Friday the 13th: the Final Chapter (Part 1) (Patreon)

Hooboy, this was fun. So like a month and a half ago I decided to do a Friday the 13th movie and not tell the players we were doing a horror movie. I started working on the concept and watching Friday 13th movies, and the whole time I had this great idea that I had to keep secret from the players, and I was just so worried that it would get spilled or they would figure it out. And my players' bullshit detector is pretty high, and they know movies pretty well so it was going to be really tough to pull off. The first key to the ruse was that Halloween 3 was already on our calendar, so they at least weren't suspecting a different horror movie.

The other key was the intensely elaborate backstories (which were extrapolated from a close-reading of the movie, but made to seem like they were actually from the movie), and the very complex love mechanic. There were secret objectives the characters had, which were used to rationalize why I would choose an obscure movie (since I needed to find a movie that none of them had seen so they could keep secrets.) And I did a lot of other little things (I showed them a clip from the movie which I uploaded myself to youtube so it looked like there were clips from the movie online.) 

All of this added up to them actually mostly not seeing it coming, while they definitely had the vibe that something might be up (and they joke about it in this episode somewhat), they were actually pretty shocked when the twist actually hits. And some of them described the sensation afterwards as really mind-bending. It was hard as heck to pull off but I am really happy I attempted this. It's a memorable episode, and I hope it's as fun to listen as it was to be a part of.