Running Away to Join the Circus: RPG Blog Carnival

Okay, so for some time now I've been vaguely aware of an interesting activity going on called the RPG Blog Alliance Carnival.  This is where each month a topic is set out for bloggers to post about and links are posted on the blog which is hosting for that month. (For an archive of past carnivals, see http://nevermetpress.com/the-rpg-blog-carnival-archive#.UHYXp1Ew_ng)  Now that I've (finally) taken the time to really look into it, I think it's a really cool idea.  So this month I'm running off to join the circus carnival.

For this month the topic is HORROR!  This can be the horror genre or the horror of games gone horribly wrong.  I'm planning to post on both.  Luckily I've only had one really bad experience with a game and I bailed before that session was even over (well, okay the GM had already killed off my character anyway, but that's not important right now).  I'll also be spicing up that Bad Game post with a link to a great video by the Gentleman Gamer of the YouTube RPG Brigade on his worst game.  Hilarious yet poignant.

Now, I don't usually run horror games, although I have done some X-Files type games with creepy stuff going on.  Right now I'm still in a 1920s Call of Cthulhu game run by my buddy Steve.  That's got some good horror elements running through it but it does point up the difficulty of really spooking players who've read all the books already.  My "Neo Tokyo" game was spooky and mysterious because it was totally homebrew, with animal mutant races borrowed from Palladium's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a skill tree system reworked from Paranoia.  The players had no idea what was going to show up next or...WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING!!!

Anyway, I'll be doing up a proper pair (or more) of posts for my exhibits in the carnival freak show next week (or maybe over the weekend--we'll see how things go).