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?"
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