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Fright Night: Haunted House

Fright Night: Haunted House is a small-ish book from Hogshead Publishing. Not the old one, but the "new" Hogshead (I think the guy bought the name). It's a d20 horror supplement. What flavor of d20? Well, that's the tricky question. It's actually sort of a mini-game for d20, similar to FFG's Horizon line or the now defunct Polyhedron section of Dungeon.

I have no idea why I bought this, really. I sold some stuff on ebay, and I had $10 or so leftover in ebay money/paypal (which is real tricky for me to convert to real money) after buying OGL Ancients, and spotted it by accident (the seller was also selling OGL Ancients, though I bought that from someone else). It just looked interesting, and thought it might be useful if I ever get the copy of OGL Horror I ordered.

It's basically 4 parts. One, tips on running horror games. Two, rules for modern d20 horror games, Three, an adventure location (an old mansion/school), and Four, a scenario, using everything else in the book. The location and adventure are actually pretty much the same thing, but you get an overview of the place first, then the adventure. That takes up about half the book, the other half are tips/rules.

Some of the tips for running horror games were new to me. Most notably, the idea of running the game in a basement at night.

The rules are something of a stripped down mini-d20 game. You get a modern skill list, some modern feats, and 6 classes. These are all "Psychic" classes, presumably because the premise of the adventure is that all the PCs are psychics. I couldn't tell if it was based off of the 3.0 or 3.5 System Reference Document, because it features the "Pick Pocket" skill, which was changed to "Sleight of Hand" in 3.5, but it does have "Survival", which is what "Wilderness Lore" used to be. (It does refer to the Player's Handbook, so it's based off of one of them)

The classes only go up to 10th level, so they might be usable in d20 Modern (though the attack and save progressions are a bit wonky for a couple of them, which doesn't matter in a mini-game, but can be tricky when it comes to integrating them with other stuff). Basically, psychic powers work like skills, but they cost psychic power points to use. There's telepathy, psychometry (reading the history of objects), remote viewing (seeing things far away), telekinesis, channeling (talking to the dead), and divining (predicting the future).

There six classes are: The Guru (kinda like Doug Henning, but with real powers and er, not dead), the Profiteer (aka, Uri Geller,), the Believer (a religious type of some sort, new age or traditional), the Gifted (sort of a gypsy), the Denier (who denies his own powers), and the Freak (sort of an outcast). Really, the classes are how they view their own power, and so you can't multi-class, really (though now that I look at Uri Geller's website, he might have gone from "Profiteer" to "Guru").

To a certain extent, the psychic powers are realistic, in that they don't work very well. Or have very limited effects. I've also known a number of supposed psychics in real life (mostly remote viewers and channelers, though not with the dead, but other things which is kind of hard to explain) and the classes in this actually handles their personalities/views quite well.

There's also some horror related rules. Rules for fear, rules for being in the dark, rules for listening to Barbra Streisand (by that I mean, "Madness and Phobia" rules, and rules for running away, screaming). They seem to work pretty well, at least in theory, as I haven't tried them out yet (if I do run the scenario in this book, it will probably be using Call of Cthulhu d20 or possibly OGL Horror)



The adventure itself reminded me a lot of the movie The House on Haunted Hill (not to be confused with the Haunting of Hill House), the remake, at least in the basic premise. Which I thought was a pretty good movie, though I really could have sworn it was James Woods in it. It really really looked like James Woods. And sounded like him. But it turned out to be Geoffrey Rush. But man, it really looked like James Woods.

Anyway, the players are invited to a haunted house for a chance to win $1 million. But rather than stay the night, they are supposed to try to scare the other guests. Sort of a game (could be a reality TV show, almost), because the premise is, the owner of the place is a really rich guy who wants to run a murder-mystery inn, only with a haunted house theme. So he wants someone good at scaring people. And so he's holding a frightening contest, with the winner getting the job of "Fright Director", which will pay a $1 million the first year.

So why doesn't he call a special effects company? (Inn-dustrial Light & Magic perhaps). Or at least Bryan Brown? Well, because there is more to meets the eye. It has to do with the psychic-ness of the PCs, he has a dastardly plot to dethrone Miss Cleo, and become the reigning phone psychic king by recruiting psychics into his evil psychic phone empire. Well, not really, but it's almost as sinister. But it did remind me of a plot of a movie that starred both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (who actually made something like 25 movies together, and which actually could also happen again in Episode III if the rumors are true, and some of the special editions of the IV if Lucas gets carried away).

Seriously, it's meant to emulate haunted house movies, and it actually does pretty well. From the premise to the events during the contest, to the finale.

The location (an old school) is detailed fairly well, as you do get descriptions of several NPCs. Good descriptions, but not great. You get the gist of them, but not things like eye/hair color or even height. The stats also tend to be very bare bones (though this scenario doesn't really put much emphasis on combat or even all that much in the way of skill use, for most NPCs). Actually, the things that get the most detailed background information are the ghosts of the place. My favorite is "Skitter", which is sort of a spider-cat.

The artwork is well, odd. On the one hand, you have some very photorealistic and gory pictures, but heavily greyed out (they actually look like computer art, similar to what you would see in Resident Evil or Silent Hill or an Olsen twins game). Then you have somewhat abstract line art, mostly of the PC classes and NPCs in the book. It's not bad, but it seems to have been re-sized in many cases, to fit the white space in the layout. Thus often stretching or distorting the art. For the gorey/grey stuff, this makes it look even creepier, but the line art sometimes looks impossibly tall. The maps are pretty spartan.


To be completely honest, in many ways, this book is a bit amateurish, and while the new rules introduced aren't terrible, they aren't great, either, and are probably redundant for most people (what with d20 Modern, Spycraft, Call of Cthulhu d20, OGL Horror, etc). And really, they aren't comprehensive enough to handle campaigns beyond this scenario (and even this scenario could be tricky). And the adventure is awfully sketchy in places.

But, I like it. Quite a bit. The premise is neat, it does deliver an adventure that is a synthesis of the haunted house horror movie, and it has a certain charm and enthusiasm to it. I bought it new (albeit at a discount), and I have no regrets buying it. I'll probably be buying later entries in the series (if they happen), especially the Ghost Ship one. B