Fright Night IV - Part 2

Fright Night playtests and gaming continued:

(Spoiler Warning) Mash ran The Hand That Feeds, a western game with supernatural elements, featuring a cast of werewolves and demons. I was cast as Clem, a ruthless bandit, accompanied by my do-gooder brother played by Paul in the playtest as a Puritan. I was taken aback when the first encounter of the game revealed the town to be unbelievably wholesome (or so it appeared) and faced the hard choice of continuing to hunt the demon, or just try and sucker folks out of as much money as possible. Mash’s character questionnaire, complete with a snip and swap section was neat, although I think that the ambition had outpaced the mechanics as several players seemed confused by what they had received at the end (I had no such problem). I totally support the idea, and have a similar thing envisaged for EPOCH, but I’m not convinced I want to start the game with the players filling in paperwork.

Given the fairly moral nature of our party I was expecting to cause some waves by playing Clem as a real bandit, so to not ruffle too many feathers I went out of my way to try and have him be less ruthless than he might have been (his interrogation of hapless townsfolk was positively genteel by Hollywood western standards). Nevertheless I fell afoul of the party morals after Clem shot a woman (in the leg) who had previously been possessed by the demon. No one would listen to Clem’s assertions she was still possessed (the players had read between the lines of the GM’s description) so I was immensely satisfied when Clem turned out to be right, at which point Clem went his own way. Predictably the other character’s strategy of trying to talk people into doing what they wanted fell through and Clem did the inevitable and used the rather suspect dynamite listed on his character sheet, which regrettably killed most of the party. The game ended with a great final scene with Clem and a small child he had ‘rescued’ leaving the decimated town accompanied by Clem’s brother who was (unknown to us) now possessed by the demon.

It was a fun game, but I could see that Mash was really wanting to explore some dark themes, and to do so with characters who were deeply conflicted. An ambitious undertaking, but potentially a very rewarding exercise if you can pull it off. Again most of the suggestions made were around some of the details, rather than anything central to the plot or ideas.

(Spoiler Warning) In round two of Fright Night I played in Scott’s LARP All Saints’ Eve. I had been cast as Kurt Carter, a wealthy control freak who had recently lost his wife to cancer, and whose daughter had been abducted not long before. On top of that he had brought a gun to a Halloween party. My take was that Kurt was a man on the edge, a tragic figure who sees his life falling apart before his eyes, but is too weak and selfish to do anything to really stop it, and hides his pain and helplessness behind an obsessive need for order and coldness toward the world. Ants played Kurt’s son Jeremy, an 11 year old pyromancer who obeyed his father while under scrutiny but rebelled as soon as he was away from him. Jenni played his friend-from-the-streets, Arial, who Kurt didn't approve of. Clearly Kurt was going to be put into a tough emotional position, and I suspected that he would be expected to lead the action at some point.

The party started badly for Kurt, as we were trapped in a room without external communication. The control-freak was suddenly deprived of control. The unfortunate target of Kurt’s displeasure was Mandy the maid (played by Donna) who really took the brunt of Kurt’s self loathing passive aggression through the night. Largely this was compounded by her raising the matter of Kurt’s missing daughter early on while touching Jeremy. As it turned out, she was a bad egg, although Kurt was acting out of prejudice rather than any serious evidence.

Mandy wasn’t the only one to feel Kurt’s cold wrath, and Jeremy and Arial got a fair bit, with Kurt eventually alienating his son to the point he was ready to run away. Only the elder Cunningham (played by Jackie) really bothered to try and see through Kurt’s quiet aggression, and ultimately she was the only one who stood up to him, and forced him to back down (despite others having the ability to kill him with various powers).

The game ended rapidly after a really slow build up. Kurt, goaded by ghosts, convinced Jeremy to pretend he was having a fit as a distraction, so that he could question Mandy at gunpoint away from the others. From there, things accelerated until there was the discovery of the body of Kurt’s daughter (really creepy) and a knife point stand off as Kurt confronted Mandy, Jeremy was threatened and Arial moved to defend him. Finally Will, played by Glenn saved the day, and freed us.

It was a tough, draining and fairly unpleasant experience being Kurt. Toward the end I had to disengage somewhat, because I just didn’t want to go too far into Kurt’s grief. As we wrapped up I felt pretty bad about how mean I had been to the others, but I did find it to be a memorable and compelling outing.