[Dead of Night] Nice Mr. Fitzgerald
Callan S.:
Ron and Andrew, is that an addition to the dead of night rules? Something other groups would have to reinvent for themselves?
andrew_kenrick:
Nope, cliches are right there in the book as part of the situations Survival Points are given out.
Callan S.:
Sorry, I'm refering to how the cliche has to be forshadowed in advance, to earn survival points (not the cliche rule in general). Is that forshadowing requirement an addition to the rules that you've both made?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Callan,
Sorry about the delay. It's a good question and if I'm not mistaken part of your ongoing effort to examine texts' teaching content. The answer is, the rules for cliches say exactly this:
Quote
Running with cliches - A player who puts their character in perilous or inconvenient circumstances by following horror movie cliches gains a Survival Point for their efforts. Suitable examples include splitting off from the party to search the abandoned house more quickly, and running into the dark forest to escape from the creature. The award is purely at the GM's discretion. Sample cliches are scattered throughout the book and a complete list can be found in the index.
All uses of the word in the rules are spelled correctly, with the accent mark. I'm being lazy.
There's nothing in the text about cliches being silly or not silly, foreshadowed or not foreshadowed, or anything else. The numerous examples are generally descriptive and range from the very familiar to the thought-provoking. Graham's question was the right one - how did I, the GM in this case, organize "my discretion?" When the rules hand me the judgment call like this, I am a big believer in telling people what's on my mind, and finding out what's on theirs, because I don't like to start over case-by-case during play. If that weren't the case, I might have played and answered such that "Ah, whenever I felt like it, and sometimes it was funny and sometimes it was scary." And that too would have been in accord with the rules.
I may be reaching here, but my call is that the game doesn't punt or suffer from vagueness about the cliches, but does the right thing by handing this role (judging cliches) to a living being at the table. The reason is that the group also creates the rules for how the GM may spend Tension Points, and the text explains quite carefully how those on-site rules will define the subgenre of horror (and they do, they do). In other words, since the group has already effectively created their own look & feel & tone of the story with the Tension specifications, the parameters for judging cliches aren't infinite.
This is a good example of a game whose rules about different stuff produce strong, reinforcing interactions when those rules are all applied. In such games, especially when certain rules are left open to customization (not: not invention from nothing, but group-specific customization), then the vectors of reinforcement are shifted. In play, what seem like simplistic instructions in other parts of the rules are then revealed as key directives.
There aren't a lot of game texts I'd defend in this way. Most of them punt way too often or leave key issues in the hands of "how everyone knows it's done, obviously." More specifically, nearly every movie-horror game out there is actually parody. Dead of Night is something special.
Best, Ron
Callan S.:
Ah, okay! Though I describe that as sympathetic restriction on judging cliches (ie, being sympathetic to the subgenre of horror that was defined), rather than a hard restriction like a rule is. I'd describe it that way since the GM still has absolute control of whether he grants a cliche survival points or not, but also given he has absolute control of it he may also restrict himself in sympathy with the prior established ideas.
Not that any of that contradicts the subtle interplay you describe.
Hey, I was just wondering about something in terms of the art (this isn't a system design question at all) - Mr Fitzgerald killed a PC by saying or shouting boo to them (and the PC had a heart condition I assume)? In real life, that would be pretty horrible and wrong...but in a horror genre, I almost see it as adding a sympathetic note to the character because he didn't do much more than be himself in that instance. Yes, horrible self, but it's not...that horrible? I don't know if that sort of message was intended as part of it, but it made me think, so I wanted to ask. But it's your art, so you can leave it 'as is' without commentry, of course.
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