The Well of Fears

Well, things seem to be working out better than I thought they would. Everyone's calmed back down and there has been some talk about trying again to play the game. Hopefully, things will stay calm and we can all have a good time playing together soon. I'll let you all know more as it happens.

Good news, everyone! My family and I finally played Nightmare tonight and I am happy to say that the game was a huge success! We had a wonderful time! After it was over, everyone remarked that they liked the game and wanted to play it again sometime. Even though The Gatekeeper won the game, I think we all won in the game of having fun.

It was a bit of a free-for-all, and we all had our 'Oops' moments. I (playing Elizabeth Bathory) was forced to skip a lot of turns. Dad (playing Baron Samedi) was stuck in the Black Hole a lot of the time. My Little Sister (playing Khufu) actually got really tense and short-tempered. And in the closing moments of the game, Mom (playing Hellen) forgot to start towards the center of the board after getting all of her keys.

There were also triumphant moments, like when I successfully finished the staring contest with the Gatekeeper, and Kate (my little sister) called my effort 'badass'. Dad, as the oldest, had to roll his age at one point, and actually managed it on the first try, much to my shock and amazement.

One funny thing that I noticed was that Mom and Little Sister laughed at the Gatekeeper a lot...at first. Once he began dishing out punishments to everyone, the laughter quickly became subdued. I remember in the last couple minutes, when the Gatekeeper had completely transformed, someone said to my little sister, "Whoa, Kate! Look at him!"

The closing minutes were quite a nailbiter, as I, after finally receiving all of my keys, rushed towards the center of the board, turns occurring in rapid succession in a last-ditch attempt to beat the clock. I was one square away from the Nightmare space when the game ended. It was too late... We finished the video, and when we watched the ad for Nightmare II, Dad suddenly said, "Hey, it's named after me!" which made me smile.

The mood was very positive as we closed the game, and I felt slightly relieved for this. After all the frustration and false starts, it went as well as I could've hoped for. Hopefully we will play again some time, but until then, I will remember this family game night fondly.

Wow that sounds like an awesome first session! I think we lost the first time we played that game too, but it was very close. You can expect the end-game to almost always be a frantic dice-move-fast as people are trying for last ditch efforts to win.

Good to hear it went well! Sounds like you'll have to get some expansions eventually.

Yep, I've already been looking into getting expansions. I am watching a copy of both Nightmare 2 and 3 on eBay at the moment (Nightmare 4 might elude me for a while as I've heard it's somewhat rare here in the States), and I have also been looking into fan-made expansions.

I spent several hours trying to get a decent version of the Geoff and Tim Expansion Video off of MySpace, and finally succeeded in getting a decent recording and getting it to play on my PlayStation 3.

I am also looking into the Gevaudan Expansion by Valveros. I just need to wait until it gets seeded.

Let me know if there are any others I've forgotten about.

I am going to a board game night being held by my church group this evening, and I've decided to bring my copy of Nightmare along to see if anyone's interested in playing. I'll let you all know how it goes after I get back.

Oh, yeah. I also finally ordered a copy of Nightmare II: Baron Samedi, and am bidding on a copy of Atmosfear DVD - The Gatekeeper. I might also play again with my family some time soon.

Well, I am happy to say that Nightmare went over quite well with my friends last night! At the end (after the Gatekeeper won), everyone was talking about how much they enjoyed the game, and asked me to bring it to the next Game Night event.

We actually had seven people who wanted to play, so two of them had to form a team, and others at the event came in to watch later on. Everyone was talking about it, joking about how "scary" it was. Just like the first time I played, there was only one person who had all the keys at the end, and they were in such a mad dash to get to the center of the board that they just started rolling repeatedly, not giving anyone else a turn. We were that excited.

At the beginning, everyone jumped at the lightning striking the logo and the Gatekeeper's sudden appearances. When the staring contest occurred, I watched the player called upon carefully, to make sure they didn't blink. They won, but they said it was a struggle. At one point, someone asked, "How long is this!?" in response to how long the contest lasts.

Everyone had a wonderful time, and I'm glad I was able to give them that. When I told them that I had ordered Nightmare II earlier that day, they got really excited. They seemed to really want to play again some time. Who knows? Bringing Nightmare to these Game Nights might become a tradition.

Oh, yeah. I also won the auction for the Atmosfear: The Gatekeeper DVD game, so it was a successful night all around.

That sounds like a great time! I've had so many new players say the same about the staring content; not surprising is it is very long and tense. I've gotten caught with it so many times I've devised a good technique to get past it.

If you are going to bring Nightmare to all the game nights try very hard to mix up which game you play. I played the original so much when it was new I started to memorize the cues (and as a side note, I definitely noticed when they were used in the DVD version). If you mix it up you'll minimize that and keep people guessing.

Alternatively, I always found that memorization to be a good thing. I've screwed with people by making it look like I'm chatting back and forth with the Gatekeeper because I knew what line was coming up next. Especially with all the "Eh?" and "Huh?" he does.

But y'know if all else fails go buy a robe and work on your Gatekeeper impression. Ad-libbing the game out in the woods became a thing with my old group of friends every weekend one summer. ...kinda got me a reputation with the neighbors with us pacing up and down the block in costumes too, but they had a good sense of humor about it.

Pro Tip: Never put candles on the board itself. While it looks cool you get wax on everything and it doesn't come off easily.

marr0w wrote:Alternatively, I always found that memorization to be a good thing. I've screwed with people by making it look like I'm chatting back and forth with the Gatekeeper because I knew what line was coming up next. Especially with all the "Eh?" and "Huh?" he does.

Haha I've done that too, but even people that don't know the script have done that to be silly. As with anything, YMMV.

But y'know if all else fails go buy a robe and work on your Gatekeeper impression. Ad-libbing the game out in the woods became a thing with my old group of friends every weekend one summer. ...kinda got me a reputation with the neighbors with us pacing up and down the block in costumes too, but they had a good sense of humor about it.

Pro Tip: Never put candles on the board itself. While it looks cool you get wax on everything and it doesn't come off easily.[/quote]

Somewhere I still have a robe that I used to wear when we played. I always run across the hood when going through my stuff at least. We went a little nuts about the game around the time Harbingers was released, so we played all the time and often we full games. We did use candles a lot and there is still a little evidence on my Nightmare board (but not so bad; it adds to the character). As long as you are careful and have enough room it's not so bad. We to this day still talk about doing a theme night where everyone dresses up as a character, but it hasn't happened yet.

That's pretty awesome that you ran the gatekeeper. After watching your Chuck videos I can totally picture it too.