The Game: FiveEvil
The Publisher: Handiwork Games
Degree of Familiarity: Well...I know 5e OK, and I know horror very well, but I've never played this
The Publisher: Handiwork Games
Degree of Familiarity: Well...I know 5e OK, and I know horror very well, but I've never played this
Books Required: Just the one
I'm actually a little surprised I backed this Kickstarter. I was pretty skeptical of the premise, and I find the whole "referring to D&D as the world's greatest RPG" thing to be pretty wanky and not at all true besides. But I was interested to the see the implementation, and since I'm actually running 5e, I figured I'd be able to appreciate it, whether it was well done or not.
And...I'm weirdly into it. Like, the problem I have with 5e and D&D generally is that it's not about anything. It's a corporate-produced RPG with all the edges sanded down, and that means it's easy to run and pretty easy to play, it's easy to understand, but the mechanics are not just simple but basic. They don't play into a theme because there isn't any, and despite the game's insistence that it's focused on combat, exploration, and intrigue, it's not actually about any of those. It's about "combat" inasmuch as it's about war-game style tactics, it's about exploration inasmuch as you find things and the GM tells you about them, and it's about intrigue inasmuch as it's...a roleplaying game. But none of the mechanics actually enhance those themes and ideas.
And that's fine, I hasten to add. I have lots of games that are very theme-focused and honestly? There are downsides to those, too. When you specify, you lose flexibility and (sometimes) accessibility.
Anyway, FiveEvil takes the basic framework of 5e and then actually asks "if we want to do a horror RPG with these bones, what do we need to do to make that work?" And it...does a pretty good job.
First of all, on a thematic level, it treats horror as distinct from fear. You can't make a player feel fear (rather, you can, but never reliably; if it happens it's incidental). You can create horror, because horror is external. The game views the scenario as a trap that the characters fall into, and it's very clear that this is not a "story" per se because you need to play through it and let what happens, happen. That's simple and pretty obviously if you've been a GM for any length of time, but it's useful to say and would have been really useful to me in 1992 when I started running horror games.
Second, the mechanics actually do support the theme, and the best change that I've seen is what it does with Inspiration. In 5e, you get Inspiration when you play to your personality traits and then you can spend it to get advantage on a roll. In FiveEvil, you can take Desperation anytime to get bonuses on rolls, but if that builds up (which it's supposed to) you wind up taking penalties and/or losing access to your personality traits (on a mechanical level) as you become alienated.
And finally, it approaches "combat" as "terror scenes," and tries to lean into the chaos of a scene like that, rather than make it strictly a tactical exercise. (And that, my friends, is something I wish we'd have thought to do with Chill. We talked about it a little but I wish we'd leaned into that idea a little harder and built the mechanics around it a little more heavily. Ah, well, too late now!)
So...fuck me, I think I'd run this, and it's really rare that a generic horror game makes me want to run it. Let's make a character!
Now, we run into the problem of there not being a default setting, of course, but there are a bunch of scenarios in the book, including one that's a little reminiscent of Cabin in the Woods, so I think I'll use that as my jumping-off point. This scenario assumes we're all about 10 years out of high school, meaning we'd be what, 28-ish (that also means we'd be born in 1998 or so, if the game is set now).
The game wants me to start with a concept, and the conceit here is that we'll be having one last fun weekend together before we all collectively try and get our shit together. I'm gonna say my guy fronts a band. He's been posting snippets on Tiktok and so on for a long time, trying to build up a following, and it's kinda happened? But he's not getting offers to tour with Connor Price or anything (first "musician I learned about from video shorts" that came to mind), and maybe it's time to throw in the fuckin' towel. Let's call him Tyree Caulder. Tyree is 27, male, Black, fronts a band called Boxcutter (I'm thinking kinda like Houses or Foster the People).
So the first thing I do is come up with descriptions. I get one at +4 and one at +2, and these basically apply whenever that description would. The first one is meant to be job, occupation, career, profession (yes, these are all listed). In Tyree's case, I actually don't think it's the band. I think instead he's worked in infosec for a while and he's pretty good at it, but he mostly freelances because he's still trying to make the band happen and wants his schedule free in case Connor Price ever calls (if by some weird coincidence Connor ever sees this, hey dude, love your music, "Trendsetter" gets stuck in my head a lot).
Anyway, that first description can be unfocused freelance infosec. My second description is meant to be more a hobby or vocation, so we'll call that wannabe indie rock band front man.
Cool, now I get to pick two skills that my first description applies to and one for my second description. Well, I think for the first one, Knowledge/Recall and Investigation make the most sense. For the second, I guess Persuasion? Oh, maybe Grit. There's not a Perform skill here, and I feel like Persuasion is the wrong skill set. Yeah, let's go with Grit - lots of late nights and long drives.
Right, and then the same thing for saves, except I just get one for each that my bonus applies. Here, I think we'll go WIS for the first one and CHA for the second.
Now we have Personality Aspects. These are the things I have to play to in order to lose Desperation. I get a Habit, a Belief, a Flaw, and a Relationship. These are expressed as sentences. Let's see...
Well, my Relationship should be with the band. I think we'll phrase it as It might be time to let the band die. No, let's say "go," not "die." "Die" is too aggressive.
For Habit, I'm meant to consider what we'd see Tyree doing in his first scene. God help me, I think Tyree is going to be checking his phone and scrolling Tiktok a lot. (At least I won't feel too bad when he dies in the movie.)
Belief is the thing that would cause an intense argument early in the movie. I don't want to make everything about the band, but we could still make it if we got a break is pretty good here.
That just leaves Flaw, which is what would get me in trouble at the midpoint of the movie. I think Tyree films everything reflexively. Like, anything interesting or just vaugely unexpected happens, the phone's out.
Cool! Now we do Ability Scores. The recommended method here is to roll 3d6 seven times and drop the second-lowest. Sure, fuck it, let's see how this goes. 11, 9, 7, 12, 12, 8, 4. Yep, that's about right. That means I drop the 7.
Well, I'll put my 12s into CHA and INT. I'll put my 11 into CON. I'll put 9 into WIS, 8 into DEX, and that leaves me a 4 in STR. Jesus, that's pathetic. Guess Tyree doesn't work out much.
And that's it! I rather suspect Tyree won't last long if things get scary.
