Can you survive the horror?
Warning: This article contains foul language, adult situations, and spoilers for the game I'm running at Intercon Mid Atlantic. Read at your own risk.
#2. Scream and the Sultan will rip out your tongue. Be silent and the horrors will destroy your mind. Dare you experience the nightmare of...
The Cell.
So there I was, a fresh faced young LARPer who had a new four hour game called Miskatonic Class Reunion under my belt and was anxious to run it at gaming conventions. I chose Atlanticon, the last year it was at College Park, Maryland.
I was young and stupid and volunteered to run the game seven times, once in each slot. We'd have the same room and just run it over and over and over again. We ended up running it four times. Not too shabby, I guess.
However, there was this intriguing sounding game called "The Cell" by John Peterson (no relation to Sandy Petersen) running in an evening slot. Since it looked like we weren't going to be running opposite it, we decided to play. That was me, Dan, Yvonne, and Dig. As it turned out some people who got their first taste of LARPing at MCR decided to play, too, including two people named Dirk and Moira Parham.
So, we paid Mr. Peterson $6 each. And that was an exorbitant amount for a 4 hour LARP in those days. These days, I can charge $20 for a four hour LARP, but back then. Heck, I think I ran MCR for free...
So, we paid our $6. Since we were last minute signups, he didn't have any of his two sentence characters left (a running theme here). So, he just came up with characters off the top of his head. Dig and I were rich brothers. I don't remember if we had names or not, and I don't think it mattered.
The player group - there had to be 30 of us - were led into a large room and told not to leave. The GM explained to us that we were on a cruise and our ship had been hit and our lifeboats managed to get here and the sultan locked us into a cell. Then he left. We weren't able to ask questions about the complete implausibility of our situation, or relevant facts like what country we were in, why we were on a cruise, or what year it was. It didn't really matter.
So, we talked amongst ourselves about stuff we made up, especially about how horrible it was being locked up. Most of the time, we were left alone, but every once in a while the GM would come into the room.
Sometimes he would come into the room as the Sultan. He would have two NPC guards who would drag a character out of the room to be tortured. He wasn't trying to get information from us; he just wanted to torture us. I didn't get to be tortured, but my "brother" was sodomized by one of the burly guards. It was "great." He came back in and was really quiet. I asked what happened and he said, "they sodomized me." I was so stunned, I could not speak. We didn't mention it for the rest of the game.
At one point, Dan tried to put up a resistance to the guards. Naturally it failed, and they split his character's belly open. He spent the rest of the game sitting on the floor with a shirt (and I cannot for the life of me remember whose shirt; I think it was Dig's) tied around his waist as a bandage.
Sometimes the GM would come into the room as an evil mage who wanted us to join him to do his bidding. Few of us were naturally inclined to evil, but he was way powerful and we couldn't do anything to him. For the most part we ignored him.
And sometimes the GM would come into the room as a GM to announce fun things like, "time has passed. You're all getting weaker," or "you are all starving and dehydrated," or "you can barely stand up," or "you all had bad dreams last night." Then he'd leave.
One time, the GM came into the room and had us all freeze in place and close our eyes. When we opened them, there was a clear tarp with a big pile of ho-hos and raisins on it covered in honey. He said that it looked like what it looked like, and it smelled like urine and shit.
We didn't know what to do with this newfound discovery, except for Moira, who went and grabbed some and started trying to eat it. There was no combat system, per se, so I had to grab her arm to try to stop her. I was unable and unwilling to actually fight Moira for ho-hos, so she got some in her mouth and was told it tasted like it tasted in real life. She alone gorged herself.
Halfway through the game, the GM let us out of the room for a bathroom break. We all tromped out of the room, relaxed a bit, then - and this is the strange part - all tromped back in. For some, it had become a challenge to survive the game, for others they had nothing else to do. Me, I was actually curious how it would end. I needed to know what the fuck was going through the GM's mind.
How did it end? OK, we were all too weak to stand so we were laying around the room. The GM came in as the evil mage and again told us that he was our only way out, join with him and die. Most people said no. Yvonne, Dig, Dan, Dirk, and I all died while singling Psalms. It was touched. Touching, I mean touching. Moira was the ONLY character who was willing to join the evil mage, so after killing all the rest of us, he looked at her and said that she was not enough and killed her character too.
Game over, man. Game. Over.
Then we all ate ho-hos and had game wrap. It turns out that the cell we were in was one of the nexuses that the Hounds of Tindalos used to enter the real world. When they came in, we would get bad dreams. The ho-hos and honey? Well, besides it being their entry points, it was also their bathroom. Yes, we got to eat Hound of Tindalos droppings.
This wonderful revelation inspired me to rewrite the game's blurb just a little bit to:
Be pushed around by powers beyond your control. Get clues to a mystery you have no hope of solving. Be sodomized, eat shit, and die. One GM's power trip is thirty players' ultimate nightmare. The Cell. Oh, the humanity.
Next up, a LARP so awful, we had no choice but to destroy the Universe.
#2. Scream and the Sultan will rip out your tongue. Be silent and the horrors will destroy your mind. Dare you experience the nightmare of...
The Cell.
So there I was, a fresh faced young LARPer who had a new four hour game called Miskatonic Class Reunion under my belt and was anxious to run it at gaming conventions. I chose Atlanticon, the last year it was at College Park, Maryland.
I was young and stupid and volunteered to run the game seven times, once in each slot. We'd have the same room and just run it over and over and over again. We ended up running it four times. Not too shabby, I guess.
However, there was this intriguing sounding game called "The Cell" by John Peterson (no relation to Sandy Petersen) running in an evening slot. Since it looked like we weren't going to be running opposite it, we decided to play. That was me, Dan, Yvonne, and Dig. As it turned out some people who got their first taste of LARPing at MCR decided to play, too, including two people named Dirk and Moira Parham.
So, we paid Mr. Peterson $6 each. And that was an exorbitant amount for a 4 hour LARP in those days. These days, I can charge $20 for a four hour LARP, but back then. Heck, I think I ran MCR for free...
So, we paid our $6. Since we were last minute signups, he didn't have any of his two sentence characters left (a running theme here). So, he just came up with characters off the top of his head. Dig and I were rich brothers. I don't remember if we had names or not, and I don't think it mattered.
The player group - there had to be 30 of us - were led into a large room and told not to leave. The GM explained to us that we were on a cruise and our ship had been hit and our lifeboats managed to get here and the sultan locked us into a cell. Then he left. We weren't able to ask questions about the complete implausibility of our situation, or relevant facts like what country we were in, why we were on a cruise, or what year it was. It didn't really matter.
So, we talked amongst ourselves about stuff we made up, especially about how horrible it was being locked up. Most of the time, we were left alone, but every once in a while the GM would come into the room.
Sometimes he would come into the room as the Sultan. He would have two NPC guards who would drag a character out of the room to be tortured. He wasn't trying to get information from us; he just wanted to torture us. I didn't get to be tortured, but my "brother" was sodomized by one of the burly guards. It was "great." He came back in and was really quiet. I asked what happened and he said, "they sodomized me." I was so stunned, I could not speak. We didn't mention it for the rest of the game.
At one point, Dan tried to put up a resistance to the guards. Naturally it failed, and they split his character's belly open. He spent the rest of the game sitting on the floor with a shirt (and I cannot for the life of me remember whose shirt; I think it was Dig's) tied around his waist as a bandage.
Sometimes the GM would come into the room as an evil mage who wanted us to join him to do his bidding. Few of us were naturally inclined to evil, but he was way powerful and we couldn't do anything to him. For the most part we ignored him.
And sometimes the GM would come into the room as a GM to announce fun things like, "time has passed. You're all getting weaker," or "you are all starving and dehydrated," or "you can barely stand up," or "you all had bad dreams last night." Then he'd leave.
One time, the GM came into the room and had us all freeze in place and close our eyes. When we opened them, there was a clear tarp with a big pile of ho-hos and raisins on it covered in honey. He said that it looked like what it looked like, and it smelled like urine and shit.
We didn't know what to do with this newfound discovery, except for Moira, who went and grabbed some and started trying to eat it. There was no combat system, per se, so I had to grab her arm to try to stop her. I was unable and unwilling to actually fight Moira for ho-hos, so she got some in her mouth and was told it tasted like it tasted in real life. She alone gorged herself.
Halfway through the game, the GM let us out of the room for a bathroom break. We all tromped out of the room, relaxed a bit, then - and this is the strange part - all tromped back in. For some, it had become a challenge to survive the game, for others they had nothing else to do. Me, I was actually curious how it would end. I needed to know what the fuck was going through the GM's mind.
How did it end? OK, we were all too weak to stand so we were laying around the room. The GM came in as the evil mage and again told us that he was our only way out, join with him and die. Most people said no. Yvonne, Dig, Dan, Dirk, and I all died while singling Psalms. It was touched. Touching, I mean touching. Moira was the ONLY character who was willing to join the evil mage, so after killing all the rest of us, he looked at her and said that she was not enough and killed her character too.
Game over, man. Game. Over.
Then we all ate ho-hos and had game wrap. It turns out that the cell we were in was one of the nexuses that the Hounds of Tindalos used to enter the real world. When they came in, we would get bad dreams. The ho-hos and honey? Well, besides it being their entry points, it was also their bathroom. Yes, we got to eat Hound of Tindalos droppings.
This wonderful revelation inspired me to rewrite the game's blurb just a little bit to:
Be pushed around by powers beyond your control. Get clues to a mystery you have no hope of solving. Be sodomized, eat shit, and die. One GM's power trip is thirty players' ultimate nightmare. The Cell. Oh, the humanity.
Next up, a LARP so awful, we had no choice but to destroy the Universe.