Dystopic: Cover Stories and Tokyo's Death

Outpost Conversation

Nice (their Devil handler) makes the final offer on the third day and offers both full membership and an associate position and explains that there will be a probationary period of one year or Blue Clearance, whichever comes first.  She points out that each host was chosen because their affiliations are unlikely to clash with Prometheus goals.  Whatever their choice, she will deliver to them gathered research on their deaths after an additional two weeks spent re-engaging with their lives.  The three options she grants them are:

• Membership: They will be given objectives and expected to fulfill them to the best of their ability.  They are expected to remain members for an indefinite period of time although it is easier to leave during their probationary period before they learn too much classified information.  They are allowed some license to disseminate low classification material to their Associates on a need to know basis.  They are granted greater access to information and are more likely to be re-summoned out of the Pit if they are slung back there.
• Associate: They work alongside the members and are granted access to information that they need to know in order to fulfill their objectives.  If they are particularly useful, they may be re-summoned out of the Pit.  They are more employed by Prometheus on a contractual basis but are given less support and less access to data.
• Friendlies: There is no consistent relationship between Prometheus and Friendlies but to the two must remain on good terms with each other.  Or, rather, the Friendlies must remain on good terms with Prometheus.  They are allowed to go about their lives and may be approached very occasionally.  Due to the investment made in drawing them out, if they turn against Prometheus than they will be hunted down and punished.

Leningrad considers the situation deeply and decides that if his loyalty to Prometheus is tested by his own organisation than he will be screwed anyway - giving his organisation information freely and perhaps even attacking Prometheus if asked.  Therefore, he might as well take what Prometheus can give him as it will be more likely that he can even find the organisation with their resources.  He becomes a member.

Nomad 6 is used to following orders and likes the Prometheus perspective of stopping societies that are causing atrocities and protecting fledgling societies whose differences may show a new way of doing things.  Tokyo joins up for her own enigmatic reasons, likely because they are powerful, resourceful and offer purpose and companionship.  They become members.

London feels it would clash with the oath he took to King and Country and so he became an Associate.  Cue plenty of jibes and peer pressure from the group (not from Nice) for him being an Associate and therefore not granted access to certain things.

Miami's player wasn't there.  I'll have to find out what his decision was and go from there.

She encourages them to take Dallas with them though warns them that as an unidentified creature it’s important for them to be aware that he’ll likely be a weirdness magnet.  However, he’s also well-schooled in books and would make a good employee as far as 14-year-olds go.

At first, all she says about Dallas is that he is of a kind kidnapped by strange entities and mutated using the entity's powers but that his kind are generally harmless and keep to themselves.  When the group enquire about the entity's nature, she says it's classified.  London asks if they're angels and points out that as they were taken to another world it would be worth knowing more.  Nice states that she can't be sure as she doesn't know where they were taken.  London gets 7 successes to Send Vision to show her twenty one seconds of the location like its a short commercial. 

Nice hesitates and then explains that this is highly classified information and the Luciferan Command, in particular, are trying to keep it close to their chests due to the risk of Fallen rushing off and making fools of themselves.  Yes, the evidence supports the idea that many were angels that have somehow become this Other World but perhaps not all Fae necessarily are angels.  She also points out that there's likely to be no more than a few thousand Fae, perhaps ten thousand in all, and that begs the question what happened to the other several hundred million angels that survived the War.

Nice explains that East Coast America have grown quite fond of certain occult texts and other important data and that while a lot of powerful people contact bookhounds to do their dirty work they don't tend to pay attention to them otherwise.  She’ll explain a potential official cover to bring them all together:

·         Miami has been a bookhound for some time although he was too busy with family issues to run his own book store and now wishes to settle down to a gentler life to recover from his wife’s murder. 

·         During his forays trying to locate the right book, he employed the assistance of Nomad 6. 

·         London has a dual layer cover.  He is a spy with British Intelligence (paperwork is all sorted out) whose cover is an official bookhound from the British Museum who is trying to get a hold of a number of antiquities in books.  Yes, he is an ex-police officer who was discharged after sustaining multiple stab wounds on a routine patrol but that’s because the Brits think America so ungodly and dangerous that they won’t risk sending their academics.

·         Leningrad is an unpaid Russian dock worker who is here on a forged temporary working VISA and is basically employed to carry heavy things and is paid on a pittance or else he’ll be reported to Immigration.  If anyone looks too deeply, or if it is helpful, he is an ex-military Russian dissident brought in for military considerations.

·         Tokyo is a Japanese exchange student who is only 16-years-old.

·         Dallas is a cousin to Nomad 6 who successfully applied for an East Coast residence due to Nomad 6's newfound +1 status.

Nice also explains their deaths although she requests that they do not attempt to locate their murderers for two weeks to ensure that they finish adapting to society.  They will be granted information concerning their case files at the end of those two weeks.  She will explain how they died:

·         Tokyo.  Suspected sabotage resulting in the company helicopter crashing on a trip from Tokyo to Osaka.

·         Nomad 6.  Attacked by zombies, he tried to escape across a window sill and fell off the side of a six-storey ruin.

·         Leningrad.  Death by Cheiron’s Curse alleged to be a rapid rejection caused by poorly tested alloys.  His body was kept in storage for a few decades and was liberated from Chancy Corp, a subsidiary of a particular company.

·         London.  Slashed by some sort of sharp weapon during a routine patrol by an as yet unknown assailant.

·         Miami.  Murdered by a fraternity in Miami.

Nancy Visits Her Father

The team flies out to Tokyo to meet Nancy's father, Kurosawa, who is the CEO of Kurosawa Bio-Connects which is a corporation trying to reach mega-corporation status that is, as far as they go, relatively stand up compared to some of the competition.  They have a number of enemies since they secured a lucrative military contract with the Japanese government.

Firstly, of course, there is a strained reunion between Kurosawa and Tokyo alone.  Kurosawa seems to want to say something more but finds it difficult and Tokyo keeps trying to return to business rather than draw out the whole painful business.  Eventually, Kurosawa relents and invites in the others to discuss business.

Kurosawa has already received a basic report is eager to have someone in the rich Miami city to groom contacts under the radar and is intrigued by this bookhoud idea. 

Nice heads the discussion. 

She steps forward as a representative from the Ophidian News Branch in New York who is hoping to defeat Cheiron’s inroads into Miami through public exposure.  She explains that Tokyo’s chopper was downed and she had been kidnapped across to a facility just west of the American East Coast Wall but was released from her cell when a zombie containment section went down.  She was rescued by a contractor and undercover reporter, Nomad 6, who had landed to deliver regular cargo and who assisted Tokyo when she made her way out of the medical wing alive. 

Nice will also explain the book store cover as: “These days bookhounds are everywhere and surprisingly well-paid in the East Coast.  It would provide sufficient cover for people seeking data or other information.  Miami is our local bookhound who will be heading this front and ensuring that they can keep to their cover.  Leningrad will provide military support – he has experience as an ex-military Russian dissident.  London has been loaned by British Intelligence – you can check, if you like – to oversee the proceedings as we’re hoping this might be the final nail in the Cheiron coffin."

Kurosawa asks if Tokyo wants to do this and she tells him that she does.  From there, he explains that due to the media attention and the current financial fracas that surrounded the downed helicopter, he hasn't managed to make much headway with investigations.  He explains that they recovered the helicopter and have obtained information from the coroner's report.  He passes the toxicology report around as being particularly interesting.

Toxicology Report Summary Prop Below

To: [Redacted]

CC: [Redacted]

Date: [Redacted]

Subject: Toxicology Report Summary

The pilot (Sumako Koizumi) involved in the crash of helicopter TKI-746 was found to have ingested a strong morphine-based derivative that is thought to have been kept in a digestible capsule slipped inside his hotdog at a street vendor.  No signs of a capsule were found in his stomach.  This morphine-based derivative would have caused a quick descent into unconsciousness within 30 seconds of the capsule being digested.  The capsule would have taken between 2 to 3 hours to digest depending on how much he had previously eaten.  The only contents in his stomach were the partially digested remnants of the hotdog.

The morphine-based derivative would have caused drowsiness, dissociation, and confusion and probably ended in unconsciousness judging by Sumako’s 178cm and 72 kilogram frame.  It is therefore our expert opinion that the helicopter crash was caused by Sumako’s drug-induced state.  This doesn’t explain, however, why the emergency autopilot failed to engage to steady the helicopter and keep it in place.  It is recommended that mechanical sabotage also be investigated.

Kurosawa’s Mission

Today’s date is 21/07/2052.  The crash occurred on 09/07/2052.

Kurosawa directs them to an automatic hot dog stand that was set up near the hotel where his credits were traced to have been spent.  He wants Tokyo to hack the New Yorker Hotdog Stand and see if there is anything suspicious about it. 

He also offers the others a neural implant that will affect the linguistic center of their brains and allow him to speak and understand fluent Japanese (2 xp - basically an excuse to learn a language in a few hours).  Only Nomad 6 takes him up on the offer.  Miami might have also done so.  We'll find out when his player returns.

It is assumed that in the next section (which will be in a different blog post for simplicity's sake), Miami took a look at the downed helicopter's remains while the others took a look at the Hotdog New Yorker Stand.  That way they can cover more ground and it justifies why Miami naturally didn't do anything during the later sections of the session.

The Hunt: Vampire / Hunter Solo Game

During my halcyon days running a Vampire: the Requiem LARP I encountered many weird and wonderful PCs and generated some interesting NPCs of my own.  When the numbers of the LARPers started dwindling after two years due to natural selection (jobs, other interests, lack of time, etc.) and there just weren't enough new players to keep the numbers up, I had to consider whether I should turn it into tabletop or create a new campaign.  While the tabletop idea was interesting, the 6 or 7 players that turned up (normally about 5 during any particular session) didn't have characters that would work well together at all.  There was no central theme to make them hang out.

A couple years later, I figured out a way to do it in my Shadows Campaign but by then it was too late.  We'd already switched to a new genre (Demon) and a new player wasn't too keen on having to play a campaign where everyone else knew so much more than he did.  There was also the small issues of me having to play other people's PCs (*shudder* I'm no good at impressions) and everyone's experience points levels being quite different to each other.

Anywho, one of the characters from the LARP just didn't work as well as the others.  My fiance had three characters: Vinnie Celino (a tough Carthian Brujah with more reason and dignity than most of his bloodline who ended up prince), Seamus O'Baoill (a wild-eyed Ordo Dracul Kogaian and Vedma who alternately seemed mad due to his extra information and wise), and James Tyler (an Invictus Daeva vampire who hunted monsters in his spare time, was infiltrating the Invictus to make his prior nomadic lifestyle cushier and who belonged to a prestigious bloodline known as House Tyler which was basically my adaptation of the Zelany bloodline).

Guess which one didn't work in a LARP?

Funnily enough, James Tyler.  A lot of what made him fun (vigilante-style hunting) really clashed against the political court stuff (turning a blind eye) and much of his character complexity was washed out behind his carefully honed veneer that he kept up around court kindred.  While you could certainly get enough mileage out of the idea, it just didn't work as well as it might have done and the player considered retiring him at a few points.

I, however, was a fan of the concept.  I'm a big fan of X-Files, Supernatural and that old television series involving a vampire policeman who hunted folk down at night (can't remember what it was called) AND I'd had plenty of sociopathic WoD vampires for the time being.  I was willing to be a bit more flexible with the vampiric curse (it dampens your emotionality but doesn't remove all sincerity so long as you were careful) and the Tyler / Zelany weakness (spend a Willpower to enter a home uninvited for 10 minutes - making Daeva spend Willpower is fun) to reflect the investigative angle I was going for.

So after a few aborted attempts to lift off a solo game, I finally put one together that worked.

Enter The Hunt.  A game about a fledgling Daeva going on some wild journeys with his enigmatic sire, Peter Walsh, to clash with various supernaturals and perhaps take down some good old-fashioned human monsters in his spare time.  It begins in 1949 (one year after his Embrace) when he sets down in America and each adventure passes it forward an additional year.  I won't do write ups for all of his adventures or else this blog will end up all Actual Plays (well, it will if I write up Shaitan, The Hunt, Dystopic, Flashpoint, Harry Potter, and this new Tennja Bansho Zero campaign I'm in).

If you guys end up really keen I'll do up a few more than I usually would, however, as if I'm going to do Actual Plays they might as well be ones you're keen to read.

I'll do up an article later that shows the campaign summary (mostly dot points) and I'll link to that any particular Actual Plays I do as without a full set it might get confusing otherwise if I just rely on a label.

Hacking Mini-Game

Sometimes you just want to add a sense of urgency to hacking that can't be captured by a single dice roll.  You want to have a sense that there's a time limit that they have to adhere to and if they don't make it there'll be trouble.  You want to show off the pressure.  There they are.  Sitting at the computer terminal and trying to hack open the blast doors as enemies fire at them from the balconies and their friends try to provide covering fire by shooting back.  But what do you do?  How do you represent that?  Sure you could have them make a hacking round every turn and hope they slowly accumulate twenty successes in time.  That's one option.  But that method won't also cut it when the character is slowly hacking a terminal while their friends scout for clues.  How long should it take?  And how long can you reasonably expect the hacking player to simply watch the others?

You could introduce a mini-game.

I've started using Connect the Dots.

Okay, so not everyone would be keen on it but with some players it does work.  It gives them something tangible to do and with a bit of effort and cunning they can hack terminals faster than you might otherwise allow simply by joining the dots faster.  Just be sure to not impose it as a punishment.  Ask your players if they might be interested and if they are, give it go.  It won't be fitting in every situation but it is good on occasion.

Cyberpunk Thug Stats "Red Tiger Gang" (NWoD)

These thugs were found in the mouth of an alleyway in Cyberpunk Tokyo watching a hotdog vending machine for interlopers.  They were part of the Red Tiger Gang and were big fans of old school Kung Fu movies and old school American comic books preferring to rely on their martial arts (which is pretty decent) and flick knives, rather than guns.  One of the men has an augmented arm which adds +2 to Strength for any rolls involving that arm.  The others have no augmentations.  Generally they earn money leaning on stores for protection money and selling drugs and prostitutes on street corners that they violently protect from other gangs.  They wear a vivid red quite visibly and wear sneakers from a brand that puts tigers on them.

Attributes For A Red Tiger Gang Thug
Intelligence: 2, Wits: 2, Resolve 2

Strength: 3, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3 (one man has a +2 Strength)

Presence: 3, Manipulation 2, Composure 1 (one man has 2, the others have impulse control problems)

Skills: Computer 2, Craft 1, Science 1, Athletics 2, Brawl 2 (Grapple), Larceny 1, Weaponry 2, Intimidate 3, Persuasion 1, Socialize 1, Streetwise 3 (Territory, Drugs), Subterfuge 3
Merits: Iron Stomach, Kung Fu 3, Allies 2 (Red Tiger Gang)

Willpower: 3 or 4

Initiative: 3 or 4

Defense: 2 (4 if suffering a -2 penalty for a Defensive Attack)

Speed: 10

Size: 5

Weapons/Attacks

Type Damage Test pool

Grapple 6

Kung Fu Strike 6 (+1 with knuckle dusters and -1 to target's armor)
Switch knife 5 dice (+1 knife)

Health: 8

Armour: 1 versus bashing attacks

Split Parties Made Easy

The words every Storyteller loathes to hear: “All right, so we have a plan.  We’re going to split up.  Zephrox and Anaphriel will go to the mall and look for witnesses.  Zahaviel, Ishad and Zaphrox want to go over to the suspect’s house to search it.  Jhoriel will hit the books.  This way we’ll waste less time....”

Waste less in character time, maybe.

There’s a lot of out of character time that gets wasted in split parties through summarising what happened before, transitioning between the swaps, dealing with out of character comments from the neglected half when they spill over into out of character conversation with those currently in action, regaining the neglected half’s attention and otherwise keeping your own head together.

So how to deal with it?

First, consider any players who aren’t involved in the game at the time to be neglected even if they’re happy with the situation.  Just like neglected kids, they’ll get bored quickly and start doing other things that may even be disruptive (like chit chat that lures in active players).  This doesn’t mean they want to be disruptive or problematic.  They likely keenly want to be helpful.  It’s just hard to ask a group of people who came for a game to sit and twiddle their thumbs for an unknown length of time.

So here’s some things to make it work.

Keep it snappy.  If you swap from one side to the other within five minutes, apathy won’t set in and the players will have to be on their toes ready for you to come back to them.  The quick pace means you can swap away the moment they start discussing their plans or predicament and their own conversation may continue in character when you cut to the other group.

Treat it like a down time.  Maybe there doesn’t need to be conversations played out between the various individuals.  Rather than having the characters go through the suspect’s house room by room you could just describe the house, find out how they’re breaking in (jotting down any clues THEY leave behind), and making them roll to see what clues they find.  Then you simply deliver them the clues in paper form (Hey Presto!) and return to the other side to quickly summarise their encounters and pass out what they overhear.  This is a great option where pacing is at a premium and where they’re not getting involved in key scenes.

Get the Nothing To Do Players to help.  Okay, so they’re not going to be prepped and briefed to do something complicated (more than likely) and some players just aren’t comfortable with running NPCs on the fly.  However, if Zephrox and Anaphriel split up to question different witnesses, you might be able to get Jhoriel’s player to stone wall Zephrox with a bored conspiracy theorist while you give Anaphriel the information through another NPC.

Write the clue information down.  Not just props but what those props mean.  This can also cut down on the “What she said....” that inevitably follows when you explain the meaning behind all of that laboratory apparatus.  If you can write it down and pass it to the player in question you can kill some time with them explaining it all in character while you swap to the other side of the split party.

Keeping them in separate rooms helps ... ish.  The neglected players will probably drop out of character the moment you leave the room even if there’s more in character discussion to be had.  It also makes it more painful to swap between the two groups as you have to bodily move yourself and any information and that can take time.  You also might not have two spaces.  Still, if there’s likely to be a large chunk of time spent between transitions or if you have secret information to deliver to one group this is often best.

At the very least, shuffle them around the table bodily so that those who are in the separate teams are sitting next to each other.  That way they’ll disturb people less as they won’t have to talk over and around people to discuss things with their own team members.  Making them move themselves and their sheets every time they split the party might well make them more judicious about doing it.

If the mall run is going to lead into a mini-adventure all of its own and the search of the suspect’s house will take barely any time at all, try to give them in character reasons why it’d be best to go to the mall together.  Give them Idea or Intelligence rolls or a gut instinct that it would be a bad idea.  There’s also nothing wrong with reinforcing this OOCly: “The mall will take a lot of time and some of you will be bored if you continue with this plan.  Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?”

If you have a co-Storyteller and a really good map with descriptions of areas you could deal with split parties quite well in the modern era even if they’re both in the same building.  A smart phone could let you easily and relatively covertly message them to let them know when a clue has been picked up or if there is a noise they would hear from the other side.  The players won’t know if that scream came from a colleague or someone else.  You don’t necessarily have to track which room they’re in unless they’re there for quite some time as you can always pretend that they just missed each other.  In character time and out of character time never quite match up as it takes longer to describe a corridor than to see it.

So there you go.  A bundle of ideas.  Hopefully you’ll be less perplexed and anxious when your players split up on your next time.

Next week I’ll do a post on how players can help during a split party to make it as painless as possible.

Double Checking Music Playlists

Have you ever sat down to a nice game and put on your playlist only to realise that particular song changes tempo midway through?  Or that those two melancholy songs are melancholy in a very different way that clashes against each other but might not have been noticeable if there was a song in between them to break it up?  I certainly have.

So how can you deal with this and ensure it doesn't happen again?

I'm sorry but you're really just going to have to listen to those hour of sombre music all in one sitting. 

This can be a problem if you have an epic four hour soundtrack although in that case you should be all right to section it up as the first few songs don't need to blend into a song that comes up two hours later.  Just make sure that you re-listen to the last two songs before you go over the next section of the sountrack.

The other issue is if you do scene-specific music as you will then need to do this on a weekly basis.  What I would suggest here is that you re-use music or keep some playlists aside as location music.  Why not put on the same music each time they go home or to the police station or library?  You can also keep some of the soundtracks as Mood Theme music for when you don't have much time but you know you want it to be haunting or exotic.

Bear in mind that if you're being scene-specific you could just loop the same song over and over again if it's a relatively innocuous song or if the scene is likely to be relatively short.  This will certainly cut down on the amount of listening you have to do as you'll only need to hear the whole song once.

Generally, though, when listening to the music you need to be paying attention to it but that doesn't mean you can't do other things while doing so.  Obviously watching a movie or playing a videogame is to be avoided as the sounds will clash and you'll get distracted.  However, you could do the dishes or other cleaning in that room or do game preparation that doesn't take a lot of brain power such as selecting miniatures or cutting our props.  You could always listen to them while making yourself dinner as well.

If you're really rushed, it's generally not a big deal so long as you know the CDs well enough to know there's not a crashing crescendo midway through that tranquil piece (unless that's what you're after).  Each song doesn't have to blend seamlessly into the next.  Most players won't be paying that much attention to it anyway which is why you can generally get away with looping songs in roleplaying games and people won't complain so long as it doesn't have lyrics.

Game Translation: Silent Hill Downpour

Well you've waited long enough so I figure I should actually get around to giving you this Game Translation.  Downpour is a really nifty game and a great addition to the Silent Hill series in my opinion.  It has some genuinely creepy and tense moments that had me sitting on the edge of my seat and there's far less of a focus on random encounters and a lot more time wandering around hoping not to run into one.  I wasn't so much of a fan of the mines section which went on for a bit too long in my opinion but the rest really felt up-dated.  Most of the side quests were disturbing and creepy though there was an occasional shout out (an easter egg you can find includes a poorly rendered room from Silent Hill 4) and arcade-like side quest that didn't really feel like they belonged there (the bank side quest).

The first trick to capture the feel of this particular place is to consider weather patterns and how they might relate to your particular characters.  Silent Hill 1 used fog and snow that was perhaps intended to give a sense of loss, purity, and being lost as Harry Mason was relatively guiltless and he had a mission of pure intent.  Silent Hill 2 that was perhaps used to show the confusion, dissociation and amnesia that plagues the main character: James Sunderland.  The other Silent Hills largely continued with the fog not only to cover graphical sins but to also hide the monsters in the distance.

However, you don't have to include, or focus, on fog to add to your game.  It might even be better if you drew the focus elsewhere.  In my play-by-post, Welcome to Silent Hill, there's been a number of different environmental effects and when the different characters cross paths they often come into a shared world that is somewhere in between the two or otherwise simply neutral and foggy. 

Cecilia - whose suffering from her daughter drowning while she was busy dealing with a suffocating work load - had to deal with energy sapping cold rain that ended up flooding the town. Cole has to deal with giant chasms, quakes, tremors, and piles of bodies that represent his rage and violent history. Murray has to deal with a little bit of everything but pockmarking seems to come up a fair bit (with holey walls and small tunnels or vents to crawl through) to represent his voyeurism and the fact that he almost lives vicariously through the sins of others (being otherwise clean himself). Lily is in a daylit fog which is kind of how she lives her life. The streets to Charles are cloaked in a thick miasma of soot that clogs the streets just like the mess that is his life that clouds his eyes and tries to choke the life out of him. Jack has to cope with everything but mostly his place is foggy and run down. Hope you're enjoying it.

Have fun with the environmental effects.  In Downpour the streets are largely devoid of monsters but over time the streets begin to glisten wetly and then a light rain falls.  Most monsters that are more aggressive begin to show up.  If you stay out on the streets, the rain intensifies and then there is the odd clash of thunder but mostly its the flash of sheet lightning that looks somewhat like the flash of a headlight or spotlight across your screen (which connects to the whole prisoner angle of the main character).  You need to take shelter inside for the storm to clear.  This is all far more atmospheric and new as well as being more personalised to the character then yet another blandly foggy street.

Don't get me wrong, though.  The streets do begin foggy.

While Murphy Pendleton can certainly hold his own in a fight, the enemies are quite hard to kill requiring you to both block and attack numerous times.  This is easy to do.  Just double the enemies hit points but don't make them particularly lethal, generally.  He picks his weapons from the debris - ranging from bricks to sticks to shovels and the occasional gun.  These weapons deteriorate over time before falling apart.  Simply give each weapon a different damage bonus, perhaps even a few special effects (WoD: Armories has a few suggested), and a certain number of use before they break.  If you make up a series of cards with this information, it'll be far easier to keep track of as the players can mark off their uses with pencil and then pass it in when it's done.

Downpour is also not afraid to throw unkillable antagonists against you.  There's a ball of light that saps your health and seems to tear the skin and cloth off your body (or warp space so that it is both on and ripping off your flesh) and you have to run the gauntlet, avoiding traps, knocking down cages filled with quivering bodies, and otherwise just getting the heck out of there.  The fact that it's a ball of light and has no physical form was also a great clue that I really shouldn't go near it - especially since you can warp space around it.  This is an excellent cue for your more action-oriented players that this isn't something they're expected to tangle with.  Some players will try their luck against solid enemies, reasoning that enough damage and lucky rolls might win the day, but they won't try their luck against something they can't hit unless they're feeling particularly obstinate - in which case you have bigger problems.

That's the last time I'll accept a blind date in Silent Hill.

The side quests are, all in all, nicely done.  There are classic haunted houses, terrifying moments when music brings up the past, horrifying revelations of just where those ribbons tied to poles mean and where they lead, and explorations of basements that lead to fleeing for your life before a horde of monsters.  Side quests that are short, sharp and sweet, can make a welcome change for players in a survival horror who might need to feel some sense of completion rather than the constant roaming through puzzles and locations with little to no discernible progress.

Just take a moment to look at your side quest to see if it isn't something out of a more action-packed arcade-style game or dungeon crawl.  There shouldn't be a series of monsters that you need to fell to pick up a first aid kit nor should there be a series of rooms that each have their own monster inside.  Focus on terrifying revelations, simple but interesting puzzles, and the occasional shock.  Some of these side quests might not have any monsters or other confrontations and instead simply provide more clues as to the world they have found themselves in.

Lastly, as always, think deeply into your player characters when designing monsters, developing NPCs, and thinking up puzzles.  Do they really need an icon of rape and masculine dominance such as Pyramid Head to enter their world?  If not, don't include it.  The NPCs should highlight an aspect of the character as their worlds wouldn't collide and they would never meet if there was nothing that called to the other.  A player character who committed industrial espionage might come across a suicidal individual who eventually kills themselves over guilt toward their accidental actions towards a trusted loved one.  A player character who ignored their depressed wife until she slumped into an asylum might meet a manic depressive who is desperate for love and attention.  Someone with anger management issues might just come across a person who pushes their buttons.

Silent Hill is a crucible.  It doesn't lead you gently to atonement.  It might not even want you to atone.  It just wants to give you a shot at it.  It will bloody you, bruise you, put you through the wringer, and maybe, just maybe, you'll have enough in you to crawl out of that hell hole and back into the real world.  You won't be stronger when you get out.  You may even be broken inside.  But you will be wiser.

Silent Hill bears more of a resemblance to Jigsaw's rationale in Saw rather than a vengeful angel.  It tests you.  Maybe you walk out of there.  Maybe you don't.  Maybe you deserve it.  Maybe not.  Sometimes you aren't even the protagonist.  You're just someone else's test.

Bear all that in mind and you should have one epic Silent Hill game.

A campaign based around Silent Hill: Downpour, or including elements of it, should appeal to Explorers as there is a story in pretty much every place you enter and its fascinating to simply see how a person's psychology and the sins of the past will be reflected in the world around them.  Investigators will be similarly fascinated by these stories and will make a point in trying to figure out the various details of it.  They may want to pause in further explorations just to make sure that they've tried every door and learned all they could about a situation that might have led to this particular moment. 

Communicators will probably get a kick out of seeing their character's psychology through the eyes of Silent Hill as well as seeing how their characters will react to each crucible.  As they're most motivated by exploring their own character's psychology, and to a lesser extent, the psychology of those around them, expect a very realistic series of encounters.  They may decide to hole up someplace.  They may fall apart quickly.  This is fine.  So long as they're having fun this shouldn't be an issue.  You can always find a way to motivate people to leave in surreal horror or even let them fall to the threat if that is likely.  They can then pick up another character and explore that one's mind.

Action Heroes will generally want a more hi-octane ride than the foreboding atmosphere but the fact that you need to kill the odd monster in Silent Hill and run away from others should appeal to them.  Generally they prefer being kick ass and untouchable but if they're a fan of horror they might enjoy exploring a more vulnerable side to the combat characters they more often play.  I have a dedicated Action Hero player who really loves surreal horror because the pacing is fast and fluid, there's always something to see and do, and the game rarely bogs down into finicky issues of consequences and obeying authorities like the Masquerade or hiding from police.

Tacticians will probably like this style of game the least as they innately try to find some sort of goal to work towards and will get frustrated by the meandering path they will need to take to get there.  Your best bet is to simply give them a number of rather clear objectives that can arise organically from the gameplay.  Rather than the Silent Hill 2 style where you randomly try to open up doors and then you're in an apartment building and you mosey around for a bit and then you're following a little girl out of a hospital and into a nightclub, you should encourage the Downpour style.  Murphy wants out so first he needs to get into town via the mines and through his journey he overhears a radio DJ so he goes to meet the DJ who gives him directions to a possible out and so on and so forth.  While there is still a bit of a ramble, there are also clear objectives.

It also helps to reinforce to the player that they should try taking their hand off the steering wheel and relax into the flow.  If they go toward the hospital, then the hospital was where they were meant to go all along.  That way they don't feel stupid trying to plan out where they're meant to go and realise that they just need to do whatever they need to do and deal with what is directly in front of them.

You can find the trailer for the game over here. If you'd like to read the sort of tropes that Silent Hill: Downpour used, you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation, you have a choice of these: Left for Dead, In Cold Blood, Project Zero, Gears of War, Dracula: Origins, Realms of the Haunting, Silent Hill: Downpour, Castlevania 64, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or In Cold Blood. If no one picks anything by next week, it'll be Castlevania 64.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.