Take A Chill Pill
Jun. 29th, 2009 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theronToday, I'm going to talk about one of my all-time favorite RPGs. One of those that, warts and all, I'll never part with, and I'll still break out and read fondly, thinking up ideas I'll probably never actually inflict on players, but might, if the stars align just right.
The game in question is Chill: Adventures Into The Unknown, from Pacesetter. Published in 1984, Chill was from the generation of RPGs that tried to resolve all actions using a single chart, the same design philosophy that gave us Marvel Super-Heroes, The James Bond 007 RPG, and Conan the Barbarian. Chill does it a little different, with the difference between a roll and the character's overall competence being indexed on the chart to determine the margin of success.
But the system isn't really the point here. What made Chill work and what still shines through after all these years is the emphasis the designers made on having fun with the game. Prior to Chill, I know there was a default assumption that people bought and played RPGs for fun, but Chill flat out told you it was an objective. As a matter of fact, Chill told you a lot of things, because it was one of the first games to have an in-character narrator explain the rules to the reader. In this case, it was a smart-assed raven with knowledge of the "Unknown." This little conceit added gobs of character to the game as well as more than a few turns of macabre humor.
But enough of that for now. Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I sat down with the rules and gave them a read-through. And while the system is certainly dated, it mostly holds up. Combat is a little wonky (lots of Side A does this, then Side B does this, then Side A does that and Side B does that stuff, and the rates of fire for bows is ridiculously slow), but the basics are awesome. Character creation takes just a few minutes, the skill system does what it's supposed to do, and the section on "The Art" gives some PCs a slight, but useful supernatural edge.
But the good stuff is the background. Chill posits the existence of "The Unknown." The Unknown may be another dimension, it may be a non-personified source of power, but whatever the specifics, it's the source of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. The PCs are members of SAVE, a loose organization of people who've encountered the Unknown and have decided to bump back. The thing is, these aren't professional monster hunters. They're academics or reporters or even fashion models. In other words, the sorts of folks who turn up in horror movies. The Unknown and SAVE just give them a reason to keep running into these things.
The core rules came with a nice little monster book, detailing ten fairly standard supernatural nasties and one remaining stroke of genius: The Evil Way. The Evil Was was a set of nifty supernatural powers you could provide a monster with to individualize them and allow them to torment the PCs, often from a distance. Want to do the classic "bounteous feast suddenly becomes a rotting mass of putrescence at a touch" trick? Just give your vampire overlord "Purified Shell" and having him cast it over the dinner table before the guests arrive. Granted, not every ability is suited to every critter, but there's enough to mix and match to keep investigators on their toes.
Incidentally, the Monsters were written so as to make them incredibly easy to run. This is not a GM-prep intensive game.
Chill spawned a host of supplements and adventures. The best of these was doubtlessly Things, a collection of supernatural critters covering a wide scope of folklore and myth (also a ton of new Evil Way powers). In fact, Chill might have been the first RPG to give us different flavors of vampires.
I never ran a Chill campaign, but I did run an annual Halloween game for my friends back in the day. Looking at it now, it still seems better suited to one-off adventures than an ongoing game, but I can't deny the attraction of running something so simple and so devoted to having a good time.
(Note: There was also a second edition of the game, published by Mayfair. It's what I refer to as the not-fun version of Chill. Whereas Pacesetter's game was rules light and devoted to fun, Mayfair's seemed to be more of the "RPGs: Serious Business" approach to the game and sucked much of the entertainment out of it in an effort to be a more generic horror investigation game. They did publish some nice sourcebooks, which can be robbed of ideas, though.)
The game in question is Chill: Adventures Into The Unknown, from Pacesetter. Published in 1984, Chill was from the generation of RPGs that tried to resolve all actions using a single chart, the same design philosophy that gave us Marvel Super-Heroes, The James Bond 007 RPG, and Conan the Barbarian. Chill does it a little different, with the difference between a roll and the character's overall competence being indexed on the chart to determine the margin of success.
But the system isn't really the point here. What made Chill work and what still shines through after all these years is the emphasis the designers made on having fun with the game. Prior to Chill, I know there was a default assumption that people bought and played RPGs for fun, but Chill flat out told you it was an objective. As a matter of fact, Chill told you a lot of things, because it was one of the first games to have an in-character narrator explain the rules to the reader. In this case, it was a smart-assed raven with knowledge of the "Unknown." This little conceit added gobs of character to the game as well as more than a few turns of macabre humor.
But enough of that for now. Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I sat down with the rules and gave them a read-through. And while the system is certainly dated, it mostly holds up. Combat is a little wonky (lots of Side A does this, then Side B does this, then Side A does that and Side B does that stuff, and the rates of fire for bows is ridiculously slow), but the basics are awesome. Character creation takes just a few minutes, the skill system does what it's supposed to do, and the section on "The Art" gives some PCs a slight, but useful supernatural edge.
But the good stuff is the background. Chill posits the existence of "The Unknown." The Unknown may be another dimension, it may be a non-personified source of power, but whatever the specifics, it's the source of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. The PCs are members of SAVE, a loose organization of people who've encountered the Unknown and have decided to bump back. The thing is, these aren't professional monster hunters. They're academics or reporters or even fashion models. In other words, the sorts of folks who turn up in horror movies. The Unknown and SAVE just give them a reason to keep running into these things.
The core rules came with a nice little monster book, detailing ten fairly standard supernatural nasties and one remaining stroke of genius: The Evil Way. The Evil Was was a set of nifty supernatural powers you could provide a monster with to individualize them and allow them to torment the PCs, often from a distance. Want to do the classic "bounteous feast suddenly becomes a rotting mass of putrescence at a touch" trick? Just give your vampire overlord "Purified Shell" and having him cast it over the dinner table before the guests arrive. Granted, not every ability is suited to every critter, but there's enough to mix and match to keep investigators on their toes.
Incidentally, the Monsters were written so as to make them incredibly easy to run. This is not a GM-prep intensive game.
Chill spawned a host of supplements and adventures. The best of these was doubtlessly Things, a collection of supernatural critters covering a wide scope of folklore and myth (also a ton of new Evil Way powers). In fact, Chill might have been the first RPG to give us different flavors of vampires.
I never ran a Chill campaign, but I did run an annual Halloween game for my friends back in the day. Looking at it now, it still seems better suited to one-off adventures than an ongoing game, but I can't deny the attraction of running something so simple and so devoted to having a good time.
(Note: There was also a second edition of the game, published by Mayfair. It's what I refer to as the not-fun version of Chill. Whereas Pacesetter's game was rules light and devoted to fun, Mayfair's seemed to be more of the "RPGs: Serious Business" approach to the game and sucked much of the entertainment out of it in an effort to be a more generic horror investigation game. They did publish some nice sourcebooks, which can be robbed of ideas, though.)
Re: Monstrousness
Date: 2009-06-30 05:32 am (UTC)Are you, by chance, up to running some one-shots...?
--TTTWLAM (aka J In Question)
PS: "Erie Birds" (one E) were my verification words. Boogity!
Boooooo...
Date: 2009-06-30 04:55 pm (UTC)One of my greatest moments as a gamemaster came during our first game of Chill, back in the eighties. We got really into it and were up most of the night to finish. At one point, one of the players gets up to go get a six pack out of his car.
He came back in a second later. He actually shook. "My car is LOOKING at me," he said, and laughed. "DARK out there. Someone wanna come with?"
I don't think I have ever felt as successful as a gm, before or since.
--Doc
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 06:16 pm (UTC)Angelo
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 06:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-01 03:20 am (UTC)--Doc
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-02 03:49 am (UTC)