Greetings All!

Last night was the first playtest of A Haunted Night, a one page Japanese Horror inspired game.

I had a total of seven people participate in the playtest, making things a bit hectic as I was refereeing. Despite the larger than anticipated group playing, the testing went well and I was buoyed by the number of compliments on how fun the session was.

The Setup:

I had created three Victims and mapped out the abandoned school for the purposes of the playtest. The three victims are as follows:

[table]
[tr][td]Tashi[/td]        [td]Yoshi[/td]            [td]Narri[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Science: 4[/td] [td]Science: 4[/td] [td]Science: 2[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Faith: 3[/td]   [td]Faith: 2[/td]     [td]Faith: 2[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Supersition: 3[/td] [td]Superstition: 4[/td] [td]Superstition: 6[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Flight Score: 8[/td] [td]Flight Score: 8[/td] [td]Flight Score: 13[/td][/tr]
[/table]

These three represent a burgeoning gang on the looking for a hideout. These are older teenagers unaware that their world is about to get turned upside down.

When everyone playing had arrived Spirit creation started. Spirit creation took about thirty minutes (with player kibitzing). There were a few forgotten items as creation went on. Mostly it was the assigning scores to their Powers, and marking down the amount of starting Fear Points.

[table]
[tr][td]Kaiko (Mary)[/td] [td]Kyle Timber (Adam) - Security Guard[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Motivation: Justice [/td] [td]Motivation: Vengeance[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Powers: Telekinesis (3), Possession (4), Silence (3)[/td] [td]Power: Manifestation (3), Animation (3), Telekinesis (4)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Fear Points: 10[/td] [td]Fear Points: 10[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]Ran (Alyssa)[/td] [td]Yuriko (Mel)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Motivation: Vengeance[/td] [td]Motivation: Vengeance[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Powers: Illusion (4), Silence (2), Telekinesis (4)[/td] [td]Powers: Illusion (3), Telekinesis (3), Manifestation (4)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Fear Points: 10[/td] [td]Fear Points: 10[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]Sukune (Tyree)[/td] [td]Bernardo Lucci (Mike) - Opera Singer[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Motivation: Vengeance[/td] [td]Motivation: Message[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Powers: Manifestation (4), Illusion (4), Telekinesis (2)[/td] [td]Powers: Illusion (4), Manifestation (3), Animation (3)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Fear Points: 10[/td] [td]Fear Points: 10[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]Warren (Amy)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Motivation: Message[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Powers: Illusion (3), Telekinesis (3), Animation (4)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Fear Points: 10[/td][/tr]

[/table]

After creating their Spirits, my Players were allowed to view the map and room descriptions of the school before the game started.  Haunting the same building, gives the players the ability to be familiar with their surroundings.  Players were allowed to choose their beginning areas.  It is night, and the school is empty.  The night feels different, and the school starts to smell...of the living.  The locks on the doors are broken, and three young men barge into the school around midnight.

Playing It:

Everybody in this group execpt for Alyssa are fairly experienced roleplayers who have had a wide background of games played. So their 30 minute exposure to the rules did not prove to be a detriment. Prior to starting I made sure to check to see if there were any questions on the mechanics and anything about the game in general. There were none. After that we jumped into it.

Things moved swiftly. Sukune opened things up after the Victims had entered the school with an attempt at an auditory illusion. Unfortunately for him, he did not roll very well and the Victims ignored the unusual sounds. The three Victims then moved into the science room of the school where Warren had the door they left standing open creakily shut behind them (via Telekensis) followed quickly by a Bunsen burner light up and freaking them out a little. After putting out the burner, the three continued to explore and they find the supply room attached to the science room where in Sukune again attempts the auditory illusion, with a bit better of a success this time. At this point, the three are starting to get a little creped out and head for the science room door.

Only to have Kyle Timber waiting for them. As Yoshi goes to open it, Kyle locks it. Yoshi struggles with it, trying to get it open for a several seconds only to have Kyle flip the lock back sending all three Victims (the other two had been standing behind Yoshi egging him on to get the door open) flat on their backs and kicking at Yoshi to get off of them.

Out in the hall way Sukune gets to both Tashi and Yoshi with another auditory illusion as Narri shows his superstitious streak by taking out a cross and rubbing it for good luck.

Kaiko decides to start to get in on the fun and Possess the hapless Narri. While in her possession, she has him say "Perhaps this is showing us that we need to leave our life of crime" in a high-pitched 12 year-old girls voice. She releases Narri.

Kyle manifests into a physical form of a gruesomely dead security guard behind the three Victims, while Ran creates a visual Illusion of a small child eight or nine years-old running down the hallway past the boys. The running, of course, leads them to look directly at Kyle's manifestation (The first cooperation between the Spirits of the night!). The three boys stare, shocked as they see the security guard.  "Repentance won't save you boys" says Kyle.  The three boys scream at once and start running down the hallway. They are running back towards the front doors, and hit the first open door, which happens to be almost directly across the hall from their current position, and into the Art room.

Tashi: Grabs Yoshi by the collar, "We have to leave, this isn't right, this place is not as empty as we thought it was!"  Persuasion roll fails, Yoshi backhands Tashi across the face.

Yukiko manifests as a small japanese girl in with long black hair in a white gown with a. None of them are able to resist the manifestation with their Faith. Tashi points at the manifestation. The girl moves towards them, arms outstretched. Tashi falls to the floor crying. The other two boys head for the door, trying to unlock it. They slam the door into Tashi several times and giving him a gash on his head while trying to get him to move out of the way off the door. They run out into the hallway and Yoshi and Narri head for the next open doorway the Music room, slamming and locking the door behind them again.

Bernardo creates an illusion of a different room. Both of the boys are freaked as they see an expansive music hall instead of a school music room. There is an Opera playing faintly from the back of the room and the volume slowly increases as they step into the room. They start to catch their breath, taking in the room as the music builds to a crecendo until it is almost too loud to listen to.  As the music builds, the room begins to shrink in on them. Yoshi wets himself screaming that Tashi was right. He leaves the room, leaving Narri behind.

Yoshi is now alone in the hallway.

Yukiko creates an illusion of the hallway on fire.

Ran manifests as a small child again running through the hallway, laughing loudly.

Kyle slams any open doors in the hallway, loudly.  Glass shatters in the doors

Big time Cooperation bonus for the three of them as Yoshi faints in the hallway.

(Reminder that Yoshi's unconcious body will not be able to do anything he could not normally) as Kaiko possesses Yoshi's unconcious body.

Tashi has come to his senses after having gibbered while on the floor for a while and crawls to the open door  sees and open art-room door. Looking out into the hallway, Tashi sees that the Women's restroom door is wide open, and scrabbles in as blood continues pours down his face from the gashes received from the door-head interaction.

Sukune creates an illusion of a warm, friendly, inviting light from under one of the stall doors. Tashi crawls towards the light, and reaches for the door as it opens for him.  The light is coming from the open holes in Sukune's manifested body.  She has no legs, just dripping organs. Tashi tries to jump up to leave, but lands on his butt.

The music in the music room has built to become so loud, that it now just sounds like a single thumping heart beat.  A stream of paper, musical notes moves around the room and centers around Narri in a tornado fashion.  Narri grabs his cross, reciting prayers.  By spending FP to reroll, Bernardo is still not able to horrify Narri.  Narri focuses on his prayers, and the papers of musical scores swirl closer to cut him as it flies by.

Kaiko takes Yoshi unconcious body to the fire hose, breaking the glass and drags the fire hose through the hallway.

Sukune creates an Illusion against Tashi as he scrambles to leave the bathroom. He sees both sinks in the bathroom spray foul-smelling blood from the faucets. Tashi is focused enough to escape the bathroom, and he runs back into the Science room.  He looks around and seems relieved that nothing is happening in the room.  He gibbers as he crawls under one of the desks.  "Nothing can get me here."

The desk and Tashi's jacket are flung away from him by Warren. He denies the sounds of things being moved around him.  As his jacket is removed he looks up in terror and sees another bunsen burner light up and fly around the room spelling out a message. The fire spells "It was Narri" (FP returned is doubled due to message motivation). 

Kaiko uses Yoshi to herd Narri with the water from the fire hose.  He is caught up in the Illusion and is pushed out in the hallway by the water, which he denies the wetness from the hose.  Narri is alone in the hallway.  Yoshi is still in the hallway, but is beginning to wake up, however still possessed.

The paper is still flying after Narri and cutting him with as Narri sees Yoshi, but as the little girl.

Yukiko and Ran have moved into the hallway.

Yoshi is confused as to why he is still holding the fire hose and throws it to the floor.  He tries to run for it.  Kaiko uses Telekinesis to throw music stands at the fleeing Yoshi and Bernardo allows them into the Illusion. Yoshi runs down the hallway.

FP spent to control Yoshi's actions as he runs into an empty classroom that has not been visited and he dives under a desk (Kyle). 

Science room, Yukiko uses scapels in the Science room to hurt Tashi.  Tashi is killed as the scapels stab into him.  Tashi dies, and FP  is doubled for Vengeance to Yukiko.

Warren takes a burning bunsen burner towards Yoshi.  Kyle remanifests and walks over to Yoshi "Are you alright?"  Yoshi hopes that it is a friendly person and falls for the trick.  He looks up to see an attractive, early 20s police officer next to him.  "Everythings alright, you just need to come with me".  The officer guides him into the Janitor's Closet in the hallway.  Sukune watches on.  Kyle closes the door behind them and changes back into his default state.  Sekune uses her holey hands to cover his eyes, Kyle, "Peekaboo" a very successful double haunt means that Yoshi is frightened.  Kyle handcuffs Yoshi's hands to Sukune's as Yoshi is trying to push her hands away.  Yoshi tries to unlock the door, taking Sukune's hands with him.

Yukiko hands a scapel through the door (3 FP spent), but Sukune makes sure that Yoshi takes the bleach instead.  Yoshi is dead.

Narri's HM has reset and Bernardo releases the Illusion, aware that Narri is no longer in the music room.

Ran manifests as Yoshi and gestures for him to follow Yoshi into an open room.  Narri runs into the room.  The room looks lived in, as though someone has taken up residence in that room of the school (Illusion).  Narri shakes off the Illusion at first, but as he steps into the room, the Illusion takes over.  Narri seems relieved that the room looks normal.  He takes a drink of the poisoned water that killed the earlier resident of the room.  Narri is dead.

Warren leaves a message on Narri's dead body for whoever finds the body.

Game Over.

My Thoughts:

Things went amazingly well for such a large group. I was only planning on three or four players which is why there so few Victims and why their Flight Scores were as low as they were. Everyone reported that they had a good time and enjoyed the concept and play. In looking back at it I have two things I want to see if I can improve.

• Playing order. Seven people was pretty chaotic and I found myself having to worry about making sure that everyone got enough playtime and being "fair" to spread the fun about. No one complained that they did not get enough time with the Victims, but it still is a concern I want to address.
• Motivations were used, but not quite in the way I was expecting. I need to think about how to address the Vengeance vs Message vs Justice playability. Vengeance is very easy to achieve, while Message is a bit harder, and Justice was almost impossible to do with this particular test run.

I had one player, Mike (who was the Bernardo Lucci Spirit) point out that a very competitive player could wait until they knew that a Victim's Horror Meter was nearing the Flight Score before acting and thus get the most amount of Fear Points back with the least amount of effort. Likewise, a couple of the players pointed out that they had copious amounts of FP from the various frights they had done. Suggestions about increasing the costs of affecting more than one Victim and possibly returning the FP from only the Horror Meter of the Victim who has the most in a group instead of every Victim in a group could balance that out some. Along those same lines, I could introduce a fourth use of FP for late game where the Spirits can temporarily increase their Power's score (and therefore the number of dice in their attempts) for FP.

Further testing needs to be done.

As an obviously biased observer for this session (being the wife of the MP) and the person taking the notes for the session, I still have to say things went really well for this group.  The largest drawback for this particular session was the amount of people that showed up.  It was planned for a group of about four, including the GM, but ended up much larger than that. 

As a coda to MP's final thoughts, I have to say that the biggest thing that needs improvement is the order of play, when there's a large group involved.  It's hard to quash people's ideas as they speak up in this format though, especially when they're so obviously into the idea of the game, the genre and the story itself.  But, there needs to be some sort of idea that helps the GM decide and the players determine when who, does what - without creating an overcomplicated Initiative mechanic.

The best thing about the session was the genre itself.  Without knowing it, MP created a system in a genre that the players were deeply interested in, in one way or another.  This definitely helped people keep on task in a group that is well versed in mid-game kibitzing.