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THIS GAME IS BROKEN AND RUBBISH! DO NOT PLAY! 
However, by all means, do mine its shattered carcass for traces of useful ore
--Oreso 17:48, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

WIP!

Please add or enhance Scenario Meat.
Please add or enhance Character Questionaires.
The Start section is definitely unfinished.
The Therapeutic Tools section is probably unfinished. Does it make sense? And add more!

concrete starting situation generated by text madlibbed by questionnaire answers.

Introductions

The Fortune Teller was dead. Her entrails were wrapped around the stage's light fixtures and her blood was scratched in arcane symbols on the theatre's walls. But this wasn't the first time you'd seen her. Can you tell me what she told you, just before she left that night to die?

Influences

I have little time for preparing mysteries in RPGs in the traditional sense. Fixing down sequences of events, doling out clues, revealing things slowly. But I love horror mystery stories.

The stories of HP Lovecraft showed me that the terrible horrors that lurk just beyond our imagination cannot and should not be statted out. They are more terrifying if we know less about them.

David Lynch let me know that horror doesn't have to make sense to be evocative. Unanswered questions and ambiguity can be fruitful (in moderation).

Penny for my Thoughts (and Ooooshie's cool leadership) showed me that you could do stories which are surprising, quick and meaningful, using only a handful of random but evocative ingredients (memory triggers) and involving everyone at the table. And the power of a metafiction to enhance immersion.

Trollbabe (and Al's masterful improvising) showed me that you can and should take almost anything a group of players will throw at you and craft them into meaningful whole on the fly. Just through basic techniques of reincorporation, asking leading questions, listening to ideas, taking notes, etc.

Dread (and Elaine's evocative GMing) showed me that you can use mechanics to have real tension and suspense in a game. But you still need powerful fiction if you want more than a cheap thrill. I use the Dread mechanics here.

Vital Statistics

This game is designed to allow the players to tell each other a horror mystery story, and experience something of the fear and tension its characters will feel, without much preparation and without any pre-plotting.

This game is for between 3 and 6 players. One player will take the role of the Invigilator and any unimportant characters (a kind of GM role), and each of the other players will take the role of an important person caught up in the events of the story; either actively investigating it, the victim of those events, or something inbetween.

It is designed for one-shot play. The whole thing shouldn't last more than five hours from start to finish, and three to four hours would be more usual.

Preparation

Before play begins there are three decisions that must be made; the setting, the tone and the mechanics.

For the setting, I had in mind a mundane modern world, where the taint of dark forces and mystical powers is only slightly apparant. I should mention that the names and things I've used in the Scenario Meat are probably slightly British. But I imagine with a little modification the story could take place in, for example, the early Twentieth Century, or in a world with more overt paranormal activity. It would only take a new set of character questionnaires to change the protagonists into Victorian psychic detectives or overly curious FBI agents.

The tone and themes of the game are also slightly variable, but by preference, I focus on the darker psychological side to the characters. External struggles will often be related to personal issues, either directly or by analogy. Violence is terrible and often only implied, not explicit and inconsequential. Things probably won't end in either unreserved joy or terrible despair, but something messy inbetween. A comedic game could possibly still be engaging, but my worry is that humour would dissolve too much tension. I prefer nervous laughter.

Lastly, for the mechanics I recommend using Dread. The tension from using the Jenga Tower fits in so very well, and the idea of using questionnaires to define characters was lifted straight from there anyway. The Dread Quick Reference is available for free and is all that should be required to play this game, but I do recommend purchasing the full rules for some great general advice on running horror.

However, if you genuinely cannot have fun with a Jenga Tower in front of you, then I suggest Cthulhu Dark; a very light, elegant and unobtrusive system that is also freely available.

The Invigilator's Section

Become the Invigilator

Since scaring fictional characters is impossible, your goal is to unnerve your players. Of course, don't be too extreme about this. You're still friends, right?

You are the Invigilator. This is not just a traditional GM role, but also a character (similar to the Computer in Paranoia or the Master in My Life with Master). As much as you can, keep in role in order to keep the player's immersed and on-edge. I would only break role in order to play NPCs or during explicit breaks in play.

Talk to the players in the Invigilator's voice. Stand over your players. Don't fuss by fetching materials and setting things up, instead politely ask other players to do your fussing for you. Let them know who is in charge, but subtly. You are not fair or impartial. Show bias when narrating or recapping previous events even while assuring the players that they can trust you.

Structure of the Session

The game will begin with directly reading and following the instructions from the Start section. This will introduce the Invigilator, teach the rules of the game, create the player characters, gather the scenario ingredients, and allow Play Proper to begin.

Once Play Proper has begun, you will prompt and guide events and cause the mystery to be revealed to the players. This will be partly through your own imagination, tying details together, reincorporating ideas and providing plot twists and surprises. But this will also be partly be from the players, in response to your questions or on their own initiative. Once the mystery is revealed to your satisfaction (but not necessarily to the satisfaction of your players), you may call the game to a close.

Do take a little time afterwards to talk about the story and the characters, but don't provide solid answers to any interesting ambiguity. What the player's invent to fill in those gaps will probably be more compelling.

This is a Therapy Session

Invigilator: "If it wasn't real, why did you run?"

Player: "I didn't! I jogged. A little. Just until I was a couple of blocks away."

Invigilator: "I think it might help us if we play this scene out. So. A shape skitters and clatters at the edge of your vision. Above, a street light flickers and buzzes before sparking and dying. A cold seeps up from the concrete."

Player: "... I run! Thinking to myself, this isn't happening, this isn't happening."

The game pretends to be a kind of therapy session for a group of possibly traumatised people. The Invigilator presides over this therapy session, and uses the metaphor of a roleplaying game to allow the characters to work through their trauma by recapping the events that led up to it.

If it is comfortable for everyone, a lot of the description at the table can be in the past tense. The Invigilator will ask about events in a character's past, and the player will respond with an account of what happened as if their character was recalling it and relaying to the group.

However, at any time, the Invigilator can ask the players to play or replay a scene as if they were there right now. In which case, the players can shift into a present tense actor stance, narrating as if they were describing events as they were happening to their character, and reporting speech directly and with feeling.

There is No Truth

Although some consensus about what is going on is absolutely necessary, the players do not have to agree completely. Treat everyone speaking as a potentially unreliable narrator. They could remember things incorrectly, their real memory might even be suppressed. They might be lying. They probably didn't see clearly to begin with.

For example, what one player considers an attack by an aetherial monster on their character might be interpreted by the others as that character's fit of madness.

As the Invigilator, do express an opinion, but any pretense that your opinion is impartial should be undermined. Occasionally show obvious unreliability and bias.

Do not use the Mechanics

Try not to instruct the players that they should use the mechanics at any particular point. Instead, the players should be trained to use them whenever they wish to take control of the fiction and their own character.

If a player narrates something that should require using the mechanics, simply describe how it fails and perhaps make a gesture to indicate it is the player's fault. Allow the player to rework the narration if and when they use the mechanics.

If you narrate something horrible happening to a player's character, keep adding more vicious details until that player uses the mechanics to resist. If a player refuses then they face the consequences. Perhaps make a comment about their weak will.

If a player elects to use the mechanics when you didn't think they needed to, always reward them anyway. Things will go in their favour or they can take slightly more control over a situation.

However, if you are dissatisfied with how the mechanics are being used, then simply take a short break to talk about them. You can even do this in the role of the Invigilator.

Therapeutic Tools

Why did you visit 17b Clarion Street? Why are you going to attack him? What did you think of her when she was alive? What did the theatre look like? Why couldn't you call the police then? Where did you sleep that night? Was this the first time you met him? Why do you live alone? Would you call yourself a bad person? Where did the trail lead?

Ask questions in a leading manner. Imply details in your question, and ask for the character's response. Fish for details that you want the player to invent. Ask the player to reveal secrets. Or make connections between details. Ask unfair and biased questions. Ask questions purely about what the character thinks of themselves, others and their situation. Take your time and listen to the answers.

Accept the answers. If it is appropriate, then the player's input should always be regarded as highly as your own. This is not to say it is the truth (as There is No Truth). Take those answers, even if they are not what you expected, even if they contradict your plans and preconceptions, even if you don't see where they will lead just yet. Accept the answers and use them. Using them will often mean asking more questions about them; clarifying things and placing them in context.

Reincorporate. Whether details from the scenario meat, or your own ideas, or input from the players, or ideas from the character sheets; write notes about these details and actively bring them into the story. Seriously, write them down. And then make them relevant during the game. Link them to other details. Tailor situations to resonate with them. Twist them. Exploit them. Even if you don't feel you need to, take the occasional break to run through the details you have written down and draw some more links between them and generate ideas on how to use them. Say it again: reincorporate.

Focus the action. Whatever is interesting, it happens to the player's characters or to someone they care about. Start at least some characters apart from others and do not force them together quickly, so that they can approach the mystery from different angles. Sometimes split the characters up, even. Do jump the narration ahead in time to get to where the action is. Do cut away from scenes on a cliffhanger, and perhaps only return to it when we discover another character's input will have interesting bearing on it. Divide your attention roughly equally, but do not be scared if events revolve around one or two characters, with other characters in a support role. Continue giving interesting opportunities for all characters.

Instead of just "the zombies attack the girl", we can have "the shambling shapes growl with rotten throats as they pound the girl into the concrete".

Be vivid. When describing things, always appeal to more than one sense. Not just how things look, but how they smell, sound and feel. Describe things intimately, as if right from a character's point of view. Even if you want to be brief, try not to use something's name to cut description short. If you feel comfortable, use gesture, tone, facial expression and other acting techniques to convey things. You can still be subtle about it.

A character is investigating a murder from 1972. As they sit down to read, immediately play the scene of that murder. Say, "It is 1972. Night. You are cold and alone. You can hear the killer approaching".

Use stories within stories. The players at the table are telling the story of a group of fictional characters who are in turn telling a story to each other about their shared past. Within that, if other stories are mentioned, play them through too. Especially if the character is psychic or mystical. And especially if the story is about something or someone psychic or mystical. Stories can come from books, reports, triggered flashbacks of memory, dreams, enchanted objects, told by other characters, and so on. Experience it vividly.

Death is a last resort. If the mechanics say a character should be dead, they can still be involved in the game. Although the dead cannot use the mechanics any longer, and so cannot help the mystery be solved, they could still complicate things in interesting ways. Most often, they are possessed or insane. Perhaps their spirit is bound somewhere, or they continue to act beyond death. Perhaps you give no indication that anything bad has happened, but it slowly becomes apparant that something is deeply wrong. Perhaps their actions from now on will always cause wicked effects. Ask leading questions to draw them to behave as you wish, and feel free to describe them, perhaps unwillingly, performing evil deeds. They can no longer resist.

Or perhaps death is just death. Especially if it is towards the end of the session. Obviously, while retelling their memories, the character will be describing their death long after the fact. This is no problem. Perhaps the rest of us are only imagining their presence. Perhaps this session happens beyond space and time. Or the Invigilator has reanimated them. Probably best not to say anything and let the players figure it out.

Scenario Meat

fig. 27

Introduce these ingredients as you like, whenever you like. Do not feel compelled to use them all, or to use them in a particular way. Combine them, split them, invert them, ignore them. They are here to give you, the Invigilator, inspiration so that you can make events in the story compelling without having to spend time before the game planning things that might not even be relevant.

In general, play with memory, time, space, death, coincidences, identity and expectations.

A fortune teller was killed last night in an old theatre. Her entrails were stretched and wrapped around the light fixtures. You were the last person to see her alive. You are the main suspect.

Matthew Seaward was killed in a ritual in 1972. The man in the photograph looks identical to you.

The ritual was unsuccessful. Or perhaps they only think it was.

An old lover reappears. He shouldn't be here. He did terrible things. He should be locked up.

There's a face that no one can remember, even as soon as you look away.

142 Maple Street. Ruins of an old nursing home. Burned down long ago, yet no one touches the site. Contradictory rumours.

The faint presence of a young man, Jamie Ewing, murdered. Pleading. Under a bridge, cold and dank. A rune etched into the concrete marks where the body fell.

You fumble at the lock of your door, fleeing in panic. Now your keys are not your own. Your hands are not your own.

You can no longer make any noise, even when you scream.

You see monsters everywhere, always behind, always in the distance, always walking by. If you look at them, they know and they come for you.

In 1997 a raving lunatic, Nathan Hartridge, electrocuted himself by sliding electrodes through his eyes and into his brain. The demons of his psychosis could only be warded away by electricity. The power fails and the lights go out.

There is no hate here. Only love.

Remembering the monster will summon them.

The phone rings. It speaks in your father's voice.

Shouldn't it be getting daylight by now?

How come no one can remember first meeting the Invigilator, or the previous therapy sessions?

You feel the the monster's long skeletal hand touch your shoulder. The doctor shakes you gently. "Are you alright? The blackouts are getting worse, aren't they? Can you remember where you are?"

Two characters met long before these events, but their meeting was coincidental and seemingly inconsequential. They only remember now that they realise it's significance.

The website's search function has predictive text. It knows what you want to know before you type it.

There is a complete contradiction between two character's accounts of events. Perhaps characters revealed to be in in two places at once. Or with incompatible attributes; such as being described as both tall and short. Or scenes play out with parallels but jarring differences. Do not explicitly explain why, only point out the problem.

The dust on the floor is marked with neat footprints. As she walks, her feet land in each footprint exactly, and as she steps away the footprint is gone. Her name is Mary and she was expecting you. She smiles. She forgets something as soon as she has done it. After a while, she has no idea who you are, only that you haunt her, and that she is scared and she demands that you go.

A child holds your hand. You don't know who it is, but you should.

You remember this moment has happened before. Or something like it. The people were different. You were younger. Braver? More foolish? Let us go back and replay it before continuing.

The archive official is a weathered old man called Joseph Little. He is amiable and understanding, but concerned for you. His archives of official records are complete. His real name is Josef Klein.

When you call the police, you get put through to a distressed call from a professional woman, Sally York, in a similar situation as you, also trying to call the police. Even if she realises you are not actually the police, she just wants to tell you, or anyone, what she knows. But she becomes more and more panicked and nonsensical. Records will show she suddenly disappeared last year, while making a phone call.

The monster is only visible to one person at a time. And never to its target.

The next victim, Richard Rowling, lives at Harrigate Hall. Isolated and out-of-town. No roadsign points there. Clean curtains flutter through the broken windows. He hates visitors. He makes an exception for one of you.

The doors are all deadlocked and bolted from the inside. No one is home.

On the first night of harmony nobody makes a sound
On the second night of harmony the damned shall be saved
On the third night of harmony only chaos will reign
On the fourth night of harmony the lost shall be found

A picture of a mystical rune. A picture of an ornate and cruel dagger. A picture of some vaguely Escherian non-Euclidian mess.

The Characters

You can find a PDF of the character sheets from here. Current version is 1.0

However, the questionaires are reproduced here for convenience.

Character 1

What is your name?
What is your gender?
In a few words, what is your greatest hope?
Why did you leave the police force?
What nickname do you use instead of your real name?
When was the last time you went on a date?
Why were you really thrown out of the police force?
What is your greatest fear?

Character 2

What is your name?
What is your gender?
In a few words, what is your greatest hope?
Who do you see in your dreams?
What is your occupation?
What lies do you tell to hide the things you know but shouldn’t?
How would things be different if you didn’t run?
What is your greatest fear?

Character 3

What is your name?
What is your gender?
In a few words, what is your greatest hope?
What trick do you use to make strangers comfortable around you?
Why are you ashamed of sleeping with your boss?
Who suffers whenever you cast a spell?
What precious item do you keep in your pocket?

Character 4

What is your name?
What is your gender?
In a few words, what is your greatest hope?
What school subject did you fail completely at?
What addiction do you hide from your friends?
What has kept you sleepless recently?
What did the fortune teller tell you?
What is your greatest fear?

Character 5

What is your name?
What is your gender?
In a few words, what is your greatest hope?
What career are you currently failing at advancing?
What are you recovering from and why is it taking so long?
What has kept you sleepless recently?
What did the fortune teller really tell your friend that only you understood?
Why are you fearless?

Start

Hello. I am your Invigilator for this session. How are we all today?

Before we begin, I must reiterate our two most important rules.

You can trust me.

You can trust each other.

Very simple rules. Say them back to me.

Already I can feel the trust in this room.

But I'm afraid, although those are still the most important rules, we will be using some extra rules for today's session. But don't worry about those just yet.

Would anyone like a drink?

I am now giving each of you a simple questionnaire. Don't worry, the questions are simple enough. Each questionnaire is identical, but I want your own answers. No conferring, please! This shouldn't take long, but take your time. When you are done, please hand the questionnaire back to me. Is that alright?

Hand the first questionnaire back unread. Spend a little more time, please.

Offer silent written feedback to each player in turn to finetune their questions.

Thank you for that.

Now I am handing out the additional rules for today's session. I'd like for someone to read them all to the rest of the group. Do we have a volunteer?

Please discuss the rules until you're all sure of them.

While the players are learning the rules, copy all the pertinent details from the questionnaires and begin to draw them together into some feasible and interesting shapes. Find the grabbiest point for a starting scene

When you are ready, call the table to order

Thank you. This exercise will help you. We shall go back there in our minds.

More to follow. Probably

Tales of Dread