Ambient Creepiness

My friend Mackie is a twisted and evil genius.

It's probably one of the major reasons I'm proud to call him a friend.

We share a fondness for table-top role-playing games (if you follow the last three hundred or so posts, I'm fairly sure you've guessed I enjoy those). Mackie is the one who introduced me to horror gaming.

For the uninitiated, there's various "flavors" of role-playing games. You have your generic fantasy genre (aka "Dungeons and Dragons") with the dragons, the elves, the magic swords, etc. You have your science fiction settings (ranging from hard science to "space fantasy" like "Star Wars"). You have your superhero settings.

And you have your horror, like Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" and so on.

I'm not a huge fan of superhero gaming (more recently I've come to loathe it, actually). I generally like the sword-and-sorcery stuff of fantasy ('cause at heart I'm still 13) as well as space-opera-ish sci-fi (though I rarely get the opportunity to play that).

Sometimes, though, horror really fits the bill.

In most genres, you're progressing a character through a series of challenges to get stronger and better. You're trying to get the gold, rescue the whomever, and beat the bad guy (or good guy, depending on your preferences).

It's great, but that kind of gaming sometimes devolves into number crunching and what gamers call being a "munchkin". Kind of off-putting.

In horror settings, you're not really progressing. You're surviving.

Horror games make you really role play. You're usually playing some average schmuck. Sometimes you're playing a badass, but it never matters. Whatever you're facing is beyond you.

Always.

That's what horror is about. You're facing something completely outside of your ability and experience and you're just trying to get out alive.

The most satisfying role-playing sessions I've ever been in were horror games. Some were play by email (PBEM). Some were in-person. Mackie's latest Halloween offering was an in-person game that still gives me the shivers.

And Mackie is a GENIUS at running horror.

It's the little things: candles, lighting, live games in his terrifying cellar, and music that help.

Which brings me in an incredibly roundabout way to my point of this post.

Mackie collects ambient horror music to play in the background. His favorite is the score to the original "Silent Hill" game. Not the subsequent sequels, mind you. I'm talking about the original game.

And he has it on a cassette.

Finding the actual CD is a minor challenge.

The other day, I found it online. I just got it in yesterday.

And now Mackie will have the entire beast on CD (with the ability to put it on an MP3 player) for future offerings of horror.

This pleases me.