Call of Cthulhu is such a Halloween staple it's becoming trite. I'm thinking of running a game, but I'm trying to decide if my group is gutsy enough to try something like the
Lost Souls RPG for that night.
I'll probably wimp out and use Call of Cthulhu instead, though I may use the Chaosium version instead of the d20 one.
Hopefully, some of my material from one of my favorite CoC halloween outings may help someone out:
(1) I pregenerated the PC's ahead of time, with 1 paragraph biographies about them. That way, I cut down on start time, and the PC's were consistent characters without a lot of "hodge-podge skills."
(2) Once each person selected a PC, I gave each of them a secret, and a goal. One character was a rich dilettante who possessed a rare book that he had worked long and hard to get, and was ferrying it back home in his belongings on the yacht they were on. His goal was to simply get the $50,000 book home, and not lose it.
Another PC was a Priest who was secretly leaving Europe to avoid murder charges. His SAN was already just a little on the low side.
(3) I came up with a dozen scenes or so that would look good in a horror movie; The boat struck a hard object and was sinking, the crew was disappearing one by one, The generator got soaked by water about halfway through and lost power, the life boats were coming up with smashed prows one by one, etc. and plenty of sightings of
something in the shadows, just out of clear vision.
(4) I discouraged table talk, and encouraged in-character only. I used sound tracks (a friend had a thunderstorm track that fit like a glove). But in my opinion, DON'T use music, as it disrupts suspension of disbelief. In my mind, Blair Witch Project is infinitely scarier than Friday the 13th.
We've had a blast doing this, and I'm hoping to continue the tradition.
