Ah, Halloween. Sure, it's a holiday where we tell our children that it's ok to not only take candy from strangers, but to go up to their doors and demand it; however, it's also a holiday where you have an excuse to dress up in costume! As such, I've really come to develop an appreciation for Halloween as an adult. That delicious limited edition Mojito-flavored soda helps, too. And candy corn. Oh yes. "But AJ," you're surely saying by now, "this is supposed to be a gaming column!" Have patience, my loyal readers. Now that I'm done waxing poetic about my favorite October treats, I'd like to talk to you about the fun of hosting a special Halloween game! As Halloween falls on a Friday this year, it's an especially good time to consider a little extra-spooky or silly RP. There are a few fun things you can do for a Halloween game, and depending on when you're reading this column, you probably have most of a month to prepare one. One popular option is to run a stand-alone game with a Halloween theme. Alternately, you can run a special session of your usual game, but with elements of horror thrown in. Our you can run your game as usual, but have some holiday fun planned for the players. Our recent tradition of Halloween games started a couple of years ago when I nagged Chris until he agreed to run Call of Cthulhu for Halloween. Call of Cthulhu is ideal for a one-shot Halloween game, as are Cthulhu: Dark Ages and Cthulhutech. It's not too uncommon for characters in these Lovecraftian systems to lose their mind in a single session, so it suits itself well to a short game. World of Darkness games are suitable, too, as would be any other system I'm currently unaware of that brands itself as a horror game. When planning a one-shot game, it's important to keep your time constraints in mind. You're going to have to get your players settled down, supplied with characters, and through the plot that you have planned, all in a single evening. As such, you'll want to keep the story rather straightforward and simple, and do whatever you can to streamline character creation. It's a good idea to use a system that at least some of your players are already familiar. If you only have one or two players who know the system, try to recruit them to help the rest. Make sure you'll have either multiples of the necessary core rulebook(s), or at least photocopies of the pertinent info for making a character. It can help to set guidelines or themes for the characters. In our first Halloween game, we all had to make ourselves in the Cthulhu system. This ended up not going over well with those players whose personal beliefs preclude them from practicing magic. So last year, we were instead told to make any of our past roleplaying characters into Scion characters. It took a bit for people to settle on to a favorite character to recreate, but once they did, we had a fun mishmash of Rifts, D&D, L5R and freeform characters all in a single game. Other possibilities include telling your players to recreate their favorite movie monster or slasher film villain. If you think you'll be really pressed for time, and/or it fits the idea for your game, you can also pre-generate all of the characters and either pass them out to your players or let your players pick them. I had a GM do this once for a one-off Christmas game and it was kind of fun and we were able to get started pretty quickly. I do recommend that you make a couple extra characters, so you don't end up with the problem we had at Free RPG Day last year - the last person to join our Scion game got stuck with the character no one else wanted, and didn't enjoy the game much. That way you're also prepared if someone invites themselves to your game at the last minute. For special spooky editions of your regular game, you can draw your inspiration from many places. Although I don't usually recommend this, Halloween is an ideal time to run a game inspired by your favorite ghost story, horror novel, or monster movie. Make it different enough that any players who have also heard/read/seen the source aren't at an advantage, of course. If you're running D&D, the Heroes of Horror book is a good resource. Obviously if you've made the switch to 4th Edition, all of the stats are useless and would have to be redone, but there's still a lot of helpful information on setting a horrific tone, as well as charts you can roll on to give NPCs random nasty traits. You might as well get some use out of your old 3.5 books, right? This is a good time, too, to break out the grossest monsters in the manual, and describe them in the most over-the-top manner possible. Don't gloss over the dripping slime or the vile stench. Do your best to let your players know just how nasty what they're fighting is. Heck, if you want, you can break out some of those old Halloween party gags, with boiled pasta and peeled grapes and other slimy things. If you want to run your usual game but still have a little Halloween fun, go for it! My favorite thing to do, whether or not the GM has encouraged it, is wear a costume. As the GM, you can even invite your players to come dressed as their character. Please don't reward them with extra exp, as that's not fair to the players who don't have the budget or skills to come up with a costume. If you do want to reward them, provide silly prizes like dice or candy. You can even do that for normal costumes, if you want. Everyone loves a costume contest! Of course, you should also feel free to provide a big bowl of Halloween candy, or some fresh-baked pumpkin cookies, or some delicious Mojito soda (mmmm). Depending on how far you want to go, you could make that punch with the dry ice and decorate your game room with plastic skeletons. Because after all, why should kids get to have all of the Halloween fun? One final thing. Before you put a ton of work into coming up with the most terrifying game ever, think about whether it's appropriate to your group. Mine is full of goofballs, and no matter how dark the GM is trying to make things, they'll be laughing, joking, interrupting descriptions and not taking things seriously. If this sounds like your group, don't frustrate yourself by trying to inspire terror. Instead, run with it and do a campy horror game. You'll all have more fun that way. Until next month, happy gaming and happy Halloween!

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Copyright © 2008 By AJ Reardon E-mail AJ at: ErtheFae@aol.com Visit AJ at: www.erthefae.com