Damned Anonymous, a personal cosmic horror RPG

[Ryan Macklin]

Hello,

I have a game I'm working on that is a horror game where the PCs are all corrupted/infected/tainted by some great Evil, and have formed a support group to deal with their problem.  The working title is "Damned Anonymous."  I've written a bit about the idea on my column ( http://www.hmfy.com/masterplan/ ), but I'm chewing on the campaign framework right now and thought I'd post about it.

The game is essentially this:  you and the others in your support group (all PCs in my mind) are "infected" by some sort of Lovecraftian-cosmic Evil.  All the Evil needs to be released into the world is for one of the people in the group to completely lose their humanity and for The Stars To Be Right.  It's a horrible, painful fight to the finish, to see if the PCs are keep the Evil contained long enough for the Stars to Pass.  To be clear, this is a game with a GM playing the role of, among other things, the Evil.

I've worked out this framework mainly because I want there to be some hope in my game, as that will make the individual horror elements and the overall construct stand out more than if this game was telling the story of an unavoidable tragedy.  I thought about a "redemption" element, but discarded that because I felt that would undermine the horror elements more than telling a tragedy would.  So I've essentially come up with the idea of a "time limit."

In my mind, that means:
(a) a scene framing-based structure would be a good way to handle the individual horrors and potentially be a resource in and of itself (as the "time limit" element)
(b) the Evil should have some sort of resource to expend to move against the things PCs care about, otherwise it could just end up being a horrible, bloody free-for-all that doesn't capture the tone I'm thinking.

So my question is this:  what other games could you suggest that handle something like this?

This framework owes a lot to Burning Empires, which I've finally be given a chance to play.  I've also played The Shab al-Hiri Roach earlier this week & read My Life With Master, but that's pretty much as far as I've gone in my adventure with scene framing.

Any other suggestions/advice/questions are also welcome, of course.  I have some other ideas regarding how characters are created & have some mechanics worked out, but those are likely to evolve as I tinker with the framework.

Thank you.

[Ben Lehman]

Hi, Ryan, and welcome to the Forge!

I talked with you about this game at GenCon, right?  At the time, you were struggling with whether or not to make the game silly or serious.  I have some thoughts on your topic, but before that, can you tell me which route you've decided to take?

yrs--
--Ben

[Ryan Macklin]

Hi, Ryan, and welcome to the Forge!

I talked with you about this game at GenCon, right?  At the time, you were struggling with whether or not to make the game silly or serious.  I have some thoughts on your topic, but before that, can you tell me which route you've decided to take?

Ben,

Thank you!  I remember us talking about it some at GenCon, and still have the line you gave me written down as inspiration (and mentioned it on my first entry about the game at http://www.hmfy.com/masterplan/9 )

I've decided to go very much in the serious route.  There's another line from GenCon that has been in my head.  Paul Tevis was telling me the Mortal Coil "Flaming Taft" story, and the line that I recall was from Judd (I think) saying that he didn't want to play a heavy horror game (the line being "I just don't want to kill my mother.")  I want DA to default to "kill your mother" heavy.

- Ryan

[TonyLB]

But ... it's still a game more about support groups than about Lovecraft, right?  I'm hoping I'm right there, because (paradoxically) I think that the support group is where all of the most stunning horror comes in.

It's not just that the whispering voice of Azathoth gibbers constantly from just behind your shoulder, clutching at your sanity.  It's that you dealt with that, and you managed not to get fired from your job, even though your boss was totally looking for somebody to blame for that Walkerton contract fiasco ... you've had a hell of a week, and you'd just like to vent and get some sympathy from people who understand you, but NO ... Eddie has missed the meeting, and Shary says that she had lunch with him on tuesday and he really didn't seem quite right, so now you and Shary are somehow in a her beaten up Volvo together heading off to see if he needs some kind of intervention, and you're going to miss the coffee and donuts after the meeting, and Azathoth is whispering that you just don't NEED THIS SHIT!

The horror of the support group is that it is easier to give in.  It doesn't cause you pain.  It just causes heartbreak and anguish for everyone around you.  How do you deal with the selfish pricks who backslide?  And how do you keep trying, even in the face of that?

[Ryan Macklin]

But ... it's still a game more about support groups than about Lovecraft, right?  I'm hoping I'm right there, because (paradoxically) I think that the support group is where all of the most stunning horror comes in.

It's about 50/50 in my mind right now between the support group element and the horrible Evil element -- mainly because I want to blend them to compliment each other.  The Evil is why everyone is in the support group, and the group is the primary defense against giving into It.  One element I want to play on is conflict between members of the group, like an intervention.  The problem is that I'm not sure how this blends together yet.

I like your example.  The idea of someone missing from the meeting hadn't occured to me yet, and it's quite a powerful one.

The support group element is definitely the most important element for my game.  It has influenced my character generation -- when we did one last week, I started off by saying "Hi, my name is Ryan, and last week I snapped and murdered a bum."  Then I started talking about me and the Evil.  My two playtesters followed suit, and as we did so we wrote down things on a blank piece of paper.  As they did, I started writing down the sort of stuff they were saying and what might be good to have recorded on a character sheet.  I am really keen on this sort of narrative character creation, and my two playtesters enjoyed it as well.

But I'm still working on how to make it fit in play -- what it means, scene-by-scene and session-by-session, to be playing in a "support group" game.

[Ben Lehman]

Ack!  Sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this.

So here's a random smattering of thoughts.  None of these are things which you have to do or anything, just thought seeds to get you going.

1) You might want to consider having the possibilities of the PCs winning.  I say this because when failure is assured, the question becomes how you fail, and there's really no point in trying to succeed.  When there is a hope of success, however slight, people will strive for it enormously.

2) I totally back Tony about the support group.  The support group needs to be the core method that the PCs have to stand a chance against the horror.  I love the idea of interventions, keeping tabs on each other, etc.

3) Scene structuring is definitely something to consider.

You've basically got three kinds of scenes: Scenes at the support group, scenes where you're alone in the world, and scenes where you're out in the world and there are also other people from the support group there.  You could probably structure this in some way (we have a scene in the support group, then we have a scene for each person during the week, to pick a structuring at random.

As for the evil is concerned, I think it might be more interesting if it didn't have resources of its own.  As in, the evil only happens when you stretch yourself to far, when you make a mistake, or when you just get unlucky.  Imagine a game about alchoholics where when you botch your roll, you need to go on a drinking spree.

My general thought is that you have a certain amount of patience, and you need to spend it to deal with things in your life (relationships, work, etc.)  You can either keep your own, or you can put patience into the group, in which case it's somehow more powerful, but anyone can use it, not just you.

Is any of this useful?  Have you played the game yet?  Are there any mechanical stumbling blocks that you've got right now?

yrs--
--Ben

[Danny_K]

I think it's a very interesting idea.

Please feel free to shut me down if you want, but I'm going to suggest you may be tweaking the wrong dial here.  Instead of paying attention to comedy-horror vs. black horror, how about supernatural horror vs. everyday horror? 

I'm asking because I work IRL in mental health, and most addicts live through a horror show every day without any eldritch entities.  Allowing for a range of play like in Dogs, where the demons can be just bad luck and human cussedness, or go all the way up to fire-spitting red-eyed monsters, would be very cool.  You don't have to necessarily play down the cosmic evil that far, but it would be good to have the Cosmic Lovecraftian Evil and the everyday evil of stupid bosses and uncaring spouses and families play off against each other. 

Maybe there should be two ways to lose all your Humanity -- one, you give in to the Evil, become its slave and wreak havoc.  The other is to be such an uptight, unpleasant son-of-a-bitch while fighting the Evil that you lose everything meaningful in your life, all your family and friends and job and car.  You can keep the job or the car or the spouse by using your magics, but that moves you closer to releasing the great old ones. 

There should totally be a mechanic for lying, too -- I can just see the player, having just played out a seen where he summoned the Space Weasels to eat his romantic rival, sowing up at the D.A.meeting and not saying a word about it. 

[Danny_K]

Ugh, sorry to double-post but I forgot my original intent in hitting the Reply button: Have you read Irrational Fears, by William Spencer Browning? That, and his other Lovecraftian books, are essential reading for this game idea. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Irrational-Fears-William-Browning-Spencer/dp/1565049152

[Ryan Macklin]

1) You might want to consider having the possibilities of the PCs winning.  I say this because when failure is assured, the question becomes how you fail, and there's really no point in trying to succeed.  When there is a hope of success, however slight, people will strive for it enormously.

I agree, but I'm still trying to figure out what "winning" means.  I definitely want that because I want there to be hope of some kind that the players actually experience, rather than lie about when they're portraying their characters' hope.  Trick is that I think winning doesn't mean that the Evil is gone, but merely "do we survive the next crisis in our lives?"

To parallel it with AA, they say you're always an alcoholic & even someone who has been sober for 20 years could still go back, so their inner demons are suppressed rather than purged by that thought.  Same sort of idea here.  Second, I don't want to mix the group with people who still have Evil and people who don't.

The initial idea was put in some sort of time limit so that the there was some sort of concrete "the PCs survived or didn't" setup.  I'm not sure if I want to stick with that idea, though I did like the sense of growing tension as the time limit (in whatever form) grew near.

2) I totally back Tony about the support group.  The support group needs to be the core method that the PCs have to stand a chance against the horror.  I love the idea of interventions, keeping tabs on each other, etc.

Definitely.  Now to work on the "how."

3) Scene structuring is definitely something to consider.

You've basically got three kinds of scenes: Scenes at the support group, scenes where you're alone in the world, and scenes where you're out in the world and there are also other people from the support group there.  You could probably structure this in some way (we have a scene in the support group, then we have a scene for each person during the week, to pick a structuring at random.

I had a couple ideas noted down for specific types of scenes:  Threat scenes, where something in a character's life is threatened, acting as a temptation for the PC; Corruption scenes, for when the PC has hit some new low and lets himself go for a moment -- these might be the equivalent to the "finding an AA guy in a bar" idea; Humanity scenes, where you deal with the aftermath of your actions, like visiting a kid you hospitalized or trying to tell your best friend that you're not a monster.

I'm not sure if I'm over-categorizing though.

As for the evil is concerned, I think it might be more interesting if it didn't have resources of its own.  As in, the evil only happens when you stretch yourself to far, when you make a mistake, or when you just get unlucky.  Imagine a game about alchoholics where when you botch your roll, you need to go on a drinking spree.

My general thought is that you have a certain amount of patience, and you need to spend it to deal with things in your life (relationships, work, etc.)  You can either keep your own, or you can put patience into the group, in which case it's somehow more powerful, but anyone can use it, not just you.

Ooh.  I had something kicking around in my head like this, but I wasn't able to quite grasp it until now.  I had a thought that maybe rather than a group pool, you give your patience directly to someone, like in a "you can get through this" talk with your sponsor.

Is any of this useful?  Have you played the game yet?  Are there any mechanical stumbling blocks that you've got right now?

Definitely useful, thank you.  I have played out a scene and did character creation, which seemed to go well.  I have this bug about my game having a fully narrative character creation -- you are actually playing the very first group meeting when you're making your character, and you tell everyone about him or her.  "Hi, I'm Ryan, and last week I had another episode.  This time, I made my boss's secretary...disappear...after I heard her spread gossip about me."

It was completely freeform, which was helpful for knowing what questions to ask and the tone people thought for the game.  One person started in about how the Evil was inside him for 10 years and how it always comes through the windows, so I noted down things like "character sheet needs a space for 'What I believe about the Evil.'"

For the mechanics, I put together a bit of a system where you roll 3d6 when doing something, total the dice, and you're trying to get higher than the other person.  Stats/skills/stuff that would modify your roll is pretty freeform, like Unknown Armies or PDQ, with the ranks of Strong, Unnoteworthy (or Average) and Weak.  If you're Strong at whatever you're rolling, like say "Fighting" (a passable "universal" example), your opponent discards their highest die.  If you're Weak at whatever you're rolling, you discard your highest die.  These are cumulative.

Each player also has a deck of cards that is their ability to tap into Evil to give them some sort of edge.  They draw cards and add them to the die roll, but drawing a Face card has unpredictable results as the Evil backlashes and takes over briefly.  The idea is that the GM is encouraged to put characters in situations where they're Weak, which means in order to succeed in a conflict they need to either draw upon Evil or, well, something else...  I know the Something Else has to do with the support group, but the problem is that I don't know what that is, mechanically-speaking.

[Ryan Macklin]

Please feel free to shut me down if you want, but I'm going to suggest you may be tweaking the wrong dial here.  Instead of paying attention to comedy-horror vs. black horror, how about supernatural horror vs. everyday horror? 

I'm asking because I work IRL in mental health, and most addicts live through a horror show every day without any eldritch entities.  Allowing for a range of play like in Dogs, where the demons can be just bad luck and human cussedness, or go all the way up to fire-spitting red-eyed monsters, would be very cool.  You don't have to necessarily play down the cosmic evil that far, but it would be good to have the Cosmic Lovecraftian Evil and the everyday evil of stupid bosses and uncaring spouses and families play off against each other.

I'm going to have to chew on this.  It would be a good pairing -- I recently finished a game of Unknown Armies where after dealing with an actual unnatural being and dealing with horrible supernatural occurances left and right, one of the characters being killed by a stray bullet was, in the words on one player, a bit more horrific because of what they experienced and how, well, *mundane* this person's death was.

Similarly, resisting Greatest Evil in one scene and failing to not snap at your husband the next would make both of those feel a little more awesome.  Or at least could, if done right.

Maybe there should be two ways to lose all your Humanity -- one, you give in to the Evil, become its slave and wreak havoc.  The other is to be such an uptight, unpleasant son-of-a-bitch while fighting the Evil that you lose everything meaningful in your life, all your family and friends and job and car.  You can keep the job or the car or the spouse by using your magics, but that moves you closer to releasing the great old ones.

I have an idea for a double-pronged approach, but with the two paths being "embrace the horrible Evil" and "sit and do nothing while everything you love is being taken away from you."  The idea is that the only "winning" path involves the risk of giving into the Evil, but to do nothing is to lose. 

There should totally be a mechanic for lying, too -- I can just see the player, having just played out a seen where he summoned the Space Weasels to eat his romantic rival, sowing up at the D.A.meeting and not saying a word about it. 

That's just awesome, though I think I might invert it.  I think there would need to be a good reason to be lie and be upfront about things.  In the real world, there's a good reason for both -- look like you're succeeding (maybe even to yourself) or to get the help you need, respectively.

I remember a TV show I saw a long time ago, I think with Ted Danson in it, where he was at an AA meeting with his sponsor.  When the guy asked if there was anyone around who sober less than 24 hours (I forget exactly how it was asked), his sponsor raised his hand.  The look on Danson's face was one of shock and disappointment -- maybe when you fail, the people who look up to you cannot draw from you example.

Ugh, sorry to double-post but I forgot my original intent in hitting the Reply button: Have you read Irrational Fears, by William Spencer Browning? That, and his other Lovecraftian books, are essential reading for this game idea. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Irrational-Fears-William-Browning-Spencer/dp/1565049152

I haven't yet, but that'll be rectified.

Thank you very much!

[johnwedd]

reminds me of a book i recently read, blood moon i think it was called, it told a story about a sorceror, the demon he sommoned joined with his mind. this of course gave him a tidy amount of power, but after a while, the demon takes over, consumes and the sorcerer becomes a husk. A slave to the bidding of the demon inside it.

the idea of comparing these things to a drug addiction is intreging. lets say that the DA support group is a circle of people who have to avoid useing their taint so they aren't consumed totally by the evil. but useing this taint, feels damn good, better than meth, weed, and blow put together. the longer they go without useing the taint, the farther away from being consumed they get. like spiritual healing of sorts. but its also painfull. when they use the taint it feels good, and they can do great and bloody things. heres where the prime horror comes in.

imagine a meth addict given a spoon, a ballon full and ready to go, and a fresh and clean seringe and tube ready to go. and then told that if he uses it, he'll face a fate worse than death, and much more permanent. Now the addict knows this. truely and whole heartedly believes it. now he has to go about liveing his life, carrying these things and still function.

that is scary and cruel. lovecraft doesn't have much in the way of modern horror.