Kapcon in Wellington, New Zealand is shaping up to be good fun. For the first time, there will be a Games On Demand room, where people can pitch up and ask to play games from a huge range of indie and small press titles, facilities by enthusiastic, knowledgeable volunteers.
In addition to this, there will also be stuff getting run as part of the main games schedule. I'm planning to run a game of Cold City and (which is the main point of this thread) a game of Dead of Night. And the DoN game is...
"Dads Army vs. The Unspeakable Horror"
Yes, the guardians of Walmington on Sea come face to face with Cthulhu-esque horrors. Or are they simply German paratroopers in disguise? Who knows? Anyway, it seems like it will be a fun game and DoN is the ideal choice for doing it.
Couple of questions and a bit of opinion canvassing though:
In addition to getting benefits for using traditional horror movie cliches, I was planning on allowing players to use Dads Army and Lovecraftian cliches in addition to this. For example, having ARP Warden Hodges turn up and an awkward moment would be a good cliche, Mainwareing steadfastly refusing to believe what is happening and charging into the unknown and so forth. Insert appropriate HPL cliches here as well.
One thing that would need to be made clear is that this doesn't just involve uttering the characters catchphrases all the time. They have to be plot cliches that stem from the source material.
Thoughts on this? Is it, within the context of the DoN mechanics, a workable idea?
Secondly, tension. I'm trying to think of a way of making the tension element of the game even more palpable for the players. I had thought of flipcards with big numbers or a whiteboard, but that seems very clinical and not in keeping. To me anyway.
Suggestions on this point?
I'll doubtless be doing a playtest to see how the characters work out in play prior to the con, so I'll post about that as well in the future.
Cheers
Malc
It sounds like a splendid
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Fri, 12/10/2007 - 08:30.
It sounds like a splendid fit for Dead of Night! After all, you already have a mechanic in there to reward genre/show cliches with survival points. You can also throw in some of the catchphrases as very evocative specialisations (stupid boy, 7, for example).
When I next run DoN I plan on handling survival points and tension with counters. That way when a survival point is spent it goes straight into the tension pool in the centre of the table. You could use different coloured ones to add in temporary tension from gribbly things if you wanted too.
For tension, you could have
Submitted by Steve Dempsey on Fri, 12/10/2007 - 12:57.
For tension, you could have the bell of the local clock tower strike whatever number it has got up to. An MP3 would be best but a description would do.
Except sometimes the tension
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Fri, 12/10/2007 - 13:49.
Except sometimes the tension goes down (when the GM spends it) ... I guess that'd add to the weirdness if the time went backwards as well as forwards!
Thanks for the thoughts. For
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Sun, 14/10/2007 - 01:46.
Thanks for the thoughts.
For the tension meter, I'm tempted now to get a small blackboard and have some scribbles of stuff to do with infantry maneouvers, platoon rosters and so forth on it, with a big space to write the current tension in. Need to see if I can sort that out.
As an adjunct to this, I'm intending to actively promote the UK games that I have with me (DoN, Covenant, Best Friends, Mob Justice, Contenders, et al) as part of the Games on Demand room.
Cheers
Malc
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