Long time readers of my site and/or my posts online know of my love for the classic Horror RPG Chill. To many role-players around my age their first introduction to Horror roleplaying was the venerable “Call of Cthulhu”, but not me. Mine was Chill.
I got started in the 1st Edition Pacesetter days (early 80s) and “Chill: Vampires” was and is one of my favorite books for any game. The 90’s came around and I picked up the 2nd Edition, Mayfair, version. It was slicker and had some minor rule changes, but it was a great addition to my ideas for my 2nd Ed AD&D Ravenloft game. The Mayfair version is of course superior, but it lacks some of the feel I associated with the game. Maybe it was the lack of the Jim Holloway art or the darker tone. Picking up a copy of the Mayfair version now I get the impression (true or not) that the makers of Kult saw it and thought, “yes this is good, but what if the world was much, much worse?”
I liked Chill also because it had Midwest sensibilities. Pacesetter was from Wisconsin; Mayfair was/is in Niles/Skokie, a suburb of Chicago than is not too far from where I live (and has one of my favorite pizza places). It was while playing Chill that learned that the best horror was horror close to home. I don’t know, or much care really, what Hollywood thinks is horror. How can a place that gets like 350 days of sunshine know what is horror? On the other hand East Coast horror (Lovecraft) has a completely different flavor. It’s almost alien. Chill may have had a global scope, but the horror is home grown. Chill remembers that there is simple horror in the haunted house, or the strange creature from the Unknown. It is not about the bigger-badder-more horror of some games, where every game has to up the ante on the last game.
I had lots of ideas for Chill, but never got to use them since I couldn’t find anyone that wanted to play it. No worries, most of my Chill ideas were resurrected for my WitchCraft RPG games. In fact there is nice continuity in my horror game world of supernatural occurrences increasing over the years that track nicely to the power levels of my games (Chill -> WitchCraft RPG -> Buffy/Ghosts of Albion).
So needless to say I was stoked when I heard Chill 3.0 was coming out. I joined the playtest, gave my stuff and……that was it for a very long time.
Well now Other World Productions is producing Chill 3.0, but they need the cash (and interest) to do it.
You can find all the information here:
http://www.chillrpg.com/
And their Fundable account here: http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-05-13.8365429432
Now I would love to see a new version of Chill, but I am not sure I should be getting my hopes up here.
I'd love to see a new chill, but with a $45 min donation I just can't justify it. that's more than I'd pay for a core book, much less a chance at buying a corebook in the future.
ReplyDeleteWell the donation does get you a full color core book, which is not an unrealisitc price. But if the donation doesn't work then you are charged nothing at all.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that Hyrum have said things like "We'll print the quickstart next week. Get playtest information in at once!" and "Next week we will have an update" and it has all been hot air I don't trust those guys with $45.
ReplyDeleteAndreas,
ReplyDeleteI can't disagree with you. I am though willing to give Hyrum the benefit of the doubt here since I know the RPG biz has been really soft the last couple of years.
I also want to see this game.