Let’s examine the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise as a TTRPG using In Nomine as the game system. In Nomine is a role-playing game designed by Derek Pearcy and published in 1997 by @Steve Jackson Games. You can learn more about Hellraiser here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_Elm_Street_(franchise) and you can buy In Nomine products here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/12199/Steve-Jackson-Games/subcategory/28908_30775/In-Nomine?affiliate_id=50797
About In Nomine
Written by Derek Pearcy + Illustrated by Dan Smith
Edited by Jeff Koke, Steve Jackson, and Susan Pinsonneault
Cover art by John Zeleznik (first printing) and Christopher Shy (second printing)
In Nomine is a modern roleplaying game in which the players take the part of celestial beings – angels and demons – as they struggle for control of humanity and themselves. The celestials, powerful though they may be, are merely pawns in a much larger game being played by their Superiors, the Archangels and Demon Princes. Based on the best-selling French RPG by the wonderfully diabolical Croc!
In Nomine won the Origins Award for Best Graphic Presentation of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement of 1997.
Transcript
Cold Open
Welcome to primetime bitch!
Intro
Welcome to Eviliv3, the live media commentary show that answers the question, if you die in your dream, do you die in real life? Subscribe if you’re new to the channel, because today we are continuing our In Nomine series with this episode, Styles of Play: A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Discussion
A Nightmare on Elm Street is part of my DNA. I remember vividly waking up as a young child and watching Freddy’s Revenge on HBO. It terrified me. I ended up getting the poster and hanging it on the back of my door, and even the poster of Freddy terrified me. It sent me on a lifelong obsession with horror films, and exposed me to humor in horror, a notion that would pay dividends when I saw Evil Dead 2, years later. The A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise boasts nine feature films, a series with two seasons and fourty-four episodes! Multiple novelizations of the films, comics from five different publishers. Two documentaries, multiple toy releases, board games and video games.
It’s safe to say that A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the top five horror franchises of all time, and in my humble opinion, deservedly so! It’s no surprise that there hasn’t been any official tabletop role-playing game or TTRPG released for the franchise, as it’s pretty isolated to a single bad guy, but the premise is one that is easily translated to one-off sessions in your favorite TTRPG, or a whole campaign seamlessly played with In Nomine. Yea, you knew I was going there. But again, how does one translate the horror, comedy, and action of A Nightmare on Elm Street to a campaign in any TTRPG let alone In Nomine? It’s actually simpler that you may think.
In the last episode about playing an Evil Dead styled campaign with In Nomine, I addressed the use of either Dissonance or Mind Hits to interpret the horror elements of a campaign. And while there doesn’t need to be a game mechanic to role-play horror, if a player is simply incapable of role-playing, you can add one of the following as an option. Let’s start with Mind Hits. It’s difficult to know if you should be terrified in a dream. Nearly every dream I have ever recalled has elements that should on their face be terrifying or strange, but the second you are hurt in your dream, well, then there can be no mistake, you should be terrified. Especially if you wake up and can see the wounds you suffered! So I would suggest for every fourth of your Mind Points taken in damage, you should grow increasingly fearful while you are awake and while you are asleep. If you need to put numbers to it for a game mechanic, I would say it would decrease your Celestial and Ethereal characteristic target numbers of Intelligence, Precision, Will and Perception by two points for every fourth of damage you take on your mind hits. Equally, if you want to use Dissonance as the game mechanic, have the Player Character or PC receive a note of Dissonance for every attack they take damage from while in the Ethereal Realm, or the Marches. This will quickly develop into Discords which will affect the PC’s emotions and mind, a perfect result to being hunted.
But how do we deal with the dream state, you ask? Well, In Nomine has that built right in! The Marches are the dreamworld. There are ethereal spirits, celestials and dream-shades which can all possibly affect a dreamer negatively while they dream. Yes, some of them require specific songs or attunements to do so, but that is easily overcome through monster design. The bottom line is that you can have a Freddy Krueger style monster, targeting the PCs, hurting them, and in some cases killing them in their dreams. The rest is up to the game master and storytelling!
A Nightmare on Elm Street styled campaign can simply start with the players as mortals. They would possibly become soldiers through the course of the campaign and fight back against the malevolent creature assaulting them. When they band together, you could run a Dream Warriors styles session, where they control their dreams, and the majority of the campaign would be set in the Ethereal realm, with the Corporeal realm being the stage for research, player interaction, and the community’s reactions to the PC’s turmoil. It would be easiest to have the players be children or teenagers, as you see in the films, but it would be an equally compelling story if the players were veterans or survivors suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and they initially mistake the monster for their disorder manifesting in their dreams rather than an actual threat. Not even psychiatrists would believe them! It could be a time based game which sees the PCs racing to prove the existence of, or defeat the monster in their dreams before they are placed in a mental institution or locked up. Playing on real world stigma and pain to tell a compelling story requires the players understanding and acceptance however.
There are endless ways to begin or conclude these stories as well. Start as the parents protecting their children, and murdering the accused. Were they correct in their judgment? Did they kill the right monster? What are the repercussions on the children afterward? This way the campaign begins in the corporeal realm, and evolves to the ethereal. If the antagonist is a demon, or spirit, you could drag them into the corporeal realm and confront them there like in the films as well! Perhaps the PCs get locked up and their wounds still manifest on their body after sleep. Would the institution’s personnel be questioned? Would one of them believe the victim and help them escape or confront their antagonist?
A Nightmare on Elm Street pits players against their own minds, and challenges their credibility with the surrounding cast of friends, family and citizens. This isolates them from their support group and forces them to deal with the problem or possibly die. I cannot imagine a better system than In Nomine for this type of storytelling, and it is something that I am incredibly excited to run! You should definitely try this style of campaign with In Nomine if you have the opportunity.
Outro
Thank you for watching today’s In Nomine episode. Subscribe and ring the bell if you are new to the channel. Don’t forget to click the like button and comment to let others learn about this award winning role-playing game and this channel.
And as always, remember that evil spelled backwards is live, so get out there and Be Evil!