WHAT THIS IS
This is a Nordic style larp based on the UK series 'Come Dine With Me'.
It's a comedy larp, meant for 4 goofy short sessions, intended to be played while drunk/drinking.
WHAT YOU NEED
pens
index cards
4 friends
A kitchen (optional)
Another room to eat in- preferably with a table, chairs, knives and forks. (optional)
Ingredients to cook a delicious dinner party meal (optional).
The objective of the game is to lose the game of 'Come Dine With Me' by being the worst host/dinner party guest.
The guests are trying to make the host seem like a great guy, and the host is trying to make himself look like satan incarnate.
RULES
1. If the conversation goes bad - or someone says something you find actually offensive, say the phrase "[real name here] - why not try that again". People playing these games can get carried away, and sometimes just a gentle nod can move the game back to where you want it to be.
2. Yes and, no but. Do not resist the fiction, if someone says something about your character unless it's disprovable untrue, go with it.
3. Similarly, if you do not know something about your character, and you are asked it, make it up!
4. None of your characters are criminals or have done anything illegal. Or at least, they won't admit it on TV. They can really look like a murderer, or have a suspiciously large amount of counterfeit cigarette boxes, or make regular trips to the door to swap packages for money with the various people from the neighborhood, but they cannot admit to a crime on the show.
5. To ensure proper engagement, the producers of the show have asked all the guests to roll on this chart 3 times. If they do not know the answers to the questions, for each guest by the end of the show, they are disqualified.
1. If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would you get?
2. If you were an animal, what would you be and why?
3. What is one goal you’d like to accomplish during your lifetime?
4. When you were little, who was your favorite super hero and why?
5. Who is your hero? (a parent, a celebrity, an influential person in one’s life)
6. What’s your favorite thing to do in the summer?
7. If they made a movie of your life, what would it be about and which actor would you want to play you?
8. If you were an ice cream flavor, which one would you be and why?
9. What’s your favorite cartoon character, and why?
10. If you could visit any place in the world, where would you choose to go and why
11. What’s the ideal dream job for you?
12. Are you a morning or night person?
13. What are your favorite hobbies?
14. What are your pet peeves or interesting things about you that you dislike?
15. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?
16. Name one of your favorite things about someone in your family.
17. Tell us about a unique or quirky habit of yours.
18. If you had to describe yourself using three words, it would be…
19. If someone made a movie of your life would it be a drama, a comedy, a romantic-comedy, action film, or science fiction?
20. If I could be anybody besides myself, I would be…
STEP 1 CHARACTER CREATION:
Everyone gets together and writes the worst traits of a dinner party guest on index cards. Make it a sentence. For instance "Always wants to talk about the novel they are writing "
"Seems to be completely illiterate - but gets irate if anyone brings it up "
"Can't take any kind of criticism without breaking down into hysterical fits of tears"
"Creepy obsessed with John Wilks Booth"
Write about 40 odd cards, between the four of you. Talk about some, but keep some as a surprise. Then turn them to face down.
You pick up 4 cards randomly. If you hate your hand, throw it away and pick up more. It doesn't really matter. So long as you end up with 4 cards it's fine.
You then describe your appearance, any other details you wish to elaborate on.
Throughout this process, ensure your character is completely different from you!
If you are a man, be a woman. If you are gay, you are now straight. If you are fat, you are now thin. If you are loud and boisterous, you are now boring and timid. This is important, because if the character is you, then you are just going to spend the evening getting trashed, and that's no fun.
You must stick to the intent of the cards.
Decide who will go first to host.
The host then gets to decide what hilarious costumes they want everyone to come dressed in.
STEP 2: BEFORE THE FOOD
The game starts when the first guest arrives.
Hopefully in the kind of hilarious and thoroughly appropriate outfit that one would naturally want to meet a group of strangers in.
Once all the guests arrive, the host can start cooking.
Player Tip: make sure you use this time to trash the menu, the other party goers and the decor of the room you are in.
Player Tip: make sure you get inappropriately drunk before the food is served.
The 'Come Dine With Me' crew must approve of the menu before you start cooking and after you have finished, ensuring you have not poisoned anyone and that you stick to dietary requirements. Other than that, the food can be as bad as you want. Just
keep in mind, you and your friends will have to probably eat it in real life.
STEP 3: DINNER!
You eat dinner. The guests ask each other questions, and give answers, just like strangers who are having a dinner party. Except everyone is furiously writing notes and asking questions, all while pretending to be bastards, and pretending that each other are saints.
Frame the Scene!
The host gets to decide what their living room and kitchen look like. What visible props are lying around, what is the decor, how does it smell. Use that power and be vivid.
"When we were looking around your house, we found this thing"!
Everyone gets one thing they can show the host, that they 'found lying around the house' which immediately becomes true.
They might find your Nobel peace prize. Or your litter of cute puppies. Or that check you wrote out to 'The needy'. It's your job to quickly explain why you are still a bastard.
Cutaway!
If a player points to another player, makes a square with their finger around the players face, and says aloud "CUTAWAY!" then they are calling for a cutaway interview.
A player may also nominate themselves for a cutaway, by pointing at their own face and saying "CUTAWAY" but the rest of the group must majority consent for this to happen by saying 'Yes'
The nominated character must monologue what they are thinking and feeling as if filmed in a cutaway interview while holding their fingers in a square gesture over their face. Use this opportunity to hammer home some home truths, the kind of thing which you wouldn't say to someone's face.
The Entertainment.
At the end of every night, its time for the host to do his entertainment. Do you have no idea how to play the saxophone? then maybe enthrall your guests with a quick improvised melody.
STEP 4: THE VOTE!
It is an open vote, and other players can contest. They can say for instance "HEY I had a great time at your meal dick head, the food was fucking divine, and the conversation was fucking enthralling. I was the fucking shit one mate, i said all that weird inappropriate stuff about this guys mom! "
At the end, everyone gives everyone who isnt them a number from one to ten. The person with the least votes wins, and gets the victory moment of standing up and having a hissy fit over not winning a thousand pounds.
Tuesday 30 January 2018
A Game Baised on Junji Ito Books
I just spent this afternoon messing about with an idea for an Unumaki game which tried to simulate the falling apart of a small town. This is like the first draft or somthing. I litearlly did this in like a day, so feel free to take it apart, or steal parts of it for your own thing if you see anything worthwhile.
It would be cool to get a credit, but I honestly dont care. Its just a quick and dirty idea. Ideas are cheap.
Play this just once.
What you need:
You and up to four other friends.
One plays as the GM.
What it is:
It is a narrative game. The focus is telling a spooky story with some friends. This means that part of the play is matching the narrative to the rules.
The point of the game is to find out if 5 friends can use rules and improvisation to generate a Junji Ito style cosmic horror
which is actually scary and unsettling, without any prep.
I got inspired to do this by reading a whole bunch of Ito books, but also when I was a kid we used to go up Bruton Park, and try and shit each other up, talking about ghosts and sanity, playing with the form of the conversation to imply one of us belived it too much.
PreGens
The Obsessive Child
- You see patterns, inside patterns, and you can just glimpse the truth. Why is it that others seem to look at you like your insane when you try and explain it to them?
The Slum Child - You live in the old rowhouse, in squalor and filth. The houses are pressed
together and the walls are paper thin. Maybe that's why you strike out at others?
The Beautiful Child - You have always been attractive, popular and wealthy; most of the lesser then thous will bend over backward to do your bidding. what could ever go wrong?
The Slow Child - You have always struggled with social interactions, and the bullies constantly
mock you because of it. When will somebody finally stand up to those creeps?
The Cursed Child - A lot of people call you 'creepy' but you just have a sense of humor. Why does nobody else get the gag?
Stages of the town's collapse
1. The Smoke Gathering
- A single traumatic event occurs.
- A grim omen of things to come ominously hovers over the town.
2. The Mysterious Deaths
-Deaths occur all around the small town.
-Most are focused on our principle protagonists
-Wierd commonalities between the circumstances of the deaths.
3. The Plague
- The rowhouses are hit hardest, with bodies turning up every week.
- The richer families attempt to block off the rowhouses, fearing to tread there.
- Attempts to escape the town seem to be futile
4. The Swarms
- Something mundane, and every day, which surrounds us, suddenly turns against us.
- Many prefer to stay indoors
- Those who go out, or who are forced out have to adapt to the new conditions, changing clothing, means of transport and
housing.
5. The Changes
- Some fundamental rules of nature are becoming uprooted.
- Buildings are destroyed and social structures unravel.
- The survivors adapt again to the new conditions, struggling to eek out an existence in the new conditions.
- The fallen now start to take their place.
6. The Transformation
- Most who were once fighting, are now subsumed, changed beyond recognition, or dead.
- The last survivors either struggle against complete dread and horror, go insane, or kill themselves.
7. The Unraveling
- Now we can see the town's true form, and what it always was.
PLAYING AS A PLAYER
You describe what you are doing. If it sounds like you are performing a move, roll to determine how well you do.
In this game, you can modify a roll with :
1. Your emotional state
2. The stuff you have
3. The people you love
If you can bring to bare either one or more of these things to the problem at hand, you add to the chance of doing well.
Every time you bring a stat into a contest, however, you risk losing something in return.
1. Your Emotional State.
Think of this as your character wrestling between hope and despair.
When you make a roll, the GM will ask you how your character is feeling about the situation. If your characters emotions
chime with any of these following emotional states, you add the characters respective modifier to the roll.
If you are successful on the roll, it represents the character overcoming some emotional hurdle and pushing forward. You
must cross off one point from the emotional state - the lowest being 0.
If you Fail a roll, you have not overcome your fears. You must add the emotional state value to your characters despair.
On top of that, the emotional state value increases by one.
If you fail, you get better at succeeding in the future, but the results of future failure increase.
Sucess is its own reward, but you also the results of future failure also drops.
Unless expressly told, all emotional states start at 1. Each act, they increase by 1.
Horror: The creeping feeling of dread surrounding you.
Anxiety: The fear of social rejection, personal failure, humiliation and isolation.
Anger: The hatred you feel for what has happened, and the unfairness of life.
Turmoil: The disorientation you feel when you fail to understand this new reality.
Dispair: Dispair represents how close you are to giving up. It cant be used on rolls. If Dispair reaches max, you lose.
2. The Stuff you have
If a piece of Stuff is relevant to a particular move, it increases your chances of success by at least 1, possibly more.
A Character can only hold a few bits of Stuff, so you should ensure you take the relevant Stuff when you go. (take a flashlight to a dark environment, a gun to a dangerous environment, etc etc.)
3. The People you love
As you play, you will define other characters which have relationships with you. Their expertise or skill or even just
their physical presence or calming influence can help you succeed on a roll.
When you create a new NPC, you must come up with a name for them, and a career. You may also add up to two hobbies or interests
they have. (Professor Ito, my teacher at the college, his hobby is collecting flies and bugs, I am sure he can help us!). These
hobbies and interests must fit the setting, or be explained.
Once an NPC is created, you must roll for a relationship value. (+1 - +6). A created NPC is now GM fiat and can be used in the
story in any capacity.
If a person you have a relationship with is in the scene or can be brought into a scene, they can increase your chances of success by + their relationship value.
Failing a roll with a person you have with you will cause your relationship to degrade by 1.
PLAY
The game has 7 acts.
Each act is comprised of 3 short scenes for each character playing.
These scenes should be a hook, an investigation and a reveal of whatever mystery is being looked into.
If the scenes take longer then ten minutes, you are being too slow.
2. Your second job is oppression.
Generating Threats
The ecological fear in this game is being swallowed, becoming a part of something greater than you. something terrifying and unnatural.
The town is becoming something different, the people within it are being consumed to serve a greater whole or unity.
Mysteries.
A mystery is a simple statement, a sentence, which if true, has wider implications. What those wider implications are is unknown to the GM at the start of the game.
The way this works is each mystery which isn't resolved, or which doesn't kind of naturally fall off, is doubled down on, and escalated.
Naturally, the mysteries begin to draw together, as the Players begin to fixate on details.
We are playing with Shuichi who is playing the Obsessive Child, Azami who is playing the Beautiful Child and Katayama who is playing the Slow Child
Act 1. The Gathering Smoke.
Scene 1. Shuichi's Dad.
The GM frames a scene with the three children walking home from school.
While walking the three discover Shuichi's Dad counting the paving stones outside his house. The characters interact with the man, and the scene is unsettling.
The GM asks "Hey, Shuichi, have you noticed anything else weird about your dad recently?"
After Shuichi goes into the house, we carry on following Azami and Katayama.
At a quiet moment, the GM prompts, by asking "hey, Azami, Are you angry that Katayama hasn't been keeping up with the homework he usually does for you?"
It would be cool to get a credit, but I honestly dont care. Its just a quick and dirty idea. Ideas are cheap.
Play this just once.
What you need:
You and up to four other friends.
One plays as the GM.
What it is:
It is a narrative game. The focus is telling a spooky story with some friends. This means that part of the play is matching the narrative to the rules.
The point of the game is to find out if 5 friends can use rules and improvisation to generate a Junji Ito style cosmic horror
which is actually scary and unsettling, without any prep.
I got inspired to do this by reading a whole bunch of Ito books, but also when I was a kid we used to go up Bruton Park, and try and shit each other up, talking about ghosts and sanity, playing with the form of the conversation to imply one of us belived it too much.
PreGens
The Obsessive Child
- You see patterns, inside patterns, and you can just glimpse the truth. Why is it that others seem to look at you like your insane when you try and explain it to them?
The Slum Child - You live in the old rowhouse, in squalor and filth. The houses are pressed
together and the walls are paper thin. Maybe that's why you strike out at others?
The Beautiful Child - You have always been attractive, popular and wealthy; most of the lesser then thous will bend over backward to do your bidding. what could ever go wrong?
The Slow Child - You have always struggled with social interactions, and the bullies constantly
mock you because of it. When will somebody finally stand up to those creeps?
The Cursed Child - A lot of people call you 'creepy' but you just have a sense of humor. Why does nobody else get the gag?
Stages of the town's collapse
1. The Smoke Gathering
- A single traumatic event occurs.
- A grim omen of things to come ominously hovers over the town.
2. The Mysterious Deaths
-Deaths occur all around the small town.
-Most are focused on our principle protagonists
-Wierd commonalities between the circumstances of the deaths.
3. The Plague
- The rowhouses are hit hardest, with bodies turning up every week.
- The richer families attempt to block off the rowhouses, fearing to tread there.
- Attempts to escape the town seem to be futile
4. The Swarms
- Something mundane, and every day, which surrounds us, suddenly turns against us.
- Many prefer to stay indoors
- Those who go out, or who are forced out have to adapt to the new conditions, changing clothing, means of transport and
housing.
5. The Changes
- Some fundamental rules of nature are becoming uprooted.
- Buildings are destroyed and social structures unravel.
- The survivors adapt again to the new conditions, struggling to eek out an existence in the new conditions.
- The fallen now start to take their place.
6. The Transformation
- Most who were once fighting, are now subsumed, changed beyond recognition, or dead.
- The last survivors either struggle against complete dread and horror, go insane, or kill themselves.
7. The Unraveling
- Now we can see the town's true form, and what it always was.
PLAYING AS A PLAYER
You describe what you are doing. If it sounds like you are performing a move, roll to determine how well you do.
In this game, you can modify a roll with :
1. Your emotional state
2. The stuff you have
3. The people you love
If you can bring to bare either one or more of these things to the problem at hand, you add to the chance of doing well.
Every time you bring a stat into a contest, however, you risk losing something in return.
1. Your Emotional State.
Think of this as your character wrestling between hope and despair.
When you make a roll, the GM will ask you how your character is feeling about the situation. If your characters emotions
chime with any of these following emotional states, you add the characters respective modifier to the roll.
If you are successful on the roll, it represents the character overcoming some emotional hurdle and pushing forward. You
must cross off one point from the emotional state - the lowest being 0.
If you Fail a roll, you have not overcome your fears. You must add the emotional state value to your characters despair.
On top of that, the emotional state value increases by one.
If you fail, you get better at succeeding in the future, but the results of future failure increase.
Sucess is its own reward, but you also the results of future failure also drops.
Unless expressly told, all emotional states start at 1. Each act, they increase by 1.
Horror: The creeping feeling of dread surrounding you.
Anxiety: The fear of social rejection, personal failure, humiliation and isolation.
Anger: The hatred you feel for what has happened, and the unfairness of life.
Turmoil: The disorientation you feel when you fail to understand this new reality.
Dispair: Dispair represents how close you are to giving up. It cant be used on rolls. If Dispair reaches max, you lose.
2. The Stuff you have
If a piece of Stuff is relevant to a particular move, it increases your chances of success by at least 1, possibly more.
A Character can only hold a few bits of Stuff, so you should ensure you take the relevant Stuff when you go. (take a flashlight to a dark environment, a gun to a dangerous environment, etc etc.)
3. The People you love
As you play, you will define other characters which have relationships with you. Their expertise or skill or even just
their physical presence or calming influence can help you succeed on a roll.
When you create a new NPC, you must come up with a name for them, and a career. You may also add up to two hobbies or interests
they have. (Professor Ito, my teacher at the college, his hobby is collecting flies and bugs, I am sure he can help us!). These
hobbies and interests must fit the setting, or be explained.
Once an NPC is created, you must roll for a relationship value. (+1 - +6). A created NPC is now GM fiat and can be used in the
story in any capacity.
If a person you have a relationship with is in the scene or can be brought into a scene, they can increase your chances of success by + their relationship value.
Failing a roll with a person you have with you will cause your relationship to degrade by 1.
PLAY
The game has 7 acts.
Each act is comprised of 3 short scenes for each character playing.
These scenes should be a hook, an investigation and a reveal of whatever mystery is being looked into.
If the scenes take longer then ten minutes, you are being too slow.
2. Your second job is oppression.
Generating Threats
The ecological fear in this game is being swallowed, becoming a part of something greater than you. something terrifying and unnatural.
The town is becoming something different, the people within it are being consumed to serve a greater whole or unity.
Mysteries.
A mystery is a simple statement, a sentence, which if true, has wider implications. What those wider implications are is unknown to the GM at the start of the game.
The way this works is each mystery which isn't resolved, or which doesn't kind of naturally fall off, is doubled down on, and escalated.
Naturally, the mysteries begin to draw together, as the Players begin to fixate on details.
We are playing with Shuichi who is playing the Obsessive Child, Azami who is playing the Beautiful Child and Katayama who is playing the Slow Child
Act 1. The Gathering Smoke.
Scene 1. Shuichi's Dad.
The GM frames a scene with the three children walking home from school.
While walking the three discover Shuichi's Dad counting the paving stones outside his house. The characters interact with the man, and the scene is unsettling.
The GM asks "Hey, Shuichi, have you noticed anything else weird about your dad recently?"
After Shuichi goes into the house, we carry on following Azami and Katayama.
At a quiet moment, the GM prompts, by asking "hey, Azami, Are you angry that Katayama hasn't been keeping up with the homework he usually does for you?"
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