Go ahead, stick your arm in there, you know you want to...
So, earlier today I was reminded of my extended Killer GM Syndrome Rant...
And now you're thinking, Zack you hypocritical asshole, you're the one who ran Grim World a few weeks ago, who posted a thought about jackasses making traps have consequences when they are disarmed, who is designing a Death Trap Dungeon as his part of the mega-dungeon to run for Extra Life (go donate if you haven't) and just posted a Facebook event for a Dread game where you included in the description "Fair warning, I'm hoping that this will be intense and nightmarish..." and linked to the Scott Walker/SUNN O))) song "Herod 2014" as the thematic inspiration which has been described thusly in the Quietus...
Take 'Herod 2014' for example, which is ostensibly about a mother hiding her firstborn from the king's terrible edict:
"She's hidden her babies away
"Their soft gummy smiles
won't be gilding the menu.
"The deer fly, the sand fly
the tsetse can't find them.
"The goon from the Stasi
is left far behind them.
She's hidden her babies away.
The potential to further explore Herod's slaughter of the first born is ignored, thankfully, in favour of a different kind of horror, one that is hard won and slow to reveal itself. And one that is explored with an efflorescence of vivid imagery:
"She's hidden her babies away
"And why bring them out
with no shelter on offer.
"The nurseries and creches
are heaving with lush lice.
"Bubonic, blue-blankets,
run ragged with church mice.
"The Havana has died
in the clam-shell ashtray.
"She's hidden her babies away."
And by the time we get to the 'punchline' - his vision is revealed as a retreat away from reality. A retreat away from sanity. A retreat away from existence itself. This horror is pure shock not schlock and Lovecraftian in its intensity:
"A R-e-a-c-h-i-n-g L-o-n-g A-r-m-e-d
vet ape
feeling hard
for a breech birth.
"I gaze up at the night,
at the asterisk's blazing,
"till they straighten,
and like tiny spines,
fall to earth.
"I bite down on this,
as I dance
and I pray.
"She's hidden her babies away."
And yeah, that's all true... I can't really deny that, what I can do is set expectations, as I think I tried to outline in my rant. So when I ran Grim World, I told my players that Death was a strong possibility, and that I wanted to see a PC die because I wanted to see just how Grim World made PC death cool. And the PC death that occurred in Grim World was cool, didn't happen because of me even, when the players figured out the ritual to stop Chaugnar required a human sacrifice, the Templar volunteered and through his Death Move became an unstoppable murder machine bent on stopping Chaugnar at any cost, which though it made it hard for me to build a challenging encounter with the Templar basically getting a critical hit on every roll, it was awesome and tied into the "Be a fan of the players’ characters" principle.
Similarly, for Dread, I'll do my standard Dread spiel on part of the fun being giving into the tension, intensity and horror of the game and that death is an expected part of the second half of the game. So then, consider what follows a rehearsal of my Death Trap Dungeon speech that I'll give on Saturday.
