32 thoughts on “Best PbtA to run a scary one off for Halloween?”

  2. I have Tremulus, I just never felt it was as scary as it wanted to be. US is great for supernatural politics ….. DEF. not scary.

    Adam Koebel, did you guys ever finish Black Star Rises?

  16. parrish warren​, from what I’ve heard of the Warren is that it shows just how terrifying the life of a bunny can be. I also know it was meant to play like Watership Down.

  17. Rapture is a great one shot horror if you’re into sci-fi horror…. I ran a modified version of the intro adventure…. It played out very similar to event horizon. not PtbA but still fun.

  18. I’m running Monster of the week for Halloween. While it may not be terrifying. …the tension could be cut with a knife in a few parts. My group is loving it…..great first impression for a group new to PbtA games.

  19. Tremulous is fun, but scare factor is entirely dependent on the GM. If the GM’s not scary, the game won’t be scary! This goes for any system.

    I would suggest just running AW core, but with preselected playbooks and apocalypse setting. Choose a setting that is sufficiently scary, and distribute the weirder playbooks to ramp up the weird factor. The Hocus, Brainer, Faceless, Hoarder, and Skinner, maybe. Then create the freakiest version you can of what happens when you open your brain.

  20. Murderous Ghosts is your answer. Works for two players (one ghost/MC, one living PC) or groups of six and up (one ghost/MC player, the rest run the living PC by discussion/voting/consensus. I’ve run it as the MC for three players, but it’s too small. I LOVE running it for a dozen to 200 players!

  21. David Benson, the trick there is to ask your players up front if the [scary thing] is kinda silly action-movie scary or if it’s for real scary. If they go to “for real scary”, their imagination will amp up everything you give them, no matter how mundane it might be.

  25. I think Vincent Baker might have done that to get people to think of AW beyond the playbooks and roll 2d6+stat.  There is also Undying and Dreams Askew as other pbta games that don’t use dice.

  29. I’ll be running Monsterhearts. Some of the most intense games I’ve played have been Monsterhearts games, where we’ve all walked away a little shook up. I’ll be setting it after school hours though, to snip out classroom banter and go straight for the premise of kids on a run down housing estate, set on the one year anniversary of some tragic Halloween event (to be established by character backstories).

  30. Dean Baker, David Rothfeder, our policy on using the PbtA labeling is pretty generous; if you have drawn inspiration from Apocalypse World and feel your game is PbtA, it probably is. Characteristics that are fairly constant are PC and MC moves, shared contribution to world building, “to do it, do it”, and the 10+/7-9/6- on 2d6 mechanic.

    For our own games, some are PbtA, like Murderous Ghosts and The Sundered Land, and some are not, like the Playing Nature’s Year cycle.

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