One Shot Monthly: Quietus and Arc
the end of the world
My last newsletter was on the One Shot Monthly discord I’m running, where a group of friends and I play a new game every month. I’ve written up a summary of our sessions and some thoughts on the game itself, but first I have to play catch up, which gives us a two-in-one. Our first session we played Quietus, our second Arc.
I’ve also recorded an audio version of the newsletter, which you can listen to by pressing play in the menu above, although you’ll miss pictures of my cat. Please let me know which version of the newsletter you prefer!
Quietus, by Oli Jeffery, is a one shot, prep-less RPG of melancholy horror. It’s a hack of Blades in the Dark, and emulates movies like Oculus, the Strangers, and the miniseries The Haunting of Hill House. I did play it with 3 players instead of the recommended 2, and may have sacrificed some quieter moments, but then again, it was pretty good.
A group of teenagers broke into a new housing development that was still under construction, then got separated from one girl (an NPC) when the security guard showed up. Inside the house with the three players was evidence of some kind of ritual. Their friend the NPC popped back up after the guard left, and was strangely insistent that they all go into the woods behind the development. Next thing you know, people are levitating and speaking with demonic voices, you know, a normal Friday night. Our players took the guard’s golf cart to a nearby gas station where, I cannot emphasize enough, they stole a car from the poor clerk and left him there to get possessed. Heartless. Back home, they start going over the options and decide to go to the nearby church for some priestly intervention, but before they can leave, they find…
TRIGGER WARNING
It’s at this point I should mention that I am very into gore and horror. If you’d prefer not to read about such things, I’d suggest you stop reading here. I’m not going to get as explicit as I did in the game, with details about sounds and smells and such, but some people don’t enjoy even the barest mention of blood or exposed muscle or what have you, so if this is you, you should probably skip down to where I talk about layout and mechanics. Not every game of mine is horror or gross, and I will warn you when it is. And in this specific instance, we have: gore, mention of child molestation, abuse, and demonic possession. To give a little space before and after I get to the bad stuff, there are very nice pictures of my cat, Vanilla Stardust. You’re safe reading after the second one.
IS HE NOT ADORABLE
SPACE
SPACE
So before the group can leave, they find their friend the NPC in the clothes washer. She’s been spun apart, all glistening exposed muscle and a pool of blood leaking onto the floor that just keeps growing. I was going for a grosser version of a scene from the Japanese horror movie Spiral, if you’ve seen it. And then she starts talking. They want to get out of there, but the kid whose house it was couldn’t stop their mom from going downstairs, so they blurted out a confession of what lay in the washer. We established previously that the kid’s dad had molested them, but the mom hadn’t believed them when told. A bad roll had the mom promising to clean up the body but not believing that they hadn’t killed their friend. Mom goes downstairs, there’s these wet noises and all the lights down there turn off. The kids leave knowing mom got got.
At the church they find a young priest who is enthusiastic about getting rid of some demons making people into blood soup, grab some holy water, and head back to the house. Unfortunately the whole house was now infected, and the group doesn’t even get past the front door when the priest is killed. Finally, the kid whose house it is sacrifices themselves to the demon to get it to stop, and they both fold back into whatever hell dimension it came from. The two remaining PCs jumped back into the stolen car and take off, cruising the darkened streets in a futile search to forget what they now know is out there.
SPACE
SPACE
HE LOVES PIKACHU
LOOK AT THIS KITTEH
END OF WARNING
I was pleasantly surprised at how well the GM mechanics worked. I’m used to running PbtA and keeping a running track of what else is happening, but the token system meant I could just glance to see how much I should do. The black, red, and white layout is very attractive and easy to read, and the red toned illustrations are pretty nice. I’d run it again if I was looking for an easy horror game for a casual night.
Arc, by momatoes, is a rules-light, tension-heavy fantasy RPG where there is an inevitable apocalypse that you have an actual chance of stopping.
I based our background on a nightmare I’d had - we were all at a university, employees and visitors, when suddenly all of the staircases dissolved. The group headed out to see if it was a widespread phenomena or localized, and noticed dark spots in the air. Some were ravens, laughing wildly as they surveyed the humans, while other dark spots were clearly very far away - but getting closer. They headed to the library, and helped some of the students that had fallen into the basement when the stairs disappeared. Back up top, one of the PCs got a raven to talk, and learned that the giant naked, many winged girls who were falling towards our planet would destroy it when they arrived. Our heroes tried a last ditch effort to blast at least one into the ether, but ultimately failed. We left them right as they succumbed to their doom…
So the book is utterly gorgeous. The colors and layout are beautiful, and it was a joyful experience to read. It has a lot of tools to track your Omens and Clock for the GM, and emphasizes play culture and safe experiences at the table. The examples and bits that were directly from the author - as opposed to being written as make it your own - were so wonderfully evocative. I’d run it again if I was looking for a hero-focused game, where my friends could save the world, and I’d add in more of the bits that really grabbed me from the text.
That was our first two sessions, and we’ve had two more since then. Have you played either of these, and what did you think?