Running the Game

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This page is for Directors.

As the Director, you’re the screenwriter and producer rolled into one. You set the story’s agenda, decorate the set, populate it with characters, and devise obstacles for the scene. Your film is going to be spine-tingling and react to the audience!

At first, this might seem a bit daunting. But never fear! Everything in this book is designed to make you into a superstar Director with as little work as possible. Simply:

1. Pick a Setting. Nowhere, USA, Blackpost, and Grismoor (all included in the full Blood on the Lens book), give you ready-made, spooky locales for your film, composed entirely out of drag and drop elements for when you need to improvise.
2. Pick a Threat. The Threats give you an outline worthy of a horror film, so you’re not starting from scratch. (The full Blood on the Lens book contains thirteen terrifying threats!)

Lastly, the Insomnia Storytelling Engine offloads critical elements of the storytelling onto the players. (And if you’re unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of horror storytelling, the full Blood on the Lens book contains the Roleplaying Horror chapter, will give you a primer.) It’s your story and presentation that brings it all together, however. This page will walk you through how to quickly and easily run a Blood on the Lens game.

Overview

The fundamentals of Blood on the Lens are the same as telling a scary story around a campfire. You need constant, building tension, a sense of mystery, and a shocking scare. Ideally, it should also be wrapped up with a clean beginning, middle, and end, though you don’t need to know where it’s going ahead of time.

Every episode of Blood on the Lens centers on a single Threat, an adversary that might be a knife-wielding slasher, a paranormal haunting, or a slimy alien beast. It’ll pick the players off one-by-one unless they can summon their courage, investigate the Threat, and figure out how to prevail.

Blood on the Lens has a loose structure of Episodes separated cinematically into Scenes and practically into Sessions of play. Depending on your group and the length of your sessions, an episode may span one or two sessions, or rarely extend to three or four.

Things to Keep in Mind

As the Director, you can shift the narrative and guide the players with invisible tethers of probability. Keep the following in mind as you begin your directorial journey.

Dice Probability

You Don’t Roll Dice

While each of the players will have a small pile of dice in front of them, you never need to roll dice for any reason. You can call for the players to make Reaction and Luck rolls in response to the world, but your choices aren’t guided by fate as theirs are.

However, you may want to roll a die to arbitrate storytelling decisions. This especially helps when you want to remain truly even-handed with regard to the players. Which Action does the threat take and who does it strike? Would the security guard be carrying a gun, or did they leave it behind? In such cases, you can roll a die in the same manner as you flip a coin, or you can call for a player to roll a Luck check—no explanation needed.

Players Choose Actions

The Actions on a player’s character are the verbs by which they interact with the world. Players choose which Actions they use and how they wish to use them. Of course, this introduces an immense bias—players only like making rolls they’re likely to succeed.

Therefore, you also adjudicate these rolls. It’s often appropriate to call for a different Action roll or a Reaction roll. Once a player attempts an Action, they must make whatever roll you call for. For example, if a player wishes to Investigate a book, it might be prudent to establish if they know anything about the book’s subject matter with a Think roll instead.

You Choose Reactions

As players explore the environment, you’ll periodically call for Reactions—especially Notice and Think. As they attempt to survive the Threat, you’ll often call for React and Withstand.

You choose which Reactions are rolled and when. Players can ask for a Reaction roll, a nudge that they might Notice or Think of something important, but you have the final say.

Failure Before Trauma

As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t impose Trauma unless a player has failed a roll. Rolling React or Withstand Reactions are the most straightforward means of dealing Trauma, but players can take Trauma for any failed roll, including for psychological reasons.

Luck

You can call for a Luck roll whenever you want, for any reason. Notably, when a player has Sacrificed an Action, they use a one-die Luck roll instead, but you can also call for a Luck roll whenever a player tries something that doesn’t fit neatly into any other roll.

To choose how many dice are rolled for Luck, use the Dice Probability table as a guide.

Twists

Whenever a player rolls doubles—two or more matching numbers on a roll—the result is a Twist. In addition to the Success or Failure, something unexpected happens. This could be literally anything tied to the Action or Reaction being taken. Firing a rifle might strike an unseen propane tank and set off an explosion, or result in a click and a jammed round in the barrel.

Ask each player, including the player that rolled the Twist, what happens. Players can opt out of offering suggestions, and you can offer one as well. Choose the one that is most interesting for the scene and most appropriate to the roll. As a rule, the most interesting Twists evolve the environment, introduce a new element or person to the scene, or shift the players’ capabilities.

Modifying Rolls

Last but not least, you can modify any roll with the following variant rolls. Advantage and Disadvantage are the most common, reflecting when a player is in a uniquely positive or detrimental position to attempt something.

You can also modify rolls to reinforce good roleplaying and clever tactics, to nudge the story in a particular direction, or to add texture to the scene. You should know your modifiers as well as the core Actions and Reactions of the game!

Variant Rolls

Beyond the three most basic types of rolls—Actions, Reactions, and Luck—you can call for the following more elaborate rolls to make the story more dynamic and reactive.

Advantage and Disadvantage

If a player is in a uniquely beneficial or detrimental position, give that roll Advantage or Disadvantage—adding a bonus die or removing a die (to a minimum of 1), respectively. You can grant more than one bonus die to a roll for Advantage.

Players always gain Advantage in the following circumstances:

• Flow. When a player’s Action directly follows and benefits from the previous player’s Action.
• Motive. When a player’s Action is in pursuit of their Motive.

Remember that you only give out Advantage or Disadvantage when the outcome is in doubt. If a player wants to leap a tall building in a single bound, they automatically fail—no Disadvantage needed.

Blessed and Cursed Rolls

The influence of magic or extreme circumstances calls for Blessed and Cursed rolls. A Blessed roll is a Success on a roll of 4, 5, or 6, whereas a Cursed roll is only a Success on a roll of 6.

Usually, it’s not necessary to mix Advantage, Disadvantage, Blessed and Cursed rolls; stick with one paradigm or the other for a given roll.

No-Risk Rolls

Declare a roll has No-Risk whenever the stakes aren’t that high. When players make Think rolls to establish their foreknowledge or Notice rolls to spot a clue, nothing at all happens if they fail! A No-Risk roll doesn’t give Adrenaline on a Failure, or obviously threaten to harm the players. (Twists usually don’t affect these rolls.)

Feel free to call for these rolls as often as you wish to keep the players engaged!

Big Rolls

When a player attempts to pull off the near-impossible, call for a Big Roll, one that needs at least two dice with a 5 or 6 to Succeed. A Big Roll that needs two dice is extraordinarily difficult, whereas one that requires three is next to impossible.

Let players know when their attempt amounts to a Big Roll before letting them roll. However, always let them try, no matter how improbable Success might seem.

Group Rolls

When more than one player takes the same Action or Reaction, such as when a group makes a Sneak roll to slip past a security guard or everyone makes a Rush roll to ascend a rope, call for a Group roll.

Every player that participates makes a roll. If half or more of the players roll a Success, everyone succeeds; otherwise, everyone fails. (Twists don’t affect Group rolls.) In a failed Group roll, compare the highest number rolled by each player. Only the player or players with the lowest number mark Adrenaline.

Challenges

If you think something should take more than one roll to accomplish, call for a Challenge. Choose the relevant roll, such as Force to push a car up a hill. Players can take that roll to accomplish the task, keeping track of Successes and Failures. After three Successes, the Challenge is a Success; after three Failures, the challenge is a Failure. Successes and Failures don’t have to be consecutive.

You can increase or decrease the number of cumulative Successes or Failures to match the Challenge’s complexity.

Hidden Rolls

When the outcome of a roll might not immediately be apparent, call for a Hidden Roll. The player rolls the dice inside a cup or mug and leaves the cup upside-down on the table. Flip the cup and reveal the roll only you would learn what happened!

Hidden rolls are best in the following scenarios:

• Stealth. Pursued by a serial killer, you dive into a locker and hold your breath. Does the killer find you?
• High-Stakes Bluff. You string together a few bold-faced lies to a suspicious police officer. Do they buy it?
• Check Their Pulse. A character falls and lies still. Are they alive?

Director Tricks

In the Director’s chair, you are the ultimate arbiter of rules. And importantly, you get to break them. The following elements are canonical, expected ways to shift the formula of the game, but aren’t comprehensive. You can—and should—break any rule of the game in ways that serve the narrative.

Devil Deals

At any time, you can offer a player a Devil Deal: an impossible bargain of fate. You can concoct any deal you wish, but the following are excellent starting points:

Doom for Sacrifice. When a player must Sacrifice—destroy part of their character sheet—you can make them a counter-offer. You can Sacrifice something else in the game world such as a friendly nonplayer character, the character’s de facto home base, or something they care deeply about, such as a pet. That thing becomes Doomed. It isn’t destroyed immediately, but is sure to be destroyed soon.

You can also counter-offer with tangible injuries—losing an eye or limb, for example—or with psychological scars—such as prolonged PTSD or crippling anxiety. Unlike Sacrificing an Action, these Sacrifices don’t impose a penalty on the player (even if the Sacrifice results in a disability). Instead, they should inform the character’s story going forward.

Success for Failure. When everything hinges on a single important roll—a Reaction to avoid certain death, or the final blow to dispatch a lethal Threat—you can offer a deal: immediate Success, in exchange for a Failure later at any time.

Black Marker

When permanent changes are left upon a player, you can reach for a black marker or a black ink pen to etch these changes permanently on a character sheet. This is perhaps your most powerful tool, a complete interdiction of a player’s agency. Use it wisely.

You can write anything on a character’s sheet, or simply black things out. The following scenarios are among the most compelling:

Black Out. Usually, players only lose portions of their character sheets when they choose to Sacrifice them. However, if something such as a location written on the character sheet is destroyed, you can black out the entire box with marker. The player can still sacrifice this option in the future, removing it from their sheet, but they lose all benefits it might have offered in the meantime.

Evolving Traits. You can remove a player’s Motive or Fear by blacking out the old one and writing a new one in its stead. Players, too, can choose to evolve their characters in this way as the story progresses, but when you use your pen or marker, it isn’t an option—this choice is inflicted upon them in response to the story’s motions.

Corruption. Supernatural forces blight mortals that come too close to them, imposing a slow corruption that might wither away at weak players. Instead of imposing Trauma, you can leave a Black Mark on a character sheet. This is a circle or a thick line inside the box of an Action or trait. On its own, a Black Mark doesn’t do anything, but as the player accumulates more of them, the marks might entirely blot out an Action or trait’s box, which is functionally equivalent to you blacking out the box.

Scenes

The fundamental unit of storytelling is a Scene, which includes a location, a dilemma, the players, and optionally some non-player characters that you control. Scenes might be investigative, social, or perilous, but they all follow the same basic flow:

1. Introduce the Scene.
2. Player Interactions
3. The Scene Evolves

Introduce the Scene

Where are we? Why are we here? What elements look interesting? What stands in our way? A few sentences of exposition are all you need to raise the tension, set the stakes, or dangle a few tantalizing clues for the scene to come.

Director: Your flashlight sweeps across the cobweb-choked interior of the cabin, glinting off rusted implements hung by chains from the ceiling, something golden on the wall, and a splash of ruby liquid on the floor.

Player Interactions

Now command of the story passes over to the players, who can freely use their Actions and abilities to interact with the scene. Any player can take an Action in any order, and multiple players can act at once. You may have to adjudicate what types of rolls are possible or suggest Actions in this phase, but the agency over the story rests firmly with the players.

You can also call for Reactions during this phase, especially when the scene calls for players to Notice something hidden or React to a Threat.

Kyle: I’m going to Investigate the desk.

[Rolls two dice.] A six! What do I find?

The Scene Evolves

How does the scene change? Success or failure, the scene evolves after every roll of the dice. The situation may grow more perilous, the players might discover something, or we may cut entirely to another scene.

Then everything resets back to introducing the scene.

Director: You find a heart-shaped locket hanging from a rusty nail on the wall. Before you can examine it closely, you hear a thud underneath your feet. Then, a trap door in the floor swings open and a gloved hand grabs the edge.

Life-or-Death Scenes

In the game’s most pivotal scenes, the flow of the game changes. Life-or-Death scenes require that players and the Threat take turns, moving around the table counter-clockwise. The players decide who acts first.

Keep the following in mind as you run such scenes:

One Action. A player can take one Action on their turn and move around 50 feet. Players can speak and perform minor interactions (such as opening a door or retrieving an item from a bag) without using an Action.

The Threat. The Threat acts or moves between every turn. Cinematically, the Threat can perform any Action you desire, but each comes with a few pre-written Actions. Remember to always call for a player to make a Reaction (often React or Withstand) before you impose Trauma due to a Threat’s Actions.

Locations. For simplicity, we say that each player is Close to the Threat, Far from the Threat, or Out of the Scene altogether. A player can move between these ranges (Close to Far, Far to Out of the Scene, or vice-versa) on their turn.

Ten Seconds. Within the fiction of the game, each full set of turns around the table takes about ten seconds.

Momentum. Keep momentum up around the table as much as possible. The turn-taking rhythm threatens to be slow and methodical, even as the story hits a fever pitch. Use shorter descriptions and directly call on players to move things along. You can also grant Advantage on particularly prompt rolls.

Episodes

Episodes in Blood on the Lens aren’t pre-scripted adventures, nor are they entirely freeform. Instead, this book provides story elements that you can arrange like jigsaw pieces to tell a reactive, personalized story that is easy to improvise. The puzzle pieces at your disposal are:

The Threat. Each Threat in Blood on the Lens is detailed with its own story, with a beginning, middle, and end, intended as a guideline for your session. This story is more of an outline than a script; it doesn’t feature hard-and-fast locations or characters or even timelines. You should fill in those gaps with the locations and NPCs featured in the episode. Moreover, you can depart entirely from the outline as your players drive the story in unpredictable directions. Loop back to the outline if convenient, or simply follow the players as they wheel into new territory.

Locations. The settings in the full Blood on the Lens book are accompanied by a catalog of horrific locations: dilapidated manors, pitch-black forests, haunted caverns, and worse. Don’t fill a map with these locations or introduce them early—just pick one off the list when the story demands a suitable place for a monster or a victim. The rest of the setting is probably filled with decidedly less haunted streets and homes, but you can fill in those gaps when the story leads you there.

NPCs. When the players saunter into a bar and start asking questions, you can turn to the list of nonplayer characters assembled in the full Blood on the Lens book to quickly summon up someone tailor fit to the setting. This army of chess pieces is yours to command: rename, reimagine, and supplement them with characters of your own as you please. Just remember: a story without characters is no story at all.

Factions. Schemes, alliances, and above all, secrets are the tissue of an episode. The factions included in the full Blood on the Lens book can link the world together in subtle or obvious ways. Importantly, however, you only need to use factions that you find useful in the moment, making your story more reactive and tailored to the players’ choices.

Act 1: Introductions

The episode’s first act is principally concerned with introducing the setting and cast—the chess pieces and board for the game to unfold. It also lets you start laying down the first layers of tension, which rise to a fever pitch when the Threat is revealed.

Introducing the Setting. Introducing the setting doesn’t require an elaborate map and dissertation on its history, just a short narration and perhaps a few mundane interactions: picking up groceries, meeting the neighbors, or taking a relaxing walk. These scenes give you a chance to characterize the setting in its default state, which doesn’t have to be positive, but should be predictable enough to form a mental image of a quiet, unassuming day.

Introducing the Cast. At the start of the episode, give each player two Beat cards that you think will enhance their character’s specific story (see the Insomnia Storytelling Engine). These are secondary narrative objectives for each player, causing the story to swerve in dramatic ways.

You can trickle the players into the story one-by-one, shove them into a scene together, or waive the greetings altogether in favor of an informal explanation of each player at the start. Whatever you choose, use this scene to introduce some of the setting and a few NPCs. This is also a good chance to let players roll some dice—it gives them a chance to come to grips with their abilities and define their personalities before the stakes become serious.

In subsequent episodes, you can forgo introducing the cast and setting entirely.

Building Tension. Even before the Threat makes its presence known, the tension begins pressing in on the players from all sides. Ominous clues show up and the atmosphere turns grim: a storm is brewing, the car breaks down, and rats are scurrying underfoot. Something isn’t right, and the players should be able to taste it.

The Reveal. The tension crescendos and violins shriek: the camera lingers on a bloody knife or the fangs of an otherworldly beast. This inciting incident doesn’t always involve the Threat jumping out in front of the cast. Instead, you can present any element of terror or gore that confirms the stakes. Once the Threat is known, the mystery can begin in earnest.

Act 2: Unraveling the Mystery

The second act of the episode is the least predictable, an unfolding mystery dictated largely by the players. Don’t panic if things go differently than you planned. An easygoing outline will serve you better than an iron-clad script, since it gives you the freedom to shift around locations, NPCs, and other details to line up with the player’s natural direction.

Revelations. Whether a scene entails a careful search of a drawer’s contents or pouring through research at the local library, the best possible result is a Revelation about the Threat at hand. These narrative twists and turns shed light on how the Threat attacks, its history and motivations, and maybe even its critical weakness. Each revelation is a minor victory in its own right, but understanding them collectively is the secret to survival.

Weakness. One revelation trumps them all: the Threat’s critical weakness. Finding this information is crucial to overcoming the Threat in a direct confrontation, and even that is rarely enough on its own. The characters will also need preparation and plenty of luck to survive.

Act 3: Conclusions and Preludes

The third act of a horror story can be more truncated than most. Once the Threat is dispatched, the bulk of the tension subsides and the characters can enjoy a brief respite and wrap-up. This is your moment to tie up loose narrative ends and answer the most pressing questions about the plot. What happened to important NPCs? Were there unforeseen problems in the aftermath?

If the campaign continues next session, this final act also lets you gesture toward any lingering mysteries and tensions in the plot. Who sent the characters that mysterious letter? Have the authorities decided the characters are suspects? Who was behind the Threat’s arrival? Are darker Threats on the horizon?

Lastly, if a player completed one of their Beat cards, they can Level Up in preparation of the next episode.

Sequels and Anthologies

Once you’ve finished an episode of Blood on the Lens, you can continue the story with a Sequel or begin a new story with new characters. A campaign of Blood on the Lens consists of a string of related horror stories, an Anthology, examples of which are detailed in the Threats.

In an anthology, the stakes grow higher with each passing sequel. By the end, the very world is on a ticking clock, forfeit if the Threat isn’t halted.

Quick Preparation

You can improvise your way through the bulk of an episode of Blood on the Lens, but five minutes of preparation before the session can pay impressive dividends. In fact, the content included in this book should streamline your preparation into a handful of bullet points.

As you devise your session, think in terms of locations, not events. Since the players largely direct the action, you should frame each scene around where the players will likely go.

Look over the hooks, mysteries, and revelations of the Threat, and consider where these might take place. Grab a handful of Locations from your setting and write these down. This is your rough outline for the session.

Under each location, write four to six bullet points about what the players will find there. Which NPCs are around? Which clues are concealed there? Do you have any spooky moments in mind? Is the Threat likely to show up? For ease of navigation, you should underline or bold the important characters for reference later.

Once you have around five locations fleshed out, you’re ready! Players can bring the episode in unexpected directions, so a light itinerary gives them space to deliberate and improvise. You can shift clues and NPCs to new locations, shuffle big events around, and drop locations entirely. Whenever the players go somewhere unexpected, jot it down in your outline and record what happens there.

And that’s it! You’re ready to start playing Blood on the Lens!