Chill Sourcebook

Now that I’ve successfully outed my dork self on this site, it’s time to really get into this shit. I love old school pen and paper RPG’s and I love playing them. While that’s not even remotely considered cool among the “I’m too hip to play that” guys I hang out with, it’s still something I have a fascination with and the sad truth is that I don’t get to play them often (make that at all) these days.

It all started with this game right here, Chill.

It’s a horror role playing game, originally started by a Wisconsin company called Pacesetter and was sold to Mayfair Games in 1990. You could call the Mayfair era the “glory years” of Chill before they decided that board games (read: Settlers of Catan) were the only way to go and ceased support around 1997 in the midst of financial trouble. The game was sold recently to OtherWorld Games and the company is working hard, despite financial difficulties, to bring the game back into the spotlight in 2008.

The basic premise of the game has you as an Envoy in the secret organization S.A.V.E. (Societas Argenti Viae Eternitata, or, The Eternal Society of the Silver Way). Despite the cheesball title of the organization, it works out to be a pretty cool setting for the player, as S.A.V.E. is an international organization with offices and groups all over the world. The goal of S.A.V.E. and it’s Envoys is too root out the evil Unknown forces and save the world from their onslaught.

As a young RPG upstart, this shit had me cold. The idea of an underground organization all over the world meant that the setting could be anywhere. The fact that the enemies were supernatural horrors called the Unknown meant that all my favorite scary monsters and creatures were actually banded together into a group of sorts. Those two simple elements meant that the stories could be vast, scary and really fun to play.

While I have a passing knowledge of the Pacesetter version of the game, my introduction to Chill came during the second edition Mayfair years and most of my fondest memories are playing out of that black rulebook with the ghastly face. The biggest hook for the Mayfair version of Chill is how dark and visceral the world is. While the Pacesetter Chill had a more campy horror vibe to it, the Mayfair version shifted the world to a much darker and sinister hue. The way the history, backstory and characters are portrayed in the game is downright scary. The entire sourcebook is filled with sidebar quotes from some creature of the Unknown named RAX, highlighting the dangers and pure evil that the Unknown are supposed to represent.

It must be pointed out that the artwork in the book was a huge part of the delivery of game mood. Something about the ink splattered drawings on the book gave it a much more scary visual appearance. It really is one of the main reasons why I love the feel of Chill and why it stands out in my mind as being so strongly scary.

While the original version had a S.A.V.E. that was organized and capable, the Mayfair version had a S.A.V.E that was reeling from an attack and subsequent destruction of their main headquarters by the Unknown. As such, most of the information on the creatures of the Unknown were destroyed and the organizational structures are in shambles. Each game you start has the conceit that you are now on the defensive against supernatural creatures you know little about. You must gather what you can find and use what little information you have to try and counter the assault and put the Unknown back on the defensive.

In the hands of a good Chill Master, this can be a perfect setting for some scary ass shit. Good thing for me, the guy running this game when I was playing it kicked major ass. And so did all the guys I used to play with. More on that in a minute.

As far as mechanics go, Chill is a pretty simple D10 system that works like just about every game that was out in the 90′s. While the reviews at the time griped about the system being a bit thin, it seems to do the job fine, if a bit overly complicated in sections. For the majority of the game your die roles must fall within certain Target Numbers in order to secure a variety of results for a called action. Each ability value of your character goes toward the success or failure of those called actions. Character creation consisted of allocating a certain set of points and was more balance oriented than luck. So, if you really wanted to be an Indiana Jones style character, you were free to do so as long as you spent the points that would give you the skills you need. You could also purchase Drawbacks, which in addition to giving a weakness to your character, also gave you a few extra points to spend.

There are a set of 8 standard abilities and a variety of classes. A certain number of points are given to spend on special abilities and the Chill version of magic called “The Art”. You can become as powerful or, as most good games go, as weak as your CM allows you to be. There is a full set of creatures in the main sourcebook that function as both fun single story creatures, or vastly more powerful master creatures that can haunt/hunt your players for years in a campaign setting.

Mayfair put out a bunch of great supplemental material (around 13 books in all, I believe) over the 1990′s with much of it fleshing out the world of modern day creature fighting. There was a complete book on Vampires, a book called Undead and Buried, a book called Things and another just on the werewolf and it’s many variations. Each of these suplements had complete backgrounds, stats and behaviors on the creatures in question. There were tons of variations and different types or creatures to fit just about any type of setting or scenario you could think of. Most of them also had a pre-made game you could run or adapt to fit the world you had created.

And that was simply the core of the fun. The world of Chill was modern day and flexible. We ran adventures that included a demented circus and a vampire’s hideaway. We traveled to small towns where a rat infestation turned into something far more sinister. It was a game were we were weak and unqualified and forced into a situation we had to deduce our way out of well before we were able to fight our way out. And when we were stupid enough to try and fight, well, we had a damn good time trying to figure out the creature and the secret to it’s defeat. For a first timer at an RPG, I felt right at home. The way I felt playing the game was almost exactly like how my character must have felt joining some new organization and trying to figure it all out. Can you blame me for hooking in and falling in love with the game?

But let’s be real here. Any player of the traditional pen and paper RPG’s knows that the game and the subsequent adventures you play all depend on the creativity and the environment of the guys you play with. Chill seemed to be a great game for a bunch of geeky high school outcasts like we were. Somehow, the sense of banding together as a team and fighting shit that was well outside our normal lives was a perfect investment of time. With the setting being so open-ended and the fundamental concept of the game so strong, it just worked to make Chill a good RPG starting point. In the hands of the creative and funny guy who ran the group and the hilarious group of friends I had at the time, the game was a joy. Pure escapism at it’s finest.

You have to search to find anything good in regard to Chill these days and I should know. I decided that wistful nostalgia was no longer tolerable and I went online to find myself a sourcebook and some supplements. A little eBay work went a long way to find some affordable product that I can now call my own.

Not as popular or, I’m sure, well done as the Call of Cathulu monstrosity, Chill is a great time for those interested in a good horror RPG. I can’t recommend it highly enough, in that “I remember being a high school geek” kind of way.

So..anybody up for a game?

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Tags: chill, mayfair games, pacesetter ltd, rpg

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Board/Table-Top, Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.