countering my last post

[subplotkudzu]

About how Gmail makes me see way more gaming in the world than there is, I found myself rather perturbed by a recent Newseek article on the evolution of Vampire portrayals in modern culture (culminating with Edward the vamp who is so chaste and good that he even insists his virginal human girlfriend wear buckle up her seat belt - no 1970's LeStat hedonist he!). While it had some interesting points it managed to completely skip the entire 1990's Vampire the Masquerade Goth-Punk scene, the existence of which surely had an impact on the current Vamp portrayals. Apparently gaming is still way too under the radar (or history is easily forgotten, take your pick).

On a similar note, we've been having a few discussion threads in A&E regarding genre tropes, specifically around Horror, and how games need to break away from the cliches now in order to engage the players - Dead Man Stop, the C0C5E sample adventure is apparently a yawner because it's just a run of the mill, Nyarlythotep backed animated dead horror. When exactly did that become run of the mill (not that I doubt that it is)? And is it still run of the mill in the larger culture? Would people who never played an RPG or COC before have the same response it it, or is it because gamers have gotten bored with the "same old thing". (As a counter, Dig To Victory, a COC scenario set in the trenches of WWI, is apparently creepy as all hell, likely because it's not the sort of thing you see every day.)

Comments

[daftnewt.livejournal.com]

Well, it's no surprise that familiarity leads to reduced emotional impact. I agree that Nyarly has been sadly overworked, poor fellow. One of the reasons CoC was/is so cool is that most other "horror" tended to be about vampires and werewolves and ghosts and such, and CoC was weird and unfamiliar. It's still great because the underlying themes of Lovecraft's work can work in so many different situations - such as digging trenches in WWI, a submarine descending to the sea bottom, a group of escaped mental patients...

What's interesting to me is how, once vampires and werewolves become so familiar to us that they aren't so scary, we start getting interested in them as protagonists and even heroes. Anyone want to play a Deep One private eye? :)

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Nyarly can still work, but the plot has to feel worthy of him, I think. If I remember correctly, the issue was that this was just the walking dead running around, and... okay, we're oversaturated on zombie movies. Not thzt zombies can't work, but... it's brute force, and I tend to think of Nyarlathotep as more into sadistic chess.

A Deep One PI could certainly work. Think of all the prejudice the poor guy would have to face (I am presuming guy here). Everyone knows the Deep Ones want to steal human women for unspeakable rites!

In the Plus 20 game I ran, I made one of Laura's band mates a halfbreed Deep One, which was interesting. She wasn't up to anything more evil than once competing with Laura over who got to sleep with Gary (Honggong won). And, she really just wanted to ignore her Deep One-ness and hope it would go away, and -- sigh, she loved her folks, but they could be embarrassing, you know?

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Remember, this is one guy's opinion based on listening to podcasts. There are a lot of other factors here.

This is not to say that Bob's wrong -- but I suspect part of why "Dig to Victory" works is that Glancy's a really good GM. I am quite sure I could bore you to tears running it.

When I ran Beyond the Mountains of Madness, I read about previous runs. Fascinating range of differences. And these days, you can find write ups of an awful lot of stuff. Familiarity may be a factor in more ways than one assumes.

At Origins, ebartley played in the scenario that's in like every edition of Call of Cthulhu, the thing with Corbet, I think. And she had a blast playing this scenario that's over 20 years old. And she knows from the mythos, so it isn't that she was a Lovecraft newbie.

There was some talk awhile back, I think on Vincent Baker's blog, if not, someone associated with the Indie movement, talking about how what they were trying to do is figure out what one needs to guarantee a good gaming experience every time. I'm a little skeptical that this can be done with mechanics, and it may be that part of the reason is that I love Call of Cthulhu, where the quality of a session is -- well, not detached from the rules, not really. The rules are such that they don't get in the way, and that's important. And, there are some good features. But, really, it wasn't the idea of rolling dice that made "Setting Sun / Rising Tide", "A Family Way", or "Victim's Ball" so good. It was the writing, the gming, and the player buy-in, all of us committed to making this work.

And, for games that have worked less well, it wasn't, I think, that the horror per se was old hat. The Rogue Cthulhu game I wasn't thrilled with was run by a gm who didn't know how to pace. It wasn't an awful game, by any means, but if his greatest delight was showing us the alien spaceship -- serpentfolk ship? I forget -- and watching our PCs get killed or worse by it, the last half hour of the game is not the time ti begin that part of the scenario. The near-Total Party Kill game I was in left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, not because of the events of the scenario, which worked just fine, but because of the way we were set up on the meta level by the gm, and the idea that, well, his idea of a good game was TPK. Again, not really a bad experience, worth doing once, not at all dull -- but not something I'd choose to repeat.

A couple of other points here. First, if you are listening to a gaming session, I hypothesize that it has to be beyond merely good to work for you. You're not playing it. You're not reading a write up of the highlights. I'm generally bored watching other people game when I'm not playing, and the exceptions have been, well, exceptional.

The other thing is that a horror game can work on different levels. I am rarely actually horrified when I play CoC, but I don't have to be. Sometimes, that's not even what the scenario is about, as in "Christmas in Kingsport". Sometimes, I have aesthetic satisfaction in watching the scenario unfold, but I'm not actually scared, and you know? That's just fine. You don't really want me a gibbering wreck out of character -- and if you do, I really do not want to play with you.

Now, caveats: I've read neither scenario. I'm not bad at eyeballing a CoC scenario and figuring out its strengths and weaknesses -- relative to how I play and hoe my local gaming group plays.

Oh yes, I think the most recent CoC game I played in was another of Oscar's, set in Roman Britain, where we were facing Servants of Glaaki, aka.... zombies. Zombies are not at all my favorite baddies. Utterly boring and old hat. But, we had a total blast here, partly due to the setting and how the characters thought of what was going on, partly because we had a good group, and partly, let's admit it, because two of the PCs were, quite clearly to all of us, Nick and Nora Charles.