Sounds like a solid start.

Cool, but don't make the other girls fall asleep at the start, just make them NPCs or something, as to be cannon fodder if necessary.

Also why all girls?

More ideas: Perhaps the other students do not lose wakefulness normally and fall asleep like players. Such a thing would require horrible book keeping. Instead, a random student falls asleep every hour. This would give the players the nice snug time frame of about a full day to complete their objective.

>>13768421
It can be changed to a coed bording school, I suppose. The idea comes from a nightmare I personally had that was, for some reason, incredibly intense.

What is the source of the darkness?

If i start at 90%, 1% loss every 10 minutes gives me 15 hours, so it's not like some epic quest. The answer will be found in the school, right?

Have it that fighting wakefulness overtime causes irritability or even altered perception like hallucinations, to represent sleep depravity or negative effects of inducing such amounts of sleep preventative drugs/substances.

Eventually insanity starts kicking in and seeing things that aren't there or didn't happen.


Also at drinking 100 cups of coffee, assuming the student can find as many and make/survive it that far, they can stop time and everything is illuminated with a golden glow for a number of turns.

>Also why all girls?

I'd say tone. Running a 'don't ever fall asleep. It'll get you if you fall asleep' game would be a lot different if you're playing as a team of guzzled special forces operators. Being little girls in a horror game gives you a general feeling of helplessness, or at least a lack of the usually PC gung-ho 'I put the darkness in a choke hold and punch it in the face until it submits' attitude.

Also, this is a very interesting idea and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Sounds pretty cool- but what's the teacher's capacity in this and what is the source of the darkness/slumber?
What happens to the sleeping classmates?

You get a gold star, an internet and TWO cookies. I like this idea a great deal. Do go on though.

Why an all girls boarding school?

This is a very cool game concept. Reminds me of something from this:

http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-series

I always wanted to run a campaign set in a world where the PCs are agents of the SCP foundation and the different SCPs would be BBEGs, equipment, allies, places to investigate, etc.

>guzzled special forces operators

The manliest thing I've ever read. Mt. Dew? Bitch that's for pussies I drink US Army Rangers!

>>13768468

Never said it should be the A-Team. A school is fine, just not all girls.

>>13768493

Shortest-lived characters in any game ever.

>What is the source of the darkness?

It's determined by the DM, but here's a few suggestions:

>Demonic incursion
Evil demons have opened a portal to Hell below the school, throwing it into the dark drearyness of Limbo. Perhaps the demons seek the virgin souls of the girls (or boys) or perhaps it's for a lark. Or maybe this is the start of a grand incursion. Either way, once this is discovered, the players must find a way to close the gate, either by bargaining with the monsters, or by performing some sort of ritual.

>Magical mayhap
The school was in fact a cover for a coven of witches, who put the school under so they may collect spiritual power from the young women or men. The students must find and defeat the coven, or bargain with it.

>Ancient evil
Some old, ancient entity is draining the energy from the students to awaken itself from beneath the school. The players must seal it away again with an old ritual.

Hm. Perhaps those who are dreaming can effect the real world? Astral projections for a start moving onto gross hallucinations then reality crumbling stuff; opening a door to a classroom only to find it drop off into a black abyss.

This could be an awesome one-shot. But how would the players combat the darkness? Do they have to solve a puzzle? Are there monsters to worry about?

>>13768508

Or the school secretary forgot to pay the power bills that month. And the lazy shit janitor is in the basement reclining by the boiler, reading a porno mag, unaware that the lights all went out.

>What's the teacher's capacity in this?

THe Teacher is the DM's PC, and due to his or her adult discipline or some other reason, does not lose Wakefulness unless frightened or under some sort of effect. The Teacher has a flashlight, keys to certain areas, is physichally stronger than the players, and somewhat smarter. Not to mention they know the school's layout a good deal better than the players.

THe loss of the Teacher should be a severe and frightening thing, like the loss of the only adult in a crisis situation to a bunch of children SHOULD be.

>>13768504

Yeah. The look on their faces when they blink and are ripped apart.

>Are there monsters to worry about?

Due to the youth of this idea, combat and monsters are but glimmers in my eye right now... But I imagine it would not be out of the question. However, if you've ever played CLock Tower, the feeling should be close to that. Monsters are meant to be fled, not fought, and at best, athletic students would be able to stall them, not defeat them, at great personal cost (Because fighting is tiring, yes?) to save the others in the group.

Actually, subjecting the players to more and more of the effects of sleep deprivation as time goes on could be pretty interesting.

The longer the girls resist sleep more their attention span and reaction time drop. Later, short term memory begins to be impaired and complex problems become harder to overcome as skill use becomes impaired. Towards the end the auditory and visual hallucinations are starting to become more real than the rest of the world. This would certainly make dealing with the darkness a lot harder when your exhausted mind and body are constantly trying to betray you.

>guzzled special forces operators
"Dammit spellcheck, this is the last straw! I want your badge and your gun. Your on desk duty until you get your head back in the game."

>>13768533
I think this one could actually be epic.

>secret ending
>everyone who falls asleep is actually waking up.
>something happened, like a cliched gas-leak or COO overload.
>the ones who "fell asleep immediately" were the ones that got outside, everyone else is in a hospital under treatment.
>the Teacher is dead or past saving normally, and is inadvertently leading the spirits of the all the students towards the afterlife.

>>13768553

I was going to ask how the children PC's would actually be able to do much of anything when there is a fully capable adult with them that is smarter/stronger/etc than them.... but then you mentioned losing the teacher. I think losing the teacher to something would be pretty much required at some point... not too early as you want the PC's to feel somewhat dependent on the adult.. but not too late as you want the children PC's to gain responsibility for their actions for most of the game.

This sounds like a very interesting idea OP. I'll be monitoring this thread for any other ideas.

>>13768595

Holy fuck.

>>13768579
Certainly an interesting idea, though I would leave this up to the DM, and not put in an actual mechanic for Sanity.

Hallucinations and insanity effects could, however cause random status changes: such as fear, or intense Mania (which would actually, for a short bit, give you -more- wakefulness!) and other effects.

I didn't have high hopes for this thread, but I was wrong. OP, I like the cut of your jib.

At a random interval, the lights come back on in the school. Students still cannot see out of the windows, and anybody who walks out of the front door will simply vanish into the darkness.

>>13768595

>>13768697

The lights will stay on for D20 minutes, after which they will shut down permanently. If the players return to the classroom to check on the sleeping students, they will find that they are gone.

Have monsters actually be rescue workers.

They wander the halls looking for students, dressed strange looking, and carrying lights.

When they catch a student, they are actually taking them outside to safety.

The students don't know this though, and to them, perhaps if you use a gas leak or something for the cause, apart from everything appearing dark and scary, the rescue workers seem like monsters, dragging students to their deaths.

In the long run, avoiding escape altogether because they think they're "solving a mystery" just means more time in the hazard zone, and eventually falling asleep is just succumbing to the hazardous chemicals/vapors.

>>13768508
depending on what genre you think this game fits into it could easily be other things.

>someone is performing experiments on the pupils at school , if its a special academy, ala the one River goes to in Firefly for gifted students then even better.
Various explanations, drug tests , secret implants, testing of various hypnosis techniques.

> make the work allegorical. the school and its pupils stand for something and the 'darkness' is some event happening in an external world.
School could be a computer and the darkness could be a shutdown, virus or power loss. i can imagine an angry techie cursing at the computer as it takes ages to reboot, as certain subsystems [you] are fighting the shutdown overides.
Some silly ideas, but you can use other things than evil demons and magic.

>The Crunch

I would really like to keep this as simple as possible. The main part of the play should be from the interactions between the players and their problems.

Character gen should be simple: Roll your wakefullnes, roll your stats (1d6 each) and then play.

There are three stats, represented as the student's grades:

English (Like diplomacy. How good is your vocabulary, your ability to understand books, your memory and comprehension?)

Math (Simple intellect. How good are you with spatial relationships and numbers?)

Science (Complicated intellect. Specific knowledges like formulae for chemicals, and the like.)

Art (How imaginative are you? How well do you understand your environment and how good are you at spotting things people miss?)

PE (How strong are you? How fast can you run? How sturdy are you?)

The roll on the d6 determines your grades. 1 is an F, which represents a -2 on related rolls, while a 6 is an A, which represents a +2 on all related rolls. Success is based on a d6: 4 or higher is a success, 3 or lower, a failure.

However, rely on these as little as possible. Try to maintain a roleplaying over rolling standpoint, and have as many objectives be completed as possible (Find out how the other classes are doing, find more flashlights, get coffee, etc) without rolling.

Maintain the atmosphere at all costs! without it, the game is going to quickly lose appeal.

>>13768508
>Perhaps the demons seek the virgin souls
"NOW I HAVE YOU, VIRGIN CHILD OF MAN. YOU WILL BE WHAT TIES ME TO THIS WORLD TO UNLE--wait you're not a virgin. Nevermind carry on."

>Three
Hurrr. I meant five.

>>13768753

Actually I like the idea of expanding it to a setting sort of.

Each adventure takes place in the school, and the Darkness event that OP described, is just one thing that can happen.

School Horror, I'm liking it.

>>13768785

One setting, the government forces the students to kill each other or be killed, the whole event being televised for the amusement of the masses.

If you want to turn it into real horror or suspense, monster fighting is a big no-no. Any monster revealed is a monster taken down a peg on the scaryness meter. As soon as it is revealed, a player can relate, if only a teeny-tiny bit and when that happens it goes from being unknown eldritch horror to VIasdnia'asdk, the Void-Born that on the weekends to grocery shopping and subscribe to Evil Inside.

I suggest directly confronting a monster leads to instant sleep or disappearance of the character unless the encounter is some sort of final boss. What the monsters actually are, be it rescue worker or bona fide nightmare fuel isn't as important. Let the player's imagination fix that one.

>>13768808
I see what you did there.

I certainly would agree that the Darkness need not be the only possible event in the school. It wouldn't be hard to take the grade system to other ideas and settings.

>>13768823
The Darkness is mainly indeed used to hide the Horrors (A catch-all term for anything that might hinder the students actively). I agree that Horrors should indeed be kept secret for as long as possible, and that confrontation has incredible risks.

Say what you will about this board, but /tg/ gets things done.

Rape; the Rapening

>>13768508
>Ancient evil
>Some old, ancient entity is draining the energy from the students to awaken itself from beneath the school. The players must seal it away again with an old ritual.

CTHULHU! CTHULHU! CTHULHU FTHAGN!

Sleeping individuals that are left along for too long in the dark vanish. As time progresses, the same starts to apply to entire rooms and sections of the school.

Hallucinations (whether visual or auditory) should be minor and sever as a general indicator of the degree fatigue in the players mind. Major Hallucinations (voices that carry on detailed conversions or people / places / things that one specific people can see) should be used as clues to advance the plot.

Group halucinations might slowly rewrite parts of the school that have been eliminated by the spreading darkness.

If the GM is feeling LIKE A VERY VERY HORRIBLE PERSON, staying too long in the dark might get you eaten by a grue.

Holy shit, this sounds cool.
I even like the idea of having the Teacher as a DMPC for a while, if only for the players to lose them at some point and be stranded in the darkness.

Nice concept, OP.

>>13768826

That's cool. Rather than have expansions or whatever, each grade in the school represents different types of adventures that can be played.

Like early school would be horror like you described, middle school would be strange events and magic/sci-fi happenings and investigations, and high school could be social and political problems.

Like moving up in each grade represents the kind of things that can happen.


Or something like that.

>>13768875
I meant more that using a student's grades as a weird stat system (Ha, if I could, I'd suggest using old high school grade sheets as the character sheets), but that makes sense, too.

Setting suggestion: scenario is generated from collective psychic emanations from the students, who are in fact locked in trance. people who fall asleep are those who are either lost in the "hive mind" or waking up, have your pick. Monsters can be collective fears or someone trying to wake them up.

Sounds a bit like that which has already been suggested, but always good to have a little extra fluff to pick from

>>13768864
Parts of the school simply being eaten by the Darkness is not a bad idea.

Be careful, however, with destroying the students. They represent the character's main goal, and thier 'extra lives'. Using it to heighten tension and make the shit truly hit the fan is an excellent idea...

But keep in mind it will make the game viciously short.

>>13768895
Grades as a stat system is highly original and sufficiently awesome.

Thread archived for great justice.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/13768398/

>>13768932
I am awed.

Most of these inspirations of mine don't last long and it's like riding a tsunami of awesome for a few hours. With it archived, I can carefully craft this into an actual system.

Awesome.

Thanks OP this is cool.

I've never DM'd in my life, but this makes me want to consider doing it now, and if I did, this is what I would do.

It's a really cool concept and really approachable with the easy character making and play style.

>>13768920
Didn't persona 3/4 use these for the social aspect of the game?

The "rescue workers" have torches - convince the PCs that light is bad, have them scuttle off into the darkness as the light approaches. not only do you get atmospheric bits as the light gets closer and closer, but you also end up with the pcs trying to get away from anywhere where they can see

>>13768977

Maybe? Can't remember. It is still pretty original. Reminds me of how in Bully going to class can give you upgrades.

>>13768917
The dark might not outright destroy you, but becoming lost lost or otherwise misplaced if they not constantly perceived in another matter entirety.

>No, seriously, she was just right here! I only turned my back for a second!

Don't turn around, don't blink, don't let go of her hand. Otherwise they might end up somewhere else, and people that become separated might have a very hard time finding their way back to each other as the layout of the school becomes increasing murky and difficult to perceive.

This is going to be great, get my friends together, just tell them were going to be playing a school based game, roll up schoolgirls. They'll all grumble about how this is dumb and how no half elf barbarians, but do it anyway. Let them role play home room or something, give NPC chatter about some boy asked her out and like my parents fought again and how if you want to go to that new dessert place after school.

Then I get one of the PCs or just say an NPC by the window notices something and interrupts the teacher to join her by the window.

I describe how, the sun is going out, like an eclipse, but instead of another disc moving across the sun, the sun looks like its shrinking, the disc is just getting smaller and dimmer, its daylight, then the sky darkens like its setting, but everyone sees that it is just, evaporating. As soon as it completely disappears, the lights switch off with an authoritative THUMP, like the power has been cut, rather than just turned off.

You hear some students scream in the pitch darkness as the teacher yells for everyone to be calm. After what seems like forever, though probably only minutes, some emergency power returns, not a shift, just a slow glow rising until you can barely see around you.

Several of your classmates are asleep, and on seeing this, a few more girls scream. The teacher tries her best to calm everyone down, but you can see now that even she has grown gravely concerned. You look around for your friends and see they are all awake, looking around as if somehow, the source of everything might be simply explained away.

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice one of the ancient Apple 2 machines that has been collecting dust for as long as you've been to this school is mysteriously on. Its screen is black save for a blinking cursor in the top left.

Slowly the letters click across the screen, your eyes widen and your heart sinks as the message settles in your mind.

YOU WILL NEVER SEE THE LIGHT AGAIN

>>13768957
Make this.
Make this system, OP. Do not let it die.
Now shut up and take my money.

>>13769003
Oh man I am loving this. Yes! Definitley. While splitting the party may be hell for a DM, with good players, it's an excellent chance to instill more and more fear as the idea of 'What happened to Suzie?' is answered by your imagination.

>>13769010

Oh god, what have I unleashed.

>>13769010

We could fill up a whole thread with things that could be seen to pop up on computer screens, or on walls or doors to be briefly seen as lights flicker.

>ONE GIRL TWO GIRL, RED GIRL DEAD GIRL

I came

I suggest not explaining anything for the players at he start. This includes the "Wakefullness" stat. Have them explore everything by themselves, adding new things to their character sheets as they progress.

It might add some stress on the DM, as you have to keep watch on some of the hidden stats.

>>13769074

I never liked passing secret notes to players as a GM, but if everybody is a school girl, then everybody is going to have a cell phone. Have players split up and use text messages for communication. Make the players write notes to each other, except as DM I will intercept them and rewrite them as the dementia sets in

I know you're already starting on the crunch and everything, but this seems like a perfect game to run in Dread

It's amazingly simple, gives a level of intensity that few systems can compare too, and if someone knocks the tower over, they can just switch to another student.

>>13769114
But make sure they don't know you're rewriting them. Oh god, you are a terrible person. A genius, but a terrible, terrible person.

This is so much win. OP we must work on this system. Together /tg/ can do wonderful things.

This calls for a reminder of just how to do horror:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12130366/

>>13769092

This was my thinking, let them figure out they're playing a survival nightmare game on their own, if students represent extra lives, let them try and fight a monster, and simply disappear. If they players are truly faced with unknowning, then no metagame and real horror.

>>13768982
>Ooo! I like this!

The darkness is bad. Bad things can hide in the dark. The dark is the unknown, and the unknown can be full of hungry, grabbing things. Things with long hands and sharp teeth and don't mean well to anyone, least of all little ole you.

But the dark can also be safe. Just because bad things can hide in the dark doesn't mean that you can't too. Hiding is the best thing you can do, especially when something is looking for you.

The last thing you want to do is run out into the light, because then everything.

EVERYTHING.

Should be as close to an official grades document as possible. The closer to the real deal, the better. Remember, the atmosphere is KING, second only to rp.

There is no HP, only Wakefulness. Physical injury should be played out in RP, but can affect PE rolls should you so choose.

The ingame time should run fifteen to 24 hours. Announce when and how you will run time passing in real life: Will you use an egg timer? A certain number of actions? some sort of dilation of realtime? It's not reccomended to play the game in real time at all. Doing so ruins some of the atmosphere and cohesion of the game.

The Teacher should be treated as a straight A student with a large inventory of useful items. Remind your players that even in this crisis, the teacher is in charge of the well-being of thier students, so have them leave the room only with skillful persuasion.

THe school itself should have a map you draw up beforehand. Only take one from a nearby school if, and I really mean this, NO ONE WENT THERE in the group. Getting lost should be a real possibility, and a frightening one.

These are the only parts of the game I would actually write out. THe system is a bare bones mechanics-guide, with some suggestions. Making the game real is up to the DM's ability to improvise and know how fear and horror works.

If you want to go for a more chtulhu-y feeling, you could give players the choice to restore Wakefulness if they take an...oddness, this being a specific hallucination ("Voice of the little Brother", "The Teacher is up to something"etc.).

Archive this and let me check this out

Or repost rules etc OP

>>13769167
>"Because then everything can see you"

>fml

>>13769167
>>13769212
>because everything
>EVERYTHING

like it both ways.

The cool thing is that you can do so much with this. Witches, demons, magic, or simply the unexplained (which is the scariest)

I got goosebumps just thinking about being in a school with this happening. GMed right this could be scary as hell.

And getting rid of the teacher is easy. That's it kids I'm going to see what is going on, be good and stay safe. And don't leave the room. I'm be right back...

Here's an idea I had based on just the gas leak scenario:

The initial d6 characters who fell asleep were rescued and brought out of the school. Any characters who are caught by "monsters" (rescue workers) also fall asleep immediately. If anyone exams these bodies, they are still warm.

However, everyone who falls asleep due to a failed wakefulness roll has succumbed to the gas and has died. If anyone bothers to examine their bodies, they'll find that they quickly lose their warmth and become cold. The teacher will fall asleep in this manner sometime in the game.

Rather than using other students as extra lives, when a character falls asleep, the GM hands them either a "you've been rescued!" or "you have died!" card for them to read in secret. It explains the premise behind the game as well, including the gas leak and the nature of falling asleep in the game. Those players also get certain abilities they can still use to influence the game world, such as influencing where rescue workers go, messing with doors, etc. They are not allowed to communicate what they learn from the cards to the other players.

>>13769262
>>13769212

I prefer the original, it seems more like it's been whispered by a semi-insane student.

"The last thing you want to do is run out into the light, because then... everything."
"Everything?"
"EVERYTHING!"

Works especially well if the semi-insane student bugs out and yells the last line.

>>13769304

Herp Derp I'll be right back

>>13769206
Traits...

I was thinking of having each player take three secret 'traits' at the start of the game. Things like phobias and addictions, secrets and talents.

For instance, one such talent is Raised In Fear, where the student in question had a terrifying upbringing. From the start of the game, she's treated as always having the Fear status, and gets special notes from the DM to fuel her paranoia.

Or maybe one of the students is actually in on the madness. She's a disguised familiar of one of the witches, possessed by the demon, a cultist of the anceint evil.

Don't turn your back on Susan...

So why does the teacher let students go out and do things?
And what's the explanation for the teacher not doing anything/helping during this?

>>13769349
That's the DM's thing. THe first part of the game should indeed be that these young ladies want to get to the bottom of the situation, and talking the teacher into either letting them go, or going with them.

Again, it's up to the DM to run the Teacher how he sees they should be run.

>>13769349

Teacher could be wounded, or somehow incapable of leaving a room, such as taking care of injured student.

Another explanation could be that two things must be performed at the same time.

>>13769372

Or teacher vanishes after leaving the room. And the kids are left all alone...

Hey, i got this. It is fairly easy.
There are two problems: lack of light and need to sleep. First, little can be done about save for trying and burning things up... but from teh other hand, one can adapt, yes?
In extreme situations a person can adapt quicklier, right? For example, blind people can usually move almost normally. And they don't need the light too. You know, i am kinda envying them.
If i was blind, that wouldn't be as scary... i mean, i would be kinda prepared, right?
Almost forgot! Another problem! Staying awake is hard when you are in pain; it's medicine thing, adreanaline and all... so, if we just hurt ourselves, we won't fall asleep!!!
I wonder...
hey
what
i mean, bear with me a little
what if there was a
bridge... nonononono, wrong word, i almost mess up, funny, isn't it?
Ha! that's really funny! *gigglegigglegiggle*
oh... what was it?
what if there was a way to.. combine those two?

Here, OP, cobbled this together from my memories of gradeschool.
Figured I'd contribute to the awesome.

>>13769372
This is good, options, explanations, and possibilities.
>>13769364
This is bad, 'up to DM' without any of the above is not helpful to a game making process.

>>13769411
We certainly wouldn't want a game that played in different ways with many different open interpretations, now would we?

What ways are there to clear the scenario?

Consensus seems to point towards one possible ending being that all students as well as the teacher falling asleep.

What is the other possible way to end the scenario?

Sure, I can probably think of one or two (mainly involving some sort of combat) but I am hard pressed to come up with alternative ways.

>>13769411

>This is bad, 'up to DM' without any of the above is not helpful to a game making process.

My apologies. I'm trying to restrict the DM as little as possible.

>>13769407
Haha! That's excellent. Saved.

Milestones? Maybe you pick some sort of system where the players accumulate towards a milestone and after each one, something in the game changes (less time between sleep checks, more students falling asleep, etc), uhh... I don't know where to go from there. The idea is to make it more tense the closer the players get to solving the scenario...

>>13769455

I had trouble with this too, which is why I came up with
>>13769308

That way, the "good" end is everyone falling asleep due to monster attack or something else that is representative of being rescued. Falling asleep through normal wakefulness checks is the bad end.

>>13769407

>>13769449
>>13769462
Reading comprehension's a bitch, ain't it?
But fine. Stomp my dick if that's how you like it.

>>13769455
>What ways are there to clear the scenario?

THe first is that the problem is solved. Lights come back on, the sun returns, but those students that fell asleep do not awaken.

THe second is failure. Everyone sleeps, and the mystery is left undiscovered.

Certainly, more options are available. Maybe sleeping leads to a living nightmare?

>>13768398
>Several girls fall asleep immediately (d6)
>roll a 6
>all the PCs are asleep

For a mid semester variant, players don't know all of their student's grades. You know only if you're failing(gave up) or struggling (lost but trying), as long as it's at least C, you don't know exactly. Should keep them from trying to game things when rolls are needed. I might combine math with science as well, depending on the scenario I'm running with at least.

>>13769505
No, that just leads to six of the students falling asleep.

>but not the teacher or the players

>>13769502

OOH! A failure scenario! Like, if they fall asleep then it isn't over, but... something else, something else, something else? It doesn't really work with the whole it's all a dream and being captured is good because this is a gas-leak thing, but I wouldn't take that approach because my players would hate me and never let me DM again.

>>13769477

For each "milestone" reached, I suggest adding one of the following challenges to the scenario:

a) Lights go out permanently (including emergency lights), only flash-lights and other "temporary" means of illumination works.
b) Sleeping bodies disappear
c) Alarm system goes off. This could be anything from just a bell to the sprinklers showering everyone. The alarm does not stop and must be dealt with for the sake of sanity.
d) Increasing number of "encounters" or new types of encounters.
e) Removing sections of the building. Consumed by darkness or just mysteriously locked.
f) Recurring "hunter" appears.
g) Electronics stop functioning
h) Loss of waking students or teachers
i) Severe medical situation; allergic shock, injury, mental sickness "activating" etc.
j) etc. etc.

>>13769536
THat's certainly an interesting variation. I like it, it's handy.

>>13769502
I'd definitely say include some optional rules for a dreamscape. It would be an interesting way to keep the game running for a while longer in the event of a TPK (Or at least TPSleep), even if having the game in a surreal dreamscape ended up raising more questions than it answered.
Just remember... in your dreams, everything.
EVERYTHING.

So I am wondering about an alternative way to get this story started, here is an idea:

Your class is here after school in the evening. You are all here because you are practicing/rehearsing for the school play/musical/etc. That is why your class, and only your class is here (and your teacher).

An alternative to the darkness could be fog. Incredibly thick fog outside, that whenever someone tries to pass though the fog they mysteriously disappear... you could have them simply walk off into silence, or you could have them attacked by some beast out of sight (but not out of range for hearing).

This fog idea is an alternate idea that I thought might give the PC's a reason why they shouldn't leave the building. If it is just darkness, can they see the neighbouring buildings? Can they see other people outside? Can they leave the school and run home? I am thinking a thick, mysterious fog might work better... even if it is just restricted to being outside. Alternatively if you just have your darkness outside, and it cannot be pierced by flashlights and the like that would pretty much serve the same purpose of cutting off the school from the rest of the world.

OP, thank you very much for this idea. I rarely ever DM.. but this has got me thinking, and wanting to DM. Would playing with low lighting be a good idea?... I am currently sitting by my computer in the dark... and just the darkness of the room, plus thinking about this has my hair standing on end. And since the character building is so simplistic, a group could play this particular session without much light... might help set the atmosphere. Especially good if you have some candlelight, and the PC's find some candlelit satanic ritual being conducted by one of the sleeping children (sleep walking/possessed satanic ritualist).

I'm thinking you don't even need the wakefulness. That could be a great core concept, but you can run it as straight horror with the darkness idea.

Kids disappear randomly and what not. Maybe it is all a dream, but falling asleep isn't the danger it is becoming lost in the darkness. Of course this leads to the GM having a whole lot of control over who gets taken.

>>13769565
>Dreamscape

I'm trying to avoid too much overlap with Don't Rest Your Head, but I'll work on it.

>>13769649

I'd say you'd still need a stamina stat, then, which could still lead to falling asleep (Think about this: if being taken into the darkness is bad, then passing out is also bad because you're defenseless, but it gives you a chance of living if someone keeps you in the light?)

>>13769683

This is a good idea. Passing out means you get enveloped into the darkness if you are alone. If you are with people maybe you have a chance to be awakened.

Seems like this system can be made very basic and yet apply to a ton of different situations, which is obviously the point

>>13769683
Stamina would be tied into PE. Making consistent PE checks to stay awake would be a vvariant in a game where the DM dislikes having the Wakefulness stat.

I think I'm going to keep watching /tg/ for a more complete version or just cobble something together from what we've posted here.

I bow to you OP and fellow elegen/tg/entlemen

A good thing has happened this day

>>13769779
I'll try to throw together a full explanation of the mechanics, then a seperate thing with suggestions for games later. keep an eye out!

Should we move to an IRC for development?

Also when I first saw this, I thought /tg/ would be all "Gay." and I would be one of the few that actually liked the idea.

Nice.

I can't seem to word this right, but I'm curious about the other stats besides PE and Science...

Arts check: Oh! That reminds me of one of the paintings in the ar

>>13769852
Let's do it

>>13769857
Arts can represent sensitivity, like to people going crazy or supernatural forces.

>>13769869

And for us newfags: how?

>>13769857
THose with high Arts are more in tune with their surroundings. They're better at seeing things others miss.

And yes. This can be a bad thing.

#Afterschoolactivities at Rizon. I'm Shot___.

This is really my first time really doing development.

>>13769885
/join #channel
/msg nickserv register password
/msg chanserv register #channel password

>>13769882
>>13769912
I see. What about English? Deciphering clues?
Also I see there's no History/Social Studies stat on the current report card. What are your thoughts on that?

>>13769953
English could be closer to Wisdom, I guess? It's things like deciphering weird ciphers as much as it is knowing how to properly put together a good argument.

If it's a boarding school, then they are at 'home' already. Maybe the game starts in a dorm instead of a classroom. Maybe the school is on a field trip. You're stuck at class because anyone with an F (or D) is barred from trips. Or it's detention.

For messing with the mechanics, use the teacher's notes to denote special functions. "Doesn't apply herself in X class" or "Watch for cheating" could give unexpected bonuses or penalties. If they want to risk it, they can sneak a peak at the teacher's files on them to see their exact grades and notes.

I like the ideas of character quirks too. Wears glasses, disrupts the class, pulls the wings off bugs, doesn't have cell phone, easily distracted, is secretly working for the enemy, bad BO and so on. These would be handed out to the players or picked from a hat and so on.

>Also I see there's no History/Social Studies stat on the current report card. What are your thoughts on that?

THat's a pretty good question. I'm not sure what use social studies or history would be, or what it would represent as a stat.

>>13769987
>If it's a boarding school, then they are at 'home' already. Maybe the game starts in a dorm instead of a classroom. Maybe the school is on a field trip. You're stuck at class because anyone with an F (or D) is barred from trips. Or it's detention.

Oh right! I forgot to mention.

If the random time falls outside of school hours, guess what? THe players have to find a way to meet up. And they don't get a teacher. Yay!

This looks like an amazing idea for one-shots. I especially like the grades-as-stats system, very nice. I'd love to play this someday, or run it for that matter.

Also, my first thought on reading the OP was...pic related. Could actually be somewhat doable if you set it early in the timeline of the series, before the girls all start training and getting Pactio artifacts and stuff...

>>13769993
If you'll excuse me for using D&D skills, then I'm thinking English for the social skills, especially Diplomacy
Then History is free to be used for deciphering and clues.
But that's sort of iffy.

>>13770014
If it's a boarding school, wouldn't there still be some adults in the building?

>>13770049
I think you mean, shouldn't there be?

>>13770064
My english stat may be a D, but my A in PE will kick your ass.

>>13770049
Well, sure. THe players might even run into them. But it's less likely than the gaurenteed one in the classroom.

>>13770064
To be fair, there would be adults in the building and their should be adults in the building, but they mean very different things.

That was my thought, house mother instead of teacher.
Anyhow, you could do up a full report card and only use what's relevant. How many times has it been asked, "When am I ever going to use this?" maybe never. So there's English, History, Math, Science, Arts, PhysEd, and maybe a separate Computers. Though I think all children are literate these days. It would be nice to have a teacher that isn't A at everything though. Then what's useful depends on the scenario. Maybe you get history clues with the witches' coven, or math puzzles while the world is trying to reboot you, and have to use English to understand cryptic demonic messages.

>>13770222
Indeed, not all classes will be relevant. An English student might remember that the witch's brew is the source of their power, for example.

The idea of a Teacher with a specialty would be that they have an A+ on one grade and a C in most others, meaning they would almost never fail that sort of test. Of course, being with the right teacher for your scenario is about as likely as winning the lottery.

One might even use the random time generation and a full on school schedule for the kids to determine the teacher they get!

Oh! Oh! And we can call the game "School Daze"!

...God, I hate me, so very much...

>>13770416
Current working title is Afterschool Activities.

But I see what you did there.

>I started this when the thread was about halfway, and just got back to an internet connection, so if this is counter to what's been worked out I apologize.

The circles under Sarah's eyes were definitely noticeable as she glanced at the reflective cabinet over the sink in the teachers' work room in the light from the digital clock on the counter. It was blinking 00:00, which she was pretty sure clocks weren’t meant to do, but at this point she was too tired to care much. She really hoped this instant coffee stuff would do the trick. Steph had said her dad used it to pull long nights when he was working on a contract, but none of the other girls had ever tried the stuff. Since Sarah knew her way around the workroom she had volunteered to go make some cups and bring them back. She had been worried that they might get in trouble for taking the teachers' mugs, but ever since Mr. Stevens had gone to look for the circuit breaker they hadn't seen a single adult, so she figured she'd take the risk.

>>13770479

Once she had filled up the mugs from the tap, Sarah grabbed the plastic container and tried to read how long she was supposed to microwave them for. The text on the container swam before her tired eyes. She couldn't tell if that was a 3 or an 8, so she threw them all in the microwave and punched in 5 minutes, hoping it would do the job. The drone of the microwave was practically a lullaby to her weary mind, so she began pacing a circle around the folding table in the center of the room to stay alert.

>>13770490

If it weren't for her circuit taking her near the door, she never would have heard the shuffling from up the hallway. Sarah froze, trying to figure out if her ears had been tricking her or not. Her first instinct was to call out. Maybe one of the other girls had gotten tired of trying the janitor's endless ring of keys on that door and had come to help her. But... that noise didn't sound like the loafers the girls wore. It sounded more like... scratching. Like nails on the tile. The noise moved slowly up the hallway outside the door. In an instant all the fears of the darkness that Sarah had been holding at bay came crashing down onto her, and she frantically searched the room for some escape. Of course, the teachers’ workroom was in the interior of the building, so there were no windows and only the one door in and out. But… there! The closet in the corner was big enough for her to hide in, and she dove for it even as the scratching outside drew even with the door. She wriggled inside and tried to pull the closet doors closed behind her, but there were no handles on the inside so she was forced to leave the small crack for her fingers to squeeze through. The noises outside the door had stopped, and for a minute Sarah thought her tired mind must have imagined it. Then the tapping began.

>>13770501

A slow, rhythmic click upon the door, as though something hard was tapping against it. Then Sarah realized her mistake. The door was closed, but the latch didn’t quite align with the doorframe, and so it hadn’t popped out when she had closed the door. And now, as something on the other side prodded the door, it slowly began to swing open into the room. Sarah held her breath as something shifted in the hallway, her eye glued to the crack in the closet doors. Then the room went black.
For a moment Sarah panicked again, reliving the moment earlier when the world had gone dark. Then she realized what had happened. The 5 minutes she had set the microwave for had run out, and the microwave backlight which she had been unconsciously relying upon had gone with it. Now that the room was plunged into total darkness, she could no longer see the door, or the source of the sounds that had frightened her. But the sounds continued. The tapping had stopped when the door opened, only to be replaced by the slow scratching sound as the source of the noise moved into the teachers’ work room.

>>13770511

Sarah’s heart pounded in her chest as the thing moved towards the now-dark microwave. Once it reached the counter there was a long period of silence, and her imagination filled with images of it slowly turning to scan the room. The sounds began again, and she couldn’t tell if it moved towards the tables in the room’s center or the couch along the wall. Then a new sound sprung up, a sliding noise, punctuated by clunks. A whimper escaped Sarah’s lips when she realized the source: the thing was dragging an… arm? A hand? It was sliding something along the cabinet doors that lined the wall on her side of the room, the clunks signaling when it hit a gap between doors. If it continued along the wall, it would come to her closet. Each clunk rang louder in her mind as it moved closer to her hiding place.

>>13770528

. But the moment never came. Unable to tell precisely how close the thing was, the noises suddenly ceased. Listening hard, Sarah could hear… nothing. She waited, but no noise at all came from the dark room. The sliding noise had stopped, but so had the scratching sounds that she had come to associate with movement. Still… she couldn’t bring herself to open the door and check. The thought that the thing was out there, something was in the darkness… Sarah slumped against the back wall of the closet, quivering from fear.
Twenty minutes later, when she still had not returned with the promised coffee, the other girls came looking for Sarah. Opening the closet, their emergency flashlight beam fell upon her form, curled in the corner, sound asleep. They glanced at each other with grim looks. Just like the others, she wouldn’t be waking up. And from the look of the coffee container upturned in the room’s sink, they would need to find another way to stay awake.
>end

>>13770479
>>13770490
>>13770501
>>13770511
>>13770528
>>13770553
Excellent writefaggotry. I may just use it later.

>>13770303
Wouldn't a teacher have an above A average in their specialty?

My history teacher knew everything about history, more than the A students.
But he knew nothing about math, so he would be C or D in that...

>>13770635
Yep. An A+ with this system is a +3, so... every roll's a success. A+ can only go to teachers, though. Also, their stats are almost all below-average. Such as a History teacher with an F grade in PE, a D in the Arts, and a C elsewhere.

>>13770635

I think in general, the teacher is supposed to have awesome stats, so it's that much more terrifying/hindering to the students when he inevitably disappears.

I'm C&Ping like a fiend right now, I think I want to run a one-shot of this once I could map out and plan out events. I'm thinking I'd be running a combination of the gas theory and an afterlife thing.

There was gas causing this, but also either an explosion or some accident that happened to the teacher that caused them to be dead for real. The psychic trauma of this event, plus the usual rationalization and introspection that is required for the dead to pass on has locked the students into this realm.

Students who pass out normally will be found at the end of the scenario in poor shape, possibly a coma as they started to succumb.

Students taken by the monsters wake up fine due to rescue workers.

However, there are malevolent beings in this twilight realm that feed off of the psychic anguish and the emotions of the newly dead. Having other living beings is a new occurrence to them, and they try to drive the students insane, and are the source of a lot of the seriously creepy things. I don't think I want them to be roving monsters per se, but will drive players actions, possibly trying to have the students keep the teacher from passing on, or do other insane acts. Students who go through the teacher's 'passing on' door (willingly and knowingly, I don't want to tomb of horrors LOL U DED) are never seen again.

I also feel like I want to do something similar to Eternal Darkness, or ADEva/Dark heresey's insanity. Every ten or so points of wakefullness they lose they gain something that causes hallucinations, or penalties, or the like. And you can't ever raise wakefullness above a certain limit.

>>13769565
>Just remember... in your dreams, everything.
EVERYTHING.

That "everything. EVERYTHING" thing is going to end up some kind of catchphrase for this game isn't it?

Also, another idea for messing with the players: each milestone of time the players pass through feels like a different length of time to the characters... And any time pieces the characters have will match their perception of time. So for one character, it may feel like one hour has passed, whereas it might feel like 3 to another player. And then you've got the unlucky sod who thinks it's a week that's gone by, which is backed up by the date on their phone...

>>13771316

Yeah, it totally is. Most blatantly memorable thing in the whole thread.

>>13771993
Yep.

>>13771316
You could have that one child who gets lost, and waits for the others to find them. And after and hour or so of searching they find the kid... who's been waiting in the dark for them for a week.

NEW SHIT: Prodigies and Delinquents

When rolling for grades, it's possible to get an average of -1 or +1 or higher. In either case, the student is granted a Delinquent or a Prodigy template, depending.

Prodigies are overall better than thier peers at many tasks, and are in every way a 'model student'. The must obey the Teachers or other authority figures.
However, when the Horrors begin, thier teaching and training fails them, and they lose thier wakefulness much faster: 3 to the other normal kid's 1. Also, when they manage to fail a test, they lose another 5. They do not accrue Teacher Notes, and do not carry anything in their bags besides what is needed for classes.

Delinquents are skippers or ne'er do wells who shirk the system for learning to be an adult their own way. They do not commit tests with dice, but instead flip coins. They cannot retry Tests. They also start with a bevy of 'useful' items: knives, lockpicking sets, lighters, porn mags, cellphones. They are unlikely to listen to a teacher, and are often the impetus for leaving the room. ("Damnit, someone go get Janet before she does something stupid!")

>>13770416

I say 'Slumber Party' if the sleep mechanics are kept.

>>13769953
>>13769993

I was musing on the Social Studies, and that grade could be indicative of how much a character is aware of and cares about society/others. Empathy, social/worldly awareness, or possibly a wisdom equivalent.

The only other stat I could think of was 'Popularity'. Are you the queen of the school or the smelly girl in the corner? Do people listen and follow what you have to say or do they try to ignore you as much as possible. Basically, charisma.

I was thinking a 2d6 roll gets you a range of 2-12. and grades can go

2- F
3- F+
4- D
5- D+

6- C
7- C+
8- B
9- B+

10- A -
11- A
12- A+

You even get a nice bell curve.

I was rolling up some characters this way and got one that had a very high english and social studies and popularity and had her be class president. Another had a low english, average popularity, and high social studies and had her be an activist; all about saving all the kitties and puppies that no one listens to.

Low popularity and social studies with high gym could be a bully or delinquent, while high popularity and gym could be a cheerleader.

School Daze - In the Darkness, EVERYTHING!

>Start of the game: Thirty students and one teacher. All-girls boarding school.

Fuck yeah negima!

>rest of the post
>magic barely mentioned

aww...

So this is an alternate version of Don't Rest Your Head?

>>13773068
I can see how you might think that, but if you read through, you'll see that's not exactly accurate.
>>13773060
You're precisely our target.

>>13773026
You've clearly put some thought into this. Come on by the IRC
#Afterschoolactivities
irc.rizon.net

>>13773026
>Popularity
Hrm.

See, in the IRC we cam across a problem: Inventory isn't tracked by teachers. So eventually, we moved that to a notebook sheet of paper, so it looked like the Student in question was writing it. Popularity would go there, too...

And I sorta like the idea of it as a stat, but it should be treated seperate from the curve of Delinquent/Prodigy.

Also
>A+

Noooooo. That is bad juju. But overall, I like your system, and I think we'll be using it. THanks for your help!

>>13773185
Hmm. High popularity Prodigies would be Class Presidents and whatnot, high popularity Delinquents would be the Bad Boys/Girls? I like it.

Also, I feel like popularity is something that should be a little more abstract than the other stats? I have a vague notion in my head of your popularity being the result of a poll of the other players, but I feel like that's blurring the 4th wall too much.

>>13773257
Popularity isn't a grade. It's measured on the same scale, but flavorfully it's not the same.

Popularity tests would be to convince students to do dangerous/strange things, Rouse others (Restore Wakefulness/stop sleeping) and generally be an inspiration to others, good or bad.

Okay uh

This is weird to ask, but is anyone a good hand with PDFs and putting them together?

>>13773400
I need to really digest all of this, but I'd definitely like to make one when y'all get the info together for it. Maybe organize it into a 1d4chan wiki beforehand to get it all in place?

>>13773625
SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN.

>>13773400
If you don't mind going the poor man's approach, you can always just type everything up in Word and then print it as a pdf. That's what I do for my projects.

>>13773770
Naw, I'm trying to get this done up like an old-fashioned school handbook.

>>13773769
....
While... you certainly can have that as a campaign... Er. While that is one possibility, it could be pretty much anything.

>YOU WOKE UP
>YOUR SOUL WAS EATEN
>YOU ARE NOW IN A WITCH'S BREW
>WELCOME TO LIMBO

etc.

>>13773832
>>13773810
>>13773857

wow. Thanks for taking it from eerie spooky straight to touchy-uncle creepy.

here, read this.
>>13768595
there. done, you can consider that canon. And do that considering from a good distance away.

>>13773832
>Take the creepy edge out

GET. OUT.

>>13773901
>>13773887
>>13773857
>>13773832
>>13773810
No, seriously. Leave. YOu're shitting up a good thread and original content.

/tg/ - my fetish

the troll girl fell asleep and was eaten by a the darkness. They never found the body.

ITT a great thread gets shat all over

>>13774006
fuck that, I'm still using this content.

YOU HAVE MY BOW.

>>13774024
Why are you being such a douchebag?

>>13774033

>>13774033
Yeah I don't want to see an awesome thread go down like this. Here. I'll post the rudimentary map I made when I wrote up the w/fag posts earlier.

Haven't read through the whole thread yet, but it would be perfect to run this in a home with lights you can turn on/off by remote, at night.

>>13774083
Pardon me good /s/ir. While no one could be more happy to sleep sleeping cuties, perhaps we should leave it to the board dedicated to it?

Thus, meet me in this thread:
>>11376955
And perhaps we can find a few to exchange

>>13774158
Is that fucking Super Mario World?

I fucking love Super Mario World!

>>13774200

Super Mario World was ballin'. I used to break into my neighbor's house all the time just to play it.

Ok, now that the thread has been shat-up by the lolasleepgirlrape crowd, and I can't get on to IRC because of work, I bid my fellow fa/tg/uys adieu. Thanks a heap for the seeds for what should be a memorable gaming experience!

>>13774109
>>13774142
>>13774270
Man, seriously, please don't do this. You're ruining other people's fun for no good reason.:/

>>13774309

I find it amusing

>>13774334
I AM a member of the lolsleeprape crowd, but I still recognize the 'sanctity' of board rules man. What yer doing is kinda lame. Also, how do I post a link that will send you to my current thread on /s/?

I like how this great thread ground to a halt because a dude had to project his fetish all over it.
Oh wait, that's the worst shit in the world.
Way to kill a great thread, douche.

>>13774375
You do have some excellent stuff (I have saved many already) but it's not everyone's cup of tea and one ought to respect it. For instance, when we are in /s/ we don't have to look at cartoon dicks or while in /k/ there's no furry boobs... ok wait maybe that last one isn't true. But anyways you know what I mean

OP, I love you will all of my internets. I just met a group of new friends who have been prodding me to run a D&D game or some sort of one-shot. This might be the perfect thing to run to gauge how well they RP. It's fucking spooky, man.

Gonna play CoC again. Want some Dark Ambience to set the mood. Anyone got any suggestions?

This thread was great till it got shit up by
>>13774442

>>13774375
>>13774442
Oh, come the fuck on. You know what you're doing as well as I do.

You are being a dick, for no fucking reason.

Please don't.

I assume most of the tactical geniuses are in the IRC. I've got not experience developing games, but I hope you guys will be awesome and make another thread about this "School Daze" game in the future.

>>13774464

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjZUYACEmec

>>13774526

Exactly what I was after. Thanks.

trolling along, are you?

>>13774547
So clearly you should keep shitting up the thread.

>>13774547


CUrrent title is "Afterschool activities: A lesson in fear" so, uh, kindly find a fire and sleep in it.

>>13774520
It'll happen, sooner or later. Might have to wait a bit or try a few times.

Gonna aim to represent more of how flexible the system is rather than the silly default setting from now on.

im making this pdf from what ive found in this thread. i dont care what anybody says, im doing it

Looks like creepy Uncle Sleepfag managed to kill this thread.

I like the fact that, unless they know ahead of time, the players will have absolutely no clue that this is a survivor horror adventure.

They will be all like "Oh, I like ice cream and get a bonus to pillow fights and it suddenly got so dark and.. wha.. my character just got turned inside out and exploded into a million centipedes... I don't even...."

I like how the moralfags are shitting up this thread moreso than some kind anon who's posting clothed tits. Which, by the way, is more than the moralfags have contributed.

>>13775055
Yeah, fuck those guys who were contributing but wanted the fapfoldier guy to get out of the thread.

>>13775084
Yes, fuck them. Their puritanical views only make things worse for everyone else.

I like how /tg/ is usually separate from /d/
But then, there's always Exalted

>>13775353
/tg/ is, like every other board, up to it's neck in people with strange and deviant fetishes.

But most of us don't want to incorporate it into a game. That shit's just not cricket.

regardless of clothed tits, this needs to get archive, kudos to OP for awesum idea

>>13776218
I think it's already archived, someone in here posted a link or something.

For added convenience, here's part 2 of the character sheet with space for an in-character description, popularity - which is now a 1d6 roll - and inventory at the bottom.

Also, here's the first batch of teacher's notes, with a couple terrible jokes at the end:
http://pastebin.com/PKYRmrHP

IRC's still going strong. Godspeed, /tg/.

I've been compiling some rules and realized something: players will probably move about in a group for a large part of the scenario. Much of the horror seems to require students being alone in the dark.

How do you motivate players to split up?

It may be a bit late, but i want put my word in that great work.

The teacher can work greatly to make some atmosphere. First you get with all that darkness thing. Give some creeps to players, but fear not little girls - the teacher, everthing-know-and-can adult is here. As a DM you play your first part in style of "gas-release" version. It surely scary, but not so much. Teacher organises childrens, calms them, helps them, leading them to rescue. That part can be tutorial-like - you can use that idea when PCs do not know their initial stats, and they revealing them while helping teacher to save them.

But then, when everything seems almost done, suddenly BOOM. Teacher leaves, ether by duying or fell asleep. And now you unpack all your "supernatural" creeps. I think that trick should greatly affect players. I mean, not only their characters, that ofcouse should be roleplayed, but players themselves. Throuing out ther support, when they [i]think[/i] everything gone, should be pretty effective.

>I wake up in the morning expecting a dead thread or 404

>There's new replies

FUCKING BEAUTIFUL.

I'll use this bit to explain a few terms I've come up with to help describe the game.

THere are three aspects to every situation: The Darkness, The Horrors, and the Terrors. THese three aspects work together to create a true crisis for the group, and should be present in most of them.

The Darkness is what shrouds the school or facility in obscurity, making it difficult to navigate. It might be smoke, or fog, or actual darkness - so long as the players have their vision or navigatory abilities impaired, it's all good. It's up to the DM whether the Darkness actually increases the rate at which Wakefulness drops. If they decide to do that, then being in the Darkness without some sort of light drains an additional 3 points a period.

The Horrors are the active malefactors. Demons, monsters, effigies that move on their own... they are the visible horror, the things that hunt down the players should they wander from the classroom. Be careful whether you reveal the Horrors at all: the truly scary things are the unknown, so it may be best to have them snatch NPCs from the cover of darkness, revealing only minor details such as a pair of limbs or long claws.

The Terrors: These are the passive malefactors against the players. Incidents within the school, strange occurences. Why are the computers turning themselves on and leaving strange messages? Why is the pool filled with blood? Why are the windows suddenly cracking? Terrors force players to make Art checks, and if they succeed, they lose 1d10 wakefulness from horror.

>Saged and spammed throughout the night

>OP don't give a shit, we're making a game!

truly a hero to us all.

>bumpity

Good news everyone!

There may or may not be a playtest later today. Character creation is now complete, all that's left is to make certain the system produces the results I desire. I'm a little worried about using the Wakefulness as a 'lol u lose' mechanic, but with some tuning I believe it will work out just fine. The optimal group for this is, I think, four people or so.

All I need now for the whole book is to put together all this malarkey into a coherent format and then we can have a rulebook.

>Roughly twenty four hours from conception to playtest planning.

>Fucking beautiful.

>>13779875
Are you including different scenarios/explanations for the darkness? I kinda like the more mundane ones like the gas leak over Cthulhu being summoned or something. I'd be a bit disappointed if the mechanics and fluff heavily favored that side of things.

I haven't read all the replies, but if you're still looking for someone to put together a pdf, I may have time later this weekend, probably Sunday.

>>13779981
We got a pdf guy. No worries there.

The Darkness can be, as I said, anything. One suggested plot is younger students in the aftermath of an earthquake. The power goes out, and gas leaks fill the air. Small children would naturally be frightened of rescue workers, of course, and the school may even be in a precarious position like the edge of a newly formed cliff for Terrors to play out (Holy shit the whole wing is falling away run run run)

Though in the case of a gas leak, the Darkness would cause enough confusion in the heads of the kids to make it difficult to navigate the school, or it's late at night and the power went out...

Things like that can definitely be allowed.

>>13779981
My hope would be that an explanation is ambiguously likely. One aspect of horror that I enjoy is the bewilderment of purpose. I don't mean LOLEVIL, just weird shit that you're forced to deal with. Zombies would be a decent example. George Romero was fine with people making guesses that ranged from apocolypse to a complicated shift in our ecosystem.

If I was a drawfag, I'd love to draw some slimy yellow creature with an eyeball at the end of one of it's arms. it'd be an interesting analogue for a hallucinated rescue worker.

>>13780077
>Ambiguity

Definitely a big part of the game. The DM's job is to describe what the players perceive, not neccesarily what is actually there, and the 'truth' of any Darkness is never supposed to be certain and complete. There should always be room for interpretation.

>>13780040
I appreciate that you're trying to leave this relatively open-ended, but as one previous anon pointed out, if you leave too much open in the final product, the flavor captured by this thread will be lost.

I think that in the end, a "default" setting could be chosen - Darkness = Literal Darkness, for example - with suggestions and alternate scenarios the DM can use to customize the game as they see fit.

>>13780422

Actually, I think that picking a default really limits everything. Instead, there should be chapters on each of the 3 parts (darkness, terrors, monsters) detailing some of the possibilities without committing the setting to one specific choice.

>>13780445
I feel like if we have all these ideas floating around, the rules will read like "darkness, fog, noxious gas, smoke pick one lol dunno"

For me, seeing a fully fleshed-out setting with some alternate views gives me a clear picture of what can be done with the system. And on top of that, I get more ideas on how to put my own spin on things than a list of "possible settings" and a footnote that says "build on this".

>>13780422
>>13780445
There really is no default, but there is the campaign that I personally would run - A parallel, I suppose would be the 'typical adventure' in a DnD book.

Sure, there's meeting in a tavern, getting propositioned to save a princess from a red dragon, etc.

But there's so much wild shit this system can do, I don't want to hold it back.

>>13780487
It would not be out of the question to release smaller books detailing settings that one can use in greater exactitude, though, even given my above statement. These would be flavour books, for The Darkened Sky (the original idea posted), THe Coven, The Elder Things, The Rescue, The Ghosts, etc. It would allow me to expand on things and flesh out the ideas further.

>>13780488
To borrow your example, even D&D has premade campaign settings adventures for DMs who've not yet used the system. Having these tools available doesn't at all "limit" the system, IMO.

While the experienced DM can take the mechanics and do anything they want with them, it's sometimes nice to have a "finished product" to playtest and build from. If I recall, Little Fears managed to leave the system open and also provide some decent (if generic) scenarios to look over.

Just my opinion, of course.

Is it just me or is this clocktower + nightmare on elmstreet the game? Because if so then my love of the op is undying.

Also, I think I might run this at some point and if any of the girls come through alright have them find out that this was one of those Hunter in Darkness Nytharlahotep type things and then stat them all out for CoC. Nothing like making your players think they're doing something completely different when, in reality you're still in the exact same world.

Then again, that's partially my love of seeing how many things I can connect to the same CoC game.

>>13780683
See I got a distinct CoC vibe off of it too, though the mechanics are very different.

This whole time I've been more digging the "Oh shit their are Things in the darkness and they are going to eat you"-style interpretation, which is why I'm glad that we're leaving the explanations open. I do agree that it probably wouldn't hurt to give a "sample adventure", since it's clear that there's a lot of possibilities.

>>13780782
Exactly. If I set up a CoC game they'll all play ex miner illiterate drifters with dynamite, something that won't really help at all in this sort of thing and wouldn't fit. And trust me, given the chance they'd play a very similar girl.

But with this sort of thing you'd probably lose a few less people to things you can't fight than if they all put all their stats in guns, sneaking guns into class, and generally using more guns.

Plus, I like the idea of having them show up later in this timeline and get picked up by the organization my players created to battle the mythos. Nothing like having the ones who do escape run into the immortal character that runs their organization telling them that he's got a job to offer them.

Plus I get the fun of handing that guy back his character sheet and telling him "Yes, this is exactly what you think it is."

Teacher could be a source of unease too, like being slightly off after coming back. Smiling too much and being strangely cheerful about the darkness.

Waking up the sleepers temporarily can also have creepy results, if you've ever talked with someone who is sleepwalking or asleep they don't talk normally at all, and tend to say the most cryptic shit.

Also, am I the first to mention drifting classroom? I thought you were more weaboo than this, /tg!

>>13781346
>drifting classrooms

Another form of the Darkness can be shifting layouts. Close the door, and everything changes... Left your friend in the other room?

Oh dear...

How about starting the game with no monsters and everytime someone falls asleep their nightmares come alive?

>>13781501
Excellent.

I love this thread so much! SO FUCKING AWESOME! I've never DM'd before, but these kind of scenarios make me want to try it out. For once, OP was not a faggot!

http://pastebin.com/64rPPfxa

One addition to the game, which is mostly optional, is generating a Phobia at the start. These have no mechanical effect, except for gaining the Panicked status around the phobia (Triples Wakefulness loss, no sleep checks, +1 to PE checks related to fleeing) and other things relating to the scene. These are rolled at character creation, or gained via dramatic exposure at the DM's discretion.

>>13780040
PDF guy here. At the ready when you organize your info together OP.

>>13783353
Will probably have it in a few days.

>>13783421
Excellent. I'll be watching!

>>13783353
>>13783421
>>13783494
Made a 1d4chan page for if anyone misses the update thread. Nothing on it yet, that's for the brainstormers to fill up. (hopefully it doesn't get deleted)

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/After_School_Activities

>>13784162
added link to the suptg archived thread

I still love this thread. Glad it's still here.

Anything come of the IRC channel that wasn't posted here?

>>13785915
currently playtesting, logs will be pastebinned afterwards

http://pastebin.com/03JRiRfs

Here is the Pastebin of Session One, which took approximately forty ingame minutes. Attached is the map of Circadia Academy, with marked 'barricades' (Red x), and horrors (purple circle). THe characters start at the red, and followed the gray line.