Scott ran Project Lazarus, his Dead of Night scenario, at Concrete Cow. It's a good scenario. I won't spoil it for you by giving you too many details.

Scott started it very atmospherically: we started play immediately, before creating the characters, with Scott telling us we'd been walking for hours and there was a light ahead of us. (The mood was then rather ruined by a bloke who joined late and made jokes, but that's another story.)

There was a hint that Scott wanted deep personal horror: we'd invented a few personal details about our characters, which seemed likely to be incorporated. In the event, they weren't, and it quickly became an action movie: we painted our Church minibus black, armed ourselves and took out a military base. Lots of fun. Apparently, this happened last time he ran it, too.

I wasn't quite sure about gaining survival points by incorporating horror movie cliches. I had this doubt before, when I played an hour-long demo. It's hard to spot the cliches, so you end up asking for survival points: "Can I get one for assuming the high-school chemistry teacher could perform complex chemical analyses?". Also, of course, many cliches aren't within our agency as players (a killed creature coming back to life, for example). So I'm unsure how to make this rule effective.

I like giving Survival Points to incorporate things into the story. At one point, I gave one to ensure there was a zombie in the room I was about to enter.

It's the first time I've played a full game of Dead of Night. It's an interesting, very light system, and I'll run it at some point. I bought Scott's spare copy afterwards. We had that reverse negotiation over price that polite people do:

Graham: So, it's 12 pounds?
Scott: Sure, but it's old and battered. Give me 8.
Graham: I can't just give you eight. Ten?

The Church minibus played "Shine Jesus Shine" as it went along.

Graham