The future-story outcome of Little Fears

[Dav]

This is in response to little nicky waaayyy up near the beginning.

I ran Little Fears based on the following premise:

I had all the players give me a few paragraphs about their homelife and stuff, then worked with that.  

Mostly, the players "created" the monsters through character actions.  For instance, Donald learned of a savaging by an animal in a nearby field.  After careful inquiry throughout many adults, he seized upon "Hyena" as the culprit.  Soon, hyenas, laughing sadistically (and not at all in an animalistic fashion) became a central focal point.  

Also, I had the main bad guy ("the Pocked Man") act more as an archetype (which is how Little Fears was meant to be played by my interpretation of the reading).  Therefore, the Pocked Man wasn't a "creature", but an embodiment of male brutality.  At times, the Poced man had Donald's father's face, the face of a mean Uncle, a school bully, and other men who displayed overly aggressive behaviors.  Conquering him ultimately required each child to "make amends" to the Pocked Man (for instance, Donald said to the Pocked Man in the final encounter, "I'm sorry, dad, I'll try to be more responsible, and I forgive you"... Donald's father was big on responsibility).  Once all the characters confronted the evil in this way, it wilted and died.

Also, to respond to other posts about "winning":

I would say that Donald did conquer the main crux of his problematic future.  That, in this case, being conquering male dominance and brutality.  He turns it around in his family, and thus, it changes his future.  Should we return to these children in the future, other things could be changed as we dealt with other issues in the lives of the children.  

I agree, they don't turn out "well", but they make significant improvement.  Kayla, our female girl, goes from drug-addict prostitute with two illegitimate kids to drug-addict with two illegitimate kids who turns her life around and settles down with a nice man.

The other boy, who grew up to be a serial killer, now just has a bad temper that gets him into trouble.  

Donald's future and changes were much more "personal" than the others.  Partly due to Ron's style of play, and partly due to the fact that his future was very tailored to his description given to me in the beginning.  Other players gave me less, and got more "template" futures.  


In all, I think Little Fears is a wildly fun game that does require some discussion about the children before beginning (more dialogue between GM and Player before play).  This is a good thing to my mind.  It allowed me to tailor the terror to play on their fears, as well as have monsters that reflected life around them, and were given shape by their own suspicions and fear.  The character sheet goes a long way to helping this work.  By filling it out completely, most Players form a round (as opposed to "flat", remember English class?) character that has a chance to become very dynamic through play.  

My overall assessment is a very strong game that lends itself to a very personal exploration of childhood fears... when done right.  It can quickly degenerate to hack'n'slash maniac on the loose if you're not careful, but the foundations are there.

And a side note:  let the Plaers run wild with Belief Magic, it makes the game.


Dav

[Demonspahn]

Has anyone had a character's future involve investigating a Cthulu like mythos or have they all turned out relatively normal?  In fact, has anyone used Little Fears as a segue to CoC?  I guess this would only happen over a prolonged campaign.  The characters would lose their childhood innocence but gradually become aware of powers beyond their understanding.

Sorry, as you can probably see, I've just been exposed to the Call of Cthulu RPG (I know I'm late) and that's where my thoughts have been lately.


Pete