So let’s talk about a little horror game called “Never Going Home”. On the face of it, NGH is a bog-standard war game, set in the no-man’s-land of Europe during World War One. The horrors of trying to survive the trenches of WWI, through the chemical warfare, constant artillery and machine gun assaults, and sometimes hand-to-hand combat… that alone has enough to make for an interesting tabletop roleplaying game.
But then they add things roaming around the battlefield. These could be demons, zombies, ghosts, Lovecraftian horrors from beyond space and time, whatever. Now that kicks things up a notch!
“Never Going Home” takes what would otherwise be a bleak tale from the battlefields, and turns it into a nightmarish battle with little chance for survival. The humans on either side of the war are monstrous enough, now add in actual monsters to make things particularly grim.
Yeah. That’s pretty f*cked up, but also amazing!
The taking of something already pretty horrific, and twisting it in a way that makes it nightmarishly horrible, I see that as very influential on how I approach my game worlds. Take something simple, twist it, and make it something else entirely. While lots of games do this as well, “Never Going Home” stands out for taking this to another level of horror.
Simply put, this game is just magnificent in its terror. The only reason I didn’t put it on my list of games to play on Halloween from earlier this week is that I don’t see NGH as a good choice for a one-shot adventure. It’s a slow burn, something that really needs time to develop and build over a campaign.
