Creature Feature Initial Playtest

[Steve Dustin]

Although I haven't completed writing the playtest version of Creature Feature yet, I got the first taste of how it might play (and made some changes already) just recently. A friend of mine came over and we watched The Third Man with Orson Welles (should have done a monster movie!), then tried to play the game with just me and him. I first talk about the game in this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4138

The monster we used was the Mummy, and I had to spend some time writing all the cast members on 3x5 cards to divy up among the two of us. There was the Stalwart Hero, the Egyptologist, the Reincarnated Love, the Egyptian High Priest and we used a Superstitious Local card to represent the various minor characters (usually ethnic minorities in the movies) that get offed by the Mummy. Each character had a law that had to be satisfied in play, the Mummy had two, before the final showdown between the Mummy and the cast members.

The Egyptologist was the father of the Reincarnated Love who was a student at the university the Egyptologist taught at. The Stalwart Hero was a football player. I took on the High Priest and love as characters, while Mike had the hero, Egyptologist and played most of the Superstitous Locals.

The game started with the High Priest chanting and burning tannis leaves to raise the Mummy. I made a 'invoking monster' roll and failed. I was narrating so I cut the scene immediately, and switch to a local lost in the swamp. Mike narrated that the local saw old ruins where the High Priest was chanting. He stopped off, and the High Priest escorted the local toward the chanting room. The Mummy showed and almost immediately munched the local. The Priest then commanded the Mummy to go find the reincarnated "Princess Annanaka."

We then switched to the love talking to the Hero, about going to Egypt with her father's expedition. Of course the Hero doesn't understand. The next scene had the Love talking to the Egyptologist, who then explains he had a speaking engagement that night in a church next to the swamp. She mentions it later to the hero, and they decide to go together.

As they drive toward the church, they notice the old ruins seem to be lighted up, and decide to investigate. The High Priest is able to control the love with more tannis leaves, and she goes into a trance, heading into the ruins. The hero discovers the tannis leaves and the priest, and burns all his tannis leaves in the fireplace. We failed another monster invoking roll, so we cut to another scene.

The wife of the first Local is now in the swamp looking for her husband, calling his name. The Mummy bursts out of a mud-bog, spraying mud everywhere, then chases her down and snaps her neck.

The Mummy then shows at the old ruins, and chases the Love and the hero into the fog. This sequence extended too long, making me think I'm gonna trim the amount of "chase points" both sides will get. Still, when the points got down to a low amount, there was some fun tension about whether the monster would catch the love or not.

It did. The hero got lost in the fog, and the Mummy brought the love back to the high priest. The hero returned to the ruins, professed his love for the reincarnated love (the last law) and attacked the high priest, using a plot complication to knock him out. The mummy awoke and fought the hero while the high priest took off. The hero lost a lot of points here because  confronting a monster makes him lose twice as many Run-away pts. The hero tried to catch the high priest, but the Mummy caught him and broke his neck.

Finally, the Egyptologist came into the swamp looking for his daughter. He had a couple of the locals with him. When the Mummy caught the High Priest, it turned on him, and killed the high priest immediately. It then caught a local, who through a plot complication I gave him, had broke his leg in a hole in the ground. Another local tried to fight the mummy off with some loose wood. The Egyptologist came to help the local, but found, by making the sign of the cross, he could back the Mummy into its original grave, where it turned to dust.

This all took about 45 minutes or so. Some of the chases dragged out too long, but cutting the point values down may help that. I also revised in play a thing called a "kill die" which I think I'm now gonna call a "script doctor die." I originally thought that the monster's script doctor dice would replenished, but decided not to do that, since it made it too powerful at the "final showdown".

Mike got confused a few times when we were rolling about what to add and subtract, and hope that's something that won't happen in play a lot, but still worries me. I'm not trying to make needless complication in the rules. We also stepped on each others characters during description a few times, which I hope doesn't happen in play either.

We both agreed that this game would be much better with the more people you played with.

Steve Dustin