Fright Night
So another Fright Night over! I have to say I had fun, but no real stand outs for me this year.
Malcolm's 'Cold Shore' was a nicely balanced story that built to a great level of pressure and action. I have to say that the discovery at the first Castaway Hut was really cool, and the discovery of the abandoned house was neat as well. The beginning was a bit slow, but I really enjoyed it once things started to make sense.
As a general note I think it'd be better if the character sheets didn't include so many useless skills, and if Malcolm had put a bit more pressure on us as we travelled the island (i.e. finding evidence of people watching or tracking us, witnessing more signs of the atrocities that had happened on the island, etc.). But these are just minor quibbles!
My own 'The Eye's have it...' was a bit of a miss for me. Don't get me wrong, I had fun, and the three hours powered by (and here I was worried that I'd come in under time), but I don't think I included enough 'plot' to really involve the characters. My goal was to have a story that would see the players having to balance their character's abilities against the desperation of the situation facing them. In this I failed. I don't know where I went wrong actually, but I don't think I reinforced the personal horror enough, and in the end (to quote Malcolm) it became a 'tour of the Hot War setting'. I don't know if this had something to do with the system I used (a 'blind' version of GUMSHOE), or my failure to introduce a more structure into the storyline (especially in the investigative elements).
On a positive note, all the players seemed to embrace their characters - although I feel a little sorry for Andy, his Social Scientist seemed a little out of place. I'm also pretty happy with my NPCs -from Pace's ability to dismiss the idea of having to shoot 3 people simply because they wouldn't fit into the APC, to Blake's jovial abuse of everyone (from the agents through his beaten wife), and even the poor Deacon who is a victim of circumstance in the whole story (although I'm annoyed with myself for not bring this to the fore a little more!).
I might review this adventure and restructure it to get it to better match the style I was after! I'd especially like to review the way I could work the character's Fallout scenes into the story a little better (the player's pretty much ignored them as I'd specifically gone in allowing them to decide when to 'activate' these flashback scenes). In hindsight I'd be better taking the time to do a bit of one-on-one at the beginning of the session and then throwing in elements that remind them of the past in game.
I have to say that writing these issues down here, does make me want to run this again at Kapcon (if only to prove to myself that I can improve it!) I did this with my 'Truckstop' adventure a few years back and it was much, much better at Kapcon!
Finally I just have to say how much I'm impressed with Norman in both sessions. In 'Cold Shore' he played my character's wife... and trust me, I felt like one of those subservient husbands you read about (I was going to play him this way BTW, but I though it might become a little too 'scene eating' if I did so) :P . Then in my Adventure he play D'ton, the French born Navy technician responsible for a number of deaths in the past. Beyond the French accent, he played up the character's strengths and weaknesses perfectly!