Winning Is Not Mandatory

Winning in the end is not mandatory. I know, I know, in most fantasy stories, actually in most stories regardless of genre, the protagonists win. They win and save the world, get the princes and princesses and get so much treasure that they can just retire and even their grandchildren will be filthy rich. They always win in fantasy.

But it is not mandatory. It is not mandatory to win in the end and neither it is mandatory to win in the middle. Loses makes the story change direction, makes it fuller and richer, gives place to a huge set of emotions that we don't normally see in our games.

Losing can also change and rewind the game. If the PCs always win, there's no challenge, there's no need for playing. If they will always win, it doesn't really matter that they've chose right and not left, or that they killed the orcs and not the goblins.

When we play for the plot, for the story, losing is what gives us those dark moments in the middle of the third arc, the moments from which we find something in ourselves and rise to the challenge, amazing those around us and even us as we do so.

Losing shows us other sides of our characters, sides that we couldn't really explore otherwise, because we didn't have those moments of loss, of depression, of disappointment from the way the things turned out. We were about to win, and somehow we lost.

Losing gives meaning to a learning curve, losing gives meaning to those hard-earned victories. Because they truly are victories that were hard to earn, scattered between all those loses.

And losing in the end is part of what makes a story into a tragedy. Because in a tragedy, we either lose or lose what we fought for, we can't really win. And tragedy is not the only type of story in which the end is bleak.

Winning is not mandatory. Losing should be part of the outcome list. It deserves its spot there.

Pulse- In Horror, Nothing Really Happens

So… yeah, Pulse was nice. Or at least, it was nice in the beginning. Somewhere after the first 30 minutes or so it just lost its mark, and what followed was a mediocre film. The acting level went down, the dialogues became clanky, the metaphors became way too much for a normal movie. I left the screen disappointed, way too much disappointed.

In short, though, this movie is a metaphor for the way that the internet changed our society, driving us away from each other due to the internet. It is pretty easy to see that by the time we reach the end, the director practically says that the internet will destroy us all in one way or the other. But the ending just feels a little bit over-the-top, and is a little too happy for the tone of the movie up to this point.

But it doesn't mean that there's nothing to learn from this movie. True, it is located in the first 30 minutes of the movie, but this lesson is there nonetheless. In the first 30 minutes of the film, almost nothing happens. And that's one of the most important secrets in the horror genre- nothing really happens, but it is still scary as hell.

The trick for doing it is to say to us quite early that this is a horror movie or game. After stressing that, we're always on the lookout for those horror moments, because we first of all wanna be scared, and second of all we wanna be brave. This combination makes us far more stressful and jumpy in horror films and games.

A great GM can utilize that. After stressing that his is a horror game, and giving something to chew early on, it is only a matter of raising questions in most of the time left for the session. How to do that is what all those other horror posts are for. But firstly one needs to understand that in horror, being gentle and graceful in the use of the tools is the trick. Nothing really happens, or is it? The room is empty, or is it? There are marks on the floor, but do you really wanna know what thing left those marks? Nothing really happened here, but the feeling went out of my keyboard and (hopefully) entered your minds. Because in horror, just like in real life, nothing really happens. We just think that it does. And hope that we are wrong.

How about you? What have you thought about this movie? And what have you learned from it?

The Orphanage- Use Sceptics to your Advantage

And here comes the big fix. A film that is so emotional, so intense, and so true to its roots. And it is far more than just a horror film- it is a film about motherhood, a film about childhood, about innocence, about the powers of our imaginations. This film is a masterpiece without a doubt.

It is the story of a mother, called Laura, who returns with her husband and son to her childhood home- an orphanage. As time goes by, her son starts to talk about some imagined friends, friends that Laura and her husband ignore as nonsense. But after her son, Simon, disappears, the real horror begins. Or is it just her imagination?

Short summaries like this one don't do the movie any justice. It is one of those movies that one just has to see for himself/herself. But I wanna talk about one of the things that make this movie so powerful, so full of horror and terror and suspense and dread. The movie has the sceptic character(s).

In this movie, we begin with all of the characters except for Simon as sceptics, but as the movie advances Laura also starts to believe. Yet, the others are sceptics. And those sceptics are important, as they give this movie to edges on movies without sceptics.

Firstly, sceptics leave our protagonist with no choice but to try and figure the truth by herself. She has no one else to ask for help, as after all nobody really believes her. The cops say that it is bullshit; her husband says that she starts to get mad, and the only ones who believe her are the paranormal experts, which doesn't make the situation any better.

But secondly, and far more importantly, is that this sceptic helps us to keep our suspension of disbelief. And why is that? Because through the sceptic(s) the director tells us that "yeah, it is quite strange, it does seem really farfetched". And when the director acknowledges that, it is far easier for us to believe in what we see, or at the very least to stop saying to ourselves- "Oh, this is just too strange to be real".

And when we're dealing with the supernatural, the combination of these two things is a huge edge that we can give to our games. Have in your Cthulhu game a cop who thinks that what the PCs are saying is crap. Have a friend of the PCs, in your World of Darkness games, dispute their theories. And suddenly, they will be inclined to work harder, because there's no one else to do the job, because if it is strange to the world inhabitants it is really strange and thus easier to believe, because of the disputer is close to the PCs the players will want to prove it to say to this friend of them: "A-ah, see? That is real!"

And that's it for today. How about you? What have you thought about this movie? And what did you learn from it?

Dead Ringers- The Importance of Identification

And here comes Cronenberg to the rescue. Dead Ringers is one of those movies that I waited to see for some years, now. And it did not disappoint. I left it amazed and emotionally disturbed, which means that he succeeded with achieving his goal. Unsurprisingly, it is considered to be one of his greatest masterpieces, ranking among the greatest Canadian films ever made.

It is, to say the least, the story of two twin gynecologists, who are far closer than they look (and it's quite hard, being played by the same actor) yet so different from each other. T is the story of their collapse, of them losing all that they've worked for. It is a story about brotherly love. And it is one of those films that one has just to see for himself/herself.

And because of being such a great cinematic masterpiece, it was extremely hard for me to pick a lesson from this movie. Not because there weren't many (or even any), but because there are way too many things one can learn from this movie. But hopefully I picked the right one*.

In the last couple of scenes in the movie, we see Beverly kills his brother Elliot. A few seconds later, we cut to Beverly waking up and he calls and cries. He doesn't look on his brother, he doesn't really see him in this stage. He is vulnerable, he is crying and sobbing, he is human. And even though we remember what he did, that he killed his brother with gynecological tools for mutant women, we can't not feel for him in this scene, we cannot not like him.

And that's a great lesson for the Personal horror GM- always ensure that the players will be able to feel for, to like, to identify the characters, the PCs. As long as they feel for their characters, they will be able to feel the personal horror, because they'll feel that they do it, or at the very least that they can do it given the same circumstances. But without this ability to identify with the characters? They'll just be in shock, they won't feel the true personal horror.

And that's the whole truth, actually. The feeling for and the identification with the characters is the thing that enables the personal horror genre, and if one needs to spend more time before going all horror, or to show vulnerability after a terrible murder, so be it. The identification will give you the reward; the identification will give you the horror.

How 'bout you? Have you watched this movie? What have you learned from it? And what have you thought about it afterwards?

* I did want to talk about how to treat your subject matter, but AveryMcdaldno did it so much better.

Hellraiser- How Not to Use Gore

Ok… yeah… emm… I'm trying to think but words fail me. So I'll just say it plainly: "Hellraiser was shit." How shiity was it? Well, Ebert said it best, when paraphrasing King's remark about Clive Barker: "…but I have seen the future of implausible plotting, and his name is Clive Barker." True, Ebert did make a few mistakes recounting the plot, but it doesn't really matter, it doesn't make the plot any better, and the pace is bad no matter how you look at it.

It is a movie about a man who made a deal with a Rubik cube or something, and due to this pact he dies. Then his ex-lover kills people so he'll get his flesh back. Also- some ugly demons who were supposed to look interesting or something, especially the something part. One of them looks campy, with his sunglasses, but that's as close as it gets there.

Truth is, most of the lessons to learn from this movie have already been covered, only here we learn them as things not to do, as common pitfalls or whatever. But there is something that we can learn from this movie that I haven't covered: Appealing to the disgust factor.

 You see, this movie is just disgusting. There's no better way to phrase that, or even to describe it. It ain't scary, ain't anything else. It was a disgusting movie, plain and simple. And one couldn't even say that it was being disgusting with a purpose. It was disgusting for the sake of being disgusting. It had a man that eats insects. Why? God knows. We later see him return and we learn that it was supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing or something, but it was a lazy kind of foreshadowing. It was the kind of foreshadowing that leaves you with a sour taste. And this one was the one with a "purpose".

Stephen King once wrote that if he can't terrify he horrifies, and that if he can't horrify he goes to the revulsion side of the spectrum*. I say something else: If you can't terrify and you can't horrify, please don't do horror, it might be better to all of us.

And I think that I'll leave this movie here, alone and (hopefully) forgotten. Maybe one day I'll find the way to get my time back, or just thee opportunity to ask Barker (or King) what crossed his mind when making this movie (or complimenting Barker).

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you taken from it? And what have you learned?

* I can't say that I like King's terminology, but it is a topic for another post, for another day.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes- How Not to Use a Pattern

Another campy movie. Sometimes one has to ask himself (or herself) why camp goes so well with the horror genre. But this is a topic for another day (and maybe even for another blog). The Abominable Dr. Phibes is campy enough for its characters to remark about the stupidity of the characters' names. But, unlike with other works of film and television, here it doesn't help the movie to look any better, too bad for this movie…

To put it shortly, the movie chronicles the revenge that a famous and now supposed to be dead organist on a series of surgeons and others of the medical profession for letting his wife die. For some reason he chooses to take his revenge according to the plagues that hit Egypt in the famous chapters from the book of Exodus.

Now, up until now it is a very descent premise, and the list of actors is quite remarkable and promising. The musical score is wonderful and… you get the idea. So why does this movie fail? Mainly because it chooses such a wonderful premise, such a promising pattern, and destroys what it has to offer.

You see, the actions, the killing ways, they're not in the same order as shown in the bible. The film tries so much to be scientifically accurate that it changes the order of the plagues to something else. More logically correct, far easier to believe in terms of causality, but it has a devastating effect in terms of our building dread.

Most of us remember the order of the plagues, at least in broad strokes, enough to understand when the pattern is changed. And when they change the pattern, we don't know what death scene is gonna come now. So instead of looking forward for the death scene, we're busy trying to remember what the Rabi said will be the next one, and we can't because what comes to mind are the original order and the knowledge that it was changed. So we don't look forward to the next death scene, we don't have the anticipation building the right way, and as such it's far harder to dread the upcoming death.

So please, when creating a villain, or a monster, and trying to think about a pattern for the killing, if you'll ever think about using a common knowledge pattern, don't change it. You'll just make it worse.

How about you? What did you learn from this movie? And have you enjoyed it?

Black Sunday- Use the Scenery to Your Advantage

1960 was an interesting year. It was the dawn of one of the lousiest decades in the history of the American cinema (ok, most of a decade, the salvation came in 1967), but it also had the amazing film Psycho to give us some hope and grandeur for this decade. As it turned out, in Italy things were a little better, as can be shown by the rise of the Giallo movies. One of them, one of the earlier ones, is "Black Sunday", also known as The Mask of Satan. And it is still a very nice movie.

It is a story, a movie, about the consequences of the witch hunting of the 17^th century. It is a film about the way Satan worshipers torment the pure of hearts, and how they fight back. It is a story about love. It is also a movie that stands to its title, to its rank, that time only benefitted it.

And like with all early masterpieces that still hold their charm, this movie has a lot to teach us. I, for once, wanna concentrate on the scenery. Especially the castle, the old dark castle. This castle is based around the gothic tradition- it is old, it is gloomy, it is filled with paintings of important figures from older times. It is also a castle made of narrow corridors and full of rooms and doors, not to mention some secret passages.

And this gives the director a lot to work with. The paintings can be used for foreshadowing; the gloomy and dark looks of the castle for the mod setting. But especially important are the narrow corridors filled with doors and the secret passages. The first one is important mainly because it gives the monsters the ability to attack from wherever they want. Through this we get a larger sense of paranoia and a greater fear of the unknown- after all, we know the monster will attack, but we don't know from where.

The secret passage is important from this reason, but also from a far more important one- it helps the director to control the pace- when the corridor will be revealed, we will enter the last phase. This is an important tool to have in the arsenal, as it helps to move past scenes of dwindling importance, action or dread-building.

And we, as GMs, don't have to limit ourselves to just old castles, we can use asylums, or hunted houses, or so much more. The important lesson from this movie, though, is to think about the scenery, to try to think and understand why do we want such a scenery and how can we utilize it. Hopefully, we'll get far greater benefits from our sceneries if we'll think about those questions.

How about you? What did you think about this movie? And what have you taken from it?

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer- Give Principles for your Killers

Emm… No, I just don't know what to say. I'm just speechless, wordless, amazed, shocked, and horrified, perhaps not in this order. Henry is a strange film, a little gem and at the same time a little piece of trash. I think that in the end, it is only a matter of how one looks at the film. For me, it's mainly in the gem section, but it doesn't mean that I'll watch it again, or that I'm happy for this film to ever been made.

To put it shortly, Henry is a film that tells the story of a serial killer, portraying him in a documentary-style fashion, showing his brutality without flinching, protecting us, glorifying it or anything of this fashion. It is a Slasher, but not the typical teenagers-on-the-run kind of Slasher; it is a psychological horror film but not that close to the exemplary ones like The Shining or The Silence of the Lambs. It is a movie that one has to see in order to understand. Telling about it is not enough.

Now, this movie puts a serial killer on the center. True, we have Otis and Becky, but it is Henry who we are after. And Henry is an interesting character. We know that he is bad, and one can't listen to him teaches his modus operandi without suffering from so many chills that it hurts. Yet, we hate Otis more. We hate the drug dealer, we hate the amateur serial killer, we hate all of Otis's character far more than we hate Henry. And that's interesting, and that enables us to survive this movie.

So one has to wonder- how could they achieve that? How could they make us hate Otis far more than we hate Henry? The reason that I've found is located in a very simple scene near the beginning- Otis tries to grab his sister and kiss her, Henry says "no!" and stops him. That's the scene, that's the reason. And why is this so powerful, so important? Because it helps us to identify with this Henry-monster, because it shows that even Henry has principles, or at the very least some feelings regarding other human beings. Things that Otis has far less of, if he has anything of this type at all.

And when we come to present our monsters and villains in our games, it might be better to use something like this. Why? Because it will make the players question the definitions of good and bad, the definitions of what moral and what isn't, it will make them be far more afraid, because a killer that is prone to feelings can be understood, and this means that one can become such a killer. But it has an almost as dark in addition for the earlier one stated- if the killer has feelings, and the killer is prone to those feelings, he can do things that will be totally unexpected, because it will attack the understanding of the killer's psyche and not just the normal expectations. And that's far scarier than anything one could achieve on its own.

How 'bout you? What did you think about this movie? And have you taken something interesting from it?

16 movies up until now, all of them new.

The Mist- Learning When to Stop

13 years after directing The Shawshank Redemption, Darabont directs another King's adaptation. And I can’t say that I was impressed. It is considered to be one of the greatest and most frightening horror movies of the century so far, but I couldn't agree less. It was one of the most disappointing films that I've ever seen.

On the surface, it has all the elements of being a good horror movie, and also a good movie outside of the genre, the same line that for me holds movies like Casablanca (my all-time favorite), Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, The 400 Blows and so many more. It has some very nice acting, and it has a political sting, and it has some interesting and surprisingly deep characters (well, most of them, if you look hard enough). It has a really nice conspiracy, and it tackles religious fanatics and hubris filled scientists. It has everything that a movie could ask for.

And that's the problem, it has way too much. The mist isn't scary, because there are creatures in there. They aren't scary, because we've got big ol fucking Cthulhu in there. Cthulhu isn't scary, because we got a conspiracy, and this conspiracy isn't scary because we also got some religious fanatics, and we're also told about the scientists, and we see the people going mad, becoming beasts like in Night of the Living Dead, and… I think that you've got the idea. We've got way too much.

And that's even before we look at the movie on the genre level. We've got horror, and then we got a love story (only for the woman to get killed 2 seconds or so later). Then we get into a Christian movie, later turned into a post-apocalyptic film, before finally ending on the melodramatic Hamlet side of the spectrum.

Maybe it's just me, I don't know. But for me it was hell too much to really care for what's going on. I watched the movie trying to understand what's going on at the beginning, and then started to guess what strange twist they'll bring this time.

And that's a lesson to keep in mind when designing and writing your stories, your adventures. Think not only about what to put in, but also about what to put out. Remind yourself that too much of a good thing turns everything into something bad, or at the very least tasteless. When every few minutes the story changes completely, and you throw something too different and too big to handle, you'll just end with people who don't care.

They don't care not because they don't want to, but because they can't, because you put too much for their minds to handle. Because, and that' a thing that one should keep in mind, you as GM's know everything and you had much time to absorb it, to analyze it, to understand what goes where and when. But players? They only have a few minutes. So have mercy on them, or don't be surprised when they can't get what you're doing next or don't care for your uber-impressive plot twist.

How about you? What did you think about this movie? And have you learned from it something else, something positive?

The Black Cat- Doing It the Lovecraftian Way

Universal's horror films rarely stand to the effects of time. Most of them look aged, irrelevant, and even quite silly. But there are a few that live to this day. The Black Cat is one of them, even though it doesn't bear any resemblance to the amazingly scary horror masterpiece written by Poe and bearing the same name (or is it the other way around?).

It is a movie about a newly-wed couple (yeah, again) who are honeymooning in Hungary, and are joined in the train by a Hungarian Psychiatrist. A few minutes later and they are already in the house of a mischievous Austrian architect. From then on we slowly get to the weirder realm, although when it does get to this realm it picks a Lovecraftian ending pace

And that's actually, the main reason that the movie works for me. There is a reason that Lovecraft's stories are so frightening. I mean, there are reasons for that. One of them is the levels of horror that he's working with, but another one is the pattern that all of his stories share.

In Lovecraft stories', he starts slowly, really slowly, with only hints and such, and only in the last page or two he picks the pace. From that moment onwards, all hell breaks loose and the weird element is skyrocketing in the speed of light. But he starts slowly. True, we know from the very beginning what we will face, but we don't see it till the end, and we only learn about it gradually.

Anyways, this pattern carries with it 2 main benefits. The first one is that it makes the thing, the monster, more believable. After so many pages of trying to understand it, and seeing the effects of its existence, it is much easier to accept this monstrosity.

But there is also another benefit, and this one is far greater. It creates a build-up, and this build up is way better than the build-up usually utilized in the horror market when pulled right. And Lovecraft knew how to do it.

But truth is, it isn't that much harder to pull right. One only needs to understand that instead of showing an attack in the beginning, one shows a diary. Instead of showing the remains of a victim, one only tells about it behind closed doors.

And then, in the end, when we pick the pace and show the true horror, gaze into the abyss and see the tentacles and eyes, we're much more frightened, much more terrified, much more scared. And that's the whole thing, that's the point, in the end, to frighten.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think? What have you learned?

The Fog- Silence is Scarier than Sound

I think that by now most of us horror filmgoers are pretty accustomed to the usual run of the mill horror monster. You know the ones- whether it's the devil, or an alien, a vampire or a werewolf, we pretty much know those monsters. But john Carpenter did something unique- he made a natural thing, a bank of fog, something scary. That's the work of a true horror genius.

The Fog tells of a small town called Antonio Bay, which celebrates its 1100^th birthday the day the movie takes place. We get to know a few of the inhabitants of the town, and we get to know of the curse put upon the town a long time ago, a curse that lays a deadly and scary fog on the town. True, the fog has some zombies in it, but they're not so scary, and the fog does work pretty much on its own as we could see with the electricity lines…

Anyway, what makes the fog so scary is the silence. It is a deadly killer, this fog, and it works toward achieving its goal, but it does all of these in silence. We never hear the fog, we never hear the zombies inside the fog (except when they knock on the doors). The fog moves silently, kills silently, avenges silently. And silence is far scarier than sound, because we know sound, and if we hear the danger we can run. But when it is a silent killer like this fog? We won't hear it come, we won't be able to run, and it will kill us.

And it can be incorporated into RPGS. Let the PCs witness this silent killer unleashes its power on some NPCs in this dreadful silence, and the players will be scared as hell. Why? Because they'll understand a simple truth- when the fog will go for them, they won't know about it 'till it's too late. And this thing is scary as hell, knowing that there's something that is ought to get you, but you won't know about its presence until it will be far too late.

But the silence isn't there only when the fog comes, it's also when the fog attacks. True, the fog knocks on the doors to announce its presence, but if one doesn't open the door, the door will be destroyed in silence, and then the fog will enter in silence, and the zombies will come out of it I silence and kill you while still don't making a sound. Silence by itself is scary and unnatural. Silence accompanied by a certain sound signaling your doom is even scarier.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think about it? And what did you learn from watching?

Cronos- Making the Curse Feel Like a Curse

There are those horror movies that you see and immediately forget, and there are those that you'll take with you onward and maybe even forever. Cronos is one of them. A debut feature film by Del Toro, yet you wouldn't feel that when watching it. It is made with so much thought, devotion and emotion that you can't find anything bad to say about it. It is one of those movies that one hardly could make any better.

It is a story of an old man, who owns an antique shop, and becomes a vampire. It is a story of the relationship between a young girl named Mercedes and her grandfather. It is a story of the fear of the death, of the price of eternity. It is a film about life and living. It is mostly sad, sometimes even a little bit terrifying. I can't find the words to describe this film, to do it justice, not in English nor in Hebrew. It is this good.

And to find something to learn from it is so hard and so easy, takes so much energy and so little an amount. Watch it because it is a good movie, and then watch it again to analyze it. I don't know what else to say.

Right… lesson! I think that the moment in which I understood that I was watching something unique was the bathroom scene, the scene in which our vampire drinks blood from the bathroom floor. It is so powerful, so sad, and so pitiful. From this scene I knew that I was in good hands.

And this scene can teach us something about our games. Quite a lot to teach, actually, but I'll focus on a single thing. In most personal horrors games, the characters are very powerful, very strong and tough, with a lot of magical power. They call this state of theirs a curse, but here it usually ends. This scene can remind us of what it means a cursed state. This vampiric state of his made him do so many heartbreaking things, from drinking the blood from the bathroom floor to almost drinking his granddaughter's blood. And this can happen in our games too.

It is not enough to describe the life taking moment, the enjoyment of the act. It is not enough to say "you bite him, his blood is drawn to your bloody, his heart starts to beat faster and faster, and then slowly picks down the pace. The blood starts to run day, but it doesn't matter, the feeling is wonderful, amazing, and good like you've never felt in your life, better than the feeling of seeing your first child born. And when he dies, and the feeling's gone, you know that you just want more." No, it is not enough, not even close to it. Because it doesn't feel like a sad thing, like a sad act. Maybe it's better to not do it both ways at the same time, but by reminding the players that this is a curse, we help to bring the horrors back. We help to make them want the pain away, the feeling gone, and the horror will use this moment to strike.

Because there's another type of personal horror, besides "oh, what have I done"? This other type of personal horror is so close to the known one, yet so different from it. It is the type of "oh, what did it make me do? To what state have I been drawn?" And by reminding the players that this state is a curse, we bring them closer to the second type's embrace.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think about it? And what have you learned from it?

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?

5 Dialogue Mistakes I've Made Portraying My NPCs

And this moment comes, when we get to finally play a part in the game, pretending to be one of the NPCs in the story. Most of us put a lot of effort into them, creating them and painting them (figuratively or else) and we try to breathe life into them and make them deep and well-rounded and not 2-dimensional and when we finally get to playing them, they sound so unnatural, so mechanic. I don't know about you, but it sure happened to me, and I can't stand it.

I've rounded up a list of a couple of the mistakes that I've made when portraying NPCs (and characters in general):

1. Calling the characters all the time by their names. This mistake is big and old, and I suffered from it for many, many years: Every time I spoke to the PCs as an NPC, I referred to them by name. There are places where it is important (like, when referring to a higher class or something), but we don't, in a normal conversation, refer all the time to one another by names (or at least, I suppose so...). So, instead of saying: "So, Bob, how are you today?" say: "So, how are you today?". Also, try calling higher standing persons "your excellency" and not "Mr. Geldof" and so on. Trust me, it does magic.
2. Not so much me, but I've seen many GMs go and say as their NPC: "Blah blah blah..." he said angrily. In RPGs, we can use our voices to tell that, and it will be so much more powerful. If the NPC is angry, talk angrily, don't say the Queen Regent spoke angrily.
3. Don't give speeches. I remember it like it was yesterday: I was GMing to a group of 4 for the second year in our (then) ongoing campaign. They arrived in the nick of time to stop the villain, and she gave them a speech. The fact that it was a supers campaign was no excuse for that, as their faces turned down, and they started to talk about other things, wandering out of the game. Don't give speeches in games, ever. It never ends well, and for fuck's sake with genre conventions, we're not in comics after all...
4. Don't try to be cunning or clever all the time. You know those players who just can't stop trying too hard to be funny or clever? Remember how annoying it is? Why should your NPCs be the same?
5. Get to the point. In real life, we have, at least theoretically, the time to go round all angles before saying our line. In our game, on the other hand, we don't. Get to the point, with as little as possible of rounds and turns to get time, unless it's... I don't know, actually.

So, that's it for today. How about you? What dialogue mistakes did you make with portraying your NPCs?

Empathy for Your NPC

So, here it comes, this moment when after all those many posts, comes the last emotion in our series. Today, it's empathy's turn. While in most other emotions the focus was on the plot, with empathy the focus is on the characters themselves.

Empathy is this thing that we feel when we care about a character. It's one of the more powerful emotions, and it makes the characters feel likable and more realistic. Usually, characters in our stories will "dance" between empathy and the opposite of it- enmity.

Empathy is connected to compassion, admiration and contempt.

There are a few ways to make for a more immediate and fast empathy bond between players and NPCs, which we can squeeze into three main groups:

1. We feel empathy for victims and weak persons, mainly because we feel sorry for them.
2. We feel empathy for characters that have some humanistic virtues, because we want to be as good as them.
3. We feel empathy for characters with desirable qualities, because we want these qualities and we want to be the characters.

What I'm going to do in this post, which will be a little bit different from the others, is that I'm going to look at these three groups and see how we can get them in our games.

We feel empathy for victims

We can't help it, when we see a victim, we immediately feel empathy, sorry and pity for him/her. It doesn't matter if the victim is good or bad, we just feel it.

The most common way of victimising a character, at least in movies, is by mistreating them. It can be by teasing them, or by humiliating them, but there's some mistreatment there. Think about Lester in American Beauty who is being constantly humiliated by his wife and daughter, aren't we immediately drawn to him and to his side? Mistreating a character can be far more powerful if the character is falsely accused (like in North by Northwest) of if the mistreatment is brutal (like in Interview with the Vampire).

Another way of victimising a character is through sheer bad luck. Think about the death of Rizzo just before they reach their destination after so much time spent in fighting the disease, or of George's uncle losing the money a minute before the inspection. We just can't stand it there, and most of us (I'm sure) would have rushed to help them if we could.

The last common way for this is through using deformed characters. Characters with some sorts of handicaps, whether physical or mental, are just more prone to our empathy. For some unknown reason, we just really like the underdog. Use it.

We feel empathy for characters that have some humanistic virtues

Virtues are a way of acting towards others, a good way to act toward them. Giving characters some humanistic virtues, like politeness, or generosity, are one of the ways to get empathy for the characters.

Remember our victims from the first group? A character that will help them will be considered a good one, and will draw both attention and caring from the players. Players tend to defend those people that are good, even when they play "not-so-good" characters. Think about George from It's a Wonderful Life, how he helps all those unfortunate souls, is there a wonder why we like him so much? Meet your PCs with a George Bailey and you'll notice it by yourselves.

Another thing is relations with children. Children are considered weak, vulnerable and innocent. A character that is good with them, and/or the children like him/her will get the empathy from the characters for the work that this NPC is doing. Think of Mary Poppins or of Dr. Crowe and you'll see it by yourself. As a side note, if you want a character to be hated from first sight, show this character mistreating a child.

A third and last in this aspect, for doing it is by fighting for a just cause. It is rightly considered a selfless act, and an act that deserves proper recognition. An NPC who goes even further and sacrifices himself/herself for this cause will be even better.

We feel empathy for characters with desirable qualities

Actually, the shortest of them all, as this technique is the most straightforward. We like people with desirable qualities, as simple as that. Give NPCs power, glamorous jobs, passion, beauty or the like, and they'll be much more likable and easier to empathise with.

Look for example on Schindler in Schindler's List: He's not a perfect human being, far from that, and he buys the factory because it's easy money, but the courage he encompasses, when helping the Jews and saving them, makes him so much better.

Think about Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love: He writes because of the lust for women that he feels, until he falls in love with her. The passion does all the rest, hooking us to him, pressing all those buttons that we keep hidden within.

It can work for evil characters also, like the humour that is used with The Joker, a sense of humour that makes him almost as likable as Batman, and far more fun to watch. 

So, this is it for today. Tomorrow there will be a conclusion post to conclude the series, but that's almost the finish line, with 41 kilometres of the Marathon behind.

How about you? How do you create empathy for your NPCs?

Can I Get My Thrill, Please?

Today it's time for our first before the last emotion in our series. Today, we're gonna talk about thrills. Although the name is similar to the genre of thrillers, there's no real connection between the 2. Thrills are the moment of sudden sensation, when all hell broke lost.

The main way to create thrills in the players is through spectacle scenes. Think about the sinking of the Titanic in the movie, think about the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Opening with a spectacle scene is one of the best attention grabbers there are. There are 2 things to remember when opening a story with a spectacle scene:

The first is not to overdo it at the expense of the story. If it's too much, or not important, or not connected, there's no use for this opening.

The second is to think about what place the PCs will fill in this scene. If there's no role for them there, maybe passing on this scene and opening with how it affects the PCs will be better. Think about the opening scene of The Matrix, part of why it's so great is that here we get Trinity and not just some kind of hacker who talks with her. If the scene can help to establish the characters, so much the better.

When speaking of the opening scene of The Matrix, we can't leave behind the sequence it's part of, the escape sequence of Trinity. Escapes are another great way to bump up the thrills in the story. En escape sequence done right can change everything. Make everything immediate, and the story and players will thank you.

But escape sequences don't have to be done by the PCs, as they can learn of an escape done by the villain. When the characters are there to investigate a crime scene, or an escape from prison scene, narrating their findings in flashbacks to the event itself can prove quiet useful. Always remember one thing when doing this kind of thing, though, it has to be short and it has to give only parts of the crime and not all of it. Strive to give only 50-60% of the crime and let the players fill the rest for themselves (and it's always better to let them fill the dirty parts by themselves).

Another way to get this thrill we're so longing for is by using short intervals of violence. Short intervals that are brutal and dirty are far more thrilling than long tactical fighting. The villains ambush the players, and they have to get to a safe zone while bullets fill the air, the famous monster goes out of the water and advances like an unstoppable nature force into the city, destroying it like a hurricane... This kind of thing is far more thrilling than the orcs who come to kill the PCs and the battle in squares that comes afterwards.

Violence can be replaced by sexuality, though. Think about some of the horror movies we all like to see. Sex=death, and the thrill is in both of this sides of the equation. Now, I'm not saying make the story a porn story or something, but a little sexual conflict here or there does come with its merits.

A better way to use sexuality in the story is by combining it with violence. The sex=death is one way to do this, but there are also other ways to do it. If one of the characters goes to sleep after a wild night and wakes up only to find a dagger near his/her throat, you'll feel the thrilling atmosphere that controls the room.

Before I close for today, there's one thing that I can't discuss thrills and not discuss it, fights. Fights are one of the oldest aspects of the RPGs (and of stories also), but they stopped being this thrilling when they stretch for too long or become too tactical. Although I discussed how to enhance the battles here and here (and also in here), there is also one thing that we can learn from Unknown Armies: making the battles short, brutal and chaotic makes battles less common in the first place, but when they come... The thrills that come with it can challenge action movies.

Another technique is by making the situations more complex, like battling on a driving van, a flying carpet or on a train. If you'll succeed in making a battle between a motorcycle driver (probably the PC) to the villain on the roof of the train, with a chase scene combined with a fight scene, it's gonna be one of the fight scenes of the game.

So, that's about it for today, how about you? How do you thrill your players?

Guess Who's Surprised at Dinner

4 emotions are already there, and only three are left to go. Today, in our series, we're gonna talk about surprises. Surprise is the thing we use to prevent our stories from becoming predictable. A predictable story will lose its appeal and interest much faster than would a surprising one.

Surprises need not change the outcome (although it's fine) but the way we get there. The heroes will ultimately defeat the adversary and restore peace into the realm, but the way they do it can be somewhat twisted and surprising.

It's important to remember, though, that in order to create surprise we have to first establish anticipation in our players' minds. Surprise is related to dismay and amusement.

So, how can we create surprise in our players' minds?

The first and most straightforward technique is by creating unexpected complications and obstacles. They should be surprising in where they are, and in what they are, but they should not stop the PCs completely, just hold them for some time when they try to cope with this sudden change of plans. They can be flooded roads or giant rocks, having to take the trip by car and not by airplane, etc. What's important is that they'll be unexpected, or in other words- no formulae to when, where and what.

Another way to create the surprise is by using secrets. They can be a secret that's kept for a scene or for an entire story arch, but they should be there and should be revealed. When the moment of reveal finally comes, and the secret goes public, there will be a surprise.

Another way of using secrets is with reversals. Think about Some Like It Hot, When Joe and Jerry appear at the train station dressed as women; or think about the moment when the nice fella who the characters always bought groceries from turned out to be the serial killer they've been looking for. If reversals are done right, there's no higher degree of surprise that can be achieved than that, but if done wrong it can really cause some problems. Take into account, though, that these reversals don't have to be character reversals but can also be an event (like when Lester in American Beauty bribes his boss instead of being fired) or when Louis tells to round up the usual suspects after Strasser has been shot.

Reversals are a particular type of revelations and discoveries. The main difference between revelations and discoveries is that discoveries are an active process, while revelations are passive processes as information is revealed to the characters and players. The reason that I'm making this distinction is that these 2 types should be balanced, and not too much to only one of them. Both discoveries and revelations are usually learnt by both the characters and the players at the same time, like when finding a clue. Revelations, on the other hand, also have the benefit of being able to learn only by the players with the characters unknowing. This benefit can be used to great lengths in horror GMing.

Discoveries and revelations can also come at the end, usually by using twist endings. These endings usually alter the perception on what we thought about the all game, and if done right can really change the way the players think about the game (an example of this in use can be seen in this post).

Another way to surprise the players is by shocking them. Hitchcock proved how useful it can be when he killed the main protagonist in the end of the first act. It's suggested to make the shocks completely unexpected, sudden and most of all extremish. Shock can also be used in non horror games, like in the comedy film Tootsie when we Michael in drag, or when at the end of Some Like It Hot the playboy says "well, nobody's perfect".

Before we'll finish for today, a little thing to take in mind: All of the surprises should come with the appropriate setup. It shouldn't reveal the surprise, but it should make the surprise seem logical. A good setup is a one that, when the players look back at it, the surprise is seen as a logical continuation. Think about the Boxer who fails to lose a fight on purpose and has to skip town because of that (in Pulp Fiction), the decision to skip comes as a surprise, but it does seem like a logical continuation considering the situation.

So, that's it for today. How about you? How do you surprise your players?

Thrillers Inc Home Edition

And here comes the time to yet another instalment in our series. Today, we're discussing the feeling of suspense. Suspense deals with the unpredictable, with the "what comes next" as well as when will it come. Suspense is made of three main things: The character and how much we care for it; how likely a particular event is; and lastly, how uncertain we are about the outcome.

Suspense is related to tension, anxiety, concern and doubt, and to a certain extent, curiosity. There is one major difference between curiosity and suspense: curiosity deals with not knowing what our protagonists want, while on the other hand, suspense deals with the fulfilment of our protagonists' goals.

So, how can we bring suspense to the gaming table?

The first technique is by controlling and changing the likeliness of success or failure. If the characters will always succeed, or always fail, there will be no pint in telling the story. If the characters always emerge from battles victorious, why playing battles? Isn't it better to just say: "You fight hard, but win this battle and all the orcs are dead"? If we change the probability of outcomes, the suspense will naturally rise, and every dice roll comes with great tension.

Another way is to control the pacing of the game. Make things in the "now" and things will get tenser, space the time before a major event, and you'll see the sweat on your players' noses. Make your descriptions a little bit longer when trying to cut the right string of the bomb, and it will be a lot more suspenseful than, like going over it quickly.

Another way to control the pacing, and thus bump the suspense level, is with meanwhile scenes. Whether it's meanwhile to other PCs in time of a split party, or to the villain actions, stopping at a minor cliffhanger and going to another place makes the particular player's whose character is left hanging in the air to look forward to see how his action will turn out. Other way to create the meanwhile is by the "parallel scene" technique, like the one used in The Silence of the Lambs. If you can make it into a game, you'll surely benefit from it.

Another way is to put PCs out of their comfort zones (or better yet, putting the players themselves out of it) will make every act tensful and will bring doubt back to the player's minds. Think about something, ability, a trait, or anything else that the character is adept at using, and then put the character where s/he can't use this ability (or the ability harms more than it helps). The player will have to come up with a new way to do stuff, doubting every action and concerned about whether s/he'll do it "right".

Putting a character out if its comfort zone can also be used in another way: with contrasting characters. Think back, for example, on the evil twin act or when David Huxley encounters Susan Vance. Although it's being used mainly in comedy, this trick surely enhances the tense atmosphere of the situation.

In most games and stories, there's this moment of big revelation, when the big and important thing is being told. It is usually one of the most suspenseful moments in the story, as we learn the ugly truth and we have no way to escape from it. This revelation is one of the most important moments in the story and should receive the right amount of energy. Think about the suspenseful atmosphere after Darth Vader tells Luke that he's his father, this is what we strive for.

2 last techniques for today: The first is by controlling the stakes. Higher stakes means higher level of suspense, and raising them can help you raise the level of tension in your game. If you start with a single family's life at stake, and then go all the way to risking the whole country, they'll feel it. But raising the stakes is not enough, as you should always make sure that the players remember the stakes. It doesn't matter if the whole universe is at stake if no one notices it.

The second is by using dilemmas. A dilemma is the formal name for the Bang, a choice between 2 unwanted consequences. It can be a small dilemma or a big one, but there are 2 important things to remember:

1. It shouldn't be black and white but black and (mostly) black. The love of one's life or the standing in society; the morality of oneself or the family. If there is a clear right answer and a clear wrong answer, there's no dilemma at all, but another not that important and unique conflict.
2. The higher the stakes, and the more personal they are, the better the dilemma will be. Which one of Sophie's children will live is a lot more personal and important than which city will I let fall first. Personal stakes are almost always higher than the non personal ones, and they carry a bigger emotional impact.

How about you? How do you use or create suspense in your game?

To yesterday's post

When We Look Forward to...

And the third instalment of our series is finally here. Today, our topic is the dreaded anticipation, or the feeling of looking forward to something that will happen in the future. It can be a good thing, a bad thing, or even a certain flashback scene.

Once we set the information, the anticipation engines start to propel as we look forward to the next bit of info, to the time when it will be useful. A higher level of this can be seen in the famous Hitchcock's movie "The Man Who Knew too Much", where we know that the murder will be done during the cymbal note. He's the one who said that "there's no terror in a bang, only the anticipation of it".

Like with the other emotions, there are a couple of others that are connectod to anticipation: Hope, worry and fear.

So, how do we create and use anticipation in our games?

The first technique is by establishing the traits of our characters, whether they are NPCs or PCs. Establishing these traits helps us to anticipate certain courses of actions or events. More than that, it can make us want to meet someone, for example. Look for example at 2 examples from The Silence of the Lambs: The first is the famous escape scene of Lecter. We knew by this stage that he's a fearful cannibalistic maniac, and that there's no limit to what he can do. When he gets captured, we want to know how he will escape, and when he does escape, it fulfills our anticipation. The second is when he says at the end "I'm having an old friend for dinner" we anticipate what will happen, and how he'll try to eat this fella.

Another example is by talking about the future. When we talk about the future, we create anticipation for a future event. It's the knowledge of what will happen during the cymbal crash that makes us look for the cymbal clash, not the clash itself. Take into account, though, that this future doesn't have to be a chronological future. It can also be a future of a flashback, like in the movie Sunset Boulevard, where we begin by being told the story of our dead protagonist, told by him after he died.

The third technique is by plans and daydreams. When Ugarte says to Rick that "after tonight, I’m through with the whole business" we anticipate to the night when he'll finally set himself free from the dreaded city of Casablanca. Secret plans are even more useful to creating anticipation. It creates a double anticipation, one for knowing what the plan is and another to know how it will turn out. But don't make every plan secret, or it will feel like a parody of spy movies...

Another way to create anticipation is by setting up goals. When we do that, the players anticipate the event of the goals fulfillment. If one of the characters has a goal of becoming the new prince of the vampire society, he looks for the event of his coronation. Goals make us look for a certain event, or the other way around of not looking forward to a certain event, feeling us with fear and worry for our beloved characters. If we know that the villain plans to kill Robert Geldof, we fear for Robert Geldof's life, thus making us anticipate this event to see him emerge victorious.

Always have the characters (PCs and/or NPCs) want something, and don't ever fulfill a goal before giving the players and their characters something else to look for.

As you've probably guessed, most of the techniques here are connected in one way or another by making the players want something for their characters (goals) or fearing for their lives from a bad thing that is gonna happen. This is no mistake, and it can be further developed to contain omens, warnings, appointments and so on. Also the MacGuffin fills this spot- the characters and/or the villains are trying to get something, and we look forward to the point of finding it.

A little trick with MacGuffins: The MacGuffin doesn't have to be an object all the time. It's much more interesting when it's a place or even a person (fictitious or real).

2 last techniques for today: The first one is to state the mood of the game from the very beginning. This way, we give the players a suggestion: Stay with me in the game, and you'll get more of those. If this thing is something that this particular player really likes, he will probably stay within the game and will look forward to these moments.

The last technique is by using dramatic irony. This is revealing info to the players that the characters don't know. An example of that can be seen in my Yale Hotel mini-campaign, where the last player knew that Bob Luchiano can be in a few places at once, and that he'll lie and tell her that the other characters released him. Another example of this can be seen in North by Northwest, when we the audience discover that Kaplan is a fictitious character, but Thornhill and Vandamm are unaware of this fact.

Another way to create this is in the opposite way: The characters know more than the players. Using this way makes us look forward to the point when we'll discover the truth behind it. Think about Chinatown for many examples of this in action.

Dramatic Irony can be created in 2 main ways, deception and misunderstanding. Both of this ways make us anticipate the moment of truth to come, when we'll discover what really happens, what was hidden from us, and what did we misunderstood.

And... That's it for today. How do you bump up the anticipation levels in your players?

Curiosity Killed the Cat, but Made It Famous...

And today is the time to the next installment in our series. Today we're gonna talk about curiosity. Curiosity is the need to know, to answer the questions, and it is one of those things that make us want to continue reading a story, watching a movie, or in our subject, participate in a game.

Like in our previous emotion, this one also contains relevant emotions, which are wonder and intrigue.

If used correctly, curiosity will make the players talk about the game after the games is finished, trying to understand, to predict, what will come next. If not used correctly, the players will probably be bored, or uncaring, but by all means they won't put energy to the game beyond the game time (if at all).

So, how can we raise the level of curiosity in the game? For that there are, again, a few techniques. They also raise the level of interest, but are used more to this emotion.

The main way to do that, and also the basic way from which we're building up, is by arousing questions. They can be simple questions like "will the thief run away" or as complicated like "will she shot her son, when she'll discover that he's the murderer of her husband?" What is important, though, is that there will be questions.

We can think about the questions in a few different levels:

The opening sequence questions are the first ones we'll have to consider. It is mandatory to catch the player's curiosity from the first moment, and raising interesting questions at this early stage will sure catch their attention and curiosity. Think about the pictures from the start of the movie Chinatown, or better yet, the questions that arouse in the first few segments of The Godfather: To whom is he talking? Why is he so important? What happened to the girl, and why? From that moment, we're hooked with curiosity, and by the time these questions are answered, we have new ones.

Always have a few questions running in the players' minds. It's not that difficult to arrange, but it is rewarding nonetheless. By the time an answer is given, 2 new questions should pop up.

Another level to think about is the one of scale. A question can arouse in the whole plot, or in a single beat. If most of the beats will raise questions, it's surely on the way to advance even farther. When the lunatic enters the room screaming, apart from the surprise and fear, the beat also contains questions such as who is he? Why is he here? Why he hasn't been stopped and so on.

But questions can also be in the scene level. Will Rick be persuaded into helping Ilsa? Will the investigator get the permission to read about Kane in the book?

Or even in sequence level. Will the criminal on the train succeed in running away from the investigator? Will Annie discover what event in the past made Alvy be this loony?

And of course it can also be in the act and story levels. What is important, though, is that there will be questions, many of them, most of them small (so there won't be an overflow of questions or info gained) and constantly bombarded at the players and their characters.

"There are trails from the dead body of the horse, the cape is full of blood, but there's nobody wearing it. They are leading to a certain point, near the bushes and trees, and then it stops, disappearing..." Not too complicated, but look what questions do we have: What happened to the rider of the horse? What happened to the trails? Has he gone through the bushes? Trees? Is he alive? Is he a she? Who is the rider, actually? And of course many many more.

There are 2 more techniques that I'll discuss today. The first one is withholding the information. If the players discover the answers too soon, there's no real excitement or drama, and the curiosity has died before it had even begun to flourish. The idea is to hold the info as much as we can before the game draws into a halt or frustration starts to fill the players. One possible way to solve it is to wait about 2-3 minutes of real time, or until 2-3 new questions have aroused before answering the earlier ones. Another way is that the answers themselves create new questions: "What happened to Lisa? -She left her house with a boy, and then disappeared. -Who was the boy? -I don't know, but he had 6 fingers on his right hand..."

The last technique for today is of emphasising secrets and schemes. It fills us with curiosity when a scheme is being made, or if someone is holding a secret. "How will it turn out? Will the scheme succeed? Will the secret be revealed? How?" I'll discuss secrets more thoroughly when I'll discuss surprise, but let's just say that holding the secrets creates a sense of intrigue and wonder, which bump up our curiosity level.

So that's it for today. What about you? How do you try to catch player's curiosity?