A Little Four-Letter Word
by John Wick

Just recently, a new friend of mine acquired an old friend of mine. Someone I haven’t seen in a very long time. What’s more, this new friend invited my old friend and me to hook up, have some dinner, spend some time together. The fruits of this meeting will be dark as wine, just as sweet, and – I hope – just as intoxicating.

See, this new friend of mine is Hyrum Savage, and the old friend is CHILL.

For me, helping to develop this third edition of CHILL is coming full circle. Way back in my college days, I ran two games: CTHULHU and CHAMPIONS. I didn’t like all the hack fantasy games spinning around, wasn’t really interested in the spy games, and I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm in my friends for TRAVELLER – and they are all poorer for it, let me assure you.

So, there I was, walking through my little game store in Dinkytown (that’s in the center of the University of Minnesota – a great and mighty game store called “The Source”), seeing that yellow box with the Victorian gentleman on the cover, standing in front of the mausoleum, looking over his shoulder while a huge shadow moved across his back.

There were words on the cover, but the biggest and boldest was a little word that caught my imagination.

“CHILL,” it said.

I shelled out my hard-earned cash and took that box home, ripping open the plastic, throwing off the cover, reading through the pages, checking out the game system… but something caught me off guard. Something… hit me. Something… I wasn’t expecting. And I was changed forever. Scarred. Marked. Nothing would ever be the same for me. Again, it was a little four-letter word that caught me, held me by the collar, and kept my attention.

“SAVE,” it said.

See, in CHILL, players take on the roles of envoys from a secret society devoted to thwarting “the Unknown,” the source of all supernatural evil in the world. SAVE envoys battle with intelligence, daring, and more than a little luck, for the Horrors of the Unknown are awful and terrible. When I read what they were capable of, I gasped. My players begged me to fight a vampire. I quietly shook my head, looking at the stats. There was no way they’d survive an encounter with a vampire. So, instead, I hit them with a ghoul.

It nearly killed them. A frickin’ ghoul!

But they had a blast and we continued playing. See, unlike CTHULHU, there’s a reason for the group to stick together after the adventure. There’s a reason for them to go on, to keep fighting the good fight, to maintain their strength and sanity against the awfulness that awaits them. A little four-lettered word.

“SAVE.”

SAVE provided me with a reason to keep the party together, and if someone did get mauled, maimed, or driven insane, SAVE provided me an excuse to allow another character back into the game. The party takes a hit, and SAVE sends a replacement. It was beautiful. In essence, it showed me there was a way – an in-game, in-character way – to give the characters a reason to be together. They didn’t need the invisible, awkward and sometimes infuriating “PC umbilical cord” to keep them together. I didn’t need to find unwieldy and spurious justifications to introduce a new character to the group. SAVE did it for me.

But SAVE did something else, too. It showed me something no other RPG ever showed me. Gave me a powerful clue for my future as a game designer, something I’ve used in all my games.

SAVE gave the players something to believe in.

The players weren’t killing ghouls and goblins for treasure and glory. They were doing it to protect the unwary from the claws and talons of the Unknown. There was no other reward. The vampire didn’t have treasure in its coffin, the werewolf didn’t have magic items in its cave, the golem didn’t have a gem stuck in its stomach. No. It was doing right for the purpose of doing right. That’s all.

And they loved it. They played like they had never played before. All because of a little four-letter word.

“SAVE.”

CHILL taught me a lot about being a game master. Ahem – CHILL MASTER. It taught me that players can be motivated by something other than the lure of riches. It taught me that bending and breaking the rules can make the game more scary (and thus, fun). It taught me that players really only become attached to their characters when their characters become attached to something. My players believed in SAVE. Believed in its cause, believed in its followers.

All because of a little four-letter word, my players and I learned the meaning of another one. Perhaps the most important word in the English language. In any language.

“HERO.”

* * *

For the next few weeks and months, we'll be talking about our adventures in the world of CHILL and SAVE, talking about the choices we make, how we convert the old editions into a brand new rule set, and what we do with SAVE.

I'm more excited about this project than any project I've worked on in a while -- both inside and outside the game industry. Like I said, this is like coming full circle. Back to the beginning.

So, next Episode, we'll start at the beginning, with Charles O'Boylan, Sir Henry Boulton, and Richard Arthur (Lord Strange). After all, those three men are the reason we're all here.