Fear of the Dark

Even adults are brave only in the light. They spend their lives dashing from halo to halo, grasping for torches and light switches. They don't linger in the shadows, for in them could be anything. And every night they send even the youngest of us into that darkness, alone and unprepared.

They do this because they know there really are things in the darkness. Things hungry for fear. Our parents fill the darkness' bellies with the ripest, most swollen fears, so the darkness leaves them alone. Or perhaps they think that if the monsters eat our fears, we will become brave and grow up. Whatever the case, their pact is made. The darkness is fed. And we children eventually stop screaming.

Eventually.

Setting Up

This is a game for 3-6 players. One player plays the darkness in the house. The rest play kids.

The characters are kids, but it's not a game for kids. Check it: shit, fuck, and beheaded children.

Pull the jokers, clubs, and diamonds out of a deck of cards, leaving the hearts and spades. This is "the kids' deck." Shuffle it. 

Get a piece of paper to record points on. The darkness player can keep score.

Set a timer for one hour. Press go when you start play. When it rings, the game ends, and whoever has the most points, wins.

Play to win!

The House and Its Occupants

The house is full of darkness. The darkness wants just one thing: the kids to be afraid. It feeds on fear. The grown ups have made a deal with the darkness, giving it their children's fear – sweet, sharp, and pure – to keep their own grinding, bitter dread at bay.

Most of the players are kids. They need not all be the same family, but at least some of the kids should live in the house. The kids can have their own rooms or share some between them, it's up to you.

There are other people in the house – grown ups, definitely, and possibly also teenagers. Teenagers sleep in the basement or in their own bedrooms, or will still be up after bedtime (it is ALWAYS after bedtime). The teenagers and grown ups in the house are relatives of the kids or their mysterious friends (so weird).

Grown ups want the kids asleep in bed. Teenagers want the kids out of their hair, and so will turn them over to the grown ups, or else they'll mess with them just for fun.

Grown ups and teenagers are a threat in another way: the darkness can create shadow versions of them. These shadows can move around the house looking like the person whose soul they have stolen, but with terrible wrong eyes and wrong motions. If the kids can kill the shadow, the soul will return to the owner. This is not an easy thing to do. 

The kids don't know how many grown ups and teenagers are in the house with them. Nobody thinks it's important to tell them who's coming over after their bedtime.

Kids who see through their fears become teenagers, too. From the kids' point of view, this is losing the game, but teenagers get to keep playing, by different rules.

The house can have whatever dimensions and rooms you need. A hallway between the kids’ rooms and the lounge (where their parents are being noisy) and the kitchen will give them a buffer zone to start exploring. Don’t forget about the toilet (there’s nowhere to run in there, but kids HAVE to go) or the bathroom, and include places that are dark and scary, like the den, the basement, the garage and the porch or treehouse outside.

Kids

Most players take the roles of kids trying to scare the shit out of themselves. Give your kid a first name and a thing about them that is distinctive enough that they get teased about it (gently or otherwise). Remember that children look for simple distinctions and can tease someone about anything. The more mundane the better. Do you have a bike on your shirt? You’re Bike Shirt Robbie. 

Talents
Kids have three different talents: brave, fast and smart. Brave is used in social contests and resisting mental pressure. Fast is used to outrun or out-wriggle monsters. Smart is for outwitting such things. Players should order the three talents, assigning them the numbers 1 (their best talent), 2 and 3 (their worst).

Note: Best Talent vs Worst
Playing to your kid's best talent will keep your kid safer, but score you fewer points. Playing to win means deciding when to use which.

Note: Bravery vs Fearlessness
These two words are often synonymous in common English. In this game they are vastly different. Bravery means doing things despite fear. To be fearless, however, is to grow up, and means losing the game.

Experiences, Items, and Charms
In your short life, you have gained some experience that might help face the things that lurk in the night. You might also have one or two items that can help you in practical ways, and you might have a charm, a belonging that isn't directly useful but brings you luck and gives you courage.

Experiences:
·	Pretending to be asleep
·	Getting out of punishments
·	Investigating weird rooms
·	Tippy-toeing
·	Being super quiet
·	Hiding so nobody can find you
·	Listening really hard

Items:
·	Flashlight
·	Sling shot
·	Walkie talkies
·	Ipod/DS
·	Drone/RC Car
·	Bike lock
·	Chemistry set
Exploring the house may reveal new items you can use. Items are tradable which makes them more flexible, but Items can also be destroyed.

Charms:
•	Your favorite toy
•	Your doll
•	Your blankie
•	Your baseball glove
•	Your lucky hat
•	Your lucky rabbit's foot
•	Your favorite book
You may not share these; in someone else’s hands, a charm is useless.

In total, choose three experiences, items, and charms. You must choose at least one experience. You don't have to choose a charm, but if you do, don't choose more than one.

Experiences, items, and charms change your draws. See the rules for drawing and interpreting cards, below. 

Starting Points
Shuffle the kids' deck, draw two cards, and return them to the deck for the next kid.

For this draw, ignore suit. Count your rank cards (A-10) versus your face cards (J, Q, K).
•	If you drew two rank cards, you start the game with 2 points.
•	If you drew one rank card and one face card, you start the game with 1 point and 1 touch of darkness.
•	If you drew two face cards, you start the game with 2 touch of darkness, on the verge of teenagerhood.

Tell the darkness player your starting score.

Missions
Children have two compelling and compatible needs: to frighten themselves, and to accomplish something meaningful. Before play starts, read through the following lists. Choose one mundane need for your kid, and have the others in mind for play.

Mundane Needs
Your kid should have something pressing on their mind from the very beginning, something they need to do before they can sleep. Maybe they left their toy or blankie in the lounge room. Maybe they forgot some homework or to get their lunch ready or to do a chore. Maybe they need a drink of water or they need to pee. 

The Horrible Unknown
In the dark, the human brain can make anything look like your worst nightmare, and that’s without the Shadows helping. And the Shadows can make anything look, move and sound like anything they want. Is that your sweater lying near the closet or is it a hundred snakes? You could close your eyes and ignore it but then what if it is a hundred snakes and they are getting closer all the time and by the time you look the floor is covered in snakes or worse you wake up and they are all over you and the bed and ONE IS IN YOUR MOUTH. If you look now you’d have time to run.

The Vulnerable Other
Children care about everything. The darkness knows that children care, which is why they take and hurt the things the children love. Younger siblings are crying in their rooms. The dog didn’t come back from its walk after dinner. Someone is calling your name from outside. The fish didn’t get fed. Your cousin is in the hospital. Mommy drinks too much and yells when stupid Aunt Carol is over and you need her to go. People on tv are dying in wars and from droughts. And only you can save them by sending them your bologna. Can you really close your eyes to all that?

Banishing the Darkness
The darkness can never be destroyed, but it can be banished from a house for a year and a day, if you do the right ritual - according to this kid at school (you might have to call him to get the details) or that one Youtube video you saw (again, you need a phone). Or maybe it’s in that Stephen King book your mom says you’re too young to read but is in the basement. And whatever it is will require ingredients which are scattered all over the house. Light five candles (kitchen, matches in the garage) in front of a mirror (bathroom). Or get salt (kitchen) and pour it in a circle in the basement. Walk all the way to the corner store to buy candy to flush down the toilet. Something arcane and impossible, but maybe, just maybe you can pull it off. 

Fight the Shadows
Shadows of the grown ups and teenagers are wandering around and if you don’t kill them, you may never see the real versions again. The darkness is stupid, all it wants to do is hurt people in random ways, but the shadows know everything their originals know, and can plan and plot. They know where kids hide and where items and charms are and how to mess with them. And they can call the real grown ups for back up. Killing a shadow, like banishing the darkness, requires exactly the right object applied in exactly the right way, but if you work together you might just save a soul. 

The Darkness

The darkness player is kind of like the referee in a sport or the dealer in a card game. You can't win the game, but you set the pace and the tone and keep the game on track. You keep score for everyone.

In play, the kids try to scare the shit out of themselves, and you help. Your job is to ask them questions about what they see and hear, then take what they say and run with it.

Grown Ups

The darkness player also plays the grown ups and teenagers in the house. 

The grown ups have one simple goal: keep the kids in bed and quiet. If they ever encounter a kid they put them to bed and tell them to be quiet (relatives will be nice about it, friends of the family will NOT). Then they return to making mysterious noises and laughing loudly in the main rooms of the house. Grown ups NEVER help kids fight monsters and always deny that the darkness is real, let alone that they've pacted with it to feed it their children's fear.

On your score sheet, make a column for the grown ups. They start the game with points equal to 2 per player, including you. In play, whenever the kids score points, they score them off of the grown ups: subtract them 1 for 1 from the grown ups' score. When the grown ups have 0 points, the kids can't score.

The grown ups' score represents their ability to talk and laugh and ignore the fact that the kids aren't sleeping but are moving around elsewhere in the house.

The only way for the grown ups to get more points is for one of them to yell at a kid and put them back to bed.

Turns

Play the game in turns until the timer rings.

In a turn:
1. The kids lead off.
2. The darkness asks the kids questions and runs with their answers.
3. The kids approach the darkness.
4. When the darkness says, the kids draw cards.
5. The kids and the darkness interpret the draw.
6. The kids score points and the turn ends.

For all questions of ties and timing, go around clockwise from the darkness' players left.

1. The Kids Lead Off

Kids, you're supposed to be asleep in bed, but you're not. You've got something you have to do first. Go around quickly and say where your kid is and what you're up to.

You see or hear something scary. The house is full of darkness and the darkness is an evil, thinking presense that feeds on your fear. It can manifest shapes, sounds, and monsters. It can create shadows of the grown ups and teenagers in the house. You can fight with it and it can kill and eat you, you and the people you love.

What's your first hint that it's after you tonight? 

2. The Darkness Asks the Kids Questions and Runs With Their Answers

Darkness, it's the kids' job to scare themselves, but you get to help.

You can ask anything you want. Here are a few example questions to get you started:
•	"You see something out of place. What is it?"
•	"You hear a voice. What does it say?"
•	"When it thinks you aren't watching, it moves, but you've kept it in the corner of your eye. What does it do?"
•	"There are more of them than you realized. Where are they?"
•	"Something's at the window. What do you see?"

Take their answers, and describe it back to them, adding details of your own. Make it as bad as you want. You probably remember what it was like to have a child's imagination. There was nothing innocent or safe about the nightmares you had or the images you used to scare yourself.

3. The Kids Approach the Darkness

Kids, in order to score points, you have to move toward what scares you, not away. Use your missions as an excuse to get as close to the darkness as you can. 

4. When the Darkness Says, the Kids Draw Cards

Darkness, while the kids approach, keep asking them questions and building on their answers. Take turns going back and forth with them until each of the kids is in one of these crucial moments:
•	The kid has to touch the frightening thing.
•	The kid has to fight the frightening thing.
•	The kid has to hold still while the frightening thing touches them.
•	The kid has to get past the frightening thing.
•	The kid has to get away from the frightening thing.
•	The kid has to trick the frightening thing.
•	The kid has to hide from the frightening thing.

Some kids might come to their crucial moment right away, others might take several back-and-forths. 

Once you think that every kid is at a crucial moment, call for all the kids to draw.

Drawing Cards

Darkness, fan out the kids' deck, face down, and offer it to the first kid. They draw 1, 2 or 3 cards, depending on the talent they're using. The idea is that attempting something involves the player reaching into the unknown, like stepping into the darkness.
•	Your best talent: draw 1 card.
•	Your middle talent: draw 2 cards.
•	Your worst talent: draw 3 cards.

Kids, choose whichever talent makes sense to you. If it could be more than one, choose whichever you want. Remember that your best talent keeps you safest but scores fewest points, and your worst scores the most points but is most dangerous.

If you're using an experience, an item, or a charm, draw an additional card, but keep it apart from the others. Only one experience, item, or charm counts.

Keep your cards face down until all the other kids have drawn their cards too. Reveal them all at once.

5. The Kids and the Darkness Interpret the Draw

If NONE of your cards are black: you do it! Ask the darkness what happens. You start the next turn past the danger, free to move again.

If ONE OR MORE of your cards are black: you have a choice to make. Either you can't do what you needed to do, or you can, but you have to touch the darkness to do it.

If you can't do it, choose one of these instead. This is what you do at the start of the next turn:
•	You start to cry.
•	You run back to your bed.
•	You whisper to another kid for help.
•	You scream.
•	You run to the grown ups.

Touching the darkness is bad. It means seeing through your fears and growing up a little. It means realizing, deep down, that it's your imagination that is doing this to you. The darkness isn't alive, it doesn't feed on fear, and the adults in your life never sold you out to it. This lets you do what you needed to, but take 1 touch of darkness.

If this is your third touch of darkness, you start the next turn as a teenager. Otherwise, you forget it again, brush the realization aside, and keep playing as a kid.

If you have an experience, item, or charm card: after you reveal your cards, before you interpret or score them, you choose whether to add it to your draw, discard your draw and use it instead, or discard it.

6. The Kids Score Points and the Turn Ends

Kids, for each face card in your draw, black or red, you score 1 point. Tell the darkness.

However, you score your points off of the grown ups' score. For each point you get, the grown ups lose one. If the grown ups are out of points, you get 0.

Once the grown ups are out of points, the only way for them to get more points is for one of them to yell at a kid and put them back to bed. You'll have to make this happen, it's not the darkness player's job. When it happens, the grown ups' score goes back up to 2 per player, including the darkness.

Darkness, the grown ups are probably going to run out of points in the middle of scoring, before every kid's gotten all the points they deserve. That's how it is. Start with the kid on your left, go around clockwise, and when the points are gone, the points are gone.

Anyway, return all the cards to the kids' deck and shuffle it for the next turn.

Start the next turn now. Kids, lead off.

Playing as a Teenager

As a kid, when you look too deeply into the darkness, you see that it's just your own imagination. This is called "the touch of darkness." Once you have 3 touch of darkness, you grow up into a teenager.

Now you get points for messing with the kids. You remember what the kids believe about the darkness, you remember that they're trying to scare the shit out of themselves, and now you want to help.

In a Turn

During step 1, let the kids lead off. Skip your turn. Once all the kids have said where they are and what they're up to, you say where you are and what you're up to.

During step 2, you should answer for yourself, if you're there. For example, if the darkness says, "you hear a voice. What does it say?" you can jump in and say what you say.

You can pretend to be a shadow of yourself, if you want. You don't even have to limit yourself to what a teenager could really do. This is you as you exist in the imaginations of terrified children. You can turn into snakes, or walk through walls, or stretch yourself to reveal all the bones inside, laughing.

During steps 3 and 4, let the kids and the darkness go back and forth. Just jump in to answer for yourself, when you're the frightening thing.

Let the darkness decide when it's time to draw. You draw a number of cards equal to the number of kids you're frightening, plus one more for yourself.

During step 5, only your black cards count. Discard your red cards.

Since you're bigger, faster, and stronger than the kids are, you can make it harder for them to do what they need to do. For each of your black cards, choose one of the kids you're frightening, and add the card to their hand. This means that now they have at least one black card in their hand.

Since you're real, not a creation of their imaginations, you can actually hurt them. For kids with black cards in their hand, before they choose whether to fail or to touch the darkness, you can decide to pinch, punch, shove, kick, bite, cut, trip, slam, or bash them. Tell them that now they're bruised, bleeding, cut, dazed, gasping, or down. If they decide to fail, make them choose two consequences instead of one. If they decide to touch the darkness, they take 2 touch of darkness instead of 1, and maybe they realize that it's you.

During step 6, if the kids you're frightening score any points, you score the same number.

Your points come out of the grown ups' score too, though, so expect to burn through the grown ups' points all the faster.

Ending the Game

When the timer rings, the game ends. It can end right in the middle of a turn. The kids are exhausted and finally just go to sleep. Maybe you fall asleep right where you were, maybe you get your drink of water and put yourself back to bed first. The teenagers stay up playing video games or whatever, and the grown ups get to finish their conversations and their drinks and finally turn in. Just any other night.

The game also ends when the last remaining kid grows up into a teenager.

Either way, whoever has the most points, wins. Ties stand.

The End