The Forge Archives

I just finished a game of The Evil with Chris Edwards and Nathan (Paganini) Banks.

They were playing Charles Doverymyer and Mandy Cox respectively.

They further on made up a few friends as NPCs so the total tally of player made characters were:
Charles "Chass" Doverymyer - (I Don't remember the archetype?)
Adam Schluss - Designated Nerd
Bubba Jones - Token Black Dude
Mandy Cox - Doomed Virgin
Jimmy Fong - Freaky Martial Artist
Biff Vandermoss - the One Word Grunt Jock
Nathan "Nate" Edwards - the Prep (nice and gullible)

...at the start of the game.

I could run through the adventure, but I'd prefer to have Nathan or Chris write up the main story and then I could fill in the gaps and explain what was really happening :) At some points Nathan and Chris' characters went different ways and I ran those simulatenously (since we were playing over irc)

I enjoyed GMing horror as usual and both Nathan and Chris seemed to get into their roles.

I think there was a lot of things that was obvious to me from the rules which wasn't equally obvious to the players at least at first. One of the more amusing things was playing the negative traits, at least I thought that was very funny, especially when Chris succeeded with his: "Always says the wrong thing" skill making up for a lot of misunderstandings.

I could actually have played this very efficiently as a Scream style adventure (especially after an incident with a knife in a dark room and a convenient corpse), but I prefer the supernatural so I stuck with that angle. I think Chris and Nathan was expecting something slightly different when we started. (Or?)

I'd like to hear from Chris and Nathan what they thought could be improved from the game mechanic point of view, especially in relationship to the rules (I don't know how much they convey the play - if at all!)

We ended up playing to 6 o'clock my time. That would be like 4 o'clock in the morning for you guys or? This despite me hurrying up certain scenes. It was important to set a "normal" tone to the beginning of the story though, so I could flip things out even more at the end. Or that was my idea anyway.

So, Chris/Nathan, could one of you write up the story? And fill me in on how you felt about the pacing and other stuff I already mentioned in this post.

This was indeed one long game. I think we started at 11:30, and we actually ended at 5:00, so about 5.5 hours. I have to say that Christoffer did an *excellent* job, because I'd only intended to stay for an hour, maybe two at the most, but once we got going absolutely had to stay until the end. He kept asking things like "How's the schedule?" And I was like "We passed the deadline 15 minutes ago! Shut up and keep going!!" :)

Quote from: The Horror Master
I think there was a lot of things that was obvious to me from the rules which wasn't equally obvious to the players at least at first. One of the more amusing things was playing the negative traits, at least I thought that was very funny, especially when Chris succeeded with his: "Always says the wrong thing" skill making up for a lot of misunderstandings.

As far as I'm concerned, the mechanics played a very small role in last nights game. We could have done the same thing with the Window, Fable, FUDGE, or any other freeform system. IMO, what carried the game was the skill of the GM (and it was uber!). To me, the system was pretty unremarkable, with the exception of the "make successes to do bad stuff" rolls, which is a lot of fun. I was about to suggest that you make that the main focus of the system, when I realized that SQUEAM already does this.

The biggest problem I had with the system was in assigning values to the traits. Creation system is freeform, and a 1 - 20 scale is just to big to feel comfortable. To me, anyway. I'd prefer a smaller scale, or even no scale at all, with traits depending on their existence rather than their rating. (Maybe they could allow rerolls, or something.)

...

Now, knowing that Pale Fire likes illusionism, what I really want to know is how much of last night was pre-scripted? Did you really have the whole adventure thought out ahead of time? If so, you did an excellent job hiding it. To me it felt like our actions were driving the story; but at the same time it had that great suspense movie "what's gonna happen next?" feel. Mike, maybe a good candidate for participationism here. :)

So, anyway, that's pretty much it. Session summary follows. Chris, Pale Fire, fill in the gaps!

WARNING! It's long! I think it's good reading, but then, I played the game too. :)

As for the plot, it went something like this:

A bunch of boarding-school-ish highschool kids are basically setting up their friend Nate. Nate's parents are, apparently, Filthy Rich (TM), and have just acquired a mondo new pad, complete with built-in library, big bathroom, multiple bedrooms, a ballroom, etc. etc. Nate's parents, it seems, are so rich that they can happily go on a trip just two weeks after moving into this glorious mansion. So, while they're gone, Nate's having a sleepover with his buds (the aforlisted characters). The "setting up" angle is that Nate's friends are going to meet his parents before they go, act all warm and fuzzy, and promiss to play nice while the parents are on their trip. Of course, the plan is that as soon as the parent's tail-lights disappear we call everyone in sight (and not in sight) for a huge party.

So, we started out in the van on the way to Nate's new digs. Biff <grunt> was driving, and the rest of us were enduring the long drive in various ways. Much comic character interraction was had among the characters, mostly revolving around Adam (who established a reputation for throwing up all over everything, all the time) and Chass (who REALLY had to go to the bathroom, and ended up hitting the hedge - much to Nate's dismay - when everyone took too long getting inside.)

So, we go in the house, but Nate's parents don't seem to be there. Nate is somewhat upset by this, since their car is still parked outside. Finally someone suggests that they might have taken a taxi and left early, and this seems to calm him down. So everyone explores the house looking for a place to party. We discover such interesting locales as a ball room, a master bed room with big ol' bath (I think we spent more time here than any other single room... ;), a kitchen, a library, an attic in which the lights are broke, and a cellar with a funny smell, also no lights.

We never did find out what was down in that cellar. (What was down in the cellar, GM?)

So everyone starts getting ready for the party. Mandy goes and takes a bath, while Chass grabs a snack in the kitchen. Wierd... Chass finds a cell phone in the refridgerator, next to some car keys. (Still don't know what it was doing there, or how it got there.)

So, after about an hour Mandy emerges from the tub, and everyone gathers in the party place to invite the rest of the crowd. There's some discussion of who to invite (Biff wants "Lotsagirls" and his bud "Johnny." Bubba, the Token Black Dude, invites a whole crowd of Fine Women.).

There's some squabbling over Mandy's cell phone, when Chass (who has been trying to get psyched up to hit on her all afternoon) remembers the cell phone in the fridge, and goes to get it. Nate recognizes it as his mom's phone and gets all upset again.

An absolutely hillarious (IMO anyway) sequence ensued with Nate questioning Chass, and Chass holding out on him because his player (Chris Edwards) had honestly forgotten that he found the cell phone in an unusual location (i.e., the fridge).

So, the other guests finally arive, including Mandy's friends Diane, Rachel, Mindy, and Biff's bud Johnny who has brought along a bunch of other guys we've never met, including - it turns out - his buddy Fred. Kimberly was also supposed to show up, but for some reason she never arrived.

And the party gets into high gear. Everyone's pretty soggy. Mandy and Chass seem to be getting along fine, dancing to Wild Thing in the ballroom. Then Jimmy comes in - pretty drunk - and switches the tunes to Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting, to which he performs some pretty awesome moves. The local girls seem to be pretty impressed by this. :)

Chass got in a great comment about "the Drunken Master" at this point. :)

Jimmy takes the girls off to "teach them his moves" (at their request). Then Chass and Mandy hear the van starting up. Seems like folks are leaving. Biff's still there, though, drooling in the corner, lights out.

Then Adam comes in. It seems most everyone else has gone to another party with Johnny. When Mandy understands this she lets go of Chass and heads off to look for her friends. She doesn't get too far though, being drunk. She ends up on the floor. Cue the entrance of Fred.

Fred is all nice and friendly. He picks Mandy up off the floor and makes to take her to the couch. Chass is upset by this. "She's not your baby, swiftness!"

So Chass lurches forward and bangs Fred on the head with his beer can, then drops it. Fred is naturally upset by this - there's beer in his hair now. So he goes for Chass (still holding Mandy) and trips over Chass's beer can and knocks himself out. (Some really good rolling by Chass's player at this point... :)

Adam is yelling about Chass killing Fred, then Jimmy and his girls come back in. The girls take one look and flee, but Jimmy comes over to investigate. Chass spends the rest of the evening telling everyone that he "kicked Fred's ass." Jimmy is somewhat incredulous - justifiably so. :)

Mandy goes all gushy and tells Chass how brave he is. Chass succeeds at an "always say the wrong thing" roll, and comes up with one of the best lines of the game:

<Mandy> You were so BRAVE Chass!
<Chass> and you were so.. um.. yeah... I like your um... yeah.
<Chass> Im a virgin

At which point everyone disolves into laughter, except for Adam who pulls out a minidisc recorder and boasts to Chass: "Now I have it on tape." Seems Adam got some of the "wild thing" out in the woods and taped it for the benifit of braging rights. Chass goes for him, trips over his own feet, and Adam passes out. They all end up on the floor, where Chas makes ANOTHER "say the wrong thing" roll.

<Mandy> Are you okay Chass?
<Chass> um, yeah, I think so... better now anyway.
<Chass> Is that you or Adam I smell?
* Mandy straightens up looking floored
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> At this opportune moment, Adam takes the moment to fart, despite being unconscious.
<Mandy> I... uh...
<Chass> uhhh!

So, anyway, everyone splits up to go to bed. Chass heads up to the master bedroom to take a shower, and Mandy (scared of the dark) sacks out on the couch.

At this point we had a split in narration, so I only know what happened from Mandy's perspective... Chris will have to fill in Chass's stuff.

Anyway, Mandy goes to sleep on the couch, but wakes up with someone touching her. First thought: Chass is back from the shower, and finally has worked up enough guts to score with her. But something warm drips on her, and she figures that even if Chass got out of the shower, the water wouldn't still be warm. So she sits up all sleepy and helpless. Nate's there, all covered in blood, but alive. (All we could ever get out of him was that someone banged him on the head while he was on the way to the van.)

So Mandy freaks out and screams and stuff. She gets ahold of herself (kind of) and starts babbling about "applying pressure" and "stopping bleeding." And she made her "naieve airhead" roll. (GM said: "Mandy, think of a really bad way to apply pressure.") So, she ripps off her T-shirt and wraps it around Nate's head.

Chass runs in wearing Nate's Dad's bathrobe. Incoherent dialogue ensues.  The shirt is removed from Nate. Chass eventually tries to stop the bleeding using Nate's Dad's bathrobe belt. It doesn't work so well. Bubba comes running in to see what's going on. He's a bit upset.

So, more incoherent dialogue ensues, the upshot of which is that we end up searching the house for the other guys (safety in numbers) but they've all disappeared, and their cell-phones are dead. Someone was supposed to take Nate to the bathroom and patch him up, but I don't think that ever happened. As far as I know we kind of lost track of him in the search. We ended up back in the kitchen. We talk about going back to bed, having a snack first (Mandy wants to get cleaned up, as she's all over blood, and only wearing a bra and shorts).

Chass goes to the freezer to get ice cream for Mandy. There happens to be a severed hand in there. Mandy freaks. The lights go out. (Mandy's scared of the dark). Mandy really freaks. Mandy sense something in the darkness. There's a breath of cold air on her neck. Chass makes a dive for the knife drawer. Mandy feels something cold and sharp prick her. (Mandy has a serious phobia about sharp things). Mandy totally loses it. ("There are KNIVES in the DARKNESS!") She runs.

We had a nother smallish split here, I think, to cover what happened with Chass in the kitchen while Mandy fled.

There's a thud. Chass is still talking, but Bubba ain't. Mandy, running, trips over a body. It's Fred, he's dead, and he's missing a hand. Chass is chasing after her, making "say the wrong thing" rolls right and left:

<Chass> I wont hurt you! I swear!!
<Chass> Fred was an accident!
<Chass> Mandy! Stop running!
<Chass> This will all be over soon, I swear!

Mandy hightails it out of there, (another split) and runs into Jimmy. She's really glad to see him, cos she thinks Chass is an axe murderer (more or less). Then Jimmy says:

"I was afraid too, before I DIED".

And his eyes start to glow. Yellow.

So, Mandy runs back the other way yelling for Chass. She tries to dial 911 on her cell phone (it seems she managed to hang on to her purse all this time) but it's dead, so she throws it away.

So Mandy runs like crazy and finds herself in the ballroom, where there's an "approaching footseps" suspense scene. Ends up with Chass, Mandy, and Jimmy all arguing together. Jimmy is acting perfectly normal again.

Then there's an earthquake.

(Still don't know what that's all about.)

Then we hear the van start up and rev. We all charge outside to keep from getting stranded, but there's no van, just the lingering echo of the rev. No cars. No nothing. Not even any tracks.

The house door slams behind us. There's a light in the attic window (where we couldn't get the lights to work). The door opens again. Chass suggests beating it for warmer climates. Then Bubba yells from inside ("Get off me you disco freak." Still don't know what that's about either.)

Anyway, Adam comes out of the woods, only he's all freaky now. (Turns out that it was Adam chasing Mandy in the ballroom after she ran away from Jimmy. He's given away by his limp.)

Jimmy goes for the gate, but he can't get it open, so he escapes over the wall instead. Chass and Mandy go after him, but Mandy remembers Bubba is inside, and insists on going back. She also thinks that the wall is a trap, because she doesn't believe that Jimmy is human. So Chass makes a break for the wall, and Mandy goes back inside. Big split here. A bit later I hear a scream from Chass, but I still don't know what happened. :)

Anyway, Mandy heads for the attic, where the light was, and bounces off Biff. He looks scared and asks if she's real. Mandy kisses him to explain that she is. They head upstairs together. Biff reveals that he knocked out Nate. He claims self defense. "He was trying to kill me with a knife! Yeah, he was all bloody."

So we get to the top of the stairs. The door is glowing. We go through into a sort of occult lab, complete with hooded figure stiring a pot, lots of mystic symbols, a necronomicon, big candles, body parts hanging on the wall awaiting the pot, etc. Mandy grabs the hood and pulls it back, but there's nothing underneath. Gloved hands stir the pot, but the cloak is empty!

Mandy freaks again and backs into Biff. He laughs and asks her if he wants a taste. Then his eyes start glowing. Nate's head bubbles up to the top of the pot.

Snappy dialogue follows, on the order of "Where's Chass?" "He's joining the flock, as will you, prettykins!"

Mandy makes a really bad Star Wars quote (It was about 4:00 AM by this time) and breaks for the door. She gets past Biff and races down the stairs. She finds herself in the ballroom where Bubba is asking "Hey, is that really you Chass?"

Much dialogue follows in which both Bubba and Chass try to convince Mandy the other is not human. Chass loses when his eyes start glowing, and Bubba and Mandy make for the door. They go through... they're back in the attic magilab! Mandy loses it completely. In the words of Chris, "her mind is el toast." Bubba is quite resourceful, though. Being superstitious, and holding a great respect for his own well being, he drags Mandy out into the ballroom again, having the presence of mind to first grab the necronomicon and take it with him ("Hey, I bet they need this!").

And here's the wrap-up. :)

<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> You never understood what happened
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> or where they took you
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> You can't get out of the place with the four white walls and padding on the ceiling and walls
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> Some people called you lucky to survive
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> Some thinks that maybe you would have been luckier if you had vanished just like the rest.
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> Most of the days you just sit there, staring at nothing.
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> But sometimes, especially at night time, you sometimes start to speak.
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> In a low voice so people can't quite hear, but some swear you are saying something like "come with me, Chass come with me"
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> And when you do that, if they were looking very closely, they would see your eyes turns a little golden.
<HorrorMaster_PaleFire> The End

What I'm really interested in is, what happened to Bubba?

Ok, first to clear up Chass' side of the story... well there isn't much to clear up really. Chass was only taking his shower when Mandy started to scream. The only thing Nathan (Paganini) didn't really see was Chass' demise. After cleverly negotiating the wall by using his knife McGyver style he jumped down on the other side where he was attacked by something.

Unfortunately for Chass, Chris at this time thought it best to fight back. Since Chass was equiped with lots of good luck, Chris got to roll that and I think he made every roll I gave him. However, he insisted in attacking back with the knife he got, which was a patently bad idea.

If there are monsters you run. If he'd tried to run away he would have survived (that ordeal at least). As it was whatever was there obviously killed him (in the end I ruled that no luck roll in the world could save him)

As for the other things, well I don't want to reveal everything, but the phone in the fridge was a clue. NE's parents were the first in the series of victims of course. Something happened to them that made the phone end up there. You could play the prequel and see what actually happened to them :)

I might be spoiling some stuff for the players here, but to dissect things:
Bubba? Well he survived out of the house bringing Mandy out. Maybe they ended up jailing him because he was thought to be responsible, maybe the ghosts got him in the end too, when he thought he was safe.

If Mindy would have stayed sane she would have noticed that carrying the book (or touching someone who did) made you see through the veils the demonic forces had conjured. That would have allowed you to find the van and get the hell out of there. Which is exactly what Bubba did.

"But who ever passes that threshold gains a shadow, and never again is he alone"

As for my planning, I had this much:
A house in the woods, newly aquired, has a secret. People go there to party and invite people. Parents should be there but are missing.

The rest was improvisation more or less. However, I made up parts of the story in chunks as things went along so there was always "a mystery to discover" despite the fact that everything was improvised on the spot.

Almost everything was only retroactively assigned a meaning. Lots of things happened without me deciding "why" but if the characters were intent on finding out I would have created an answer. For example, had Mandy been able to question Bubba on the "disco freak" thing she most certainly would have gotten a satisfactory answer. But as things stand, we will never know, we can only speculate.

This is in essence the philosophy of only decide on "the reason" when the players find out.

One good example was the incident with the hand you discovered in the freezer. Who's hand was it? I didn't know. (actually you got the sequence a little wrong here Nathan)

Then Chass walks out of the kitchen, knife in hand, and says "the wrong thing":
- "I wont hurt you! I swear!! Fred was an accident! Mandy! Stop running! This will all be over soon, I swear!"

That's when I decide Mandy trips over the body of Fred. And to make things better, he's missing his hand. It has director stance written all over it doesn't it? ;)

There was a lot of things we never found out like: What the HECK happened to Adam, why was he limping? Why did the whole place change? Why did Jimmy want to lure people over the wall? Was it maybe the real Jimmy who got over the wall but he was killed just like Chass later on? Why the heck does their eyes turn golden? What was the pot for?

And so on and so on.

In fact, nothing stops you from revisiting this story in the follow-up, set a few years later. That's the beauty of this style of stories.

Finally, thanks a lot to Chris and Nathan for playing, a lot of the enjoyment they actually made up themselves by acting out their characters.
I was a little surprised it ran so long but it might be the IRC thing (first time for me), we even skipped a lot of story and scenes in an attempt by me to finish it as quickly as possible.

Any comments on the pacing on the story, Nathan and Chris? I like to build up a "everything is just peachy and ordinary" at the start to make the contrast bigger (all that is mentioned in the rules by the way). Did you too feel that was a good thing?

Quote from: Pale Fire
Any comments on the pacing on the story, Nathan and Chris? I like to build up a "everything is just peachy and ordinary" at the start to make the contrast bigger (all that is mentioned in the rules by the way). Did you too feel that was a good thing?

I liked it a lot. I really enjoyed the beginning where we were just playing more or less "slice of life" with nothing freaky. Just knowing that it was likely to get scary, and the odd spooky clue (missing parents, cell phone in fridge) gave it some tension and a lot of flavor. When do we do the prequel / sequel? I Want To Believe!

;)

Well let me know when you people have time. Oh, and the ones of you that didn't play, you're welcome to show up to the sequel if you want to.

I enjoyed the game a great deal.  Most of the credit goes to Christoffer for his excellent GMing.  I knew going in that poor Charles Dovermyer was going to be toast.  What differed from my other horror gaming experiences was that at one point, very near the time of Charles's demise, I actually had hope that the poor kid just might get away.  

QuoteChass eventually tries to stop the bleeding using Nate's Dad's bathrobe belt.

Yeah.  So for the rest of the game whenever Chass had to run (which was very often) he looked like a knife-wielding streaker.

Well, that might have something to do with you both actually having a chance. Maybe next time you'll survive Chris ;)

Quote from: C. EdwardsI enjoyed the game a great deal.  Most of the credit goes to Christoffer for his excellent GMing.  I knew going in that poor Charles Dovermyer was going to be toast.  What differed from my other horror gaming experiences was that at one point, very near the time of Charles's demise, I actually had hope that the poor kid just might get away.  

Hah, I had a similar experience, but in reverse. (There was no way I was going to let the little slut escape! ;) At one point I had decided that Mandy was going to do the love-sick "I don't wanna live without you!" scene, and throw herself on the Chass-thing, accepting her fate. But Bubba, the cold voice of reason, swayed her squashed psyche towards escape. To quote Horror Master Yoda: "Then Matters Were Worse!"