Don't Look Back! Trapped

Alice Grace stomped down on the accelerator but the wheels of her father's classic red Cadillac spun uselessly, whether because of the mud or because the frame was sitting up on an exposed tree root. He was going to be furious if the paint was so much as scratched. How could this night get worse?

Thank goodness her cell phone had reception all the way out here in the woods. "Max," she said evenly, trying to sound more annoyed than frightened, "I ran off the road and the car is stuck." She described where she thought she was and he promised he and Holden would drive out right away.

So much for partying at Denise's place.

Hoping to calm her frayed nerves, she decided to get out of the car and walk around a little. She absentmindedly left the cell phone on the hood of the Cadillac and paced around in the beams of its headlights. She was sure her dad was going to ground her for --

A horrible wail pierced the crisp quiet of the autumn evening followed sharply by a snap as Alice Grace spun around in terror. Like the Cadillac's wheel, her ankle was caught in the gnarly pine roots and now it was sprained or maybe even fractured. She almost collapsed in pain but the same horrible wail echoed among the trees again, and she bit back her agony.

The gravel road crunched under the wheels of Holden's restored VW bus. "Are you sure this is right?" he asked, looking at Seth in the rearview mirror. "Uh, actually," Seth replied, characteristically pushing his glasses back up his nose, "this is precisely as close as we can get without following Alice Grace down the ditch off the highway."

"You may want to be, like, a bit more sensitive when we find her," Denise chided, smacking Seth's arm. Max grimaced in the front passenger seat looking down at his cell phone. Alice Grace was not answering any of their calls. "Seth knows everything," he sighed, "except how to talk to girls." "Women," Denise corrected him flatly. Max let it go. This incident had ruined her party, after all.

Holden stopped the VW and turned off the ignition. "Well at least we have some moonlight." "And my flashlight," Seth chirped, hoping to reassure his friends. Ignoring him as usual, Denise had her cell phone up to her ear. "I'm calling the ranger station. We're going to need someone who actually," she imitated Seth's nasal voice, "knows the area."

Max and Holden shot each other a knowing look as they climbed out of the van.

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In the Trapped scenario, one of the characters is randomly chosen to be stuck in the center of the play area quadrant diagonal from the quadrant where the rest start. The isolated character is meant to have stepped in a bear trap and can only move within 4" of their starting position until the others get within 2" and make a successful Awareness test with a -5 modifier to release them. At that point the trapped character can hobble along with -2" to their Movement stat, or -1" if there are other characters within 2" of them. So the objective is to get to the trapped character and then escort them off the edge of starting quadrant.

We were quite lucky NOT to randomly chose Seth, who notoriously only moves 3" per Movement action. The scenario also specifies that all the characters might randomly step in a trap but of course I forgot about that, which may have been for the best as the area terrain was so dense that every character needed to take a Jump Scare test every activation. And the Killer arrived on Turn One as a result. We randomly conjured an Ethereal Killer with the Stalker MO and traits that buffed its damage and required a successful Awareness test to melee attack it.

A lot of the action occurred in and around a creek running through the forest, with our hapless teenage heroes splashing up and down the banks trying to stay alive. We counted both the creek and the pine stands as difficult terrain, halving movement, and while we were able to pretty well avoid the trees there was no way to avoid crossing the creek to get to Alice Grace and then re-crossing it to get back to Holden's VW. But allow me to "zoom out" so you can take a wider look at the forest:

You can just see the Light Token representing the headlights of Alice Grace's dad's Cadillac from behind the trees, in the top right of the picture. And although there is a fairly clear path going around that same pine stand, we opted for the narrow path at the top of the bank where the Killer had us squeezed between the creek and the trees. Thanks to Seth's flashlight, most of the teens managed to scramble away (mostly) unscathed but poor Max took quite a beating.

The Ethereal Visage is fairly squishy compared to, say, the Mutilated Visage so we debated trying to drive off the Killer but, not able to get it done in a single turn, forged ahead to free Alice Grace instead. Denise had used her cell phone on Turn 1 to place fan-favorite supporting character Ranger Sandy at the edge of the starting quadrant. We hoped this would gives us some time to navigate the dense terrain but the Killer kept appearing near the teens due to rolls on the Jump Scare and Fright Token tables.

Supporting characters are the Killer's priority targets, such that during this session the Killer was always trying to get to Ranger Sandy way back past Holden's VW. Even so, the Ethereal Visage has a 10" area attack that automatically hits. So the teens were just about always caught in that area attack but very rarely suffered the Killer's secondary melee attack.

Despite the slow going and relentless area attacks, Seth and Denise finally got close enough to Alice Grace to free her from the trap and so began the slog back to Holden's VW.

The combination of scenario and terrain layout gave us little incentive to split up either heading out into the woods or retreating back. This was fortunate as the damage inflicted by the Killer's area attack was fairly tightly balanced against the teens' capacity to heal themselves and one another. Rather than feeling like we were being stalked by an 80s slasher film antagonist, however, it was a bit closer to being buffeted by a heavy downpour of particularly caustic acid rain while applying Band-Aids.

Doug suggested that, cinematically speaking, we were not being attacked by a single monster but rather a whole band of restless ghosts. My own impression was that, if this were a horror film, the backstory would have to be that Ranger Sandy had killed a serial killer years ago whose spirit returned this very night to take revenge ... and the teens just happened to get caught in the middle. True to form, the Killer did finally slay Ranger Sandy on the last turn. But everyone else, including poor Alice Grace, survived.

The Fiend of Stirbruck

 A trio of strangers filed into the alehouse. A tall man mantled with shaggy, matted fur led the pack, sly and self-assured as a wolf stalking sheep. His youthful countenance seemed mismatched with the grey streaked through his unruly mane. A graceful minstrel whose bright crimson cloak jingled with silver bells all but pranced after him, half-smirking at the villagers staring back. Such simple folk had rarely seen the like of him, to be sure. And stomping up behind them was some manner of priest, or so it seemed from the heavy talisman dangling under his forked beard: the gleaming Hammer of Sigmar!

Laying eyes on that blessed symbol should have reassured the mistress of the house. In better circumstances, strangers as well-armed as these (for each wore their steel openly) would scarcely find any welcome in sleepy Stirbruck. Even now, the alewife strained to manage a smile as the wolfish man silently drew up to the crackling hearth and the minstrel jangled off merrily to some comfy nook, unslinging his lute. The priest, meantime, paced up and down the floor. Suddenly, he addressed everyone, yet no one in particular, in a voice as clear as church bells. "We have heard about your recent troubles."

"Sir," the alewife answered, for the priest's tone had cut the silence with a sharp, accusatory edge. She came out from around the serving counter, fretting with her apron. "Sir, if you have heard the ... rumors then have pity on us." The minstrel chuckled softly while tuning his instrument; it made her shudder. Everything about that fellow was out of place in the cursed village. On the other hand, the tall man watching the fire as if mourning over his true love's grave was the perfect reflection of Stirbruck's despair. She wondered what tragedy, or horror, had silvered his sable locks.

"Pity? Oh yes, good lady," the priest boomed, breaking her out of reverie. He brandished a hammer in each of his giant fists. "This one," he explained "is called Pity." Her face contorted into a snarl a second before a hammer blow caved it in, even as the rest of her still lurched forward to attack. "And this one is called Mercy," the blood-spattered priest continued, grinning. His companions had already drawn their blades. "Now let us hear your confessions."

The hunter's grisly work continued as the sun sank ever lower. They learned what they needed to root out Stirbruck's affliction: A vampyr was nesting in the cemetery and its thralls in the village fed it unwary travelers. Its increasingly ravenous hunger terrified the villagers to the point of locking it in the mausoleum of some long-forgotten nobility. They secured the charnel prison with three mechanisms hidden among the tombstones. The hunters marched off to the cemetery under the rising moon as the alehouse burned to cinder behind them, its former patrons having received absolution.

Don't Look Back!

Autumn is the perfect season for fleeing in terror from a homicidal maniac in Don't Look Back! from Black Site Studios.

Craig and I played the first scenario (in the first edition rulebook). It is a very straightforward "run across the board without getting killed" affair. Two factors made the scenario easier than intended: (1) we used a 3x3 rather than 4x4 play area and (2) I forgot the scenario rule that characters take 1 Terror Token per turn after leaving the starting quadrant. Nonetheless, the game was great fun with plenty of tense moments.

Alice, Denise, Holden, and Max were hanging out at the soda counter of the diner. Four stereotypical teenagers looking for something exciting to do on a Friday night. Max had scored some beer. Alice was going on and on about ouija boards. Holden's van had a full tank of gas. And Denise suggested partying in the abandoned house where those murders happened years ago.

Denise:    You're not afraid are you, tough guy?

Max:     N-no way! It's just ... that old place is a real dump.

Holden:    Trespassing. Stupid idea, if you ask me.

Alice:    C'mon, it'll be so cool. We could contact the beyond!

In a booth across the dining room, Deputy Sandy listened to the kids plan their evening from behind a copy of the local newspaper. The front page headline read "Town Remembers Unsolved Murders Ten Year Later". She folded the paper and watched the kids pile into Holden's van, shaking her head.

12 AM.

The kids were staring at each other over a tree stump, faces lit by the lantern Max snatched up when they bolted out of the abandoned house moments before.

Max:    We should never have messed with that ouija board!

Alice:    I thought ... it was just a game ...

Denise:     Why won't any of these people answer their doors?

Holden:    We have to get back to the van. It's the only way.

The kids needed to get from the top left corner of the play area to the bottom right, where they had parked the van in the driveway of the abandoned house.

In DLB, a character must make a Jump Scare Test if they pass within 2 inches of area terrain during their movement. We counted houses, bushes, and cars as area terrain for this purpose.

Holden jumped the fence of the side yard where the kids started to get into the road, away from any area terrain. Ironically, he triggered a Jump Scare when passing within 2 inches behind the blue car and triggered all the Fright Tokens to move toward him.

As a result, the other kids tried moving behind the house to avoid the Fright Tokens. Alice, Denise, and Max ended up moving pretty slowly because of Tap On The Shoulder results on the Jump Scare table. This result pulls the closest character into B2B with the active character, including pulling them back from where they just moved. 

On Turn 3 (of 12), the Killer showed up. We randomly generated a Killer with damage reduction, regeneration, and a skill debuff aura. He appeared on a Fright Token in front of the abandoned house, appropriately enough. But his M.O. had him teleport within 6 inches of the most players, which ended up being between the houses across the street:

The first in a series of lucky rolls resulted in the Killer failing to hit his would-be victim Denise, who slipped away after Alice distracted him. Holden proceeded down the street and managed to hit the Killer with his shotgun through the picket fence after Denise scampered over.

Before Max could run away, a Jump Scare put the Killer right behind him. But this was also fortunate as it meant the Killer could not attack that turn.

On Max's next activation, he Stumbled Away without tripping and used a Cell Phone he had found on the first turn to summon Deputy Sandy between him and the Killer. The deputy apparently decided to keep a close eye on these youngsters tonight after overhearing them talking in the diner earlier.

The Killer dispatched Sandy immediately. Fortunately, none of the kids witnessed her grisly end and so avoided taking Terror Tokens. The kids sprinted down the street toward the van and, hopefully, safety. Alice investigated a Point of Interest on the front porch of one of the houses and found an Assault Rifle. But fighting this particular Killer did not feel like an effective plan. Better to flee.

Denise made it to the driveway of the abandoned house, while Holden covered them with his shotgun. Before Alice and Max could get there, the Killer appeared again but, on another lucky roll, did not make it B2B with Denise. Alice and Holden both shot at the Killer with little effect. Denise used her Cell Phone to summon ... Deputy Sandy!

In classic horror movie fashion, a character we thought was dead returned at the crucial and most dramatic moment. The Killer, again, immediately dispatched our brave intercessor (this time causing everyone but Max to take Terror Tokens) but Denise was able to use her other two actions to pass an Awareness Test to end the game.

With gunshots and screams echoing through the darkness and Denise frantically waving her hands on the side of the highway, it's no surprise that someone pulled off the road to investigate. Caught in the beams of the headlights, a huge masked figure stood over a prone and motionless body. The figure turned toward the car menacingly before taking a hesitant step backward, spinning on its heal, and sprinting off into the shadows faster than anything natural.