The cottage part 2, towards insanity

I wrote about my pwn rpg last autumn. It was about the Cottage and you can read first part from here.

What happened in the Cottage?

Basic idea was that characters lives through a tramatic weekend and they begin to fall. The truth about characters will be revealled when the layers are peeled from their minds. Fist they think that they're workers of the hospital. Slowly their own personalities will come out and there you will have  persons with mental issues. So eventually players realise that they were not workers in the hospital, they were the patients.

One of the characters was paranoid being suspicious about everything. Other character was imaginating that she lived in the fantasy world and third one was overly violent and aggressive. From these three first two offered best options to play. Playing aggressive is hard and it is only going into rage if things won't go the way character wants. If I would keep the rpg again I would change these mental disorders into different ones. I didn't use real diagnoses either since I thought I didn't have enough knowledge to do so.. So even the game was happening 1990´s, it was still some kind of fantasy world.

What triggered characters then?

The cottage wasn't empty. Actually characters had a bad luck that there were two robbers in the cottage at the same time. And these robbers had used drugs what made them aggressive so they even fight with each other. Characters didn't see the fight but they found corpse of the other robber from the lake. And at the same time they were facing sabotage so they couldn't escape from the place. Eventually polices arrived into to place but before that players were trying to survive alive what they did more or less.

This kind of surprisemoment can work only in the game what is meant to play during one evening.  Playing campaign with characters like these could be very tiring especially when the characters were written by DM not by players. But this was worth of trying and it was fun evening.

The cottage part 1, the basics

Today I was dungeonmaster in a game called the Cottage. I had made characters beforehand and gave them to players. There were four characters who were working in the mental asylum where they kept prisoners. Employees who were friends with each other needed a break and they had rent a cottage for a weekend. The story started when they left from the city towards countryside.

I wanted to keep system a simple one. There was three skills.. physical (like strength, dexterity), mental (wisdom, intelligence etc.) and effectiveness (like charisma) and I had shared ten points between these to every character.. Like one of the characters was porter and I had given him these stats:

Physical 5

Mental 2

Effectiveness 3

When I asked players to roll the dice they always rolled one six sided dice and added their skill to the result. If it was 8, it was success. If it was 1 it was always fail and something bad happened. Simple system since this game was supposed to last only couple hours. And to be honest we finished it in three hours.

The other characters were nurse, psychologist and psychiatric nurse. Unfortunately there was only three players so one of the written ones was dropped away. This time no one wanted to play psychologist, so she was out of the adventure.

In the beginning all the friends had had a rough week at work and they needed a break desperately. They had morning shift on Friday so they could leave together from work and could travel towards the cottage after buying some food for the weekend. 

I will analyze the plot on the next part then.

Dread system: Disintegration

Once again I made a rpg with my friends. This time I decided to host another rpg using Dread system. Now we weren't in the deep space, but yet world had changed. Virus had changed people and turned them into living deads, zombies.  And players had to survive on the collapsing worlds. Sounds epic?

Disintegration is premade scenario what I changed some during the game. The orginal versio is freeware so if you want to check it out, just click here. I used premade charactersheets what meant that every character had questions written beforehand. I think premade questions worked well and that way we got rather good group to work together. This time one of the characters was even young kid what brought some difference into the group. The others were the leader, the caretaker, the loner and the sage. And it seemed that every character had different meaning how they developed the surviving. 

Dread system itself worked well for scenario with zombies. The threat was growing the more the group was separated. And some had to sacrifice themselves so that others were able to survive. But there was always a decision, who would survive and he would die for others. Also this time there were heroic dying when one wanted to give a life for others. How sad but how perfectly fitting for one-shot scenario. 

The original game was supposed to  go slower fprward than the game I hosted. But  I think it wouldn't be nice to use dread system on a minicampaign so I wanted to keep game during one evening. So there were more zombie attacks but also other survivals caused problems since everyone aren't nice for others, they only want best for themselves.  So things escalated faster and I also picked things from the backgrounds onf the characters. I think Dread is good for that. When players have thought what their characters are fearing for example, DM can push them towards chaotic moments. And that way you can build rather impulsive game. 

So once again I need to say that I like Dread. But still I will be using another system on my next one-shot rpg. For once we will be throwing dices when players will be facing the Steampunk world.  But I will post about that game on another time. But as a conclusion.. If you love pen and paper rpg's and you love zombies. Try Disintegration. It is well made scenario what is easy to modify if you feel to do so.

Creating character for rolegames

When you do play rolegames, do you ever create background story to your character or is it always pure statistics? I have always loved to creat story behind my character since it truly tells what kind of character is. Statistics helps when throwing dices but deeper thoughts comes from the history.  What do I mean.. I will give you few examples. Sometimes story begins from the name and sometimes it comes from the interests.

On Scifi-rpg I played a pilot. She was short girl and total introvert. Her greatest hobby was to play video games with her handconsole whenever she wasn't flying the ship or hacking the computers. Jelena, my character, had poor social skills and she was clumsy when had to deal with other people. But she was useful to the group since she was bloody good pilot.. That's why she was tolerated even she had the third hand as well. And she had name coming from Russia  since long time ago before moving into space station her family had actually lived in Russia. 

Or.. in Forgotten Realms adventure I am playing little gnome. She is joyoys and extremely curious about everything. And the most important thing is that she has a lot of nicknames. Her name is Aliisa Lisbeth Kulta-Kurre Hölösuu Rauniolöytäjä Kylmäkahle Usvakieli Linnankaataja Dryadinauttaja Vaahtera Loruinen. What this Gibberish means then? Well I do try to explain.

Aliisa is a name what goes in the family. Her mother's name is Alisa, so Aliisa sounded nice.

Lisbeth is nickname from the name of her sister, Elisabeth. So As all good gnomes knows, carrying name of your sister, brings you some extra luck!

Kulta-Kurre (golden squirrel) was the name given by her aunt Eleonoora when she saw Aliisa having teeth for the first time. Aliisa had golden brown hair when she was born and hair even grew fast. So when she got her first teeth her aunt thought that she looks like a cute golden squirrel. And since then it was one of her nicknames.

Hölösuu (blathering mouth) was given to her by her ex teammate. He was serious dwarf who didn't always understood why someone has to keep talking and remain cheerful. 

Rauniolöytäjä (Founder of ruins) was given to her after she found old elven ruins. There were even cursed elf leading the castle and when she helped to break the curse, the name was truly earned.

Kylmäkahle (Shackle of cold) was a name given by herself when  undeads attacked to her ankle in the well. In the well she ended since she was  volunteer to study it. But touch oft he undeads were so cold that now she black ring around her ankle what reminds like a shackle. At least shackles radiates coldness whenver undeads are around her.

Usvakieli (Misty mouth) was given  to her by her father Emer. Aliisa had always been giggling and blathering little gnome even when she wasn't able to form real words. So all those cute baby words were like a mist to everyone else so her father started to call lovely little daughter with that nickname. 

Linnankaataja was giveb to her when she helped with her friends to drop one castle up from teh sky. The Castle was full of bad giants and even white dragon lived there so ruining it wasn't that bad idea. 

Dryadinauttaja (Helper of the Dryad). Little Aliisa follows Fairy Queen Titania so everyone who loves Titania is on her favourite list. So when she met a dryad in the forest, she wanted to help her even she was on a disguise. After helping the dryad she was given a magical lei what she has been wearing around her neck since then. 

Vaahtera (Maple) is surname what goes in the family since every member of the family has always loved maples. When Aliisa was barely able to walk, she always found her way to sleep under tha maple since she loved those leaves especially in autumn.

Loruinen is another family name what could be surname. Her greatgreatfather Raihka was always speaking all kind of little stories no matter if they were true or not. So since then he was called Loruinen because he made up little stories. 

These are only few examples about my character and as you can see.. names are usually important. Name of the character is telling on its own story and as we all know.. Nomen est omen. At least in rpg!