I spent rather more time than I would have liked in hospital during my recent UK trip, but it gave me time to read a book I'd bought to entertain me on the flight: Scott Smith's The Ruins (2006). It was one of three I'd bought, the other two being a Michael Slade and a Jack Higgins. I don't look for aesthetic or intellectual entertainment when I fly; I want something interesting enough to make it worth my while turning pages, and that's it. It's different when you're comfortable, awake and alert, but those three things are not what flying is all about.
The Ruins was an unknown quantity. I didn't recognize the author. I later discovered he's the guy who wrote A Simple Plan (1993), a thriller I very much admire, but at the time the name Scott Smith plucked no forgotten strings of memory. The Ruins is his second, and to date he's only written two. The man does not believe in rushing things along.
He's an MFA Fine Arts who's got a few screenwriting credits behind him, and is currently working on Civil, a TV drama-cum-thriller-cum God Alone Knows in which nation-shattering violence breaks out after a hotly contested election. He seems to prefer obscurity; he's given few interviews and in those interviews he says little about how he works or what he's working on. He likes bookstores. So there's a plus.
The Ruins begins deep in Mexico's tourist heartland. Four Americans meet a German and three Greeks. The German has a problem; he and his brother fell out after the brother met a pretty archaeologist and the brother ran off to join her at some dig out in the boondocks. Now it's almost time for their flight home, and the brother hasn't come back. What, he asks the Americans, do they think he should do?
To them this all seems like a fantastic side adventure with a hint of illicit romance. Besides, going out to see some picturesque antiquities was on their To Do list, even if these particular antiquities seem to be a not very remarkable mine far from the comforts of civilization. So they pack a hearty picnic lunch, rent a taxi, and zoom off to the ruins. Ignoring the taxi driver's Borgo Pass-style warning - 'this place no good. Give me fifteen dollar, I take you somewhere better.' - they get off where they think the footpath to the ruins ought to be. There their problems begin.
The locals in the village nearby are as unfriendly as it is possible to be without actually shooting them. The locals pretend not to understand what they're talking about, and don't encourage them to stay. However by luck and some deductive reasoning they find the right footpath, which has been carefully camouflaged with leaves and brush. Following that path they find a pleasant hilltop covered with greenery and beautiful flowers, surrounded by a wide strip of what seems to be burnt out landscape, not unlike a moat cut out of the jungle. They can see what seems to be a tent at the top of the hill, presumably belonging to the archaeologists.
In short order the locals arrive, and they are not best pleased. Many of them are armed, and more are on the way. The leader seems to be about to let them go, but then one of the Americans accidentally sets foot on the flowery hillside. That contaminating foot is enough, and they're all ordered to climb the hill. No questions, no going back: climb.
Then things really get weird, but to go any further would involve major spoilers.
This, like Smith's previous novel, has also been made into a movie. While I have not seen that movie the trailer gives me no confidence whatsoever, and I'd avoid watching the film before reading the book as it might ruin things for you. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a pretty mixed rating, for what that's worth.
I like smart horror. By that I mean I like the characters to be strong characters who don't do anything dumb for reasons that are transparently plot related. Everyone has to behave in keeping with their character and everyone has to make reasonable decisions. Not necessarily correct decisions - in horror there aren't many of those - but reasonable according to the facts available at the time.
This is very smart horror. Even the locals, who might otherwise be faceless cyphers, are interesting, and behave very much in keeping with a group of people who've found themselves living next door to Satan's Left Buttock. Having found a way to keep the wicked emanations at bay they dedicate their lives to ensuring nobody goes near, and if somebody does, they make sure the unlucky wanderers never get out. Perfectly reasonable, under the circumstances. After all, we know what happens when you rely on the authorities to solve your problem for you.
Seldom have I read anything quite so much in the present tense. The only comparable I have is Andy McNab, and you know how I feel about him. Yet in this everything relentlessly flows from moment to moment, less like a narrative and more like a rising flood, carrying everything before it. Nothing in this novel happens without you silently witnessing it; there are no off-camera segues.
The antagonist is pleasingly Lovecraftian. By that I mean it is unknowable, alien, and malign. You get the sense that it's just biding its time up there on the hillside, waiting for the locals' guard to drop. It voraciously devours everything it can get - birds, animals, insects - and human targets are o-so-tasty, but perhaps a little large and feisty to be swarmed in a frontal assault. So it resorts to trickery and illusion to get the job done, luring them into dangerous situations where they can be picked off one by one.
Narratively it reminds me of John Wyndham and while some of you may be leaping towards a certain novel I'm actually thinking of the criticism levelled by Christopher Priest, who called Wyndham 'the master of the middle-class catastrophe.' The main characters are all nice college kids with money and all the nice things that money can buy. They've had good educations, they're smart, they can handle themselves in most situations and soon they'll be going off into the working world.
Here they are enjoying an exotic vacation. Here they are going off to rescue their friend's brother from a silly romantic misadventure. Here they are climbing a flower-covered hill, threatened with death if they try to come down again.
One of them thinks wistfully about her nice things, left in the hotel back in Cancun. Perhaps the maid will steal them.
It all speaks to a kind of invulnerability middle class Westerners think they enjoy. Nothing can seriously go wrong, not to them. After all, they're on vacation. They're having a good time. They just want to go out for the day, have a picnic, see some scenery and go home again. What's so difficult about that?
The other two books I bought for the trip are long gone. I don't believe in carrying excess baggage, and I brought too much stuff home with me to want to burden myself with even a fraction of a kilo's weight. I don't think the Harris even left Bermuda's airport; I dumped it for someone else to find, and same goes for the Slade. I believe in being a Johnny Appleseed of books, and English pubs are quite good places to spread the love.
I almost took the Smith to Dragonmeet to pass on to some unwitting host. I didn't. I almost passed it on some other way - after all, I had three days in London after Dragonmeet before getting on a plane.
It's with me now, on my desk in front of me.
You don't get rid of the good stuff.
Showing posts with label survival horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label survival horror. Show all posts
Sunday, 11 December 2016
Sunday, 13 November 2016
The Donner Party (Trail of Cthulhu)
I've been doing some Old West research, looking for things to plug into The Vendetta Run. It's surprising how unhelpful the internet can be; more often than not the articles that are best optimized for search engines are also junk pieces cribbing frantically from Wikipedia. While there is useful stuff out there, most of it's buried way back in the weeds.
But I did find some helpful stuff, and in so doing was reminded of the tragic fate of the Donner Party.
For those who don't know the story, a brief recap: the Donner-Reed Party was a group of would-be migrants trying to find a way to California in 1846. They were grossly misled by The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California, which suggested an alternate route from Fort Bridger, Green River Wyoming, to California via a mountain range and the Salt Lake Desert.
Theoretically this route is navigable, but not at the time of year the Donner-Reeds proposed to make the trip. By the time they finally got across the desert and the mountain range they had no chance of getting across the Sierra Nevadas before snowfall, and when they tried they were cut off, with no way forward and no way back.
Their options were few. Several of the party were too sick to travel. Those who were still healthy enough to go on had nowhere to go, at least not with their possessions; if they walked out with their clothes on their backs they might survive, and perhaps send help to the others. A party of 17 including women and children joined that Forlorn Hope, while the remainder stayed in a makeshift camp at Truckee Lake.
The Forlorn Hope soon ran into difficulties. Lost, snowblind and with little chance of finding their way to civilization, in desperation they began eating the corpses of those who fell. One macabre touch about the story I always find intriguing is that they took special care to label the dried-out meat they took, to ensure that nobody in the party mistakenly ate the flesh of a relative. About half the Hope ended up in the bellies of the other half before they finally found rescue.
Things were little better in the camp. Starvation and privation led them to do much as the Forlorn Hope had. All told, about half of the 89-strong group died in the Pass, and many of those who died were eaten. The full story can be had via Wikipedia here.
One curious footnote: many of the survivors preferred to pretend that they hadn't turned cannibal. They swore they found sustenance in other ways - the family dog, say. None of them outlived the stigma; all their lives they had to live with a ghoulish reputation. The last of the Donner Party survivors, one year old at the time, died in 1935.
The Lincoln Highway, constructed in 1913, traverses the Donner Pass. Though there are other highways today, in the Trail 1930s period the Lincoln would have been the only highway through the Pass. It's often described as one of the snowiest parts of the United States, and today it's a popular spot for winter sports like skiing and snowboarding.
With all that in mind, let's talk one-shot.
In the 1930s the Great Depression led to significant migration from Oklahoma and the Dust Bowl to California, where there was the hope of work and food. Many of these Okies went along Route 66, but not all. Suppose some of them went up the Lincoln, along the Donner Pass. What might they find there?
The opening scene would be the departure from their ruined farms, the hot blasts of dust storms screaming at their heals. If the Expedition rules are being used - and I recommend they are - then whatever else they have they haven't many supplies. A lot of what they carry will be useless but have strong sentimental value. Photographs, dining room sets, perhaps a piano - that sort of thing.
They might start from Colorado, Texas, New Mexico or Kansas in addition to Oklahoma. Some photographs from the period illustrate the awesome power of the dust storms; it's like watching the hand of an angry God smash down on the land. Not unlike the migrant period of the 1840s you could see the dust-drowned remains of cars and people's lives scattered by or on the roadside as you travelled. At least one of the scenes after the opener should involve the group trying to cope with the aftermath of a storm, trying to get their sand-choked cars going again.
Nobody wanted to see these migrants. It was the Depression; jobs were few, and the Okies soon got a bad and undeserved reputation as an army of thieves and bumpkins on the march. The next scene should be an encounter on the outskirts of some little burg, perhaps in Arizona, where the townsfolk are united in their loathing for the Okies and the police come out to make sure the Okies move on as quickly as possible. There's a potential for a supplies refresh here, but it requires delicate negotiation.
Since we started this in the Old West it seems only right to have at least one Old West scene. What we think of as Ghost Towns these days aren't, really; they're tourist traps with a cobwebbed aesthetic, where T-shirt stalls, geegaws and costumed guides lurk alongside history. But in the 1930s these places would have been almost completely abandoned.
Tombstone itself for example, where this digression started, had only 700 residents in 1900, a huge drop from its 10,000 heyday. Its famous courthouse with gallows next door was left to rot from 1931 until its conversion to a museum in the 1950s. Imagine driving through a near-deserted place like this with nothing but the clothes on your back. Maybe you can scavenge some tinned food left behind by some long-dead inhabitant 30 years ago. More likely you can get water from a forgotten well. but in any case the echo of gunfire and the taint of sulfur still hangs over the streets, and only the unwise go near the gallows at night.
From here we go to the final scenes. By this point everyone's on their last legs. What little supplies they had to start with have long since been used up. Maybe they have water. It's less likely they have food. Their few remaining cars struggle up the Lincoln Highway, trying to get through the Sierra Nevadas. It's getting dark.
Then the snow comes.
Those cars would have had very little left in them even before this point. Now everything freezes. One by one the vehicles grind to a halt and will not start again. If the group has a map they can work out where the nearest civilization is; a ski lodge perhaps, or some kind of roadhouse. But that's a long walk away, and they're tired, hungry and worn out. It might be better to wait by the cars; after all someone's bound to come along the highway soon.
Then they see the hunched shapes in the shadows, watching them, alive with eager, hellish anticipation.
Keeper's choice as to what these are. Ghosts of the Donner Party? Ghoulish remnants? Wendigo? Cold Ones? Whichever it may be they are hungry for hot, fresh meat, and here come the characters stumbling into their cold little corner of the world. Now it's a straight survival horror narrative and the only question is whether or not the characters will survive the night. Maybe they struggle through to that roadhouse, or maybe they huddle up in their stranded cars and make a last stand. Whichever it is they won't see a friendly human face till dawn.
So who will live to see that dawn?
Enjoy!
But I did find some helpful stuff, and in so doing was reminded of the tragic fate of the Donner Party.
For those who don't know the story, a brief recap: the Donner-Reed Party was a group of would-be migrants trying to find a way to California in 1846. They were grossly misled by The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California, which suggested an alternate route from Fort Bridger, Green River Wyoming, to California via a mountain range and the Salt Lake Desert.
Theoretically this route is navigable, but not at the time of year the Donner-Reeds proposed to make the trip. By the time they finally got across the desert and the mountain range they had no chance of getting across the Sierra Nevadas before snowfall, and when they tried they were cut off, with no way forward and no way back.
Their options were few. Several of the party were too sick to travel. Those who were still healthy enough to go on had nowhere to go, at least not with their possessions; if they walked out with their clothes on their backs they might survive, and perhaps send help to the others. A party of 17 including women and children joined that Forlorn Hope, while the remainder stayed in a makeshift camp at Truckee Lake.
The Forlorn Hope soon ran into difficulties. Lost, snowblind and with little chance of finding their way to civilization, in desperation they began eating the corpses of those who fell. One macabre touch about the story I always find intriguing is that they took special care to label the dried-out meat they took, to ensure that nobody in the party mistakenly ate the flesh of a relative. About half the Hope ended up in the bellies of the other half before they finally found rescue.
Things were little better in the camp. Starvation and privation led them to do much as the Forlorn Hope had. All told, about half of the 89-strong group died in the Pass, and many of those who died were eaten. The full story can be had via Wikipedia here.
One curious footnote: many of the survivors preferred to pretend that they hadn't turned cannibal. They swore they found sustenance in other ways - the family dog, say. None of them outlived the stigma; all their lives they had to live with a ghoulish reputation. The last of the Donner Party survivors, one year old at the time, died in 1935.
The Lincoln Highway, constructed in 1913, traverses the Donner Pass. Though there are other highways today, in the Trail 1930s period the Lincoln would have been the only highway through the Pass. It's often described as one of the snowiest parts of the United States, and today it's a popular spot for winter sports like skiing and snowboarding.
With all that in mind, let's talk one-shot.
In the 1930s the Great Depression led to significant migration from Oklahoma and the Dust Bowl to California, where there was the hope of work and food. Many of these Okies went along Route 66, but not all. Suppose some of them went up the Lincoln, along the Donner Pass. What might they find there?
The opening scene would be the departure from their ruined farms, the hot blasts of dust storms screaming at their heals. If the Expedition rules are being used - and I recommend they are - then whatever else they have they haven't many supplies. A lot of what they carry will be useless but have strong sentimental value. Photographs, dining room sets, perhaps a piano - that sort of thing.
They might start from Colorado, Texas, New Mexico or Kansas in addition to Oklahoma. Some photographs from the period illustrate the awesome power of the dust storms; it's like watching the hand of an angry God smash down on the land. Not unlike the migrant period of the 1840s you could see the dust-drowned remains of cars and people's lives scattered by or on the roadside as you travelled. At least one of the scenes after the opener should involve the group trying to cope with the aftermath of a storm, trying to get their sand-choked cars going again.
Nobody wanted to see these migrants. It was the Depression; jobs were few, and the Okies soon got a bad and undeserved reputation as an army of thieves and bumpkins on the march. The next scene should be an encounter on the outskirts of some little burg, perhaps in Arizona, where the townsfolk are united in their loathing for the Okies and the police come out to make sure the Okies move on as quickly as possible. There's a potential for a supplies refresh here, but it requires delicate negotiation.
Since we started this in the Old West it seems only right to have at least one Old West scene. What we think of as Ghost Towns these days aren't, really; they're tourist traps with a cobwebbed aesthetic, where T-shirt stalls, geegaws and costumed guides lurk alongside history. But in the 1930s these places would have been almost completely abandoned.
Tombstone itself for example, where this digression started, had only 700 residents in 1900, a huge drop from its 10,000 heyday. Its famous courthouse with gallows next door was left to rot from 1931 until its conversion to a museum in the 1950s. Imagine driving through a near-deserted place like this with nothing but the clothes on your back. Maybe you can scavenge some tinned food left behind by some long-dead inhabitant 30 years ago. More likely you can get water from a forgotten well. but in any case the echo of gunfire and the taint of sulfur still hangs over the streets, and only the unwise go near the gallows at night.
From here we go to the final scenes. By this point everyone's on their last legs. What little supplies they had to start with have long since been used up. Maybe they have water. It's less likely they have food. Their few remaining cars struggle up the Lincoln Highway, trying to get through the Sierra Nevadas. It's getting dark.
Then the snow comes.
Those cars would have had very little left in them even before this point. Now everything freezes. One by one the vehicles grind to a halt and will not start again. If the group has a map they can work out where the nearest civilization is; a ski lodge perhaps, or some kind of roadhouse. But that's a long walk away, and they're tired, hungry and worn out. It might be better to wait by the cars; after all someone's bound to come along the highway soon.
Then they see the hunched shapes in the shadows, watching them, alive with eager, hellish anticipation.
Keeper's choice as to what these are. Ghosts of the Donner Party? Ghoulish remnants? Wendigo? Cold Ones? Whichever it may be they are hungry for hot, fresh meat, and here come the characters stumbling into their cold little corner of the world. Now it's a straight survival horror narrative and the only question is whether or not the characters will survive the night. Maybe they struggle through to that roadhouse, or maybe they huddle up in their stranded cars and make a last stand. Whichever it is they won't see a friendly human face till dawn.
So who will live to see that dawn?
Enjoy!
Tuesday, 25 October 2016
Tombstone Showdowns and Pelgrane Day
I had it all worked out, and then it went wrong.
Pelgrane announced its first ever Pelgrane Day last Friday, and I immediately came up with a Cunning Scheme. I'm Premises Manager at the local dramatic society, and it has WiFi. If I can game on the actual stage, so much the better, but even if I can't there are plenty of other rooms in the building. We could livetweet the entire thing! Maybe even shoot some video, do a bit of recording, nothing fancy.
Filled with confidence and joie de vivre, I get the gang together: Max, Tach, Mary and Jym, who're currently journeying on the Orient Express - sanity dwindling away not in a trickle but by handfuls - and they leap on board. I pick for the evening Ken Hite's Vendetta Run, a fun survival horror setting perfect for a one-shot. I have two weeks to prepare. What could go wrong?
Well, we had a hurricane for one thing. The theatre cellar flooded, and then caught fire. Not as serious as it sounds, and nobody was hurt. However it did mean I was kept very very busy, and exhaustion set in. The theatre lost its WiFi connection, and thanks to one damn thing after another it still didn't have its WiFi connection by the time Friday rolled around. Never mind that I had much less time to prepare than I'd fondly imagined.
At one point I considered cancelling but decided against. The show would go on!
Not in the theatre, though; that was taken. We moved up into the office instead. The office is supposed to be haunted, though how much truth's in that is anyone's guess. Like just about every old building in Hamilton the theatre's supposed to have been a bordello back in the bad old days, but I've heard that story so many times about so many different places in Hamilton it must have been wall-to-wall shagging back before the Great War. But let's say one of the customers is still hanging around, why not. It's as good an excuse as any.
We started the session at 7pm with character creation, and were gaming before 8, carrying on till after midnight.
Pelgrane announced its first ever Pelgrane Day last Friday, and I immediately came up with a Cunning Scheme. I'm Premises Manager at the local dramatic society, and it has WiFi. If I can game on the actual stage, so much the better, but even if I can't there are plenty of other rooms in the building. We could livetweet the entire thing! Maybe even shoot some video, do a bit of recording, nothing fancy.
Filled with confidence and joie de vivre, I get the gang together: Max, Tach, Mary and Jym, who're currently journeying on the Orient Express - sanity dwindling away not in a trickle but by handfuls - and they leap on board. I pick for the evening Ken Hite's Vendetta Run, a fun survival horror setting perfect for a one-shot. I have two weeks to prepare. What could go wrong?
Well, we had a hurricane for one thing. The theatre cellar flooded, and then caught fire. Not as serious as it sounds, and nobody was hurt. However it did mean I was kept very very busy, and exhaustion set in. The theatre lost its WiFi connection, and thanks to one damn thing after another it still didn't have its WiFi connection by the time Friday rolled around. Never mind that I had much less time to prepare than I'd fondly imagined.
At one point I considered cancelling but decided against. The show would go on!
Not in the theatre, though; that was taken. We moved up into the office instead. The office is supposed to be haunted, though how much truth's in that is anyone's guess. Like just about every old building in Hamilton the theatre's supposed to have been a bordello back in the bad old days, but I've heard that story so many times about so many different places in Hamilton it must have been wall-to-wall shagging back before the Great War. But let's say one of the customers is still hanging around, why not. It's as good an excuse as any.
We started the session at 7pm with character creation, and were gaming before 8, carrying on till after midnight.
The characters are:
- Hosanna (played by Tach), a dealer at the Bird Cage Theatre which hosts the world's longest ever poker game in its cellar.
- Shallott (played by Mary), a medical type more than a little handy with a six-shooter.
- Slim Bob (played by Jym), the worlds fattest demolition expert, with a deep, abiding love for chocolate.
- Twitchy (played by Max), a Cowboy gunman and enforcer, weedy but a dead-eye shot.
I decided to set the game in Tombstone itself, rather than have the Earps chase the characters across half creation. There's plenty of information out there, and the Wikipedia page even has a period street map. It also allowed me to steal real-world locations, like the Bird Cage and the Courthouse, for important scenes.
I made a couple decisions I would later regret. First, I decided to do this with the lights off. LED tea lights are cheaply had, and I thought this would add atmosphere. It did, but the flip side was I had very little to photograph.
The red tea lights are for the Keeper, the others for the players. Note to self: if I do this again, more tea lights please. Mind you it could get expensive; down here those things cost about a buck a light. Which is still fairly cheap but if it's a buck a light here they're probably .10c in the States.
It did make things difficult to read. This is where tablets and phones come in handy. Plus Pelgrane is relatively rules-lite when compared to, say, D&D or other crunchy games, so you don't have to spend eye-straining minutes looking for something on your character sheet.
Speaking of, what would have made this even more fun is period character sheets, as have been made for Bookhounds, Dreamhounds and Trail. I know this is more of a fan project, but there's a few KWAS that provide alternate settings - Tombhounds, Vendetta, Moon Dust Men - and my artistic skills are negligible. Would that there were an easy way of setting up fun character sheets!
Another regrettable decision: music. I like using music in game, but I hadn't appreciated that recent iPlayer updates meant the interface had confusingly changed. Plus my battery seems a little feeble these days. Che sera sera; the music kinda worked, but not as I'd have liked.
One other bit of prep I have to mention here: Time Life Books. My God those things were gorgeous in their day. The one you see in the photo is The Old West - Gamblers. I could not have done this without that book. Highly recommended, and you can often pick up those titles for silly money, especially in the States.
We started with a tremendous hangover. The characters wake up in their chosen hidey holes in Tombstone, having tied on a righteous one the night before. As Slim Bob awakens in his pharmacy and makes himself a cup of coffee out of last week's grind, dreaming of chocolate, Hosanna, Shallott and Twitchy - who were over in the Bird Cage - go looking for him. They find a bunch of Earps (Deuces, which term will mean nothing to those who haven't read Vendetta Run; think of them as mooks) and things soon turn grim.
Fortunately Slim Bob traps one of them under his enormous girth, but that still leaves a couple outside.
"I hear you're the best shot," says Twitchy to Lou Cooley. "I propose a gamble. I'm going to flick this here coin up in the air and if you can hit it in one try without missing ... Unless you're chicken."
"I'll hit that coin," says Jim, "And shoot you right between the eyes with the same bullet."
"I'd like to see that," says Twitchy, and hilarity ensues.
Fortunately for Twitchy he does not get perforated, but Shallott does, and with rounds that will not heal. It's always the way when someone plays the hero; someone else carries the can.
However after all the Earps are dispatched - their bodies mysteriously vanishing - the characters look in at the Bird Cage. There they meet Josiah, a miner, who extolls the virtues of the establishment.
"Are you married, Josiah?" says Hosanna.
"I don't like to talk about my personal pains and miseries," is the reply.
But with Josiah as a beard they sneak into the poker game, where Doc Holliday is supposed to be holding court. Twitchy, staying upstairs, notices a couple Earp hangers-on lurking on the other side of Allen Street, keeping an eye on the Bird Cage. However the group doesn't notice Warren Earp and a compadre sneak in the back of the Bird Cage and take up ambush positions.
Josiah, it seems, has a very interesting mine. "Hell is a place, ma'am, but it's also ... I'm sorry, I've lost my train ... you'll be going there soon, ma'am, real soon. What was I saying?"
A sinister figure appears at the other end of Allen Street, and storm clouds gather. Wyatt's on the way.
Shallott slips out and gathers a couple Cowboy helpers.
With Warren and his compadres blocking the escape route, and Wyatt plus helpers plus Doc come in the front door. However thanks to Preparedness and copious explosives this proves to be a poor life choice for the mooks.
"I wonder if I might try some Intimidation," says Slim Bob, as he "kinda rolls toward 'em."
In the gunfight that follows Shallott comes out more perforated than Swiss cheese, and pretty much everyone takes hits, but the Keeper gnashes his teeth in frustration. More mooks were needed, and Warren went down like a puling kid. All the Cowboy NPCs get killed, which is just as well really since if they hadn't been there to be bullet sponges the PCs would probably have died.
I could go through the rest of it shot for shot, but that would take a long time and half the fun of a gaming session is being there. Suffice to say that Twitchy got the death he'd been looking for and Slim Bob fared little better. Shallott crawled away with several bullet wounds that would never heal, and Hosanna beat the odds and achieved salvation.
Well done to all, and many thanks to Pelgrane for all the fun!
Sunday, 14 February 2016
Silent Hill 2: How to Design Survival Horror (Fear Itself)
Last time I talked about designing Silent Hill for Pelgrane's Fear Itself. Now I'd like to spend some time discussing what makes Silent Hill tick, and to do that I'm going to talk about survival horror as a genre.
Survival horror, appropriately enough, is a subgenre of horror in which the survival of the protagonist is what drives the narrative and provides the scares. It isn't about external threat - though there are plenty of those - but about the internal, as the vulnerable, easily killed protagonist tries desperately to exist in a world inimical not just to all life but to the protagonist's life specifically. There's a healthy dose of paranoia here, but then, is it really paranoia if the world is out to get you?
What in Silent Hill makes this apparent?
Always bear in mind that the two most important aspects of survival horror are these:
First, it is always about the character, not the situation. Nobody cares about a zombie apocalypse if there are no brains to munch on, nobody cares about dinosaurs on the rampage if all the humans have already escaped via helicopter, and nobody, but nobody, cares about a spooky castle on a desolate peak if the protagonists skip past it and go on vacation in Monaco instead. This isn't about sinister plots or grand Illuminati-style machinations. This is about what happens to ordinary people when plunged into extraordinary circumstances.
Second, not only is the threat real, it will almost certainly be fatal for someone. Probably several someones, in group-style play. When six co-eds vacation in that charming little cottage in the woods by the lake, it's practically guaranteed that only one or two, at the very most, will come back to tell the tale. Or to take the Silent Hill route, it's perfectly possible for James Sunderland to survive every single threat the town has to throw at him, and still have his life ruined.
Now, enough of that, I think. Next time, something completely different!
Survival horror, appropriately enough, is a subgenre of horror in which the survival of the protagonist is what drives the narrative and provides the scares. It isn't about external threat - though there are plenty of those - but about the internal, as the vulnerable, easily killed protagonist tries desperately to exist in a world inimical not just to all life but to the protagonist's life specifically. There's a healthy dose of paranoia here, but then, is it really paranoia if the world is out to get you?
What in Silent Hill makes this apparent?
- Even the normal is a little weird. There's a moment in Silent Hill 2 where James Sunderland explores Neely's Bar. Like everything else in Silent Hill, Neely's is deserted. However there's an odd note painted roughly on the window: There Was A HOLE Here. Now It's Gone. The meaning of this note is unexplained, leaving it up to the player to decide just how to interpret it. However the mere fact that it exists begs all kinds of questions, the most obvious being, who wrote it? Who's supposed to read it? Is it like graffiti, a message for anyone, or was it intended for James specifically? There's nothing more normal than a bar, but adding that extra touch makes it seem somehow other, perhaps even tied specifically into the threat that may yet engulf James. This crops up again and again, perhaps best in the town itself, where you can wander the streets only to find that your path is cut off by a vast chasm. How did that happen? What kind of tectonic event can cause a rift like that, and yet leave the buildings roundabout still standing? Or what about the fog that swallows the town whole, or the way everyone else you meet seems either to accept the situation or to perceive things very differently than you ...
- The weird is very weird. If you play the game more than once, the characters get the chance to pick up and use different items in different ways. Often this means getting a better weapon, perhaps a chainsaw or a flamethrower. However in Silent Hill 2 James has the option of picking up a peculiar star stone which, if he uses it in exactly the right way in exactly the right places, opens up the true meaning of reality. Again, as with point 1, there's a strong presentment that these things are set here specifically for James to find, to use, to explore, further establishing the central concept that nothing happens by chance. The strange, twisted creatures James encounters are designed especially for him; they play on his frustrated sexuality, his darker side. But who or what did this? Or was it James himself ...
- Sure, you can find weapons, but don't expect them to help. Stick with a nail in it, pistol, shotgun, rifle; all are useful tools, but when the chips are down it won't matter what you're armed with. The real threat here is from within. That's why Silent Hill often has a suicide option as one of the alternate endings. In Gumshoe terms your dwindling Stability is the problem you'll have to manage, or die trying.
- Using Night of the Living Dead as an example, although zombies are clawing at the walls the real threat is that posed by your fellow survivors. They all fight like cats in a sack, convinced beyond reason that their plan is the best plan. They have a rifle, a defensible position, molotov cocktails, and what happens? Chaos and blood, that's what happens. In survival horror if you depend on guns to see you through, you might as well climb into your grave and beat the rush.
- Supplies are limited. In Silent Hill the protagonist eats health packs and drug ampules like they were candy. There's never enough. You wander the streets half dead, because you only have one or two health packs left and you know, just know that you need to save health packs more than you need to actually be healthy right now. In Gumshoe, items like these might count as free Medic pools, perhaps 1 point for Health Drinks, 3 for Health Packs and 5 for ampules. Funny thing about those pools; in my experience players either consume them early and then regret it later, when they've got nothing, or they save them and save them and save them, waiting against the time when they're desperate. Which, oddly enough, is exactly how players of survival horror video games behave.
- The enemy is very dangerous. The external threats the player faces are always real. There are no Mooks in survival horror. Some may hit harder than others, but they all hit hard, and you misjudge the threat at your peril. The same applies to traps and other potentially harmful situations. Stick your hand in the wrong place and you may lose a few fingers. Not that this ever stopped James Sunderland, but still ...
- Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is usually bad for you. As in you specifically, not you, the abstract. This goes back to the Neely's Bar note. When something happens, when you go to a location, when you encounter a Shadow, these places, people and incidents exist because of you. They are linked to you, and often are a reflection of your mental state. As in, your rapidly deteriorating mental state. This is the polar opposite of Lovecraftian horror, in which the whole point is how powerless we are, how insignificant, in the face of cosmic forces. Nothing could be further from the truth here. In Silent Hill, and to a great degree in survival horror as a genre, the protagonist is the most important person in the entire universe. Without that person, none of this could happen. In fact, in Silent Hill there's good reason for thinking that the entire mess is the protagonist's own making.
- The cavalry isn't coming, by the way. If you stick yourself in a cupboard somewhere and huddle up, crying softly, waiting for the police or the army to rescue you, good luck and God bless. Just remember what happened when the survivors in Return of the Living Dead called the telephone number printed on the side of the can of toxic waste.
Always bear in mind that the two most important aspects of survival horror are these:
First, it is always about the character, not the situation. Nobody cares about a zombie apocalypse if there are no brains to munch on, nobody cares about dinosaurs on the rampage if all the humans have already escaped via helicopter, and nobody, but nobody, cares about a spooky castle on a desolate peak if the protagonists skip past it and go on vacation in Monaco instead. This isn't about sinister plots or grand Illuminati-style machinations. This is about what happens to ordinary people when plunged into extraordinary circumstances.
Second, not only is the threat real, it will almost certainly be fatal for someone. Probably several someones, in group-style play. When six co-eds vacation in that charming little cottage in the woods by the lake, it's practically guaranteed that only one or two, at the very most, will come back to tell the tale. Or to take the Silent Hill route, it's perfectly possible for James Sunderland to survive every single threat the town has to throw at him, and still have his life ruined.
Now, enough of that, I think. Next time, something completely different!
Sunday, 7 February 2016
Silent Hill (Fear Itself)
Over the New Year's I tried to play Silent Hill 2 all the way through to the end. I had no choice; my copy is an aged PC version that, among its many bugs, wouldn't let me save, so it was play through till death or not play at all. I've seldom enjoyed a horror title more, and even half-bust as my copy is, that old corpse didn't disappoint.
For those who never had the pleasure, Silent Hill is a survival horror video game series originally developed by Japanese studio Konami. It's set in the one horse town that is Silent Hill, populated only by shadows and the damned. There's a map of the surrounding area, but you can't rely on it. There were other people here, some of whom are dead. The others? Well, you probably want to avoid them if you possibly can ...
People who come here seldom find what they wanted to find, and are lucky if they get out alive at all. Sometimes they stumble in, like Harry Mason, who just wanted to find his missing daughter. Some of them deliberately make their way there, like James Sunderland, who wants to track down his supposedly dead wife, or Heather Mason, who'd leave Silent Hill alone if only it would do her the same courtesy. Or you could be like Harry Townsend, who just wakes up one day and finds that he's trapped in his apartment, with no real idea why or how.
Silent Hill 2 is the best of the series. The rest? Eh, they have their moments, but none of them are as consistently frightening as James Sunderland's trip into nightmare. It's one of the most effective horror games of all time, and for good reason. No other game, and certainly none of the other Silent Hill titles, is as good at reaching into your mind and making you think; and once you do that, the shadows can get into your brain. After which, there's no chance at all.
This game partly inspired the hot mess that is the Silent Hill movie, with Sean Bean playing a Sunderland-esque role. Bean's a reasonable physical match, but that's about the only good thing that can be said about it. The terrible thing is, there are times when it becomes a really good movie, only to disappoint the viewer in the very next scene.
What makes Silent Hill work? Ultimately its character. You believe in James, Harry, Heather and the rest. You understand what they want, and why they're in the situation that they're in. Those strong characters then get to bounce off the weirdness that is the town, which will explore and exploit all of their flaws, until they break.
Silent Hill the town is a very odd place, even more so than it seems at first glance; and at first glance it's pretty damn odd. It's shrouded in mist and darkness, so you can't see all of it, and it's easy to get lost. Your initial impression is that it's a one horse burg, the kind of place that hasn't many young people because they all move off to the big city as soon as they can. Maybe it had a past, but it definitely doesn't have a future.
Then you begin to explore, and to wonder. How many one horse towns have apartment buildings? A fully functioning hospital and a separate medical clinic? A prison, a Civil War museum, a Historical Society, a lakefront Hotel, a funfair, a park? Suddenly it seems much bigger than before. But where are all the people? Yes, there are abandoned cars here and there, and signs that something cataclysmic happened. But there are far fewer corpses than you'd expect if there was a natural disaster, and far fewer survivors.
One of the first living people James Sunderland meets is Angela, whose importance you only really understand when you see her for the last time, at the end. Without wishing to spoil, it becomes clear that the Silent Hill she experiences is a completely different kind of Silent Hill to the one James has had to fight through. Here's her final scene. "You see it too? For me, it's always like this."
This demonstrates two very important truths: first, that Silent Hill is different for everyone. Second, that everyone in Silent Hill gets the experience that they think they deserve.
Ultimately, this is about Hell. But this isn't about scales being balanced or some kind of judgement. This is about the punishment we make for ourselves.
Angela sees the things she sees not simply because she's being punished, but because she thinks she deserves to be punished, and in that particular way. Taking that example, James too must see the things he sees for the same reasons. Which suggests that Silent Hill, the town, bends its appearance, its essential being, to the expectations of people like James and Angela. There's a Hotel, yes, but perhaps it only exists because James needs it to exist. For Angela, there may be no Hotel. She's clearly somewhere, in that final scene, but it might not be the same somewhere that James thinks he's in.
In that case, Silent Hill is just a set, a dreamscape. For James, the Hospital is clearly designed as a insane asylum. For someone else it might be an ordinary hospital, or a school, or some other building. Two people can be in the same place, the same room, and yet have completely different experiences.
Moreover this malleability doesn't stop at the streets and buildings. As James proves in his relationship with Mary not all the people are really people. But as with the environments, these phantoms aren't created by a god or devil figure. It's people like James who invent them out of nothing at all. Ultimately all they are is a reflection of the protagonist's mental state. Nor are they there to be helpful; after all, this is about punishment, not salvation.
So taking all that on board, how can you, as Keeper, simulate Silent Hill with a ruleset such as Fear Itself?
Fear Itself has at its core the idea that ordinary people, without special abilities, magic or some kind of overarching Destiny (with that all-important capital D), can be plunged into terror beyond their imagining or control. This works nicely with Silent Hill's insistence that its protagonists be ordinary people, without powers or indeed weapons beyond the sticks and items they can scavenge. Often its scenarios are designed to be one-shots, which is perfect for a Silent Hill session. Also, in its character creation mechanic the players are encouraged to identify and describe The Worst Thing You Ever Did, which fits perfectly into the Silent Hill punishment trope.
Finally, the characters are encouraged to develop a goal, and again, this is perfect for Silent Hill, since its protagonists are usually very goal-oriented. James' goal is to find out what's going on with his supposedly dead wife, for example. Heather's is to find out what Silent Hill wants from her, and incidentally to avenge her dead father figure Harry Mason, so that's both a goal and a Drive in one easy package.
My suggestion would be that, in addition to developing a character, each player also develop something that the Wraith RPG would call a Shadow. Don't worry about Stats for these creatures; the main points are the archetype, Drive and Goal, which work in just the same way as they would for an ordinary character. Except, as with Wraith, the Shadow's goal is to oppose the player's character, to drag them further down into the abyss. So their archetype, drive and goal ought to be a polar opposite to the player's character.
A Jock player type might have a Brain Shadow, for example. That Brain's Goal might be to show up the Jock in front of his girlfriend, if the Jock's Goal is to rescue his girlfriend, and so on. An alternate Shadow for a Jock, assuming that his goal is to rescue his girlfriend, is to have a substitute girlfriend whose personality is the polar opposite of the Jock's actual girlfriend. So if his original girlfriend is a Good Girl, the Shadow is a Sexy Girl.
Instead of abilities, a Shadow has an Aberrance pool. That pool can only be spent to help, or frustrate, the character. Helping in this instance means adding points to a character's Pool, to help with tests or to uncover clues. Say a character wants to interrogate an NPC. The Shadow can contribute Flirting, Intimidation or Interrogation to assist, by using Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis. If an important door is locked, blocking progress, the Shadow has the key, or knows how to bypass it, on a 1 Aberrance spend. Or say an Athletics test is needed to overcome an obstacle; the Shadow can contribute points to the test.
Frustration is the same thing, in reverse. Though the Shadow can never willfully obscure clues, it can contribute pool points to increase the difficulty of a test. I suspect this will often be used to increase the difficulty of Stability tests, but not always.
This pool should be two points less than the Investigative build points used to create the character. Assuming 16 build points, then the Aberrance pool is 14, and so on. Aberrance can be refreshed whenever the character loses Stability. For each point lost, the Shadow regains Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis, up to a cap of the Shadow's original Aberrance pool.
Shadows have no General abilities. They piggyback on the characters. So in a Fleeing contest, for example, if the character successfully flees, then so does the Shadow. Shadows also have minimal Health, and no Stability. However they can never truly die. If killed in a scene, perhaps by a monster, a Shadow can reappear, apparently unharmed, a few scenes later. Ultimately as a reflection of the character that created it, a Shadow cannot die unless and until the character that created it dies.
A Shadow is never played by the person who created it. A Shadow's role should always be taken by another player, whenever possible. If that isn't possible for whatever reason, then the Shadow should be played by the Keeper.
OK, that's it for the characters. What about the town of Silent Hill?
Well, the great thing is that there are plenty of online resources that can help you create it. One of the most useful is this fan-created map of the town, but there are plenty of map examples online. That part of the map used in Silent Hill 2 is marked as South Silent Hill, but really you can pick and choose as you see fit. Print out this map. That way the players can draw on it, just as happens in the games.
What, exactly, is in Silent Hill? Ultimately that will be up to the players, but I suspect that it will depend greatly on whether or not they have played any of the Silent Hill games. Those who have will almost certainly expect to be able to go to their favorite locations. Brookhaven Hospital is a recurring setting. Heaven's Night nightclub may turn out to be a fan favorite, as might Neely's Bar. If you have the time it would be a good idea to ask, preferably at least a week or two before the session, which locations the players want to visit, and then build scenes around them.
If the Keeper's uncertain about an area, there are plenty of online resources that describe them. Alternately, make it up out of whole cloth. So long as there's plenty of atmosphere and fog, you should be fine. Even within a Silent Hill location there were always plenty of fenced-off or gated areas the player could never get to. The bit of the Hospital the characters are currently in could easily be one of those.
The creatures encountered in Silent Hill often depend on the protagonists themselves. So James Sunderland, for instance, first encountered Pyramid Head because Pyramid Head is intended as a play on his frustrated masculinity and libido, all gleaming muscle and huge weapon. Ideally, as with the locations, the Keeper should get a week or more worth of heads-up about the Worst Thing The Character Has Ever Done, which should give enough material to design the look and basic behavior of the creatures the character encounters.
It may also be useful to ask if there are particular creatures the players want to encounter, or avoid. Some long term fans of the series may feel that a particular creature type is done to death and just not interesting any more. Others may really look forward to, say, the Nurses, or Robbie the Rabbit.
However the key to monster design here is to take a hard look at the character and see what can be done. So in Silent Hill 3, for instance, where there's a strong undercurrent of sex, Heather is often attacked by creatures that resemble walking spermatozoa, or giant misshapen muscle-men, and in one section has to kill a giant purple worm that suddenly emerges from a huge hole in the wall. As I recall, I beat it to death with a stick. Paging Doctor Freud. But the point is that the enemies she faces are dependent on Heather herself, so you as Keeper need to know about the characters' goals and Worst Thing.
Try to keep it simple. Dividing it up into the Seven Deadly Sins is a handy reference that may help you in a pinch. A creature motivated by Lust is bound to be different from one motivated by Gluttony, and so on. Also remember that the Sin will affect the environment as well. Angela sees Silent Hill in a completely different way from James, because her motivating sin - linked to her goal and Worst Thing - is different from his.
Once all that's done, send the characters off into Silent Hill. Each character will probably arrive on his or her own; this isn't a moment for the Mystery Machine to rock up and start disgorging plucky teens and their crazy dog. But after they arrive each character will probably encounter the other characters one by one, just as James first meets Angela in the graveyard and leaves her there, or finds Maria in the park and brings her along with him.
You shouldn't be afraid to let the characters split up and explore the town on their own, because when not on stage a player can assume a Shadow role. If there are a lot of players this becomes tricky, so you may be better off doing this in a smaller group.
Alternately if you don't mind things getting really complicated, you can assign off-stage players recurring monster roles of one kind or another. Robbie the Rabbit returns, or one of the Nurses takes on a more human intelligence.
I'm going to leave it there for the moment, and come back to this in a Part 2. So long for now! See you in a bit.
For those who never had the pleasure, Silent Hill is a survival horror video game series originally developed by Japanese studio Konami. It's set in the one horse town that is Silent Hill, populated only by shadows and the damned. There's a map of the surrounding area, but you can't rely on it. There were other people here, some of whom are dead. The others? Well, you probably want to avoid them if you possibly can ...
People who come here seldom find what they wanted to find, and are lucky if they get out alive at all. Sometimes they stumble in, like Harry Mason, who just wanted to find his missing daughter. Some of them deliberately make their way there, like James Sunderland, who wants to track down his supposedly dead wife, or Heather Mason, who'd leave Silent Hill alone if only it would do her the same courtesy. Or you could be like Harry Townsend, who just wakes up one day and finds that he's trapped in his apartment, with no real idea why or how.
Silent Hill 2 is the best of the series. The rest? Eh, they have their moments, but none of them are as consistently frightening as James Sunderland's trip into nightmare. It's one of the most effective horror games of all time, and for good reason. No other game, and certainly none of the other Silent Hill titles, is as good at reaching into your mind and making you think; and once you do that, the shadows can get into your brain. After which, there's no chance at all.
This game partly inspired the hot mess that is the Silent Hill movie, with Sean Bean playing a Sunderland-esque role. Bean's a reasonable physical match, but that's about the only good thing that can be said about it. The terrible thing is, there are times when it becomes a really good movie, only to disappoint the viewer in the very next scene.
What makes Silent Hill work? Ultimately its character. You believe in James, Harry, Heather and the rest. You understand what they want, and why they're in the situation that they're in. Those strong characters then get to bounce off the weirdness that is the town, which will explore and exploit all of their flaws, until they break.
Silent Hill the town is a very odd place, even more so than it seems at first glance; and at first glance it's pretty damn odd. It's shrouded in mist and darkness, so you can't see all of it, and it's easy to get lost. Your initial impression is that it's a one horse burg, the kind of place that hasn't many young people because they all move off to the big city as soon as they can. Maybe it had a past, but it definitely doesn't have a future.
Then you begin to explore, and to wonder. How many one horse towns have apartment buildings? A fully functioning hospital and a separate medical clinic? A prison, a Civil War museum, a Historical Society, a lakefront Hotel, a funfair, a park? Suddenly it seems much bigger than before. But where are all the people? Yes, there are abandoned cars here and there, and signs that something cataclysmic happened. But there are far fewer corpses than you'd expect if there was a natural disaster, and far fewer survivors.
One of the first living people James Sunderland meets is Angela, whose importance you only really understand when you see her for the last time, at the end. Without wishing to spoil, it becomes clear that the Silent Hill she experiences is a completely different kind of Silent Hill to the one James has had to fight through. Here's her final scene. "You see it too? For me, it's always like this."
This demonstrates two very important truths: first, that Silent Hill is different for everyone. Second, that everyone in Silent Hill gets the experience that they think they deserve.
Ultimately, this is about Hell. But this isn't about scales being balanced or some kind of judgement. This is about the punishment we make for ourselves.
Angela sees the things she sees not simply because she's being punished, but because she thinks she deserves to be punished, and in that particular way. Taking that example, James too must see the things he sees for the same reasons. Which suggests that Silent Hill, the town, bends its appearance, its essential being, to the expectations of people like James and Angela. There's a Hotel, yes, but perhaps it only exists because James needs it to exist. For Angela, there may be no Hotel. She's clearly somewhere, in that final scene, but it might not be the same somewhere that James thinks he's in.
In that case, Silent Hill is just a set, a dreamscape. For James, the Hospital is clearly designed as a insane asylum. For someone else it might be an ordinary hospital, or a school, or some other building. Two people can be in the same place, the same room, and yet have completely different experiences.
Moreover this malleability doesn't stop at the streets and buildings. As James proves in his relationship with Mary not all the people are really people. But as with the environments, these phantoms aren't created by a god or devil figure. It's people like James who invent them out of nothing at all. Ultimately all they are is a reflection of the protagonist's mental state. Nor are they there to be helpful; after all, this is about punishment, not salvation.
So taking all that on board, how can you, as Keeper, simulate Silent Hill with a ruleset such as Fear Itself?
Fear Itself has at its core the idea that ordinary people, without special abilities, magic or some kind of overarching Destiny (with that all-important capital D), can be plunged into terror beyond their imagining or control. This works nicely with Silent Hill's insistence that its protagonists be ordinary people, without powers or indeed weapons beyond the sticks and items they can scavenge. Often its scenarios are designed to be one-shots, which is perfect for a Silent Hill session. Also, in its character creation mechanic the players are encouraged to identify and describe The Worst Thing You Ever Did, which fits perfectly into the Silent Hill punishment trope.
Finally, the characters are encouraged to develop a goal, and again, this is perfect for Silent Hill, since its protagonists are usually very goal-oriented. James' goal is to find out what's going on with his supposedly dead wife, for example. Heather's is to find out what Silent Hill wants from her, and incidentally to avenge her dead father figure Harry Mason, so that's both a goal and a Drive in one easy package.
My suggestion would be that, in addition to developing a character, each player also develop something that the Wraith RPG would call a Shadow. Don't worry about Stats for these creatures; the main points are the archetype, Drive and Goal, which work in just the same way as they would for an ordinary character. Except, as with Wraith, the Shadow's goal is to oppose the player's character, to drag them further down into the abyss. So their archetype, drive and goal ought to be a polar opposite to the player's character.
A Jock player type might have a Brain Shadow, for example. That Brain's Goal might be to show up the Jock in front of his girlfriend, if the Jock's Goal is to rescue his girlfriend, and so on. An alternate Shadow for a Jock, assuming that his goal is to rescue his girlfriend, is to have a substitute girlfriend whose personality is the polar opposite of the Jock's actual girlfriend. So if his original girlfriend is a Good Girl, the Shadow is a Sexy Girl.
Instead of abilities, a Shadow has an Aberrance pool. That pool can only be spent to help, or frustrate, the character. Helping in this instance means adding points to a character's Pool, to help with tests or to uncover clues. Say a character wants to interrogate an NPC. The Shadow can contribute Flirting, Intimidation or Interrogation to assist, by using Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis. If an important door is locked, blocking progress, the Shadow has the key, or knows how to bypass it, on a 1 Aberrance spend. Or say an Athletics test is needed to overcome an obstacle; the Shadow can contribute points to the test.
Frustration is the same thing, in reverse. Though the Shadow can never willfully obscure clues, it can contribute pool points to increase the difficulty of a test. I suspect this will often be used to increase the difficulty of Stability tests, but not always.
This pool should be two points less than the Investigative build points used to create the character. Assuming 16 build points, then the Aberrance pool is 14, and so on. Aberrance can be refreshed whenever the character loses Stability. For each point lost, the Shadow regains Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis, up to a cap of the Shadow's original Aberrance pool.
Shadows have no General abilities. They piggyback on the characters. So in a Fleeing contest, for example, if the character successfully flees, then so does the Shadow. Shadows also have minimal Health, and no Stability. However they can never truly die. If killed in a scene, perhaps by a monster, a Shadow can reappear, apparently unharmed, a few scenes later. Ultimately as a reflection of the character that created it, a Shadow cannot die unless and until the character that created it dies.
A Shadow is never played by the person who created it. A Shadow's role should always be taken by another player, whenever possible. If that isn't possible for whatever reason, then the Shadow should be played by the Keeper.
OK, that's it for the characters. What about the town of Silent Hill?
Well, the great thing is that there are plenty of online resources that can help you create it. One of the most useful is this fan-created map of the town, but there are plenty of map examples online. That part of the map used in Silent Hill 2 is marked as South Silent Hill, but really you can pick and choose as you see fit. Print out this map. That way the players can draw on it, just as happens in the games.
What, exactly, is in Silent Hill? Ultimately that will be up to the players, but I suspect that it will depend greatly on whether or not they have played any of the Silent Hill games. Those who have will almost certainly expect to be able to go to their favorite locations. Brookhaven Hospital is a recurring setting. Heaven's Night nightclub may turn out to be a fan favorite, as might Neely's Bar. If you have the time it would be a good idea to ask, preferably at least a week or two before the session, which locations the players want to visit, and then build scenes around them.
If the Keeper's uncertain about an area, there are plenty of online resources that describe them. Alternately, make it up out of whole cloth. So long as there's plenty of atmosphere and fog, you should be fine. Even within a Silent Hill location there were always plenty of fenced-off or gated areas the player could never get to. The bit of the Hospital the characters are currently in could easily be one of those.
The creatures encountered in Silent Hill often depend on the protagonists themselves. So James Sunderland, for instance, first encountered Pyramid Head because Pyramid Head is intended as a play on his frustrated masculinity and libido, all gleaming muscle and huge weapon. Ideally, as with the locations, the Keeper should get a week or more worth of heads-up about the Worst Thing The Character Has Ever Done, which should give enough material to design the look and basic behavior of the creatures the character encounters.
It may also be useful to ask if there are particular creatures the players want to encounter, or avoid. Some long term fans of the series may feel that a particular creature type is done to death and just not interesting any more. Others may really look forward to, say, the Nurses, or Robbie the Rabbit.
However the key to monster design here is to take a hard look at the character and see what can be done. So in Silent Hill 3, for instance, where there's a strong undercurrent of sex, Heather is often attacked by creatures that resemble walking spermatozoa, or giant misshapen muscle-men, and in one section has to kill a giant purple worm that suddenly emerges from a huge hole in the wall. As I recall, I beat it to death with a stick. Paging Doctor Freud. But the point is that the enemies she faces are dependent on Heather herself, so you as Keeper need to know about the characters' goals and Worst Thing.
Try to keep it simple. Dividing it up into the Seven Deadly Sins is a handy reference that may help you in a pinch. A creature motivated by Lust is bound to be different from one motivated by Gluttony, and so on. Also remember that the Sin will affect the environment as well. Angela sees Silent Hill in a completely different way from James, because her motivating sin - linked to her goal and Worst Thing - is different from his.
Once all that's done, send the characters off into Silent Hill. Each character will probably arrive on his or her own; this isn't a moment for the Mystery Machine to rock up and start disgorging plucky teens and their crazy dog. But after they arrive each character will probably encounter the other characters one by one, just as James first meets Angela in the graveyard and leaves her there, or finds Maria in the park and brings her along with him.
You shouldn't be afraid to let the characters split up and explore the town on their own, because when not on stage a player can assume a Shadow role. If there are a lot of players this becomes tricky, so you may be better off doing this in a smaller group.
Alternately if you don't mind things getting really complicated, you can assign off-stage players recurring monster roles of one kind or another. Robbie the Rabbit returns, or one of the Nurses takes on a more human intelligence.
I'm going to leave it there for the moment, and come back to this in a Part 2. So long for now! See you in a bit.
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