Sleeping Lady Extras: Horror Mode
As promised, the third extra for The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady is up, and it's all about using Horror Mode during the adventure. If you want to get your Horror Mode on from the Cypher System book while running Sleeping Lady, check it out. (GM's only, spoilers for players.)
What's Horror Mode? It's the tabletop rpg equivalent of the spooky music ramping up in a horror movie. Read about it here.
Going Horror Mode in the Cypher System
For Halloween, I tried out the horror mode rule from the Cypher System. I ran a horror Numenera game down at my Friendly Local Game Shop (Modern Boardshop), where I reskinned an adventure for horror. I used The Nightmare Switch, from the original Numenera Kickstarter, which worked well.
Horror mode changes the way the players' die rolls can create GM Intrusions. Instead of only on a 1, you start off at a 1 or 2, and keep adding to the threat range for the GM Intrusion. Once we got it up to 8, and with six players rolling dice, we had a huge number or GM Intrusions.
The Cypher System book has all the details, but the idea is that GM Intrusions bring on the horror. Once the PCs beat a local horror, or successfully flee from it, you set it back to normal (only a 1 gives a free GM Intrusion).
To help create the right mood, I took a huge red d20, and slapped it down on the table with the 2 up. Then I explained the rule. Every time I upped the chance to get a GM Intrusion, I picked it up and slapped it down with the new number up. I may have chuckled evilly.
So what about when you want the horror to show up? Easy. Just use a normal GM Intrusion, hand out the 2 xp. And add one to the horror die. Slap!
How did it work? It worked great. The players focused on their die rolls, constantly glancing at the big red die in, well, horror.
I'm coming to appreciate when a game designer like Monte Cook uses a core component (GM Intrusions) of their existing system in a new way. This reminds me of why I like how 13th Age designers have come up with new ways to use the escalation die and icon relationship roles. I find this so much better than the old way of slapping on a new mechanic to the side of an existing game. Eventually the system is defined by a collection of non-related mechanics that have been shoved into the game until I find it unplayable.
I can totally see adding horror mode to any cypher system game where I have a horror component. In fact, it would work great in The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady, which has a strong eldritch horror vibe.
I think I know what my next Sleeping Lady Extra will be...
Horror on the Cypher System Express
I've always enjoyed a great eldritch horror game: Call of Cthulhu or more recently, Trail of Cthulhu. And I really enjoy the Cypher System, the core rules used in Numenera and The Strange. Now, with the publication of the Cypher System Rulebook, I can mix my shuggoths and my GM Intrusions.
So, how does horror work in the Cypher System? First, I should explain a little about how the Cypher System Rulebook works. It's a menu of rules a GM (and players) can chose from to create their own game. Besides horror, there are rules for science fiction, fantasy, modern, and superheros. Within each genre, you get more choices. Lots of optional rules to tailor the game to just the right kind of horror.
The rulebook has a big bestiary of creatures to choose from and the horror section lists the ones that best fit a horror campaign, including Deep Ones and Mi-Go. It also includes 3 horror artifacts, so if you want more, you're going to have to make some yourself.
The horror rules are all optional rules. Madness will be familiar to Cthulhu players. Cypher System madness grew out of the madness rules found in In Strange Aeons: Lovecraftian Numenera. In this case madness puts a hurt on your Intellect pool and can even change your descriptor. I do something similar in The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady, which has a seriously eldrtich horror vibe.
Shock is another optional rule, more for short term effects like losing control of your character and running away or sitting down to sob rather than fight. Trail of Cthulhu players will find it very similar to Stability losses. Different mechanics, but going for the same effect.
Combine both Madness and Shock if you want a game like Trail of Cthulhu, or just Madness if you want a Call of Cthulhuish experience.
I've saved the most interesting for last. Horror Mode. Horror mode is a great way to ramp up tension, as the range for a GM Intrusion (the dice fail kind, not the 2xp kind) goes up to a 1-2 on a d20 roll. Then 1-3. And so on. You can get to 1-10 fairly quickly. Each GM Intrusion brings new horror AND widens the GM Intrusion range by one.
After the horror mode is over, you reset the GM Intrusion range to 1. Until the next time...
Which has me thinking of a Cypher Cthulhu adventure. I'm sure my players would love it!
Art Preview -- The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady
Some people might get the impression there is a horror component to this Numenera adventure. We have no idea what they mean. ;) Artist Doug Scott gives us a little peak into the challenges to be faced in The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady. These are preliminary sketches. The final art will be steeped in even more cosmic horror.
GM Excuses V: Lovecraftian Horror
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GM Excuses, Part V
And the 3rd will be 5th. Somehow we jumped over the Lovecraftian episode of Writing Excuses. Perhaps our broken minds blocked the show out. And now, it's back, more terrifying than ever!
And it's a great episode, with guest speaker Cherry Priest. Her latest novel is Maplecroft: Lizzy Borden with an ax vs. Cthulhu! Hello?
Take a listen, then let's do our homework.
Writing Prompt: Take a character, and from that character's point of view, describe their reaction to something horrific and awful, but do so without describing the thing itself.
OK, great fiction writing prompt. How can we twist this for gaming? If we use an npc, when would the players ever hear about it? If we take a PC, how would you describe something to them without describing it?
Here's my shot. It's a PC, and here's the READ ALOUD text addressed to ONE character:
As you step across the obsidian floor, white glyphs flare into existance across the surface and twist and turn. The rest of the party watches in horror as you vanish.
You fall to the floor in front of your friends, covered in a foul caul of mucus. How long were you gone? Thankfully you don't remember, until, then you do. Just bits and pieces. Being on a stone table as surgical implements held by what? Pincers? As you were cut open? There was a lot of screaming. Yours.
And they put you back together. But not quite the same as before. And didn't they add something? Cold and wriggling? Can you feel it now wrapped around your heart, or is this some delusion?
You hope it never happened. But you know better. There is no hope, and it's only going to get worse.
So the poor player doesn't really know what took them away, nor what they looked like. What all the players know, is any of them can be taken at any time. And unspeakable horrors are hovering.
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GM Excuses IV: What Do You Mean My Main NPC is Boring?
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GM Excuses, Part IV
Because of my hiccup, I've gotten behind in my homework! Time to file for an extension and get back to work.
If you’re new to this blog thread, I’m following the Writing Excuses master class on writing, and transmogrifying it to be about adventure design. In Part 1, I came up with five adventure ideas. In Part 2, I mixed up the ideas to create 4 new ideas. One of them is a mash-up of two of my ideas from Part 1, an adventure based on Drood, the novel by Dan Simmons, and one based on World Without Tears, a song by Lucinda Williams. In Part 3, I auditioned 5 NPCs for the lead role in the Drood/Williams adventure and let the blog readers vote for their favorites.
Take a listen to the Writing Excuses Podcast, What Do You Mean My Main Character is Boring? (only 15 minutes, and time well spent).
Today's Homework: Take three different characters and walk them through a scene. Convey their emotional states, their jobs, and their hobbies without directly stating any of those. The scene in question: walking through a marketplace, and they need to do a dead-drop.
Cool! We'll take Nalo D'Costa, Robert McTavish, and Elizabeth Dixon. You can see their biographies in Part 3. I haven't created hobbies for them yet, unless you count looking damned suspicious. We'll do these as Read Aloud text from a published adventure.
Nalo D'Costa:
You hear a hubbub from the city marketplace in front of you. Shoppers and stall owners comment on an unseen woman. You hear a lot of "Who does she think she is?" and disparaging remarks about the woman's dark skin color. You spot a fidgety brown woman dressed in a teal day dress wearing a deep bonnet that prevents you from seeing her face unless her head points straight at you. The fingers of her left hand are stained with ink.
She seems to be arguing with someone, but you see no one walking with her. Her accent is both educated and Jamaican. "Yes, I know they are looking at me. Always me, and not you. Why don't you make yourself useful and create a distraction?"
A fishmonger's cart collapses, but you can't see the cause. Cod spills across the cobblestones. While all eyes are on the fish, you see the woman stuff a brown sack into a barrel, close the lid, and walk away.
Robert McTavish:
You enter the city market and are surrounded by the calls to buy fresh fish, produce, and the like. An old gentleman with long sideburns and a mustache hurries past you. You meet his watery blue eyes for a moment, then turn away. There's an intensity about those eyes that is unnerving.
The gent marches up to a grocer and points to turnips. When the grocer turns to grab the turnips, the old man looks around, then puts his hands on the lid of a barrel. He stares across at a fishmonger's cart, where a woman calls out "Snakes! Snakes under the cart!"
You see the old man stuff a brown sack into the barrel, close the lid, and walk away, turnips forgotten.
Elizabeth Dixon:
You enter the city market and are surrounded by the smells of fresh fish, poultry, and the like. A bespectacled woman, perhaps in her 30s, rummages through a cart selling old books. A black ankh pendent graces her neck. She's talking to a corpulent Turk, fez and all, and they seem to be arguing. She points at a fishmonger's cart with a folded hand-fan, and says something sharp to the foreigner.
The Turk nods, and ambles over to the display of cod and mackerel. He stops, closes his eyes and falls into the fish-cart, hands flailing and grasping. The cart tips forward, spilling fish and causing a scene.
You see the woman stuff a brown sack into a barrel, close the lid, and walk away.
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GM Excuses: Audition Your Lead NPC
GM Excuses, Part 3
OK, class is in session again, and we have more homework. If you're new to this blog thread, I'm following the Writing Excuses master class on writing, and transmogrifying it to be about adventure design. In Part 1, I came up with five adventure ideas based on the homework assignment. In Part 2, I mixed up the ideas to create 4 new ideas. One of them is a mashup of two of my ideas from Part 1, an adventure based on Drood, the novel by Dan Simmons and one based on World Without Tears, a song by Lucinda Williams.
Check out the latest (15 minute) podcast from Writing Excuses, Q&A on Ideas.
The podcast is well worth a listen, but instead of dealing with the very interesting questions the cast answered, I'm jumping right to the homework:
Take one of the ideas you're excited about, and then audition five different characters for the lead role NPC in that story. Make sure they're all different from each other.
I changed the idea from the lead role, to the lead NPC because your player characters, lovable idiots that they are, are already cast in the lead roles. The question is who do they get to bounce off of? It could be the antagonist, an ally, or a another important person, perhaps one around whom the adventure revolves.
Looking over the ideas from the last GM Excuses, I'm going to go with Drood meets World Without Tears. Everything revolves around the famous writer, Charles Dickens. I'm going to mix it up, and replace Dickens with a fictional writer, but we'll say they are a famous and successful Victorian author.
Elizabeth Dixon Liz is a popular writer who has an aura of scandal around her. She's been seen traveling with another man while her husband stayed home with the children. Somehow the scandal has only increased her sales. She's taken a bizarre turn since a railway accident, and can now be found wandering graveyards and dealing with foreigners and other odd people. She's the daughter of a wealthy shipbuilding family and something of an expert in Egyptology. Secretly she believes she is the reincarnation of Hatshepsut, a woman pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty.
George Kingsport George is a popular speaker and writer on occult topics. He's known for his seances and being able to make contact with those who have past beyond the veil. A happy charlatan, George has been milking the naive since he was a teen, but now thing have taken a turn for the strange. For the last few months, George's fake powers have started to work. He speaks in tongues, recites ancient Egyptian poetry, and has the power to bend people to his will. Which would all be great, but for the blackouts. George wakes in odd places and has no recollection of how he got there.
Nalo D'Costa Nalo is a Jamaican woman who has burst onto the literary scene in England. Aided by a following in the upper class, she has transcended racial and gender barriers and gained a popular following. One worry is her belief that she will be fashionable only for a brief moment, and then the English will find another "exotic" author to pay attention to. The other worry is Anton, her fraternal twin who died at birth. Nalo sees and hears Anton, and while she used to believe he was a harmless hallucination, recent events have proven him neither.
Connor Synge is a celebrated Irish playwright and poet. Intense and brooding, he's a bit of a walking contradiction -- often seen in bars, he never drinks; popular with the ladies, he never marries; said to be gifted in Irish, he only works in English. Connor has recently been frustrated in his work. The play "The Droods" just will not write itself. He's torn up more versions than he can count. And each time he stops writing, he sees a pale face in the window. When he looks, he sees a figure vanishing down the block. He follows, and then finds himself lost in the most peculiar places. He's been talking to himself, and his friends are worried.
Robert McTavish was unknown outside of his Scottish landholdings until he reached the age of 70. He claimed he found a Pictish burial site and vanished for three days. When he came out, he began writing at a furious pace, and soon started on well attended speaking tours. He has watery blue eyes that force people to avoid his glance. He's also taken up poetry, and his latest poem is entitled "Before Man, Serpents." His dark writings have embarrassed his offspring, and they are looking for someone to rein in the old man.
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