I recently bought Little fears and I've told all my friends about it. Most of my friends want to try it. However, this gives me a problem. They are a few people who really want to play but who are, in my opinion, not able to play a child.

My first idea was to say no, but since I'm the only one owning the game, I want to give everyone a chance to try it, so I'll start running one-shot games.

I just want to know if any of you have any tips on how to make a game enjoyable when you're playing with dungeon crawlers.

Thank you very much.

Well, to be honest, I don't run games for players I don't think the games are suited for. For example, I have one friend who I will never run horror for (due to personal reasons) and another I will never run high fantasy/epic sci-fi for (due to wholly different, um, "personal" reasons). That being said...

If you're going to run one-shots with revolving groups, be careful of how you group the players together. This is something that not only applies to the tone/severity of the game but the character-investment/immersion* each person is willing to make.

LF actually _can_ be run as a dungeon crawl. Keep in mind that most "investigative horror" is just a dungeon crawl with a different suit on. It's pretty simple, actually: kid goes missing, PCs find a sock with a riddle sewn into it in kid's bedroom, PCs figure out the kidnapper is the Sock Monster, kids crawl through the dryer (where all socks go missing, duh) and into Closetland, kids use clues sewn into the sock (as well as other socks they find) and chase down the Sock Monster to the Laundry Room where Missing Kid is being held in The Hamper awaiting The Drying (an agonizing process which will turn him into a sock-craving Argyle Ghoul), PCs fight Sock Monster (finally defeating him by peeling socks off him and pairing them up), Sock Monster vows revenge before he *poofs* and there ya go. Dungeon Crawl a la Little Fears. It's light, it's mostly puzzlework and railroading (the stuff that crawls are made of), and I actually think it's pretty cool (I may just write that up).

This allows you, ideally, to then have a group you can experiment more with. Maybe make it darker, maybe make it a bit more oblique, what have you.

Does this help at all?


*Who are we kidding? LF is all about immersion. It's a terror game that, as written, needs immersion to be effective in its implied goals. Any shift in goals requires fudging on the system end. Feel free to discuss this elsewhere, however, if this interests you.

While I haven't tried this with Little Fears I have had great sucess doing this with other games. What I do is that I shock them. I took them from a pure d20 dungeon crawling environment and stuck them in a world of paranioa, fear, violence, and betrayal. Sla industires in case you were wondering. Anyway so they went from being these great world saveing heros, to people who spend most of thier time running in terror for thier lives. They enjoyed the change and they handled it quite well for the most part. Just be pacient and give them a chance to learn this new style of imersive roleplaying. It took us a few bumps but we got there. I found a helpful thing to do is after the game point out several of the good things the playters did and things they should focus more on or questions they should of asked and hints that they missed. Just make sure they understand what the subject matter is and go for it. The worse that can happen is that they think you are a freak, tie you to a stake in the yard and burn you. But I digress, I usualy have to deal with mostly d20 runoff who expect to hack and slash, they usualy pick up pretty quickly what I'm all about and they have some fun.