Actual Play – Geiger Counter @ Fright Night ’08
Geiger Counter is an rpg that allows you to recreate survival horror movies. It’s a shared narration/creation game where you create the premise of the movie, characters and plot once you sit down to play. It’s perfect for pick up play and cons. Not to mention being a whole lot of fun. I played a game run by Mike Sands at Fright Night ’08 and managed to survive!
The game set up was very collaborative and we ended up being people who were involved with an astroid minning colony called Eclipse. I was a former military pilot, Jana Cabot, who after a disgrace of some sort was kicked out of the service and now makes her living shipping ore back to Earth and bring “assorted” other items back, on her barge the Hell Hath No Fury (or Barge 269).
The other characters were:
Zoey Clark – a engineer who spent most of her time running the black market
Col. Martin Hacket – a Military auditor on the base to dig up dirt
Jay McQueen – a prostitute
Dallas – also and engineer
Pvt Ryan Laws – member of the Military security forces on the base
We also established that the menace would be a nano virus of some sort that was being transmited through radio signals and Total Eclipse – The Movie was born!
From the get go the game ran like a well oiled machine with all of us throwing in scenes that added to the dramatic tension and allowed the story to move along. My character, was thrown into the thick of things from the very beginning as she went to investigate a marooned civilian ship which had been taken over by the virus in the opening scene.
The relationship between the characters was set up from the very beginning with the solider boy, Ryan, trying to keep his “business deallings” with Jay secret from his girlfriend Zoey, only to be thwarted by the fact they were attempting to survive the chaos together. Col. Hacket was shot by Ryan, but managed to somehow survive only to be taken over by the virus. Dallas almost made it off the astroid with his retirement fund (stolen from the coloney) only to be set on fire and sucked out to space, screaming as it happens, “Who says you can’t take it with you!!”.
In the end Jana and Jay ended up blasting away from the colony and destroying it in the process as well as being able to overcome the virus which had infected them.
It was a great game, and one that I look forward to playing again.