Happy October! It being the spooky season, I’ll be covering horror games all month. We start with Chill, from Pacesetter, which, well, isn’t the best horror game out there. Despite the cumbersome rules, though, I still like its goofy heart.

Chill didn’t know what it wanted to be. Thanks to Call of Cthulhu, horror RPGs already existed. Chill seems like it should be a romp through every Hammer film ever made, but then the tag line is “A frightfully fun roleplaying game,” which is a big wink-wink, nudge-nudge that what we find will be more House of the Long Shadows than Satanic Rites of Dracula. But then the rules play it straight, while the modules (we’ll get to those) deliver heaping doses of camp, mostly. Is it a horror game? Is it a horror parody game? I haven’t a clue, and I own most of the line.

The key new concept here his SAVE, the Societas Argenti Viae Eternitata which investigates and defends against the paranormal. The idea of a secret society fighting supernatural threats is an old one, but I like to think that SAVE might have paved the way for Delta Green.

James Holloway’s the only artist in the box and he does a decent job, but I suspect he contributes to the tonal confusion (Holloway, of course, is the artist behind the humorous games Paranoia and Tales from the Floating Vagabond). There’s not much humor to be found in the art, which ranges from rather nice (the box art) to uninspired (many of the interior spot illustrations). It is all very confusing. But also kind of fun?