Dread Night Vale Secret Identities

Everyone in Night Vale has secrets. So I thought it was only fair to give my Dread players secrets of their own to match the setting. Just like any one character question, they could use these to try to avoid pulls. I also encouraged them to use these to obtain equipment in the early stage of the game. For example, it made sense for the member of the NRA wanted a rifle, s/he would have easy access to one (a single pull) rather than another character who might have to get around pesky things like a background check and a three-day waiting period (two pulls). Characters might even choose to reveal their secrets to their teammates, if doing so might advance the plot.

Background: Your secret identity is just something you don’t necessarily talk to about with strangers or casual acquaintances, for whatever reason. This is not something that you must keep secret - in fact, you will likely want to reveal your secret at one point or another, in order to gain a bonus in gameplay. If you wish, one or more of your team members can be aware of your “secret.”

Ex-CIA agent. You received a letter from a Night Vale resident, a former colleague who was burned for his theories about a “World Government.” Your colleague urged you to come here to help with his/her investigation of “the black helicopters.”

Member of the NRA. You attended the local chapter meeting the other day and were handed a bumper sticker that says, “Guns don’t kill people. It’s impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it’s a miracle.”

Scout. You are a proud son/daughter of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, on your mother’s side. Your grandfather taught you everything he knew about being a scout. There is apparently some white guy in Night Vale who calls himself “The Apache Tracker,” but who knows what that’s about.

Eagle Scout. You wanted to get involved with the local chapter of the Boy Scouts. They do things differently here in Night Vale… for one, signup is automatic and random; families receive a scarlet envelope informing them their sons have been selected.

Connected. When you left your mobster family to become a scientist, you never dreamed that you would run into your Uncle Rico again. He owns the only local pizza shop that hasn’t been burned down in an unsolved arson case…

Related. You are the third cousin twice removed of John Peters - you know, the farmer. He has no children, and is hoping you’ll move to Night Vale and take over the farm someday.

Ready-to-steal Dread characters (Night Vale)

My second Night Vale Dread game got cancelled - no one showed up just because a catastrophic snow storm was descending upon us. Freaking casuals. However! That's no reason not to share my revised character questionnaires with my adoring public. 

In Dread, the host (GM) creates a unique character questionnaire for each character. The answers players provide help dictate their role-playing choices and can sometimes be used to help them avoid pulls. For example, say you come across a locked door. A character might be asked to pull to try to pick the lock. But if you put in your backstory that you spent time in prison for B&E, you might not have to pull to get through. Creating questionnaires is more art than science... and I am still trying to perfect my form. For the purpose of the one-shot pickup games I run at my FLGS, I usually limit my questionnaires to 6-7 questions, whereas a typical Dread questionnaire is about a dozen questions long. I also added a twist with "Secret Identities," which tied the characters to the Night Vale community in some way. I'll include those in a separate post.

Oooh, mysterious! 

Background: You are members of a research team that has come to figure out just what is going on in Night Vale, the most scientifically interesting community in the United States. For example… seismic monitors indicate that catastrophic earthquakes are happening, but no one feels anything. An elderly woman named Josie claims that Angels visit her on a regular basis, and help out with household chores. The sun doesn’t set at the correct time, and indeed it seems that none of the clocks from Night Vale actually work. A few weeks ago, a strange glowing cloud appeared above the city, dropping dead animals of increasing size. Then it disappeared without a trace, and any digital recordings of it were also wiped clean. Then there’s Hiram McDaniels, a five-headed dragon, approximately 18 feet tall, with mostly green eyes, and weighing about 3600 pounds… he’s wanted by the Sheriff’s office, under suspicion of insurance fraud. And just the other day, all books stopped working - when you tried to read them, they started emitting sparks and, somehow, biting. These are just some of the mysteries you have come to Night Vale to investigate. But you all have your own secrets as well…

By the way, I modeled each of these after a famous scientist character. See if you can guess which one is which!

Another comic post - real original content coming soon...

(via Dorkly)

Bwahahahaha

(via Completely Serious Comics)

Dread: Welcome to Night Vale

Lately I've been obsessed with the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, and it occurred to me that it would make the perfect setting for Dread. I got to steal a lot of flavor text, in italics below, from the show itself (specifically the episode "Pyramid"). I also recommended that each player listen to a few episodes if they hadn't already, so they could get a general idea of the background and tone. I'm still working on getting the characters right for this game, but I'm planning to post those later.

The System: Dread is a role-playing game that uses Jenga® instead of dice. Pull from the tower and you succeed. Refuse to pull and you fail. The choice is yours. But if the tower falls, your character will be eliminated from the game!

The Setting: "Welcome to Night Vale is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events. Turn on your radio and hide." 

School Daze: BtVS (Characters)

You may think that we GMs pour over rule books to get a complete understanding of game mechanics, then turn to our computer screens and effortlessly produce a compelling interactive story line. What actually happens, at least for me, is that I discover a gaming system that sounds intriguing, check out the rules and some of the sample flavor text, then hit the internet to see if someone has done the hard work for me. It's usually only when I've seen a game in action that I commit the necessary resources to creating a game "from scratch."

That being said, this post is for all my fellow lazy GMs who want to run the BtVS School Daze game I posted previously, and just need the characters. I will say, though, that character creation in School Daze is incredibly easy - you just pick each student's Favorite Subject (+2 to related rolls) and three Ranks (+/-1 to related rolls). Then you add Relationships to NPCs - which is super easy when you're working off an established cannon like BtVS - and a Motivation. I actually left the Motivations blank, so my players could tell me what was on the forefront of their character's mind that week. These characters are set in the early seasons of BtVS, when they were actually in high school, but you can easily adapt them for later seasons as desired. 

One more note... because of my OCD desire for a balanced party, I made sure there were not repeats in Ranks. This is obviously not necessary and may actually not be completely true to the original characters. If verisimilitude is your thing, modify these as needed. Or let your players customize their characters by swapping out a Rank or two, if they can explain to you why a different Rank would be a better fit for their character. And no, "this would be more useful" is not a good explanation.

Ready-to-steal School Daze characters after the jump!

School Daze: BtVS

Hey, friends - here's my latest contribution to Wednesday Night RPGs at my FLGS. It's a game of School Daze set in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe. Some of this was borrowed from the BtVS RPG. Check out the bottom of the post for my Playtest Notes.

The System: School Daze is a role-playing game in a high school setting. High school is an exciting time. Everything in your life is in flux, and no matter what, nothing will be the same again. What better place to set a story? Each player takes on the role of a high school student, with all of their hopes, dreams, problems, and challenges. The Administrator facilitates the game using Group Projects as frameworks for the game sessions. School Daze is collaborative and functions best when the Students and the Administrator work together, developing the story and the world together.

The Setting: Buffy the Vampire Slayer follows Buffy Summers, the latest in a line of young women known as Vampire Slayers. Slayers are chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness. Like previous Slayers, Buffy is aided by a Watcher, who guides, teaches, and trains her. Unlike her predecessors, Buffy surrounds herself with a circle of loyal friends who become known as the "Scooby Gang".