So, on one of my many plane/train rides recently, I had a thought for Dead of Night, something that could be put up on the Steampower website as a quick and easy downloadable resource. Partly inspired by the Sorceror one-sheets, part by my own activities of wandering round abandoned mental asylums, I give you the fright sheet.

In essence, it's a single page designed to provide the core idea for a DoN game, most likely a single session. They would be quick to create and so forth. So, what would they contain?

Background

What's the place, what is it like?

Rumours

What kind of tales, myths and gossip surround this place?

Cliches

What kind of cliches are appropriate to the location?

Monster

Whats the horror that is really there?

Example

Gartwood Royal Hospital

Background

From day one, Gartwood had a sinister reputation. Opened as a lunatic asylum in 1906, the buildings sprawl across a few acres of ground, shrouded by woods and gently rolling hills. The faux-gothic main building spreads it's wings like a bat, while the smaller subsidiary wards and outbuildings cluster round in gloomy little huddles.

A little branch line turned off from the main railway nearby, allowing patient, doctors and visitors to catch the special trains that brought them right to the door of the asylum. With growing car ownership, the line was torn up decades ago and now the track bed lies overgrown with brambles and nettles, the little station falling slowly into decay.

Gartwood was meant to be a place where patient were treat with dignity and respect, but overcrowding starting in the 1920's, a lack of sufficiently trained staff and apathy on the part of the authorities made it a dank, ill-regarded place.

The hospital was finally closed in 1999, with the last handful of patients sent to other hospitals or into community care. The buildings themselves are boarded up, with a small security patrol doing regular rounds in a little white van. That's not to say that the grounds are closed, dog walkers regular exercise their pets in the overgrown spaces of the former hospital grounds. But only the foolhardy or adventuresome venture there at night....

Rumours

There are tunnels under the grounds that link up all of the buildings. They were used to take patients from building to building and were, at times, used to house patients when all the wards became grossly overcrowded.

The railway saw a weekly 'death train' leave the asylum, taking the bodies of the recently deceased to the nearest large hospital for autopsy or cremation.

Patients have been coming back to Gartwood since it closed down in 1999. Some have become so institutionalised that they can live nowhere else.

The police have secretly covered up the fact that people have been killed attempting to explore Gartwood.

The old furnace contains skulls and bones.

The are locked safes in the old admin section that contain money and valuable taken from patients.

Monster

A former patient who stalks the buildings and grounds, where he kidnaps and tortures a select few victims. He/she has never been caught. Maybe he/she is actually the security guard?

Cliches

Corridors are always much longer than expected when you are running away.

The final door is always locked.

The padded cell will lock if you go in.

Someone will definitely manifest previously unknown mental problems.

So, that's kind of what I was thinking of. Suggestion, addition, further development is always welcome.

Thanks
Malc