Come and See- Presenting Monstrosity

I've decided to try and take the October Horror Movie Challenge. In short, it is a challenge to watch 31 horror movies in the month of October. As part of this challenge (although not required), I decided to post something after each one of the movies. Being an RPG blog, I'll probably post lessons from these movies about what to do or what not to do as the horror GM or player. I'll try to keep it as one lesson for movie, and I hope that at least some of them will be applicable outside of the horror-gaming scene. For my list, though, I've decided to pick a bunch of movies that are considered good, yet not that well known, so I went to the 31 last places in the Time Out London. I hope that you'll find it interesting…

And we start with Come and See. And what can I say? It is not your typical horror movie. Actually, it is pretty far from it. It is a great movie, though, even if it is not a great horror movie. If I'll have to describe it, it is somewhere along the lines of Apocalypse Now, but done right, just like with Platoon.

It is a movie about the horrors of war, and specifically about the horrors of the Second World War, while also tackling the way that they influence a young lad who wants to be- and becomes- a partisan. The story takes place in Byelorussia, during the year of 1943

But apart from being a great movie, it is still a pretty good horror movie (even if it is more a horror movie by accident than by purpose). And like most good movies, it has quite a lot to teach us. But I wanna concentrate on a single lesson from it, derived from a single scene. It is the scene in which the Germans burn the church with all the people in it.

In this scene, director Klimov tries to show us the monstrosity of the Germans during those times. Klimov was wise enough to understand that one needs more in order to show someone as monstrous, than to just show this one committing mass murder. To make someone into a monster or to show someone's monstrosity you need far more than that.

The solution that he has found was to make the Germans behave, when committing those atrocities, like its normal and nothing worth thinking about. More than that, he showed them like they're enjoying it, a sick enjoyment. Our knowledge that it's all true makes it even more monstrous. But for our purposes we don't need this knowledge. For our purposes, the fact that he did show this is enough to make us hate those Germans, to make us terrified of what they can do. They listen to music while they murder, eat shrimps while watching the church burns, taking pictures afterwards like it is a tourist attraction. It's monstrous, it's disgusting, and it shows their monstrosity to the extreme.

And we can use that in RPGs too. When we want to show the monstrosity of the monster(s) in our games, we can use this trick. In one of my Changeling campaigns, for example, the villain made a lamp from the head of one of the major ally NPCs of the characters. But it didn't end with that, as he was so happy and smiling all over the place due to the beauty of his new lamp. Needless to say, nobody loved him afterwards. He's monstrosity showed for miles.

It is pretty much a morbid lesson from a very dark and depressing movie, but I think that it is a very useful tool in the horror GM's arsenal. How about you? Did you use a tool like this? If so, how did it go? And what other lessons did you learn from the movie?

My Players Created the Plot for Me

I opened a new campaign last Thursday. It's an MLP campaign, with the players playing Blank Flanks looking for their Cutie Marks, utilizing Erin Palette's wonderful UA hack. It started with books flying out of all of the houses in the city, laughing like villains should laugh.

The players then decided to search for info about this thing in the books. Long story short, they've found the book, and the page with the solution to this problem. Then I asked one of the players: "What's written in there?" and decided to roll with the outcome.

I think that it is no secret by now, fateful (and new) readers, that I love giving my players the power to decide about the way the campaign will unfold. The idea in this incident was that if the players like the story, they will invent something that will keep this "flying and laughing maniacally books" thing going. If they don't like it, they will finish it off.

What happened next kinda amazed me. You see, the player asked for help from his fellow friends (and players) and together they came with a prophecy. A prophecy about rebellious books, a prophecy that explains all that happened up to that moment, a prophecy that puts them as the ponies that will stop the rebellion before it's too late.

Or to put it in other words: they created together, in harmony, the plot of the campaign. Isn't it just pony magic? I don't have any lesson or thought for today except for this: give your players the opportunity, even just once, to decide about a thing like this.

You might end up like me, doing it all the time, addicted to the stories that they create together, with you and/or with the toys that you give them.

So, how about you? Have you ever tried to do something like this? How did it go?

I Got a Cannon Once...

A few years ago, I was a player in one of the strangest D&D games I've ever played with. You see, we were a party of 2, one was an angel, and I played a succubus. The game opened with a battle on the city we were resting in, and as good adventurers, we were called to the battle to fight for our city.

But because we were adventurers, and I as a succubus was a very good diplomat, I got an acid cannon. Yeah, an acid cannon in a D&D game. Not only that, though, it was a mobile cannon, that my medium succubus could carry with her to wherever she wanted to go with it.

Needless to say, we won the battle. Like every group of adventurers, we went to loot the bodies. Another cannon! This time a fire cannon. The angel got the fire one, I got the acid one, and as the team leader, he went after me. 

From there, the game went fast. My little succubus conquered almost the entire world in sheer months, using both her military powers (haven't I said I had a cannon?) and her "good-looks"... Place after place, city after city, empire after empire, they all fell for my little succubus.

One thing unexpected happened, though. You see, my little succubus got pregnant. It was the end of the march to conquer the world for me. I decided that when conquering the world is so easy, "my baby" deserves better, and I spent my time with her.

The campaign didn't continue much more than that... 

Now, why am I telling you this? It's not because I got a cannon (I think it was one of the coolest ideas ever), and certainly not because I was a succubus. It was due to one reason: The game stopped to be interesting, when my victory was sure, and there was drama no more. The game became a dull dice rolling thing, with a few witty remarks from me (at least I think they were witty...). So, next time you bring a cannon to your players, think about a dramatic use for it...

P.S, It doesn't have to be a cannon. It can also be a nuke or even the Death Ray of Kalikachuchu...

One Reference to Kill Them All

A few days ago I've made a mistake. It was during a game that I've GMed, an "Avatar: the Last Airbender" game. I had 4 players, three of which watched the series, one did not. The game went smoothly, with a few big action scenes where they defeated a few Dai Li agents. During one of the fights, a cabbage fell on one of the characters. The three players who knew the series, and me of course, started to laugh 'till we fell on the floor. The one who didn't looked at us like we are conspiring something against him.

This brings me to my point: References are a great way to bring the feel of the original story, of Avatar in that example, but it can also be used of course to bring the feel of such stories as Star Wars, LotR and so on...

There is one problem with references, though, which is the bad reference. A good reference is a reference that is good by itself, but makes the story better if you know the original place that the reference came from. A bad one can be bad in 2 very different ways:

1. If you know the original, it detracts from the game. The easiest example of this can be with cliches: If you don't know that it's a cliche, it can be very good. If you know that it's a cliche, and you've seen it in action, you know what will come and there's no sense of wonder. Think about the person who says "I'll be back" in a horror game. If you know where it comes from, you'll know that this speaker won't come.
2. It's good only if you know the original. That's what happened in the example from above. Three players and me knew the original Cabbage Merchant, and laughed straight away. The one who didn't, on the other hand, probably thought that it was very silly. 

And that's the whole thing: If the reference is not good by itself and better when the original context is known, don't include it. If it is, though, why don't include it? One extra thing to remember, though, is that the context in which you give the reference is important too, and can destroy even the best of them all...

How about you? Have you made such a mistake in one of your games? How did it manifest within it? How did the players react?

The Story of Mellisa Lermondon

In Arcane Game Lore, they're running a blog carnival about our favourite NPCs. I must say, it was hard for me to come with an NPC, because I don't have that many (although I really like the one that I do bring to the table). So, 18 days of thinking brought me to this NPC. Is it my favourite? I'm not sure, but she sure is on my top list...

Mellisa Lermondon wasn't supposed to be a major NPC, at the beginning. She was supposed to add a little bit of colour, maybe even be a part of a romance between one of the PCs and her. As it turned out, she couldn't end farer from that.

It was a D&D campaign that I've started a year ago and ran for 3 months, and the story was set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. The players wanted, as every normal player will want, to start a new village in the frontier. They have "forgotten" that it was the "Ezripold Daemon Forest". They have collected a group of peasants and adventurers to help them start this village, and among them she was.

Time has passed, and the village grew bigger and bigger, and her statues in the village rose as well. The characters, though, started to abuse her (and to treat her like an animal or property). That was the point when I said enough to myself, and started to think how to make her a little bit more important. 

As the real Mellisa started to unravel, I've started to like the character more and more. It was a long time since I had a major villain, and Mellisa looked like the right one. I've made her a conspirator that came from a noble family that no one remembers anymore. I've made her a bitter wizard who served to defend the city of her grandfather, only to be shunned because she was a woman. Then I've made a little bit of background (it was before the time of the recipe), making her and the king of the goblins work together, and so it went on.

Then, to the next session, she came back. I started the session with describing the clothing of the NPCs that they've started to like. None of the players got the clue, and the session continued. They went to gather some resources for the village, the characters and her, only to find when they returned that the village was conquered. She, who was the strongest wizard there, used her magic to incriminate one of the other NPCs for opening the doors. They didn't wait to kill him.

After a "civil war" in the village, order was back in place, and they went off again. There she made her mark. Everything that they tried to do, she made them fail, using her illusion abilities to incriminate others. She was kept clean. 

When they finally reached their spot, she made her move, and disappeared, leaving the characters far from home, going back to fill their subjects with poisonous thoughts while they were on their way back. They only received letters from her ever since and sometimes a riddle or 2 to tease them off.

One of the reasons that I so like her, I think, is that she didn't made any open move at all, 'till she left. Even then it was them who fought the village people, not her, and it was them who saw the collapse of the village that they worked so hard to raise because of their actions. She was a string puller, but most of the time they didn't know she was even her. I think that if they read this post, this is the first time that they get to know why the village collapsed.

No More XP for You

There's something that I wanted to try for a very long time; a thought that ran through my brain for months, maybe even years; an idea for a game that I'm still waiting to try. The idea itself is pretty simple: No mechanical advancement for the PCs.

Too much of the games that I ran saw the players focusing on the mechanics, and how are they gonna be better and cooler. This resulted with them making the characters incomplete, always saying that when they'll achieve this and this, they'll be better, fuller, richer...

I don't like it, this aspect of gaming, and if we'll look at Lord of the Rings, or James Bond, Hamlet or Casablanca, the characters don't get any better physically, or any better magically or the like. Even in comics they don't get better (except for Spider-man, but it always turns bad...), so why do we see it there? Isn't story and character advancement is enough? Must we go for the mechanics to feel the advancement? I'm not too sure.

So the idea is really simple, and the possibility of running a game like this might be even positive, might even be plausible to run a game like this. I don't know when, or how; I don't know if it will be fantasy or sci-fi; I don't even know if I'll enable advancement by getting better tools; there's too much to think about in a game like this, but the PCs... I think they and their story will be much fuller, richer, and overall all the way better.

When Characters Encounter the Players

Last June I finished my V-tR campaign. It ended pretty much in the way that I intended it to happen, although only one of the Players were killed in the process. WTF?

Let me start from the beginning, won't you? It was after a few months of game sessions, pretty long and eventful ones, when we finally entered the final stages of the story. We had three characters in the game: Tina, a Daeva, who was beautiful as the legends, and deadly as the rest of them; Louis, a Ventrue, whose powers of command was the source of legends; and finally Jack, a Mekhet who was an artist in at seeing and not being seen.

The game was set in New Orleans, the default setting, with a little twist: To add another level of complexity, I included in the city the three main characters of the novel "Interview with the Vampire", who were the string pullers of New Orleans, being part of another level of secret intrigues and alliances.

In the sessions preceding the final one, Tina started to get close to Louis of the novel, and also to a Mage called Robert Geldof; Louis entered the world of vamp politics and tried to rise higher and higher; and Jack? Jack tried to understand the truth about the situation they were in.

Also of note: A bystander found Tina in a blood frenzy, Tina vampirized a person of great power, the 2 enemies of Prince Vidal thought about of forces, Jack succeeded in killing a werewolf, and Louis agreed to a strange term with Louis of the novel about a favour for standing in society.

At the end of the preceding session, Prince Vidal was murdered. Then we started the final one. It started with the group being escorted to a "cave", which was ran in a Nordic-freeform fashion (a combination between LARP and tabletop), till we got to the gaming table. The session then continued, with the group and the city trying to cope with the death of the prince.

We had a break as they awoke from a dream scene. Then, they ran away from the three new contestants for the job.

Then, the soundtrack finally started, with 15 minutes of thriller's themes. Louis was caught by a vamp group, and the others tried to free him. Then, after the cue, Jack was freed, and I made someone dress as a stranger. He went downstairs, and after a text that he said, about life of misery and about a way to solve it. He told the characters that they were only characters in a game, aimed at making them feel misery, gave them the rulebook and character sheets, and then opened a portal to a dimension where the Players and the GM were tied up. "Killing them is the only way to get free", he said, and gave them a knife.

Tina killed her player, Jack let his player ran away, and Louis brought the player with him back to the world. The world that they came into was different; it was by the rulebook edition of New Orleans.

This is what I recall as my crowning moment of GMing, when they found the truth. It was, as John Wick called it, breaking the fifth wall- making the audience be the event, be the feeling, the happening.

"All Kinds of Colors, Big and Small"- A Fiasco Session Recap

Not a too long time ago, I participated in another great game of Fiasco. We had 3 characters: Robert Geldof, a drug dealer, Cob, a man who fell in love with him, and Lisa Melanis (played by me), a desperate woman with desperate needs and tools...

The game started with Lisa looking desperately for a way to earn some money. She meets Cob, and persuades him to get a "wiggle-waggle" for some money, so she'll be able to buy a new dose of drugs. She then continues to meet Robert, who comes to her with a suggestion that she takes. She'll be his lab mouse and he'll give her 20% of cash and some free doses.

Cob, on the other hand, doesn't stay quiet, and comes to the underworld to meet Rob, so he'll be able to expunge the "mistake". He then expresses his affection to Rob, but a bus just passing by prevents Rob  from hearing it.

Back to Lisa's whereabouts, she tries a new drug in her new job, and goes completely high. She then returns to herself, and leaves the place. When she goes out of the house, Cob notices her. Then, in a 3 character scene, Lisa said accidentally that Cob and she were together; despite that, Rob and Cob do succeed in surpassing all difficulties and go on to being together.

Lisa, after leaving the place, calls from the phone, and tries to blackmail Rob, as revenge because of them robbing her house, but her scheme falls short to a trick by Rob. She comes to take the money, but Rob hits her and Cob wounds her with a gunshot, after Rob "accidentally" shot a cop.

When she wakes up, in hospital, they come to visit her. Cob starts to realise what a bad influence Rob is on him, and trashes him. Rob tries to get him to be back together, but he fails. Mad and fearful, he decides to burn the place, as a way to express his broken heart and his still burning love. Cob goes back to Lisa, and they decide to start a new life together. When they smell the fire, they jump out of the window, but don't die. They end up in a different hospital.

Rob finds it hard to cope with what he did. He goes up in rank within the underworld, but decides to put an end to his life, and wakes up in heaven.

Shocked by Lisa's state that escalates to a critical near death state, the now awake Cob is clueless. In the end he kills them both, so they'll live happily ever after in heaven. When they finally get there, Lisa awakes from her dream about all this stuff, and goes back to work.

Memories from a Festival

There's a magic out there, and it's real. There are games that are kept forever within ones heart and mind; there are modules that are always there, waiting for you to look back at them, one last time, and then another. One of my best games, as a player and at all, was in a con, where we played the wonderful module B-11 King's Festival. We were a group of five: A cleric, a magic-user, a thief, an elf, and a fighter (me).

We started at the entrance to the dungeon, like in the good old times. We entered the dungeon, surprising the orcs, and killing 2 of them on the first round. A lot of misses followed, and then the magic-user finished the last orc with a magic missile. Then he looked at his character sheet, "Shit! I've got only one more spell", "so do I" answered to him the elf. One of the most important things happened after the battle: I found a spear, 2 of them actually.

 Like in old times, there were no negotiations with any of the orcs that we found, this time and later, we just came, killed and continued. Kobolds and orcs, all died to our whims, and we continued to kill monsters like good characters. Sometimes, we killed monsters, although we knew that they aren't in our way, but just because we could. We continued with this till we reached room 13, where we found a dead orc. That was the point when we got angry (for the wrong reasons, though) about the orcs.

After we defeated the orc chief, and the rest surrendered, for the first time we negotiated with them. We made an agreement that they won't attack the village anymore and we won't tell that they are alive or where they are. We left the dungeon a short while afterwards and only then we started to question ourselves why we came there. "Oh! This Aralic guy is still there, and we rushed back, taking him with us, and going back town, happy and victorious.

At no point later we returned to there to finish cleaning the dungeon, an agreement is an agreement, and we finished the game 30 minutes before time.

It wasn't a clever game, or a deep one, or anything of the like, but it was full of funny moments, and is still an example that even the simplest games out there does carry their magic for years onward.

The Yale Hotel is Here Again

So that Thursday game became a campaign. The second session took place today, and another confession occurred, so I'm quite pleased with it. Two corrections to the post of the original session: One, its Bob Luchiano, and not the original name I posted. Two, Daniel and James stopped at the third floor. They thought about the 4th, but Daniel's intuition chose the third.

Anyway, we started from the same spot where we left. Jessie went to the fourth floor, and after examining the door to the corridor, she opened it. The corridor continued to both sides, without an end, and just ahead of her was the door to the room of Robert Geldof. She shouted that she's from the FBI but there was no comment from within. When she entered, she found Robert sitting to the table, eating without a sound.

Tom followed Bob, shadowing him through all corridors and turns, until they reached the end of the corridor. There, they found an elevator tube, and Bob turned to Tom, signalling at him to come.

Daniel and James continued their walk with Bob, and he led them to the end of the corridor (although it was a shorter one), where another elevator tube waited for them. There was no sign to the continuation of the corridor, where Tom walked. They interrogated him, while accusing him with a lot of different crimes, but for no help. They decided to enter the elevator tube.

Robert Geldof asked Jessie what she's doing in his room, and when she mumbled, asked her to close the door. She ran away and closed the door behind her. Then, she turned left, to far end of the corridor. Voices called to her, reminding her of her past, of her promises, and of her family.

Tom went out of the shadows, and talked for a while with Bob. He learnt from him that the rest of the group is down there, in the lobby, with a replacement night clerk called Rob. After that, he entered after Bob to the elevator tube, and the tube went down. It got stuck between 0 and 1 level, and Bob disappeared.

Daniel and James went with Bob to the second floor, where he succeeded in running away from them. In the corridor, a couple of old people (an elderly woman who was a little deaf, and an elderly man who didn't respond to James' questions) caught James attention, and he tried to talk with them, leaving Daniel to run after Bob alone.
Jessie ran to the end of the corridor, discovering a little too late that the corridor ends with a mirror. When she looked at it, she saw her back, and heard footsteps from behind. Then, in a confession, she opened one of the doors to the right, and found in a bathtub a rotting body of a woman without her head. She rose from the tub, water turning to blood when falling from her, and she went to Jessie, who ran away, closing the door behind her.
Tom opened with a little bit of the magic the door of the elevator, and found himself on the 12th floor. It was a small one, with walls in sick green color, and a black door ahead of him, a vase with a thick tree to each side of it. He went to open the door, and that's where the session ended.

A Game for GMs?

Yesterday I tried a new thing. Once in a while, my players ask me to improvise a game. They give me some elements (usually genre and tone), and I run a game around based on them. Yesterday, it was a post-apocalyptic high fantasy comedy game.

The game itself wasn't all that interesting, at least not to write about it anyway (although it did include an electrical tiger blowing up a 40 meter long dragon), but I tried a new mechanical trick. It was very simple: During character creation (which was done collaboratively by all players) each player chose 2 events that changed the life of the character.

Then, at certain points in the game, there was a role switch: The character had a kind of a flashback to the event; one of the other players (or me in one incident) played that character (in that event), without knowing how it is supposed to end; the original player GMing the flashback scene, with the goal of making it come close to what he originally envisioned, without railroading.

I think it went really nice, and added a lot of tone and comedy to the game, but as with any experiment there were a few things that weren't done well. The most important one was that the other players railroaded too much. The second thing was that the players didn't know when to end it, and sometimes it felt too long. Luckily I was there to stop it when I felt it was enough, but it felt like a forced conclusion.

I don't know yet if I'll ever do that again, but I'll make sure that I have fellow GMs as the other players. I think that their understanding will surely help to reach a fuller potential of this technique.

Has someone tried something similar to this? How did it go? Any tips will be welcome.

Yale and the Hotel

Today I ran an improvised game that maybe will be the beginning of a new campaign. It was a kinda horror oriented game, about 4 students who have a little understanding in magic, and lots of bad luck. To give the game a little mechanical twist, I used to concept of the "Confession Chair" from InSpectres, which was used one time during this session, and advanced the plot quiet well.

The game started with the characters studying for their upcoming tests, a little time before the big exams that will come after the Easter vacation. When they opened the newspaper, one of the characters (Daniel) found a headline about the "dog-killer". They read it, and rushed to the place, finding 20 dogs' bodies, forming a pentagram. The scene was full of cops and FBI agents, and after failing to convince the cops to leave the scene, they created a lot of noise, and entered the house. There, they found a house which is just too clean and empty, and a cabinet which looked black on the inside. When they threw a drawer into it, there was no hitting sound, and when they looked behind it, the drawer flew to them, smashing in one of the characters (Jessica). Then one of them (James) put a stick into it. Another one (Tom) touched the marks on the floor.

When they looked back, the other cabinets were gone; fire marks were all that was left from them. The scene with the dogs included no dogs any more, but an old phone. All was quiet, like a ghost town. Then, a motorcycle sound came. When the motorcycle finally came, its driver got off it, went to the back and pulled  out a pair of pizza boxes. Then, in a confession by James, he came to the door, knocking on it slowly but steadily. He didn't respond to the characters' questions. After some time, he opened the doors, on each hand a pizza box and something strange came into his stomach really quickly. He put the 2 boxes on the floor, bowed and returned to the motorcycle, driving away. The whole time, his head being covered by the helmet. They examined the pizzas, but they soon stopped, after green slime came out of it, and one of the characters (Jessica) almsot lost a finger because of it.

The phone rang, and a voice told them that they are late, and that they need to give the pizza to a person called Robert Geldof, in the Yale University. They went there, finding their university looking closer to a hotel than to a university. When they entered, the night clerk called Bob Laurezzio welcomed them, and two (Tom and Jessica) went to deliver the pizza, while the other two (James and Daniel) stayed to talk with him. A bit of time passed, and when they were back together, someone shot at the lamp. They ran after him, but he disappeared. One of them (Tom), of course, stayed with the clerk, who decided to go upstairs by the elevator. Tom followed him through the stairs.

When the other characters came back, they found Bob going through his files, and Tom missing. When they asked Bob, he said he went upstairs.

The characters used some magic to convince him that they are FBI agents, and 2 of them (James and Daniel) took him up, to search for the missing Tom. Jessica stayed down there, going through his files. She looked out of the window, and when she came back to the files, Bob was there. He told her that James and Daniel  had told him that he was free to go back, when they were at the fourth floor. The session ended with her going to this floor.

When Players Go Wrong, GMs Go Right After Them

Over at Elthos RPG, they ran a blog carnival on the subject of GMing for a ship of fools, or moments where the characters did something so stupid, that the game ended. This is my most memorable incident, from my GMing career.

It was a D&D one-shot (of 9 hours), with my players being 3rd level characters (paladin, cleric, wizard, rouge and a barbarian). They were guests of the Paladin's father, in a little village. During the first night of the session, a werewolf attacked, killing one of the villagers. The mayor came to the party, as the only adventuring party in the village, and the party agreed to his terms, promising to help clean the village from the werewolf.

They started to investigate, meeting all the village people, talking with them, trying to get some information. During the days, they investigated, and during the nights they were on the walls (a wooden one, of course...), watching to see where the werewolf comes from, looking to ambush him if he comes.

A few days passed, and the werewolf attacked, they missed him, coming when he was running away, finding a little girl killed, her body torn apart. They swore they would kill him, but they did no other action, but returned to the wall.

They continued to investigate, following the footprints all the way to the nearby forest, where the prints disappeared, and returned to the village. The streets at this time were very empty, shops being close, pubs managing with a smaller crew, and a lot less of buyers.

After a few nights, and a lot of info that they got, they finally met the werewolf. They tried to stop him, but he defeated them, and then disappeared in the shadows, and they were there, all beaten up and losing.

The following day, they came back to the mayor, and asked for a higher payment. The mayor said no, and the barbarian killed him. I looked at him, my eyes widening with shock, and then he just said: "What? That's just what a barbarian will do. I need money, no pay- I kill him."

The village of course wasn't sure of what to do after it. Some were angry, 'cause he was a good mayor, and he did his best in solving this problem. Some agreed with the party, saying that if they killed him, the reason was probably right, like maybe he holed them or something. All of them, agreed though, that the problem hasn't been solved, too long of a time has passed, and they released the characters from their service. The game ended with that. A long time passed before I GMed for them again.

"Murderous Habits"- a Fiasco Session Recap

Somehow this disappeared from my blog, so I'm uploading it again:

I've participated lately in a great game of Fiasco. We used the Cthulhu playset found in The Unspeakable Oath 21. We had three characters: Robert Geldof (me) who is a little bit crazy teenager, Benjamin Geldof who was Robert's father and lastly Elizabeth Richards who was the family neighbour living next door.

The game started with Elizabeth returning home from work, only to see Robert dissecting her mother's body, tearing out organs and putting them in a bag. Elizabeth's mother abused her as a child, and Elizabeth who is happy for her death says nothing about Robert's actions. She does talk with him about himself, though, and learns his name.

Robert returns home and he's caught red handed by his father. Benjamin is angry, but he's relieved when he's convinced that Robert didn't tell his name to Elizabeth.

Ben tries to protect his son by calling Elizabeth and trying to convince her that her mother is abroad, but he fails. The following day, Liz tells Robert that his father is dead, and he reacts with a strange mixture of extreme happiness and extreme depression, switching between these 2 moods. Liz suggests to him that he'll move to her house, so she'll be able to put an eye on him, and he agrees.

Ben calls Liz, trying to warn her from his son, but she hangs up. Disappointed, he calls the police. Meanwhile, Liz talks with Robert and almost succeeds to get a confession from him, but then takes a break to buy some groceries. She's caught red handed by the police who come to her house and tries to run away. The police catch her and accuse her. Robert then takes his dissection knife and stabs his arm with it. Then, he runs out of the room screaming and blames her for this.

Liz is taken to jail, and he's taken to the hospital. His father comes to visit, a few days later, and blackmails him. Robert, in a panic attack, rushes out of the hospital, while killing a cop in his way out, and returns to his home. When he comes in, his father hands him to the police after pointing a shotgun at him.

When Robert goes to jail, he finishes in the same cell as Elizabeth. There, she tells him the truth: Robert and Elizabeth are a brother and a sister, and Benjamin is only a phony. They start to plot together on how to incriminate Benjamin.

The game then continued to a few trial scenes. In the end, Robert was sent to a psychiatric hospital; Ben became a murderer after all of his unsettling experiences and Liz... She ended the way she started it, in her house, with her dead mother's body on the floor and the bag with the organs.