RPG Story Teller question

[Mr Mystery]

How do?

Dunno about you, but I effing love pen and paper 'get your nerds round the table' role play, especially if it's a big old slice of White Wolf Mortals.

And I'm currently watching a horror film, the name of which shall remain nameless for now, because I'm really rather enjoying it, so wish to avoid spoilers.

In short, it's looking like a human infecting variant of that fungus wot make ants zombies. And feeling a tingle of inspiration, I'm wondering if anyone has managed to successfully run a body snatchers/mind snatchers type game, where any of the player characters could become infected in a myriad of different ways.

The paranoia seems easy enough, but as many, many terrible attempts to ape The Thing, Body Snatchers etc have shown is that it's even easier to get it wrong. And I'd love any pointers on how to get my peeps properly watching their back and, if I really get it right, at each other's throats.

Any pointers etc very welcome!

[Rissan4ever]

Let's start with the infection. The method by which it spreads should be uncommon enough to avoid if you're super careful, but also common enough that they PCs will at some point have to endanger themselves to accomplish a task.

The infection itself should be detectable in some way, so the players don't feel completely powerless. But, that detectability has to have a level of uncertainty to it. Either the detection method is very difficult, requires special materials that are hard to obtain, or it has a high probability of producing a false positive.

You can also meta-game mess with the players' heads by telling them at the start of the game that one of them is infected, then take each of them aside and inform them that their character is definitely not infected. You'll have them guessing the whole time, even though none of them are actually the traitor.

[YorkNecromancer]

If you have enough players, actually get one of them to play an infected right from the start.

I was recently inspired by the 'Hannibal' TV show - so, a World of Darkness police procedural game (no supernatural stuff or magic at all - just the real world using WoD rules) and the players are told to design a CSI-style FBI team, working together to catch a killer.

What none of them knows is that one of the players and I have already talked it through, and they're the killer the rest of the team is hunting. I'm not really planning the game; I just implement the killer's plans and run sessions based on that.

Either that, or you can occasionally run sessions where the characters are in a mental institution without telling them why; build up to a reveal that there is no infection - the games where they're fighting it are all a grand shared psychosis.

Then have the reveal that the institution is the psychosis, and that shared hallucinations are a side-effect of infection.

Then see if they feel safe.

[lobster-overlord]

I ran a Star Wars game 20 years ago (wow, 20, this summer) where several of the characters were succumbing to the Dark Side over the course of the campaign. I incentivized it for them, by giving more character points for how well they played it.

The ultimate end of was a full on conversion of one character to the Dark Side and the final battle was between the two players and not against an NPC.

The better they played their individual part, the more skills they got, the better (or worse) they became and that played very well into their desires to become the central character. Gamer meta-egos played into it, but it worked.

John M.

[YorkNecromancer]

There's also the old meta-gaming trick of using colours.

So, start the game explaining that none of your players can use red dice. Then, every now and then, ask them to roll a red one without telling them why, then make a little note of the result. If they ask what's going on, respond 'there's no significance to the red dice'.

Then, watch them squirm as they try and work out what's going on, and get increasingly terrified of the red dice, which have a worrying preponderance of coming out whenever the infiltrators are nearby.

An alternative meta-game idea is to have a stack of poker chips in easy reach of all players. Most should be white, some should be red, and the last one should be black. Make a big show of assembling it, as well as being thankful it didn't fall down - because if it topples, 'something terrible' will happen to their characters - but don't tell them why the stack is there.

When one of them takes a white chip, whatever action they do either automatically succeeds, or else gets an ABSURD bonus. In WoD, a system where you're normally rolling about four dice, I always used to give them an extra ten. So the roll succeeds massively. The chip then goes in the discard pile.

Suddenly the white chips are appealing

Every now and then, ask a player to take a white chip for some menial roll, but don't say why they have to. 'There is no significance to you being forced to take a chip'.

Suddenly, there's a story to the chips and a pattern; are the players receiving help from some outside agency?

... But what about the red ones? If you've done your work with the dice, then red has become a Bad Colour. So, whenever a player takes a red chip, give them all the super levels of dice, but now they're forced to take the red chip and hold onto it for the rest of the night.

'There is no significance to you having that chip'.

Of course, every now and then, you ask people to remind you how many red chips they have, and laugh menacingly when it's more than one. Strenously deny your evil laugh has any significance.

And remind them now and then to be very, very careful when removing chips. If the tower falls, simply shake your head, clear all the chips away, and go 'Oh dear...' in a dead monotone.

What happens when they reach the black chip at the bottom is, of course, entirely up to you. By that stage, they should hopefully be so scared of the chip tower, Mission Freak Out All The Players should be well and truly accomplished.

[Mr Mystery]

Oooh, I'm liking the red dice idea.

Also toying with the concept of a host-jumping parasite, be it possession or something more medical in nature.

Could have a lot of fun if the whatever-it-is has some kind of psychic potential....it could sit in Person A's head, but transmit thoughts into Person B - Person's C and D may notice B is acting oddly, but not A.....

And because I've always wanted to, I'm halfway tempted to have a secret second group - who in terms of Resi Evil, would be Wesker and Co. Done well, that could be a lot of fun

Totes gonna set it on the Lahndhan Andergrahnd though. Familiar, yet claustrophobic. And who knows what lurks in the tunnels, or who really built them.....

[YorkNecromancer]

Don't set it purely on the underground. In fact, probably best to start on the surface - keep things as normal and real as possible, so there's a contrast. Have an initial trip to the underground which plays like a slasher film - the characters are just completely outclassed by whatever's down there, end up captured and about to be killed, and when they wake up, they're at home and the villain tells each of them 'Stay out of the underground' before handing them a cup of tea and walking away. Make it very clear to them: surface = safety, underground = death.

Then, as you slowly build up that they're definitely going to have to go back there, you can really ramp up the horror of that.

Familiarity breed comfort, and the moment the tunnels become a place the players want to be, you've lost. They should never feel safe there.

You might also consider the 'Doctor Who' RPG's combat system if you're more into horror; it's a really good one. Essentially it replicates the structure of a 'Doctor Who' narrative, so inititative isn't a question of reaction times, but narrative: talking always goes first, then running away, then actions and only then attacks. It means that there's a huge disincentive to fight, which is entirely appropriate since 'Doctor Who' isn't - and has never been - about combat.

The damage system is excellent as well. Human guns do levels of damage from sort of one to ten; alien guns do damage that's 'L' for lethal. Basically, if a Dalek hits you, you instantly die, all armour ignored.

Because that what happens in 'Who': aliens are utterly deadly, and human simply can't survive a shot.

As a result, there's a real disincentive to violence, which makes every combat encounter legitimately terrifying, but without the crappy 'better get my next character' syndrome that characterises something like 'Call of Cthulhu'. After all, every character death pulls players out of their suspension of disbelief and multiple character deaths turn the game into a comedy. 'Who' has, for me at least, really hit the horror-game sweet spot, where your characters are in real, serious danger, but they'll usually only die as a result of mistakes/poor judgement, not crappy dice rolls or poor game design.

For me, the golden rule is: if you're running a horror game, you want them scared, not fighting, because fighting is a way to exercise control of the game environment, and horror should always leave you feeling physically powerless. You 'win' horror with your wits, not your fists.

As for the host jumper idea, you might want to watch the Denzel Washington film 'Fallen' if you haven't already. That's a film which really looks at how impotent humans are against something that can body swap.

[Mr Mystery]

Oh absolutely.

The 'combat' character is there to look hench - otherwise they tend to dominate, nevermind that the Talky/Cerebral characters could have gabbed their way round the situation entirely.

[YorkNecromancer]

Combat characters are easy to deal with; you just throw them into situations that they can't solve through combat - ones that, if they use combat, end with them in far more trouble than if they hadn't.

If it's set in the real world, that's normally really easy. Just enact real-world consequences, and most combat characters end up in prison unless they're really, really smart.