SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! is first played in Narrative Scene which move the plot along as fast as necessary. It is only when the Player Characters face danger or want to maintain, temporarily at least, their safety, that the game play switches to Narrative Rounds and the mechanics, the Tenson 20 system, comes into play. To undertake an action for his character, his player rolls a twenty-sided die and attempts to equal or beat a Target Number. If the player succeeds, the next player in the scene rolls for his character, and so on, until every player with a character in the scene has rolled and their actions have been taken. The Narrator describes the outcome and either a new Narrative Round is played out or play switches back to a Narrative Scene.
However, the consequences of failure have repercussions for all of the Player Characters. Initially, the Target Number is nine, but if a player fails a roll, the Target Number rises by one—and that is for every player. Effectively, the difficulty goes up and so does the tension, not just for the Player Character who failed, but for every Player Character. The failure also means that the Narrator—who never rolls a die in the game—can introduce ‘THEM’ into the scene if not already presence, which will increase the number of Narrative Rounds that the players have to play through. However, failure does earn Desperation, a communal pool of points that a player can spend to ensure a successful roll.
Bar the opening scenes, SHH!! is played in stage whispers. If a player raises his voice, this will alert ‘THEM’ as to the presence or location of the characters. It also increases the Target Number by two! This is temporary though. If the Player Characters can avoid ‘Them’, the Target Number can reset to what it was before, but if ‘THEY’ cannot be avoided, the increased Target Number’ becomes permanent.
Amongst this rising tension and difficulty, a Player Character is very simply defined. He is an archetype. For example, a Jock, a Nerd, or a Clown for a horror game or a Smooth Operator, Hacker, or Safe Cracker for a heist game. Each Archetype grants advantage when a player attempts an action using its skill or ability. For example, in a horror game, the Prep archetype grants advantage when using ‘Social Clout’, whilst in a heist game, the Cat Burglar grants advantage when attempting to ‘Breach the Vault’. In each genre, one archetype grants a more powerful ability. For example, the Goth grants advantage when using his ‘Horror Knowledge’ to guess the next actions of ‘THEM’, which will also reduce the Target Number for everyone for the next round.
Besides his archetype, a Player Character also has a Stress factor. Initially set at zero, this represents the Player Character’s mental and physical well-being. When a player fails a roll by more then five, his character gains a point of Stress. A Player Character also gains a point of Stress for fighting ‘THEM’, which means on a failed roll, he can gain two! If a Player Character gains five points of Stress, he is dead. Death though, is not the end. A dead character continues as ghost, his player aiding the player to his left (or right if that Player Character is also dead) by spending his character’s accrued Stress as Fate Points, which work like Desperation, but which he can only spend. This will push the play of SHH! towards that typical of horror stories, that of the lone survivor having lived through a terrible existence. It does not quite work for heist stories, since this genre does not always involve the deaths of its central cast, and perhaps in heist stories where such deaths are unlikely, a Player Character who has his Stress increased to five represents his being captured or arrested rather than killed.
Advice for the Narrator is light and two genres are given broad treatments. The one on horror is better than the one on heists as it also suggests what the ‘THEM’ can be that the Player Characters will be facing and what they have to do to survive. The treatment for heists only lists the archetypes. Given how light SHH! is, and how it is designed for ‘pick up and play’, some advice on preparing and setting up scenarios for either of its genres would have been a welcome addition. Although the rules are clearly explained—and include a rules reference on the inside front cover—one issue not addressed is if the tension and thus the Target Number ever goes down. There are situations where it does, such as after temporarily raising it due to a whisper, but arguably, it should drop during Narrative Scenes, in moments of respite in keeping with the types of storytelling that SHH! wants to tell.
Physically, SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! is decently and darkly presented. The artwork is all shadows and foreboding. Whilst everything is clearly explained, the use of the coloured text on black is not necessarily going to be easily read by everyone.
SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! has a ‘pick up and play’ quality by design with its simplicity and broadly drawn genres and archetypes. Arguably, it is so light, the Narrator does not even need a copy at the table to run it! Its Tension 20 system is also intentionally brutal, making play increasingly uneasy and jittery until it escalates into panicky fear and horror. The whisper mechanic will probably annoy the players as much as it enforces the genres that SHH!! is designed for. SHH!! A Game of Hiding, Sneaking and Staying So “They” Don’t Find You! works better with the horror genre than the heist genre, but its low preparation, fast play, and easy buy in make it a good choice to have to hand.
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