Hey all! Yes, believe it or not, the amazing Designer’s Notes for The Plum Island Horror game have mysteriously been missing for months. Suddenly vanishing from the possession of the GMT development team, they of course told me not to worry about it, as they had everything under control. Utter gaslighting nonsense! I found out later that they just didn’t want their wonderful “professional” rulebook to be clogged up by my “meaningless jibber-jabber”, as they so un-diplomatically put it. I suspected a Deep State cover up, of course, as this game and its historical research have unveiled one of the most heinous chapters in U.S. history. Alas, I have found my copy of these notes (hidden in my copy of the Funk & Wagnells New Standard Dictionary) and I now bring them to you in all their lyrical glory. I decided to let you read this before I release it to the major news networks and the airing of the special segment on Ancient Aliens that is dedicated to this event. And by the way, Ancient Alien experts say “yes!” when asked if there could be a UFO cause to these catastrophic occurrences on Plum Island. But you didn’t hear that from me.  

First of all, let me thank you all again for your wonderful support of The Plum Island Horror. This project has been near and dear to my heart for a very long time and it is so cool seeing it finally come to fruition. I can’t adequately express how appreciative I am for all the kind words and of course for the pre-order support of this design.

As the game races through the final laps toward the finish line, I decided to work up some designer’s notes just to let people know where I’m coming from and to answer the never-ending deluge of questions regarding the sanity of some of my design decisions. So, I am now officially enlightening the world about how and why this game exists – whether you like it or not.

The idea to create a multiplayer horror game like this started many years ago, when I first met Gene Billingsley out at the CSW Expo convention. Those were back in the days when I was designing for Victory Point Games and Gene had been a fan of my Dawn of the Zeds game way back then. He expressed to me, and we discussed briefly, the possibility of doing a design like Zeds for GMT. As the years went by, projects came and went for both of us, but I always remembered that conversation and was always subconsciously waiting for that one idea that would spark a unique horror game design for GMT. Well, during my design work on a wargame about Dunkirk, it suddenly dawned on me that the concept of such a military evacuation being used as the model for a horror game setting was ideal. The goal of the Dunkirk game is not to defeat the Germans militarily, but rather evacuate as many soldiers and as much equipment as possible to better fight another day. Why couldn’t that work for a horror game? The players aren’t going to defeat the monsters, but they will instead be trying to contain them, minimize their destruction and save the people from being consumed by teeth and claws. And thus was born the idea of doing what was basically a Horror Dunkirk game.

While cultivating this game idea, I found myself playing many different types of games in my spare time. Though primarily a wargamer, I really started to enjoy the experience of playing fantasy adventure, dungeon crawl and science fiction games with my friends, often doing so cooperatively. This inspired me to take many of the mechanical ideas from the games with which I was having so much fun and baking some aspect of them into The Plum Island Horror pie.

For example, the Turn Order Cube process was inspired by Aeon’s End; the Biohazard Bag is an offshoot of the cube bag used in Clank; the “exploding” Combat Die result is from a number of dungeon-crawlers such as Descent; the “Follow” mechanic was born from playing Tiny Epic Galaxies (and I added the push-your-luck twist as in my In Magnificent Style system); the variety and style of the Search Cards was a take on the Eldritch Horror and Arkham Horror encountercards; the unique Civilian unit “triggers” that are found on the bottom of many of the Event and Search Cards is similar to the same kind of “triggers” that are found on the faction boards in Fallen Land; and, of course, much of the design is an outgrowth of the themes used in Dawn of the Zeds.   

The ultimate motivation for utilizing all these wonderful influences was to pack them into as fun and interactive a multiplayer experience as I could imagine. And believe me, the goal for me creating this design was for players to have as much fun possible.  I want participants to be telling their stories afterwards, generating anecdotes that will stay with them for a long time. And the dynamics of players attempting to solve multiple problems and puzzles, working together to find an edge or discover the strategy that will win the game, is very satisfying. Though thoughtful planning and tactics is important, I just hope everyone enjoys themselves. And the game is meant to be played by all sorts of people – spouses, kids, old school “grognards”, casual gaming friends and even non-gaming friends. I’m hoping that it will a joyful experience for everyone!

Part of making gameplay a memorable experience for players is facilitating their immersion into the “world” of the game design. I tried to achieve that by naming all the locations on the island, providing a bit of a back story and giving each of the six factions their own personalities. And it was actually Gene who helped immensely with the immersion aspect by insisting early on that I provide names for each of the faction units to make them more personal. I had originally given them titles that represented what their job is in the game, such as “Watch Team”, “Police Patrol”, “Fire Department”, etc. But one of the things that Gene loved about Dawn of the Zeds is that players develop a relationship with the characters because they have individual names and identities. I absolutely agreed and went about changing each of the faction units’ titles to named individuals. Now, these units don’t each represent only one person but rather a group of people, their equipment, vehicles, etc. The named person could actually be the team leader, the group’s spokesperson, or just the most charismatic of the bunch. But having the unit now named for individuals will aid in the players getting up close and personal with their factions and that lends itself to players immersing themselves, and thus caring about, their people and what is happening to them on the game board. You may also notice that there are tons of “Easter Eggs” all over the game. Some are personal and many names of places and units are friends or relatives of mine. Most are references to old TV shows (especially my favorites, F-Troop and the Honeymooners), movies, and some more recent entertainment personalities, shows and pop culture. I’m sure you’ll figure out the majority of them. This is all done in good fun and with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

So that’s it! Not a big rambling essay or tell-all confessional. Sorry, but I’m saving all the juicy stuff for my appearances on Maury Povich and Jerry Springer. Thanks again for supporting this design and if all goes well, we have terrific plans for some expansions. All the best and good gaming!

-Hermann

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