Tell Me of Your Annual Halloween Game!

[Ahnehnois]

Now LARPing might not be mine or your favorite gaming activity, but you could consider Halloween as the international Live Action Roleplaying Day, for hundreds of years before the existence of RPGs. It's the day kids, adults, teenagers gets to play dress up and roleplay a character they are not in life, such as superman, wicked witch, whatever.

In the oldest days, it was getting to be an anarchist for one day, and not feel the legal repercussions of tricking people.

Halloween is one of the oldest and most consistent forms of roleplaying. It's not about reality.

In my experience, Halloween is about either candy or sexually suggestive outfits (or both) depending on how old you are. To me, the kids don't really pretend to be anything, and the slightly older kids and adults just look at it as another excuse to party. I can see what you're saying; it just doesn't match my experience. Then again, I haven't done anything in a while on Halloween so that experience is from pretty far away usually.

Then there's also my gaming situation; I'd be happy to be playing any game on or around Halloween.

 

[Job]

I run "one-shot" horror adventures for my players near Halloween each year. Since I don't want to get bogged down with new rules for a one shot game, I use the Dread system (very simple, very fun) which uses a Jenga tower to build the tension.

Over the years, we've had alien attacks, 2 zombie outbreaks, a haunted house, and this year my players will all awaken as patients in an asylum-gone-terribly-wrong scenario.

We don't usually dress up, but I may take the opportunity to wear a labcoat and stethoscope this year...

J.

 

[malcolypse]

Everyone always focuses on Halloween at the expense of the True Greatest Holiday Ever, November 1st, when all the Halloween candy goes on sale.

 

[jaerdaph]

I'm generally far too busy with partying to play on Halloween.

It's my favourite holiday of the year and, fun as RPGs are, I have other stuff I'd rather be doing with friends on my favourite day.

For me, Halloween is more of a season than just one day. I like to do it all - costume parties, haunted houses, haunted hay rides, scary movies and some horror gaming!

 

[Corathon]

For several years, the Halloween game I ran was one in which the PCs played monsters (a vampire magic user, a greater werewolf cleric, and a man beast). The theme was "evil versus even worse evil".

These days I run Call of Cthulhu for Halloween.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

I'm gearing up for my first Halloween game right now.

If it goes well I'll probably try to incorporate seasonal festivities into my games. For Valentine's Day I'm looking forward to running an old Planescape adventure involving delivering a letter from a devil to a succubus. On St. Patrick's Day there will probably be some leprechauns and drinking-related festivities for the players.

It sort of breaks the fourth wall. I guess I just feel like I should do more for the seasons. I like to mimic how the players may actually be responding to the climate. For some reason I feel like it's a little more immersive to be trotting through a D&D tundra when there's an actual blizzard outside than in the middle of summer.

 

[Pentius]

Update! It looks like I'll be able to spring orcish were-tigers on them after all! Also: A cursed temple haunted by a crazed ghost! This is gonna be a good Halloween game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I live by Salem so we usually go there on Halloween night, but I like to run seasonal games during the month (preferably the weekend before halloween). This year may be a no-go due to health, but I might run a horror adventure this weekend if I am up to it. Normally I run things like Ravenloft or Colonial Gothic. If I do run a game this weekend it will be my own system and very special.

 

[Wycen]

Today was our pre-Halloween game day and we tried to play some games with a matching theme. Shadow Hunters and Elder Sign were played and maybe something else, I forget. Oh yeah, Last Night on Earth. We thought about playing a huge mash up with the Martian invaders also, but had 1 too many players.

 

[nedjer]

'Same her' - doh!

Playing loads of OSR clone right now so made up, and last night tried out, a load of sugary Halloween horrors. Much fun was was had by most and I've just stuck the very OSR compatible bunch up at Thistle Games.