Afterschool Activities

"The last thing you want to do is run out into the light, because then...everything."
"Everything?"
"EVERYTHING!"

A role-playing game based on one Anon's spectacularly intense nightmare. The players take the roles of students at a boarding school. During an otherwise normal day, all lights in the school go THUNK and even the sun itself dims in the sky. A malevolent darkness seeps into the school, and the students must stay ahead of it and stay awake. It went from conception to playtesting in about 24 hours.

• Original thread on sup/tg/

The Students

Each player's character is a student that resides at the boarding school, with access to everything a boarding school student could have except working light fixtures. Student attributes are their grades in five school subjects (Art, English, Maths, Phys.Ed. and Science), as well as Popularity and Wakefulness. Attributes are generated randomly by rolling a d6 for each except Wakefulness, which is 90 + d10 to start.

The school subject attributes are used in contests for rolling dice. They are graded F(1) to A(6). Better performance in a subject means an easier time overcoming obstacles related to that subject.

• Art - How imaginative are you? How well do you understand your environment, and thus spotting things other people miss? Especially things you wish you didn't see?
• English - How good is your vocabulary, your comprehension, your communication? Also used for understanding difficult books like tomes from the restricted area of the library.
• Maths - How good are you with spatial relationships and numbers?
• PE - How strong are you? How fast can you run? How sturdy are you? How fast can you run?
• Science - How much do you remember about chemicals, the mechanical and electrical workings of the school? How good are you with complex instructions like rituals?

Contests are usually rolling a d6, with 4-6 for success. Having a Failing grade in a subject is a -2 penalty, and a barely passing grade of E is a -1 penalty. A high mark of B gives a +1 bonus, and an Ace student gets a +2 bonus. Even failing students succeed sometimes, and even ace students make mistakes.

Popularity is the student's charisma, reputation and (apparent) confidence. Students are more likely to listen to someone with high Popularity.

Wakefulness is how much longer the student can stay awake in this unnatural nightfall. It decreases by 1 every 10 minutes of game time (or just use a timer, such as the one from Space Hulk, and decrease it when it runs out), and a Wakefulness test is rolled for every hour of game time (or for every 6 Wakefulness points lost with the timer method of doing things). If you roll under, you stay awake. If you roll over, you fall sleep and will not wake up unless certain actions are taken (determined by the GM). Wakefulness can be restored by drinking tea, coffee, or energy drinks, by splashing cold water upon your face, or by some other means such as being frightened (by the GM's discretion). Students that exhaust their Wakefulness, or fail to stay awake, are unlikely to wake up again, and certainly won't avoid the encroaching darkness.

As an optional rule, students may also have merits or flaws called "Teacher's Notes", described below.

The Teacher

The Teacher is an NPC ally for the players. The Teacher could be a groundskeeper, guidance counsellor, or school nurse, but always (starts as) a trusted authority figure at the school. The Teacher has a working flashlight, keys to almost every door in the school, physically stronger than the players, somewhat smarter, and familiar with both the student areas and off-limits areas of the school.

Teachers usually have high marks for their school subjects, but not all teachers have "A"s across the board. The Teacher may have an "A+" mark in a subject, giving them a +3 bonus (automatic success). The Teacher does not lose Wakefulness over time as students do, but they could still lose Wakefulness from being terrified, or pass out due to circumstances.

The Teacher is a crutch for implementing plot armor for the characters while the players get settled into the horror scenario. The GM is expected to incapacitate, kill off, or subvert the Teacher early in the story. The loss of the Teacher should be a severe and frightening thing, like the loss of the only adult in a crisis situation to a bunch of children SHOULD be. It shouldn't happen too early as you want the PC's to feel somewhat dependent on the adult... but not too late as you want the children PC's to gain responsibility for their actions for most of the game. When the players lose their Teacher, that's the GM signalling "the training wheels are off, all aboard Mr. Bone's Wild Ride."

The Darkness

The main enemy. The Darkness is both the unnatural absence of light, and the thing from which the horror spills. As time progresses, the same starts to apply to entire rooms and sections of the school. Sleeping individuals that are left alone for too long in the dark vanish. This could mean eaten by a Grue, or forgotten and unmourned, or added to the midnight legions... or something worse. The Darkness itself may not destroy you, but becoming lost is another matter entirely, especially if you end up on the other side of the school and having to find your way back to the others when your Wakefulness is low. (The Darkness doesn't itself have to be dark -- it could be fog, an abyss or even have the lights stay on for a Daylight horror.)

Before the story starts, determine a random time on the clock for Darkness to fall. Roll a d12 for hour, 3d20 for minute, then roll a die: even is PM and odd is AM. You could start the story during this day, but when the appointed time comes, all lights in the school go THUNK, and the sun itself dims out of the sky. 1d6 students fall asleep at this point, and do not wake up.

The lights going out is not the only problem.

Horrors

The active malefactors. These could be anything, depending on how you interpret the Darkness event. They could be manifestations of the student's fears, or they could be warped and distorted Rescue Workers, or they could be demons. Whichever they are, try to keep them out of the player's sight for as long as possible, as a Horror known is not nearly as frightening as a horror unknown.

Terrors

The passive malefactors. These are just there to be spooky, ranging from the school computers having messages appear on the screens ("ONE GIRL, TWO GIRL, RED GIRL, DEAD GIRL"), to the windows cracking, to whatever your cruel mind can envision to shit up the players.

Scenarios

There are a lot of potential scenarios for this setting. Here are some to give you ideas.

• Demonic Incursion - Someone's up to no good and trying to summon an eldritch horror within the school and is using the psychic emanations of the students as power, which also leads to some demons running around.
• The Coven - Witches. They could be doing anything, from being the cause of the above, to trying to cast a spell to resurrect something evil, such as a more powerful witch.
• Gas Leak - It turns out this was all a hallucination. Those who are caught by the monsters are actually being taken to safety by rescue workers, and those who lose consciousness of their own accord have died.
• A Trance - This scenario is generated from the collective psychic emanations from the students, who are in fact locked in a trance. People who fall asleep are those who are either lost in the "hive mind", or are waking up. Take your pick. Monsters can be collective fears or someone trying to wake them up.

Sample "Milestones"

The following are some simple things to go on at certain points in the game.

• Lights go out permanently (including emergency lights), only flash-lights and other "temporary" means of illumination work.
• Sleeping bodies disappear
• Alarm system goes off. This could be anything from just a bell to the sprinklers showering everyone. The alarm does not stop and must be dealt with for the sake of sanity.
• Increasing number of "encounters" or new types of encounters.
• Removing sections of the building - consumed by darkness or just mysteriously locked.
• Recurring "hunter" appears.
• Electronics stop functioning.
• Other students and the teachers just go missing.
• The lights go back on but everything outside is just inky blackness.
• Severe medical situation; allergic shock, injury, mental sickness "activating".
• Etc. Etc.

Total Party Sleep

A Total Party Sleep doesn't have to be the end of the game. When characters fall asleep, something will happen. They may get trapped in the Nightmare world and have to force themselves awake, crawl out of hell, or other scenarios.

Writefaggotry

The circles under Sarah's eyes were definitely noticeable as she glanced at the reflective cabinet over the sink in the teachers' work room in the light from the digital clock on the counter. It was blinking 00:00, which she was pretty sure clocks weren’t meant to do, but at this point she was too tired to care much. She really hoped this instant coffee stuff would do the trick. Steph had said her dad used it to pull long nights when he was working on a contract, but none of the other girls had ever tried the stuff. Since Sarah knew her way around the workroom she had volunteered to go make some cups and bring them back. She had been worried that they might get in trouble for taking the teachers' mugs, but ever since Mr. Stevens had gone to look for the circuit breaker they hadn't seen a single adult, so she figured she'd take the risk.

Once she had filled up the mugs from the tap, Sarah grabbed the plastic container and tried to read how long she was supposed to microwave them for. The text on the container swam before her tired eyes. She couldn't tell if that was a 3 or an 8, so she threw them all in the microwave and punched in 5 minutes, hoping it would do the job. The drone of the microwave was practically a lullaby to her weary mind, so she began pacing a circle around the folding table in the center of the room to stay alert.

If it weren't for her circuit taking her near the door, she never would have heard the shuffling from up the hallway. Sarah froze, trying to figure out if her ears had been tricking her or not. Her first instinct was to call out. Maybe one of the other girls had gotten tired of trying the janitor's endless ring of keys on that door and had come to help her. But... that noise didn't sound like the loafers the girls wore. It sounded more like... scratching. Like nails on the tile. The noise moved slowly up the hallway outside the door. In an instant all the fears of the darkness that Sarah had been holding at bay came crashing down onto her, and she frantically searched the room for some escape. Of course, the teachers’ workroom was in the interior of the building, so there were no windows and only the one door in and out. But… there! The closet in the corner was big enough for her to hide in, and she dove for it even as the scratching outside drew even with the door. She wriggled inside and tried to pull the closet doors closed behind her, but there were no handles on the inside so she was forced to leave the small crack for her fingers to squeeze through. The noises outside the door had stopped, and for a minute Sarah thought her tired mind must have imagined it. Then the tapping began.

A slow, rhythmic click upon the door, as though something hard was tapping against it. Then Sarah realized her mistake. The door was closed, but the latch didn’t quite align with the doorframe, and so it hadn’t popped out when she had closed the door. And now, as something on the other side prodded the door, it slowly began to swing open into the room. Sarah held her breath as something shifted in the hallway, her eye glued to the crack in the closet doors. Then the room went black.

For a moment Sarah panicked again, reliving the moment earlier when the world had gone dark. Then she realized what had happened. The 5 minutes she had set the microwave for had run out, and the microwave backlight which she had been unconsciously relying upon had gone with it. Now that the room was plunged into total darkness, she could no longer see the door, or the source of the sounds that had frightened her. But the sounds continued. The tapping had stopped when the door opened, only to be replaced by the slow scratching sound as the source of the noise moved into the teachers’ work room.

Sarah's heart pounded in her chest as the thing moved towards the now-dark microwave. Once it reached the counter there was a long period of silence, and her imagination filled with images of it slowly turning to scan the room. The sounds began again, and she couldn’t tell if it moved towards the tables in the room’s centre or the couch along the wall. Then a new sound sprung up, a sliding noise, punctuated by clunks. A whimper escaped Sarah’s lips when she realized the source: the thing was dragging an… arm? A hand? It was sliding something along the cabinet doors that lined the wall on her side of the room, the clunks signalling when it hit a gap between doors. If it continued along the wall, it would come to her closet. Each clunk rang louder in her mind as it moved closer to her hiding place.

But the moment never came. Unable to tell precisely how close the thing was, the noises suddenly ceased. Listening hard, Sarah could hear… nothing. She waited, but no noise at all came from the dark room. The sliding noise had stopped, but so had the scratching sounds that she had come to associate with movement. Still… she couldn’t bring herself to open the door and check. The thought that the thing was out there, something was in the darkness… Sarah slumped against the back wall of the closet, quivering from fear.

Twenty minutes later, when she still had not returned with the promised coffee, the other girls came looking for Sarah. Opening the closet, their emergency flashlight beam fell upon her form, curled in the corner, sound asleep. They glanced at each other with grim looks. Just like the others, she wouldn’t be waking up. And from the look of the coffee container upturned in the room’s sink, they would need to find another way to stay awake.

Optional Rules

Prodigies and Delinquents

When rolling for grades, it's possible to get a delinquent 'E' average, or a prodigy 'B' average.

Delinquents are skippers or ne'er do wells who shirk the system for learning to be an adult their own way. They do not commit tests with dice, but instead flip coins. They cannot retry Tests. They also start with a bevy of 'useful' items: knives, lock-picking sets, lighters, porn mags, cellphones. They are unlikely to listen to a teacher, and are often the impetus for leaving the room. ("Damnit, someone go get Janet before she does something stupid!")

Prodigies are overall better than their peers at many tasks, and are in every way a 'model student'. The must obey the Teachers or other authority figures. However, when the Horrors begin, their teaching and training fails them, and they lose their wakefulness much faster: 3 to the other normal kid's 1. Also, when they manage to fail a test, they lose another 5. They do not accrue Teacher Notes, and do not carry anything in their bags besides what is needed for classes.

Teacher's Notes

Students may have an extra note written on their report cards by teachers. These have mechanical effects during the game:

• "Does not work well with others" - Suffer a -2 penalty on all rolls to persuade or influence classmates, but gain a +1 bonus to any roll made when completely alone
• "Horseplay during class" - This student can make a PE test to draw a Horror's attention away from someone else
• "Texting during lessons" - Has a functioning smartphone that can be used for a +1 bonus during tests, but depletes battery after each use.
• "Poor attention span" - Can spend 1d6 points of Wakefulness at any time to cheer up the same amount to any one classmate; never takes matter seriously, -1 penalty to all rolls made to persuade or convince a student or teacher.
• "Excused for sports" - Has an additional +2 on all PE-based rolls, and +1 on any roll made to persuade or convince any student when athletic status is used; -1 penalty to all rolls in any subject other than PE.
• "Caught daydreaming" - Has -1 penalty to academic rolls or anything boring, but +1 to inspiration or anything related to dreaming or big ideas.
• "Violent outbursts" - Has a -1 to Popularity for a well-known bad temper. Failing a roll when working with another student will trigger a violent upset; can be calmed either by inflicting harm, or if the other student describes an effort to appease and makes a successful roll. While upset, the student gains a +2 to all PE rolls. The student can trigger their own violent upset at GM's discretion.
• "Sensitive kid" - All influence rolls by (or targeting!) this student gains a +1 bonus; has a -1 penalty on rolls dealing with the strange events.
• "Plays music during class" - Has a functioning music player and does not stop using it at any time. Rolls that involve this student listening to talking can only succeed on a roll of '6'. The constant music improves fatigue; this student's Wakefulness decreases at half the rate of other students (20 minutes instead of 10) and this student has a +10% bonus to Wakefulness rolls.
• "Spills drinks on homework" - Using caffeinated beverages restores twice as much Wakefulness; after an hour without imbibing, Wakefulness decreases as twice the rate (5 minutes instead of 10) until a drink can be acquired. Has -1 to Popularity rolls due to reputation for having a disgusting habit.
• "Does not read assigned books" - Has -1 penalty in all subjects, and -1 to Popularity rolls due to inattentiveness. Fascination with trashy YA fiction means Wakefulness decreases at half the rate of other students during this horror scenario (20 minutes instead of 10), and once per session the student's genre savvy can be used to evade one confrontation with a Horror.
• "Disrupts class with talking" - Has a +1 bonus to Popularity-based rolls with other popular students (4 or more), but -1 penalty to Popularity with unpopular students (3 or less).
• "Always prepared for class" - Has a +1 on all subject-based rolls, but -1 to all Popularity rolls with other students.
• "Excels in _____" - Raise one subject an additional grade level (this may raise it from A to A+), and may know more about this subject than a student could; however, the strain to always succeed means -2 from Wakefulness every time this subject is used in a roll.
• "Does not apply self in ____" - Rolls for this subject never use bonuses nor penalties; an even roll is always success, an odd roll is always failure.
• "Frequently makes beeping noises during class" - This student is an android (secretly or overtly). Wakefulness is pinned to 100% as androids do not sleep, but spilling water or other liquids on the android's chassis will cause a shutdown (asleep). Any Math rolls gain +3, but all English rolls lose -3, and attempts to solve captchas automatically fail.
• "Falls asleep during lessons" - This student begins the game asleep. Roll a new character.