"Short for squeamishness, the character is very sensitive to little things
like severed heads, pools of blood and decaying corpses."
MetalMan's Review of "Squeam" by Jared Sorensen
Squeam (in case you didn't guess immediately from the title) is a game
of playing a role in the teen slasher flick genre. Unfortunately, you
don't have the option for playing the deranged killer or supernatural
deathbringer. Nope. You're stuck playing the happless victim - lucky
you... or should I say lucky GM?
The Premise:
As before, all players are fodder for the slasher. Your objective is to
not become another meaningless statistic in the harrowed halls of the
cheap movie victims hall of fame. That's really about it.
What Ya Get:
Squeam is only available in HTML format so you'll need to download/save
it to disc or print it out. I opted for the printout since I'm writing a
review and its easier to refer to. Sqeam weighs in at five pages in length
so its a quick printout no matter what kind of printer you have.
Cost:
Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Gratis. Free.
The appearance of Squeam is very simplistic. White text on a black
background with a very simple logo graphic at the top of the page (suspiciously
looking just like the Scream movie logo *grin*). I'm only guessing that the designer
was going for a very sparse and stark look so I'm not going to detract anyting for the
look of it although maybe a funny picture or two wouldn't have hurt any. Don't let the
sparseness of the appearance turn you off though - there is lots of good fun in the rules.
Character creation is pretty simple as is the game as a whole. Your
first step is to pick one of the provided character concepts. No rules
are given for creating your own concept but it can be marginally
forgiven due to the two-dimensional nature of the genre trying to be
imitated. Besides, with the mechanics the way they are, making a new concept
should be a snap for anyone. There are four types of concepts given: Cop,
Caretaker, Old Coot, and Teenager. Teenagers (which should be the vast
majority of your players) are broken down into eight subsets: Geeky
Teen, Quiet Teen, Jock Teen, Bimbo Teen, Lucky Teen, Tough Teen, Slutty
Teen, and Good Girl Teen. I would spend some time describing each concept
but I think that anyone playing this game should be able to get the idea
and the rules gives a very funny overview of each already. Now that you have
choosen your character concept, it's time to do your attributes.
Attributes in Squeam are intersting. Instead of following the
traditional method, attributes represent your characters negative aspects. There
are four attributes: Curiosity, Fright, Naivete, and Sqeam. Curiosity
represents how frequently your character will wander into abandoned
houses that are rumored to be haunted, read strange books, etc. Fright
represents just how good a characters nerves are when faced with something
horrific. Naivete is a measure of how gullible a character is to the
standard cliches of misdirection in horror movies. Sqeam is the last one
and it measures a character's sqeamishness or how well they can handle
the sight of blood and gore.
All characters start with one point in each attribute. You then roll
2d6 and distribute them between your attributes. A seven is the maximum
that you can have in any given attribute. Remember high nubmers are BAD!
You WANT a low roll on the dice - it substantially increases your
potential for surviving.
The mechanics are very simple. When the situation demands it, the GM
will ask you to roll for one of your attributes with a single d6. If you
roll over your attribute score you succede. Otherwise you're in for
trouble. Now, I am not a fan of simplistic game mechanics, but it
works here... it really does. It takes players who are ready to go with
the flow to make it work but it does work. The rules say that characters
can accomplish any task that is appropriate for them unless they are
paralyized with fear or incapacitated in some manner. So that rules out
the need for a skills list and replaces it with common sense that the
average teenager is not going to know demonology to any great extent.
The rules also state that no game should run longer than an hour and a
half. This is in there to simulate the length of an actual movie and
also to quicken the slaughter. This was not a problem as most of the
characters will die pretty quickly either through a completely heartless GM
(stop looking at me like that!) or through their own errors.
All characters have three states of health: Okay, Injured, and Dead.
And this brings up my real gripe with the system. There is no set points
where one begins and the other ends. The rules say that, if you're
injured, you have a -1 on all Fright rolls and a 1 on all Squeam rolls.
However, there is no information anywhere that says how much damange any
given thing does or how much damage a player can withstand. I pretty
much assume you run the game on if you wanted the player immediately dead or just
wounded so that you could prolong the suffering. Players may be okay with
this but I suspect that you'll find some or all of your players much more upset
about this depending on your gaming group. The GM essentially holds their character's
lives in his hands. Players, however, have one thing going for them - Fate. Fate is a
purely optional rule, but I see little reason why GMs should ignore it. Not only is
it great fun, but helps the characters survive a bit longer. At the beginning of
the game, the GM rolls a d6 for each player and writes down that number next to
their name. This is the number of times that a player can "cheat fate" and live. To
activate it, the player has to scream really loud. When they run out of Fate, that
last scream represents their agonizing death. Players never know how much Fate they
have... which should be a load of fun.
In addition, rules are presented that award or penalize Fate points for
various character concepts. For example, the Good Girl teen always seems to
live in these types of movies so she is given a bonus point of Fate. This is
mainly put in there to represent the tendency for certain stereotypes to just
drop like flies in all horror movies. You may or may not want to use these rules.
The last part of the rules gives a small listing of various enemies
that the players may run up against and gives their motivations for their
actions (suprisingly enough "kill teenagers" is on everyones list).
Nothing really revolutionary here but it wasn't suposed to be - as nothing
apparently has any stats at all - you can bring in whatever you want
into the game to terrorize your players.
Now, to wrap this review up, this is a fun game. If you're really slick
about it, you can set it up for "sequels" to the original adventure.
However, like most of the spawned sequels to bad movies - they get
unbearable after a few of them I imagine. So this game is an excellent
example of a one-shot game that can be a lot of fun if your players are up
for it. Your milage on the rules may vary but I suspect that you'll find them an
entertaining way to spend roughly two hours (if not a little rough in
spots) and this would be an excellent short little game to fill in with when
you have those nights where the majority of your players don't show up
for one reason or another. Best of all, it is very "GM Light" because
you can grab the plot for any bad B-grade slasher flick and immediately use it
almost verbatim. This game is perfectly suited to Halloween gaming... get
some friends over and watch a few horror flicks and then play this game. If you
still have friends aftewards, they'll should thank you for the good time.... just
keep them away from any sharp objects you may have in your home.
MetalMan signing off.
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