We recently wrapped a seven-part Call of Cthulhu campaign, one which I honestly started with the premise of "like a Grindhouse Movie, where everyone dies," but in the end it turned out to be more like "A Grindhouse film, but only half of the party dies." Fair enough! But it raised an interesting specter to me about the horror game market, one which I have been somewhat aware of for many an age: as fun as it is to play horror RPGs, there is a weird measure of investment on the part of the player to make and play a character who is just interesting enough that you like playing them, but not so interesting that when they die you find yourself disappointed or disconnected from the game as a result.
High PC mortality is something I have often handled in Call of Cthulhu (or GURPS Horror) by either laying down the likelihood of death at the start of the campaign and advising the group to prepare one or more PCs in advance and let their darlings sit it out; and often I try to design around the idea that the really lethal moments tend to come on plot beats that coincide with a grim middle act or the finale. However, given that I also encourage as much free agency on the part of my players as possible this can be a harrowing process to see if the players, by coincidence, comport to the plot and pacing as I have outlined it.
Either way, as a GM I have come to accept that Cthulhu campaigns work best when you plan them out with the expectation of clear and periodic breaks; each works best as a discreet tale, and there is opportune time for reflection and recovery in between. As a result, some of my regulars have characters who have survived for three or more campaigns this way now, and often the "win" as always in Cthulhu is if the players decide to keep them pleasantly retired in their game folders.
At the end of the latest campaign we were left with a unique series of conclusions, some of which clearly hinted at future potential adventures for each character. I myself was left thinking about how interesting this would be, but also realizing that as with all things Cthulhu, any investigator who continues his life in this world is living on borrowed time before madness, death, or oblivion await. That got me to thinking: what horror ruleset or universe might be better suited to an episodic style of tale, one in which the risk of mortality was present, but not necessarily inevitable or even the goal? Or, to put it another way: are there horror games where the focus is on the survivor and their travails, rather than the monsters and the madness against which any number of faceless gumshoes must prevail?
I think it's perfectly possible to accomplish this in Call of Cthulhu, if you commit to a generally more low-key campaign where maybe the mythos creep in in the slightest of ways on occasion. GURPS Horror could accomplish this as well. I hesitate to suggest Savage Worlds, which can handle a certain kind of horror but one which (in my experience) is more suited to "heroic horror" and is maybe less about the discreet moments of character building and world exploration in between....and again, not that you couldn't do this in any system, its just that certain systems may be better at this than others.
The Trails of Cthulhu setting might, but I've got my issues with the Gumshoe mechanics which are aimed at solving an investigative problem that only exists for certain interpretations of the process, one for which I have no need of a solution. Cypher System has its horror genre book, but Cypher, like Savage Worlds, is not about characters of a mundane nature and is more clearly suited to heroes of a most unusual quality; I love Cypher for what it can do, but feel it maybe handles "low key nitty gritty character building" less well than some other systems do.
Anyway.....the idea of a game system aimed at thematically being all about the investigators, the survivors, the people discovering the creepy, weird and the unknown; something modeling the X-Files, essentially, in which we are tuning in for Mulder and Scully first and the Smoking Man and the black goo second....I am not sure that's fully out there, at least in print; I bet Conspiracy X or Bureau 13 might do this.
I guess several (or even all) of the horror games out there can do this, but it requires a concerted effort on the part of the GM and players to decide that this is how they are going to roll. The tricky part is, if you allow players to grow too invested and attached in their characters, what happens then? Or is the secret that players are doomed, as their character survives one horrifying scenario after another, to inevitably grow attached to their lucky survivor?
I know I have...in the campaign where I have been a player I have two rotating characters in a Gaslight era Cthulhu campaign, and both have taken on some measure of significance to me, enough so that I contemplate ways to get them to pleasantly retire from the "game" of constantly flirting with death. Arguably this is either a sign that the GM in that campaign is too merciful (too much time and leniency has allowed me to grow fond of my creations), or I have myself simply allowed my own guard to slip, and no longer think of my characters as hapless sacrifices waiting for their number to be drawn, but actual sympathetic fictions trapped in a harsh realm. I'd suggest they buy beachfront property but in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos that is, clearly, the worst idea.
Indeed, in a horror tale or movie, the death of the protagonist is often tied to the end of the film. In role playing games, the true horror is that when you die the game inevitably continues, proving that you were wrong: you were never the protagonist, you were just another b-list actor who's number was up.
No comments:
Post a Comment