Quake 1 RPG intro

You sit in the briefing room at the NORAD complex deep underneath Cheyenne Mountain. Around you are 30 or so members of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Decorated veterans all, most with scars and all with a determined set to their faces. You were chosen for this mission because you are the best. But until now, you aren't even sure what the mission is.

A grizzled man bursts into the room, a burned down cigar clenched in his teeth. His hair is close-cropped and white, and his right eye is hidden underneath a massive burn scar. He stomps his way to the front of the room and eyes you all critically. With a grunt, he turns on a projector that displays a grotesque image of mutilated bodies and blood.

"1900 hours yesterday, violent attacks occurred in several cities across the world." The projector clicks to a macabre scene at a fast food restaurant, "Memphis," another image, this one of human bodies clogging a canal, "Amsterdam," The windows of an airplane terminal, splattered with blood and gore "Buenos Aires." Click. An intricate rune painted on a brick wall. "At each location, variations of this symbol are drawn in blood, and strange scorch marks are found on the ground nearby.

"The only surviving witnesses are locked away in nuthouses. They say the attackers arrived in a flash of light, that they had horns and claws and shot venomous thorns and bolts of lightning. It might seem like crap, but our top scientists have been working on the theory that these are invaders from another dimension." The grizzled man waves his arms in a placating gesture. "Now hold on - I know it sounds crazy. But they've worked out a way for us to fight back. I'll let the brains explain it."

A frail looking man with tufts of hair sticking out from behind his ears enters the room and stands in front of the projector. "Thank you, Sergeant. Now, I know alternate dimensions probably sounds crazy to the lot of you. But I tell you there is much merit to the idea. These very attacks seem to prove my theory! But, I get ahead of myself. You all know the difference between two and three dimensions, correct? If not, try covering one eye and looking around. It's hard to tell distance and placement, yes? This is because you're only seeing in two dimensions. To see a third, your eyes gather two different pictures and compare them in your brain. Now, it's been theorized that a fourth dimension, time, also exists. We cannot perceive time except in how we can see its effects. Now, imagine there are 5 or 6 dimensions. Imagine a thousand! What is in them? We have no way to perceive them, no way to interact with them. They could, in fact, house completely different life forms, completely alien to our sensibilities. I hypothesize that there could even be types of matter--"

"OK, Professor, get to the point." The grizzled sergeant grunts from the back of the room.

"Oh, yes. I'm sorry, Sergeant. The point is, that we have found a way to follow these strange beings back to their dimension. Using our own understanding of quantum physics combined with the arcane knowledge represented by these symbols, we've hacked together a device that can send over people and objects to the attackers' dimension. We're calling it a Slipgate."

The Sergeant pushes back from leaning against the wall, and heads back to the front of the room. "That's where our sorry asses come in. We jump in with guns blazing, kill every one of those fuckers, and blow their dimension to bits. Poindexter here's coming with us, to figure a way to send us back. But if you decide to go, know that it's probably a one-way ticket. There's things we can't even imagine out there, and I for one won't rest until they're all dead."

"Yes, well," interrupts the scientist, "We can't rule out an incredible but alien intelligence, perhaps unknowingly causing damage to our dimension. I hope we can try to ask questions first, and shoot second. But the probability of violent greetings are in indeed high, this is the very reason we've asked you all here.'

'You'll be loaded to the teeth, carrying as much ammo and supplies as you can. It seems the slipgate can't transfer anything big, so we don't get tanks or choppers. We'll sweep through the place, taking out as many of the fuckers we can, then Poindexter will set up a slipgate on the other side and we'll head back. You can make gear requests to the quartermaster, he's been ordered to give you whatever you want."

"And one last thing. We tested the damn gate, we sent watermelons and shit over, but we don't knwo what the trip will be like. Could be we all make it over dead, or frozen, or in little pieces. But those thigns made it over here, and we can't just sit around. Now who wants to kick some ass?"

I fail at Dread :)

So I ran my Halloween game at Mom's last night. I had 5 players - Tommy, Jessie, Mark, Amanda, and Cameron. I sprung the questionnaires on them right before the game, and that had some people flustered. But then we slowly got into the adventure. Some people had to go, but the almost everyone was pretty engrossed in the story until the very end. I say I fail at Dread not because I ran a bad game, but because I basically ran a sci-fi one-shot with jenga instead of dice :)

I was running "Beneath a Metal Sky," one of the examples from the back of the book. I was warned on RPG.net that this was the hardest of the scenarios, but I trudged ahead with it, spending the past few weeks going over the scant information published in the book and building on it in my head. One of the most useful building blocks I created was a deckplan of the ISS Auerbach. Because I had committed this to memory, I was able to visualize and explain where the locations were in relation to each other.

Another thing I worked hard at was picking the right music. I had originally wanted to use the Alien soundtrack, which was creepy enough, but it had ups and downs, crescendos that may be awkward if they played at a dull moment in the game. I decided to use the background music from Quake 1, written by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. That worked beautifully. Creepy and droning, it was able to fade in the background and make everythign jsut a little more creepy.

Best moment of the game was when the characters found out what the creatures were. Mark's character, the Captain, took one down with a few excellently placed pistol shots. They examine it to find that it's merely a slightly-altered human with absolutely no skin. Exposed muscles are covered in dried blood. When the doctor starts to investigate, the corpse explodes into a swarm of tiny, four-legged beetles. Thankfully no one was hurt. (Drat!) The bugs had hollowed out the former crew member and were driving him around. Both Cameron and Mark said that this was legitimately creepy. Go Team Chris!

There were some other creepy parts towards the beginning, but the game turned into one big run & gun after the first creature fell. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Next Halloween, I'm planning to run something more game-y.