Del Ray Diablo, New England (!!)

[Dav]

(Ron, I trust if you feel this is best served in Actual Play, you will move it and give me a swift backhand when next we meet)

I just wanted to give a bit of a mention to some of the great playing and innovation we've been running about with using a bastardized, screamingly insane version of Hellbound and Demon Cops.

Okay, present day, 200X.
Location: Del Ray, Maine

Reason Del Ray ain't where you thought it was:
The Del Ray family, formerly of Florida, moved to New England after the opening of Disney World in the seventies.  The Del Ray's were in the carnival business, and Disney pushed them out.

They move to Maine, where Belgado Del Ray (patriarch of the family) decides to open an amusement park dedicated to the New England history and culture.  Enter Del Ray Amusement Park.  Unfortunately, nobody is interested in attractions such as the Witches' Coven, The Spirit Forest, and so on.  The park folds, never having opened to the public.  After the shut down, Belgado hangs himself from Faust's Dive, an ride near the center of the park.

The park is largely considered haunted, with a group of ten people hired on a securty force to keep out trespassers.  For some reason, the ten people revamped a hotel on the grounds, and live out of there.  They are never really seen, but rumor states that they all die of some wasting disease or go insane after a few years of working the job.  No one has ever retired.

Needless to say, the force isn't even needed to keep people away.  The place reads CREEPY with no need for help by those ten gents.  Thus, why the group?

This is the public story.

The real deal is that Belgado's wife, Genevieve, is a sorcerer and she has sensed the greatest demon in existence slumbering beneath Del Ray.  Thus, she fosters Belgado's idea for a New England answer to Disney World, but subtly alters the plans so that the park is transformed into a gigantic Contain, built over the moldering body of the great Devil.  

The entire city of Del Ray Heights and Del Ray Proper is kept.  Most of the cosmetic setting is kept.  Except the ocean is now on the other side of the town, and it is none too sunny... ever.  

The Del Ray family is headed by Patricia Del Ray, typical "rich bitch" ruthless power chick (she also has been rumored to have slept with any man that walks too close to her).  She is married to Giuseppe Montavi, a cousin of hers.  He took the Del Ray name when they married, and is nominally the head of the family.  However, the Dowager, Genevieve, stalks about somewhere in the house at the top of the mountain.  No one ever sees her.  Ever.

Other notables include Eidolon Lumber, who own the lumber company (despite the fact that the only forest nearby is fed by a brine lake, and is thus... well... let's just say not good wood).  The Eidolon family hails from somewhere along the Atlantic Coast from early years of colonialism.  They say they changed their name from the Dare family some couple hundred years ago.  They are sorcerers as well.

Max's Tip Tap Pub.  Run by Max Sidow (who has never ever been seen outside the bar).  Max is an odd duck.  He is open all the time, or nearly so.  Every so often he closes up shop for a few minutes, but that's about it.  When anyone asks about the laws regarding hours of operation for selling liquour, Max winks and says "Grandfather Clause".

The Van-Dewey Foundry, owned by the Van Family, and the Dewey Family, with a minority partnership held by a Japanese Holding firm.  Current foreman is Matt Foster.  Matt is a gruff blue-collar bully with a soft, chewy center.  High concept of chivalry in the guy's head.  Years ago, would have made a great knight.

There are a slew of others.  The general idea is that every character has some completely odd side plot (think Twin Peaks... EVERYONE is fucked-up).  The Humanity rules follow Hellbound... with the strict definition of Humanity following a loose conglomeration of sanity and morality (in the classic sense).

None of the characters begin with a demon.  In fact, they aren't truly aware of their powers.  Lore automatically defaults to 1.  Something is happening.  The general hook for the game is that characters were waking up, thinking they were someone else.  On top of that, they find others having the same problem.  It is only temporary, lasting 10-15 minutes, but during that time, they can even tell you private info about "themselves".  A few days later, those who have had this problem start dying.  Something about the "thoughts of 13 being a key", and the park has been broken into... or out of.

This is where it all begins.  

Anyway, we had a great time.  A few died (heroically, I have rarely seen such willing, even eager self-sacrifice by a character... of course, it was to save reality as they knew it), some went irrevocably insane (or near to), two survived with what could be called a "good ending".  In general, I wanted to bring the sanity-wrenching horror of Cthulhu to Del Ray Diablo.  I had fun, it was wonderful.  Someday soon, I may write it up in a more complete manner, but you get the idea for now.

Dav

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Dav,

Here are my questions.

1) How many sessions did this run? Is it "over" now?

2) About how many Humanity rolls did you find occurred during play? How about the ratio of checks to gains (rolls, that is, not successful tries)?

3) Explain the use of the Hellbound Humanity tweaks - this involves negative values of Humanity, a definite rules change. Did any player-characters run around at negative Humanity? What was that like? Did anyone use the "eating others' Humanity" option from Hellbound?

4) What would you say was the core moral issue at hand, in concrete terms? Was there more than one? (Clearly there was at least one, given the self-sacrifice stuff going on.)

5) Which NPCs were definitely interesting to the players? How did you establish that, and what tipped you off that it worked? Did you alter your prep for future sessions based on that demonstrated interest?

Best,
Ron

[Dav]

To answer Ron's questions:

1) The game ran 4 sessions, though most of these were 6 hour sessions, so a bit longer than I am used to.  This is fine because the group was not the hyperkinetic problem-solving badasses I have come to expect through role-playing.

2) On average, each person had at least 1 roll per session.  One person had three, in rapid succession.  For the most part, however, the climactic scene for each session usually involved something humanity-wrenching.

3) The negative Humanity tweak is fun.  I love it.  It involves going into debt for Humanity (which equates to "soul" in Hellbound terms).  Humanity is bounded from -10 to 10.  At 0, you are a damned soul.  Strictly speaking, Hellbound declares you damned to Hell (bye-bye) at 0, though for those familiar with Hellbound, playing in Hell is perfectly reasonable and (hopefully) fun.  In this, it involved the degree of influence "they" had over the character.  Trading the Power/Humanity parity became something most were leery of, though one person did make the leap from full-fledged human to partially demonic with a bit of flair and pinache.  The negative results are given as "bonus" dice that the GM may assign to rolls throughout a session to antagonists.  It also played hell with their perceptions, morals, and general mental balance.  And no, no one wanted to eat humanity... the thought was far beyond the rational scope of the characters (which is good).

4) The core moral concept was the ultimate exercise in Utilitarian thought: the most good for the most people, with minor regard to cost.  The key concept that most characters were faced with was: when does your death become important?  And, what is the merit of "noble sacrifice"?

5) As Ron is aware, I am based almost entirely on "intuitive continuity".  Meaning, I throw the kitchen sink at you in the beginning, see what gets a bite, then let it rip about for awhile.  In general, I try to throw a curveball at everything for the first run or two, then slowly let characters get their bearings, define "sides", and decide on a course of action.  Then, of course, the mode of play changes from "they are out to get me" (and the GM is too), to "we are out to get them" (and the GM loves it so long as it is cool).  My general approach was to utilize Twin Peaks as a basis.  This meant making certain everyone had something they were after or wanted.  No one was sincere, and no one could be taken at face value.  I made tons of soap-opera style sideplots.  Many of these were going to be resolved with, or without, character intervention.  It made things interesting when NPCs changed their motives because of a doublecross that the PCs had NOTHING to do with, and wanted nothing to do with.  All-in-all, the prep for the games consisted of highlighting the NPCs the characters found useful, interesting, or scary, and letting the others fall from potential main supporting cast to "featured extras".

Dav