The Vault (2017, dir Dan Bush)

This is going to be the last post for the year, and I want to round off 2017 by taking a failed idea and playing with it: The Vault, a recent horror release. A desperate band of robbers try to take millions from what ought to be an easy target, only to discover that this vault is the last one they ought to have broken into.

It's not good. It's not truly awful either, though that's mainly down to the three leads. Taryn Manning's good as the crazed, strung-out robber, Francesca Eastwood keeps the plot moving forward as the clued-in, grounded one, and James Franco as the bank manager with a secret is the rock holding all this together.

There are several problems here. The first is the plot, which is bloody awful from about the midway point onwards. If you can't guess what's going to happen next, you haven't seen many horror films since, say, 1970. It explains too much, which is a ridiculous mistake to make. Even the music conspires against it, being the same collection of bland, obvious TA-DAAH! horror stings you can buy for $0.99 from a sound effects collection.  The only standout is Crimson and Clover, a 1968 single, and I couldn't tell you why it's there.

Well, maybe I can. While looking up this song's Wiki entry I notice that it's also featured on the Bates Motel series, Sons of Anarchy, In Plain Sight, crime drama Blood Ties (which went to Cannes), and a few other 2000-era film & television references. I suspect it's become one of those go-to songs that sound editors desperate for something vaguely spooky and evocative reach for. I'm guessing it's cheap, too.

I fell asleep sporadically for the last 40-odd minutes of the film, which meant I stopped keeping track of who was doing what to whom - not that it mattered much. It was obvious who was going to live to see the final reel and who was not.

I knew absolutely nothing about this film before deciding to see it, not even the trailer. However the puff line accompanying the Netflix entry reminded me of a much better film, R-Point, a K-horror war movie in which an army unit is sent to rescue a group of soldiers lost behind enemy lines, only to find that very little is as it seems.

It's the phone message that caught me. R-Point starts when the Korean top brass hears a radio SOS, from soldiers who've been dead for months - or are they? Whereas in The Vault everything goes to hell for the robbers when someone calls the police, again and again and again - but who is it?

Kim Newman, in his review for Empire, says that The Vault is 'too timid to go all-out weird,' which definitely is not R-Point's problem. That one's weird almost from the get-go. If you're looking for a horror film to round out your year, R-Point is the one I'd heartily recommend.

However I started this by saying I wanted to play with The Vault, so with that in mind, let's start playing. Assume this is a one-shot, say for Fear Itself. What happens next?

There are some things The Vault gets very right. One is anchoring the nasty in a particular mismatched time period, in this case the 1980s. There aren't many 2017-period tags until about ten minutes in, and everything looked suitably pastel and old-fashioned, so at the start I was almost convinced the film was set in the 1980s. That allows a Keeper to start laying pipe with period-specific material. If ever you're going to use music in the background, now's the time. If the session is set in the 2000s, the players are going to get freaked if all they get on the radio or TV is period material. You can swipe old radio stings and other audio from YouTube and similar places, but the key here is to keep it subtle at first, with something that might not be noticed - like one of those radio stings. Then hit them with something obviously out of place later.

The players, in a one-off, can be a mix of robbers and hostages. This is one of those hotbeds of suspicion concepts that's crying out for a Trust mechanic of some kind, which is the one thing Fear Itself lacks, but it shouldn't be difficult to import one from another source - say, Night's Black Agents.

In R-Point, one of the earliest scares comes when the platoon takes a photo of the group early on, only to discover later that one of the people in that photo wasn't really there at all. That's what you should be aiming for with this scenario seed. Imagine what it would be like to go into the vault with a five-person crew, only to discover later that there were only four of you all along. At least one of the team ought to be on the Enemy's side, but what that means exactly is up to the Keeper. Has this person been suborned, or were they always this way?

With all that in mind, let's have a scenario seed:

This bank is being robbed. Armed thieves have locked the place down, taken the customers and tellers hostage, and are making their way to the vault. Except there isn't any money there, and the cops are closing in ...

1) The Bank never existed in the first place. There was a Bank in that location back in 1983, but during a botched robbery someone set off an explosion that took out everyone inside, and the building's been vacant ever since. Only the most desperate homeless live in that eerie, bombed-out structure. The robbers are from out of town, which is why they don't know that - or at least, most of them don't know that, though their man on the inside might. Once inside, the robbers can't leave; the only way out is through the vault, but it's anyone's guess as to where that door leads.

2) The Bank's vault safeguards something incredibly dangerous, like the Devil, or impossibly valuable, like a jar with someone's soul in it. One of the robbers knows this, and has persuaded the others to help him get in there. What the other robbers and bank staff don't appreciate is, the closer the robbers get to their goal, the more elaborate and deadly the defenses become. Doors become hungry mouths, electrical cords reach out and strangle, and the wall of Most Valuable Employee pictures just gets longer and longer with each death.

3) The security cameras see everything, everywhere, and record every move. Some of the footage is from the 1980s, some from the 1990s, some from the 2000s - but that doesn't matter. Some is from a bank in San Francisco, some from San Antonio, and some from Paris, France - but that doesn't matter. This is an amalgam of robberies, faithfully recorded by all the cameras, and the feed is playing into the Security Room, where it's all spliced together. Who is in that room? Why are these five robbers and a handful of customers and tellers trapped here, and how will it end?

That's it for 2017. See you soon!

Not Quite Review Corner: The Dracula Dossier (Night's Black Agents)

I backed this Kickstarter to physical copy level, but the copies have yet to arrive, so this review is based on the .pdfs alone.

If Ken Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan are, at this moment, incarcerated in rooms with very soft furnishings, and only given crayons to write with, the Dracula Dossier is the cause. This improvisational Night's Black Agents campaign setting, complete with the unredacted print copy of Stoker's first edition Dracula and a massive Director's Handbook, is beyond huge. It's one thing to write up Stoker's Dracula with little 'Dracula's a great big meanie' notes in the margins; after all, Stoker's done the heavy lifting there. It's something else altogether to take that text, all those marginal notes, and a hundred other things besides, turning it all into a 364-page document complete with supporting characters, locations, rival agencies, and Dracula's many possible conspyramids and plots. I'll give you my conclusion right up front: if you have any interest in the Night's Black Agents setting whatsoever, this is a must-buy.

The unredacted copy of Stoker's Dracula is as complete as any vampire aficionado could wish for. By complete, I mean it includes absolutely everything, including appearances from Kate Reed, curious journalist who some of you may recall from Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series; Inspector Cotford, unlucky official investigator into the De Ville menace; and Francis Aytown, damned artist and photographer who stumbles into horror and cannot stumble out again. All these characters were part of Stoker's original concept but, for one reason or another, were removed from the final text. An author's caprice, or the hidden machinations of a government agency determined to hide the truth?

Interspersed with the text are notes from previous owners of the book, who used it as a guide when carrying out their own vampire investigations. Some of these notes may contain vital clues, while others may be false leads, mistakes or other red herrings. Which is which? That's for you to find out, but bear in mind that every last one of those notes, no matter how trivial they may seem, has an explanation written down in the Director's Handbook. In fact, they have more than one ...

Hence my not-entirely joking quip at the beginning of this screed. Just as an exercise in collating data, never mind the purpose, this thing is a massive undertaking. If you're any kind of student of Stoker, you'll find layer upon layer of meaning here, and each layer translates to yet another node, or character, location, item, plot thread. Imagine trying to put all that together, yourself. Then be grateful someone else did it for you.

The Handbook takes all that information and runs wild with it. Sixty four different supporting characters, half a dozen detailed vampire-hunting official agencies, locations galore, sinister side plots, hideous monsters like Erzabet Bathory, Lilith and Count Orlok, Nodes glorious Nodes, side trips to Hong Kong, Argentina and elsewhere, random establishing shots, objects mystical and mundane, four detailed capstones, plus ... but you get the idea. There's a whole lot of plus going on.

What makes this unique is that each and every one of those possible locations, nodes, characters, items and so on are discussed in several different ways. First, if the thing in question has no immediate link to the Conspiracy one way or the other. Second, if it is an asset, belonging to one of the spy agencies tasked with finding and recruiting, or killing, vampires. Third, if it has fallen to Dracula, and is now part of his Conspyramid. If it's an item or a location, then the text may also discuss options, such as is it genuine, is it a major or minor item, is it a fake? Is this location Hot, as in a really important place, or Cold?

Should you go to Carfax, for example, there are several different ways the Director could play it, many different items or supporting characters you might find there, and many different consequences. What this means in play is that the characters can never be sure what they're going to discover, nor can they take anything for granted. It also means that the Director can play this several times, maybe with the same group, and it will never play out the same way twice.

Which leads me straight to my only caveat: this probably isn't suitable for neophyte Directors.

It's not that it isn't great. It so very much is, but there's so much going on here that, if you haven't got a few years under your belt, you may find it intimidating. Its improvisational nature means that it lacks the structure a new Director may need to get going.

Let me compare it, for a moment, to Horror on the Orient Express, and say why I'd recommend the latest edition of Horror to new Keepers.

Horror is huge. There's tons of things to do, a mountain of stuff to read, and at first glance it seems intimidating. However it has solid internal structure; the Keeper always knows where the campaign is, in the narrative, and can easily determine what's going to happen next. The latest edition in particular is very newbie-friendly, and while there's a lot to absorb, it's not impossible to digest. It would definitely be a challenge for a new Keeper, but it would be a challenge that could be overcome.

I'm not sure the same could be said for the Dossier. Its improvisational nature - which I endorse and enjoy very much - and the metric ton of stuff in it, means that it's very easy to get lost in its labyrinthine innards. For a Director who's had a few years of gaming, this will not be a problem. However as someone who indulges in improv theater from time to time, I can tell you that confidence is key. As an actor, even if you're playing a weak character, you need to be utterly confident in yourself and your ability to play a weak character. That's the only way to convince, and entertain, your audience.

I wonder whether a new Director would be confident enough to pull this off. Or whether one mistake - and there's really no such thing as a mistake in improv, but try telling a new actor that - will lead to two, and then more, as the Director gets more and more nervous.

That is my only caveat, and to be honest, I'd recommend a new Director buy this even if that Director never plays it as written. It's a masterclass in how the game is constructed, and how it can be played.

At the moment it's not available, but Pelgrane lists it as Printing, which means it should be on sale very soon. Meanwhile, let me offer my personal thanks, not to the authors - though they deserve every plaudit - but to my fellow Kickstarter backers. Thanks to your funding, something wonderful has been created.

Now let's make our players' lives a vampire-haunted misery!