characters or locations, they’d find some information that’s pretty close to the person or place they encountered. And why do I put myself through such tedious periods of research? For the payoff, of course. When the players are grounded in reality, the mundane, the everyday, they are far more susceptible to the uncanny. When the temperature in the room suddenly drops, or the groaning noise outside the front door gets steadily
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louder, or the very shadows seem to move when viewed from the corner of the eye… it all seems more real, and more visceral, by virtue of the fact that the players have become so immersed in the world, and so sure of its earthly parameters, that the horror of what’s about to happen hits them like a ton of bricks. If this is the real world, then how on earth can we combat this thing? We’re all doomed! And that’s exactly the reaction you’re angling for when you unveil your monstrous masterpiece.
Relentless Terror, by Joe Murphy One difference between mere terror and full-on horror is that horror is relentless. The psychopath doesn’t just want to kill you, he’s followed you home. The ghouls aren’t just hungry, they’re standing at the window. Despite the clever deadfalls and jury-rigged traps, the robot from the future is about to catch up with your truck. You can’t distract horror, you can’t reason with it, you can only run or confront. Presumably if you alternate confrontations (fights, explosions, miracle cures) and evasion (car chases, last minute escapes), you’ll get a horror story, right? Problem is, if you don’t offer the players respite, they’ll become fatigued by the constant pressure to plan and respond. Eventually, the pace becomes cartoonish, and the players will act accordingly. There goes the mood. So you need to pause along the way. Offer the players an all-too brief moment where they catch their breath, bicker over who ate the last packet of crisps, and warily eye the slats hurriedly nailed across the door. Ask the obvious questions: ‘How do you feel about him leaving your character in the car?’ ‘Do you think he deserved to escape?’ ‘Do you trust her with the shotgun?’ You can provoke a lot of interpersonal tension with some pointed questions. Give the players what seems like a resting place, a couple of tins of baked beans, and a chance to slap on that bandage. Prod them into arguing, and leave that to stew for a little while. And just before someone gets the final word... the monster comes through the door.
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There Can be No Escape ‘Why don’t we all just leave?’ you might well ask, were you to find yourself in a horror movie yourself. Sadly, horror movies don’t work like that; wherever the characters go, the horror follows. There can be no escape. Think of Jaws 4 (as traumatic as that might be). Despite flying thousands of miles to the Bahamas, the Brody family find themselves followed by the eponymous shark. Sounds mightily implausible, for sure, but that’s just how the logic in a horror movie works. And that’s how the logic should work in your games too. Often the situation, the characters’ agendas and the good-natured embracing of the tropes of a horror movie will keep a player engaged in the game, willfully placing his character in danger. But there will be occasions when players do the unthinkable and act rationally, attempting to escape the movie and flee the monster. But they cannot possibly succeed in doing this. They might escape for a time, but the monster will relentlessly pursue them. This is not meant to give the GM permission to block another player from doing as they please, nor is to require the creation of implausible boundaries to stop them from escaping. The victim might well flee the scene, but the horror is implacable. Wherever they flee to, the horror will be waiting for them or the monster will catch up with them. The horror will act to draw them back in. There can be no escape.
Strive for the Familiar Something that any good campfire tale will do is set the story in a familiar location to the audience, often the very same location that they are in. This immediately unsettles the audience, as not only can they picture the scene perfectly, but it also makes them wonder if there really is a serial killer stalking the woods, or a ghost haunting the summer camp. Whilst you don’t have to set your own games in the same place as you are playing them, always strive to capture a sense of the familiar in your settings. This then helps your players imagine the setting, evoking some of the emotions that they have invested in it at the same time. So you might not set your slasher movie in your own street, but by setting it in a suburb very much like it your players can instantly picture there own version of that street, along with the emotions they associate with it.
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When we talk about the familiar, it doesn’t have to be restricted to physical locations that the players can all relate to. We all have idealised images of American diners, college dorms, abandoned warehouses, lavish New York apartments and even the darkened corridors of spacecraft, all drawn from popular culture with depictions on TV and in the cinema. These can be used to your advantage just as readily as real-world locales, taking advantage of commonly shared imagery to make the players quickly place their characters in their imagination.
Relationships Whereas the sordid relationships and complicated love triangles between characters is not something the lightest of slasher movies need contend itself with, more psychologically involved horror movies use the personal relationships of the characters as key drivers of the horror. As part of character creation, consider plotting out a relationship map - a diagram depicting the relationships, both emotional and physical, between characters. This needn’t be more than a sheet with everybody’s name written on it, with relationships joined by lines. Don’t be constrained to just the players’ characters - non-player characters can be incorporated too. This gives the players a vested interest when the monster starts to chow down on the townsfolk - that’s not a nameless victim he’s eating, it’s Jim’s wife! You can even go so far as to include the monster on the relationship map, to record forbidden love, reasons for revenge and so on, making its rampage even more personal. You can find a relationship map in Chapter Seven, in the Dust scenario. A neat trick you can use is, before play starts, for everyone to jot down a relationship on an index card, whether another player or a resident of the town that they’ve just invented. Once all of the players have done this, each takes it in turns to pick another player’s relationship and devise their own relation to that person too. Quite quickly, a complex relationship map can be created between all the players and the townsfolk. The twist in this technique, however, is that the index cards are retained by the GM. Whenever another victim is found dead, the GM picks a card at random to decide who the victim was.
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Uncooperative Play: Fostering Mistrust & Suspicion, by James Mullen The worst time to find out your boyfriend is cheating on you is when you are both holding back the barricades against the oncoming zombie hordes, so I always try to have something like that happen in any game of Dead of Night that I run. A cohesive group of friendly characters who all cooperate towards their mutual survival makes for an unexciting story; I like characters in my games to ask themselves which is worse, the monsters outside or the people they are stuck inside with? Witness The Thing for a great example of this. My experience with Dead of Night lies in running games with pre-generated characters and the most important technique I’ve discovered is to always include sex; sexually based relations are one of the biggest motivating factors in the history of fiction and they work as both the carrot and the stick. A romance between two characters gives them something to strive towards and a reason to sacrifice their own safety for the sake of their beloved. Even better though is a dysfunctional romance: the jealousy of the partner who sees betrayal everywhere, the unrequited ‘love’ of the obsessive stalker and the passion gone cold in a loveless marriage. All these give characters reasons to do stupid things in a horror story, stupid things in the form of clichés which I as GM reward with Survival Points:
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Starting a loud argument when everyone is trying to avoid
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Slipping away from the group or your post for some intimacy,
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Stepping out alone to attract the monsters and offer yourself
attracting the monster.
just when everyone needs to stick together and be on guard.
to them out of grief or rage over what you have just discovered about the object of your affections.
I always build the potential for situations like this into my characters and encourage players to do likewise when creating their own characters; build a relationship with one or two other characters, then think of ways in which that relationship can suffer a dramatic breakdown.
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The other component in this equation is the opportunity for revelations to be made. My scenarios are set in locations with lots of private spaces and the set-up encourages characters to go off in groups of two or three before or in-between any scenes of supernatural horror. Characters need to have an agenda besides simply surviving and players should be encouraged to pursue these personal agendas at the worst possible times, with the promise of Survival Points for doing so. I like to create personal agendas in opposing pairs, with each half of the pair being pursued by a different character. For example, two colleagues each trying to avoid redundancy with only one job available; the journalist sniffing out a story around the official trying to cover it up; two media stars forced to share the spotlight, each trying to ensure that they get the biggest billing. The most successful games of Dead of Night I’ve run are the ones where players have separated themselves from their characters and taken the attitude that survival or death aren’t important, only whether the story created is enjoyable and exciting.
Secret Notes, Personal Agendas & Lonely Fun A common inclusion in many classic horror roleplaying games is the secret note and the personal agenda, whereby the flow of information around the table is carefully controlled and restricted by the GM so as to maintain suspense and create surprise. Done well, this is exactly what the technique can achieve, but so often it is done badly, creating boredom and disconnection amongst players excluded from the information, and lonely fun for the players included - that is to say, fun that only they are experiencing. Because Dead of Night is a very knowing and self-referential game, with players mechanically rewarded for actively putting their characters in danger, the notion of the secret note is often counter-productive, fostering a secretive, almost defensive mindset amongst the players where they became reluctant to embrace the horror and put themselves - or others - in danger. By keeping information in the open around the table, the players can choose to willingly and knowingly embrace it, playing to the dramatic foreshadowing that is such an important part of the horror genre.
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As with everything, however, there is still scope and opportunity to make use of such a technique. There are some instances where a character with a secret background or personal agenda is appropriate, and where you’re going for the surprise of the big reveal. Situations where one of the players is secretly a monster, or the goals of the characters are in direct competition with each other, for example. In such cases by all means keep it a secret however best you can, until you are ready for the big reveal to come out through play. Just be mindful that in gearing up for the surprise of the reveal, you’re not compromising the rest of the horror movie.
A Word on Clichés The notion of a cliché is an unfixed concept, a mutable idea that can shift depending on the genre or mood of the game. A cliché only really becomes a cliché at the point that it is a repetitive, recognisable trope. Hence, horror movie clichés only became clichés after movies began to reuse them, sometimes accidentally, sometimes lazily and sometimes knowingly. The same is true for clichés that you include in your games. Just like in the movies, the easiest and most likely to get a positive response from the players is the classic horror movie cliché. Because the players know them, they can play up to them, playing into the hands of the cliché to get rewarded with an expected outcome. Conversely, by playing on this knowledge, you can surprise your players by subverting the clichés, setting it up as normal and then turning it on its head. You can make your own clichés too - after all, any action or event that is repeated within a movie becomes a cliché itself. By introducing reoccurring themes, motifs or occurrences, you can create your own horror movie clichés that provoke the same response and reaction as any of the classics.
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Splitting up to explore the haunted house is never a good idea.
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Children and dogs are seemingly immune to death.
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The character played by the famous actor survives... or dies at the climax.
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The token character is always the first to die.
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No one believes the crazy old guy.
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Nearby deaths always go unnoticed.
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Darkened woods and dead ends are the escape routes of choice.
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After injuring a monster with a weapon, said weapons should be dropped to hasten a character’s escape.
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If a ritual can go wrong, it will go wrong.
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Warnings should always be ignored.
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Getting naked means getting killed.
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Strange noises in haunted houses must be investigated. Preferably alone. In the dark.
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Whenever a monster seems dead, it’s not dead.
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Monsters rarely prey on each other, no matter how plentiful the monsters or how few the victims.
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If a victim survives being bitten by a monster, it’s only a matter of time before they turn into a monster.
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Beware the mirror!
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Don’t look behind you, don’t read the book, don’t watch the video!
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E N T E R
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STEEL STUDIO PRESENTS A P.I.H. PRODUCTION A FILM BY ARNOLD D. ROUTER aMICK ‘THE BEAR’ WIRE nJACK BOOTH bCAROLE POLLOCKgSTUART IVESON uA. D. ATTACK LABSjBRIAN JACKS kARNOLD D. ROUTER
Killing Characters Some GMs try to avoid killing characters, others go all guns blazing to scalp as many of their players as they can. In Dead of Night, neither approach works particularly well. As the victims of a horror movie, at least some of the characters have to succumb to the attentions of the monster, or else the horror will fall flat. Similarly, if the characters die to the arbitrary whims of the GM rather than the monster, the horror will prove to be frustrating rather than scary. Fortunately, the rules of the game don’t allow for just killing characters off willy-nilly, which is where Survival Points and Tension come in, which we’ve already touched on. Make use of these mechanics to the full, use them to draw the players in, to engage them in the story and to give them the genuine sense that their characters are in peril. That way, when you have whittled away a character’s Survival Points and finally deal the death blow, the death will have far more impact, as the player will have played an active part in the struggle to survive. But killing a character doesn’t mean that a player has to be written out of the game. In many a scenario, there is plenty of scope to simply hand them the reins of an NPC or get them to quickly create a new character. Some scenarios might warrant having a stack of spare characters ready - this approach is certainly a good idea for games set in the slasher or splatter genre. At other times it might not be appropriate to work in a new character, in which case you can turn some of your GM responsibilities over to the player, handing them the role of one of the monsters. This can work particularly well for scenarios where there are more than one monster, or where it turns its victims into monsters too, such as a werewolf infecting its victim with lycanthropy or a vampire siring a vampire spawn. And, of course, as a scenario hurtles towards its blood-spattered end, don’t feel that you have to work a dead player back in - as the climax nears and the victims dwindle in number, it can be just as involved for the players to be there on the sideline, cheering on the last surviving victim or secretly rooting for the monster to have its day.
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Coming Back for More: Sequels & Series Sure as sunset, any successful horror movie will spawn a sequel or seven, in which the starring monster returns in increasingly implausible manner and setting to wreak havoc on the rapidly dwindling original cast. Sometimes a movie will merit a prequel, in which the secrets and origins of the monster will be revealed in painstaking detail, thoroughly eliminating any sense of mystery that might have surrounded it. It’s fair to say that the law of diminishing returns can be applied to horror movies and their sequels, but just because sequels on the big screen tend to be inferior to the original movie, doesn’t mean your own sequels need to be! Simply place the same monster in a different situation or with a different group of victims. Any survivors from the first movie can return, older and wiser to offer sagely advice to the younger and more attractive stars of the sequel, albeit with a reduced number of Survival Points - surviving the first film is no guarantee that they will survive the sequel, after all. Horror as a genre is not restricted to the big screen. There have been many successful horror series on TV, such as Supernatural, the X-Files or Fringe, each typically featuring a ‘monster of the week’. A series is a good way of turning Dead of Night into a campaign, rather than a one-shot. Horror series usually revolve around a small, recurring cast - a duo or trio typically - and the same model can be used for a Dead of Night series. Pick your recurring cast members - everyone else plays a (disposable) extra. When the extras hit 0 Survival Points they die as normal, but when the main cast hit 0 they’re out of the episode but not necessarily out for good - tied up and in need of rescuing, clobbered round the head and in need of patching up and so on. If it helps, think of each episode as a mini horror movie. Each session is a different episode, set up as a regular Dead of Night game with a different ‘monster of the week’ and the main cast returned to full Survival Points.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: CHAPTER SEVEN:
S C E N S A O I R S There are four scenarios included in this chapter, pulling together the various rules, techniques and advice that we’ve talked about throughout the rest of the book. The scenarios are presented in such a way as to be representative of how you might prepare your own game and are open to a great degree of interpretation by the GM. Each scenario includes everything you need to get started: a brief overview of the story, Tension settings, monster stats and a handful of key scenes to get you going. There are also a set of ready-made characters for some of the scenarios, and it should be easy enough to introduce an additional character if necessary. Printable versions of these characters can be found at:
www.steampowerpublishing.com
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UNHALLOWED In the war between good and evil, good lost. The world lies in smouldering ruins, ravaged by the war between heaven and hell. The surviving remnants of humanity have been herded into great camps by the demonic servants of Lucifer. In this scenario the players are a small band of survivors who are holed up in the crypt of a church, still protected by mystical wardings. Necessity drives them out into the open, rumour of another sanctuary leads them to the centre of the city where they discover other survivors fighting back, the fate of the last angel and the Devil himself. The vibe should be very much like a modern zombie apocalypse, but with heavy religious overtones. The game is set in London, but could happily be moved to a city that the players are more familiar with. For this scenario, Bad Habits are replaced with Sins, as will be explained later.
Tension Escape and Protect checks should dominate, with the players constantly escaping the demonic hordes.
Tension Points Circumstance: May not be spent until Tension hits 10, and then may only be spent on Protect and Escape checks. When the Sword of God is found, these circumstances flip and they may only be spent on Assault and Pursue checks.
Tension Intensity: Any amount of Tension may be spent on a check.
Genre: Supernatural Survival Horror. Think The Mist or 28 Days Later. There is a small hope for a victory, emphasis on small. Starting Tension: 4. Mood: Should be very bleak and irrepressible, interspersing scenes of frantic fight and flight, with scenes of emptiness and calm. Limit I Did It! and Running with Cliches to heighten the sense of impending doom and decrease the traditional schlock horror approach.
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Tension Thresholds: Tension 5 - At Tension 5 the wards surrounding the sanctuary falter and the demons burst in. This is the point at which the scenario begins in earnest. Tension 10 - At Tension 10, the infernal hunt begins to pursue the characters, wherever they might be.
Tension 15 - When the Tension hits 15, Lucifer makes an appearance, starting the climax of the scenario. Whether that is on the characters’ terms or not is up to them. Lucifer cannot be slain until this point.
Monsters Eyeless Those humans who do not willingly submit themselves to Lucifer’s servitude are instead embraced by one of his servants, their skin flaying from their body, their eyeballs bubbling out of their heads and their souls gobbled down. The shell that remains becomes a demon, a bestial and near-mindless creature hungry for the souls of others. They are readily identifiable, hunched over with long nails, broken shards of bone jutting through wounds and - most telling of all - only a baleful green glow where their eyes once were. Identify: 4 Persuade: 2 Escape: 4 Assault: 6
Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 6 Pursue: 6 Protect: 4
Smell the Faithful: 8 The Fate that Awaits us All: 8
Survival Points: 2-3 per group, with each point representing a single demon.
Smell the Faithful: The Eyeless might not be able to see, but their keen noses can smell out those who do not worship their dark lord. The Fate that Awaits us All: The Eyeless are a grim reminder that all who do not submit to Lucifer will share their fate.
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The Fallen Those humans who willingly submit to the service of Lucifer are spared the fate of the Eyeless, instead becoming one of the Fallen. Although most such creatures are merely vessels for the spirits of fallen angels and higher-ranking demons, the real draw for volunteering for such a role is that the truly corrupt are granted demonhood in their own right, gaining enormous power and near immortality. The Fallen are near indistinguishable from regular humans for the most part, except that they visibly display the sins that they were once most guilty of; flies buzz lazily around the grease-stained bulk of the gluttonous and anger crackles around the wrathful like black lightning. They are far more subtle than the Eyeless, attempting to tempt the weak into joining the service of their dark master rather than outright slaying them. Identify: 5 Persuade: 4 Escape: 5 Assault: 4
Obscure: 5 Dissuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Protect: 4
Corruption: 8 Spawn: 8
Survival Points: 3-4
Corruption: Words of doubt and promises of power worm their way into the heart of the weak, planting a seed that the Fallen can nurture. The Fallen may use its Persuade attribute as a Risk Check. If successful, the victim swaps one of its Survival Points for a corruption point (use a different coloured token), which may be spent by the Fallen in place of its own Survival Points. If the victim only has corruption points left, it becomes a willing servant of the monster. Spawn: Where words fail, the eldritch powers of the Fallen will succeed. A victim that will not turn to darkness willingly will serve the demons in a different manner. Whenever the Fallen succeeds at a Risk Check using its Spawn Specialisation, this Specialisation may be triggered. The victim’s soul is marked. If the victim is subsequently reduced to 0 Survival Points or less, this Specialisation may be triggered again and the victim turned into an Eyeless. The victim uses its existing stats, but replaces any existing Specialisations with the same Specialisations as an Eyeless.
Vulnerability: Assault (Holy Water) - What blessed water remains burns the Fallen like acid. If a Fallen loses an appropriate Risk Check to a character using holy water, it loses an additional Survival Point.
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The Infernal Hunt Let loose the dogs of war! Or, in this case, the dogs of death. The four horsemen ride the earth, the hounds of hell running at their feet. Death rides through London upon his black charger, wings of blood flapping behind him and the horn of the Infernal Hunt issuing out its mournful cry. Death seeks out those souls that would escape his liege, hunting them wherever they might try to hide, his infernal hounds chasing them out into the open. Identify: 6 Persuade: 4 Escape: 2 Assault: 6
Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 6 Pursue: 6 Protect: 4
No Escape: 8
Survival Points: 4, representing both hounds and Death himself.
No Escape: The relentless pursuit of the Infernal Hunt is impossible to escape. Whenever a victim successfully escapes the Infernal Hunt, this Specialisation may be triggered. The Infernal Hunt may immediately appear in the next scene with the victim, regardless of where they have hidden or escaped to.
Lucifer At the heart of darkness stands Lucifer, the ultimate victor in the war against his father’s kingdom. Lucifer now rules from beneath the shattered dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, now the First Cathedral of the Morning Star Ascendant, from where he blesses his worshippers. Lucifer is a fallen angel, and every bit as beautiful and enchanting as his celestial brethren. He is an entrancing personality, his eyes piercing the souls of all he surveys, knowing their innermost wants and desires in a heartbeat. Identify: 5 Persuade: 5 Escape: 5 Assault: 6
Obscure: 5 Dissuade: 3 Pursue: 5 Protect: 2
Corruption: 9 Implacable: 8
Survival Points: 5
Corruption: Lucifer knows exactly what the heart desires, able to make promises that even the strong-willed find irresistible. Lucifer may use its Persuade attribute as a Risk Check. If successful, the victim swaps one of its Survival Points for a corruption point (use a different coloured token), which may be spent by Lucifer in place of its own Survival Points. If the victim only has corruption points left, it becomes a willing servant of the devil.
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Implacable: Lucifer is, to most intents and purposes, immortal, his angelic heritage and infernal powers protecting him from mortal injury. This Specialisation can be used to defend against physical attacks or to negate other circumstances that might harm a mortal human. It can be triggered immediately after the monster loses a Risk Check to negate the Survival Point loss, so long as the loss stemmed from physical damage.
Vulnerability: Assault (Sword of God) - The only thing that can slay Lucifer is a weapon forged in heaven, a Sword of God. If Lucifer loses an appropriate Risk Check to a character armed with the sword, he loses an additional Survival Point.
Scenes The Church of St. John The scenario starts in the crypt of St. John’s Church, on the outskirts of North London. The survivors have been holed up here for quite some time, but supplies are running low. Worse still, the wards daubed on the walls of the church and the entrance to the crypt, which once glowed brightly, now grow dimmer. One of the doors to the church remains unwarded. The game begins with a pounding at the barred door to the crypt and a cry for help from a man claiming to be a survivor. His cries turn to screams, and if the characters open the door they find him being dragged up into the church by a pair of Eyeless Demons. He is held prone in front of a Fallen, who proceeds to magically flay the skin off him strip by strip. He will engage the characters in conversation, trying to convert them to the cause, all the while flaying the man. If anyone chooses to intervene the various demons will attack them. As soon as the Tension ticks over to 5, which it will as soon as a Survival Point is spent or lost, all of the wards fail, blinking out in an instant. When the Fallen has been defeated or driven off, the characters can rescue the man, who is badly injured. He tells them he has been hiding in cellars for weeks, but is trying to find his way to the sanctuary in the centre of London, marked by the burning bonfire - the players may well assume this to be St. Paul’s. The characters will have to decide whether to take him with them or not, but staying put is not an option. Any supplies that they want will have to be acquired with Survival Points.
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Let Loose the Hounds of Hell Outside the church, all is ruin. Buildings remain intact but with shattered windows and collapsed roofs. Smoke still drifts into the sky. It is daylight, but the thick cloud of dust and smoke makes the light faint and sickly. There are cars and vans parked or abandoned, and a Survival Point will allow them to find one in working order. Bodies are scattered here and there, sometimes being eaten by feral dogs. When the Tension hits 10, a trumpet blares in the distance and a nearby pack of dogs suddenly looks up, fire burning in their eyes. The Infernal Hunt is here. The hunt comprises Death garbed in the blood-red finery of an English huntsman, riding a huge black steed with a pack of hellhounds baying at his feet. They give chase to the characters through the streets of London. If they escape the hunt, the Infernal Hunt can trigger its No Escape Specialisation to catch them again, riding through the walls of buildings, tracking them down and so on. Whether they escape the hunt or fight it does not matter, but they will be inexorably herded towards the centre of the city.
The Riverbank As the characters near the riverbank, piled high with rotting corpses, they will catch sight of both St. Paul’s and what was once the Tate Modern art gallery. The steps of St. Paul’s are thronged with people, absolutely packed in all around the cathedral. The Tate, however, appears abandoned apart from a beacon blazing on top of the tower. The two are joined by the Millennium Bridge, which appears guarded by demons. Closer inspection, whether by venturing near or through a pair of binoculars, and an Identify check will reveal that all is not as it seems. St. Paul’s is indeed surrounded by people, but in amongst the crowd are Eyeless and Fallen. The Tate is also not as it seems, for it is guarded by scattered, armed patrols of men and women. It is up to the players which way they go next.
The Last Angel The Tate Modern, on the south bank of the Thames, is the last sanctuary, as rumoured amongst the survivors. Its wards still blaze strong, for at its heart lies the last of the angels, Gabriel, who took his own life to protect the last of humanity. The sanctuary is filled by men, women and children, and guarded by the Resistance, heavily armed and desperate fighters. So long as the characters can prove themselves to not be demons, they will be greeted with open arms.
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The Sword of God, driven through his own belly, pins the angel’s body to the floor and is the source of the warding. The Sword of God can slay Lucifer, but taking it will cause the sanctuary to collapse. The Resistance can be persuaded by the survivors to allow them to take the sword, so long as they have a suitable plan to use it wisely. As soon as it is drawn from the angel, the wards collapse and the howls of approaching demons can be heard outside.
St. Paul’s Cathedral Opposite the Tate Modern across the river stands St. Paul’s Cathedral, its once-magnificent dome now cracked. The steps to the cathedral’s entrances are all thronged with people, queuing patiently to receive the blessing of Lucifer. Moving amongst them are the Devil’s servants, vestment-clad Fallen and eyeless Demons, sniffing out the faithless. The crowds are so tight-packed that characters can move through it with impunity, although they will have to escape the attention of a Demon. Inside the cathedral is gloomy and defiled. Much of the statuary has been daubed with blood and black paint, and victims hang up side down from the balconies. The altar has been desecrated, an Archbishop nailed spread-eagle to the cracked marble, and the font is filled with something dark and bubbling. At the centre of the cathedral is a great throne, apparently formed from melted down candles and smashed-up pews. If the Tension has escalated high enough, Lucifer will be atop the throne, blessing the faithful and imbuing them with the spirits of his kin, turning them into Fallen. Those who are not so lucky or pious are greeted by Fallen garbed in vestments and robes, who take the victims’ heads in their hands and burn out their eyes, replacing their souls with a Demon. If the Tension is not high enough, the throne will be empty but the Fallen continue to greet the crowds.
Dealing with the Devil Lucifer will attempt to tempt each of the characters, luring them with promises of whatever it is they want. What he wants is simple - the Resistance to be crushed and the Sword of God to be destroyed. Some of the characters, particularly those already afflicted by Corruption, may be tempted, causing duplicity, deceit or outright conflict amidst the group.
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Lucifer can be slain by mundane means, although he has a fair few Fallen and Demons to defend him from outright attack. Sneaky characters can get close, but will have to resist his wiles and charms. The Sword of God is the best hope for slaying the Devil, for it is his Vulnerability. The battle with the Devil, whether physical or psychological, should herald the climax of the scenario - if the characters successfully slay him, they might just stand a chance of rekindling the flame of hope. If the characters fall to temptation or in combat with his servants, then an altogether gloomier future awaits humanity.
Victims Lieutenant Carl Jeffries You were on shore leave from the Royal Marines in London when the Big A went down. You were brought up a good Christian boy by your parents, and still wear a cross around your neck, but you’re not so sure about it anymore. The one thing you are sure about is your duty to protect the weak and defend the helpless, and that’s what you’re going to do. If only they did what you said it’d make doing that a whole lot easier. Identify: 4 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 4
Obscure: 6 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 5 Protect: 4
Orders are to be Obeyed: 8 Anything’s a weapon in my hands: 8
Howard P. Saunders Perhaps in some ways, the apocalypse happened at the right time, as it got you out of a fraud trial. Sure, your carefully embezzled funds are now worthless, but you’re still alive, aren’t you? And with grand larceny to your name, you were hardly going to go to heaven, were you? But you’re not one to rest on your laurels and pat yourself on the back - in the new world order, you need to make sure you come out on top. Identify: 4 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 4
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Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 5 Protect: 6
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Reverend Hugo Winters As a man of the cloth, someone who has devoted their entire life to the worship of our lord Jesus Christ, you were rightly irked when the rapture happened and you weren’t invited. Now you know the truth - that god is dead and the war in heaven and on earth has been lost - and that’s put you into an all together more awkward theological conundrum. You don’t know what to believe any more, except that your flock needs you and that in the heart of London there exists a last remaining sanctuary. If only you could reach it. Identify: 6
Obscure: 2
Persuade: 5
Dissuade: 3
Pursue: 4 Assault: 3
Escape: 6 Protect: 7
A guide to recognising your demons: 8 It’s for the good of your mortal soul: 9
Claire Grady In your previous life, before all this, you were a mother and a wife. But that’s all gone now, snatched away from you to be replaced by this living nightmare. But you’re not going to lie down and die like so many others. You’re going to fight, as all you’ve got left to give is your own life... and soul. Identify: 5 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 4
Obscure: 5 Dissuade: 4 Escape 5 Protect: 4
Stern Voice: 8 Defend the family: 8
Nathan Warwick Some call it the apocalypse, others the rapture, but for you it’s a new beginning. Sure, the world might be turned upside down and burnt to shit, but in this world you’re no longer a murderer and a thief. Survival might be all there is to hope for now, but you do know one thing - you’ve had enough of people telling you what to do. Identify: 5 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 4 Assault: 6
Obscure: 5 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 4 Protect: 4
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Sins Rather than assign characters a Bad Habit, before the game begins cut out and fold up the following seven sins. Then have each player randomly draw one of them - that is their Bad Habit for the game.
Pride - gain a Survival Point if your proud and arrogant course of action causes another to lose a Survival Point. Gluttony - gain a Survival Point for hording, scoffing or concealing food and supplies from others. Sloth - gain a Survival Point whenever you neglect your duties or lose an item, if it puts another in danger. Wrath - gain a Survival Point whenever you charge unthinkingly into a situation, putting yourself or others in peril.
Envy - gain a Survival Point when you take something from someone that they might later need.
Greed - gain a Survival Point when you attempt to usurp authority, contradict orders or betray another.
Lust - gain a Survival Point whenever your sexual desires cause a problem or puts another at risk.
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COLD FUSION Cold Fusion centres around a cutting-edge power plant in northern Canada on the day of an official visit by the recently elected Minister for Energy; he’s here to get to the bottom of the secrecy surrounding the huge expense of this plant. Those working at the plant are more concerned with holding onto their jobs, but are also curious about ‘Material Zero’, an unknown composite that makes the fusion process possible at such low energies. Material Zero is actually an extraterrestrial substance reclaimed from an incident in Russia decades ago. It has changed hands on the black market many times since then. It also has a malevolent purpose of its own... The mood of the scenario has the potential to veer between Survival Horror and Black Comedy, with horrific goings on juxtaposed with a cool sense of humour. The game is set in the icy and remote north of Canada, but could happily be moved any other suitably remote location. Most of what you need to know about the scenario can be found on the character sheets; it’s important that players don’t get to read the sheets before the game starts, so it’s probably better to deal them out randomly rather than let players choose characters.
Survival Points You will need to prepare a special bag of Survival Points for this scenario, consisting of an equal number of red & blue poker chips or any similar substitute. Around 30 chips in total should be plenty, made up of 15 red chips and 15 blue chips; everyone starts with 5 red chips for their Survival Points but these do not count towards the red chips in the bag. Whenever a player gains a Survival Point, they draw 1 from the bag; when they lose a Survival Point due to losing conflicts, they must lose a red chip if they have any left. If you want the game to tend towards the harsh & grim, then they must also spend red chips rather than blue for re-rolls and plot devices; if you want a chance for happy, heroic endings, then players can spend either red or blue for the above. Whenever blue chips are lost or spent for any reason, they are placed back in the bag but red chips are always set aside, not returned to the bag.
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Tension Escape and Protect Checks should dominate, with the players opting to flee rather than fight.
Tension Points Circumstance: May not be spent until the first of the Frost Zombies appears, and then only on Escape and Protect checks. Tension Intensity: No more than 3 Tension points may be spent on any check.
Genre: A small-scale zombie apocalypse crossed with a black comedy. Think Severance, Dead Snow or the Doctor Who episode, The Waters of Mars. Starting Tension: 3. It’s isolated and everyone is nervous but not overly tense.
Mood: Should be veer between the horrific and the humorous. Each character has three Bad Habits, so Survival Points should be plentiful.
Tension Thresholds: Tension 5 - Snow begins to fall, lightly at first. Frost Zombies simply appear pale with cold skin. Tension 10 - The storm strikes the plant, engulfing the site in a blizzard. Material Zero begins to expand. The Frost Zombies’ skin is snow white and their eyes ice blue. They leave a frosty trail in their wake.
Tension 15 - The storm begins to take on a life of its own, winds and snow actively penetrating the corridors and rooms. Material Zero expands out of the laboratory. A thick rime of frost builds up on the Frost Zombies, their breath freezing around their nose and mouth.
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Scenes The Briefing Jeanette Rankin, the plant manager, gives a final briefing to her work force on the morning of the Minister’s visit, while the Minister is briefed in the car about the plant’s senior staff. This gives the players a chance to get into role and introduce their characters to the other players. A presentation has been prepared in the Conference Room of the Visitors’ Centre, which is a separate building from the Fusion Centre, at the heart of which is the ‘Zero Room’ where the actual fusion process takes place. There is also a buffet laid on for the Minister, his entourage and the coach-load of press who have turned up to cover the event. An important point to drop into this scene is the approaching storm front that will soon engulf the plant in a severe blizzard for several hours...
A Minor Incident The story segues into this scene with a message on Dr. Marcus Corbet’s PDA, telling him that the ‘relevant number’ (i.e. the percentage of efficiency) from the Zero Room has gone up to 102. This will keep slowly rising until any characters arrive in the Zero Room to investigate; the beeping of the PDA should first be used when Edgar Bentham, the minister, is questioning Dr. Corbet about his work. In the Zero Room, the technicians are concerned about a soft but high-pitched whistling coming from the lattice of Material Zero strands that form a web at the heart of the fusion chamber; there is one hazard suit spare for the first player to take it, any subsequent hazard suits require the expenditure of a Survival Point. Whenever there as many characters as is reasonably possible in the control centre or Zero Room, Material Zero goes critical. The readings for energy efficiency spiral up quickly, accelerating as the numbers rise, followed by a bright flash of blue light from the fusion chamber; everyone close by must make a Protect check to avoid losing a Survival Point.
Cold Snap After the blue flash, all scientists and technicians in the Fusion Centre are unconscious for a few minutes; also, the power goes out across the plant, so anyone still in the Visitors’ Centre will be aware that something has gone wrong.
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Almost all the NPCs in the Fusion Centre have now become frost zombies; they are still alive, but bitterly cold, colder than any human could actually survive. A layer of frost builds up on them deeper and more obviously as the rest of the scenario progresses, but to begin with, they just look pale, with a few ice-crystals in their eye-lashes. This is where the blue chips come into play; with the power out, the blizzard wrapping the building and the frost zombies attacking anyone who still has body heat (e.g. red chips), all the characters are in danger of freezing to death or also becoming frost zombies! When any player’s Survival Points are at least half blue chips, they begin to feel extremely cold; when they have only blue chips and no reds, they become a frost zombie! They lose all their current Bad Habits, which are replaced by a single drive: absorb body heat from others. Whenever a PC fails a Risk Check against a frost zombie, they lose 1 red chip; if the frost zombie is another PC, then that player gains 1 blue chip. Once a PC has become a frost zombie, they only gain blue chips, not red.
Blizzard Conditions The remainder of the game is a fight for survival; the blizzard conditions make escape from the plant almost impossible for the next few hours, but the frost zombies will soon spread from the Fusion Centre to the Visitors’ Centre. PCs can attack the frost zombies if they choose and get back into the Zero Room, where the web of Material Zero has grown out from the fusion chamber to fill the room with a gigantic, fractal snowflake sculpture that is absorbing ever greater quantities of energy from the environment. If the web can be destroyed, the frost zombies collapse and simply start to melt. On the other hand, if there are no victims left in the power plant at any time (because they are dead, have become frost zombies or have escaped) then Material Zero absorbs all the energy available in North America and uses it to reconstruct itself into a form capable of leaving the planet for good... killing hundreds of millions of people in the process. The game tends to reach a conclusion much more quickly than other Dead of Night scenarios because of the blue chips; players can still have the same number of Survival Points in front of them, but if there are no red chips left, the frost zombies win.
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To make the scenario last longer, and to give the characters a fighting chance of a happy ending, you can adjust the ratio of red-to-blue chips in the bag, from 1:1 to 2:1. Alternatively, the characters’ own plans can turn against them; if they called in the military whilst they were still human but have all now turned into frost zombies, then the endgame can consist of a battle between the frost zombies fighting to defend the Material Zero web against the human attackers!
Monsters Frost Zombies Frost zombies are humans that have had their energy drained away by Material Zero. They are still alive, but are so overcome by the cold that they are driven by one thing: the need to steal the heat of others. They can be reasoned with and remain lucid, but will furiously seek out their warm-blooded prey to keep the cold at bay, even if only for a moment. Identify: 4 Persuade: 5 Escape: 4 Assault: 4
Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 5 Pursue: 6 Protect: 4
Sense Warmth: 8
Consume Heat: 8
Survival Points: 2-3 blue chips per group, with each point representing a single frost zombie.
Sense Warmth: Frost zombies can sense the warmth of other living creatures from behind closed doors, through walls and so on. They can also sense the warmth from other things, such as fires or generators. Consume Heat: Whenever a victim fails a Risk Check against a Frost Zombie, they lose 1 red chip; if the frost zombie is another character, then that player gains 1 blue chip. Once a victim has become a frost zombie, they only gain blue chips, not red but can spend them as normal. When any player’s Survival Points are at least half blue chips, they begin to feel extremely cold; when they have only blue chips and no reds, they become a frost zombie! They lose all their current Bad Habits, which are replaced by a single drive: absorb body heat from others.
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Victims Dr. Marcus Corbet: Lead Researcher Early 40s, prematurely grey but physically fit. Identify: 6 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 3
Obscure: 2 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 5 Protect: 7
Nuclear Physics: 8 Practical Electronics: 8
You don’t appreciate the government involvement in your research, especially the secrecy surrounding Material Zero, the superconducting composite that you were saddled with. You don’t know who made it; you suspect it has been acquired illegally by espionage in another country. The thing that really worries you about it is that is not 100% efficient, as the findings you have published state. It is 101% efficient: more energy comes out of it than goes in. You have covered up this detail in all your research, since you have no explanation for it and do not want to be ridiculed; you hope to come up with a hypothesis for this phenomenon soon. You spoke to Ms. Rankin, the Plant Manager and secured her co-operation in covering up the truth. You are worried about others stumbling onto this before you can write a paper on it, so you have fudged many of the readings & statistics and even tampered with measuring equipment to conceal the truth.
Bad Habits: Sabotage an attempt to find out more about Material Zero. Try to analyse a dangerous situation from up close. Put your fate entirely in another character’s hands.
Jeanette Rankin, Plant Manager Mid 30s, plain and businesslike. Identify: 3 Persuade: 3 Pursue: 5 Assault: 5
Obscure: 7 Dissuade: 5 Escape: 5 Protect: 3
Facts & Figures: 7 Kick Boxing: 7
As you were appointed to this post under the previous administration, you must prove to the new Minister for Energy that it was not a political favour. You don’t know much about the science involved, but you do know how to organise things: it’s all about the
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numbers, not the people. If something’s not working, replace it; this attitude has not won you any admirers, but it has meant that every project you have been in charge of has been completed under time and under budget. You will go to any lengths to make this power plant a success and hold onto this job, even if that means using & controlling the people who work for you, or even betraying them. Dr. Corbet, the head of research, came to you recently with concerns about the plant being too efficient! Nonsense! Luckily, he wanted to keep this secret, so you agreed to ‘cover it up’ and then disregarded what he had told you.
Bad Habits Publicly humiliate any other character and enrage them. Abandon all others to their fate in order to save just yourself. Take an insane risk to save the plant or your spotless record.
Edgar Bentham, Minister for Energy Late 40s, strong and patrician. Identify: 5 Persuade: 7 Pursue: 5 Assault: 4
Obscure: 5 Dissuade: 1 Escape: 5 Protect: 4
Incisive Questions: 9 Wrestling: 8
$1 billion for one new power plant is a lot of money, but for some reason, the previous administration was happy to hide a lot of this funding under other names, purportedly for other projects. After wading through a morass of spreadsheets, confidential reports and scientific papers, you realised you were being led astray by the national security services. The only way to get to the bottom of this was to visit the plant in person and review the facts on-site with the people responsible. You have no compunctions about closing down this plant and sacking everybody if you don’t get satisfactory answers to your questions. This has now become an official visit, with the press in attendance; you think those responsible for the secrecy behind this project will not appreciate being in the spotlight. Nothing is going to stop you from exposing the truth: not the people here, not the weather and certainly not the secret service.
Bad Habits: Threaten to ruin any other character’s career. Take time out for an intimate encounter with another character. Provide a delay or distraction that allows other characters to escape imminent danger.
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Amanda Yewtree, Chief Technician Early 30s, dark and slender. Identify: 6 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 3 Assault: 4
Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 5 Protect: 6
Mechanical Engineering: 8 Rock Climbing: 7
This whole project is a crock of shit: the brains of the outfit, Dr. Corbet, insists that all measurements & readings go directly to him. The plant manager, Ms. Rankin, doesn’t give a damn for worker welfare and deals with most complaints by sacking the complainer. You don’t even know what this ‘Material Zero’ that the central components are made of really is. At least you’ve got Dan, the head of security, on your side; you both have a similar sense of humour regarding the running of this place and enjoy making bets on what will go wrong next. On the subject of things going wrong, you’re sure there has been unlogged access to the ‘Zero Room’, where the fusion process takes place. There’s no sign of a security breach, but you’re sure someone has been in there when no presence was logged; they might have tampered with some of the instruments, but you don’t have the evidence to prove it yet.
Bad Habits: Go off on your own to investigate something. Openly refuse to answer another character’s questions about your work. Take time out for an intimate encounter with another character.
Daniel Bester, Head of Plant Security Late 30s, tall and lean. Identify: 6 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 7 Assault: 4
Obscure: 2 Dissuade: 6 Escape: 3 Protect: 4
Watchful: 8
Firearms: 8
One of the only things that keeps you sane working here is the company of Amanda, the chief technician; you keep each other going everyday with your jokes about the management of the plant and making bets on what idiocy they will pursue next. The official visit by the new Minister for Energy has been a colossal headache, especially when your old friend Phil crawled out of the woodwork and wangled himself a press pass to the event. He knows enough
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about your dodgy past to blow your security clearance out of the water, but he swears that all he wants is an exclusive story for his website. He’s a crank, but he’s harmless and he’s only one more reporter of the dozens coming today. As long as no-one makes a connection between the two of you, it should all go flawlessly.
Bad Habits: Give your gun to any other character. Go into a jealous rage over the attention Amanda gives to any other character. Use violence against another character when words would be more appropriate.
Phillip Hart, Press Reporter Mid 30s, stocky and unshaven. Identify: 5 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 4
Obscure: 3 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 5 Protect: 6
Data Search: 8 Open Doors: 8
You’ve followed the trail for years, across continents, through secret agencies and it has brought you here, where to your amazement your old friend Dan is working as head of security. A little friendly blackmail (Dan certainly doesn’t want his shady past coming out) got you access as a reporter for a provincial Canadian newspaper and now you are closer than ever to your Holy Grail: genuine proof of alien visitation to Earth! ‘Material Zero’, as they have dubbed it, was recovered from an extra-terrestrial crash site decades ago and has changed hands many times since then. You don’t know what they are doing with it here, you just want a sample of it for yourself to begin the ultimate exposé and you will stop at nothing to get it. You don’t regret lying to Dan about your intentions and you won’t regret who you have to hurt to get your hands on Material Zero.
Bad Habits: Go off on your own to look for something. Try to persuade another character about your extra-terrestrial obsessions. Take an insane risk to get what you want or need.
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DUST Dust is a Hollywood remake of an Asian horror movie in the vein of Dark Water or The Grudge. It revolves around the occupants of an apartment block, newly refurbished in the wake of a terrible fire that killed a mother and her young daughter. The fire was no accident, however, for it was started to hide the murder of the family by the jealous father. The ghosts of the dead now haunt the apartment, their dreams and emotions spilling out into the inhabitants as they yearn for vengeance and peace. The vibe should be very much like a modern, slow-burning ghost story. The story can be set in any city, for the only location is the apartment block itself. The backstory and relationships between the victims, the ghosts and their home is central to the story, so these are presented in a little more detail first. You should acquaint yourself with the details of the background thoroughly before you begin play. Do not share all of this information with the players.
A Relationship Map The relationships between Terrence, Eleanor, Anna and the other characters is key to understanding how to best manipulate and scare them. The relationship map below should give you an idea how everybody’s motivations fit together.
Gary Cain
Lillian Neil
Estranged Husband
Neighbour
Eleanor Stanford
Benjamin
Terrence Stanford
Father/ Murderer
Husband/ Murderer
Mother
Confidant
Jessica Poss. Surrogate Mother
Annabelle Stanford
Melanie
Potential Playmate
Mother
Joe
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Background Eleanor had a string of affairs, as she was stuck in a marriage with a man she no longer loved. Terry, her husband, grew steadily more jealous, believing incorrectly that she was having an affair with their neighbour, Benjamin. Terry murdered Eleanor in a jealous rage but was forced to kill his daughter too, as she woke up and saw him kill her mother. Terry hid Anna’s body in the wall and buried Eleanor under the basement floor. He then panicked, starting a fire in the basement to hide the evidence. Unbeknownst to Terry, Anna was still alive and burned to death, trapped in the wall. A year later the block is refurbished and families move back in. The ghosts of Eleanor and Anna are waiting for them.
Tension Obscure and Dissuade checks should be prevalent, with the characters unsure as to what is going on but thoroughly creeped out.
Tension Points Circumstance: Can only spend Tension to increase Dissuade and Obscure checks or to reduce Identify checks.
Tension Intensity: No more than 3 points of Tension can be spent on a single check.
Genre: Asian Horror, in the same vein as Darkwater or The Grudge.
Starting Tension: 3. The story starts innocuously. Mood: Slowburning and simmering tension, with the appearance of the ghosts and the supernatural elements juxtaposing with the mundane comings and goings of the residents. Running with Cliches should be rewarded sparingly.
Tension Thresholds: Tension 5 - The first cracks begin to appear in the plaster. Plaster dust falls from the ceiling. The characters all begin to experience strange, shared dreams that are not their own.
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Tension 10 - Cracks appear in most of the walls and ceilings. Everything is coated in plaster dust. The smell of smoke and burnt plastic fills the air. The handprints of a child appear burnt into the walls throughout the building. Tension 15 - Blood splatters appear on the staircase. The building begins to come apart at the seams. The cracks emanate from the basement and act almost malevolently.
Monsters Anna Anna, Eleanor and Terry’s murdered daughter, roams the hallways and rooms of the building as a ghost. She is not actually evil, but lonely and no longer in possession of any human morality or restraint. She likes scaring people, as it’s funny, and will react badly to slights against her. She appears much as she did in life, albeit ghostly pale. When she is angered or the Tension cranks upwards she appears far more ghastly - with cracked, almost plaster-like skin, smouldering around the edges, her nightie stained with blood pouring from a wound in the side of her head. Anna thinks of Joe as a playmate and adopts Jessica as a mother figure in the absence of her own mother. She will not like Melanie if she tries to get between her and Joe. She remembers her daddy saying that Benjamin is a bad man, and may want to play some tricks on him. Identify: 4 Persuade: 2 Pursue: 7 Assault: 3
Obscure: 6 Dissuade: 6 Escape: 3 Protect: 3
Fright: 8 Control fire: 9
Implacable: 7
Survival Points: 5
Fright: Anna can move objects about or appear as a spectre, terrifying the living and scaring them off. Control Fire: Killed by the smoke and flame that Terry started to hide the evidence of her mother’s murder, Anna can control fire, causing it to lick up the walls when angered.
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Implacable: Anna is insubstantial and physical attacks pass right through her. This Specialisation can be used to defend against physical attacks or to negate other circumstances that might cause Anna harm. It can be triggered immediately after Anna loses a Risk Check to negate the Survival Point loss, so long as the loss stemmed from physical damage.
Vulnerability: Dormancy (Mortal Remains) - If Anna’s physical remains can be found and buried properly, she enters a state of dormancy. Whilst dormant Anna is reduced to 1 Survival Point and may only take defensive actions. Dormancy does not count as resting for a scene. Anna immediately regains her Survival Points plus an additional one should the remains be disturbed.
Eleanor As the residents move into the building, Eleanor’s spirit stirs in the grave beneath the building. As she wakes, her dead dreams spill over into the occupants, dreams of being buried alive and being smothered by earth and concrete. Some of the dreams involve her murder, of being beaten to death with a hammer by Terry. Eleanor is trapped in the concrete, but desperately wants to escape to save her daughter and exact revenge for her murder. She is angry and confused, and far from lucid. Her spirit cannot leave the basement in the same way as Anna’s ghost, but she is as part of the building now as the bricks and mortar. As she wakes further and her vengeance grows, the building will crack and disintegrate more and more. She manifests to the residents of the building as cracks in the walls and plaster dust falling from the ceiling - sometimes this will appear to freeze in the air and form the shape of a woman standing in the room. If Anna is destroyed or exorcised, Eleanor will come to life fully and try to destroy everyone in the building. Her attacks will involve property damage: collapsing walls and ceilings, broken gas pipes, water running over electrical outlets and the like. Every time she attacks, the dust falls thicker, showing more of her shape. The particles writhe in the air and take longer to fall each time. Identify: 4 Persuade: 2 Pursue: 7 Assault: 3
Obscure: 6 Dissuade: 6 Escape: 3 Protect: 3
Curse: 9 Legion: 9
Just Bricks: 7
Survival Points: 5
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Curse: Eleanor’s spirit sleeps restlessly, her nightmares spilling over into the dreams of the living. With a successful Curse Check against the victim’s Protect, this Specialisation may be triggered. Eleanor can modify the victim’s next Conflict Check up or down by 5. Legion: Eleanor can use her control over the building to lash out at everyone caught within its walls, causing bricks and mortar to fall on its victims and gas pipes to explode. Whenever successful in a Risk Check, this Specialisation may be triggered to force every opponent in the room to lose a Survival Point as well as the original target.
Just Bricks: The building is still a building, regardless of the haunting, and it takes more than a sledgehammer to inflict real damage. Vulnerability: Dormancy (The Body in the Basement) - If Eleanor’s body in the basement can be exhumed and buried properly then Eleanor is placated, entering a state of dormancy so long as Anna has already been buried. Whilst dormant Eleanor is reduced to 1 Survival Point and may only take defensive actions. Dormancy does not count as resting for a scene. Eleanor immediately regains her Survival Points plus an additional one should the remains be disturbed.
Terrence Of course, Terry is the real monster of the piece, but he is just a man. He is troubled by Eleanor’s dreams and is keeping an eye on the house, convinced that she may still be alive. Any character who has shared Eleanor’s dreams of her murder will recognise Terry. Once the ghosts have been put to rest and the truth outed, Terry can be dealt with however the characters see fit. They might decide to turn him over to the police - the remains of both Eleanor and Anna are evidence enough to convict him - or they might decide to sort him out themselves. Identify: 2 Persuade: 2 Pursue: 4 Assault: 7
Obscure: 6 Dissuade: 6 Escape: 6 Protect: 3
Hide the Evidence: 9 Bully: 8
Survival Points: 2
Hide the Evidence: Terry put his background in building and renovating houses to good use when hiding the bodies of his wife and daughter. Bully: Terry likes to solve problems with his fists and a raised voice, and that included his marriage.
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Scenes The scenes in this scenario can occur in any order you see fit. Some of them may even repeat over the course of the story. Keep an eye on the Tension and up the ante as necessary.
The Building The building is a three-storey brownstone tenement block in a nondescript neighbourhood. There are two apartments on each floor, accessed from a central hallway. Each apartment has a number of rooms as required. They’re not huge, but big enough to suit the needs of a horror movie - kids sneaking out at night past the parents in the living room, large windows that lead on to fire escapes, air ducts large enough to crawl through and so on. Flats 1 and 2, occupied by Mrs Neil and Benjamin respectively, are on the ground floor. Flats 3 and 4, occupied by Melanie and Jessica are on the middle floor. Flat 5 is rented by a businessman, Drew, who only uses it intermittently to meet with his mistress. Flat 6, which used to be occupied by Terrence, Eleanor and Anna, is still being renovated and builders can be heard in there sporadically during the week. The building is the key to the scenario - no other location beyond its walls is relevant. When the characters leave for work or to engage in any other mundane tasks, simply fade to black and cut back to them arriving back later. If this contributes a somewhat claustrophobic air to the story, so much the better.
Cracking Up The first thing that any of the characters notice as being odd about the building is the appearance of cracks in the plaster of their newly refurbished apartments. At first these will simply appear overnight or whilst they are out at work. Later on they will appear while the character is watching, and as the Tension really racks up they will seem to act malevolently towards the victim, moving almost like snakes up the walls. At the same time, dust will begin to fall from the ceiling, steadily coating everything in a thin layer. Characters might notice this at first when they come to make a cup of tea and find all their mugs filled with dust, when dust falls into their dinner as they are about to eat it or when they wake up to find themselves covered.
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As the Tension progresses, the dust will fall in ever-increasing quantities. Sometimes it will appear to freeze in the air as it falls, almost forming the shape of a woman.
The Watcher Several of the characters have reason to suspect that they are being followed or watched, and at one point early on in the story may well spot a man standing under the street lamp outside, watching them. If they race outside, he will be gone. Despite who they may suspect it is, this is Terrence, who has been plagued by the same dreams as the characters. Terrence will return at various points during the scenario, possibly even coming as far as the doorway at one point. A character who has shared Eleanor’s dream of her murder will recognise Terry with a successful Identify check.
Anna The first indication of the supernatural is the appearance of Anna. In theory any of the characters can see the ghost of Anna, but she hides herself from most of them. She will appear to Joe, trying to get him to play with her as well as to get him into trouble - she will keep him up laughing and singing after bedtime, or encourage him to sneak out and up to her apartment (see Apartment 6, below). She will also try to get Joe in trouble with his mother, Melanie, by leaving taps running, scattering toys about or drawing on the walls. Melanie might also discover more sinister evidence, such as a burnt doll with a hand print melted into the plastic, or a little girl’s charred shoe. Anna will also take an interest towards Jessica, seeing her as a potential mother figure. She will not appear as openly as she does to Joe, more likely filling her apartment with the sounds of a girl’s laughter or songs. She might appear as Jessica is half asleep, asking her to read a bedtime story to her. She will not act favourably if Jessica acts frightened or attempts to get rid of her, playing cruel tricks on her.
Mrs Neil Mrs Neil lives in Apartment 1. She is a typically nosy neighbour, always watching the comings and goings within the building and on the street outside. She should come across as a little bit creepy and unhinged, always saying wildly inappropriate things, talking as though you weren’t there or reacting to unseen people. Mrs Neil
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provides a good source of information, as she has her suspicions about what really happened to the family from upstairs, filling in some of the backstory. As the story progresses, Mrs Neil might find herself on the receiving end of Eleanor’s anger at her nosiness, or perhaps Terry will decide to cover up one final witness by paying her a late-night visit.
An Unwelcome Guest Flat 5 is unoccupied most of the time, except when a businessman, Drew, brings his mistress there for an afternoon or evening of entertainment. One of the characters notices Drew and his lady friend arriving, both of them studiously trying to avoid eye contact. Eleanor, remembering her own affairs, lashes out at the lovers out of a mix of jealousy and guilt, electrocuting them as they shower together. Benjamin might notice something is wrong when he notices Drew’s car still outside, long after he normally would go. Jessica will almost certainly go and investigate as the water from the still-running shower begins to leak through her ceiling.
Apartment 6 Apartment 6, on the top floor, stands vacant. The flat is still undergoing renovation work, the interior garbed in dust cloths and plastic sheets suspended from the ceiling. Some of the walls are as yet incomplete, absent plaster and panelling exposing the cavities between the bricks. Apartment 6 was the site of Eleanor and Anna’s murder, and the atmosphere remains oppressive and creepy here. The sheets seem to rustle even when the window is not open, and the doors slam closed or creek open all by themselves. Footprints in the plaster dust seem to appear all by themselves. As the scenario progresses, the ghost of Anna may lead Jessica or Joe to the gap in the wall. Joe is small enough to crawl in to the cavity but Jessica can only get her upper body in, at which point they’ll find themselves stuck, face to face with the burnt skeletal remains of Anna, and suffocating on plaster dust and ash. Anna will attempt to pull anyone foolish enough to put their heads into the hole in fully, suffocating them with dust and ash unless they can persuade her to stop - she wants another playmate, after all.
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The Cellar Up until now the players may assume that there is only one ghost - that of Anna. It is only after Anna’s remains have been removed from the wall and buried, and the building’s anger continues to build, that they will realise that there is another ghost here too. The cracks lead down to the cellar, threatening to bring the building tumbling down on top of them. Eleanor’s vengeful spirit will not let the characters get down to the basement without a fight. Once down there, the air fills with steam and smoke as the boiler and pipes begin to buckle and burst. An Identify Check will reveal the area of slightly newer concrete in one of the storerooms where Eleanor’s body can be found. The discovery of her remains will put her to rest, so long as Anna’s body has also been found.
Victims Jessica, Apartment number 3 This is your first time in the big city and, under other circumstances, you would be loving it. You’ve got it all: the job, the gym, and now this fantastic new flat; everything except a family. When your young daughter, Trish, died suddenly of meningitis, you could no longer face even talking to your husband, Gary, and you ran, making a new life for yourself and never telling him where you went. And now he’s hired a private investigator to find you. Well, you assume he’s a private investigator, as the guy seems to spend an awful lot of time waiting outside the building. Identify: 4 Persuade: 4 Pursue: 5 Assault: 5
Obscure: 6 Dissuade: 4 Escape: 5 Protect: 5
Empathise: 8
Melanie, Apartment number 4 All you know is that you’re glad you’re finally in - moving can be such a chore! Especially with a young son in tow, and a messy divorce in progress. Still, at least your soon to be ex-husband doesn’t know where you both are now. Unless that was him waiting outside the building last night? Identify: 6 Persuade: 5 Pursue: 5 Assault: 4
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Obscure: 4 Dissuade: 5 Escape: 5 Protect: 4
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Protect Joe: 8
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Joe, Apartment number 4 No matter how many times mummy says it, your new home isn’t as good as your old home. Your new bedroom might be bigger, and mummy and daddy aren’t shouting any more, but your old house didn’t have any ghosts. And no matter how much you tell them not to, they keep on staring at you. Identify: 4
Obscure: 4
Persuade: 5
Dissuade: 5
Pursue: 4
Escape: 6
Assault: 5
Protect: 5
I can see ghosts: 8*
*You can spend a Survival Point to try to see or talk with a ghost.
Benjamin, Apartment number 2 There’s no place quite like home, and flat number 2 has been home to you for the best part of three decades. 29 years you’ve loved and lost within these walls, but you’re unlikely to get another 29, that’s for sure. In fact, after the fire - and the nightmares ever since - you’ll be grateful if you get another one. Apart from Mrs. Neil across the hall, you don’t really know any of the new residents. You miss the Stanfords, who used to live upstairs. Mrs. Stanford – Eleanor – used to stop in and chat all the time, even telling you about the problems with her husband. She had to stop when Terry, her husband, got jealous, even though you were more than old enough to be her father! Identify: 6
Obscure: 2
Persuade: 4
Dissuade: 6
Pursue: 5
Escape: 5
Assault: 4
Protect: 6
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WHEN JOHNNY CAME HOME This scenario takes place in a suburb of a medium-sized town and in the old, abandoned industrial estate nearby. In this estate, there is a derelict mannequin warehouse where the fabric between worlds is weak. An entity from somewhere else, known simply as the Thing in the Mirror, has started bleeding through into our world and it wants to reproduce. It has been putting some of its life essence into the mannequins, making them into its children. The mannequins are slow and awkward, though, and have trouble even walking. As the scenario starts, a young teenage boy named Johnny and his friend Simon have broken into the old warehouse on a dare. The mannequins, upon encountering them, have discovered that they can take the identities of humans, becoming near-identical replicas and leaving the humans trapped as immobile living mannequins themselves. The mannequins wearing the faces of Johnny and Simon are now returning home, and they want to bring fresh victims to the warehouse to bring life to more of their brothers and sisters.
Tension Escape and Protect checks should be frequent, encouraging the characters to behave like kids, fleeing from danger and standing up for their mates.
Tension Points Circumstance: May only spend Tension on Risk Checks.
Tension Intensity: Any amount of Tension may be spent on a check.
Genre: Psychological Horror meets Body Horror, in the vein of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.
Starting Tension: 3. Mood: The mood should be fairly paranoid and tense. In addition to the normal Clichés and Bad Habits, Survival Points can be earned any time a player character turns to an adult for help only to be disbelieved.
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Characters The characters are all older children or young teenagers, either siblings of Johnny or, depending on the number of players, siblings of Simon from the house next door. Before you start play, create characters as normal, but make sure that Specialisations and Bad Habits are appropriate for a child. It would help if some of the characters were around the same age, so that any scenes taking place in their school can involve as many characters as possible.
Monsters The Thing in the Mirror The main threat comes from The Thing in the Mirror. It is an entity from another dimension, and has seized the opportunity to spread into our world through the weak spot in the derelict Knight Brothers warehouse. The Thing itself does not exist in our dimension and only manifests as disembodied eyes shown in every reflective surface in the warehouse - mainly old mirrors and bits of broken windows. It can also extrude tendrils of mirrored ooze through the reflections, which it uses to ensnare foes and to imbue the mannequins with its life force. Identify: 7 Obscure: 3 Persuade: 3 Dissuade: 7 Pursue: 7 Escape: 1 Assault: 5 Protect: 1 Create Mannequins: 9
Mirrored Tendrils: 10 Legion: 10
Survival Points: 5
Mirrored Tendrils: By pushing parts of its essence into our world, the Thing in the Mirror can reach anything or anyone in the warehouse and grab hold of it to stop it escaping or to drag it into the midst of its mannequins. These tendrils take the form of long, white, wispy tentacles that can move with blinding speed.
Legion: The warehouse is filled with mannequins that act as part of the Thing in the Mirror. They are slow and cumbersome, and find it difficult even to walk a few steps, but what they lack in mobility they make up for in numbers. Whenever successful in a Risk Check, this Specialisation may be triggered to force every opponent present to lose a Survival Point as well as the original target.
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Create Mannequins: When a victim is lured into the midst of the mannequins and subdued, one of the mannequins can steal their form, leaving the victim as a mannequin that bears a disturbing resemblance to the person they once were. This person is not dead, but simply trapped in cold, brittle plastic. If The Thing in the Mirror is destroyed, the victims will be returned to flesh. Of course, if they were damaged in their fragile mannequin form, the same damage will be present when they return to flesh, possibly resulting in their immediate death. Vulnerability: Assault (Mirrors) - The Thing is vulnerable to attacks on the bits of mirror and broken windows around the warehouse. If the Thing loses a Risk Check to a character attacking any reflective surface in the warehouse, it loses an additional Survival Point.
The Cuckoos Once a mannequin takes the form of a victim, it can leave the warehouse in search of fresh victims to give life to its siblings. It also has the memories of its victim to work with, and will use these to try to build trust with its victims. There are certain things that give the Cuckoos away, though: they are slow and emotionless in speech, they are irritated by noise and fast movements around them and when they rest, they are absolutely motionless. Their main form of defence is to tell lies to try to turn people against one another. They will blame their actions on innocent parties, frame people for crimes that haven’t occurred, or simply break down the barriers of trust between people who may band against them. At the start of play, there are only three Cuckoos: Johnny and Simon, and the watchman who patrols the old industrial estate. Identify: 3 Persuade: 5 Pursue: 5 Assault: 6
Obscure: 5 Dissuade: 3 Escape: 5 Protect: 4
Imitation: 9 Tell Lies: 9
Survival Points: 2
Imitation: This Specialisation may be triggered to act like the victim. A successful Identify check, opposed by Imitation, will detect a subtle flaw or giveaway, such as their slow and emotionless speech or the fact that they are motionless at rest; otherwise the disguise is indistinguishable from the real thing.
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Tell Lies: The Cuckoo’s main form of defence is to tell lies to others, trying to turn people against one another. Depending on how much damage these lies can do in a given situation, some conflicts involving them may be Risky.
Implacable: Although they look real enough, the Cuckoos are no more real than the plastic mannequins back in the warehouse. This Specialisation can be used to defend against physical attacks or to negate other circumstances that might harm a regular guy. It can be triggered immediately after the monster loses a Risk Check to negate the Survival Point loss, so long as the loss stemmed from physical damage (and not from a blunt object - see below).
Vulnerability: Assault (Blunt Objects) - The skin of the Cuckoos is brittle and can be shattered by attacks with blunt weapons. When their skin splits, it looks like shattered plastic with a thick white liquid oozing through. The liquid has a cloying chemical smell. A destroyed Cuckoo will just be a broken shell, resembling its victim, in a pool of liquid. If the Cuckoo loses a Risk Check to a character using a blunt object, it loses an additional Survival Point.
Non-Player Characters Johnny and his siblings live with their mother and father, both of whom are busy professionals, trying to balance their careers with looking after a large family. The careers are winning out at the moment, especially now the children are a bit older, and both parents are often out or busy with work at home and will have little patience for sibling squabbles or strange stories. Simon’s parents are divorced, and he and any siblings are being raised solely by their mother. She is currently having to work two jobs to make ends meet, and is rarely available. Simon has been taking responsibility for his siblings more and more recently. Any younger children have Mrs. Alexander as their class tutor. She is an older woman with short, frizzy white hair, and a very stern manner. She has been teaching for many years and does not actually like children much. She is likely to react to any reports of strange events with disbelief and punishment. Older children have Mr. Edwards, who is a slightly gentler figure, a middle-aged man with propensities for tweed and digression. He may well be talked into investigating any stories he is told, much to his own peril.
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Stanley Venables, the watchman over at the abandoned industrial estate, is a kindly old man who has been doing this job since retiring from the insurance industry. Sadly, he has already been replaced by a Cuckoo and is trapped in plastic within the warehouse. The Cuckoo lurks around the warehouse, largely to make sure that those who go in do not escape. He may also try to trick people into going in if they are lurking outside.
Locations Home: The house where the player characters live is a typical suburban house with a reasonably large garden. It backs onto some playing fields, and beyond there is a patch of woodland. If there are two groups of player characters in separate houses, they are next door to each other. The Woods: There is a clearing in the woods, in which Johnny and Simon have put up a makeshift clubhouse. It is just a little shack made from a few bits of waste wood, and it has a small stash of cigarettes, dirty magazines and any other contraband that they want to hide from their parents. After becoming Cuckoos, they will spend a lot of time here, plotting.
St. Agnes: Just on the other side of the woods is St. Agnes, the school that the characters attend, along with Johnny and Simon.
Knights Brothers Mannequin Warehouse: The old industrial estate is just outside town, a few miles from the characters’ homes. All of the businesses which operated there have closed down, and it is now an eyesore, filled with crumbling warehouses. The area is overgrown, filled with refuse and avoided by the townsfolk. The Knight Brothers mannequin warehouse is in the middle of this estate, and doesn’t stand out in any way. There is a sign on the outside, identifying the warehouse, but it is rusted and covered with moss. The building is largely made up of the warehouse itself, with a suite of offices at one end of the building. There are two main entrances to the warehouse: a series of sliding metal doors for vehicular access to the warehouse area, which are long rusted shut, and a side door into the offices. This side door has been forced open by Johnny and Simon and has not been repaired. The offices are in complete disarray. There is still some office furniture and a large amount of paperwork present, but this is scattered all over the place. The offices are also home to many pigeons, rats and other vermin, and there are mannequins dotted around, especially in the corridors. They are waiting for visitors.
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The warehouse area is a single large room, filled with the rusted remains of racking. The sounds of pigeons can be heard everywhere, and the air smells foul with them. One corner of the room has been largely cleared of debris, slowly and carefully, by the mannequins. It is now filled with a few dozen mannequins, some of which will bear a disturbing similarity to Johnny, Simon, the security guard and anyone else who has gone missing during the course of the scenario. The walls surrounding them are covered with every bit of mirror and glass the mannequins have been able to salvage, and eyes of all shapes, sizes and colours can be seen reflected in them.
Scenes Missing Siblings The scenario opens with one of the characters, who shares a room with Johnny, waking in the middle of the night to find the bedroom window open and Johnny missing. This could also be reflected with a similar scene next door if Simon’s brother is also a character. Johnny is generally a good boy and has not done something like this before, but Simon is a bit more of a tearaway, and the instigator of the dare. They have crept out to the abandoned warehouse to get a trophy of some description to prove their bravery. By the time their absence is noticed, they have already been replaced by Cuckoos. If any of the children alert their parents, the parents’ reaction will be to search the house and gardens, make some phone calls, panic and then call the police. The missing boys will come home by themselves before dawn, and may face recriminations if their absence was discovered. If the children decide to investigate on their own, with a bit of work (involving walking through the spooky woods in the dark) they can find the Cuckoo Johnny and Simon in their clubhouse in the woods; the other children know about the clubhouse, even if they are not welcome there. The Cuckoos are sitting in the dark, absolutely still, gathering their strength. They can be convinced to come back to the house without an argument. The Cuckoos don’t sleep, so they will spend the remainder of the night at home sitting on their beds, completely still. They will be impatient if questioned by the children, and may even react violently if provoked enough.
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School Days The following day, the children and the Cuckoos will be back at school. Neither Johnny nor Simon have been bullies in the past, but the Cuckoos are irritated by all the screaming kids running around, and will react by doing things like tripping a running child so they land badly or holding a child down roughly and telling them that movement is a privilege, not a right. This should happen to at least one of the characters. During lunchtime, Simon or Johnny will attempt to lure other victims back to the factory. They will definitely try to replace a teacher or two, as they will be well placed to get additional children to the warehouse.
After School After school, if they get a chance they will retire back to their clubhouse to discuss plans. Their impatience with movement and noise leads to them catching and killing any small animals or birds in the area. They nail the bodies to the trees surrounding the clearings. Some of the birds are still alive when this happens, and their unnervingly human screams can be heard throughout the woods. Back at their houses, Johnny and Simon will plan to replace their parents as soon as they get an opportunity. If their siblings are attempting to interfere, or are trying to tell their parents about violent incidents during the day, they will use a combination of lying to adults and threatening the kids to keep the situation under control. They will back their threats up with violence if necessary, such as arranging for a nosy sibling to fall down the stairs. They know that their window of opportunity is small and they may even escalate to murder if necessary, although they would rather keep victims alive and take them to the warehouse.
The Cuckoo’s Plan The Cuckoos’ long-term plan is to find identities for all of the mannequins in the warehouse -- there are about 30 of them left -- and then carry the shards of glass and mirror to throughout the country, bringing more and more mannequins to life until they replace humanity entirely. As their numbers grow, their attacks will become more blatant, including carrying struggling victims out to the warehouse by force. They will also slowly wipe out all the pets and wildlife in the area, and will probably kill any loud children who get in their way.
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If the characters don’t manage to follow any of the Cuckoos or their victims out to the warehouse, the Cuckoos will try to lure them there in turn, or turn violent and drag them there by force. Once there they will be attacked and subdued by the mannequins and replaced by a Cuckoo of their own. Once in the warehouse, it should be obvious to anyone that the mirrors - and the ectoplasmic tendrils emanating from them - are the key to the strangeness. The Thing from Beyond the Mirror can be slain by smashing all the reflective surfaces in the warehouse, but they will have to survive attacks by both the Cuckoos and the mannequins in order to do so.
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THEY OUTLIVED THE DINOSAURS, NOW THEY WILL OUTLIVE US STANSFIELD-STOKES PRESENTS A FILM BY LUCY ROW aHIRO NORIKO nCRAIG BOOTH gKELLER KING p A.P. HANSEN jJOHN POLLOCK vAARON GOULDING kRICHARD HUNT
SELECT ECTED SEL ED
APPE A P P E N DNIDXI XO NOEN: E :
IOGGRRAAPPHHYY MMEEDDIO MOVIES Hundreds of horror movies were watched during the making of Dead of Night second edition. Many of them were good, others less so. Almost all were born of Scott Dorward’s infamous movie library, for which I am eternally grateful. There are too many to list here, so this is a selection of the movies that best capture what a good Dead of Night game should be. A complete mediography of all the movies mentioned in this book can be found on our website. 28 Days Later, dir Danny Boyle, 2002 A Nightmare on Elm Street, dir Wes Craven, 1984 An American Werewolf in London, dir John Landis, 1981 Dog Soldiers, dir Neil Marshall, 2002 The Evil Dead, dir Sam Raimi, 1981 The Faculty, dir Robert Rodriguez, 1998 Friday the 13th, dir Sean S. Cunningham, 1980 Halloween, dir John Carpenter, 1978 The Host, dir Joon-ho Bong, 2006 I Know What You Did Last Summer, dir Jim Gillespie, 1997 Ju-On: The Grudge, dir Takashi Shimizu, 2002 The Mist, dir Frank Darabont, 2007 Night of the Living Dead, dir George A. Romero, 1968 The Omen, dir Richard Donner, 1976 Prince of Darkness, dir John Carpenter, 1987 Rec, dir Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza, 2007 Ringu, dir Hideo Nakata, 1998 Scream, dir Wes Craven, 1996 The Shining, dir Stanley Kubrick, 1980 The Thing, dir John Carpenter, 1982
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M E D I O G R A P H Y
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BOOKS Although the source material for Dead of Night primarily stems from the cinema and straight-to-DVD movie, there are a handful of books that encapsulate a good Dead of Night game too. At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft, 1936 Beowulf, anonymous Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham, 1951 Dracula, Bram Stoker, 1897 Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley, 1818 I Am Legend, Richard Matheson, 1954 Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886
REFERENCE The following reference guides were invaluable in researching the second edition, in particular the Genre and Creating your Monster chapters: The Rough Guide to Horror Movies, Alan Jones, 2005 How to Survive a Horror Movie, Seth Grahame-Smith, 2007
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A P P E N D I X
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M E D I O G R A P H Y
APPENDIX TWO: APPENDIX TWO:
I N DE X
A
Alien Intelligence
65
Asian Horror
95, 160
Assault
9, 15-17
Attributes
9, 19-21
Assault
9, 15-17
Dissuade
9, 12-13
Escape
9, 15
Identify
9-11
Obscure
9-11, 14
Persuade
9, 12-13
Protect
9, 16-17
Pursue
9, 11, 14
B
Bad Habits
22-23, 35
Beast Within
50, 58, 84, 90
Black Comedy
104, 152
Black Ooze
63
Body Horror
106-107
C
Characters
4, 8-23, 112-113, 118-119, 131
(Creation) Concept
8
Attributes
9
Specialisations
19-21
Survival Points
22
Bad Habits
22-23
Killing
137
Checks
26-30
Modifying
40-41
Conflict Check
28, 30
Risk Check
30, 34, 44, 125
Task Check
9, 26-27
Circumstance Clichés
42-44, 46 22-23, 35, 119, 132, 134-135
Corrupter
50, 60, 107
A P P E N D I X
T W O
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I N D E X
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D
Dissuade
9, 12-13
E
Escape
9, 15
Extended Actions
27
F
Formless Horror
50, 68, 92, 95-96, 107
G
Genre
5, 42, 45-46, 80, 122, 134
Asian Horror
95, 160
Black Comedy
104, 152
Body Horror
106-107
Ghost Stories
92-93
Lovecraftian Horror
102-103
Monster Movie
84-85, 90, 104, 141
Psychological Horror
92, 100-101, 170
Slasher
81, 83, 89, 104, 137
Splatter
86-87, 89, 137
Vampire Movies
88-89
Werewolf Movies
90-91
Zombie Apocalypse
98-99, 152
Getting Started
5
Ghost
55, 92-93, 95-96, 162-164, 169
Ghost Story
92-93
H
Haunted House
68-69, 92-93
Horde
50, 64, 66, 68, 98, 104
Hunter
50, 56, 84, 90, 104
I
Identify
9-11
Impostor
50, 62-64
Initiative
31-32, 125
Intensity
42, 44-46
Isolation
113, 118
L
Let it Ride
27
Lovecraftian Horror
102-103
M
Masked Killer
53
Monster Movie
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A P P E N D I X
84-85, 90, 104, 141
T W O
:
I N D E X
Monsters
5, 41, 47-77
(Designing) Archetypes
50-71
Monstrous Specialisations
30, 73-76
Motivation
49, 73
Vulnerabilities
30, 33, 76-77
Monstrous Archetypes
50
Beast Within
50, 58, 84, 90
Corrupter
50, 60, 107
Formless Horror Horde
50, 68, 92, 95-96, 107 50, 64, 66, 68, 98, 104
Hunter
50, 56, 84, 90, 104
Impostor
50, 62-64
Puppet Master
50, 64
Thing from Beyond
50, 70, 103
Unstoppable Killer
50, 52, 81, 83-84, 86, 104
Vengeful Dead
50, 54, 92-93, 95-96
Monstrous Specialisations
30, 73-76
Triggering
73
Mood
42-43, 46, 122, 134
N
NPCs
112, 114, 118-120, 131
O
Obscure
9-11, 14
One-shots
111, 117
P
Persuade
9, 12-13
Preparation
111-112, 117
Protect
9, 16-17
Psychological Horror
92, 100-101, 170
Puppet Master
50, 64
Pursue
9, 11, 14
R
Relationships
113, 119, 131-132, 160
Risk Check
30, 34, 44, 125
S
Sequels
36, 138
Shadow from Outer Space
71
Slasher
81, 83, 89, 104, 137
Specialisations
9, 19-20
Gaining
21, 35
Maximising
21
Monstrous
73-76
Using
21
A P P E N D I X
T W O
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I N D E X
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Splatter Survival Points
86-87, 89, 137 4, 21-23, 32-33, 38, 41, 43, 45, 73, 122-125
Customising
123
Economy
123
Gaining
35-36
Losing
30, 34-35, 38, 75-77
Spending
34-35
T
Target Number
26, 28
Task Check
9, 26-27
Tension
4-5, 36, 38-40, 42-46, 80, 122-124
Circumstance
42-44, 46
Genre
5, 42, 45-46, 80, 122, 134
Intensity
42, 44-46
Mood
42-43, 46, 122, 134
Monsters and
41
Threshold
40
Thing from Beyond, the
50, 70, 103
U
Unstoppable Killer
50, 52, 81, 83-84, 86, 104
V
Vampire
57, 88-89
Vampire Movies
88-89
Vengeful Dead
50, 54, 92-93, 95-96
Vulnerabilities
30, 73, 76-77
Uncovering
10, 76
W
Werewolf
59, 90-91
Werewolf Movies
90-91
Witch
61
Z
Zombie
67, 98-99
Zombie Apocalypse
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A P P E N D I X
98-99, 152
T W O
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I N D E X
VICTIM NAME :
NOTES :
Identify
/
Obscure
Persuade
/
Dissuade
Escape
/
Pursue
Assault
/
Protect BAD HABITS :
SURVIVAL POINTS :
© 2010 Steampower Publishing. Permission granted to copy for personal use only.
VICTIM NAME :
NOTES :
Identify
/
Obscure
Persuade
/
Dissuade
Escape
/
Pursue
Assault
/
Protect
SURVIVAL POINTS :
BAD HABITS :
© 2010 Steampower Publishing. Permission granted to copy for personal use only.
