Each of the nine adventures is presented in a clear and structured way. Between the bulk of the plot in the rear, broken down into encounters, and a short synopsis of it up front, there are sections collecting and describing the creatures and bad mojo encountered by the PC envoys, providing GM advice, a background, and giving dreams for the clairvoyants. The creature and background sections combined explain the NPCs' motivations so that the GM can adapt the plot if the players deviate from the one lined out by the encounters. And while the prescient dreams look like a fixture of Pacesetter's Chill-products, this matter is often overlooked by authors of fantasy/horror adventures, leaving the GM floundering in the face of a PC who wants to use his or her precognitive skills.
But the adventures in Evenings of Terror, while being described as "macabre and strange", are only average and rather uninspired, I'm afraid. They aren't exactly bad, but they aren't good either. Rarely original or innovative, they contain plot-holes and clichés and sometimes contradictions. Not many of them, but enough to say that there is not one really good adventure in the collection.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
1. The Epidemic
A monster turns a small town into zombies — starting with the pets!
This adventure certainly needs work, for one thing, why is Katie Mattingly still alive to spill the beans to the investigating PCs? And the small town is just not isolated enough for the inhabitants to just sit and be turned into zombies one by one instead of screaming for the authorities.
2. Lanier House
The PCs must escape or destroy a living house that wants to eat them.
This is a nice twist; the house is not haunted by an evil creature, but is the evil creature itself! Sadly, the author didn't go the whole nine yards, so the effect is the same. Why does the house need the "Gnarl" spell to bend its own steps? Or why is the building's plan fixed at all if it is a living creature? Changing rooms would call up a surreal feeling without giving away the solution and confuse the players no end. What's more, the house does change. It looks like a 1800s mansion today, but it has been around for a long time and I'm sure it has put on a Las-Vegas-style teepee face to lure in the indians.
The plot is extremely dull, the encounters are just a rundown of the rooms and it starts the very opposite of subtle, with the doors slamming shut the minute all PCs are inside. The PCs are trying to get out while the house tries to scare them out of their Willpower stat and eat them.
3. A Little Room
The PCs are called to bust an angry, troubled revenant ghost in a room overlooking a 300 foot drop (IEEE, to recycle the old Pentium joke).
This is the epitome of closed-room drama: The PCs enter, the doors slam shut (again — and by the way, what does the "Slam" spell do if the PCs have taken the door off its hinges beforehand?), and they are trapped in a single room with no resources besides those they carried in.
Here we have an interesting, if brief, background motivation. It's a stock haunting of sorts, but nicely fleshed out. Unfortunately, the adventure quickly deteriorates into an exercise in Willpower economics, with the ghost alternating between spending it on a killing spree and recovering it in long hours of rest. I probably wouldn't have fun GMing that. Come to think of it, I'm not sure it works at all: The PCs just have to force the ghost to "Haywire" their cell phones (alright, walkie-talkies, it's 1985 after all) for 24 minutes to drain its Willpower completely.
Let's hope one of them had a prescient dream the night before, because the three ways of defeating the revenant are (1) unlikely to succeed, (2) almost impossible to do (the author even says so) and (3) look positively suicidal and the only way to figure out it's not is by way of a prescient dream. The "Matter of Dream" section is all-important in this adventure. If the PCs don't dream, there are a few hints leading to method (3), but since it boils down to throwing themselves off the cliff I doubt very much my players would implement it. Come to think of it, the assignment letter would probably have them asking S.A.V.E. (and the GM) for a severance package.
In the unlikely event that (a) the PCs accept their assignment and (b) live through the ordeal, they'll probably stone the GM in effigie for the adventure's author. You see, the doors open and the ragged survivors stumble into the presence of the housekeeper, who has just found an old diary explaining it all! If I were a card-carrying cthulhoid satanist so eevil as to be expelled from his church of other card-carrying cthulhoid satanists, I'd know who I'd put a curse of eternal flatulence on.
4. Animal House
A ghost vet turns the PCs into a row of animals to get them into the local SPCA chapter.
If you ever wanted to rub your PCs' noses in the mess they leave behind, this is the adventure for you. They are to look for missing persons in a city troubled by the strange behaviour of its pets. When the envoys confront the vet who, as they'll quickly find out, treated all the animals, he metamorphs them into dogs, cats, mynah birds and finally guppies and gives them to a different family each day so they can experience first-hand the humiliations pets have to suffer.
My issue with this adventure is twofold. First, the players won't like the humiliation of being turned into a procession of Snoopy-, Tweety- (complete with Sylvester!) or Nemo-clones and of being subject to humiliating treatment. They can't even do anything about it, the GM effectively leads them by their noses through the whole adventure. If they are like my players, they'll resent being stuck in animal bodies, even if they realize that the death of the spell caster will eventually reverse the metamorphosis. Second, PCs turned into poodles? Come on! This might work in a silly game like Pandemonium! but not in Chill, which has a much darker tone.
5. The House on the Hill
The envoys stumble on a scene right out of Frankenstein — not!
This is probably intended to be the "comic relief" adventure. In the midst of a torrential rain, the PCs' car breaks down and they have to take shelter in the Gothic mansion they can see in the flashes of lightning. A hunchbacked servant welcomes them in and promptly leaves them to wander about aimlessly until they hear screaming from the cellar. There, a man viss a German accent administers emergency surgery to a young woman. Break out the stakes! Sorry, wrong movie. And sorry, no monsters, the doctor and patient are real!
The only hint that the immigrant physician is really trying to save the lift of the young woman, who was injured in another car crash, is that the cliché is thick enough to cut. I wonder why the mansion doesn't have a fizzling neon sign saying "Hermann Bates, M.D." and a row of six by three foot mounds of earth behind with a shovel sticking in one of them.
If they don't get the picture, it'll be bloody mayhem before they find out that nothing untoward is going on. At least the girl will have died because the PCs delayed the good doctor in patching her up. The way he comes across initially, he'll soon be dead of lead poisoning, players being what they are. Little Igor will come a-runnin with a pitchfork and won't accept any lame excuses. Or, as the author put it: "One can only hope that no player character has killed anybody!" Indeed!
A dangerous aspect of this is that a GM might take it as an edifying experience for trigger-happy PCs. It isn't. Events are unlikely to stop at the point the GM wants to make, and the PCs will come out as murderers and fugitives. If they enter the house at all — you wouldn't willingly enter a building right out of an Oxnard Montalvo film, at the dead of night, unprepared and without being able to call for support, would you?
6. Still Life
A fellow envoy and art critic is murdered, by the hands of a 17th century Dutch painter.
This is one of the better adventures of Evenings of Terror. It has an original idea and well-rounded characters, in my opinion. The only thing that detracts from it is the fact that the victim is a member of S.A.V.E., the ghost-busting agency of the PCs. He is aware of the situation and has called for help, but he doesn't seem to take any precautions and so is murdered in his sleep. On the other side, the PCs, who form a team hastily assembled to bail out one of their colleagues, are expected to kick their heels in their hotel rooms for six hours because the didn't get an earlier appointment with the victim. However, this is easily remedied: Just make poor Driskell DOA.
7. Rounded by a Sleep
Guests in a posh New York hotel room are killed in their sleep.
Another example of the clueless envoy! The manager is a member of S.A.V.E., and the only justification for it is that he can cry for his buddies to help him. Which is the only thing he does, I mean, this is a variation of a classic haunting, and he can't even supply information about the first death that happened in the room twenty years ago and spawned the evil ghost. Who hired that man?
What follows is a so-so dream world adventure. The ending is difficult to play, because once again the PCs have to dive into the abyss without a tangible clue they can survive it. While this works in a (scripted) movie, the GM will have a hard time generating the fear and despair the PCs need to feel to put themselves into positions bordering on suicidal. And together with a little railroading this may cause the players to enter a bored "enjoy the ride" mind-state.
8. Crime Magazine
The PCs tangle with mobsters controlled by an evil gun.
For all you Chill fans out there, the adventure probably is not connected with the excellent short story "Gun Control" by Steve Antczak, which appeared in the later, Mayfair Games collection Chilled to the Bone. So the revolver which is the physical part of an evil multidimensional being is another original, and clever, idea, and supported by background. However, the adventure is marred by a number of annoying flaws.
For one thing the ending is less than sketchy, really not much more than "and now you only have to take the Gun to Germany, smuggle it through customs, dig up its long-dead maker and shoot the corpse with it, while all the time it controls whoever is holding it and tries to make him shoot his fellow envoys". For another, it is a needless attempt at a 30ies film noir setting with a beautiful, not quite innocent girl, a Bogart-style gumshoe and greasy mafiosi. This just doesn't work in the 80ies, I think.
Talking of the gumshoe, since he stumbled across zombies animated by the Gun, he is to be induced into S.A.V.E. by the PCs. A very interesting idea, because it gives the PCs an opportunity to deliver a sales rap which might help the players get deeper into their characters. But it never happens. The detective seems to be a S.A.V.E. member in all but name and leads the PCs directly into the adventure.
9. Haunt Thy Native Place
Vampires take over a roadside village and live on motorists.
This adventure I consider the best in Evenings of Terror, largely because I had a very similar idea myself (hah!). It is one of the "sidetrack" scenarios that can be put into a larger adventure if it includes enough travelling by car. While the plot is quite straightforward, the setting conveys a nice surreal feeling. And it has an Elvira® reference!
Appendix
The one-page appendix lists five new Evil Way disciplines (black magic), although I can't tell if they are really new. I've just finished two old Pacesetter adventures (Isle of the Dead and Deathwatch on the Bayou, both of them towering over the at most average scenarios in Evenings of Terror, incidentally), which also have the same spells and say that they already have been published in the Things supplement. I only have the newer, Mayfair edition of Things, and if that has the spells and creatures said to be inside, they have changed the names.
Repeating this information at the back of Evenings of Terror sits well with me. I'll call it redundancy, and there seems to be a lot of it in the Pacesetter products. There certainly is in Evenings of Terror, e.g. the creatures get a stat block in the creature sections as well as when they appear in the adventures. Beats having to look up the stats in an armful of books, I think.
OH, SPOILERS ENDED AROUND HERE, BY THE WAY!
Wait a minute, what about Elvira®?
I'm a foreigner, I don't know Elvira®. I have read the pertinent Wikipedia articles, of course, but I don't think I have understood the Elvira® phenomenon. So please excuse me if to me she is just a pre-angst buxom goth chick with fake hair and my statements about Evenings of Terror with Elvira® are only conjecture.
Evenings of Terror is hosted by Elvira® as if every adventure were an "Evening of Terror" in a late night TV series of unconnected horror films. The hostess gives an introduction and final thoughts at the start and the end of every adventure in the collection. These run to ten lines, on average, of quite meaningless drivel. I wonder if she is in any way connected with Evenings of Terror or if she just raked in the money in return for her name.
The corny phrases and the fact that she doesn't appear in any of the adventures (apart from #9 where a horror show with Elvira® is the only thing on TV) may be a bow to her nature as a TV presenter. She doesn't feature in the movies or deliver meaningful information (read: spoilers) for them either, does she?
The problem is who the presentation is directed at. The GM certainly doesn't need it, and it is of little value for the players. It might even spoil their fun because it breaks the fourth wall. So basically the Elvira® aspect as presented in Evenings of Terror is meaningless. I wonder why the authors didn't involve her in their adventures. Wouldn't it be fun if a PC could meet one of his or her favourite TV personalities? And she's the one who seems to know everything about the stories she hosts on the tube, so why not have her tangled up in one of them? Why not have some evil creature invade the TV stage? Why not have the PCs encounter her — maybe opening a mall somewhere — so she can provide a few clues? In my opinion, the Elvira® connection in Evenings of Terror is a complete waste.
But the Elvira® business even draws the adventure collection down. She appears quite literally at the beginning and end of every story, in a half or quarter page b&w photograph (colour for the covers, of course). There are a couple of maps and plans, some very well executed, but apart from them and the Elvira® stills, there are no illustrations at all. Which is a shame because Pacesetter employed some very inspired illustrators, e.g. Jim Holloway, whose style of goofy realism breathes life into Paranoia, and Stephen D. Sullivan, whose art graces Isle of the Dead and Deathwatch on the Bayou.
Odds and ends and verdict
Overall production quality is fair. Layout is clear and well-proportioned. There are a few instances of excessive cut'n'paste, the stat blocks could use boxes, and a few typos. The prose is pleasantly smooth and devoid of peculiar styles or affectations. While the drawn maps are mostly well done, the Elvira® b&w stills are badly rastered and pale, but that may be just faded ink and yellowed paper.
Evenings of Terror with Elvira® is so-so. Minor mistakes and loveless execution regularly drag down good ideas. Sometimes a little more effort would have gone a long way. Especially the "Encounters" sections of the adventures often consist only of a boring list of rooms. Railroading abounds, but the scenarios are mostly too short for that to be more than a nuisance. However, most of the stories are sound in principle and will do for an evening of terror if the GM hasn't prepared anything else.
The collection sits on the fence between the 2 and 3 ratings, so I'll give it a 2 for style, largely due to the Elvira® angle, and a 3 for substance, because it's nine average adventures.
