I played J. Walton‘s game Restless (PDF link) this week (see the video if you want to watch how it went). It’s a horror story game in which you play either a group of survivors or the non-surviving horde of something that is destroying the world. The Restless can be anything, and it can change over the course of the game. You can change characters and sides at each scene break in the game.
With the holidays coming, I was thought-noodling about what might make for an interesting creepy palette for the non-survivors. This would be the starting premise of the game. John Aegard called it a palette, so I’m using that term for this story-starter for:
Restless: A Very Special Holiday Horror.
Non-Survivors: The non-survivors are Santa’s Elves, driven mad with obsessive toy-making. They have broken free of the Workshop, overthrown their tyrannical master, and are now turning all the boys and girls of the world into toys. The adults are gone– turned into Elves or just "disappeared." The Elves are sweeping the world to turn every child into a toy. Their legions of marching toy soldiers and dolls who wet themselves are growing.
Survivors: All survivors are children, lost in a world where the adults have disappeared or turned against them.
When starting a card, choose a thing you might carry:
- A baseball and bat
- A box of art supplies
- Enough blankets to make a blanket fort
- A Swiss army knife
- A doll… who did it used to be?
- A storybook
- Three pieces of clothing, all hand-me-downs.