A Dark And Quiet Room

excerpted from Dirty Secrets from Dark Omen Games

I blame John Tynes. It’s all his fault. I was reading his list of inspirations for his Unknown Armies roleplaying game, and he talked about James Ellroy. In it, he says, “If you want to read the best in new horror fiction, avoid the ‘horror’ book rack — Ellroy is fighting on the front lines of the human nightmare, and has handily left the sad remnants of the horror field in his wake. “ I read this, blinked, and went off to locate The Black Dahlia. Over the course of several years, I finished Ellroy’s Los Angeles quartet. It was very hard going and horribly brutal, but I understood what Tynes was talking about. The most horrifying thing in the world is other people.

All this helped me as I played Unknown Armies. But, somewhere in the back of my mind, lodged the idea that I needed to explore this genre more. There was more potential here that wasn’t being tapped.

Time passed. About four years, to be exact.

In August 2006, I pulled this idea out and dusted it off. The time had come to make this game. So I sat down and wrote my first draft. It wasn’t very good. The only thing that really survived from this first draft is the title. Originally, Dirty Secrets was just a working title until I came up with something better. Nothing better came along.

But, the more significant thing that happened at that time was an email exchange with Ron Edwards. I knew from reading Sorcerer’s Soul that he was an aficionado of this type of literature, so I went to him for recommendations. He told me to read Ross MacDonald. He was so very right.

In September 2006, when we had that exchange, I owned no Ross MacDonald novels. As of this writing (july 2007), I own eleven and am working on gathering them all. MacDonald manages to pack more story into a 200-page novel then many novelists pack into an entire trilogy.

I also had the joy of being introduced to the joys of Raymond Chandler. While I think that MacDonald writes a deeper story, Chandler takes such a delight in the English language that he has earned a spot in my heart as well.

The turning point in my design of the game was in January 2007. Crystal and I were taking a day trip to Champaign, Illinois, which is about 90 minutes away from Peoria, where we live. Throughout the day, we discussed the design of this game. It was on this trip that we came up with the idea of organizing the Character cards around the Conflict track in order to show the social inequities of the Characters. That night, I realized what this game is about.

Dirty Secrets is about injustice. The powerful oppress the weak, using their money and influence to control them. In response, the weak rise up in violence against their oppressors. We are a divided people, and therefore, our society will not stand. But we hide from this reality. So long as we are safe, we do not care to look around us. But the oppression is real, and the violence is already with us. Is it already too late for us to be saved?

As of 8:00 p.m. on Friday, we wrapped up Dirty Secrets and got it to the printer.