Interest Check:

I've got a freeform game I came up with myself that needs playtesting... It's a Monster of the Week type game that, for now, I've given the working title of ALL HALLOWS.

Players are agents of Order or Chaos. The objective is to take over the town or city that the game is set in. Agents of Order do this by destroying all Agents of Chaos, each of which is a strange artifact hidden somewhere in the town or city (a blood-red jewel? a carved skull? a shrunken head?). Agents of Chaos take over by destroying all Agents of Order, by destroying some specific object that represents order (the statue of the bald eagle in front of the post office? the flag that flies on top of police headquarters? a judge's gavel on the top floor of the courthouse?)

Only each specific player knows what the object that represents their right to operate in the town or city is-- it's up to the opposing players to find out what it is during the course of the game, if they can.

(In a solo game, the opposing side would be played by the GM).

The game is played by manipulating pawns... human-- or monster-- characters. Each player starts with one free pawn, and 3 Power Points. Power points can be used to make new pawns, to increase their effectiveness, or to communicate with them immediately. Each player gets 3 more Power Points once a week, but they can also be earned by having pawns successfully complete missions or through good role-playing.. (There is a maximum limit of 10 Power Points that can be saved up.)

Every so often when a pawn survives a certain number of missions, they will gain experience and become more useful... there are 5 levels of possible pawn experience.

All first-level pawns have the following 4 traits:
--Fighting
--Sensing Stuff
--Health
--Willpower

...and then often 1 or 2 other skills or abilities... but more can be bought by giving pawns weaknesses or disadvantages...

Once all Agents have their first pawn (the free one [free unless the Agent spends extra Power points on enhancing it, that is]), the GM will start the ball rolling by assigning each agent a starting mission.

--Agents of Order will usually get a starting mission of investigating some strange or disturbing thing that has been rumored to have happened in some part of the city.

--Agents of Chaos may get a starting mission of investigating some irritating pawn of Order who might be able to provide a clue about where to best strike at the town or city (or who just needs to be lured into a trap or ambush and eliminated).

During the missions, pawns will investigate, and then often clash with one another. Whether pawns clash, investigate, or do anything else, the GM will roll the dice, and will describe, very basically, what happens. The GM will then assign an Agent to describe what happens, an event called "describing the scene" (this will often involve taking turns with different parts of the scene as it unfolds).

Players helping to tell the story by describing scenes is where Power points can be won by writing scenes involving good role-playing. That way, even if an Agent's pawn loses the clash, or is even destroyed, the Agent can always create more and/or stronger new pawns.


Players will state, at the start, if they would prefer to fight for a huge city with millions of people, a sleepy small town somewhere, or something in between... and whatever the answer is, what part of the world they might want it to be in (or if they care).

The game can work not only anywhere in the present-era United States, but also in some other era (noir 1940s? Atom Age 1950s? Groovy 1960s? Tubular 1980s?)...

It also should work in the old west, or 1897 London, or in a fantasy world (high fantasy or low fantasy), or probably feudal Japan... but I feel I should probably playtest it in America of the last 100 years or so first.


I've posted a more detailed version of the rules (though not the most detailed, because there wasn't room) in the Autobiography section of my RPOL profile...