Pumpkin Patch Massacre

 Here's my prep for the game:

There's some heavy stuff in there; content warning for sexual violence, drugs, and all kinds of prejudiced -phobias. 

A disclaimer about the depiction of Mormons in this scenario: it's totally fictional. I know/have known many Mormons, none of whom were serial killers. This scenario is based on a paranoid fantasy of Mormon-Pentecostal syncretists. Unlike modern Mormons, the villains in this scenario still believe in polygamy (now forbidden by the Church of Latter-Day Saints), they make and take drugs (always forbidden by the LDS), they worship the cross, speak in tongues, and handle snakes (Mormons don't worship the cross, and the latter two activities are Pentecostal), and they kidnap, rape, and impregnate women to serve as their "wives" (which is not something I associate with any modern religion).

Prep and writing 

This scenario evolved from a dream I had, in which killer hillbilly farmers worked a pumpkin patch, and simultaneously aliens started mind-controlling people. I wrote about that here. After I discussed the scenario with Eero, I decided to focus on the thing I found actually compelling as horror, the nightmare farmers. Aliens with mind control are just not scary to me!

I souped up the scenario with aspects of my real life in San Bernardino and Ohio -- for instance, there's a barn with a "sandbox" full of corn kernels, just like in the Yucaipa pumpkin patch I went to last year, and there's distasteful liveleak videos of people dying, just like Haunted Hoochie plays at their entrance.

I also took cues from a few horror movies and tv shows. The sinister central house and family dynamic is taken from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The nightmare underground section comes from the third act of House of 1000 Corpses. The "breeding" aspect probably comes from Barbarian. (This part I added on the fly during the first game. As the players were descending into the tunnel, I realized that I had written that the family took prisoners, but hadn't given them a reason to do it!) The cookhouse and hillbilly in a gas mask probably come from True Detective. (I say "probably" because they weren't conscious touchstones; I only realized the similarity after the fact.)

Right before the first session, I doodled a map of the pumpkin patch.

Player-facing map of the pumpkin patch

I then added the default locations of each family member to my own private map.

Pumpkin patch map with family member locations marked

This came in handy, especially during the second game, in which players traversed the whole ranch.

Game 1

Adam, Dave, and Paul. We started about an hour later than scheduled, but managed to finish without going too late.

Contra my notes, I started at tension 2 instead of tension 1, because I was worried we would have trouble getting enough tension. I should not have worried, because the players were eager to indulge in their "bad habits". In fact we got to tension 5 quicker than I wanted, before the players had time to meet almost any family members or explore the ranch.

I added and changed a few details on the fly in this game. I put Sister Ruth at the entrance to the park, instead of in the pumpkin patch. Since she's the most ambiguous, complex member of the family, I wanted the players to meet her; otherwise her potential betrayal would have no impact. (Is this too much effects-first thinking? Am I doing railroading/intuitive continuity here?)

I was probably too generous in giving survival points for bad habits. I think going forward I'll only give survival points when I can think of a way to capitalize on the bad habit to make trouble for the characters. If a character does something risky or unwise, but I don't think of a way to capitalize on it, sorry, no survival point!

Characters were decently developed and distinct. They had an internal social dynamic, which I would have liked to develop more. (This goes to the quick tension gain; the game would have been improved with a slower start.)

Lots of laughter on all sides until we came to the root tunnel. This was appropriately horrifying.

Combat was mostly boring. Seems like once Brother Jared gets you, you're stuck in a statistical grind until you die. (The cure for this might be to stick rigorously to the "no two rolls in a row" rule, as a kind of initiative system, so that after a monster attacks you they back off, or the game goes into freeze-frame mode, until you've said what you do next. Which doesn't have to be "attack back". 

We had one exciting combat moment, when Adam's character attacked Brother Enoch, and Adam spent several survival points to beat my roll. Essentially we compressed a series of back-and-forth engagements into a single extended roll by spending all of our survival points.

About halfway through the game, I was getting tired. I announced that we should wrap up soon, or possibly end things now. We decided to keep playing, and I asked that we play snappily and decisively. This really worked; the next, final hour of play was satisfying, and wrapped things up.

Game 2

Kyra and Tschesae. Again, rounded characters with genuine (which is not to say strong) relations.

I started with tension 1. Things amped up slower, and they got a chance to meet more family members before the shit hit the fan.

Because there's at least two fixed entrances to the root tunnels, they found the entrance before we hit tension 10. Thus in this game, even more than the last, tension operated as a tripwire, one possible way to bring elements into the game. It did not determine which horror elements were brought in.

Since the characters were very mobile, my fixed family patrol locations came in handy. I knew where each family member was at every time, and I could move them around in response to events in the ranch, as they were notified of them at least. This is a little bit of anti-railroading; if my prep and modeling tell me there's no family member present, there's no family member present, even if it would be cool for someone to be present. In fact I had given the family such effective patrol routes, and kept them communicating so regularly, that Tschesae thought I was spawning family members into place whenever convenient.

Two extended roll-offs where the players spent all their banked survival points. These were genuinely tense.

Outside of these roll-offs, I felt like I was hitting the limits of task resolution in this game. The different skills have a lot of overlap, and they don't cover all the actions I would want to be determined by a resolution procedure rather than situational authority. (Unfortunately I can't remember any examples of the latter!) It would be worth writing a new skill list for future play.

I used "the family member fakes innocence while trying to lure a player into a trap" twice, which felt kinda silly, though it made sense in isolation each time.

The players rescued a pregnant woman, Daryl, from the tunnels. I didn't play her very actively. Mostly forgot about her presence until I was reminded of her. I still don't have a great idea of how I should have played her. Maybe I could have asked Tschesae to play her as a distinct PC?

I have difficulty playing multiple characters in a single scene, and this definitely came out in the fight with Sister Ruth, where Daryl was mostly useless, and the 911 operator on the phone disappeared entirely.

Final reflections

I'm hoping to play this scenario one more time, with Misha, Divya, and Ken.

I would play more Dead of Night, in a new scenario with fewer independent monsters. I have lots of ideas for horror movies, after all!

I really enjoyed creating the scenario for this game. I was able to tap into themes and situations that I actually care about. Content creation was not difficult.

Since content creation in this game is very similar to content creation for Champions Now -- you make a villain with a plan, and then play all NPCs proactively -- I have some hope that I can run that game, too. More on my plan for a supers game later.