Malice: Not just scary dolls

I have been working on Malice, the game formerly about scary dolls. Now it's a game that celebrates the low special effects and high character development horrow movies from the late 60's to the early 80's. Before the obvious thing to be feared could be seamlessly and realistically featured onscreen. I'm thinking of movies like The Omen, The Brood, and The Shining.

I just happened to misplace my handwritten notes from the last time I worked on the game. This has turned out to be a very good thing. I have the bare bones, the pieces I really like, and I've been able to look at the game from a fresh perspective. A few nights ago, we playtested character creation, which is done in character, and in conjunction with establishing a plot. That was really fun. We ended up with the beginning of a story set in the summer of 1972, Michigan, with a cast of four teenagers who witness "Mark" die at a party, from excessive drinking. They call the police and an ambulance (after a lengthly discussion), but when they arrive, Mark's body and any evidence he was ever there are gone. That's about as far as we got. In subsequent scenes, the GM would play Mark--the Malice--of the story. I'm still working on the dice mechanics, and how exactly how to propel the story.

Another fun thing is the character sheet, which looks like a smudgy mimeograph of an Intake Form for therapy, institutionalization, etc. You fill this out in character as well, and talk about who your character is while you create her. The GM acts as a Case Manager to help the dialog along, and players establish which character (a PC) is their character's nemesis. It was all terribly fun, and I look forward to seeing how this story unfolds.

And I should be finishing Tales of the Fisherman's Wife by June, so if you ordered a handbound ashcan, it will arrive as a finished game. Hope it's been worth the wait!