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One of the more elusive concepts for RPGs is a casual or "pick-up" RPG for those times when you want to game, usually for a one-shot adventure, but you don't have supplies, materials, or time to run a full-blown game. Dead of Night by Steampower Publishing is marketed as a "campfire horror pocket roleplaying game" that can be easily taken anywhere, and in which characters can be created in a snap. I was reminded of Deep7's Shriek 1PG and decided to give the book a look.
Background
Before I begin, a little background. I am an acquaintance of Andrew Kenrick of Steampower Publishing. We chat in LiveJournal now and then. When he mentioned that his first print run of Dead of Night had cover problems and he was going to turn them into review copies, I offered to review the game for him (but I will refrain from comment on the elements he specifically pointed out were reasons for rejecting that particular print run). Although I've chatted with Andrew for a while now, this is my first exposure to a Steampower product. I did not have time to run a game of DoN.
Physical Product
The book is, according to my ruler, 4.25 inches wide by 5.5 inches tall. The game is 224 pages long, which comes in at a comfortable half inch thick. As I read it, I slipped it into my jeans pocket to take with me a few times, so it certainly fits the qualification of being a pocket RPG. The cover art is pretty typical. The binding is nice and firm, and even some moderately rough handling didn't split it. The body text font is a decently sized member of the Roman family, and much easier on the eyes than I expected (although some of the title and header fonts weren't always so easy to read). I didn't find any noticeable errors in the text. The art is average to good, but a bit dark in places.
I found the book to be a touch expensive -- the back cover lists it as US$19.95. I'm not sure if the higher price is due to the fact that the book is an import (as Steampower is based in Reading, England), but it seemed a bit high for such a small book. The higher price and small size might cause this book to be passed over in a FLGS.
Character Sheet
The book is already pretty small, and yet page 5 has two identical copies of the character sheet, it's that tiny. You could easily scribble this information on a note card or the back of a receipt, which would certainly lend to portable play.
Fiction
Prefacing each major part is a collection of fiction bits, telling a basic werewolf tale called "Wolf Moon." It's fairly typical game fiction, so I won't mention it again except to say that it does tie to the section it prefaces pretty well. The game also has a couple dozen horror movie cliches scattered through the book, but they actually do have a minor game function, detailed later.
Introduction
The introduction is standard RPG introduction fare. It mentions that if you know a lot about RPGs, you can read the grey shaded boxes in the rules chapter and get started, but you are warned that you'll miss a lot of cool stuff. I tried to read these first, to get a sense of that, and both are true -- someone really steeped in RPG knowledge (such as the average RPG.net reader) can start playing right away, but the bare bones are just the beginning of the game.
Chapter 1: Rules of Play
DoN uses 2d10 for resolution. The object is to beat a target of 15 (for standard rolls or checks) or 10+opponent's attribute (for contested or conflict checks). Opposed checks have some interesting elements, but I'll get to those in a bit.
There's a weird quirk in the rules chapter. The "Wolf Moon" fiction precedes the examples, and the examples actually precede the appropriate rules. At first, this confused the hell out of me, because I thought the rules were being poorly explained, and then I would read the rules again in much more appropriate detail. Once I understood that I was reading examples before the rules, though, I actually liked it. Players unfamiliar with RPGs might be lost with the strange format, but I found it to be a good method of learning -- here's the base rules, and now here's the detailed rules to reinforce your basic understanding immediately after.
Character creation is next. Characters have four opposed attribute pairs: Identify/Obscure, Persuade/Dissuade, Pursue/Escape, and Assault/Protect. You have 10 points to put in each pair -- a point taken from Identify, say, has to go into Obscure. You can specialize an attribute by taking two points from the pair and adding them to the specialization. All of the rolls of the game come from these attribute pairs. The very vague nature of the attributes leads to some confusion: if I intimidate the werewolf with my silver knife so I can run away, is that Dissuade or Escape? However, there are some examples as well as eight key questions for each attribute to help the GM and players determine the best choice. It also gives a lot of sample specializations, which cover everything from skills to job perks (like authority) to supernatural powers... well, later in the book, at least. You can take deficiencies, but they don't give you any mechanical benefit or modification -- it's just a roleplaying key.
Back to checks. Conflict checks are pretty slick for a couple of reasons. First is that, most times, the appropriate check is the "partner" attribute of the pair: if you're trying to Escape the werewolf, he's going to Pursue you. As mentioned, the difficulty is 10+opponent's attribute, so if the werewolf had a 8 Pursue, I would have to meet or beat an 18. That leads to the other cool thing -- a person at the table cannot roll dice twice in a row. So, if you roll against the werewolf's Pursue and lose, he's caught you. Assuming the GM is playing the werewolf, he now rolls the werewolf's Assault against your Protect. This cuts down opposed dice rolling, but makes sure everyone gets their turn to bounce dice.
Combat is nearly the same. Each character has a number of Survival Points, usually around five. Whoever loses a combat check loses a Survival Point. That werewolf trying to Assault you will either win (and cause you to lose a Survival Point) or lose (and lose a Survival Point himself). I'm not sure how it would work at the table, but I imagine that combat would get to be either very colorful or very dull, depending on how much your group likes to improvise detail on the same (or very similar) dice rolls. However, Survival Points are not actually health. They can reflect shock or loss of sanity just as much as cuts and bleeding. It's simply an indication of how close the character is to being written out of the story, a dramatic countdown if you will. This does increase the utility of the combat system, bringing more than Assault and Protect into play.
Survival Points are also a metagame currency that players can use. They can allow you to flip the values in an attribute pair for a scene, to reroll a check, to claim or cede initiative, find a clue or a dingus, or to cancel another Survival Point expenditure. You can regain Survival Points by rolling doubles, by being the one character in a scene that most meaningfully advances the plot, by describing their actions in a cool way, by resting for a full scene, when the players roll a 13 on the dice (only for monsters), and by acting out one of the cliches listed in the book or any other horror movie cliche. The last one bugged me when I read it, and it still does. While I understand the desire to reward players to encourage them to participate in horror movie cliches like walking into the basement with a flashlight that dies or getting naked in the shower while the killer is on the loose, at the same time those cliches often lead to the character's demise, instead of increasing their longevity. As such, it seems a bit backwards to allow characters to live longer by being stupid. However, it's a minor nitpick, and for other genres like sci-fi or fantasy giving more Survival Points for cliche actions is a really slick idea.
Chapter 2: Advanced Play
There are a lot of options for DoN play. You can change the dice to different polyhedrons, or use no dice at all (either by using chits or the page of random numbers in the back of the book). The GM can use Tension to define the scene -- a numerical indication of the horror of scene, akin to Fear Levels in Deadlands. Tension points can be spent by the GM to force a player's dice roll to succeed or fail, which reduces the Tension of the scene. Again, this rule struck me as a bit odd, since the GM will want to do this mostly to advance the plot, which would increase the tension, not decrease it. (In a later conversation with Andrew, he said that his co-designer explained it like this: "When the foe remains unseen and the threat unrevealed, the tension increases. When the foe is revealed, or it turns out to be something else (just a cat), the tension decreases, at least for a while." If the Tension expenditures are used for that purpose it makes sense, but as written it implies that any modification of a die roll reduces tension, which can lead to paradoxical situations.) Monsters also add into the Tension as well when they appear. There are also suggestions on sliding the game between grim fatalism and schlock or campy horror, and how to develop a scenario.
Then chapter two starts to talk about the various different ways to run the game. Standard Play is one GM playing monsters, and players playing victims. Tables Turned is where the players play monsters, and the GM plays victims, including some pretty interesting rules on how the victims notice clues and advance the plot. Target Countdown is when the victims have to be killed in a particular order. Wolf in Sheep's Clothing is where one player plays the monster, and the players are either aware or unaware of this fact (if they're unaware, they use a system similar to the party game Werewolf). No Single GM mode is a more "indie" style of shared GM control, and even that option has three sub-options! I'm not sure if thirteen pages needed to be devoted to variant GM styles (including one that was simply mentioned but never detailed), but there's certainly a lot of variety available in how you can use DoN at your table.
Chapter 3: Things That Go Bump In the Night
This chapter covers the monsters, killers, and so on. Monsters are made just like any other character, but they have access to advanced Specializations to reflect mystical powers and abilities, marked with a skull symbol. Most of them require a Survival Point expenditure on a successful check (except Sorcery, which requires a Survival Point expenditure whether or not the check is successful). Alternatively, creatures can take a Vulnerability to negate the Survival Point loss. There are rules on how victims can become monsters, and then a list of example specializations and monsters. All of the basics are here: vampires, zombies, mummies, werewolves, witches, killers, ghosts, and the like; everything you need for a few different horror scenarios.
Chapter 4: Tales of Terror
This chapter has example scenarios for DoN. All of them are set in the generic American town of Chaddlestone. The scenarios are a little more than sketches, but they detail a rough beginning, middle, and end for each plot, along with suggested tension ratings and how to use the scenario in some variant GM styles. This is fast enough for a GM to read quickly and absorb (along with the rough maps provided), but loose enough to account for the inevitable player digressions.
The Rest of the Book
The rest of the book contains an appendix of character archetypes for super-fast game starts, a convenient rules summary, an index, and the page of random numbers.
Summary
This book is exactly what it says it is -- a lightning-fast horror movie game. I'm not sure how portable it is, as characters do have eight to ten numbers to keep track of (counting potential specializations), as well as a regularly fluctuating pool of Survival Points. You can't easily hike and game with DoN, but the tiny book and a few scraps of paper, along with pencils, will be sufficient for a quick game of slaying teenage victims. A few of the confusing mechanics and variant GM styles are easily overlooked, worked around, or modified to suit your tastes. All in all, this game is worth a flip-through, and is certainly a serious contender for casual gaming.
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