Posted for my GM, because he's too lazy to create an account.
1) He didn't answer, but probably yes
2) Best prop ever: Stuffed toy dog with an evil secret.
The game was horror, a mix of Little Fears and Silent Hill. The PCs were
children, and one of the little girls owned a beloved stuffed dog she
took everywhere. Before the first session, I found a good old prop at
the local goodwill: a brown stuffed dog at least 14" tall, big enough to
make the player feel like a little kid again. I made sure the dog was
waiting at her seat before every session. For two sessions she held it
and bonded with it.
During the third session, the PCs are trapped in a nightmarish
veterinary clinic. They need a weapon to kill the monster waiting for
them outside. They see the gun laying out in the middle of the clinic
exercise yard. After they go out and grab it -- just before they reach
the 'safety' of the clinic doors again -- BANG. Not the monster the're
expecting, but a gunshot, from nowhere. The girl with the stuffed dog
feels the hit and crumples.
She's fine, but she discovers that the shot hit her stuffed dog -- and
it's bleeding from the head.
Furthermore, they find that the gun has no bullets. There's only a
suspicious lump in the dog's head*.
"With the scissors from my backpack," whimpers player of the girl, "I
dig the bullet out."
"So dig the bullet out," I tell her, sliding a pair of scissors across
the table. "There really *is* a lump in that dog's head."
Before the session, I had made a tiny opening in a seam of the dog's
bottom. Using a long dowel, I had pushed a rifle shell up into the
stuffing of the its head. I'd replaced the dowel with a long tube and
poured in red food coloring and just the right amount of water. After
removing the tube, you couldn't tell anything was different.
I looked on in glee as the player carved a hole in the dog's head,
reached in, squealed "Oh my God, it's wet!" and dug out the bullet in a
red-stained hand.
