A Hammer Horror Horror Quick-Start

The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! is a quick-start for They Came From Beyond the Grave!, the roleplaying game of the shock, the terror, the eroticism, and the  humor of 1970s horror films. It is inspired by the output of Hammer Film Productions, Amicus Productions, and Roger Corman—so The Curse of Frankenstein and Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, The City of the Dead and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, and House of Usher and The Raven, and more... Its tales are not just from the 1970s, but also the nineteenth century, and they are performed by actors with rich, fruity voices ready to project all the way to the back of the auditorium, who are all going to give their all, despite wishing that they were performing on the stage, which is the proper venue for men of their talents and stature. Published by Onyx Path Publishing, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! provides everything necessary for a gaming group to give the roleplaying game a try and perhaps even use it as the starter scenario to a horror campaign set in the miserable, grim and grimy dark ages of the England in the seventies and the gaslight reaches of the Victorian era. This includes a basic explanation of the rules, a nine-scene scenario—the ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ of the title, and five pre-generated Player Characters or protagonists, plus Trademarks for all of the Player Characters, Quip Cards, and Cinematic Cards.

The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! employs the Storypath system. A distillation of the earlier Storyteller system, it is simpler and streamlined, designed for slightly cinematic, effect driven play. The core mechanic uses dice pools of ten-sided dice, typically formed from the combination of a skill and an attribute, for example Intellect and Science to analyse a problem, Aim and Dexterity to fire a gun, and Empathy and Manipulation to unobtrusively get someone to do what a character wants. These skill and attribute combinations are designed to be flexible, with a character’s preferred method being described as a character’s Favoured Approach. So a character whose Favoured Approach is Force, would use Close Combat and Might in a melee fight; if Finesse, Close Combat and Dexterity; and if Resilience, then Close Combat and Stamina.

The aim when rolling, is to score Successes, a Success being a result of eight or more. Rolls of ten count as two in They Came From Beyond the Grave!, rather than the capacity for the player to roll again for further Successes. Typically, a player only needs to roll one Success for a character to succeed at a task, though it can be as many as three, and ideally, he will want to roll more. Not only because Successes can be used to buy off Complications—ranging between one and five—but also because they can be used to buy Stunts which will impose Complications for others, create an Enhancement for another action, or one that makes it difficult to act against a character. Stunts cost at least one Success and each of the five pre-generated protagonists in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!  possesses three favoured Stunts. These include ‘Uncover the Truth’, ‘Spot Weakness’, ‘Oracular Gaze’, and more. However, where combat Stunts like ‘Increase Damage’, ‘Knockdown/Trip’, and ‘Pin Down’ are explained, there appears to be no explanation for the three favoured Stunts for each of the Protagonists.

Under the Storypath system, and thus in They Came From Beyond the Grave!, failure is never complete. Either a player can spend a Rewrite to reroll; accept the failure, accept its consequences and a Consolation; or if the roll was a failure and a one was rolled on the die, suffer the consequences of a Botch and earn two Rewrites for the Writer’s Pool.

Both ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ and They Came From Beyond the Grave! use a number of mechanics which help enforce the genre. Unlike Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea!, the quick-start for They Came From Beneath the Sea!, Protagonists do not have access to Trademarks, each tied to a particular skill, which grant the player two extra dice on a related roll per Trademark, but when activated and there are some Successes left over from the completed task, enable the player to gain Directorial Control of the film. There is scope for them in They Came From Beyond the Grave! as there is space for them on the character sheet, but they do not appear in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!.

A Protagonist does have Quips, like ‘I always believed human sacrifice died out.’ or ‘There's your proof — the proof of your own eyes.’ When used, they require everyone around the table to vote whether or not their use is appropriate, but if a Quip is successful, it earns a player another die to a roll or a reroll if a complex action. Rewrites are another genre-enforcing mechanic and are drawn from the Writers’ Pool, which is a group resource. They require all players to agree to their use, but with that agreement, a Rewrite can be used to make rerolls or add dice to a roll, as well as to active Cinematic Powers. Several of these are listed, including ‘I’m a Serious Actor’ which grants a bonus to the Protagonist’s Social Attributes after he uses his serious acting chops to elevate the film; ‘Same Set, Different Movie’ in which the Protagonist—or the actor playing him recognises the set of the film from another and uses it to his advantage; and ‘Waxing Poe-etical’ which has the player narrating the actions of his protagonist in rhyme and everyone joining in to gain an Enhancement for all associated rolls. Several Rewrites are included in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!, but only five are used in play.

The rules in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! are not quite as well explained as they could be. Beyond the basic rules, which are clear enough, the rules for combat are explained in the scenes where they might happen in the scenario and there is no explanation of the Stunts for the Protagonists. That aside, the rules are all easy to use in play. They are specifically designed to encourage and support cinematic play, even badly cinematic play, and whilst they are genre-enforcing, there are quite a few of them. So as much as the players need to lean into the genre and their Protagonists, they also need to lean into the genre-enforcing mechanics—the Rewrites, the Cinematic Powers, and more—to get their full effect. This is not an impediment to play as such, but more of a requirement than players might expect of the roleplaying game.

A Protagonist in Both ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ and They Came From Beyond the Grave! has nine Attributes—Intellect, Cunning, Resolving, Might, Dexterity, Stamina, Presence, Manipulation, and Composure; a range a skills, Quips, and Favoured Stunts. A Protagonist also has a Path each for his Archetype, Origin, and Ambition, but these do not play a role in the jump-start, whilst of his three Aspirations, or goals, only the two short term Aspirations really count in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!.

The five Protagonists included in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! consist of an elderly and authorative parapsychology professor, a brilliant, but disillusioned scientist, an ex-cop turned skeptical researcher, an eccentric medium, and a would-be hero dupe. Each is presented in full colour over two pages with the character sheet on one and an illustration and background on the other. The character sheets are easy to read and the background easy to pick up.

The scenario, ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’, on two stormy separate, but connected, nights. The Protagonists are members of a parapsychology research team from the University of Portsmouth (technically Portsmouth Polytechnic at the time of the scenario) who are visiting Abbeyham Priory, a gothic pile with a long reputation for being haunted and being associated with witch hunts. Once the Protagonists get past the small crowd of protestors objecting to the idea of ghost hunters visiting a place of God and gain entry to the abbey, they find the nuns frosty and unwelcoming. The building is shabby, dusty, and cobweb strewn, the floors creak and there is nowhere to escape the draughts. The nuns seem to watch their every move, and despite what the Protagonists’ ghost hunting equipment fails to detect, there seems to be signs of ghosts everywhere. Well, if not ghosts, then something strange is definitely going on.

The Protagonists are members of a parapsychology research team from the University of Portsmouth (technically Portsmouth Polytechnic at the time of the scenario) who are visiting Abbeyham Priory, a gothic pile with a long reputation for being haunted and being associated with witch hunts. Once the Protagonists get past the small crowd of protestors objecting to the idea of ghost hunters visiting a place of God and gain entry to the abbey, they find the nuns frosty and unwelcoming. The building is shabby, dusty, and cobweb strewn, the floors creak and there is nowhere to escape the draughts. The nuns seem to watch their every move, and despite what the Protagonists’ ghost hunting equipment fails to detect, there seems to be signs of ghosts everywhere. Well, if not ghosts, then something strange is going on!

‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ is designed to be played in four hours—and so is suitable to be run as a convention scenario—and is designed as a fairly linear countdown to a big finale. Which is entirely fitting for the genre. It contains a detailed description of the abbey, (though there is no map), which the Protagonists have plenty of opportunity to explore and are encouraged to do so to gain clues as to what is exactly going on at the abbey. Some of the clues come from a series of flashback scenes which foreshadow the events of the present in ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’. These are set in the nineteenth century and involve visitors to Abbeyham Priory very similar to the Protagonists and who are in fact roleplayed by the players as variations upon their Protagonists! As the scenario counts down, its scenes cut back and forth between the present and the past, one set of Protagonists desperately fighting to withstand their inevitable doom, the other set  desperately fighting to withstand their potentially inevitable doom.

Physically, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! is a slim softback, done in full colour throughout. The artwork is excellent and gloriously depicts the campy, over the top horror of its genre. Therea re two main issues with the quick-start. One is that the rules explanation is underwritten and there are elements, such as the explanations of the Trademark Stunts missing. The other is the structure of the scenario, which writes some of the core rules for the roleplaying game into scenes when they should really have been placed together with the explanation of the basic rules. Consequently, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! does need a thorough read through as part of preparation, both to grasp the overall rules as well as the structure of the scenario.

It should be noted that ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ is a very British scenario. Consequently, it includes an explanation of what ‘jumble’ and a ‘jumble sale’ are and the Protagonists get a scene in an Austin Allegro. Which is either the result of brilliant research or the author getting revenge for childhood nightmares spent in the back seat of one on very long family holidays. Either way, for players of a certain age, it will bring back terrifying flashbacks of their own...

Although it needs a little more preparation than perhaps is necessary to ready the players for the rules, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! has everything the Director and her players need for one night’s session of a dark and stormy night, creepy nuns and salacious nuns, jump scares, creaks and groans from cheap sets, and over over acting. Anyone looking for down at heel frights and the richest, fruitiest of hammy performances as the clock ticks down to horror should prepare for a night at The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!