Re: [HoE] One small complaint.... (SHANE)

["Steven Nelson" <sdnelson@advancenet.net>]

There has been much mention of losing the "gritty survival element" or of
the game flavor becoming too campy and not deadly enough or serious enough.
If you study horror movies you will find that in the best of the horror
movies there are moments of relief or humor, this helps set the horror
feeling.  If you set a mood and do nothing but create grim scary settings
eventually you will de-sensitize your players to the element of horror.  But
if you intersperse some light comedy or moments of relief then you make the
elements of horror that much more horrible!

For instance, I had the other players and the marshal in my Deadlands group
be my playtesters for a game I ran at a local convention (where I totally
ripped off a Troma movie by the way... if I ever get that written up I will
submit it to a HoE page...)  and I had the characters walking along some
country roads on nice beautiful days in the serenity of the wilderness with
blue skies and big white fluffy clouds, and I had them spend the night at a
farmhouse, where the hardworking farmer and his polite family had been
self-sufficient since the war.  They had a hearty dinner and a good night's
sleep in the barn... Meanwhile one of the players kept saying, "OK... after
nightfall these people turn into freaks or something..." but in the morning
they shared breakfast and the characters helped out with chores on the farm
then set about on the road again.  When I started describing what a
beautiful day it was one of the players started saying, "What's up here?
There's something really wrong here" and so on.  I think that when the
actual grim stuff started happening it was so much more grim because of the
backdrop of normality it was set in.  I also threw in a comic relief NPC
midway through the adventure that had the potential to be a problem in the
finale (he was at the playtesting, but not at the game at the con...)

And for your information the final scene was capable of claiming at least
one character's life and did so consistently (though I fudged at the
playtesting as it was the first swing taken at this character and would have
beheaded him...)  If you want your game to be deadly, then by all means,
crank it up a couple notches.  Remember being killed by a slavering beast
and being killed by a killer tomato still both result in the character being
dead!  Just remember, some players don't like games where they spend more
time generating characters than playing them.  So make sure your players are
kosher with this type of thing.

Now pretty much the same people who playtested that adventure are going to
be playing in the HoE campaign that I'm starting.  I have taken the
opportunity to tell people that I am going to be running this in a manner
that is more deadly than they might be used to.  I said that I won't be
setting out to kill characters, but that I will not have mercy either.  If
the dice say death then I won't contradict them except in extreme
circumstances.  And I plan to run my games pretty much the same way I ran
the game at the con.  The world will be a grim place, but there will be
places where it hasn't all gone downhill, where some glimmer of hope still
remains for mankind... and that humans haven't lost the ability to laugh...
it's just harder to do when a wormling is swallowing your head.

Peace, outta here!

Steve Nelson
sdnelson@advancenet.net

P.S. Not to mention the fact that my Deadlands character is scared out of
his wits in our campaign right now, and the session before all our
characters were laughing and picking on one another and stuff, next thing
we're in a heap of nastiness and waiting for the other shoe to drop... and
it would figure that it's a John Goff adventure too...  I can't wait to put
my players through the Killer Clowns... and I don't even know what it is...
hhehe....  (I just hope it won't conflict with Paggliaci the syker I just
created for a one-off game...)


-----Original Message-----
From: GMPrime@aol.com <GMPrime@aol.com>
To: hoe@gamerz.net <hoe@gamerz.net>
Date: Thursday, March 04, 1999 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: [HoE] One small complaint.... (SHANE)


><>
>
>I haven't got that feeling yet, but it's entirely possible that I might get
>it. When I first started to collect/play RIFTS about five years ago I was
>under the impression that life was one tough bastard. As the world books
keep
>coming out my opinion changed and I realized that the gritty survival
element
>had been thrown out. There were freakin sport leagues between various city-
>states for pete's sake! :-)
>
>Just my two pennies....
>GM Prime
>
>PS: Hey, a Hell on Earth sourcebook for New Jersey would be perfect! I live
in
>NJ and I must admit it's a lot like hell. Toxic waste included! :-) Toxic
>Avenger anyone? J/K
>
>
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