For me, this is a short campaign, not a big massive game, but something that you can play when you want to play a horror based game for a little bit. You could certainly put this towards the end of a longer campaign, basically, survive this and meet the final boss, but you’d have to make whatever is causing the issue not play in the normal rules of the game, because you’ll probably have some higher level spell casters.

This game is about one last run, one last mission for a group of mid level characters, 5-12 range, where they know that they are doing, they aren’t experts, but they aren’t bad, and they, for a hook, have been brought in for a big score, one dangerous mission, Hell’s Run.

Hell’s Run is a shipping run up the coast of the continent, through an area where the veil between worlds is thinner and strange things happen. But the score of this mission is going to be worth it, it’s a retirement mission for everyone on the ship, including the captain of the ship, and have the players create the captain. Give them the parameters that this is someone that they all know and care about and let them create them and create a back story for them.

Immediately on the voyage things needs to start going wrong. Food spoils that shouldn’t have spoiled because it was packed wrong, a crew member becomes sick while another goes crazy, weird things are happening before they even get to Hell’s Run. But nothing so bad that they can’t complete the mission, this is still a driving factor for the Captain and for most of the crew, though some will want to mutiny, if they can do it, again, it’s retirement and fame. As they get further along, the disease should crop up again on a few crew members and something or someone, probably the first mate, should end up going overboard in the night and be lost at see, even though they are a veteran sailor and the weather was fine.

That first whole part is about building suspense and you can go as fast or as slow through it as you’d want. I’d recommend this being a couple sessions, that should build tension and kind of build in a claustrophobia. Have the players do things to try and cleanse or stop whatever is happening, and still have stuff happen. Have the crewmen say odd things and the Captain start to slowly and subtly change on them.

Then we get to Hell’s Run. It’s called that, obviously, because some malevolent force is on the other side of that veil, probably brought there to protect whatever the players are after by creating this treacherous sea lane.

This is where you get to have fun with it, it should be fairly obvious by now that there’s someone who is sabotaging the ship, and have that ramp up big time and make it even more obvious. More crew members getting sick, and while it doesn’t kill fast, it’s basically always fatal, and start rolling at the end of each session to see if a player character gets sick. If one does, just let that player know with a few details of how to play it and when to start showing it. And have the Captain go insane and possibly someone become possessed, as the DM, this is one of those times where it’s you against the players, kind of, you won’t shoot down a crazy idea still, but you’re going to make it hard for them and who knows if all of them will survive.

Now, have some fun with the horror elements. I’m not thinking, for the most part, of using random ghosts or stuff the players can fully fight. If there’s some tragedy in a backstory of a player, dead parents, whatever it might be, play with that for the horror elements. Give them things to fight that then disappear, give them monsters that make no sense, visions and the ship changing on them so one day the sails are white the next they’re read. All the potatoes turn into turnips that bleed, which might just be beets, but as much as it’s meant to be horrific, make it crazy and disturbing as well, all the while, slowly whittle down the crew, have them die in various ways, and do a lot of it off screen. Have the players find the weird stuff that leads them to a dead crew member, not witness it themselves.

Then when a player gets sick, see what the players can figure out. See how they react to the situation, see how they search for a solution. If they have someone who can cure a disease, let them, but this is a game taking place on a ship where things are going missing and being destroyed, healing a disease will work for some time, but eventually they’ll run out of components needed, unless there’s a Paladin, where, maybe play around with the rules of the disease, make it a curse instead or an alien entity in the body that needs a living host to survive.

Play this out for a handful of sessions and then reach the promised land with whatever crew there is left. With the Captain, if he’s still around after going insane and probably making some crew walk the plank or something like that. And I’ll leave it up to you if there’s a return voyage home. Maybe it’s a paradise they find on the other side and they decide to stay. Maybe they just make it through the weird visions and what’s known as Hell’s Run and find themselves on the river Styx and sailing into hell itself. Or they could do a voyage back, I’d probably not do that unless you’re planning on making it go even faster.

This game is meant to be dark, so warn your players ahead of time. I haven’t talked about it much because I tend to play with close friends who I know will let me know if I’ve gone too far, or we tend to keep it quite lighthearted, but there’s a concept known as the “X Card” basically, it’s an agreement that if something at the table, some role play or whatever it might be, is making someone uncomfortable, they can touch the X card (if it’s physical) or just say something like “End Scene” and the scene will end and the it’ll move onto the next thing, no questions asked. For running a horror game, there is some buy-in that things will make you uncomfortable at times, but definitely set-up an “X Card” of some sort for this game so players or DM always can move it along to a new scene, no questions asked.

Would you play in a game like this? Do you like elements of horror or strong horror themes in your games?

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When people play Chaotic Evil, they generally play it, since they are chaotic that they have a get out of jail free card. Basically, I’m the hero of my own story, therefore, I can do whatever I want and the DM will make it work out in the end. Much the mindset of the Chaotic Neutral character who is actually Chaotic Evil. So your Chaotic Evil character is going to go around stabbing people and generally causing as much trouble as possible, and you should get away with it.

In an evil based game, even, that mindset isn’t going to work. You’re going to have the law after you at some point in time. Someone like The Joker who just does bad stuff for the sake of it still gets beat up by Batman and then arrested. And that is likely to happen to your character as well. I think that The Joker is a fairly good example of what you might do as a Chaotic Evil character however.

Mainly, The Joker doesn’t go around stabbing everyone, even though he’s not above it. Instead he’s just trying to create as much havoc as possible, and when there is havoc, he feels like he’s succeeded. So, in an evil campaign, you can take it that direction by going for more and more chaos and destabilizing of an area, versus just leaving a trail of bodies in your wake. That doesn’t mean that you might not stab someone along the way, but it isn’t the modus operandi of a good Chaotic Evil character or of the Joker. If we look at The Dark Knight, we see how the Joker makes Batman make choices, but then lies about what the different options actually are, just to mess with Batman, that’s very chaotic evil.

Let’s talk quickly about what classes might make the most sense for a Chaotic Evil character. Again, most of them are going to work, with things like a Paladin or Cleric being the hardest to fit into there, and I think that a Monk or Druid would be tricky as well. Bot of those classes lean into discipline or harmony with nature, so there would have be some event that you’d need to lean into that causes them to be that way. If you do just want to be the murder character, the Barbarian is going to make a lot of sense, and a Rogue would be very effective at it as well.

If I were to play a Chaotic Evil character, I would play a Wizard, personally. The reason for that is that an illusionist Wizard would have a fun tool bag to mess around with. And with a character like that, you don’t have to murder everyone, but can instead make someone feel like they are going insane, which is probably worse than just being murdered. But as a player, I would feel better playing that versus just a random character who wants to murder everyone. Other spell casters would work well for this as well. It’s almost like Loki can be, with the story that Thor tells in Thor: Rangorak, where Loki turned into a snake and then back into himself to scare Thor, something like that.

But even with that, I would be careful about playing a chaotic evil character. I actually be careful about playing with someone who really wants to play a Chaotic Evil character. There are plenty of ways with any evil character to go very dark, and Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil are going to be more apt to go that direction.

Have you played in an evil game with a Chaotic Evil character? Have you played in a good game with a Chaotic Evil character? How did that work for you and the rest of the party?

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The biggest reason it was awesome, in my opinion, is because of the forensic scientist. First off, we had a good one running our game, but the ability to give clues and having to give clues, that is very interesting. How it works is that someone is a murderer and you have an accomplice and a witness. Each person has some clues and murder weapons in front of them and whomever is the murderer, during the closed eyes phase like all these games have, picks on of their clues and weapons, and that is what the forensic scientist has to go off of. The accomplice knows who the murder is and what they’ve picked, and the witness knows who the murderer is, but not the accomplice. Then once all that information has been disclosed, the investigation starts. This is done through clue cards that the forensic scientist has. These cards have stuff like: Where the murder was committed at, what did the victim look like, what time of day did the murder take place? And then a number of options for the forensic scientist to pick, and then each player has done guess per game as to what the clue and weapon are.

What I really liked with the forensic scientist is that not all of the information cards are useful. If someone died in a operating room because the murder picked surgery, what time of day it is, is pretty irrelevant. But, the forensic scientist can’t just skip over a card, they have a certain number of cards that they have to give. So as the investigators on this case, you have to try and figure out which clues really matter the most as well as thinking about what murder weapon and/or clue could go with the information that we’ve just gotten from the forensic scientist. That seems like it would make it really difficult, but the forensic scientist (who isn’t allowed to speak except for in game stuff so no commentating) has more of these information cards than they can have out at one time, this is determined by some fun looking bullets, so they have to play, eventually, all information cards. That means that they can replace some of the cards. If there was the time of day question for surgery, maybe they swap it out for another tile so that we aren’t focusing in on the time of day.

The other interesting thing about the forensic scientist is that whomever is running that part of the game, they do have to listen to what everyone is saying. Maybe the murder is trying to get people to look at another player, so they want to try and keep someone from guessing what that other player has. Maybe a clue that they thought would be really helpful has led the players down the wrong path. They get to still play the game, even though they aren’t guessing, by trying to direct what the investigators are talking about and possibly having to adjust on the fly if, for example, the players are onto the right murder weapon, but not for the reason that the forensic scientist would have thought.

This game plays quickly, it’s very interactive, and while you are going to eventually accuse someone of murder with a certain murder weapon and clue, everyone is involved in the game to some level. I’ve gotten to play as both the investigator and the witness, and both were a ton of fun. As the murderer or accomplice you are trying to steer people away from the murder, but as the witness you’re trying to steer people towards the murderer, but not in such a way that it’s obvious. It’s a really fun balance as compared to other games, like Avalon, that have a similar mechanic such as Merlin, this one seems to work much much better as you are able to hide your witness-ness in the conversation much easier.

Overall, for a social deduction game, I’d really recommend this game. I plays fast, it plays a large number, and I hope to play it again soon. The theme, while it is solving a grisly murder isn’t dark, and the murder weapon and clue cards aren’t dark. I think this is a good game for a party as well because it has a very interactive aspect to it, but isn’t just silly, and because it is so interactive, even if you aren’t talking at a point in time, you are still involved in the game.

Overall Grade: A

Casual Grade: A

Gamer Grade: A

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