I ran my first playtest of The Final Girl, my "pick them off one by one" horror movie game with Judd (of Paka fame), my college buddy Chris, and my special ladyfriend, Ellen. I'm not sure how to discuss the game in terms of the problems I ran into playtesting without vomiting up the whole of the rules, but I'll try to stick with what's relevant.

First, the part that really hummed. In this game, while there is one player who is the monster on any given turn, other players can play cards to help you or hinder you in an encounter with the monster where the monster might kill you. Judd in particular really hated a character I was playing and got way into slapping down cards to ensure that my character was disemboweled. I, on the other hand, tried to subtly emphasize my character's hateability. Anyways, the scenes where the monster was rampaging and killing people hummed pretty well. So for a first playtest, the central type of scene that the game hangs on going well is a good sign.

I got mixed reviews on what I called characterization scenes. See, at the game's beginning you create a huge cast of characters, then you do a series of scenes (one for each player) where you play different characters and set up their relationships with one another. This determines who the players actually give a crap about and also sets up your characters stats (the only thing on a character sheet of numerical value is their relationships). I tried to come at this from a PTA angle and say that the scenes should be about something and players should have a conflict in mind, but since this is the early game and stats aren't established yet, the conflicts were ho-hum. Judd thought this part of the game dragged. I thought it was okay but definitely not as good as the monster scenes. Ellen told me later that she liked them a lot. It could be something that I just need to figure out how to run better. I think once I start pushing the idea that establishing relationships gives you cards and lets you affect conflicts, people will jump in more. So I'm going to try to emphasize that, and step in more and push conflicts. I'm also trying to figure out a way to maybe spread out the characterization scenes and the "killer" scenes where there's running and screaming and gore. I was thinking maybe every scene is a characterization scene, and you draw a card and if it's a red card it turns into a killer scene at the end to keep things uncertain and kind of tense. I'm not sure.

The part of the game that was really rocky is endgame. This game has an endgame and I wanted it to emulate "The end... OR IS IT?" tropes. So in the end you have two or three survivors and the final confrontation with the monster or slasher or whatever. Now, my original idea was that the characters beat the monster automatically, and then there's this really random card draw to determine who has narrative rights to determine how things play out. Now, the way I did it, basically everyone draws a card, high card narrates, was not satisfying for anyone involved and kind of just didn't do it. Judd said, rightfully, that we spend the game building up these relationships and this cemetary of characters we cared about and the endgame should tie into that. What I want the endgame to produce is a horror movie ending. I want it to be a bid on determine who sets up "the final shot." You know, the one where survivor gets taken away by the ambulance and then the camera pans over to where the slasher's body was and we see -gasp- he's gone. This is where I'm struggling.

Thoughts would be appreciated. Questions would also be appreciated since I realize this post is messy and I probably didn't do the best job explaining the system.

Hi Bret,

High-mortality, multi-player-character horror/gore flick game design has a long history at the Forge. Human Wreckage, Dead Meat, Phantasm - all good ideas, often playtested to states which warrant full publishing this is a lot like one of the earliest playtest games at the Forge, Human Wreckage. Other games that developed similar ideas include SQUEAM and Dead Meat.

Dead Meat should still be available for download, although my link for it isn't current, so I'll ask. I recommend playing it! Here's the old playtest review too.
Old playtest review of Human Wreckage - I don't think it's available any more.
Phantasm: competitive horror role-playing - a good idea from Mike Mearls
Horror games (a few interesting ideas and review)

There are lots of other related threads, including stuff in the inactive Gilded Moose Games and Destroy All Games forums. It'd be quite a job to compile it all, although I suppose someone should.

Best, Ron

Well duh, I finally looked in the first place I should have looked, the Free RPG Page that ended up hosted by John Kim: Dead Meat.

Hey Bret,

An important take-away from having playtested Jason Walters' slasher film RPG You Brought This On Yourself is that it's not fun to create characters, and then to have your creations largely divorced from your subsequent control and destroyed to no creative purpose. See my feedback to Jason after #25 here:

http://www.ashcanfront.net/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=55&page=1#Item_0

If you want to un-block your thinking on The Final Girl, I recommend getting your hands on a copy of the You Brought This On Yourself ashcan, trying to play it, and then reading my feedback threads on The Ashcan Front forums. And I recommend playing Graham Walmsley's not-yet-published A Need To Kill, if Graham is willing to share it at this stage.

Paul

Bret, I've been thinking about this stuff a great deal in the context of my game Geiger Counter.  It started life as an Afraid hack built to do slasher movies and Aliens, but then became it's own thing. Now it's available in a beta draft after going through a year and a half of development. Do you have a draft or outline of your game up somewhere I can read and comment on?  I would be interested to see how you're approaching various issues that nearly all these games have in common.

In the spirit of not being helpfully demoralizing, here's a thought - if the "or IS it?" ending is something you really want to include and savor, why not start the game with it rather than end with it.  The ambulance is pulling away, there's been a terrible crime, and we see this in flashback before beginning the game for real.  The traumatized survivors return to normal - briefly.  This is obviously a trope in every horror sequel ever, but it works to excellent effect in films like My Bloody Valentine out of the gate cold.

Ron, thanks for all the information on other works that looked at the same idea. I've read them all and I'm moving into a rewrite of the rules and I have some good ideas from this thread and conversations elsewhere.

Paul, I tried to find that ashcan but couldn't. I'll keep your advice in mind. At this point it was pretty fun for everyone involved to kill or have killed our characters, and sometimes we felt kind of bad about it because we liked them, but there wasn't a point where I feel like what you're describing occurred. Still, you got me thinking that at perhaps rather the controlling player of a character rather than the monster should kill a character when their time is up.

Jonathan, write now I have a bunch of scribbled notes. I'm going to do a rewrite soon and I'll let you know when its done. I'll try to make this version more easily parsed by someone not me.

Jason, I'm considering it. I mean, I want the game to end with a big bang. Right now I'm considering there being a number of questions that can be answered by the highest bidder (what happens to the monster, what happens to the survivors, what's the final shot) etc. I'm not sure if that'll work or not but I'm coming up on playtest round 2 so we'll see.

Hey Bret,

It's definitely worth making the effort to find a copy for its insights into the slasher genre. It's as meticulously academically researched on the tropes and themes of the genre as a GURPS sourcebook. I know Alexander Newman has a copy. Perhaps he's willing to part with it. I bet Brennan Taylor also has a copy. Or let me know and I can get you Jason's email address.

Paul