Or, “make it up your own damned self,” apparently?
So, we’re out of character and system rules, and now we’re talking about the house itself. Fucking finally. The House will take on an outer facade that matches the cultural context of where it appears, but inside it doesn’t bother. Which… feels like something that a cheap movie would pull and try to use as a source of horror, but, if a person walks into a building that looks like an Edo-period Japanese house, and inside it looks like a turn of the century Western manor, I don’t think most people are going to find that scary. Weird maybe, but we live in a world where “Zillow Gone Wild” is a Twitter account and it posts weird fucking houses every day. That just means the people who live there don’t care about aesthetic consistency.
The House also can absorb other buildings? I’m curious to see how much, and how, this is used in the actual scenario. The Tea Room is called out as a specific location, but nothing is really said about it. And having been in the hobby as long as I have, I feel like this won’t be used to much effect. Cool ideas like this never are. But hey, maybe I’m wrong.
Next, it talks about, well, fuck, I’ll just quote it-
...do… do game writers realize they can just write genre guides or books about ideas? That they don’t have to write settings? I ask, because if this was a book giving ideas for a haunted house adventure, or talking about it as a genre, suggestions for backstory would be fine. But if I’m buying your setting or story, I’d like to know what you say the backstory is. I can make shit up all fucking day. I’m really good at it. If I don’t like your backstory, I will change it, don’t worry. This mystery box bullshit is… Well, it’s bullshit.The Story of the House wrote:The Darkest House has a complicated history. Its origin might be tied to a man named Phillip Harlock. It might be tied to something far older, perhaps even something primal in the multiverse. Or it might be a combination of all such things.
But, anyway. That's kind of minor before it goes off on this thing about... how people shape their environment. No, really. "We sometimes think that when two people spend extended periods of time together, one begins to take on qualities of the other." Um. Yes. That's a recognized thing. "No, but what if one of those people wasn't a person, man, what if it was a house, man?" Yeah. People shape their living spaces. "No, but what if the house was a people, man?" Kitty Horrorshow did this better.
Oh, except that Kitty Horrorshow's Anatomy never really bothers to explain why the house is sentient and horror-y, in a rare example of The Mystery Box actually working, and here Monte's going off on some wild tangeant about "fundamental forces of the universe" that "represent particular concepts" that the House can tap into, and how that lets it be something we can hardly comprehend. And how "we just don't know the answers to all these questions" and how all we need to know is what happens inside it (fair) and that "the house hates you."
Phillip Harlock's Story
The House was owned and lived in by a (wizard/occultist, as appropriate for your setting), who grew increasingly reclusive. That is literally all this section says for certain, everything else is "well, maybe x, but no one knows, and you can't verify anything with external records."
Monte actually addresses this, in about the worst way possible, and I'm just going to show this shit in it's entirety-
I want to hunt JJ Abrahms for sport.
I mean, yes, this kind of thing has been around in RPGs longer than JJ Abrahms has been doing his mystery box thing, but...he's out there telling people that creating questions and then not answering them is good, and I seriously doubt that Monte has no exposure to that.
Next up is talking about how to get PCs into the House, and.. It’s nothing big or special. It suggests Treasure, Lore, Curiosity, and Pursuit. I don’t know that I consider this a particularly necessary section, I mean, I could come up with these easily enough, and it doesn’t talk in enough specifics to give any meat for helping you to generate an actual hook, just general goals. It does mention some super valuable diamond that is in fact in the House, and that’s kind of the thing I’d like it to do more of here, tell the GM who hasn’t necessarily read through the House scenario yet some specific things that are in the House to hang a hook on.
Something like in the next section, Stories Within the House, which talks about shit they’ll specifically find and how to tie them in, when necessary, like they’ll find The Dog, and might want to befriend it and get it out, or the NPC in the absorbed room might be a loved one they’ll want to rescue, or they’ll find “the aeolotropic structure” and want to repair it.
Or… they find The Mystic Tools, which can build a door to get them out of the House (and back in, if they wish), and “hey, maybe those tools can also build other special shit?”
Like, there’s an actual specific idea that can be fleshed out for a game. I saw that and immediately had an idea for how I can get my PCs in-- there’s an NPC they’ll encounter at the end of the first adventure, which I want to make a recurring antagonist. She’s already used demonic magic to create a rat hivemind and trick it into thinking it was a god and develop a cult of wererats around it, so it’s not a stretch that she would learn about the House, that it has these mystical tools inside it, and they can be used to build artifacts (and she’d probably be interested in the aeolotropic structure). So I can have her perform a ritual sacrifice in broad daylight to summon the House and then run in when the PCs give chase.
Or your PCs might be interested in Monte’s tortured occultist story, or maybe they’ll decide they want to sever the House from their world forever.
There’s also some stuff for if the PCs research the House, which… well, one is a book about Monte’s tortured occultist character, Phillip Harlock, which I might rework to fit a D&D setting better, or might discard entirely, since it feels, to me, very real worldish occult, ie, the kind of thing Call of Cthulhu investigators might find, not the thing D&D sages might have. But I could do a bit of reworking. The other is about the House itself, and if my PCs get, or take, a chance to actually research the House before running in, then this I might use. This is more… “mad study,” and feels more fitting for a D&D setting without much change (like, I’m probably going to change Harlocke’s name, and he’s mentioned in this, and it makes a reference to a specific real animal, and I’ll change that to a fitting D&D monster).
There are also rumors you can give the PCs if you give them an opportunity to investigate the House before they go in, and, again, I’m not sure I’ll use these. But, maybe my PCs will decide to be cautious about the House rather than charging right through the front door of a building that appears after a blood sacrifice.
Anyway. Next section talks about conditions within the House, and they’re pretty expected--anachronisms (obviously, in a house that can connect to any world), magic (obviously, in a haunted house), weird time (or rather, time works exactly how the GM wants)--ie, it’s a haunted house, so you can explain things within the narrative. I guess some people need or benefit from this being spelled out.
It also gives some more detail on the “you can’t reach the outside” thing- basically, any effect, technological or magical, which would connect a character to the outside world instead directly contacts the House, as do any effects like a tricorder or detect magic that would reveal the paranormal nature of the House. It gives three things these attempts could result in--deception (a cleric communing with their god gets the House pretending to be that god), mental feedback (a mid-tier mental damage attack), or possession. Other than that, the only PC ability that is outright screwed with is attempts to leave. You can still fly, walk through walls, or teleport, but these things can’t get you out of the House (though there are areas which are, we’ll say, part of the grounds, so maybe they try to teleport out, think they got out, and then find out they’re still in the House, just in the garden, or something).
There’s a lot of reiteration in this thing. It’s already said that sleeping in the house results in a mental attack, though now it gives an attack rating, and I don’t recall if it did before. But even so, things could have been organized better to reduce this repetition of shit.
The House will “heal” damage and reset changes, tho there are some entities that won’t return if the PCs manage to destroy them, and any kind of beneficial treasure or loot doesn’t reset (no gold mining the House, unless you’re ready to spend a lot of time there).
...tho I suppose you could Greyhawk the House, and grab everything that isn’t nailed down, grab all the metal fixtures, and take it all home to hoc in a big santa sack and then go back in to do it again…
Heh. So, every major section of this pdf starts with a quote, and the one for the next section is from a youtuber, Jacob Geller, whose video about Control and Anatomy, which I’m pretty sure is being quoted here (“Some houses just reject humanity”), is the thing that first told me about Anatomy, and possibly Control (can’t remember which of two videos that talk about it I saw first, Geller’s or Erik Sophie’s).
Just neat.
I'm going to call this post here and make a new one for the next section.