Character Creation: The Hour Between Doggo and Woof

I use silly Internet terms to distract from the horror of the subject matter. 

The Game: The Hour Between Dog & Wolf
The Publisher: Errant Knight Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

The Hour Between Dog & Wolf is a two-player game, so right there it's not a game I'm likely to ever play. But I've been interested, because the concept of the game is interesting. One player is a serial killer, the other is an investigator hunting them. 

Now, that by itself doesn't necessarily need to get too disturbing - sure, "serial killer" is a pretty big ask for a lot of players, but such killers also occupy some mystique in our culture. But The Hour Etc dives into the deep end and explains serial killer pathology in a surprising amount of depth, using a lot of sources that look familiar to me from books like World of Darkness: Slashers. We're encouraged (if we're playing the killer) to make a character and consider their signature, their method of killing, whether they're organized or disorganized, and so forth. This game is 100% Not For Everyone, but it owns that and doesn't let you off the hook.

Would it be, for want of a better word, "fun" to play? I suspect with the right person it probably would, though I personally might enjoy it more as an epistolary game. Two-player games always feel weirdly, uncomfortably intimate for some reason, and this one would probably be even more so. 

But, whatever, I'm just gonna make a character. The first choice, naturally, is whether to make the killer or the investigator, but when I was reading the book I had an idea for the killer so that's where we're going. 

The idea I had was for a killer who breaks into people's houses when they're home alone, lurks in the dark and watches them, waits for them to wake up and stumble to the bathroom or investigate the noise in the dark, and then slit their carotid artery with a razor or scalpel and simultaneously start the time on a stopwatch. It's got to be an analog stopwatch because he likes to hear it tick, and because digital ones get too messy to use if they get blood on them. He stops it once the victim dies, and then leaves it behind. 

I'll get more into pathology and so on as chargen progresses. For now, I think that's enough of a start to do stats. Killers have three stats, Compulsion, Cunning, and Control. I have 10 points to split up between them. 

Compulsion is exactly that; the higher your rating, the more impulsive and driven to kill the killer is. I picture my killer as being somewhere in the middle, maybe 3 or 4? I'll say 4 for now but I might lower it if I need the points elsewhere.

Cunning is intelligence and care for avoiding leaving evidence around. My killer is pretty careful in a lot of ways - he cases homes before committing, avoiding households with alarm systems, dogs, multiple residents, and inconsistent schedules. He unscrews light bulbs or cuts power when he can so that his victims don't turn on lights and reveal him. Sure, arterial spray means he's sometimes messy when he leaves, but he's learned to wear coverings over his shoes so at least he can take those off and not leave footprints. That sounds pretty high in Cunning to me, let's say 5. 

And actually, as I think about that, it seems to suggest a lower Compulsion, so I'm gonna keep Cunning at 5 but lower Compulsion to 2. 

Now, that would leave Control at 3, but that actually works, because low-Control killers are the ones that aren't really active outside their own little world. My guy lives alone, probably has a job he can do online and without interacting with people, and rarely talks to anyone. The investigator is probably going to wind up being his most significant relationship. 

Next thing is motive. The Stopwatch Killer (as the press calls him) is in it for Thrills, though he would probably say he's just interested to see what people do with their last minute. That's a subset of Hedonistic.

Next question is Organized or Disorganized; my guy is pretty obviously Organized.

Other details: Let's say that Stopwatch's only living family is his father, Ross. Ross frequently expresses his disappointment in his son in little passive aggressive ways, never enough that Stopwatch (whom I'll find a real name for in a sec here) feels justified in getting angry or confronting him, but always enough that it hurts. Ross is a PhD and a former professor, a published author, and a recognized authority in his field (some obscure field of mathematics, I think, which my guy never had an aptitude for), and feels likes his son could have done more with his life. 

Stopwatch's mother left them when he was very small, and made occasional attempts to have a relationship, but never stayed consistent or seemed enthused about it. When Stopwatch turned 12, she no-showed when she was supposed to pick him up for his birthday. His dad had already dropped him off (he was running late, and figured mom would be along soon, and this was in the days before cell phones) so Stopwatch wound up sitting at a little diner watching the clock for hours until finally someone asked him who he was waiting for and then called his father. 

Engram: this is the ideal encounter, the thing the killer fantasizes about. For Stopwatch - real name: Shaun Harris - it's his mother begging to spend one more minute with him, and then cutting her throat and watching her spend her last minute choking on her own blood. 

MO: I've covered this above.

Signature: Crime scenes undisturbed other than lights being disabled, victims dispatched with a single cut to the throat, stopwatch placed on or near the body. 

So Themes & Characteristics are four aspects that, if we were playing, would become important. For Shaun, I think we'll say: 

1. Father has no time for him
2. One clean slice (Shaun is especially proud when he can slice open the carotid with the flick of a wrist; he'll stab if he has to but it's not as satisfying)
3. Mother abandoned him
4. What do you do with your last minute?

The only other thing would be to set Victims, Evidence, and shared experiences, but all of that would require someone playing the hero, so that's about it.

I picture Shaun as being in his mid-20s. Average height, average build, not good-looking but not memorably ugly, either. Reading glasses, but he doesn't need them at night. He's got a shopping list of things he wants to buy for his killings - night vision goggles, maybe chloroform? But he's not sure where to get this stuff and he doesn't have a lot of disposable income anyway. 

That'll do it!