FRI-01 to SUN-02 Grudge Mansion

[Brendan]

Thanks to the sixteen players who stepped up to wreak vengeance on each other via every horrible weapon I could think of! Harry was the eventual winner after he and Daniel conducted a life-and-death chase through the hallway zone, but let's face it: the REAL winners are all the people who got to kill somebody.

I understand there were quite a few people who were unaware that, when too many of you were still alive at the intended end of the game (between SUN-01 and SUN-02), I announced that the zone requirements no longer applied and anywhere was fair game. I tried to get the word out, but obviously I fell down on the job, and I feel bad about that. If I run it again, I'll build in that free-for-all "expiration date," but it'll be on the rules sheet so everybody knows what's up. (Another thing I'd change: have a second prize pack to be awarded to the person with the highest kill count.)

I know there were great stories, like Tony deviously asking someone to "just help him move a few chairs" and nailing him once he got into the room, and several people setting games in specific rooms just to get their target in range. I also understand Remi's taunt-dancing hubris was his downfall! Care to elaborate below, grudgeketeers? I'm also happy to hear suggestions about anything you think could be improved.

[tonydowler]

My high point was spending several sessions talking Daniel, then seeing him saunter into Fidalgo seeking his prey. I walked right up behind him, but he was pretty far away, so I had to walk pretty fast, which tipped my hand. He spotted my urgency, and when I lunged at him, he ducked out of the room before I could get there. Curses!

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Yes, I just remember seeing this vaguely Tony-Dowler-shaped blur coming at me out of my peripheral vision -- I was just lingering in the doorway (trying to see if my own mark was somewhere in that room), so I managed to leap backwards in time to avoid the kill.

After that, knowing who was after me, things were relatively calm -- though I did have to duck through that room several times at various points. I killed my first target, the elusive Chartreuse, before hitting the non-Lopez wall. Things picked up again the next day, though, as Tony was killed and I could not reliably identify who the mysterious 'Chiffon' might be.

As for my final moments -- I was running DRYH in the post-free-for-all slot, but Johnstone was acting as my accomplice and tipped me off when Chiffon lingered at the door -- only to come back a few minutes later to inform me that she had been killed by Harry. So I knew who was after me, but I didn't know if Harry knew who I was yet. I had been saddled with a non-Lopez target for the previous day (Doug, aka. Goldenrod), but now that the gloves were off I knew I could finish him off as soon as my game was over. The problem was doing so without getting killed by Harry first. My hope was that we three were the last ones left -- so I could chain-murder straight to Harry -- or that someone would kill Harry meanwhile.

Unfortunately, I did not manage to get to my target without Harry spotting me -- I doubled-back through Orcus at a sprint and managed to off Doug outside, only to see Harry emerge (casually eating a banana) from the interior hallway. At that point the aforementioned chase began -- I managed two or three laps of the exterior area, and almost lost Harry by ducking inside by the bathrooms, but the problem was that I hadn't had time to find out who I was supposed to kill next -- so I was just running pointlessly in circles, instead of running towards further murder.

As it turned out, Chris Bennett was my next target, and the only other remaining participant -- I am confident that if I had somehow managed to psychically acquire that information, I could have made it to kill him before Harry got to me, at which point I guess we would have killed each other in some sort of pyrrhic finale. As it was, I seem to remember Chris not even knowing who he was supposed to kill, and having to fish Harry's kill-slip out of the still-unopened Grudge Match envelope! It's dilettantes like that that make the rest of us murderers look bad, I tell ya!

In any case, it was a lot of fun and I'm glad I grabbed an envelope before they all disappeared. Adding a 'hallway' kill zone might have helped as well, though of course without seeing the venue in advance I can see why things ended up as they did.

[Brendan]

Yeah, if we were going to be in the same place next year, "hallway" and "outside" would definitely be seeded in as zones. Maybe once we know where next year's venue is, I'll commandeer one of those Seattlites to go scout locations for me.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

If you are going to do it again next year -- I seem to remember something in the rules suggesting that we should deliver gloating speeches, etc. upon killing our victim. (Or maybe I'm just hallucinating that, I can't find my rules.) To encourage that, perhaps along with a murder weapon you could include a brief motive to help spark appropriate gloating.

eg. 'Kill the Hon. Goldenrod with a POISONED DAGGER for WHAT HE DID TO YOUR CAT' or 'Kill Dr. Turquoise with a SAWBLADE for MAKING FUN OF YOUR HAIR', etc.

[Ben Wray]

I, sadly, was unable to kill my target: I knew who it was, but had to get them into one of the non-Lopez rooms and didn't know them well enough to engineer a plausible excuse. If they had been scheduled for games on the board I would have tried bribing the organizer to run them in the kill-zone in question, but alas, I fell before then. I knew Tony was trying to kill me (Be careful looking at your target cards, people! We're all professionals here) but the siren call of getting to play Dungeon World rather than run it was a greater incentive than continued survival.

Somebody posited that a team-based variant might be interesting, and I concur. Like, to kill someone you must confront them with at least one team-member, and they can't have one of their own team-members within five feet, or something? I'm not sure if you would still do targets, do them at the team level ("Okay, we killed somebody in team Fuschia, so that means we get their target in to team Aquamarine"), or just make it a free-for-all or such.

Actually, wasn't there a ludocity game about giving everyone secret allegiances and challenge-responses ("Challenge: scratch your nose. Response: they yawn.") for identification and then having them try to identify both their own team-mates and everyone else's codes? That'd probably be a fun one to run next year.