Friday, September 29, 2017

[CRYPTWORLD] "Burial Plots" Origins Of Horror Part 3: "Unquenchable"

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1895361773/burial-plots
As the Kickstarter for Goblinoid Games' CRYPTWORLD adventure compilation Burial Plots is underway, I thought it'd be fun to explain where each of these horrific scenarios came from. (These reflections will be full of spoilers for the adventures within, so if you plan to play in any of them, proceed with caution!) The third adventure I wrote, "Unquenchable," is a hex crawl where my own personal demons stalk the players in a setting where they instead hold all of the cards...

Many of my previous CRYPTWORLD adventures take place in a confined, claustrophobic space: an abandoned hospital, a jetliner in flight, the rotting farmhouse outside of town. So for my next adventure, I wanted to break out of that genre trope and have the setting be eerily "calming." So I created an outdoor hex crawl that takes place in the middle of the day. The sun's up and the players can see for miles. The players are both armed and in constant radio contact with the authorities. How could I take this setting -- where ALL of the advantages are in the hands of the PCs -- and twist it so they instead find themselves faced with a living nightmare? All you need is a good monster -- and lots of them.

They say "Write what you know," so I decided to dip into the well of Sniderman's Personal Fears. You see, spiders terrify me, as I have severe arachnophobia. Monster films featuring spiders -- no matter how low-budget and cheesy -- give me the willies. (In fact, I used this phobia earlier when I wrote "Tangled Threads" found in CRYPTWORLD's first supplement, Monsters Macabre.) So the Tarantulords were to make a comeback. But I wanted these to be even more horrific. More frightening. More dangerous. As I mulled a new hybrid of "werewolf spiders" or "zombie spiders," I chanced upon the concept of  "vampire spiders," and realized with a shudder that THOSE ACTUALLY EXIST.

 
And thus the protagonists of "Unquenchable" came to horrific life.

I don't want to spoil everything, so please consider pledging for Burial Plots and discover what other horrors are found in the woods!

No comments:

Post a Comment