I used to run a one-shot RPG story every year around Halloween. Some years it was, naturally, Call of Cthulhu. At least one year I ran a game centered on the Internecivus raptus. I ran Wraith: The Oblivion (which you know I loved) and I ran a spooky fantasy-horror story (driven by the SAGA System) about pumpkins being used to gestate a puppet race of homicidal dopplegängers. For a while, I looked forward to these Halloween games for weeks and weeks in advance, creating props and mixing CDs. They were my Halloween parties.

The Halloween games never caught on here in Atlanta. People would seldom make time during Halloween week to play games, and the one time I finally got some folks together, it went pretty badly. I planned a story that was much too long and played in a florescent-lit conference room — it was the worst year by far. The core idea of the adventure was okay, though, I thought. Here’s the pitch I emailed around (I got three players out of it):

(more…)

I know it’s nostalgia because it aches a little. It’s something about the time of year. This is when, longer ago now than it seems, I’d sink into the thick of the school year. The air mellowed out, it got dark sooner, and summery shirts gave way to sweaters and scarves. We went indoors sooner, and we played games after school.

Nostalgia is about the pain of going home, and that’s what this is. It’s the strain in the arm of reaching back through the bars for something we can see but can’t reach. Tonight, for me, it’s about trying to recapture the days of play from back when. Summer was the time for messing around, but this was the season of games.

// Read more of this post

As a kind of author’s note, I’m cross-posting this piece I wrote on RPGnet this morning, in response to the question of resemblance between the World of Darkness (of Vampire and Changeling) and the real world. Read on after the jump.

// Click to read this one

Whether you already have First Person and Second Person or not (getting them eventually should be a foregone conclusion), Electronic Book Review’s collection of articles from the books is a must-read trove of cunning essays. In addition to those, my essay from Second Person, Storytelling Games as a Creative Medium, is there in the company of such sterling articles from the likes of Ken Hite, Greg Costikyan, Paul Czege, James Wallis, Kevin Wilson, and other brilliant blokes. It’s all wrangled and made shiny by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (Get it here) is on Will’s Reading List and has the first published bits of Will’s Thesis. You’ve seen our reading lists, right?These articles are all dressed up with hypertext footnotes, linked bibliographies, and other handy internet enhancements. Keep your eyes peeled over there, too, for new articles riffing on those from the print books. Seriously, you’re looking at several hours of good reading over there, for free.

You’ve heard of Last Night on Earth.

ICv2 tells us that it’s the #3 board, card, or family game, if an unqualified statement like that can have any meaning at all.

Actual play, Last Night on Earth style. A ring of zombies closes in and takes down the last hero they needed to kill in order to win.

The game is a scenario-based contest between 1–2 zombie players on one hand and 1–4 hero players on the other. In a given scenario, the heroes might have to kill some quantity of zombies, dynamite their spawning pits, find the keys to the pickup truck and make good their escape, or whatever. There are always four hero characters (at the beginning, anyway), chosen from among eight. All scenarios apply time pressure with a turn countdown that moves toward either dusk or dawn.

As the game plays, zombies spawn and shamble toward the heroes. They can move through walls (that is, up through the floorboards and in through the windows), but advance slowly. They aren’t very good at fighting, but have the strength of numbers on their side.

Meanwhile, the heroes frantically ransack the buildings around the edges of the board looking for cards — items and events — that can help them. Depending on the scenario, once advantageously equipped (or when the zombies press them too grievously), they turn to the game-winning task at hand and sprint for the finish line.

// Nice summary. How is it?