# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 26 - Bump in the Dark - Father Patrick Rossi, Monster-Hunting Catholic Priest tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/bump-in-the-dark > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2025]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice Did you like **[Buffy the Vampire Slayer](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118276/)**? Not the movie, which was fantastic, but the TV series. Does it help if I tell you that Season 6 never happened? Good. We can agree on that. **Buffy the Vampire Slayer**, Season 6, never happened.  There have been a lot of games which have reached out to do Buffy over the years, including [the licensed tabletop RPG that used Unisystem](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/731/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-roleplaying-game). As interesting as it was, it never really captured what I thought was the most interesting part of the show. That *wasn't* Buffy. From my perspective, the most interesting part of the entire setup was everyone else. The normal people who got sucked into dealing with the total insanity of the real world that no one else wanted to talk about, look at, or deal with. They were just normal people doing the best they could and sometimes getting ahead, but often paying the price. (For the record, this is part of why season five heading into season six started being less interesting. The characters stopped being *normal*. When it went from street-level normals to low-level superheroes for all intents and purposes, it lost its charm and the reason I wanted to see those characters.) What if I could take you back, except *without* a single central supernaturally empowered character to act as a narrative focus? What if it was just mostly normal people dropped into the deep end against monsters, terrors, and things that go bump in the night, or maybe in the dark? ![[Bump in the Dark (cover).jpg|400]] Welcome to **[[Bump in the Dark]]**, It's 1994 and you are in the Ontonagon Peninsula, part of "Iron Country," a belt of mining towns barely clinging to life with dilapidated closed down attractions littering the roadside, reminders of a more prosperous time. It's a small town called Last Pine, nestled in the center of an old-growth state forest called the Sylvan Wilds, tucked away somewhere in the northern Great Lakes. Somebody probably wants to offer you cookies. Someone else may want to drain your blood. It's small-town life desperately doing its best to look away from the encroaching darkness, going about its life amidst a situation that has been sliding into the void perhaps for centuries. Mechanically, **Bump in the Dark** is a very solid *[[Blades in the Dark|Forged in the Dark]]* game, with characters having in common being hunters, people who have gotten sucked into knowledge of what's going on and can't find it in themselves to do anything but fight against it. Together they form a pact (the equivalent of the gang that you find in **[[Blades in the Dark]]** or the ship crew in **[[Scum and Villainy]]**). Most sessions involve going on a hunt and then a cycle of downtime, but it can be a little bit flexible. There is a *void clock*, which acts as the pacing mechanism for the game as a whole and which focuses on keeping public panic under control during your hunts in order to slow the clock. I would go into more depth about the mechanics but we've talked about *Forged in the Dark* on more than one occasion. Pools of d6's, attributes and actions, conversation about position and effect. It's got all of the good stuff that you would expect: strong hits, weak hits, misses, the whole gamut. There is one particular inversion that I think is interesting. In traditional *Forged in the Dark* games, you have what is effectively an engagement roll at the beginning of a conflict situation to determine your opening position. That's generally excluded here in favor of establishing opening position through investigation and research. However, instead, we get a *showdown roll*, which is a special kind of fortune role that the group uses to determine whether their theory about the situation and their approach to dealing with it is correct. The more void clues that you have, the more likely that you are right about what you think is going on and your method for taking it on. Think about the implication: you can find clues and come up with your own belief about what's going on, state that as a player (*not* as the GM), and make the showdown roll to find out if you've been correct the whole time or whether things are about to get a lot more complicated. That's fascinating. There's also another mechanic that ticks the void clock upward, and that's alarm. Do things loud, do things publicly. If things involve corpses, the general panic level of the public goes up no matter how much they'd rather look the other way. Every time the level of alarm hits 8, panic goes up by 1. And every time you mark panic, the void clock ticks, which brings you ever closer to the final showdown. I think this is pretty fascinating. Pacing mechanisms in games are a little hit and miss, but I'm fascinated by working the fictive connections together just so. I think this is actually one of the better ones, especially for a game that focuses on investigation, research, and then a final conflict with an implicit build to a crescendo. Plus, the art is just really nice, quite frankly. ![[Bump in the Dark - Squidface (illo).webp]] (Yes, I have a type.) ## Acts of Creation All right, let's see to it. Really, there are only eight steps to creating a character in **Bump in the Dark**, and most of them are pretty straightforward. We could drag it out, but I think we're going to go pretty quickly tonight. ### Play Ball First, we choose our *playbook*. Pretty classic *Forged in the Dark* behavior here. There are seven to choose from: - *Shields* - *Icons* - *Scourges* - *Ravens* - *Staves* - *Lances* - *Unshaped* Those are generally what they sound like. The Scourges being your witch/warlock/mage types, Staves being scoundrels, crooks, and thieves, and Unshaped being the kid, the innocent, the novice. Normally I would go with being a Scourge here because that's my jam, but I'm feeling like going against my usual grain, so we're going to go with a **Lance**, a zealous occultist and disciple in this case — a literal Catholic priest. Because what horror story where you fight against monsters doesn't need a Catholic priest having a crisis of faith?  ### Back It Up Next, we need to choose and detail a background, which are made of three parts: a field, a speciality, and an origin. Field and speciality are broad and generally undefined, but origin is simple and specific: are you from Iron Country or from somewhere else? Since we already have a concept, then we just need to shape it a little bit. *Field:* **Occult** *Speciality:* **Priest** *Origin:* **"He ain't from around here."** I envision this character as in his mid-30s and dispatched to Last Pine as a bit of a punishment detail. After all, there's not much room in the modern era for a priest with a serious hate on for demons, diabolism, and the literal forces of evil. It's a softer, gentler Catholic Church these days. Not for this father. Where *is* he from? Seattle. They don't take kindly to his kind up there. I find it kind of interesting that priest is not on the list of example fields and backgrounds even though it could fit in multiple places, obviously under occult but just as reasonably under public. I feel like there's no way that could not be a deliberate choice on the part of the author and I think it's a serious missed opportunity. Assassin? Disgraced scientist? Three different kinds of computer programmer, sure, but not a priest? ### And … Action It's time to pick four *action dots*. We start with three already marked thanks to the playbook, and we get to pick four more. Nothing can have more than two at the start of the game, unless we have a special ability that says otherwise. Flipping over to the Lance playbook, we see that we gain hope (one of our resources) when we approach a challenge with cooperation or control. I'm not sure that cooperation is the good father's strong point, so I see him using a lot of control early on. Perhaps that's an avenue for character growth. We kick off with an actually interesting question: *"Are you alone in your beliefs, or do others walk beside you on this winding path? Write a drive connected to your sect or crusade."* We haven't talked about drives yet because that's down in step seven. We'll get back to that. Be thinking about it. Our starting actions are one dot in **Connect** and two dots in **Hunt**. We have four more to drop around, and there are some fairly good example templates right here on page one of the playbook. I'm just going ahead and grabbing the *Witchfinder* template. That gives us one dot in **Sneak**, one dot in **Compel**, and two dots in **Rig**, with a suggested ability of **All-Consumed**. - **Connect:** * - **Hunt:** ** - **Sneak:** * - **Compel:** * - **Rig:** ** I'm pretty good with this since it means that when we investigate or work on a long-term project about the element of history or lore of our sect, we get a plus one result level. What is the good father obsessed with? **The Powers of Hell**. Obviously not everything that we're going to be dealing with is necessarily one of the powers of Hell or even Hell-related. There's plenty of evil out there. But that's a narrative question, and as long as we can justify it… While there's no discussion of it in the setup of the character, like other *FitD* games, we can simply narrate in a certain amount of gear whenever we need it in the course of a hunt. While some of it is just not particularly relevant here, I can definitely see pulling out a **Talisman** (in this case a blessed Rosary and Bible) and a nice set of **ceremonial clothing** (because I've always really appreciated the European Catholic cassock; modern American Catholics really go in for the somewhat more modern suit look, but I think that's giving up a certain amount of class and style for practicality; the good father agrees with me). ### Curiously Connected While choosing people to be connected to in this kind of game is pretty standard, it's interesting that here they are specific about what *kind* of connection that we're talking about. We need to pick two people who tie us to Last Pine, one of which is pulling us in and keeping us there and the other is pushing us away or out of town. That's a really cool narrative setup for getting started, thinking about someone who can provide negative pressure. It means that you don't necessarily have an antagonistic relationship, but you have a reason to get away or stay away from them. That's fascinating stuff. There are some example connections on page 41. Here we go with individual choices for each of the playbooks. I think I'm going to go with a couple of them, but I'm going to give them a bit of a twist because I'm perverse that way. **Quellyn Graves** is the local conspiracy nut and true believer in everything. There is no ridiculous nutty off the wall theory that Graves is not willing to seriously entertain and probably believe in. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, he's also usually correct in his ultimate assessment of the horrific origins of many otherwise meaningless unconnected events. Graves and the good Father have an online history together, and the Father considers him one of his few confidants that he can go to with anything. **Viola Glass**, on the other hand, is a local Baptist preacher — the street corner kind. You don't find many of those in the Great Lakes, but judging from the accent, Glass isn't from around Last Pine either. Her accent marks her as from Alabama, and considering how Baptists feel in general about female preachers, it's no surprise that she headed north. She did retain the Southern Baptist disinclination to like Catholics on general principles. Unfortunately, she is also quite charismatic and has more than a few of the locals under her thrall. ### Balm Gilead At this point we get to pick what our solace is. In Blades in the Dark, this would be our vice. I like that it fits in with a lot of monster hunting things in literature where the coping mechanism starts off as a little thing and gradually becomes another monster for the character to fight. There are a lot of interesting possibilities here. I'm going to go with something a little bit strange: the father's solace is his **faith**. The problem is that increasingly he feels that going through the motions is just hollow ritual, and yet he still feels a level of personal comfort from pursuing them. When the pressures of the hunt build up on him, he has a tendency to submerge himself in the day-to-day of the parish. ### Two B, One D We need to give our character two *beliefs* and one *drive*, like the connection the beliefs have specific direction associated with them. The first should be about our pact or another hunter, and the second involves the supernatural or how we see the world. The *drive* is what we work to accomplish or what keeps us going. All of these things should lead to action rather than contemplation. The text directs us that we can feel free to return to this after the entire pact has created their hunters and we know more about what we're doing, or even after the first session. But since we don't have that opportunity… I can't really refer to any of the other hunters for obvious reasons. So my first belief really needs to be about the pact as a whole. **The road to damnation lies before all of us, and it's my job to keep someone from setting foot on that road.** I think that's a pretty strong and actionable belief; if there is another occultist who is treating with powers the father could think of as hellish, he's not going to be down for that. Nor is he going to be inclined to make a deal with demons or the undead. This could put him at odds with other characters. I like it. **I'm afraid that God has abandoned this fallen world and I don't want anyone else to know it.** That is some pretty strong spice for the meal right there. That's a man who is going to be absolutely pushed to the limit to try and convince people of something that he himself does not believe. I'm feeling electric drama positively gushing out of that. Finally, a drive. Remember that we had a prompt for that when we went to our playbook originally. I feel like this is something that we need to keep slamming our fist into as hard as we can go. Nothing about this character is halfway. **I will prove to the Archdiocese that the powers of Hell are real, threatening, and a danger to us all, and they must be stood against without hesitation.** *Jesus Christ*, to make an ejaculatory reference. As a player, *I* know that the Catholic Church probably already knows that the powers of Hell are real and that there is actual monstrous evil walking the world. I know that *they* know within the context of this setting. I also know that they sent our character to Last Pine to get him to shut up as far as *he* knows. There's about four different layers of possible indirection going on here and I can't decide which one I like most. That's good red meat. ### Namaste **Name:** Father Patrick Rossi **Look:** > Father Pat is in his mid-30s, in that age range where it's difficult to make out whether a man has entered middle age properly or not. You might expect him to have started going a little soft, but he keeps himself in excellent shape. He knows that the forces of evil are out there and they will take you if you're not ready. He's about 5'9", give or take, roughly average height. > > He has the thick dark hair of his Italian heritage and the blue eyes that his Irish mother gave him, still a striking man with more frown lines than perhaps he ought to have. > > When he's not dressed for church proper he tends to wear dark red flannel shirts, worn jeans, and some sturdy work boots. The mark of grunge leaves its mark no matter what you do; he always keeps the collar though, which plays very oddly with flannel. There we go. Technically, far more description than necessary. But, dammit, I had a moment of inspiration. And the idea of someone wearing Seattle grunge in their mid-thirties in 1994 with a clerical collar tucked underneath really struck me as pleasantly idiosyncratic. I'm not sure how feasible it is, but it definitely makes a striking visual impression. And we're done. ![[Bump in the Dark - CCC2025 - Father Patrick Rossi, Zealous Monster Hunter.webp]] ## Exunt Classically, this would be when we went on to finish up working out the stats of the *pact*, the group of characters who are bound together to hunt the monstrous. But that's not really as much fun without other people. But just as a sketch, you figure out why you're together, what is the promise spoken or unspoken that you've made to one another, what's the reputation you have among the people of Last Pine, and what you call the Pact when you're casually referring to it amongst yourselves. Or, what is it known as among the locals? Then you pick your base of operations (like Buffy's library), a pact ability chosen from a list, figure out what your relationship with the factions in town and around town are, including one that you've totally hurt or screwed over in some way, then pick an ally. Finally, everybody picks someplace on the map and adds something to that location. Someone else will introduce a rumor about it, and maybe you throw together an NPC related to that location. You're ready to rock and roll, go hunt monsters, kill demons, and work out your personal trauma. I quite like **Bump in the Dark**, but I think I like it in ways that the author may not approve of. This is generally because my taste for storytelling runs to something a little less socially acceptable. I'm not trying to spin grand metaphors about the evils of late-stage capitalism or the threats of Reaganites.^[In part because I don't believe it, but also becauser message-horror is usually trite and boring.] I'm far more interested in more cosmic issues and how they cast our personal nightmares in stark relief, sometimes enhancing their importance because they are all that we have left that we can truly declare to be ours. If you were of such a mind, you could definitely take this game and run an **[SCP](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com)** story with the pact being scientists and prisoners thrust into dealing with the various threats around the world. Hell, you could do **[Friday the 13th: the Series](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092357/)**, or **[Warehouse 13](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132290/)** without too much trouble. In fact, I encourage you to do so.   Overall, **Bump in the Dark** gets a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up from me. Believe it or not, tomorrow we stay in the same genre, but I can't promise that it's going to be quite so upbeat. That may remain a mystery.