ALL THINGS DARK & DANGEROUS

Perhaps it is real; perhaps it is only a dream; most certainly it is a nightmare.

JOHN KANTOR

BACKGROUND
All Things Dark & Dangerous is a collaborative storytelling game loosely based on the roleplaying
game Schaeurmrchen by John Wick [http://www.wicked-dead.com] and using a variant of the Matrix
Game rules created by Chris Engel [http://www.io.com/~hamster/]. The game begins with a group
of children who awaken to nd themselves in a mysterious village at night with no real understanding of either their past or how they came to be there, but with an awareness that something
bad-something Unknown-is stalking them in the darkness.

GOALS
The goal of the game is twofold: rst The Children must discover what that something is-and
then they must confront it. Though this is a multiplayer game, with each player nominally representing a single child, The Children always are always together and the players always describe
the groups actions as a whole. The number of children exceeds the number of players, but is never
completely dened. No child may die or be badly injured. Turns are round-robin, with Narratives
(equivalent to Arguments in the standard Matrix Game rules) submitted and adjudicated consecutively. (How order is determined is described at the end of the Adjudication section below.)
The Children have only two characteristics: Hope and Fear, although they will also develop individual traits and may gain possesions and meet additional characters through the gameplay. Hope
can uctuate up or down, while Fear can only increase. However, Fear is not something to be
avoided; only by confronting their Fear can The Children learn what it is that threatens them and
nally defeat it. The Children both start with Hope and Fear equal to one. Hope cannot be reduced
below one until the nal Confrontation.
Each player in turn proposes a Narrative of what the children do, see, hear, or nd (adding to the
description of The Children and the setting as well)-and explains how that will aect their Hope
or Fear should they succeed at their actions. The Children can gain Hope by succeeding at an attempt to do one of the following:

Do something Heroic or Altruistic in their quest to understand The Unknown

Undertake a task that is Challenging or Dangerous in their quest to nd or escape
from The Unknown

Find an Item or Learn something that is of use against The Unknown

They lose one point of Hope and gain one point of Fear by failing at such an attempt.
The Children may also gain Fear in one additional way: by learning something terrible and frightening about The Unknown. (Gaining such knowledge may be included as a part of any narrative.)
Each turn The Children must gain at least two points of Fear. (If no other player has done so, it
is incumbent on the last player of the turn to narrate how they gain those points.) Once they have
gained a total of 12 Fear, the nal Confrontation will occur.
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A DJUDICATION
Proposed Narratives must be appropriate in order to be considered. In this game appropriateness
primarily means faithful to the genre (a dark fairy tale) and following the explicit game rules.
Appropriate narratives will be judged using the following criteria, gaining one point for each criterion that they meet:

Faithful to the genre

Faithful to the established setting
Faithful to the established plot
Faithful to the established characters
Well-written
The number of points a Narrative receives is its chance of being successful (in its original form and
desired eect) out of 6, with 5 being the maximum. Obviously, introducing something new-a new
location or item, plot complication, character, or character trait-will reduce the chances of the narrative being Successful. If a Narrative does succeed, The Children gain either one point of Hope or
one point of Fear as described.
If a Narrative fails, The Children lose one point of Hope and gain one point of Fear. The narrated
events still occur (this is in contrast to the standard Matrix Game rules), but in modied form, and
the next player must include in his or her Narrative one of the following, as appropriate:

How they did something Cowardly or Selsh

How they failed at the Task attempted and its consequences
How they lost an Item or Learned that something they thought they knew about
The Unknown was wrong

A running total is also kept for each player in order to determine how much Hope his or her narratives have been responsible for. This determines the order of play each turn. In the case of ties (and
on the rst turn), the order is determined randomly.

THE CONFRONTATION
Once The Childrens Fear reaches 12, the nal Confrontation will occur. If The Childrens Hope
is equal to or greater than 12 at this time, then they may initiate the confrontation on their terms. If
The Childrens Hope is less than 12 then they will be confronted by The Unknown on its terms.
During The Confrontation, the Narratives are adjudicated as normal, but all Narratives must describe a direct confrontation against The Unknown. Upon a successful Confrontation Narrative,
The Childrens Fear is reduced by 1d6. Upon an unsuccessful Confrontation Narrative, their Hope
is reduced by 1d6, and the following player must narrate how the Confrontation attempt failed and
its consequences. If The Childrens Fear reaches zero, The Unknown is permanently vanquished
as dawn breaks, and the nal player may narrate the ending as he or she sees t. However, if their
Hope should ever reach zero, then The Children lose and Blackness descends once and for all.
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