But the ending is essential. With no explanation, the horror will stay with you forever.
Now, granted, the black thing appearing to present a semi-tangible threat was probably a bad move. Simply leaving the characters to wander the tunnels forever would be better (or, alternatively, if the thing wasn’t actually aggressive and just was there). And actually revealing you were making this shit up was not the best move either as it’s an easy way to destroy the horror. Realizing there are no answers on meta level is almost as bad as actually getting one, as was discussed in the post about Junji Ito (though if the goal was to give the players a closure, it’s not really bad).
The idea itself, to just play it by ear and let players to come up with their own ideas about what’s going on which you never confirm or deny, that’s a great deal of fun.
If it were only a story, sure, I’d agree. But if I were a player, I’d be miffed that I never even had the chance that my character would at least survive the adventure, even in a horror game.
Eh, it’s more a matter of taste than anything. I don’t see anything wrong with unwinnable scenarios as long as everyone’s on board with them. In certain genres, it enhances the experience.
Take Polaris, for example.PCs in that game has a Zeal/Weariness stat. Zeal goes down, when it reaches zero it turns into Weariness. When Weariness maxes out, you turn into a demon. The only alternative is to die.
And it works great because the game is about tragedy and hopeless battle against accursed Sun and Moon and their demonic spawns. There can be no happy ending and there shouldn’t be because it would undermine the tone and purpose of the game. And so players seek for an opportunity to die in a dramatic way rather than go down as demons and join their enemies, leading the game into a certain direction they wouldn’t take if there were a possibility of salvation.
I’m not sure it was unwinnable. He says that he gave them an extra roll to not get pulled away by the black thing, so he wasn’t expecting them to fail totally there and even tried to avoid it. And if they’d rolled better to figure out where the sound came from, he’d have decided if it was radio or not, it wasn’t strictly unknowable. So it’s not that there were no answers and no way out, it’s just he hadn’t decided on anything and wouldn’t unless it came up.
I think the black thing is forgivable with how long the game was running. He talks a lot about how exhausted the players were, and at least he was getting to eat and drink, but he must’ve been getting pretty worn out himself by that point as well as running out of ideas. And his main toolkit was based around separating the party and messing with what information they knew about each other, but by that point the players were clinging to each other and he was out of NPCs.
Admitting the truth was probably more a niceness thing, given how rattled they all were. It undercuts the horror, but it sounds like they appreciated that over stewing even more.
I really liked it until the ending and the post-ending reveal.
They are undoubtedly an excellent GM, though.
But the ending is essential. With no explanation, the horror will stay with you forever.
Now, granted, the black thing appearing to present a semi-tangible threat was probably a bad move. Simply leaving the characters to wander the tunnels forever would be better (or, alternatively, if the thing wasn’t actually aggressive and just was there). And actually revealing you were making this shit up was not the best move either as it’s an easy way to destroy the horror. Realizing there are no answers on meta level is almost as bad as actually getting one, as was discussed in the post about Junji Ito (though if the goal was to give the players a closure, it’s not really bad).
The idea itself, to just play it by ear and let players to come up with their own ideas about what’s going on which you never confirm or deny, that’s a great deal of fun.
If it were only a story, sure, I’d agree. But if I were a player, I’d be miffed that I never even had the chance that my character would at least survive the adventure, even in a horror game.
Eh, it’s more a matter of taste than anything. I don’t see anything wrong with unwinnable scenarios as long as everyone’s on board with them. In certain genres, it enhances the experience.
Take Polaris, for example.PCs in that game has a Zeal/Weariness stat. Zeal goes down, when it reaches zero it turns into Weariness. When Weariness maxes out, you turn into a demon. The only alternative is to die.
And it works great because the game is about tragedy and hopeless battle against accursed Sun and Moon and their demonic spawns. There can be no happy ending and there shouldn’t be because it would undermine the tone and purpose of the game. And so players seek for an opportunity to die in a dramatic way rather than go down as demons and join their enemies, leading the game into a certain direction they wouldn’t take if there were a possibility of salvation.
I’m not sure it was unwinnable. He says that he gave them an extra roll to not get pulled away by the black thing, so he wasn’t expecting them to fail totally there and even tried to avoid it. And if they’d rolled better to figure out where the sound came from, he’d have decided if it was radio or not, it wasn’t strictly unknowable. So it’s not that there were no answers and no way out, it’s just he hadn’t decided on anything and wouldn’t unless it came up.
Hm… Yeah, ok, I can see the distinction. Still, if I were a player in that game, I’d have preferred they preserved the illusion.
I think the black thing is forgivable with how long the game was running. He talks a lot about how exhausted the players were, and at least he was getting to eat and drink, but he must’ve been getting pretty worn out himself by that point as well as running out of ideas. And his main toolkit was based around separating the party and messing with what information they knew about each other, but by that point the players were clinging to each other and he was out of NPCs.
Admitting the truth was probably more a niceness thing, given how rattled they all were. It undercuts the horror, but it sounds like they appreciated that over stewing even more.