RangerWickett
Legend
So I just got back from the Halloween game I played in. God it was fun.
First, you must know that in previous years, this same GM has run horror games. In the first game, I was the first person to die, shot by dual elephant guns by my fellow PCs after I made a bargain with the evil spirit in a haunted house. In the second game, when we had disposable characters (if you die, you get the next person in line), I died six times, including one time when my character lasted all of 5 minutes in real-time. Not even game time.
So the GM, Trae, starts off by letting us pick a name from a list of characters as we arrive at his apartment. There is one set of beginning characters, one set of back-ups, with 9 players, for a total of 18 characters.
The game begins on a bus in Mexico, in the Middle of Nowhere (tm). I am playing Justin Helderman, a U.S. Navy Seal on vacation to visit his girlfriend Denise at her archaeological expedition to unearth some Aztec ruins.
The bus breaks down, and we have to walk to the nearest town. Because we are in the Middle of Nowhere (tm), there is one town a mile away, and the next nearest part of civilization is 92 miles away. It's the middle of a Mexican summer, so if we're going to get help, it has to be in this town.
Soon I meet my traveling companions.
Bubba is a white guy from Kentucky, who manages to chew both hay and tobacco at the same time.
Stanely is a British traveler, dressed like a hunter.
Professor Mia is a Mexican math professor, who is bilingual.
Chris and Carly are a traveling American couple, dressed in black trenchcoats, nervously carrying a briefcase.
Arturo is a Mexican tour guide escorting a Japanese man and a Swedish family. He is multilingual in English, Swedish, Japanese, and Spanish.
Sandra is a New York cop, planning to get a tan.
And our bus driver is Carlos. He don't speak English.
It was at times scary, at times hilariously funny. We discovered that the townsfolk had killed each other in various grisly fashions, and that all the cars were missing or destroyed. All the telephone lines cut to bits, the church defaced with horrible bodily excretions, and the bar left with only a single bottle half-filled with Tequila.
We wander the town, me and Carlos going off together to see if we could find a car repair shop or something, even though we had a complete language barrier. I start to learn the (wrong) words for "good," "bad," and "woman" in Spanish. Carlos can barely stand me.
We were scared at first, and we headed back to the bus, only to find it on fire, with signs that a lot of people had come, and a lot had run away. So we head back into town to try to figure out how to cross the desert safely, or get another car. We see a murder, and we kill the murderer, and then we're just nervous. Then, Chris suddenly punches Carly, and Carly screams for help and beats Chris with a crowbar hidden under her trenchcoat.
We run in, pull guns (I found a shotgun with a single round; Carlos had a shotgun from the bus; Stanely had a ceramic sniper rifle he assembled from pieces hidden across his body), and find out Chris doesn't remember what happened.
I try to check Chris for weapons, and when I do, something passes into me. Soon I'm pulling out my hunting knife and stabbing Chris in the throat. When I regain consciousness, I'm on the floor, shot in the leg, hit with a crowbar, and holding a bloody knife. I don't recall killing Chris.
Yes, my friends. We have a demon, jumping from person to person.
I don't die, though. As the game progresses, I team up with Bubba, then later with Carlos, as we try to figure out what's going on. People die and are replaced by overzealous vampire hunters who've watched "From Dusk 'Til Dawn" too many times, Mexican tourists, an overly romantic Mexican aristocrat, a surfer dude, a panicky Swedish woman, a Mexican priest, and a Swedish businessman who was funny in a way it'd take hours to explain.
But Justin and Carlos, we don't die. We're each possessed by the evil at least twice, but it finds its way into other people, and we're smart enough to run for our lives. We figure out it can travel when it touches people, or when the host dies, so we try really hard to just wing anyone we attack. I, the Navy Seal, get stuck with my one shotgun cartridge. Carlos finds the hidden armory and stocks up on AK-47s, a rocket launcher, and pistols.
We know things are going bad when Bubba shows up with Professor Mia, who is dressed in a teddy. We're pretty sure one of them is evil, or, as Carlos and I are calling it, "Diablo." Since Mia was the only one who was bilingual, we hazard through bad Spanish and lots of pantomiming, and eventually run away.
We discover what's going on from a crazed man hiding in a locked house. An ancient Aztec evil, which we will call El Diablo, terrorized this town a hundred years ago, then was trapped, until cultists freed it last week. Now we have to trap it again. My sanity is slowly whittled away until I'm down to 29, second only to the 'vampire hunter,' who's sanity is 19. I assure you, there were no vampires. The guy was nuts. But the worst insane episode I had was a screaming fit when I saw the Swedish woman's body quartered and scattered in an underground vault with a summoning circle.
We finally start to piece together how to stop the demon, which requires aligning four carved stone pillars, and casting a spell while the demon is in the very center. The pillars are scattered all around town, but we found a VW Bug with no engine in the auto shop, so we stick it in neutral and use it as a push-cart to get the pillars to the town square. Then we put the Bug in the middle of the pillars, intending to capture El Diablo in the trunk of the car.
Yeah, yeah, I know we're screwed.
At one point, we burn down the church, just in case, because it was desecrated. The Mexican priest tells Carlos to throw his guns away, because violence cannot defeat this evil. Carlos mostly listens, keeping only his AK-47, and a souvenir rocket launcher (he already used up all the rockets). The rest he tosses into the fire.
Bubba finally shows up, sporting a gun wound to his leg, saying Mia shot him then ran off. We hold him at gun point, intending to force him into the truck. But Bubba insists on helping, so trigger happy Carlos "shoots him in the leg." Unfortunately, the AK-47's on autofire, so Bubba dies, and we're screwed, because now we don't know who the Devil is in.
So we do the only sane thing, and just don't worry about it. We're just about to get the pillars aligned and starting making people climb into the trunk one at a time, when the Mexican priest picks up Bubba's pistol and shoots Carlos in the back of the head.
"You should have listened to your padre, and thrown your guns away."
Then the priest uses Carlos as a body shield and takes his AK, shooting at us.
Carlos, my friend, the only guy other than me to have survived from the beginning, has been killed by El Diablo. I am pissed. I intend to sacrifice myself by grappling with the preacher and pulling us both into the trunk of the car, so we'll be trapped together. I attack, miss just barely, and get gunned down. I lie bleeding and dying, watching the others try desperately to defeat the evil.
We happen to have a flat push cart from a convenience store, and one of the characters shoves the evil priest with it, knocking him onto it. The priest's aim is ruin, and he misses with the machine gun, so we have just enough time to ram the cart into the back of the Bug and knock the priest into the trunk. The vampire hunter slams the trunk shut, then rolls away as a spray of bullets burst outward.
The group starts to try to align the columns, and the vampire hunter (who speaks Latin) pulls out the liturgy to trap the demon. Then the lock on the trunk is blown off, and the priest starts to climb out. The vampire hunter pistol whips the man, dealing just enough subdual damage to knock him out, but since it doesn't kill him, the demon stays in. They slam the trunk shut again, draw a circle of silver powder, and cast the spell.
El Diablo es muerte.
And somewhere Heaven, Carlos and Justin hopefully are finally able to understand each other. We died, so it's a happy Catholic ending. *grin*
It was very fun.
First, you must know that in previous years, this same GM has run horror games. In the first game, I was the first person to die, shot by dual elephant guns by my fellow PCs after I made a bargain with the evil spirit in a haunted house. In the second game, when we had disposable characters (if you die, you get the next person in line), I died six times, including one time when my character lasted all of 5 minutes in real-time. Not even game time.
So the GM, Trae, starts off by letting us pick a name from a list of characters as we arrive at his apartment. There is one set of beginning characters, one set of back-ups, with 9 players, for a total of 18 characters.
The game begins on a bus in Mexico, in the Middle of Nowhere (tm). I am playing Justin Helderman, a U.S. Navy Seal on vacation to visit his girlfriend Denise at her archaeological expedition to unearth some Aztec ruins.
The bus breaks down, and we have to walk to the nearest town. Because we are in the Middle of Nowhere (tm), there is one town a mile away, and the next nearest part of civilization is 92 miles away. It's the middle of a Mexican summer, so if we're going to get help, it has to be in this town.
Soon I meet my traveling companions.
Bubba is a white guy from Kentucky, who manages to chew both hay and tobacco at the same time.
Stanely is a British traveler, dressed like a hunter.
Professor Mia is a Mexican math professor, who is bilingual.
Chris and Carly are a traveling American couple, dressed in black trenchcoats, nervously carrying a briefcase.
Arturo is a Mexican tour guide escorting a Japanese man and a Swedish family. He is multilingual in English, Swedish, Japanese, and Spanish.
Sandra is a New York cop, planning to get a tan.
And our bus driver is Carlos. He don't speak English.
It was at times scary, at times hilariously funny. We discovered that the townsfolk had killed each other in various grisly fashions, and that all the cars were missing or destroyed. All the telephone lines cut to bits, the church defaced with horrible bodily excretions, and the bar left with only a single bottle half-filled with Tequila.
We wander the town, me and Carlos going off together to see if we could find a car repair shop or something, even though we had a complete language barrier. I start to learn the (wrong) words for "good," "bad," and "woman" in Spanish. Carlos can barely stand me.
We were scared at first, and we headed back to the bus, only to find it on fire, with signs that a lot of people had come, and a lot had run away. So we head back into town to try to figure out how to cross the desert safely, or get another car. We see a murder, and we kill the murderer, and then we're just nervous. Then, Chris suddenly punches Carly, and Carly screams for help and beats Chris with a crowbar hidden under her trenchcoat.
We run in, pull guns (I found a shotgun with a single round; Carlos had a shotgun from the bus; Stanely had a ceramic sniper rifle he assembled from pieces hidden across his body), and find out Chris doesn't remember what happened.
I try to check Chris for weapons, and when I do, something passes into me. Soon I'm pulling out my hunting knife and stabbing Chris in the throat. When I regain consciousness, I'm on the floor, shot in the leg, hit with a crowbar, and holding a bloody knife. I don't recall killing Chris.
Yes, my friends. We have a demon, jumping from person to person.
I don't die, though. As the game progresses, I team up with Bubba, then later with Carlos, as we try to figure out what's going on. People die and are replaced by overzealous vampire hunters who've watched "From Dusk 'Til Dawn" too many times, Mexican tourists, an overly romantic Mexican aristocrat, a surfer dude, a panicky Swedish woman, a Mexican priest, and a Swedish businessman who was funny in a way it'd take hours to explain.
But Justin and Carlos, we don't die. We're each possessed by the evil at least twice, but it finds its way into other people, and we're smart enough to run for our lives. We figure out it can travel when it touches people, or when the host dies, so we try really hard to just wing anyone we attack. I, the Navy Seal, get stuck with my one shotgun cartridge. Carlos finds the hidden armory and stocks up on AK-47s, a rocket launcher, and pistols.
We know things are going bad when Bubba shows up with Professor Mia, who is dressed in a teddy. We're pretty sure one of them is evil, or, as Carlos and I are calling it, "Diablo." Since Mia was the only one who was bilingual, we hazard through bad Spanish and lots of pantomiming, and eventually run away.
We discover what's going on from a crazed man hiding in a locked house. An ancient Aztec evil, which we will call El Diablo, terrorized this town a hundred years ago, then was trapped, until cultists freed it last week. Now we have to trap it again. My sanity is slowly whittled away until I'm down to 29, second only to the 'vampire hunter,' who's sanity is 19. I assure you, there were no vampires. The guy was nuts. But the worst insane episode I had was a screaming fit when I saw the Swedish woman's body quartered and scattered in an underground vault with a summoning circle.
We finally start to piece together how to stop the demon, which requires aligning four carved stone pillars, and casting a spell while the demon is in the very center. The pillars are scattered all around town, but we found a VW Bug with no engine in the auto shop, so we stick it in neutral and use it as a push-cart to get the pillars to the town square. Then we put the Bug in the middle of the pillars, intending to capture El Diablo in the trunk of the car.
Yeah, yeah, I know we're screwed.
At one point, we burn down the church, just in case, because it was desecrated. The Mexican priest tells Carlos to throw his guns away, because violence cannot defeat this evil. Carlos mostly listens, keeping only his AK-47, and a souvenir rocket launcher (he already used up all the rockets). The rest he tosses into the fire.
Bubba finally shows up, sporting a gun wound to his leg, saying Mia shot him then ran off. We hold him at gun point, intending to force him into the truck. But Bubba insists on helping, so trigger happy Carlos "shoots him in the leg." Unfortunately, the AK-47's on autofire, so Bubba dies, and we're screwed, because now we don't know who the Devil is in.
So we do the only sane thing, and just don't worry about it. We're just about to get the pillars aligned and starting making people climb into the trunk one at a time, when the Mexican priest picks up Bubba's pistol and shoots Carlos in the back of the head.
"You should have listened to your padre, and thrown your guns away."
Then the priest uses Carlos as a body shield and takes his AK, shooting at us.
Carlos, my friend, the only guy other than me to have survived from the beginning, has been killed by El Diablo. I am pissed. I intend to sacrifice myself by grappling with the preacher and pulling us both into the trunk of the car, so we'll be trapped together. I attack, miss just barely, and get gunned down. I lie bleeding and dying, watching the others try desperately to defeat the evil.
We happen to have a flat push cart from a convenience store, and one of the characters shoves the evil priest with it, knocking him onto it. The priest's aim is ruin, and he misses with the machine gun, so we have just enough time to ram the cart into the back of the Bug and knock the priest into the trunk. The vampire hunter slams the trunk shut, then rolls away as a spray of bullets burst outward.
The group starts to try to align the columns, and the vampire hunter (who speaks Latin) pulls out the liturgy to trap the demon. Then the lock on the trunk is blown off, and the priest starts to climb out. The vampire hunter pistol whips the man, dealing just enough subdual damage to knock him out, but since it doesn't kill him, the demon stays in. They slam the trunk shut again, draw a circle of silver powder, and cast the spell.
El Diablo es muerte.
And somewhere Heaven, Carlos and Justin hopefully are finally able to understand each other. We died, so it's a happy Catholic ending. *grin*
It was very fun.
