Little Fears.

The basic premise runs like this: You're a child in the age range of 6-12 years old, and everything that you were scared of as a child... quite possibly really exists. And bad things are happening to you and your friends, but no adult (defined in the game as anyone over the age of 13) will believe you, because they have lost their Innocence and are now blind to the horrors of childhood.

The first night was a general meet-and-greet and character creation night. NPC also wanted to hash out exactly where our personal boundaries were... this is a game about being children and all of the violent and scarring things that happen to them, real or imaginary. The general consensus was that, with a few exceptions, we were all willing to roll with whatever punches he chose to throw.

I'm not sure if the other players knew each other and had played with each other before, but it was the first time meeting them for me and John. The group seemed to groove fairly quickly... I think this at least in some part had to do with the fact that we all seemed to have the same expectations of the game and what we wanted out of it. We were all there to play Little Fears. Cool.

Right at the beginning, NPC proposed something which I thought was interesting and immediately started character speculation. He asked all of us to think of 4 awful, terrible things that were going to happen to our characters as adults if, for some reason, the characters came out of this adventure without any Innocence (basically, purity of soul) left. The fourth thing, he said, should be our terrible and twisted deaths.

Nice.

(The review on the Forge mentions doing something like this. Jason, you listening? Darn, second edition is probably done already.)

Since I don't come into char-gen with many preconceived notions of what character is going to be played, it was interesting to select somewhat random things that I would hate to have happen in my own life (and some that are based on things that have happened). Even more intriguing was how these random projected events ended up shaping the character background. For example: I picked for my third event that my character would become aggressively alcoholic, and end up having her children taken away from her by Child Protective Services. This led to two points in her characterization: #1 her mother is an alcoholic (don't we fear most that we'll be doomed to repeat our parent's mistakes?) and #2 that the thing she wanted to be when she grew up was a mother (because, of course, she would be a better one than her mom. Ironical, ain't it? This is also reflected in the tragedy of her first event, which I won't discuss.)

I'm not sure if the other players worked it backwards as I did, or already had character concepts that they extrapolated into the future. When we were finished, we handed them over to Nathanael. IF we managed to make it through each session with some Innocence points remaining, he would allow us to choose one item off of the list to cross out. Disaster averted.

(As of now, most of us have still kept a majority of our "lists of terrible things" secret from each other. It's a nice tidbit of mystery.)

NPC ran through the rules, which are pretty darn simple. You have 5 stats and a number of points to assign to those stats. You can take "Things I Like About Myself" (advantages) and "Things I Don't Like About Myself." (disadvantages). The game mechanics call for only 6 sided die to be rolled under two circumstances: Quizzes (which are uncontested rolls against your own stats) and Tests (which are rolls against another character's stats.) Awww, hell. Who cares. A better discussion of it than I could ever do is here: http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_7965.html

We went around the room answering the Character Questionnaire and developing our backgrounds and personalities. Some of us are not as glib as others and so some of us didn't have answers for all of the questions, and therefore some of us were getting the hairy eyeball from the GM when it was our turn. ;>

But here are the characters as they hacked out in the end:
*Ed's note: The character descriptions are from my perspective. Sorry if I totally bomb.*

Player: Glen
Character: Michael Arthur Maddox
Age: 8
General Description: Michael is the one that other kids point to and whisper behind their hands, "Weirdo." Thankfully, he's pretty oblivious to that fact, and lives in his own world of fantasy and high adventure. His best friend is Steve, but his real best friend is invisible: possibly a spirit, possibly a figment of his imagination. His dad passed away while in military service, his mom works swing shift, and he's cared for by his witchy and homeopathic grandmother.

Player: Jake
Character: Steve "Stevie" Walt (God, I wanna say Holt. Sorry, Jake.)
Age: 8
General Description: Stevie is a "Slow Learner" and a "Scaredy Cat". Poor kid. He also has a "Tag along" younger sister, Alexis. Steve is one of those guys that is pretty likeable, regardless of the dorky half-grown-out bowl haircut and the slight tubbiness. He's the President of the... uh... clubhouse and has a dog Reagan, named after his hero. Yes, (ex)President Reagan.

Player: Melissa
Character: Alexis Walt
Age: 6
General Description: Cute, bubbly, blond pigtails, dimpled, missing a front tooth, and obsessed with unicorns and rainbows. Completely innocent and unintentionally hilarious. Just about every big brother's nightmare about a little sister. I think, though, that she probably worships Stevie a little bit (this is me extrapolating) and just wants to be around her "cool" older brother.

Player: Nievita
Character: Marissa Renee' "Missy" Colin
Age: 9
General Description: Missy is fairly quiet. Studious and a bookworm, she loves school, has a bit of a crush on her teacher, and likes to hang out in the library for as long as possible to avoid going home. She lives in torturous fear of her older brother, Mitch, who happens to be a jock and popular. Still, she's pretty brave, and likely to stand up to any bully who isn't Mitch.

Player: John
Character: Edward "Eddie" Bellvue
Age: 11
General Description: Mullet. That word alone should strike fear into your heart. Eddie is "the new kid". He's only been in town for a month or so, and hasn't made many friends. This would explain why he's hanging out with 8 year old kids (and GIRLS! Ewww...) when he's 11. Eddie wants to be a tough guy, carries a cigarette behind his ear and has a mouth like a sailor... if the sailor was an English-As-A-Second-Language student. Or maybe, if the sailor was 11.

NPC wanted to make sure that the kids were all friends or relatives in some way. We determined that we all lived in generally the same neighborhood with the exception of Eddie, who probably lives in some redneck trailer out in the boonies. I think at this point we may have decided some setting stuff (NPC originally was going to set it in Portland in the late 80's, but we thought a nice rural oceanside town would be much creepier) and talked a little bit about where our clubhouse was going to be, etc.

That pretty much concluded Session 0, as far as I can recall. After we wrapped up character development, there was a good hour of chatter about self-publishing RPGs and game design and that sort of stuff, but it has no real bearing on anything related to Little Fears. It was just fun to geek out. :} NPC pretty much had to kick us out of his house, which for a first meeting of players one would hope is a good sign.

Next up: Session 1 - "Mr. Wiggles Strikes Back" or "The Case Of The Zombie Frog"