How to represent such holes? "If you fail this test, you go in the hole and die" is not great

How to represent such holes? "If you fail this test, you go in the hole and die" is not great.

Treat the story as a metaphor for dungeon crawling.

>and die
if only this were true

I was able to do something like that through metagaming. Make the players think the thing is important out of game, the players will flock to it in game.

The first edition of Delta Green had a 'spell' - some scientists notes on Mi-Go mathematics - that did nothing but cost an exponentially increasing amount of sanity each time it was studied.

Every game I've used the notes a player offs themselves because "if it cost sanity must be powerful spell rite"

What manga is that from?

Boku no Amigara Fault.

The Enigma of Amigara Fault. It's like under 20 pages long. Just google it and don't sleep for a week.

If you're doing the Enigma as written, you don't have players enter the holes unless you want to do a painstakingly awful description of being compelled to force yourself down miles of you shaped rock that gradually twists and narrows and mutilates your mind and body. The players are investigators trying to figure out why the fuck these holes are irresistably attracting people and why they were just fucking there underground for no real reason. It doesn't make any possible sense. The world somehow contains random holes that perfectly match random people who lose all rationality and just climb in. The world is clearly somehow wrong, but why? And then as they are realizing how fucked reality is, DRR DRR DRR finally happens as the other shoe

It's going to take a bunch of work teams with strong will power or carfully matched up by outside authority of strong will power to holes that at not theirs. Then it is going to take a lot of concrete if we want to fill them in or less if we want to just slap some 20 tonne slabs over them.

Or some sticks of TNT and patience.

Either way once it becomes evident what these holes do to people the party will not be stopping their crusade against the rock.

I think not having your own hole means you failed your test.
treat it as a metaphor for finding your place in society, literally represented by a hole shaped like you, which everyone desperately tries to find, but when they do and take it they are warped and deformed by it.
and yet not finding it is even worse. Everyone has their hole but you. Some kind of supernatural force has taken the effort to make holes for everyone except you. Do you even exist at that point? Was there ever a purpose in your existence?
What's your choice? Neet with no future or twisted and contorted by your job and social responsibilities?

Clearly, the third option is as best as it is optimistic.
Forge your own path in life! The fact that you don't have a hole which twists and mutilates you means you're meant for something bigger than any hole, and it's up to you to figure out what!

>means you're meant for something bigger than any hole, and it's up to you to figure out what!

nope, it means you'll be left alone while everyone finds their place in the hole, telling yourself everyday how lucky you are that there is no place for you.

>it means you'll be left alone while everyone finds their place in the hole, telling yourself everyday how lucky you are that there is no place for you.
So, no change from my current life whatsoever, got it.

And this is suppose to make me depressed? Try again sweetie.

>twisted and contorted by your job and social responsibilities?
do robots actually believe this?

Do dumbasses really insist on off-topic shitposting?

"If you fail this test, choose between going into the hole or taking a decent chunk of sanity damage" might work.

The players will take the sanity damage every single time. Better to make a bunch of saves over time, losing a little bit after every failure. Once your sanity goes below a certain number, you’re compelled to enter it. Make the players understand that they have a limited amount of time and their characters could snap at any moment.

For the Japanese it kinda is. Working yourself to death happens often enough that they have a name for it, lest we forget.

Some tribes have a deal they cut with a spirit or something way back when and now they use holes like those to get rid of their more heinous criminals. Legends say that whatever comes out the other side is used by the spirit to guard its realm.

Jobs are an aspect of our social contract. Without the social contract, we wouldn’t have language, culture, or technology. All of these things, jobs included, warp us from our animalistic selves into something else. Whether this “civilized” man is in any way freer or better is up to interpretation. Of course, jobs change us. Some horribly warp the psychology and physiology of the worker much like these holes. But all jobs change the person, in some ways, it defines them.

>tfw almost half of your favorite chinese cartoons go on hiatus because their writers are dying
Karoshi is one hell of a drug

Just have the hole be there, and perfectly shaped for the person who first looks at it. They'll go straight into it, guaranteed.

Remember to draw in important npc’s as well. It’s bad to drop sanity but players will react emotionally if their kid sister or husband are in danger of entering the holes.

At least it wasn't Idolmaster.

it makes sense in the japanese context. as said

But read the rest of my post, I said that not having your own hole is the worse option of the 2

>user, there's TREASURE at the end of the hole!
just watch them climb in.

I'll make my own damn place.

There may or may not be blackjack and hookers involved.

can someone explain this? I don't understand the whole hole thing

It’s an Ito manga, see Ito is really the flavor of the month on Veeky Forums. I’m not an Ito fan, but it leads to some interesting discussion and lots of other people like his work. So I guess that’s alright.

Better than the time the flavor was ‘party gets a whore sidekick, what happens.’. You couldn’t even get to the generals without finding yourself waist deep in magical realm.

Ito is quite interesting for horror sessions(although hard to pull off in a game). It usually starts out quite tame and a little mysterious and then suddenly the horror hits you like a sledgehammer.

I respect that others like it, it’s just not for me.

IMO a lot of Ito’s horror depends on the same element of surprise. Situation starts out weird and mysterious —> protagonist(s) engage —> oh no, turns out it was (insert horrible thing) all along, who would have guessed?

Once you decode the formula there isn’t really anything left. Ito’s drawings are really good, but to me they are not enough to carry the mood by themselves.

That is true though ... you cannot do that little "trick" too often with your players else it will get boring quickly.

>"If you fail this test, you go in the hole and die" is not great.

Too true.

give the characters obsessions/aspirations that give them XP if they follow them

the biggest one is entering the hole

While I'm fully aware of the convention being used, that would be a hell of a hentai.

Honestly, I don't actually read Ito for a sense of horror, I read it for the batshit insanity. Very little of it is actually horrifying to me, but god does he go down the rabbit hole.

>god does he go down the rabbit hole.
Not so much. He just knows the secret of the spiral.

As it seems that most everyone has already given some good ways to implement this, what I want to know is:

How would you deal with what comes out the other side?

Nuke it, nuke the mountain, and call it a day.

Amen

Ah, of course, the Emperor's Peace is always an option.

What's there to do? It's just essentially people jerky. Package and sell it if you're a fan of Soylent Green.

these, if you make it alluring players will hop in and die

there's some old D&D cave of odeals type shit that had a big stone lion's head that had an orb of annilhation inside it shrouded in darkness. players see the big lion head and think "wow there must be stuff in this hole!" reach in and lose their fucking arm, no save.

its a kinda bullshit thing to do though

I'd go with a system where everyone has something which we'll call "Calling" - calling represents how strongly you're drawn to your hole. Hitting max Calling (let's say, 10 points) is bad, as it means you can't resist taking the closest path to your hole and jumping in. Lesser amounts of calling have a mix of positive and negative effects, mostly negative - you're nuts and easily distracted, but you do get advantages towards understanding the horrible truth of the situation. Characters in-universe can tell that they have the calling, although they don't get an exact number of course - that's just for the players to know.

Gaining calling is easy - just having seen your hole, even just once, means you gain a point per day. Researching the phenomenon gets you a point with each successful research roll (a normal failure gets nothing, but a sufficiently bad one might get you Calling without any actual knowledge). In a situation where you are humiliated, treated as an outcast, or otherwise rejected and shunned, gain some Calling. Go more than a day without any meaningful human contact? Calling time, baby.

Losing Calling, on the other hand, is hard but possible. Spend some time reinforcing your bonds with unCalled people. Create something new and permanent (a sculpture, a house, a child - you're anchoring yourself in the world). Gain acceptance from others in a way you previously lacked.

The end result should be that if you're staying away from the Fault and not interacting with it at all, you're still fucked. You'll be able to keep yourself good for a while, maybe indefinitely, but eventually you'll have a bad day and gain enough Calling faster than you lose it - and once you've got some built up, you're a crazy person, making losing it harder. If you try to understand the Fault, on the other hand, you're gonna be fucked much faster, but if you can manage your Calling enough you might be able to learn the truth or find an answer before you snap.

>0 Points: You have been called to your hole - it's intriguing, though you couldn't explain what makes it so

>1-3 Points: You dream of your hole, and the idea of going inside makes something inside you feel so happy, like you're finally going to be at peace. You could describe what your hole looks like to anyone, even if you've only seen it momentarily. Everything - work, school, hobbies, love - feels a bit less important than it should. You want to travel closer to Amigara Fault if you're not there

>4-6 Points: Your life is haunted by the absence of your hole - it is the solution to your problems, the one thing that's more than a temporary fix for your issues and yet people say you can't have it. You instinctively know which direction it's in, and tend to stare that way when not busy, and walk that way when distracted. Any conversation you have eventually comes around to Amigara Fault and its mysterious holes.

>7-9 Points: Your mind is being eclipsed by the need for your hole. Whatever problems your facing right now are just shadows you could brush aside - the only REAL problem is that you don't have your hole. When acting in a way that gets you closer to it, you ignore any penalties that could be caused by fatigue, hunger, pain and other ephemeral issues. Taking care of yourself, dealing with everyday life, and talking about anything other than the fault require active mental effort. When talking about the fault, you can casually mention physical details you have no way of knowing.

>10 points: You are going to Amigara Fault. Everything that isn't stopping you from going can be ignored. Nothing else matters. You can describe even secret information about the fault, and have a vague sense of what it might do. Of course, the only people you'll talk to are the ones helping you get there, or going there themselves.

10 points, despite its badness, is not game over - they can still lose calling if forced into an appropriate situation

It's been a while since I read it but did a person specifically need to see their hole for the attraction to start? Either in person or on TV/a picture or whatever.

Something like Trail of Cthulhu I suppose, with one stat letting you resist the lure and another gradually being eroded, and when that hits zero you strip to your skivvies and jump in your hole.

Depending on the world the DRR DRR DRR might be the sound of the little cart carrying a nuke into the mountain.