Black Sabbath- It's All in the Name

It is hard to believe it, but after this movie I have only three movies left. Time moves so quickly, it turns out, way too quickly. Anyway, Black Sabbath. I must say that I wasn't really impressed. Maybe it is because I watched better movies throughout this month, or maybe it is just because after 28 horror movies one starts to feel the dreaded "please no more horror films this month, I had to much" kinda feeling.

Anyway, Black Sabbath is an anthology film. It is made of 3 short films combined together. The first one, The Telephone (this might be the time to say that I've watched the Italian version and not the American one) is a story about a woman, a prostitute, who starts to receive telephone calls from her ex-pimp. Little by little, his threats become deadlier and far more frightening. For me, this short was the highlight of the collection. The next one, The Wurdalak, is a conventional vampire story. The last one, The Drop of Water, is a short film about a nurse who steals a ring and a ghost haunts her.

Now, the lessons from the better shorts, the first and the second, are lying in the posts about other movies in this project. But there is a lesson that is unique to this collection- the lesson of names and their power. You see, The Wurdalak is conventional. Way too conventional, if you ask me. We have a vampire, he kills those close to him, much blood. It even takes place in Eastern Europe, if it wasn't conventional enough.

But he is not called a vampire. He is given a different name. And this gives the movie some sense of originality. Because to a certain extent, it is like discovering and learning about a different, a new, monster. And this can be done in our games too. Give a familiar monster a different name and a description that is only a little different, and you can cut yourself a lot of time creating monsters on the one hand, and on the other the players will feel a certain feel of knowledge and similarity combined with a feeling of freshness. This is good.

As an added bonus, you can go the Troll 2 Way and have a connection between the names (yeah, it is probably the first and the last time that I'll mention something positive about Troll 2, as even this name change is executed terribly). You don’t have to go for the Nilbog kind of name, but you can go the anagram way. When the players will figure it out, they will feel like geniuses, like true investigators. This is even better.

Anyway, that's it for this movie. How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you thought about it? And what did it teach you?

Salò- Horror through Beautiful Scenery

I want my time back. Like seriously I want my time back. This film is supposed to be a controversial art film, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just not ready for films like this, or maybe it is just a matter of me being close to this subject matter. OK, not this exact subject matter, but I think that you know what I mean.

Anyway, it is a movie about 4 sick fascist libertines, in the North Italian region, and the ways they torture 18 teenagers, 9 boys and 9 girls. It is suffice to say that it is not a movie for those with a light stomach. For 120 days, the fascists torture them in about every dreadful way imaginable and finished with a Waltz and no punishment. Pasolini wanted it to be a social commentary. For me it is a sick flick that shouldn't have been made.

But, being made, and held to such a high regard by some directors and film critics, and being a part of my October Horror Movie Challenge (number 24), I have to pick a lesson from it. And what can I say, it is quite hard to pick one because there aren't many things to pick from this movie. But I picked one anyway.

When the film opens, we quite early get some glimpses of Northern Italy. We see some beautiful houses, some nice skyline and rivers, and we even see some nice small and big trees. The scenery is just beautiful. Way too beautiful. Even the house where the teens will spend their next 120 suffering for no reason whatsoever, even this house is beautiful from the outside, and has some merits in the inside.

This is made by purpose, because through this beauty of the outside world, and its contrast to what lies and happens within, we get a feeling of an evil world that doesn't care for those teens at all. Even the huge amount of statues, all of them religious statues, is there to advance this world. "The world is sick", Pasolini tells us, "and even though such horrible things are happening in this house, no one in the world cares, the world just continues with its usual affairs".

When we GM horror games, especially cosmic and other fifth level horror games, this contrast can add so much to our games. Because the power of this level comes from the realization that the world is an evil, uncaring and cold place, using this contrast can help us so much. The beauty is just a façade, terrible things lie beneath, and the world doesn't care, it continues to be beautiful, it continues to do nothing to prevent it.

Have you watched this move? What have you thought about it? And what lessons did you take from it?

Threads- Giving the Victims a Face

I don't really know how to start this post. I'm pretty shocked and horrified, you see. I've just finished Threads, a TV-movie made in 1984, about how a single nuclear bomb hit may affect the UK. It's suffice to say that the movie is way too realistic to go unnoticed, unremarked, to let you leave it without the urge to cry. I don't know what else to tell about it, before delving into one of the far too many lessons to learn from it. Should I say that it is not your typical horror movie? That the movie chronicles a little more than 13 years in the characters' lives? That when it was made and first broadcasted this nuclear bombing incident was a possibility, that this movie had a chance to become a reality? That society just crumbles and one starts to somewhat envy the dead?

No, I wanna go to the lesson as quickly as possible, I want to just let it off of my mind. You see, the main reason for the movie's power is that we have feelings and empathy for the victims. We identify with them, we know their normal ways of lives, and they feel real. We also see how the bombing affects them. Them and not some random people, them and not some red-shirts. We get to know the people only to see them become the victims of the bombings.

The bombing itself occurs about 35-40 minutes into the movie. Up until that moment we got to know about 10 characters pretty-pretty well. We watched the Kemps banter, we watched the Suttons say their last goodbyes, and we watched the love story of Ruth and Jimmy who are going to have a baby and so decide to marry. And after we got to know them, the pain is so much stronger, so much more close to home.

But it is more than that. Because we know of people who feel for each other, we feel their fears for their loved ones. We feel for Mr. and Mrs. When they cry for not being able to save their children, but also we cry for them when they only fear it. We cry for Ruth who fears of her baby being deformed, and we hope for Ruth to find Jimmy when she goes out to try and find him.

We also see how they change, how they become quite monstrous themselves when they have to commit crimes in order to survive, how they change to the "dog-eat-dog" mentality. It's the feelings than we have for them that enable the movie to touch us on so many levels, on so many emotions (from the d'aaw in the beginning to the "oh-my-god" of the ending and all those feelings in the middle).

And we can also use it in our games. When we want the players to fear for a city, or to feel for a kingdom, we have to get the players and their characters to know the people there. To know and feel they human-ness in them. Bring those faces out and show them to the characters and to the players who play them, and when the city will be under threat, or when the country will be under a nuclear threat, the players and the characters will do their best.

How about you? What did you learn from this movie? And even more important, how did you feel afterwards?

Background Is Not Mandatory

I don't ask my players to write a backstory anymore. It's not that they don't know how to write good ones because not only some of them write quite a lot of stories in their free and not so free time (and a pretty damn good fiction also), they do know how to write good backstories. It's also not because I don't love reading backstories, because I really do. I stopped asking them to write backstories because I think that there are better ways to create a connection and to get a feel for the character. I still welcome backstories, but it is not mandatory anymore.

I now use a different tool, a series of 10 questions that I devised over the last year and a half, which I find quite satisfying. It gives me and them roleplaying tools, creates a feel for the character, enriches the world and takes far less time than it would take to get all of that from a backstory.

The questions are presented in this order, in these groupings:

1) What is your character obsessed about?

2) What triggers your character's rage and anger?

3) What scares your character the most?

4) What makes your character be her best self?

5) Who is your character's best friend?

6) How would he/her describe your character?

7) Where would he/she be wrong?

8) What is your character's goal?

9) What tools does your character have in order to achieve them?

10) How is your character connected to the other characters in the group?

After presenting those questions, I wanna take a moment or two and go through each question, explaining why I used this questions and what do I get from them.

What is your character obsessed about?

This question gives me a simple tool- something that I can get to draw the character to the story with, if I'll ever need one. But it does more than that. A player can use the answer to signal to the GM what she wants to see in the game ("my character is obsessed about killing orcs"), or he can use the answer to breath more life into the character ("my character is obsessed about flowers").

What triggers your character's rage and anger?

This is again a question that gives a simple identification tool. But it also gives us more than that. It is usually used to describe what one's character will fight about ("whenever I see injustice"). I, though, prefer using this answer to shed some light about my character's uglier self ("losing in something that I'm good at", for example).

What scares your character the most?

Every one of us is afraid of something, it part of what makes us real persons. It is also true for our characters. For that we have this question coming to the rescue. While its immediate usage seems like only for horror games (and in those games, it is preferable to answer with something that the player is afraid of also), I think that it has much more uses than that. In most heroic stories, the heroes and heroines face their fears and overcome them in order to win. But for that to happen, we have to have those fears in the first place, right?

What makes your character be her best self?

But our characters also have a good side, and this question is used to showcase it. These are the times when the character will do everything that she can in order to help the persons around her. She will defeat the adversaries, help the wounded or whatever else that she can in order to achieve this goal or to solve this problem.

But one of my players used this question to show another ugly side of the character. She answered this question with this answer: "Only when my character feels better than someone else".

Who is your character's best friend?

Remember all those tip articles about mining the backgrounds of the characters for NPCs to add? Here is my answer (well, the first part of it anyway…). This answer gives all of us a major secondary character to add to the story. It can be used to hook the characters for something, to illustrate the PC or anything else. It populates the world with a character that the player already feels for.

How would he/her describe your character?

This gives us the primary characteristics of the character. How she presents herself and how she is seen by everyone in the world. Answers such as "dependable", "smart" or "honest" gives us easy gates into the character's psyche, while others such us "pretty", "strong" or "has a keen eye" showcase more physical characteristics that can't be ignored.

Where would he/she be wrong?

This question I like to nickname as the twist one, or the "thank-god-my-friend-doesn't-know-about-it question". This is a usually dark or ironic twist about the descriptors from before. "My character is not brave, but just too scared for being afraid"; "my character isn't smart, but just recites old sayings". One of my players decided that his character isn't playful because she's afraid to lose her playful friend.

Take into account, though, that it can be used to illustrate the friend also. If we'll look at my player's example, we get a friend who has a territory- "I'm the funny and playful one"- and will probably fight for it.

What is your character's goal?

This is the ultimate goal of the character. This is something that should be unachievable till the end of the campaign (or at the very least very hard to achieve). This is the character's dream, where she sees herself in 20 years' time or whatever.

In my MLP campaign I tweaked it a little bit, changing it to "what is your character's childish goal", because they are children and as such their dreams are prone to change all the time.

What tools does your character have in order to achieve them?

The answer here can give me a lot of tools. If the player answers with NPCs, then we have more characters the players care for in the world. But other answers can be given as well- one of my players gave answered this question "because I really want to", thus making the character a childish one. It can also be used to showcase the character's most famous moves or whatever, showcasing the way she behaves and/or acts in the world.

How is your character connected to the other characters in the group?

Now is the time to answer this question. After we have the personalities of the characters, and we know who they know, we can finally answer this question organically. I always ask the players to come with an answer together. This way, they both feel that they're part of it and they all care for it more because of that.

And an end

And that's it, my 10 questions with the logic behind them. I hope that you'll find them as useful as I've found.

How about you? Do you use a similar questionnaire? If so, in what way? And if not, why not?

Kick the Realism Out of the Door...

We all like to build worlds for our games. It's fun, it's rewarding, it gives a great feeling when finishing it... But there's a thing that always crops to my mind when I read other people's worlds. The heavy place that realism takes in the games and it can go quite extreme sometimes. 

"If the sun doesn't move and lights a certain country all the time, what's the temperature there?"

This, at least to my eyes, is wrong question. Why? Because it doesn't help to make the game or the story better, and because it talks about the last question that should be asked about a world that the GM is building: "How this X is real?" Realism should be the last thing to think about. After the world is complete and the sun shines there, then it's time to think about realism. 'Till then, it's an easy way to both distract the writer from the world building job, and also to destroy the initiative of build such a world.

So please, whenever you come to someone who builds a world and asks for remarks on it, leave the realism for the end. It's not that important...