Tis the Season

[jaegamer]

It's the season for Chill, and I have a problem.

I love running Chill, and I have a group of wonderful players.  Until I took a hiatus a month ago, we'd been running weekly for a couple of years.  I tend to long, involved scenarios deeply linked into the backgrounds of the characters.  That made for a lot of good play, but Real Life has reared its monstrous head.  Odds are good that no more than 3 of my six players will be able to make any given week night session, which ends up limiting my story options.  What do I do if I've centered the story around a character who can't make it that week - or for several weeks?

I don't want to replace the players who can't make it often - they're great players, they just have Real Life conflicts.  I want to make my game more "absence friendly" without losing the personal connection that I feel is so important in a horror game.

I'd like to go to a more episodic approach (a la Supernatural, Friday the 13th the Series or Poltergeist: the Legacy), but I'm kinda stalled.  I don't want to do tired old stuff - these folks are all pretty well mired in the horror genre.  I'd like to string the episodic events into arcs so that eventually they'd look at them an realize that this and this and OMG THAT all apply to their personal arcs, and it's time to batten down the hatches.

So I turn to you, my fellow evil geniuses, for a burst of ideas for short (3-4 hr) torture sessions...er... games.

Edit: Game blogs are available at: www.chillrpg.net/chilldetroit

Comments

[varianor.livejournal.com]

First thought - if it's a Chill game and important PCs are missing - how about the adventures revolve around the missing PCs? In other words, the players are shoved into a series of encounters where people ask for the absent folks? They need them?

Then you hit them with flashbacks and psychic screams and snuff filmsstarring - you guessed it - the PCs as victims. Is it real? Memorex? At every step, the absence of their comrades turns up the heat a little more.

[jaegamer.livejournal.com]

I've done this one to death, alas... it's one of the ways I've dealt with missing PCs in the past. In one spectacular incident the PC ended up becoming a major villain/NPC. I feel very badly about it - I was just following the organic course of events, and by the time I realized I was making his character unplayable, it was too late.

He was a good sport about it, has made a new character, and even participated in the final defeat of his previous character. He said it was of his most satisfying character deaths ever. (evil grin)