Investigating The Horror Of The Chill Role-Playing Game

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I do like a good horror game, and Chill has always been a good horror game. I have played the first edition from Pacesetter Games and the second edition put out by Mayfair Games. Either edition was an interesting alternative to the other horror games of those times, like Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu or White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade. Much like with Call of Cthulhu, Chill has always been more human-centric. You don't play the monsters, you play the people who fight the monsters.

Where the first edition wanted more of a "Hammer Horror" vibe, the art undermined the edition's feel with a sillier tone. The second edition embraced the angst and edginess of the 90s and, in places, managed to out-White Wolf the books that White Wolf put out. The new edition falls somewhere in between these two poles, but overall the people at Growling Door Games have put together an interesting and engaging horror game that has a tone more in line with some of the better "monster of the week" episodes of The X-Files television show.

System-wise, the third edition of Chill draws more upon the Mayfair Games second edition than the earlier Pacesetter Games rules. This is because of the rights issues involved over the various editions of the game. The third edition also gets away from the table-based methods of task resolutions and instead uses much simpler percentile rolls against the rank of a character's ability or skill, or an opposed roll against another character's ranks. There is a degree of success mechanic that determines how well, or how poorly, the character does on their roll relative to the rank. This serves to quicken play, versus earlier editions, because you don't have to worry about consulting tables during play.

There is also the token mechanic where tokens on the game table are turned light or dark, depending upon what happens during play, and showing the ebb and flow of the good and bad forces during a game. Players turn tokens dark, while the Chill Master turns tokens light. Example of things that can turn tokens dark are making a roll easier, activating a character's Art or saving the life of a character. Examples of things that can turn token light are activating the dark powers of a creature, inconveniencing the player characters, or the Chill Master rolling a botch.

Character creation is involved, but not overly complicated. The list of skills for characters is limited but robust, and edges (advantages) and drawbacks (disadvantages) can help to fill out your character. I'm not a huge fan of systems that give character points for drawbacks, because I think that it encourages a min-maxing sensibility in players. It isn't that this approach doesn't work, it just is easy enough to misuse them.

Many would consider going off and facing down the occult and fighting monsters wouldn't be the smartest of career choices. Many horror games don't really address the whys of characters getting involved with these dangerous, nasty things. With Chill third edition, they round out the character with a Drive that addresses why they throw themselves into the world of magic and terror. Drives are player-defined, and can take any number of directions. Characters are then rounded out with History, things that have happened to the character in their past while investigating the Unknown.

Characters also may or may not have their own supernatural powers called The Art. These are not the flashy types of magic that we get in fantasy role-playing games, but more subtle abilities that are more akin to psychic powers than anything else. Having characters use The Art is optional, and while it can be a great equalizer between the Envoys of SAVE and the creatures of the Unknown, there is always the worry of those fighting against the Unknown and the creatures of it becoming too similar.

There is also an in-depth discussion of the organization of SAVE and its history. This is the organization to which Chill characters will belong. SAVE has a history going back to 1844, which allows for a continuity of knowledge that can be accessed by characters. The 1980s lead to a period of decline for SAVE, leading to the attack on the organization's central archive by a great gathering of creatures. A lot of SAVE's data was destroyed in the attack and a number of envoys were killed. This sets the tone for the current state of SAVE, which is neither as large nor as powerful as it once was. The SAVE of today is one that is being rebuilt from the remains of the organization. This means that the player characters can take an active role in the new organization.

Finally, monsters. This is always one of my favorite parts of a game book. There are a number of creatures of the Unknown that can face and harass the player characters. The creatures are drawn from horror stories, myths and folklore. With a larger Monsters book on the way from Growling Door Games, you still have all of the monsters that you will need in the core book to get your Chill games going. Creating monsters also looks pretty easy, there are not a lot of mechanics attached to the creatures in the game, so I would think that it wouldn't take a lot of work.

There are a lot of things in the Chill game that they get right. Probably the thing that they get the most right is in representation. There is an extensive section of pregenerated characters in the book, made up of women, people of color and the LGBTQ. One of the sample pregenerated characters, who is also featured in the introductory comic in the book is a transman. This past weekend I was a guest at a convention in New York, and one thing that kept coming up in the comments from people at panels was that newer players and GMs were happy to see people who looked like them in the art and sample characters of role-playing games. Representation matters, and people seeing themselves reflected in the heroes of games is a great thing. It is also something that we need to see more of in role-playing games.

The art in the book is a bit uneven. There is a mix of photography and illustrations in the book, of differing quality. I myself am not a fan of mixing photography and illustrations in a game book because I find it jarring. The photography is pretty stunning, and definitely the high point of the art in the book.

All in all, the third edition of Chill is a solid horror role-playing game. If you're looking for a game of investigative horror, with strong combat options, you should check out Chill. I look forward to seeing more of this game in the future. It builds a great new game upon the foundation of the previous editions of Chill. Whether you are new to Chill, or a fan of the older editions, there should be something of interest to you in this game.

 

[lyle.spade]

I played the Pacesetter version, own (and dislike the mechanical changes in) Mayfair's take on it, and really like 3e a great deal. I've had a lot of success running it at a local con for the last two years, and I think the investigative skills system is superior to that in Gumshoe. In Chill, you will always get a vital clue; however, you might end up with distractors or red herrings, as well, or maybe some extra bits that help propel the story forward even faster. But you'll always get the clues essential to moving the story forward - this is tremendously important in an investigation game, obviously, and the writers of this system have done a great job in creating a simple mechanic to facilitate this, and never get in the way of the story.

Additionally, I've found that the black/white chips at the table are great for adding tension and foreshadowing things to come, as the CM turns a chip from black to white when the beastie is about to make itself known. It can seem a little meta, but horror can work well through the surprise that comes in reaction to something you didn't know, to the dread you feel welling up in anticipation of something you do.

I highly recommend this game if you like horror, investigative horror, and/or are interested in a system that presents a set of very simple mechanics that are flexible across a range of encounters and play styles.

 

[EternalDungeonMaster]

I CM (Chill Master, the Chill term for GM) Chill 3e from time to time. I've invested in all of the Kickstarter campaigns to date. I find that it's not a system that I would be interested in CMing as a long-term campaign. For instance, our gaming group tends to run years-long D&D campaigns. I tend to use Chill as a serial break from our regular campaigns.

If you're a fan of games with explicit combat rules then Chill may not be for you. The tactical/combat stuff is mostly pretty vague. As a CM who likes to set tone and atmosphere and emphasize how incredibly deadly combat with the Unknown (Chill's term for supernatural creatures) can be, I actually prefer Chill's fuzzy combat rules. I'm more interested in the visual, cinematic narrative of a scene than I am in how many feet so-and-so moved and how many squares or hexes her shotgun blast covers. It highly favors Theater of the Mind combat over any sort of grid-based combat.

The aforementioned dark/light token mechanic is interesting in theory. In practice, it puts a surprising amount of mechanical pressure on the CM to use dark-to-light token turning mechanics regularly else the players will run out of light tokens to turn dark when they need an extra boost. In a game that seems to strongly emphasize narrative and story over game mechanics, I'm surprised by just how obtrusive this mechanic is. But if the CM makes a strong effort to weave the in-game-world effects of many dark tokens or many light tokens into the narrative, it can be a lot of fun. I like to set a darker, more oppressive tone when there are lots of dark tokens, and the opposite when there are lots of light tokens.

This is a really fun game, and I recommend it for groups looking for sporadic breaks from their regularly scheduled gaming programming. From my perspective, I don't think there is enough meat on the bone for a long-term campaign. Over time, characters really end up with a lot of wear and tear on them from exposure to the Unknown.

 

[lyle.spade]

CNYGamer99 makes some solid points about the game, with which I agree in general. I use Chill for cons and one-offs or short story arc as breaks within longer campaigns, as I think maintaining a horror vibe is really difficult over the long term; thus, I prefer horror games to be short than those in other genres. I also agree that the token system does require that the CM pay close attention to the build-up of dark tokens, which result when the players actively use the token option for themselves, but if you're clear on what your monsters can do with them, it helps drive the story forward.

And yes, the combat system is fuzzy...but it's not a combat game, so lots of crunch in that area would detract from what it's really seeking to do, or would simply be unnecessary rules.

I've had good results running Supernatural-style stories, as well as ones with a more Lovecraftian tone.