Tomorrow is the third time we are going to tackle tremulus. But this time I will be running the game instead of Aki. As this is again one of our random sessions it sets the score of games run to a tie between me and him (hopefully Ville can take this hint as he is now left behind).

I’ve been working with my own rpg system for a couple of years now (more of that will follow at some point) and wanted to brake away from it for a bit. After two sessions I think I have some idea of how to run a game of tremulus. Not enough maybe but that is besides the point of trying things out.

As a fan of intertextuality I wanted to take elements from the stories Aki ran and build something from them. A sequal was exactly what I wanted to do. Something that fits the horror genre like a hockey mask to a serial killer.

Primrose Path didn’t offer much in the way of continuity. It could only work out as a “Return to the Mansion” but if you have played it through you know the problems this kind of approach could present.

Bell End was a far better choice. My character survived it and painted a master piece (though it happened during the debrief stage). There were some unsolved elements too which helped me to form the basic idea behind my own framework. Some Red Bull and Midnight Syndicate was everything else I needed to write it.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of clear examples of writing a framework (from my experience with WFRP I gather this is a major problem as fan material is quite a boost for any game). So I worked with Aki’s framework and that from Primrose Path.

It was interesting to notice how the guidelines of frameworking for tremulus guided my ideas. I had thought it to only take moment to write down my ideas but the restrictions, examples and guidelines refined them. It wasn’t so easy to write it in a compact form but as a writing exercise it was a good one.

We’ll get back on this after tomorrow’s game. So session debriefing and the downloadable framework will follow at some point.