Lost Prototypes

After many years of waiting, I finally had a chance to play Grim Fandango and subsequently played Broken Age. These, in turn, reminded me of playing adventure games when I was much younger, which subsequently reminded me of something I hadn't thought about in years.

Starting in third grade, we used to play pretend at recess. That's not especially noteworthy on its own — lots of kids did that — but I made elaborate scenarios with continuity from one recess session to the next, and the plots ran for years. Individual sessions usually included puzzles to solve, enemies to battle, and friendly characters with whom to interact. (If I had known about randomizers like dice or any of the abstract LARP-style combat forms, this no doubt would have become even more elaborate.) By sixth grade, the damn things even had character sheets. (Just equipment lists, but still.) I think I even developed paper props once or twice.

It was only years later that I realized these were some manner of proto-LARP.

(Most of the characters were ripped from popular culture, but at some point, I should probably bring The King of All Trees into a game. Why I had some Green Man-style nature deity in my elementary school pretend games is probably a conversation for another time, although it probably has the same psychological root as my deep and abiding love of folk horror.)

The weird recess proto-LARP stuff I remember, and Nicole and I occasionally discuss it. (Lamentably, she always figured we were never interested in having additional players, and so never participated.) That's old news. The more recent memory from playing adventure games is this:

No doubt spurred both by this and by a diet of computer adventure games, at some point in sixth grade, I started writing analogue adventure games that we would run through at lunch. If you've played any of the command prompt or point-and-click adventure games popular in the eighties and nineties, you'll recognize the format: a map with a series of rooms, each of which usually features an NPC that requires some object or interaction (often from a previous room) to progress. These were all hand-drawn maps and characters, and while very linear (in the style of adventure games at the time), are recognizable as weird puzzle dungeons. I only remember one or two puzzles from them, but I now idly wonder if I could track any of those down...

(If I do happen to find any of them, and they're still legible, I'll no doubt have to scan them and upload them for general perusal. I wonder if I'll recall any of the puzzles from the time...)

I know at some point in seventh or eighth grade, I started developing a scenario with percentages, but never sorted out the math and always assumed it would have to be some manner of video game. Again, had I known about d100s or random number generators, I would have been running and designing RPGs years before I "officially" started.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I suppose no one (least of all me) should be surprised that I started running role-playing games or messing with game design. The obsession started early, before I had the language or tools for it.

State of the Madicon 2013

Stay classy, Harrisonburg.

I usually try to stay focused on gaming, but this post will ramble a little bit.  It should all make sense, though, so just bear with me.

So, from March 8-10, Nicole and I were in beautiful and exotic Harrisonburg, VA for Madicon 22.  For those not in the know, Madicon is an annual convention held at James Madison University and organized by the JMU Science Fiction/Fantasy Guild.

I previously attended Madicon 18 in 2009, but I didn't know a lot of people back then; I was with PST Productions most of the weekend, although I did find myself at Glen's Fair Price Store (more on that in a bit) and at J. C. Lira's panel on the end of Pimp: the Backhanding.  As such, I didn't really experience the convention proper back in '09.

Where else can you see Ness, some woman from Elder Scrolls, Link, and Fire Mario?

I did a little better this time.

Friday night we went to the Madicon LARP, a Cthulhu LIVE event set in the fictional St. Harold's Asylum during the Victorian era.  Despite using the Cthulhu LIVE ruleset, it wasn't heavy on traditional Lovecraftian elements — one of the plots involved a member of the Gentry (played by Nicole, actually) seeking out one of her former changeling slaves.  Another plot involved a criminal mastermind attempting to escape the asylum (he had himself committed to avoid going to jail).  There were a couple of expected elements, though — some horrific monster lurked in the tunnels under the asylum, and one of the doctors (played by rushputin) was synthesizing an antipsychotic from human brains.  It was a standard comedy of errors: the mastermind's gang locked everyone inside while the mastermind and his cronies tried to break out through the back.  The asylum staff quietly supported the breakout once it was clear that there was no other way to leave.  Some horrific monster lived in the tunnels underneath the asylum, and all hell started breaking loose as people tried to fight for their freedom.

I try to celebrate every week.

Saturday saw an actual foray into the city proper.  We found some amazing, CNR-inspired suit (no pictures yet) at a place called Granny Longlegs.

And then there's Glen's Fair Price Store.

Madicon is just the place I go when I'm not at Glen's Fair Price Store.

Glen's is the mashup of that store in Napoleon Dynamite and the magic shop in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. They sell a little bit of everything — photography, antiques, novelties, Halloween costumes — but the draw for the LARPing crowd is typically the novelties and costumes.

Stay classy, Glen's.

Strangely, my only gaming-related purchase of the con came from Glen's.  I purchased a set of six-siders with orca whales instead of 1s:

That makes sense, right?

And I purchased a set of spherical six-siders:

That also makes sense, right?

I probably made the wrong dice choice, though.

I clearly should have gone with the giant, Confederate d6.

In the afternoon, I finally had the chance to run a pick-up game of James Raggi's infamous Death Love Doom.  (Shameless plug!  I wrote a review of said module a while back.)  It ended surprisingly well: six PCs and four NPC thieves entered the Bloodworth Estate.  All ten returned, laden with treasure.  Basically, they snuck in the estate, started looting, defeated the Dead Sign trap on Miles' body, found Agatha, killed her (out of mercy), cracked a safe, left the house, and set it on fire.  They were lucky and smart; they avoided any of the nastiness in the estate, instead leaving when it became apparent that something was terribly wrong.  Of course, being a Raggi module, there are still plenty of consequences for success...

Afterward, rushputin ran Elder Sign, essentially a rules-lite Arkham Horror.  We won against Nyarlathotep (albeit by the skin of our teeth), so it was an all-around successful evening of gaming.

There were a few things I missed at this convention — I usually purchase something from the Dealer's Room at a convention, but I didn't this time.  For such a small convention, the Dealer's Room is pretty well-appointed — there's a pretty big dice/board game/RPG book vendor, as well as some clothing, art print, and Magic: the Gathering vendors.  Sunday sees an art auction that I didn't attend because Sunday is for laziness.

Chell was in the Dealer's Room, though, so that was pretty cool.

Additionally, I would have loved to play in the Isle of Dread being run at the convention.  (That likely just means I'll have to run the damn thing myself sometime.  There are worse fates.)

If you're ever in the area, I'd recommend it.  It is quite small, though — organized events tend to be less prevalent than pick-up games, so if you want to try something, you may have to initiate yourself or see if you can organize something ahead of time.  Also, my focus on gaming means there is a bunch of stuff I almost totally ignored — there's a lot of anime stuff there, and the 501st was hanging around.  So, that might make for a more ready-made convention if that's more your style.

(Finally, credit where credit is due: Nicole took most of these pictures.  I took the group shot of Ness & Co., as well as the pictures of the orca d6s and the spherical d6s.  She took everything else.)

Addendum: I neglected the neat license plates at Madicon.  Check out the pictures in this post.

Sharpened Hooks: Oi there, basher! What's the chant?

This one isn't so much a story hook as a story hook delivery system.

I'm sure a lot of gamers do this already — it's practically required for any player-driven, sandbox-style game — but if you haven't tried this, the prospect of in-game rumors is both entertaining and useful.

I started manufacturing rumors in my campaigns after reading Unknown Armies, a game I may have previously mentioned.  Each section of the core rulebook opens with a collection of rumors — some are true, some are false, and some cannot be verified as they might be true in some campaigns and not others.  Basically, they're meant to motivate Player Characters and inspire Game Masters.  Additionally, they're indicative of the sorts of things one might hear on the street, and so can be taken in-character without justification ("Last night, I was messing around on Google and I heard that the seven original varieties of Barbasol correspond to the seven chakras of the body!").  The Unknown Armies website has a collection of fan-generated rumors* that I might recommend; they're really usable in any contemporary occult roleplaying game.

This trend extends beyond Unknown Armies, of course.  In addition to the fact that Game Masters have probably been doing this for years — again, how do you expect get players to muck about in a sandbox if they don't have some idea of what's out there? — I've seen it elsewhere.  A local LARP, SimTerra, has a "rumor mill," which is really just a construct so that players don't have to worry whether they've heard something in-character or out-of-character ("Wait, did Eddie tell me his character stole Vyrkaj's spellbook, or did his character tell me that?  Eh, I'll take it as a rumor, because I heard it somewhere."); manufacturing rumors to further distort things is, of course, perfectly okay.  Likewise, Jeff Rients offers recaps of his ConstantCon Wessex game, which can be taken in-game with the justification, "Well, you heard some folks drunkenly boasting in the tavern."  Of course, some details may be omitted, and some people absolutely keep quiet afterward, so wise adventurers take the information they learn warily.

I also used the rumor system in my long-running Mage: the Ascension game, The Imperial City.  Interested parties can read them here* (the weird editing represents the fact that I originally posted them, as-is, on a forum), though several references don't make sense out of context (they refer to inside jokes or campaign-specific entities, like LINTech and the Brotherhood of Light).  That might just make for weirder rumors, though.

Astute observers might also note the title references Planescape (like I said, I've been playing Planescape: Torment), and "the chant" refers to the collection of current news and rumors.  It can easily be presented to PCs in the form of these rumors.  My PCs in Crux of Eternity will probably get stuff like this before long — and if they don't, I'm contemplating doing an organized crime D&D game as a sequel, and that will definitely have a rumor list.

* These links actually contain rumors suitable for a modern occult conspiracy game.  Modification makes them usable in any game setting.

Guest Spot: The Dunwich Experiment

In September, I mentioned The Dunwich Experiment, a Cthulhu LIVE LARP I planned to attend.  As noted, I didn't, but my good friend Nicole did.  She wrote her experiences in a loose, in-character journal format, and wanted me to share them here.  Enjoy!

Among the forensic evidence taken from the town of Dunwich, MA during a police investigation in 1969 following an incident during the “Dunwich Experiment” contest held in the town, was a journal belonging to a 22 year old college student.  This and other evidence were publicly leaked when Filmways, Inc. bought American International Pictures (AIP) in 1979.

This journal belonged to Miss Allison “Ali” Hockett of Middleburg, VA, a sophomore at Georgetown University studying parapsychology, and one of the contest winners.  It is known that she left Washington, D.C. the morning of October 3, 1969, taking the Amtrak to Boston, MA.  She traveled alone.  She is among the missing and, decades later, is presumed dead.

Excerpts from the journal pertaining to the 48 hours that have become known as “The Dunwich Incident”:


Friday 10/3/69 
Just off the train, nine hours, finally in Boston.  Read up on Dunwich history, some text for class, witchy stuff.  Waiting around the bus station for other contest winners and AIP people to arrive.  Maybe someone has some reefer?

Bus from Boston to  Dunwich is taking FOREVER.  Driver says it is an accident or bad road conditions – it is getting pretty rural.  Hanging out with Tommy Argento and Mike Barker, also contest winners.  Other two never showed.  Tommy is cool, and is in a band.  He’s also from DC – WHO KNEW? – and has a hefty flask of bourbon we’ve been passing around.  Mike is a Boston local, into the club scene.

Lady from AIP seems pretty OK, young, into good music.  Tamara... something.  Her boss, Mr. Herman is such a hard ass – loud, short, and way uptight.  Some actor is here, Gene Stockton I think?  He’s slept the entire time, didn’t see him get on the bus.

Been corrected.  His name is Dean Stockwell.  He seems out of it, like he doesn’t know what’s happening.  Wasteoid.


Saturday 10/4/69 (I think.  It must be after midnight, but my watch is busted)
WHAT IS THIS TOWN.  SERIOUSLY.

Finally rolled in 10:30, a little drunk, thanks Tommy.  The town is dark, almost entirely uninhabited.  We’re brought to the general store-cum-tavern.  We’re given dinner and start to watch the film, The Dunwich Horror.  Some locals are here and they are rude.  This old man kept shouting at the projector screen every time someone said “Dun-wich”, seems the accepted pronunciation is “Dun-ich”, not surprised.  He and this other fellow also making snide comments.  Sad, because the Whately story is fascinating and although this is Hollywood BS, it is still interesting.

Then it started. 

Mr. Herman had a seizure or something – stood up started talking loudly about Silver Thomas showing us the way, and not getting out, some crap like that, and then he fell over.  Movie was stopped for that and because locals seemed not to like it.  Mr. H was OK, and we decided to turn in for the night.  Locals said we could take any empty/unlocked house; the inhabited ones all have lights and locks on.

Walked around a bit and finally found a big house (a shack, dear god) where we could all fit.  But then.  THEN.

Mike is gone.  We lost him, and he is not at the tavern.  Did he leave with that old man’s (Boomer) daughter?  I barely registered her – very quiet, mousy – but they say she went to Boston and maybe Mike went with her.  I don’t think so.  He was pretty wasted and probably wandered off somewhere.  Others agree and so off we go with the town doctor around Dunwich.  In the dark.  The whole damn town.  They have no street lights any more, so we just use flashlights.  There is no moon and it is cloudy.  It is dark, man.

So we walk.  Then we get shot at.  OH YEAH I FORGOT.  So earlier before the movie, we had talked about going to Sentinel Hill because, I mean, right?  Amazing.  So much history, so much energy.  Anyway, Tommy snuck off up there but didn’t get close because that old man Boomer followed him and was holding him up with a shotgun.

So we’re walking, gunshot, we drop.  There’s a ‘Nam vet in town (already) and he’s got tremors and flashbacks, and fuck you Dick Nixon.  Of course he wigs out (the vet).  The gunshot is B. with some other local, but he missed.  We carry on.

Every unlocked shack, every common area.  I have my EMF meter out and there are some great hot spots – 1) Doc’s cabin (does he operate?  He says it is his wiring) 2) empty field where they say a church burned down.  AMAZING!  We search the whole town and find some weird things (a creepy photo in an empty room, odd black fabric across random windows, a dead lizard, weird writing and drawings on the walls).  But of course no Mike.  If the dumb fuck went and broke his drunk neck falling in the woods, to hell with him.  My dogs are barking and I am ready for bed.

Locals are creepy and clearly distrustful of outsiders, so we’ve put furniture against the door.  Like that will stop them.


Saturday 10/4/69 (morning)
Mike came in last night.  Wasn’t in Boston.  Says he lost us in the house hunt, met with the Mayor, got a personal tour. Whatever, he’s slimy and weird, and I’m keeping clear.

I’m first up and dressed from our shack.  Got breakfast and walked the town with Doc Willett, Delmont (the vet), and Ruby Boomer, who actually DID go to Boston.  She’s still quiet and strange.  Nothing of note, though did see two weird lights – small and red, but not any bulbs I’ve ever seen.  My EMF went crazy at them, so who knows.  Didn’t see them last night, and they were bright even in the day.

Eating Lunch.  My mind is blown, expanded, sweet Tim Leary what is this place?

Went to Sentinel Hill with Tamara and Tommy (Mr. H and Delmont too, but they left).  Crazy readings at the Hill, just crazy.  This is a place of power, I can feel it.  Tamara starts talking about spirituality, and Dunwich, and history, and then she says that she hand picked Me, Tom and Mike as winners because we and she are actually blood of the Whately family and this town is ours.  Too much to write here, but it all MAKES SENSE.  This feels right. 

She had a dream last night that we did a ritual on S.H., that Ruby had mushrooms, but Tamara had nothing to place on the altar stone (still standing, by the way, just amazing) and then the Dark Man came to her and said she did it wrong and, “You are all now void”.  Then these orbs came and swallowed everyone up.  Tamara thinks the town people (Boomer esp.) know what we are and what we’re here to do (take the town, or Whately Manor, back).

We go mushroom hunting with Ruby, me, Tamara, Tommy, Mike, etc.  Try to get Mike to talk to Tamara, which he does later, but I don’t think he gets it like me and Tommy do.  Tam. wants to actually do the ritual.  Should be fun.

Boomer and the Doc are guarding Whately Manor and won’t let us in.  We need to get in.  There are things there that we need, that are ours, but they won’t let us have them.  Tamara is right, they are working against us.  Haven’t said a word about us Whately kids, but I know they know.  Tommy wants to smash a window to get in, but Tam. says no, that’ll be noticed. 

Delmont says he can pick the lock.  Doc and B. are eating now, we have to GO.


DONE.  We broke in, took everything that was left and are in our shack, furniture piled high at the door.  Looking over these things, they’re good, but they’re not what we need.  Old shaman box toy, weird bottle with golden dust, a blank notebook, and someone’s notes from an investigation in town.  Not good enough.  Delmont said there had been other things in there earlier.  T & T know that Necronomicon (WHAT SERIOUSLY?) is one, and there are other ritual components.  Official: they’re up to no good and out to get us.  They’ll end the town utterly and us along with it.  They must be stopped.  We’ve gotta get into Doc and Boomer’s houses.

We can’t leave Dunwich.  There are invisible barriers keeping us in.  Trying to get out unleashes horrors in the mind.  Others have tried, not me.  Don’t want to, but god, we can’t get out?

Planning.  Scared.  Know they’re going to try to stop us.  But we have to do this.

Something appeared outside the tavern.  It is like a pyramid sundial but not.  Weird texture.  I touched it, got electrocuted (?), it blew me back 10 feet.  Doc helped.  DO NOT TOUCH.  It shorted my EMF reader.  Boomer seemed to know what’s up, covered it with a trash bag.  Looking out our window I can just see others standing around it talking.  Don’t like this at all.

Been walking around, just walking.  Keep finding random sheets of paper with occult drawings, ritual instructions.  Something about summoning Yog-Soth- Tam doesn’t want me to write the rest.  Names have power.  Y-S then.  Y-S is the Dark Man from her dream.  He brings nothing, the god of nihilists.  This isn’t just us any more.  This is the end of the world.  Must act.  We keep the papers on us.  Know Doc and BOOMER need them for their rit.  Must stop them at all costs.  They have the Necronomicon.

Back in our shack.  This is as safe as we’ll get.  Heart won’t stop beating so hard.  Tried to talk to Doc, who seems to be friendly with Tam. but don’t know.  Don’t trust him.  His house has something radioactive, but don’t know what it is.  Ruby met us, says her daddy has power over her, she can’t hurt him because he has her hair.  What to do.

During dinner we will break into Doc’s house and Boomer’s and steal their things and torch the place.  It is the only way.

We cut off Tommy’s hair and mine is under a scarf.  Tamara is like Twiggy and has short hair and a hat so she is safe from Boomer.  Burned Tommy’s hair in the fire.  Boomer will never get it there.

Tam. talked to Ruby.  Boomer and Doc will do their ritual at Sentinel Hill at dinner.  Our plan is ruined.  We must act now. 

Back in shack.  Tommy broke in, stole Necronom from Boomer.  Tam and I to Sentinel Hill in dark and pouring rain and kicked over the fire pit and buried the ritual pages.  They’ll never find them.  We’ll win the night.

O god theyre coming for us all of them can’t run for the barriers o god were trapped

Dean Stockwell is not Dean Stockwell
The doctor can raise the dead
Tommy sold his soul to the devil for guitar skills and unleashed Y-S and the veil between this world and the next is so fractured and now Y-S will get us
Boomer is ancient
Everyone is old families – Whatelys and Bishops and everyone o my
We must do the ritual together.  It is the only way.  The only way we’ll get out.

SUNDAY
NO TIME HAVE TO GET OUT. WE ALL TALKED IN THE TAVERN AND ALL WAS WELL BUT BOOMER TOOK THE PAGES AND THE DARK MAN IS COMING AND WE WILL NEVER GET OUT.  RAN TO OUR SHACK.  IF I HIDE HERE MAYBE HE WILL FORGET AND LOOK ME OVER. 

We killed boomer and doc brought him back but hes not right and then boomer bit the other man and hes not right too.  No one can be trusted.  We failed the whatelys.

SCREAMS NOW AND IT IS THE DOC AND DEAD BOOMER IS EATING HIM I KNOW.  THE WORLD IS FALLING AWAY BUT MAYBE HE WILL FORGET MAYBE YOG SOTHOTH WILL FORGET

O god I said his name o god I forg

Foiled Again!

I appear to have contracted some horrid respiratory ailment, so my week of roleplaying is ended abruptly.

Though I will not be attending the Dunwich Experiment, I may still post any pictures that appear with my own commentary, probably having nothing to do with the actual picture.

I'll post the writeup for the game, though, as it sounds super-keen.

In January of 1970, American International Pictures along with producer Roger Corman brought to theaters an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror". Attempting to drum up publicity in anticipation of the film's release, AIP held a write-in contest with 5 winners chosen to survive a weekend in the actual town of Dunwich, Massachusetts. In October of 1969, those 5 winners and their friends, along with several AIP employees and special guests, boarded a bus from Boston to Dunwich. What took place over the next 48 hours is, to this day, not completely known. When the film finally released, moviegoers had completely forgotten about the contest and the fate of the winners.

When AIP was sold to Filmways, Inc. in 1979, police investigation records regarding the Dunwich Horror contest were discovered and leaked. These records state that several members of the AIP group did not return to Boston after the weekend was over and had not been seen in the following weeks. Additionally, some who returned were apparently injured, though the reports don't go into detail. Survivors of that weekend have since been unwilling to speak to investigators regarding their experiences and what happened to those who never returned.

The Dunwich Experiment is their story.

The "L" Word

No, not "lesbian."

LARP. Live action roleplaying. The place where even gaming geeks fear to tread.

Somewhere, right now, there's a stereotypical D&D group that will laugh you out of their parents' basement if you say the word. Oddly enough, the feeling is mutual.

As much as I've heard about tabletoppers who think LARPers are weird, obsessive people, even for roleplayers, I know LARP people who have never played games on the tabletop and wonder why you'd ever want to gather around a tabletop when you could play something more immersive.

LARP is still reviled and somewhat underground, but is occasionally mentioned to a wider audience.

A bit of history: LARP is how I got into this hobby. I'd heard of D&D, but a newspaper article on LARPing mentioned Vampire: the Masquerade. I'd heard of it, too, but that started the path toward receiving a copy as a gift, and the rest is history.

Cut to three years later. I'd heard about this thing called Avalon, but I had never gone. Then my best friend went, and well, I had to go.

I played for about three years.

It was fun, but had a tendency to be time-consuming. I spent a year or so at this game called SimTerra (they also have a wiki) before drifting away.

Both Avalon and SimTerra are boffer LARPs, which refers to the fact that they have real-time combat wherein you beat your opponent with padded lengths of PVC pipe designed to look like melee weapons. Ranged attacks are performed with spell packets (little cloth pouches filled with birdseed), boffer weapons that lack PVC cores (basically just foam designed to look like a weapon and weighted only by the duct tape that covers it), and even boffer arrows (arrow shafts that have wide, foam heads placed on them; they don't hurt, even at close range).

I was never a fan of boffer LARPs for a couple of reasons. First, they're more unyielding than the old school tabletops. Your old school character might only be as smart and as clever as you are, but at least he can cast magic or swing a sword reliably. Boffer LARPs mean that you're frequently only as accurate as your own abilities allow.

Boffer combat has a second weakness: it doesn't accurately simulate real combat. In real combat, you try to avoid getting hit. In boffer combat, you try to avoid getting hit the most. The strategy is totally different. In a real fight with real weapons, people aren't going to charge at each other, they're going to size up their opponents and hope to get the most out of a single blow. In a boffer fight, you can kill someone by pummeling their feet with rapid-fire strikes — try doing that with a ten to twenty pound sword and see where that gets you. I have spoken to some people who actually know how to swordfight, and they don't like boffer combat, either.

That having been said, boffer combat is neat because it's real-time — everything is fast and flows with the chaos of an actual fight. Combat doesn't really interrupt roleplaying because it's so seamless. Most boffer LARPs are combat-heavy, though, as befits a system where everything is geared toward fast and furious combat.

Since playing boffer LARPs, I played a little Mind's Eye Theatre, but I've mostly played Cthulhu LIVE. It is, hands-down, my favorite LARP system I have so far encountered. The third edition uses an artificial-time combat system, and balances the fact that my character might actually know how to fight with the speed of boffer combat. A typical combat round lasts about a minute, though this may vary from group-to-group (I'm assuming a sizeable combat with, maybe, ten participants).

I've played in several Cthulhu games, and run six (I've helped run a couple more than that, but precise numbers escape me). These games are typically like locked-room murder mysteries, and are typically played tournament-style: rather than making one's own characters, the Game Master writes all the characters. While this prevents you from making your own character, it does ensure that you have something to do, as most characters are at least tangental to the plot at hand. The Game Master of these tournament-style LARPs is very hands-off, typically running combat or answering story questions, but otherwise letting the PCs interact however they like. Since there are only a couple of Game Staff, PCs play all parts — the janitor, neurotic professor, and evil cultist are played by players who only know as much of the plot as their characters would know. These games are also typically one-shot LARPs, so there's typically a whole story arc in four hours or less. That story arc sometimes involves everyone going home, but the climax usually involves some faction attempting to perform its master stroke and touching off all the conflicts in the house. This is almost always unpredictable.

For example, I was once playing a character (the mayor of a small town) who owed money to a recently-released prisoner, because he had hired said prisoner to kill a business rival. I didn't know that the business rival survived by body snatching, and hoped to kill me. All I knew was that I didn't have the money to pay this guy, and I didn't know what I would do. Apparently, just fidgeting and drinking was super-effective, though, because the prisoner and the body thief killed each other about halfway through. It was one of the most successful games I've ever played.

I ran a game involving a secret church in a Soviet village. The KGB agents finally came around, guns blazing. A hidden monster was released in the chaos. Anybody in the house who had access to a weapon used it. There were four survivors out of an initial group of about twenty.

I'd recommend trying LARPing if you have a dramatic bent, or like dressing up in costume. Some are longer than others. Avalon and SimTerra last for an entire weekend. Cthulhu LIVE games typically last a few hours (we usually play with PST Productions or a local group called Sic Semper Tyrannis).