Inspiration

I run modern horror - it's my best thing.  As a result, I get inspiration from the oddest places, most of them on the web. In my opinion, horror is most effective when the world the characters inhabit is almost like the world the players inhabit. Characters are constructs -- there's no way to scare them.  Players, on the other hand, have nice little hot buttons all over them.  In my quest to provide an extra-scary experience, I find I am interested in the strangest things -- how far you can fall without dying, for example. (link courtesy of **Dave)

I'm running a playtest group for the newest version of the Chill game, and last night we finally began play.  (All of our sessions to this point have revolved around dissecting the rules.)  We're in Michigan, so I decided to locate them in Detroit (inspired, in part, by the excellent Mythic Detroit site).  Naturally, the playtest is under NDA, so I won't go into details, but I will say that one of the antagonists I have to work with (currently) is the zombie. Add to that my recent purchase of The Zombie Survival Guide (warning, site is Flash intensive and noisy) and it was a scenario just waiting to happen.

The characters each received a text message on their cell phones (or some other form of brief message) giving them an address in downtown Detroit on the Cass Corridor (bad, but recovering, neighborhood) and a time - 6 pm.  They arrived, introduced themselves and broke into the building, a burned out, boarded up store with a surprisingly sturdy set of iron bars on doors and windows.  Inside they found it bare-bones but clean and minimally repaired, and on the table a padded envelope containing a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide with a Post-it note(tm) on the cover and a map inside.  The note said: "Find out if there is any truth to this, and if there really is an infestation.  Tonight."  The map directs them to a nearby abandoned and burned-out area that may have at one time held a graveyard.

:: chuckle ::

Next time, it's ZOMBIE TIME!