Giallo

[hardcoremoose]

The discussion about CD-changers in the 'Breakfast Club' thread gave me this idea.

For a while now I've been considering a game about my favorite thing in the world:  Cheesy Horror Movies (particularly the Italian splatter films of the 80's, hence my title, 'Giallo').  The premise of the game could be described as Pleasantville meets Lucio Fulci; the players are people who get sucked into their TVs while they're watching horror movies, becoming part of the ongoing film.  This was as far as I'd gotten, not really knowing where to go with the game mechanics.


The CD-changer thing gave me this idea:

What if, at the start of the game session (after characters are generated), the GM pops his favorite horror flick into the VCR and fast-forwards it to a random spot in the movie.  Each player picks one of the major characters from that film, and then the game begins.  When a player gets to a point where they need to resolve an action, they get to fast-forward or rewind the tape to a random spot and push Play.  They then get to watch a few seconds of the movie (how many seconds is probably equal to an appropriate characteristic from their character sheet).  If the character they picked gets any screen-time while the player is watching, they are successful at whatever it is they are attempting.

Combat would work similarly, except that if an act of violence is occurring when Play is pushed, the character being victimized suffers an injury (or death, if someone is actually being killed onscreen).

This game would obviously have a wild, party-like atmosphere, but if done right, the cinematic moments might help create an eeriness as well.  What do you guys think?  Cool, or is it too weird?

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

One guy we need to get on this forum is Sean, also known as "unodiablo," who is the king hell scary fan of zombie and giallo flicks. He'd know what to say about this.

What I guess I don't grasp is how the CD-changer thing really aids any sort of role-playing (of whatever goal). Explain it to me some more.

Best,
Ron

[hardcoremoose]

Ron,

Is it the VCR-as-game-mechanic thing that you want more info on, or the actual CD-changer idea (which is contained in Jared's Breakfast Club post)?

I'm not sure how the VCR thing would actually work in play...it would probably be too slow to actually use effectively, unless it was kept to a minimum.  Thematically, though, it seems appropriate; what could be better when playing characters trapped in a gory horror film than actually getting to watch clips from gory horror films?  Additionally, it would reward fans of the genre; if you've seen the Evil Dead as many times as I have, you should be able to pretty accurately Fast-Forward and Rewind to any point in the film at will.

I guess I should mention that when you Fast-Forward and Rewind to specific points in the film, you do *not* do so while the film is playing.  You do it without the action visible, so when you hit play, you won't know what scene you've cued up until the screen flares to life.  I assumed that was self-evident, but perhaps it wasn't.:smile:

[unodiablo]

What about making a specially edited tape that contains only scenes of Horror (failure), and then others that show some sort of success (escape, zombie-bashin', etc)? And then using the tape, in order, or FFWD/REW to get the results of conflict?

Geez, just boppin' around in here today, and I get a frickin' tornado of a brainstorm on this one... Maybe combining this with Pantheon?

Ron, just imagine the tapes I could make for this from the movie library. Scary!!! Who's bringing the VCR to GenCon??? :smile:

unodiablo

[hardcoremoose]

If you dupe up a highlight reel, I'm there.  I'd pretty much given up on this idea, but I'm always up for a little gorehound fandom.

By the way, DEADMEAT is sweet.

And I'd be curious to see how your video library compares to mine.  There are a few things I've been looking for...:smile:

Take care,
Moose

[unodiablo]

Hey Moose,

Send me an e-mail, and I'll shoot you over my Laser & DVD list. I don't do much tape2tape dubbing, the quality on my tapes varies too much, but I've still got a big list of digital.

Glad you like Dead Meat! I'm working on a "2.666" version of it, filled out quite a bit more.

I started jotting down notes on the Giallo thing last night too. I figure a 2 hour tape with 240-30 second segments should do the trick... Now I need to figure out how I want to do conflict resolution. I think I'll need two tapes, one for just zombies, and one for weird supernatural Giallo happenings... Are you going to GenCon?

Sean