Daniel (@dungeondive) opens his October horror episode with a bold claim: he can’t think of another game that captures its theme more perfectly than Camp Grizzly 2nd Edition, the freshly delivered crowdfunded slasher from Trick or Treat Studios. You play camp counselors rescuing campers and scavenging objective tokens (keys, crank, rope, battery) to unlock one of four finales at the barn, van, ranger tower or boat, all while Otis, an unkillable Jason-style brute, stalks the paths and grows faster and deadlier as the body count climbs. Daniel walks through a fully randomised setup and the eight mix-and-match modular expansions (he’s playing Rated R, Happy Campers and Jump the Bear), but the star is the cabin deck, which he calls possibly the best random-encounter deck he has ever seen: jump scares, plot twists, cameos like Detective Harding, doomed campers with quirks, and “fooling around” cards that tempt fate exactly as the genre demands. The rules have gaps, he admits, but every one can be settled by asking what would happen in a slasher movie. He played it three times on day one. The second half is a ten-film October rewatch list, from Doctor Sleep and The Exorcist III through Freddy vs. Jason, Jacob’s Ladder and a bootlegged copy of The Empty Man, to his all-time favourite Poltergeist and the uncut gore of Braindead.
Daniel says every rules gap in Camp Grizzly can be settled by asking “what would happen in a slasher movie?” Do you house-rule by theme like this, and which game’s theme has carried you through its rough edges?