Ah so I shouldn’t play Hanrahan then.
(Whartson Hall in-joke, he started as a randomly generated character for a one-shot and has gradually evolved into something like the Avatar of Kaboom.)
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A standard USAn grocery store has plenty of stuff. Enough cardboard, paper products, and alcohol for fuel. Lighters are up by the cash register. Charcoal, starter fluid, and matches are on on aisle next to the beer.
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“Trapped in Fairyland” has been bumpy a few of times in games I’ve been in
If the rules are too oblique it’s frustrating to be re-set to a default and if they’re too obvious it’s anticlimax
And my experiences have tended towards the frustrating
I think a key bit here could be to imbed the rules for escape into the behavior of the shoppers if players are staff or into staff if players are shoppers that could allow some low lying fruit steps like “make sure to have red items in the basket” or “don’t try to clean up the mess on isle 3, just put cones around it” that are clearer from the context around them and then have anything more complex flow out of those somehow
I’m blanking on more specifics but I think a key bit is why the players are in the store (shoppers, staff, regional management, year-end inventory count temps, marketing team checking items are properly set based on stocking fees paid) that connects why they have some agency to break out when other folks are trapped
Also, can freed NPCs join the attempt or are there some in-session sanity rewards as folks are helped to escape, which could let parts of it be made more horrific
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Yeah, I need to do some serious thinking about how exactly the store changes. It would be easy to go into slapdash surrealism (the checkout has a mouth now! the shelf is full of your favourite childhood toys!) but doing that well is difficult, probably beyond me, and I know Nick at least strongly dislikes it.
I think a degree of thematic blending is probably OK and hopefully not too annoying if the players can perceive a pattern behind it. My idea is to blend the department store with essentially the temple where this thing has been, so the bathroom department merges with the ritual bathing chamber, for example. Some parts can be untouched.
In terms of why the PCs are the protagonists, the main factors are:
- a lot of staff have been affected by the creeping change over weeks or months before it came to a head, so they’re caught up in it entirely
- people in different departments of the store are separated by the change, and the weirdness makes it hard/impossible to regroup
- as a friend of mine likes to highlight (and I often need reminding), the players are playing the people who are most functional after the change and proactive enough to do something. The ones who just decided to hide and wait for it all to blow over didn’t make the shortlist.
I’m fairly certain I want them all to be shoppers so they aren’t already familiar with the store and its staff. There could be one or two options of people sent in for official reasons like you suggested. I plan for there to be a couple of recent/returning staff who haven’t been around and so can be informative NPCs and join an escape attempt or be replacement PCs.
I also need to work out what to do about active opposition, which is another weakness of mine. The obvious option seems to be monsters from the other reality coming through to eat people - though the risk there is that the main solution to hungry monsters is usually violence and I wasn’t aiming for a combat-action scenario.
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In an effort to provide help as well as just a pile of questions
Two models have worked for me on “escape fairyland” style things without too much opposition
first is “get N+1 different things in specific states simultaneously where N is number of PCs”. So either help has to be recruited and relied on or something remains open to interference. That way it’s not combat, it’s gremlins prying at what’s unattended
second is “figure out the script you have to follow but isn’t written down” (see also Groundhog Day) The way a buddy tried this that failed (for me) was unlimited attempts with context from trying to follow the script. I think it works better with more than a single failure allowed along a single attempt at the script and context from tomes or witness statements or observation of a lead-in
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