Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The darkness

I actually think that Beacon plays better in the dark.  When we were camping, we played at night and it was pretty dark.  In addition to the central Coleman lantern, I just used a little LED reading light clipped onto my GM screen so I could see my notes. The players either used a quick shot from a flash light or leaned a bit into the lantern light to reference or update their character sheets. All their dice were from a shared pool that they rolled in that circle of lantern light.


It totally rocked.

I've played with music or general sound effects and I've played with props like minis and battle mats, and I have to say I think that darkness works better than any of these approaches.  Maybe we're just hard-wired to imagine better while sitting around the fire encircled by darkness?

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a great game! I gotta agree on the "better played in the dark". At university we used to play Cthulhu with just a couple of candles in the center of the room, and those were probably the most evocative games I've ever been in. Funnily enough, I read a blog post a while ago talking about the early days of D&D where Gygax and gang would play with the GM sitting out of sight - the players having no other cue other than the GM's disembodied voice, which I think is kinda a the same principle.

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    1. I kind of like the idea of the DM being out of sight, possibly in the hallway rifling through peoples coats and purses for valuables. DMs got to eat...

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