Author Topic: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts  (Read 3873 times)

Offline Glendower

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Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« on: May 25, 2011, 07:31:44 PM »
I had a chance to run the Night Fears Module at a local Convention (Keycon Winnipeg) not once, but twice.  In both games, I had a combination of people I didn't know mixed in with one or two people I did know.  None of them had played Dresden Files before, and before I get into it, the summary of this is that I found Night Fears to be an EXCELLENT teaching resource for how to play the game, and it's great for Con games where time is short and there are competing events of interest going on.

In the first game, I ended up with 7(!) players. Every kid got used, and though I was worried that people would feel a little forgotten in the very loud and energetic table, it actually turned out to be quite fun. The players were enthusiastic and interested, and they bought into the premise of kids exploring a haunted house. I'll call this Team Alpha.

The second game had far less players (4 in total), and far less energy around the table. They were very quiet, and the enthusiasm seemed quite low, and I had the sense that they didn't really like the initial premise. This is going to be called Team Beta.

The questions at the beginning did a great job of establishing initial characterization of the very broad characters. For Team Alpha, they jumped on the questions, and had a ready answer for everything I asked them, and even began a series of excited connections from those questions. The interplay between the three girls was great, because they worked out that Dani and Nicky were friends, and Dani and Jaimie were formerly friends. Jaimie thought that Dani was just social climbing, but the truth was that Jaimie was creepy and codependant, and it was making Dani really uncomfortable.  This added some nuance to the session.  In game, whenever Nicky was trying to be super nice to Jaimie, Jaimie's jealousy kept her surly and distant. This was all talked about after a single question!

Team Beta had to be poked and prodded to get any kind of response. There was a lot of "deer in the headlights" moments with Team Beta, and I had to really hand hold them through the process. Their responses focused on the pictures of the characters. Dani was a popular girl and bitch because "the picture makes her look like that".  They kept wanting to know what the right answer was, even after I repeatedly told them that they were supposed to make it up.

Interestingly, Team Alpha and Team Beta both had very different responses to their questions, which led to very different characters.  In Team alpha, Terry was Zealous and harshly Judgemental to his fellow teens.  In Team Beta, Terry was much more awkward, struggling with temptations of the flesh and guilt ridden that he's spending the night with... gasp... girls!

Team Alpha took everyone, and I got a chance to see what kind of stuff Chris could come up with.  Chris is a neat character, and the player decided it was his mission to get the other players to run out of the house in fear, and then record the whole thing on his little camcorder "For Youtube!".  He told the other teens he had to "use the washroom", and then set up all kinds of noisemakers and other fear based pranks.  In fact, for the first little bit of the game, Chris was doing the Ghost's job for them!  What made it even more funny was that when the ghosts started to make their move later in the night, they kept rolling their eyes and saying "nice try, Chris".  ("Nice Try, Chris" ended up becoming a scene aspect when they discovered some of Chris' traps)

Team Beta took Dani, Nicky, Jaimie and Terry.  Because Terry was the only boy in the house, the player took a "Lead me not into Temptation" aspect, and it was compelled like crazy, leading to Terry holding Dani a little too long when she slipped on some floorboards, and him stealing a glimpse when the girls were cleaning off the disgusting mold that coated their legs in the basement. 

One of the questions that tended to come up in both games is "what does my character have on them?"  I handled this pretty loosely and hand-wavey (you have teen stuff!) but it actually led to a disconnect that ended Team Beta's game on a sour note (Dani pulled out a .45 revolver and started shooting).

In Team Alpha, they actually wrote down what they had on them.  For example, Terry had a Bible, Nicky had a whole list of stuff (one of her aspects was Level Headed, another was Voice of Reason) ranging from power bars to pencils (and a pencil sharpener!), Andy had a six pack of smuggled beer from his dad's fridge (Whenever I addressed Andy, it was either in a voice of his Dad, or as John Madden. "Student of Madden" and "Screw You, Dad" were two of his aspects), and Dani had a bottle of Vodka, stolen from her dad's liquor cabinet ("Daddy's too busy to care" was one of her Aspects). I was uncertain how to handle alcohol, so I just used temporary aspects.

I would advise adding a question of "What are you bringing with you to the Cranston House?" to avoid some of the issues that cropped up in my game.  I also advise that you make very clear that these are (fairly) normal kids, and that they would pack in a manner that would match young teenagers.  I found that with a specific list of what they did and did not have, it went a lot better.  

At any rate, all the players said that they had a great time, and were really enamored with the system.  I quite enjoyed running Team Alpha, and found parts of Team Beta to be ok.  That being said, this game really requires the players at the table to participate, rather than just kind of sit there and expect to get spoon fed the plot.  Though Team Alpha had 7 players, it had 7 players interacting with me and each other and enthusiastic about the premise.  Team Beta's lack of energy and shyness to interact really caused the game to drag considerably.  Again, something else to think about.  

All in all, Night Fears is a great first game of Dresden Files for those looking to try it out, and makes for a really great Con game. The module is highly configurable, what was happening in the house for Team Alpha was very different from the House for Team beta.  The Replayability is pretty high, and I highly recommend trying it out!
« Last Edit: May 25, 2011, 07:45:38 PM by Glendower »

Offline Richard_Chilton

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2011, 07:46:50 PM »
I'm curious about when those games were run.  If Alpha was run on the first day of the con and Beta had a morning slot I can see sleep levels affecting the energy.

That said, one player brimming with energy can pull the entire table along on a great game.

Richard

Offline Glendower

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2011, 07:55:40 PM »
I'm curious about when those games were run.  If Alpha was run on the first day of the con and Beta had a morning slot I can see sleep levels affecting the energy.

That said, one player brimming with energy can pull the entire table along on a great game.

Both games were around the same time (3pm-6:30pm), but team Alpha was Saturday, and Team Beta was Saturday.  Lack of sleep certainly played a part on team beta's less stellar success, probably on my part as well.  Team Alpha also spoiled me with it's awesomeness and fairly effortless faciliatating.

In Team Beta, the person playing Terry did put in a lot of energy, but the other three were just not really into it. I ended up cutting it short when Dani pulled the gun, about an hour and a half into the game.

Offline pensivetoast

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #3 on: May 26, 2011, 05:38:34 PM »
I have to add my two bits. As one of the players of team Alpha, I have to say it was a blast. The tables was boisterous and we played off of each other very well. Due to time constraints, it felt a little rushed at the end, though this isn't a criticism against the GM or the game, but just a comment from someone who would have been quite happy playing longer.
 
The GM was great, had handouts ready for the players, from maps and characters (in color) to torn up pages we found in various locations in the house, and lots of spare dice and pencils. He was patient with us, explaining what we needed to know, no matter how many times the questions where asked.

Characters where piked at semi-random, with nothing more then the character art to go by to tell us about the characters. The players at the table where fun, and everyone was spread out when the real haunting began, with some players being upstairs, some on the main floor and more in the basement. There wasn't really much in the way of teamwork, especially with Chris being a little troublemaker. Everyone was headstrong and wanted to do their own thing. Just like real teenagers!

As someone who has read huge chunks of the rulebook and even ventured so far as to create a character for an online game that never panned out, it was great to see the game actually played. The often confusing written text became easy to use in actual game play. And while I know we where running on a more 'rules light' version of the game, it was still great fun and really made me realize the importance of Fate Points and compels and why making a character with lots of cool stuff but 1 refresh might not always be the best idea.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2011, 05:41:40 PM by pensivetoast »

Offline stitchy1503

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #4 on: May 26, 2011, 06:56:54 PM »
That sounds pretty awesome, I'll be running Night Fears at Gen-Con this year, hopefully my players enjoy it as much as "Team Alpha" appeared to.
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Offline Glendower

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #5 on: May 26, 2011, 09:54:44 PM »
I have to add my two bits. As one of the players of team Alpha, I have to say it was a blast.

Thank you! Were you the person that played Jaimie? Or were you the one that played Dani? I'm just terrible with names, and the con badges all kind of swam together towards the end. 

You're spot on about rushing it at the end.  I was worried about having a long slot at the con as I was competing with a lot of other events. There was also an hourly smoke break of about 10 minutes, but I actually quite liked the regular breaks for people to go out and use the washroom or stretch their legs. I think it helped maintain the energy levels of the game. When I run it again, I think I would give it a full 4 hours, maybe 5, and really slow it down at the beginning, give people a chance to play their characters.

You reminded me of two things I did.  First off, I actually put together a small set of sketches, grabbing some creepy free charcoal art online, with scrawling writing next to each sketch, for some clues about what was happening supernatural-wise. I then tore it up so that several of the players could find them and do whatever with them.  They weren't essential to the plot, but certainly helpful and very atmospheric.  I figured that in con games, the more tactile stuff you give people, the easier it is to get them into what's going on, and the more they can use this stuff to get more invested into the game.

The second thing I did was crop and print out a blank floor plan.  This was helpful as well, but I think next time I would put it on bigger paper and have a few counters just to keep track of where everyone was in the house.  Some of the players got a little floaty in terms of their relative position, and one person who was upstairs in one room was interacting with people downstairs in another room.  It would just help to establish who was in which position.

I absolutely adore the page with the pictures of every playable character on it.  Both Casefiles do this, and I really hope that future Casefiles do the same.  Slapping that down and saying "who do you want to play?" is excellent, and avoids having people scrutinizing character sheets. 

I'm planning to run this again at another of our local conventions later on in November, with these things in mind.

Offline toturi

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2011, 01:39:59 AM »
Both games were around the same time (3pm-6:30pm),  but team Alpha was Saturday, and Team Beta was Saturday.  Lack of sleep certainly played a part on team beta's less stellar success, probably on my part as well.  Team Alpha also spoiled me with it's awesomeness and fairly effortless faciliatating.
Do we need to call a Warden? Or did a temporal anomaly occur?
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Offline Glendower

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #7 on: May 27, 2011, 06:14:33 AM »
Do we need to call a Warden? Or did a temporal anomaly occur?

*Headsmack*

Alpha was Saturday and Beta was Sunday.  Boo on me!

Offline pensivetoast

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #8 on: May 30, 2011, 02:38:54 PM »
Thank you! Were you the person that played Jaimie? Or were you the one that played Dani?

I was playing Jaimie. :)

Offline Glendower

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #9 on: May 30, 2011, 11:45:09 PM »
Here's a link to the sketchbook I mocked up, using charcoal drawings I found on the internet.  I wanted it to drop some atmospheric background for the Cranston House, giving the teens some idea of what actually happened. I had them scattered inside of old cupboards, inside of a writing desk drawer, and a few other places.  They really helped establish a bit of the mood!
« Last Edit: May 30, 2011, 11:47:41 PM by Glendower »

Offline Rechan

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #10 on: June 01, 2011, 03:01:30 AM »
So did you play it like a Mystery, or the "Survive the night" game?

I'm heartened by your playthrough. Reading through Night Fears left me kind of Eh. In part because I wasn't sure what kind of compels you can really get off given the setting and characters, and the characters didn't really interest me much. Partially it sounds like a great game if you have players with energy.

Offline Glendower

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #11 on: June 01, 2011, 05:17:22 AM »
So did you play it like a Mystery, or the "Survive the night" game?

I'm heartened by your playthrough. Reading through Night Fears left me kind of Eh. In part because I wasn't sure what kind of compels you can really get off given the setting and characters, and the characters didn't really interest me much. Partially it sounds like a great game if you have players with energy.

The kids are great little ciphers (you can go all kinds of places with their additional Aspects) and have only a small handful of stunts and powers. The leading questions really start connecting the various players, and a lot of the character conflict between the teens can be generated from the aspects that follow. The situation is fairly recognizeable and the motivations are straightforward. I maintain that it's a perfect Con or Introductary scenario.

I went with a "Survive the Night" sort of game, with some minor mystery elements.  The mystery part came up during the first part of the game, when the characters had more time to ponder and explore things.

Offline Papa Gruff

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #12 on: June 01, 2011, 02:57:01 PM »
Thank you very much for this nice report. I had the pleasure to run this at a con too and had a similar experience.

All my players where new to the system and most of them hadn't a clue about the novels. But that didn't matter. Night Fears doesn't require either, witch makes it a perfect one shot for a con game.

At first I tried to explain some basic rules but then I realized, that I didn't have to. I ended up explaining rules where they were necessary and it worked out fine. All you have to do is hand out the character sheets, let the players decide who they want to be, go through the questions, set some aspects and you are good to go.

Unfortunately we weren't able to go into act III because one of my players backpacks was stolen from right under our noses. I guess that says something about the immersion that we all were experiencing, but it killed the game nevertheless. I'm looking forward to running it again at the upcoming FeenCon in Bonn next month.

Your sketchbook will make a very nice addition to my material too! Thanks a lot for that as well. Looks awesome and should help at bringing the true background story out.
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Offline zcthu3

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Re: Night Fears ran (twice!) thoughts
« Reply #13 on: June 07, 2011, 08:56:12 AM »
So I also ran Night Fears twice at our local con over the weekend. Unfortunately the con organisers decided to try three hour instead of four hour slots which ended up affecting how the games played out.

First game had all seven characters and was a little rough, partly because we ended up running out of time. The Question - Answer session went reasonably well, and we developed the relationships between the characters and why they were there. Once in the house, however, the "popular" kids decided to pretty much stay in the main room and drink Dani's dad's scotch  and party after they'd done a quick tour of the house. All the other kids split up to search different parts of the house in more depth and (some of them) pull pranks on one another. The splitting up meant that I ended up spending a lot of time trying to deal with all the separate parties and their attempts to scare each other before they finally ended up all together. Even after the ghosts upped their activity, the PCs took a long time to start trying to resolve the mystery/defeat the ghosts possibly because I tried to treat all the ghosts as separate entities which ended up confusing the issue and how the PCs were meant to try and resolve it.

The second session was much better, four characters (Andy, Mike, Chris and Jamie) went into the house and they pretty much stuck together. I also brought in the ghosts earlier and had given the players the "published" version of the story before they went in. I pretty much concentrated on the wife's ghost as the malevolent force, with the husband's ghosts as a death echo, that allowed Chris to follow him around and uncover the horror of what he'd done while the others were finding the sketchbook (thanks Glendower for making that resource available, it was really good!) and trying to determine how to lay each of the ghosts to rest. In the end, they managed to solve the mystery within the three hour slot.

If I was to run this again, I think I'd limit the number of characters to 5 but let the PCs choose from all seven. Trying to run all seven just used up a lot of time before we got to the "meat" of the story, and I ended up rushing it to fit it into the time allowed. A four hour slot might have made it more manageable and allow me to ratchet the tension up more slowly.

All in all, however, I think it's a really good introductory scenario, I've now got an idea to "age" the characters and have them have a college reunion where something else happens for next years Con...
« Last Edit: June 07, 2011, 08:59:52 AM by zcthu3 »