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>>71235429
>Every 2nd Saturday throughout the shift a handful of energetic people dressed up in different time period costumes come in for cigarettes, beer, and rolling papers. They're always happy to make small talk about the "party" they're headed to, but seem confused if asked about their costumes.
>The bathrooms are locked and on the outside end of the store. No one knows where the keys are, but the pounding coming from inside them tends to make new hires frantic to find them.
>The walk in freezer has a few shelves in the very back that are frozen stuck to the floor. However, it's possible to see what looks like an unending stretch of freezer behind them.

Make sure to read the labels on the milk bottles. If you see one that's ever labeled "melk", do not sell it or drink it yourself. Look up the nearest LDS temple and send them a formal letter of complaint. They won't respond to anything else.

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Maintain your nightly duties and, when done with said duties, look busy by staying active. Failure to do so will cause pic related to arrive as if from thin air, scream at you, threaten to garnish your nightly wage and torture you with his almost superhuman strength and fighting abilities. These encounters will persist until you find something to do. To prevent the likelihood of encountering this being, 35% of your wages will go to a third-party account labeled 'Staff Fund'.

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>>71235589
>Every 2nd Saturday throughout the shift a handful of energetic people dressed up in different time period costumes come in for cigarettes, beer, and rolling papers. They're always happy to make small talk about the "party" they're headed to, but seem confused if asked about their costumes.
I have the funny feeling I know what sort of "party" they're headed to

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Something is happening is isle 3....

>>71235685
I don't get it and I served a mission even.

>>71235429
>A truck pulls up
>The driver says he's here to deliver new stock
>You don't ask any questions
>The new products are... strange
>You swear that you see something moving underneath the wrapper of a chocolate bar
>You ask him what it is, and he says it's just extra fresh
>You don't ask what 'extra fresh' is supposed to mean

>>71235429
Any preferred systems for these kinds of “night shift”/wacky retail stories?

>>71239362

As a personal preference, Fate Condensed. It's good at creating bonuses and complications out of anything, which is needed for a setting where you can just be trying to mop, turn around at the wrong time, and shit gets immediately weird.

It's also rather nice in that it can handle combat if it's needed, but it's not a required thing, which can definitely go a long way towards getting the vibe right.

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I was always a big fan of these threads, and of mixing mundane troubles in with the horrors of the Night Shift. Let's see if I can think up anything worthy of inclusion.

>A burly, surly biker and his crew roll into the Station and take over the place for about an hour or so. They're an unsavory lot and they make the attendants nervous, but might be useful if something weirder or worse shows up.

>The Station has been plagued with minor mishaps all night, like automatic doors opening for no reason and things falling off the shelves. Reviewing the security footage reveals a child no one can see is messing with things for fun.

>A nondescript man with glasses and a bad haircut walks in at the beginning of the shift, saying that his car broke down within sight of the Station. He's asking for help pushing it into the parking lot, but something about the man feels wrong.

>An old vending machine is found in storage, still stocked with a variety of bottled sodas of an unknown brand. When drank, these expired beverages appear to bestow a variety of powers or abilities, but the "crash" afterward can be terrible.

>A young hitchhiker, looking sleep deprived and nervous, asks if she can spend the night on the couch in the break room, and asks that the attendants deny having seen her if anyone comes in asking. Of course, someone does.

>An unmarked delivery truck drops off the newspapers and magazines for the next day. When hauling them inside, one paper falls open to reveal an article about that night's shift that proves to be accurately and horrifically prophetic.

>Some technical issue has shut off power to the pumps, and despite the lateness of the hour a number of customers have shown up for gas. Some are content to wait for a fix but others are starting to get a bit irate with the attendants.

>All the attendants suddenly come to the realization that they have "lost" the hour between 12:37 and 1:37 and must attempt to discover what happened in that span of time.

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https://vimeo.com/217048927

>Do NOT eat the new brand of gummy worms. They're not properly processed and are still squirming in the bag. If you do, your nightly wages will be slashed come your next-of-kin.

>two glowing red spots show up a few kilometers down the road, floating high in the air
>during a quiet smoke break, it occurs to you they are not floating lights, but a pair of gigantic eyes

Hi, a kid had an "accident" in the ladies' bathroom, nightshift do your jobs and clean it up
-dayshift Derek

>>71242738
>An unusually large number of stray cats gather to hold court out by the dumpsters. They don't look or act any different than you'd expect, but there sure are a lot of them out there, and some are starting to get curious about what's inside the station.

>A raging rainstorm has blown in, causing the lights to flicker eerily as wind and rain lash the Station from all sides. Every so often the electricity goes out completely and everything is thrown into darkness, and when the lights come back on, someone is missing.

>That one linoleum tile with the weird dip in it has finally peeled itself up from the floor enough to revealing what's underneath. Wedged inside a hole in the concrete is a slim steel box, the lock on which seems to match a key left in the cash register.

>>71245044
>The attendant enters the women's bathroom with trepidation, but everything appears to be in the same state of dingy disrepair that is always is.

>There does seem to be more water on the floor than normal, though, and a strangely rhythmic clunk-clunk-clunking sound coming from one stall.

>The lid over the toilet seat is raising up a couple inches and then falling back down, raising up and falling down, raising back up and falling back down.

>The attendant opens the lid and sees what appears to be a pale child's arm snaking up from the toiler drain, beckoning with odd motions,

>>71242738
>you will never see bikers and truckers vs aliens in the halls of a Buc-ees
Imagine.

>>71245277
>You hand the kid a fresh roll of TP and get back behind the counter.

So how would you guys do an actual campaign of this? I've always thought it would be cool to have a rotating cast of players, quick and easy to help it be a pick up type of game. Obviously high lethality, and if a character makes it for more than 3 shifts have them promoted to day shift and retired from play.

>>71242738
this is that good shit.
>>71245200
>Opening the lockbox reveals a schematic of the Station dated 2067, but the specifications are in a language and a measurement system you can't make heads or tails of. It's entirely correct minus a rather large portion in the back seemingly behind the beveage fridges

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>>71248548
I think there are a couple ways that you run a dedicated Night Shift campaign, if you don't want to play around with a series of stand alone installments between your regularly scheduled games. The first would, like you say, feature a lot of character and player rotation as part of the high-lethality gameplay, amping up the horror of the setting and the desperation of the characters for sticking with a job that pays so little and threatens a fate much worse than death. The second would be lighter and softer, reining in the lethality and emphasizing the surreality and humor that the setting is capable of so that it plays more like a paranormal slice of life sort of campaign. In either case, the goals of the game would be more or less the same. Make an honest wage, survive the night, and find out what's going on if you're lucky/unlucky.

>>71248548
>Every week one of the retired day shifters leaves a brown bag in the back of the employee fridge
>It always disappears by the end of your last shift of the week despite the fact that it was definitely there when you started
>The rattling in the pipes seems to have gradually diminished in the few months he's been doing this

Fuck, I kinda wish I had a gas station job. Other than the robberies it sounds a lot like my old job where I chilled and served customers once in a while. Now I work in a factory and it sucks dick. At least I can think about my D&D campaigns while I am there but I still hate it.

>>71248548
I would probably do a series of shorts per session; one player plays an event for like fifteen minutes then when it's "game over" the next player plays another short story. Mix this up with a few bigger multiplayer stories and I think you could set the tone well.
Definitely going to try it with my players some day soon.

>>71238635
Due to the dialect it is a stereotype that members of the LDS pronounce "Milk" as "Melk" and a few other problems since they were a hodgepodge of immigrants and previously settled people whose accents caused a unique blend to be formed over the years of relative isolation of the community while in Utah

>>71250852
OP here, mine is pretty chill. I work on the weekends and open to close every Sunday, it's kind of boring but easily 80% of my time is on my phone shit posting on here. I only make $7.50 but I work two jobs so it's decent. Lot of meth heads.

>>71250957
that seems like an interesting way to do it, I guess the singular narrative focus moments could really fit the feel of the game well. I hadn't thought of that
>>71250723
>The Day Shift cook lost a ring in the grease trap, and wants one of you shmucks to find it for him.
>Carl lost an arm rooting around in there, but it grew back quick enough. Only problem is it's a lot angrier now, and not nearly as good of a listener.
>Worse still he pulled out whatever ate it in the first place jerking around all wild like, and now you can't find the little son of a bitch anywhere.

>>71247927
>be nightshift guy
>tfw too minimun wage for this shit
>after a while, a very short while, the paranormal isn't scary anymore
>It's worse
>it's annoying

>Kent, one of those Day Shift assholes, forgot some shit or other in the break room and has come back to pick it up and hassle the "weirdos" for some laughs. The good news is that he'll see the kind of crap that the attendants working the Night Shift have to deal with, but the bad news is that he's going to freak out and probably get himself killed. That asshole.

>For as long as the attendants have worked at the station, there has been a sealed manila envelope stuffed under the cash drawer inside the register, with a note written in faded block letters not to open it until a specific date. Now that date has arrived, and inside appears to be a dire warning and a very detailed set of instructions left to them by the Night Shift staff of 1987.

>An extremely pregnant woman and her husband come into the station to buy a specific brand of snack product that she's had a particularly strong late-night craving for. Just as they're about to check out with their purchases, the woman goes into labor and her husband, though well-meaning, is in no way equipped to handle the emergency situation at hand.

>The attendants discover a dead body stuffed inside the ice machine. They then discover this dead body again in the bathroom. And again under the front counter, and in one of their cars. This dead body seems to disappear when they take their eyes off it and reappear in the most inconvenient places, which is bad because tonight a cop has stopped in for his doughnut fix.

>Those daytime assholes were supposed to do a major spring cleaning on their shift, but of course they didn't do jack shit and the place is still a mess. Seeing as how it will probably by the Night Shift's asses on the line for this, the attendants must take Station from positively squalid back down to merely dingy in addition to everything else they'll have to deal with.

>>71251446
That's potentially part of the fun in playing a Night Shift game that leans more heavily into the "paranormal slice of life" interpretation. Not all the happenings at the gas station are deadly and terrifying. Most are just bewildering or annoying, and some can even be amusing or entertaining.

>>71251644
>A man dressed in a convincing spacesuit staggers in well past midnight
>He beelines straight for the fridges and disappears into thin air with two full kegs
>Tracked red sand everywhere
>Didn't even pay

>an obese man sharts in mart
>and you have to clean it up

>>71252346
>What came out of him wasn't shit, but it is very, very angry.

>>71252377
>and it speaks in rhyme

>>71235685
>>71235685
for me, it's malk

>A polite-looking man walks in. He looks normal enough, but...
>"Do y'all have any of that outrage orange mɨlk? Been lookin' all over for it with no luck!"
>He grows visibly agitated
What do you do?

>>71254700
>He grows, visibly agitated
"Hey big guy, sun's gettin real low"

>>71254734
Make a Customer Service check

Rolled 9 (1d20)

>>71254918

>>71254918
Seriously though, how does this sound as a very rough proof of concept for a rules lite system for this game?
>4 base stats, A B C and D
>Each stat has four Skills, with the sixteen being divided into four categories: Combat, Work, Investigation, and Endurance.
>Characters have either a specified favored Stat or Category, meaning they get bonuses to one Stat's four skills or bonuses to the four skills of one category.

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Been running my own night shift campaign for a few months now.

A few thoughts for those interested in what’s (not) worked for me:

In the first handful of sessions i would split the night into 3 “acts”, ratcheting up the spooky until the 3rd when all hell broke loose. Essentially turning the game into a series of one-shots.

Being mostly one-shots I was allowed to pretty much swap in whatever free players we had on the day, making the interactions between players and GM fresh, even if the content was the 3rd variation of “a ghost wont leave” levels of stale. (Even if it is a friendly werewolf salesman this time)

I had a table of job-related-duties that the group would have to accomplish before/during the 3rd act (in which would be mostly combat) these tasks flavored how the night would eventually turn spooky. (I.e. cleaning the pump area can lead to finding a nest of giant spiders above the store)

I had a recurring boss battle every night for act 3. I believe it was pulled from the old 1d4chan threads, but the 3AM Man was basically a shadow creature who would attempt to steal some minor magical item(s) from the store. If anything was taken, then it would be used against the players in the following section.

Speaking of items, I whipped up a deck of overpowered, but situational weapons/armor and consumables and randomly picked a pool for the players themselves to choose. This allowed some creativity in how players could tackle the spooky problem/3AM Man (I.e. someone who picked a limited spellbook one night, could play as a tank another night and led to some fun interactions)

Eventually I gave the group a reason to leave the station, and since then it’s allowed me to worldbuild outside of the confines of a single area. I personally regret this, and wished I had planned things out better than I did. Now I am trying to railroad them back to the station to stop some apocalyptic scenario to mild success.

>>71255276
I’d run this

>>71255252
>"Man, it's the same at every gatdang station."
>The man leaves. The air smells heavily of oranges.
>You are alone.

Isn't there a well-made PDF of scenarios for this exact campaign somewhere? I remember seeing it float through tg once or twice in the past

>>71237291
They drank the melk

>>71255331
In order of Combat, Work, Investigation, Endurance

>Guts
Bravery/Strength
skills:
>Brawl: punching stuff
>Grunt: heavy lifting, looking in the basement for products
>Intimidate: force information out somehow
>Grit: simple refusal to lose to weirdness

>Brains
Thinking/Smarts
>Plot: Strategy/weak spots
>Manage: paperwork, organization
>Discover: connect dots
>Logic: confront weird with reason

>Tongue
Persuasion/Words
>Negotiate: using words to defuse a situation
>Service: deal with customers
>Bargain: try to prompt information out
>Pep Talk: rally yourself or others against the weird

>Hands(no real clue)
Talent/Skilled
>Finesse: skill shots/precise moves
>Repair: fix broken stuff
>No clue
>No clue

The last set kind of falls apart, but again it's a rough idea

>>71255526
check on 1d4chan

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>>71251705
Night Shift honestly reminds me of Space Station 13, in the regard that every interaction will most definitely end in death and being medical sucks fucking ass. I've considered running a medical version of NS, med-students "holding the fort down" in a soon to be decommissioned clinic.
>medical: deal with patents WAY above your pay grade even though nobody was even supposed to show up.,
Med-Students (Student Doctor) - this counts for your clinical hours.
CNA (Nurse Assistant) - this counts as your 8hrs/month renewal.
CERT (Voluntary Paramedic) - final "hurrah" before that new hospital takes over.
>administration, keep medical from commiting crimes and get patients to sign paperwork.
Desk Clerk - get insurance, determine coverage, figure out issues, figure out prices. . . sort documents.
Paralegal - decided what happened with non-emergency patients, effectively department-head admin, get them to sign waivers. . . legal shit.
>maintenance, keep this dump running smoothly.
Janitor (Building Maintenance) - keep it clean, keep it running, better said then done in this old run-down death trap.
Security (Rent-A-Cop) - keep the place, and the people, safe.

Bump (in the night)

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You know, the premise of this thread is very uncanny to me, it reminds me somewhat of back when I was a security guard for a mental hospital. I worked the nights, and every other evening I would go out on "patrol", dodge the cameras, and go across the street to a gas station/convenience store to buy some snacks and drinks for my partner and I, and the cashier and I would always talk about the patients (usually homeless) that we'd discharge who'd then come across to buy a pack of Swisher Sweets that they'd take apart and pack 50/50 with weed. Some would get violent in order to get the PD to show up and haul them back into the hospital after their smoke, and others would stalk the cashiers or generally act like you'd figure mental patients would. It was a unique camaraderie in that not only did we both work shitty jobs with shitty hours, but we both had to deal with the absolute refuse of humanity.

Sorry for the blogpost, hopefully this'll end up inspiring somebody else's more on-topic contributions, or maybe I'll end up playing myself.

>>71255295
That's some good intel, thanks!

>>71255757
>>Hands(no real clue)
>Talent/Skilled
>>Finesse: skill shots/precise moves
>>Repair: fix broken stuff
>>No clue
>>No clue

Maybe the last two can be something along the lines of Stretch/Wriggle which allows an attendant to reach for and access clues and supplies the others cant, and Dodge/Escape which allows an attendant to avoid weirdness?

>>71258195(Me)
On further thought, a lot of what I experienced that year could be adapted pretty readily into a Night Shift campaign or something along >>71256106 's lines, focusing on the hospital itself. If only I had a group and half a nut's worth of DM experience, I could probably cook up something worthwhile.

Inspired

>The ATM in the corner only dispenses bills with future dates in them.

>>71237291
This picture absolutely terrifies me and I don't know why

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I worked the GY shift at a big IT and services company. Even in the cleam and lit offices there would be some funky things going at night.


>poorly lit hall
>lights flicked when someone coughed
>otherwise would work perfectly

>weird knocks on the windows in the dead of night
>it was a 2nd floor

>phonecalls with static and breathing noises were common

>different people would call and give us weird info, never asking for action on our part
Calls such as
>guy to tell his car battery got depleted
>woman about finding her keys in the kitchen counter
>person calling to tell the time, that wasn't even remotely near the actual time
This one happened so often we joked about time traveler's hotline
>pre-recorded voices IVR style dictating numbers and letters
>these ranged from 3 letters to ginormously long strings
>an agitated guy telling us to come out
>security randomly calling to ask if we're ok
The list of weird af calls goes on amd on


>dining room was never used at night
>everyone was unnerved by it
>no real reason

>people hearing being called behind corners or empty meeting rooms
Staple of new hires was asking "you called me?". The rest just knew to ignore that kind of stuff and just send an IM over Lync.

>random af massive swarms of beetles
>they appeared at night and disappeared before sunrise
>it's an urban area with no water bodies near

I always remember the first day (night) and a veteran saying "You either get used to it or go insane. Or both. Spot on.

>>71251226
WILL YOU BE ROBBED? THE ONLY NIGHTSHIFT SPOOKS THAT SCARE ME ARE THE REAL SPOOKS. NOTHING IS WORSE THAN SPOOKS MAN.

>>71254608
Those smell strangely like fish, to be honest.

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>>71261010

>>71260661
>>security randomly calling to ask if we're ok
This reminds me of a NS campaign where only certain floors of a skyscraper where involved, so security on the ground wasn't effected. Imagine being in a NS scenario but you are off-site and can't do anything to actually help as you watch people on cameras. Each day they forget what happened, but you remember.

>>71259882
The ATM is owned by a bank that none of the attendant has ever heard of and only dispenses bills that are, for various reasons, not legal tender and not accepted at the station.

>Some bills are far too old and rare.
>Some bills should not be printed yet.
>Some bills are foreign currency.
>Some bills are comically poor counterfeits.
>Some bills are burnt or stained.

This thread is full of half baked shit, how about i tell you something i witnessed with my own eyes

It was back in 2015, i just started working in a 24h grocery store in my home town. Not a big place but since we were close to the city center we got plenty of customers. I've been working tere for about 2 months, and usually did the morning or afternoon shift, but I always cycled into the night shift at least once a week.
Now, one day a FedEx guy showed up at our store and delivered a big heavy box. As i discovered later, that shit was delivered here for a customer to pick up.
Now why the fuck would a guy have his stuff delivered at a grocery store? I asked the same thing and basically the guy in question was an old friend of the manager and he usually had his stuff delivered here because he was 'without fixed abode'.
I have no idea what was in that box, i only know it was very heavy and while moving it whatever was inside clinked lightly like a bunch of glass bottles.
Now this guy was supposed to pick it up the day I had to do night shift, but who cares, he'd probably come and pick it up during the day, right? Wrong.

The night of my shift, nothing happened much, and i spent the time mostly putting stuff on the shelves or playing on my phone. At some point, i don't remember the time, a car pulls over next to the entrance, and here comes in this very old guy, he must've been at least in his 70s. Thin as fuck, with a white moustache.
I remember looking at him for a while and he just casually browsed the store, picked up some milk and a bag of chips, and then got to the counter. I move there to check him out and he asks for the box.
-cont. next post

>>71264077
Now, of this man, i remmeber clearly two things: One, he was very well dressed, even if his clothes looked a bit worn, and second, when he talked for some reason i felt terrified by him. Like, pants-shitting scared. I just wanted to get away from him as soon as possible. But i got a grip and checked him out, then phoned the guy at the back to bring the box.
As we waited, he did small talk, asked if i was new since i he never saw me, and how was work, that kind of stuff. When the box arrived he thanked me and my coworker, and picked up the box. The guy who brought it from the back asked if the old man needed help since it was very heavy, but he just said 'no thanks' and just lifted it, like that, as it didn't weight more than a normal shopping bag. He then thanked us again and left.

I resigned from that work in 2018 but i've never seen him again, despite everyone telling me he was a regular.

To this day i am quite sure that guy was either an alien of a demon. I was on the verge of panicking all the while he stood near me

>>71235429
I confess I'm not terribly familiar with Night Shift's parameters but I believe I have an interesting concept that could work for it.

Essentially somewhere way back in the store's supply room is a really old box from the 1930s that was accidentally left there at some point and simply never noticed or recovered. Opening the box releases 6 slightly larger than action figure puppets, and reveals a featureless black puzzle box. The game then becomes, figure out the meaning of the box before the creatures kill you. Their attempts will escalate in indiscretion and intensity, starting out at very subtle and very discrete and moving towards horror movie mayhem.

This is where things get a bit tricky, as two of the creatures use evil magic, however the type of evil magic they use is very subtle, so subtle it has effectively no pyrotechnics at all and is more a moving of invisible influences in a very behind the scenes manner, rather than throwing a fireball.

If these beings actively persist long enough, they will attempt to open the grave of their creator and revive that person in a very temporary lich like state, with a lifespan of only 1 month, who will then search for a new body to inhabit as a possessing spirit. This grave is somewhere underneath the store's bottom-most floor.

While the creatures certainly can be physically destroyed (by hitting throwing etc), the box is the true threat, and the revived character is another true threat, as the revived character knows a lot of evil magic (again very subtle behind the scenes things with no pyrotechnics at all).

Failing to solve the box in time results in the appearance of either the homeless man demon, or the untrustworthy merchant demon. The homeless man demon will take the box outside the store, spontaneously combust, and fly away as a hideous skeleton monster. The untrustworthy merchant will try to buy the box, then will try to buy the store, then will seek to close the store. 1 of 2.

>>71264625
2 of 2.

Solving the box in a timely fashion will result in either a bad end, or a good end. If the revived character is not present or has not yet been revived, the cenobites (yes its that box) take the character who solved the box away. If the revived person is present, the cenobites take the revived person away, and leave the puzzle-box-solver with a scary reprimand and a reminder that they could easily re-appear at any time they wished, as 'doors stay open'.

You can see the puppets here. Set to expire in 2 weeks.
https://pastebin.com/8wVLWcPq

If a player-character is killed by the puppets he or she may re-appear in a sequel as a puppet, if a player-character is taken away by the cenobites, he or she may re-appear in a sequel as a cenobite.

>>71259882
Customer asks why the atm doesn’t give Boo-bucks

>>71264625
>>71264705
I also had 4 small ideas that might be fun.

1. Truck stop terror - a person or a player character is the target of the vengeful Pumpkinhead demon, and must find a way to survive until daytime, since sunlight causes pumpkinhead to experience a 'painful sunburn' feeling all over and retire till night. At turn 1 it is 11:42 PM.

2. The creature from the black latrine - The toilet from the 'Ghoulies' films is present in the store's blacks only bathroom. The year is 1949. Survive if you can after an accidental monster release.

3. Just Dandy - A creepy clown is visible, but only in reflections, surveillance footage, and on screens such as tvs computers etc. Dandy is a 7 foot tall silent-movie-aesthetics clown with clown attire from around the year 1900 AD and a steeple-cap tilted to one side. Dandy is very subtle, it should be very unclear whether he is real or not. Dandy is waiting for a friend who eventually arrives. Dandy is grainy and B/W when visible, routinely experiencing small gaps of skipped-frame (meaning routinely suddenly in a slightly different position).

4. Apocalypse wow - The end of the world seems to be occurring outside, the store is one of the only safe places. A secret experiment caused the events, it is eventually resolved and the seeming-apocalypse ceases. Survive the horrors until the experiment is corrected.

>>71265891
Slight addendum; in scenario 4 there is nothing, at all, players can do about the experiment, that takes place entirely off screen, from the players perspective the apocalypse simply eventually stops for no obvious reason. Their entire goal is simply to survive.

>>71255526
There are a couple pdfs and excel sheets archived on 1d4chan. The pdfs look nice, but there are bits and pieces of fluff and pictures missing from them. Crunch should be good though, and they are playable.

>>71235429
Serious question; am I doing this right? I'm >>71264625, >>71264705, >>71265891, >>71266025.

I'm trying to make something that fits the rules and setting of night shift, but I'm also trying to do something very different from the more usual fare, and which takes place over the course of several night shifts, rather than just 1.

>>71267825
Looks fine to me!

>>71267948
It's my very first serious attempt, and forgive me for asking another question but I do have one more question.

What stats would one expect a party to need to have any chance of surviving these scenarios? I want to make it possible to survive, but reasonably hard, and with a high probability that significant portions of the party die in horror movie deaths.

>>71267825
Well, it's hard to do nightshift wrong, you have a lot of leeway. The general gist of it is simply overworked, underpaid, and definitely unprepared, late night workers dealing with creepy maybe-magic/maybe-not bullshit while also doing their actual jobs (or making others do it) so they can get paid.
Yours is slanted more towards the overtly magical horror stuff with some nineties slasher film thrown in, and very little about the mundane drudgery running a late night business is. It seems to me that you wanna run survival horror, and it's fine to disregard the mundane if that's what you want.
there's a little problem with your box, though: Players can choose to not open it. If you really wanna use it, make dayshift open it right before they left, forcing it to be night shift's problem.

tl;dr: it's fine, don't worry about it

>>71268279
I was unsure whether I wanted to do scenarios in which things go so wrong so quickly that there is simply no time for the mundane aspects, or in which the business is effectively closed permanently by the end of the plot, or do it more slowly and have mundane work be possible during the early plot and slowly progress it towards impossible conditions in which just getting out alive is the goal and work is entirely disregarded.

>>71268279
Your spoillered comment gave me a hideously great idea; the tarman zombie is in a barrel in the supply room in the store. Things get bad. Real bad. It gets opened. Terrible things happen. But hey, you get to see that redhead from the movie (return of the living dead) naked. Fair warning; she is already a zombie when you do.

>>71267825
So long as you're underpaid, then it should be fine. At no point are you allowed a desirable roll. The first time I ever did NS I let people pick pilot for an airline.

Next time I did a bus thing where a personality eating monster ate the faces of it's victims. Players had to figure out what happened, I personally think this was my best one as each action they took revealed more and more information.

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Ummm.....The girl in the bathroom is acting weird...

Bump

How much should Dayshift and Management be aware of the bullshit that goes on? Also how big should the station be?

>>71273321
The Dayshift don't believe a word of what the Nightshift say. Nightshift are typically hired from the bottom end of the applicant pool, nobody wants to do that shift so anyone who is capable wouldn't. Dayshift consider Nightshift to be a bunch of mental disorders when they think about them at all. With possibly one exception. There is a possibility that one of the Dayshift used to work nights, occasionally helpful notes of advice or warning are left on the counter at the start of the shift and the old biscuit tin sometimes has something helpful in it.

Management claim not to know. But it's debatable. Mostly management is just a voice on the other end of a telephone.

That's probably a better way of doing it since I include notes I'm the schedule that imply management knows something, but having notes left by an unknown third party is probably the best way of doing it.

>>71274007
Ask me how I know you actually did work the night shift
cause all that is 100% accurate and painfully real, even the pity snacks

>>71276024
I have worked nights. I won't say that I enjoyed the experience and although I won't say that I would have sought out the company of my co-workers if given a choice I will say that we were all fuck ups and we all knew it so it was best to not rock the boat.

It is very easy to imagine bullshit scenarios at 3AM and in the worst hours mundane shit started to take on a sinister air. As previously stated I'm a fuck up so I can say with reasonable certainty that I'm not a reliable narrator but quite often I would be convinced that, without real cause for concern, that there was someone/thing waiting for me around a corner. I'd typically go as wide around the corner as possible holding something heavy and sturdy in my right hand and my work knife in my left. Other times I knew that there was someone standing behind me, even going so far as to tell them to take their fucking hand off my shoulder. It was about then that my co-workers started to think that I wasn't operating on a full deck. Or was on meds/drugs.

I think that it, or part of it, is because the human brain is built to look for patterns in the environment. Presumably when we were gatherers and scavengers huddled around a campfire in the depths of the deep history this was very useful.

>An old, beat up motor home rolls into the parking lot at the beginning of the shift and just sits there. No one comes out, and no noises come from it but the rattling idle of its engine, but its presence outside feels ominous.

>Something has moved into one of the dumpsters out back that likes to eat garbage. Sometimes it requests specific kinds of trash, and will offer up useful items in return for the very rarest or most unsavory offerings.

>The station is dead, figuratively speaking, thankfully. No customers or weirdness has appeared this shift to stress our or threaten the attendants, and they’re forced to deal with the boredom or make trouble for themselves.

>While playing around with the light switches, the attendants learn that they can turn on the big neon sign outside that they’d always assumed was broken. Once they do, it starts... attracting... things out of the desert.

>A pair of obnoxiously jocular state troopers roll in and spend all together too much time browsing the snack foods and sodas and hassling the attendants in a way that feels just shy of being genuinely malicious.

>>71277039
I like it when mundane events are interwoven with horror events. Like, having the obnoxious cops or the threatening biker gang at the station could be a problem by itself, but if something really horrifying happens you might want them around to help.

Neat.

>A new employee has been hired to to fill a vacancy on the Night Shift (RIP Derek) and the more senior attendants must either train up or scare off this hapless high-schooler before they get themselves killed.

>A car, fully engulfed in flames, pulls into the parking lot, thankfully far away from the gas pumps. What appears to be a burnt and smoldering family of four exits the vehicle and comes inside to do some shopping.

>A frequent and genuinely friendly customer loses his wallet somewhere in the station and asks for help in finding it from the attendants, offering a round of coffees for all a monetary reward to the one who manages to locate it.

>The moon disappears and the stars overhead start to wink out, as do the lights of any towns out on the horizon. Eventually, the station is left as the only pool of light in the thick and impenetrable darkness surrounding it.

>A customer gets belligerent when informed that the station doesn’t carry a very specific regional brand of potato chip. This customer ends up staying for far longer and arguing far more than any snack product is worth.

>Boxes of tin toy robots from the 1950s is found locked in an old supply closet that had been hidden behind a shelving unit. When one is wound up, it runs amok, winding the others up too and tries to take over the station.

>Doppelgängers impersonating your coworkers begin causing trouble.

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>>71273321
>>71274007
Management is something of a mystery to our attendants. According to the “old lore” behind the station there’s a door in the break room that leads to an office, but no Night Shifter has ever seen anyone inside it. All that’s in there is a suite of office decor and furniture from the 1970s, and an old green rotary phone on the desk. Attendants can, if the need demands, call Management to get professional advice on how to resolve their current issues, but Management hates having to micro-manage and will often make requests I’d the attendants in exchange for their assistance.

>>71235429
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HblU4fmtIY

>>71279664
>The only doppleganger was you, everyone else was normal, you just thought they were dopplegangers.

>>71281433
That’s why everyone else was acting so suspicious. They were suspicious of you.

This would be a fun trick to play on one player for one session. Make them the “threat” without them knowing while cluing the rest of the players in.

>>71281486
One interesting ending you could play is self-meet-self, the doppleganger and the real person meet, them touching each other results in a matter/anti-matter explosion that annihilates the station in a visible kaboom explosion (conventional, fire/smoke etc).

This is the Segue over to; surprise! it's the sequel to army of darkness, and you're the heroes! Oh and also; its 800 AD, forget your modern skills, you won't need them.

I love all these prompts, but what comes from them? Like, how does a session go?
These are all good starting points, but what happens in the middle and where does it end?

>>71281924
Presumably it ends when the morning shift come in and things to back to how they're meant to be, or when everyone dies.

>>71281924
speaking theoretically, I'd say do it like an episode of the Simpsons/American Dad/Family guy. A primary plot (the A storyline) that's interspersed with a B storyline that's a little less fleshed out but tangentially related, with the A storyline being weird and out there and the B storyline based off actual normal duties. As far as time spans I'd say no longer than 2 weeks.

>The storage room has been filled with packages that have unintelligible writing on them, and a very angry fellbeast demands for you to give him the right package after originally giving him the wrong one.
vs
>Day Shift needs an inventory done by the end of the week.

There's a natural correlation as well as tension between the two

>>71281924
In the threads of old, a number of Anons worked out a system by which these prompts could work. As I remember, it went like this:

The game-runner should take each prompt that appeals to them and expand on it to make it a “threat,” or a problem that the players and their characters will have to solve. Every threat has an accompanying set of “portents and omens” associates with it, which are a set of scenes and happenings that are thematically connected to the threat that provide clues and escalating penalties as the threat becomes more dire. Each threat has a concrete solution or win condition that the characters and their players can figure out, which does not discount the possibility of improvisation.

Once I get home I’ll skim the archives and post what I find. Some nice posts and PDFs were made describing this concept in much more detail.

>>71282085
This generally works well.

>>71251194
I am sitting on my crapper in my Salt Lake City apartment right now, with my missionary name tag stuck on my fridge in my kitchen and I can honestly say I’ve NEVER heard of this before.

>A couple in neat, stately clothes comes in. The woman browses the snacks while the man comes up to the counter to ask something. He talks in intelligible insectoid clicks. You don't know what he wants but he's getting impatient.

>An 18-wheeler rolls into the station. Literally. The motor isn't running, the headlights are off and there is no driver. The rookie is curious about the cargo.

>A group of hitchhiking college kids comes in, blasting music and causing a ruckus. After 10 minutes of this, they disappear without a trace. An hour later however, the same group comes in, with the same music, as if they just got there.

>The letters on the signage out front are scrambled. And not just the ones you can conventional move. All of them.

>A soda spill attracted ants. The ants form a circle around the spill, followed by a pentagram in the circle and some strange symbols between the points of the star. You smell sulfur.

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He always rolls in at 3:25 am sharp.
Every thursday, without exception.
He always buys a pack of camels, a granola bar, a coke and a gallon of gas. Every thursday, without exception.
He never shows up with a vehicle, though. Can't see him walking up either, but right on time, he comes in. Every thursday, without exception.
He's got no car for the gas, and no mouth for the snacks or cigarettes. He buys them anyway. Every thursday, without exception.
He's not a problem in and of himself. The problems come if there's other customers in the store when it's his turn. And it's his turn at 3:25, every thursday, without exception.
Normally, there aren't any customers to worry about.
You'd best hope there's no exceptions.

>>71255295
That's a neat set up, how long did it take you to build?

>>71235429
An accidental damage to a wall reveals a small chamber containing a lock box. The lock box contains any, but at least 3 of, of the following items.

>1 sacrificial Babylonian dagger
>A weird virgin Mary candle from the 1800s
>The Nocteron Demonto (evil dead series, the book)
>The Excerption of Truth (1700s copy of several pages of the book of hastur and the pnakotic manuscripts)
>De testimonium - an exorcism manual written around 656 AD
>A disturbingly small human skull
>1 pack of Cheetos from the 50s
>1 large bizarre brass key that looks like aliens made it (ritual item)

>>71249561
this image would be so much eerier with a shadow protruding from behind the A pillar and just enough of a foot in frame to tell its a man looking at the car standing rod straight

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>>71284528
About a weekend

>>71285195
That's some work you've done. I like the layout a lot. It's just big enough to give the place some elbow room without it feeling unrealistically large for a gas station and convenience store.

Have something from an old thread I just came across. Appropriate given the year:

>There are different instances of the storeroom that appear on different days and contain different stock. There is one storeroom that only appears on Leap Day (Feb. 29th), and has been used as "long term storage" for particularly weird or dangerous beasties and stock.

"Leap Day has rolled around again and the Attendants are surprised to find that the expiration dates on all the stock inside are four years old, yet the products themselves still seem fresh, as if their clock had been stopped somehow. What's even weirder, it seems like a lot of merchandise has been trashed as well, and the Attendants have to leave the door to the storeroom propped open in order to haul all the wrecked stock to the dumpsters.

Thinking nothing more of it at first, they go about their business, not realizing that what they've found is the Leap Day Storeroom, and that they've released a VERY powerful Thing that a previous Night Shift had trapped in the room before it vanished. Now, the Attendants have to lure it back inside before midnight / dawn and banish it for another four years."

The coffee at the station a couple miles outside the town is the best I've ever had. It wakes me right up! It was complimentary for being a first time customer, but I think I'll have more if I'm ever back in town. It's unlikely since I'm only here for work, but leaving such a place to be forgotten would be such a shame. I should get going soon though, town is far enough away that I can barely see it. It's probably the heat, but it shimmers like I'm staring at a mirage. The guy that served it to me went to the back, I need to ask him about the recipe. I'm still a little groggy, but a little more of this coffee will help.

Man, the coffee at this station a couple miles out of town is the best I've ever had!

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>>71282154
Looking at the old threads now, a typical Night Shift "module" could consist of:

Threat - The major paranormal issue that the attendants must deal with that shift
Resolution - Ways by which the Threat can be resolved, with clever player improvisation encouraged
Portents - Manifestations of the shift's Threat that present both dangers and clues to its Resolution
Doom - The penalties for not reading the Portents and discovering a Resolution to the Threat

Here is an example:

Out of the Frying Pan, into the Freezer

Threat: There's an unusual chill in the desert air tonight, so the Attendants decide to turn up the the thermostat a little. However, they soon find themselves sweltering inside the Station as the temperature keeps climbing, while the old thermometer by the gas pumps shows that the mercury keeps on falling outside. Worryingly, the thermostat on the wall now seems to be unresponsive.

Resolution: Fixing the Station's malfunctioning central heating and air conditioning unit will bring the temperature both inside and outside back to normal. The Unit is vast and complicated, and exists in a non-Euclidean labyrinth of pipe and ductwork behind the walls accessible through the scorching air vents inside, the freezing maintenance hatch outside, or the locked door at the back if the janitor's closet.

>>71285923
Weird Rating: 5+

Portents:
1. An old, tape-patched note above the thermostat warns Attendants not to change the setting from its prescribed 68 degrees.
2. Things are feeling nice and balmy inside, while a cold breeze begins to pick up outside.
3. The air vents around the Station rattle once, and the warm air stops momentarily. There is a bumping, backfiring noise, and a small puff of smoke from each vent before the best kicks on again.
4. Things are starting to get a but toasty now inside the Station. Basic tasks raise a bit of a sweat, and the freezers are slick with condensation.
5. Outside, a frost seems to be forming on the pumps and on the ground around the Station, and a snow-halo can be seen around the moon. The Gas Attendant is definitely going to need a coat of some kind.
6. Snow begins to fall outside as a blustery wind starts blowing, while inside the store the air develops a heat shimmer. Frozen items begin to melt, and Attendants will have to start removing outer garment to stay even the least bit comfortable.
7. The convenience store grows as hot and dry as a desert at noon, and bottled items begin breaking on the shelves and in the freezers, spilling their contents everywhere. Outside, a full-blown blizzard has erupted, shrouding the Station in swirling ice and snow.
8. The Grey Man comes in for his nightly candybar, wearing an old fashioned greatcoat on over his usual suit. He amiably remarks on the unseasonable weather but otherwise seems unbothered by it. He is a touch disappointed by his melted candy, though.

Doom: Canned goods will start exploding on the shelves and gasoline will start freezing in the pumps. The heat differential between inside and outside will shatter every window in the station. Before the end of the Shift, conditions both inside and outside the Station will become lethal unless a Resolution is found.

>every so often, a quiet but nondescript man occupies one of the ratty chairs outside the front door of the Station from 2 to 3 AM. He's gotten a lot of nicknames over the years, usually centered around the smell and his being blind in one eye.
>He's got a way of finding things that turn out to be awfully useful for someone in a position of fighting against the strange, unnatural, and just plain odd.
>Reality warping proof cardboard boxes, dimensional sealing duct tape, time stopping gum, even those discontinued sour Altoids
>He doesn't want or seem to understand money, instead he barters for jokes, stories, and if you're good enough at them, lies.
>The only catch is, if he's heard it before or just doesn't buy it, it'll cost you an arm or a leg.

>>71239362
I used a 2d6 system I found on /tg/ called Small Towns. Three stats, only need 2-3d6 each. Great for a fun small game between bigger games to get people into the spoop faster

>It's a different station when you exit out the back

>>71286674
I remember seeing that a while back. It seemed like fun.

>>71235429
One of the one-off story thread I put in my Night Shift game was a few stoner kids that would show up at the store every night around 1-2am and listen to shitty trap/metal on their phones and, if the players left them alone because they were otherwise harmless, would start spray-painting the wall of the store that can only be seen from the security cameras when you're inside. What the players didn't know is that the little fucks had gotten a hold of a demonic spray-paint can designed to encourage them to such poor behavior, and after a particularly harrowing shift they left the kids alone too long.

>>71286735
it's a really fun system.Sadly the creator I think stopped working on it-the rules are done but the monsters and settings part is incomplete. It was on a Tumblr until recently(the page is gone sadly, seems like the creator hadn't updated it for years anyway). I can upload it to mediafire or something if you'd like anon.

I ran two campaigns out of it- One Night Shift(working a roadside 50s diner+gas station rest stop), and one kinda-spooky but not night shift game based around a native american folk-tale.

>>71286818
Both of those games sound like a good time.

>>71286849
I can greentext/storytime if any anons are interested, since both campaigns finished with a pretty solid ending. I was real proud of the night shift campaign- I made up a shit ton of minor, annoying rules that had to be followed every night, sent them all an email of them from the 'shift manager'(They never met him or her), then threw stuff at them to see if they'd forget not to answer the Green telephone say, or fail to keep the coffee pot full, etc.

>>71286921
I'd be very interested in any stories you feel like sharing. I can really appreciate you making the characters' and player's shifts more difficult with irksome regulations and hassles.

>>71286921
>>71286959
Seconded

>>71286959
Sure. So for setup I gave all my players a list of positions in the rest stop(It was one of those combined diner/gas station/auto shop - the first two were open during Night shift, the auto shop was day shift only). I also wrote up a hundred random, vague 'secrets' - each player got one and got to tell me what they wanted it to be, then I secretly went behind them and rolled a second time, and didn't tell them, but adapted it to whatever they told me their secret was. Examples for secrets are things like 'The Deer Watch You' or 'the police know what you did'.

>>Be GM, with 4 players.
>>Player 1 picks a middle-aged, tired single mom that's the head waitress for the diner. Known secret: 'You carry the Spirit of the Bezerker' Unkown Secret: You are related to the Savior of Mankind
>>Player 2 picks cook for the diner. Known secret: 'She's coming'. Unknown secret: 'The Police know what you did'
>>Player 3 makes super young cashier/attendant guy.Known secret: The Deer are Watching. Unkown Secret: You are Imaginary
>>Player 4 - picks attendant for the station. Known secret: You are the God of something completely useless. Unknown Secret: Your Home is Lost.
<cont>

>>71287122
Now, I gave them a list of iirc, of about 30 rules - Most of them were inane and easy. Don't answer the Green telephone. Don't go into the Manager's office. Don't look into the employee of the month picture's eyes after 3am. The outdoor bathrooms on one end of the parking must be inspected every hour. The light on the far end of the parking lot went out constantly(faulty wiring) - they had to go out and wiggle it to get the lights back on. if they didn't, the other lights would start to go out and...things...would start showing up in the parking lot. At the same time, there was atrict rule that someone had to be in the station at all times unless the whole building was locked(the doors would sometimes lock randomly if let unattended, trapping everyone in or outside). I grabbed a bunch of stuff from Night shift threads here on /tg/ too, mostly minor crap. Each session was one night across a week(Sunday-Saturday), and anyone who didn't show up or came in late got slotted in as having called out sick, having their day off, or had just been hired/was coming back to work after days off.
>>Sunday - Players there for session : 1, 3, 4.
>>tell player 3 the first thing he remembers of the day is clocking in right before player 4. Player 4 decides he got stuck working at the station because it never, ever can get completely clean no matter how hard he scrubs, but he can't leave because it isn't finished being clean.
>>Player 1 gets told there's no cook, and spends most of the evening talking to a Gentlemen whose face she can't make out, who wants coffee(thankfully she can keep it full), that reminds her of her Ex, the one who left her with a kid and a dead-end job at the diner because she beat the shit out of her last boss for getting handsy.
<cont.> (sorry if these end up short or long, I lurk way more than I ever post)

>>71287277
I'm glad to read whatever you're willing to post. These threads have always been some of my favorites.

>>Sunday night is mostly a run-down of the basic stuff they have to do. I throw in a few spoops like having a deer trapped in the bathroom when Player 3 goes to clean it, or Player 4 selling a candy bar to a tall figure in a trenchcoat and hat that sounds like three children stacked on top of one another. Only the hand that comes out of the trenchcoat isn't the right color, and the taillights of the car it takes off in go *up* when it gets past the parking lot.

>>Monday Night: Players 2,3, 4. I introduce the bunch of punk-kids sharing a spray paint can. They won't give the can up(Player 4 flubs a roll to grab it, but manages to chase them away from tagging the back of the store). Player 2 and 3 go together to wiggle the wire to the far-light. As he does the light comes on to show a hundred-plus deer filling the empty road to the opposite shoulder, staring at them without moving. As soon as the lights come on, they start to disperse. Halfway through they forget to keep the hot dog cooker fully stocked. The Man in the Business Suit is displeased, and a lot of the lights go out that night. The players spend most of the rest of monday night frantically juggling fixing the lights with keeping all the inane shit done like the bathrooms.

>>71235429
The Red Box out front, regardless of what is selected, only produces copies of the 1925 production on Wizard of Oz on U-magic tape.

Should a person manage to find a player the Larry Semon film is rendered in 4k 16:9 regardless of the televisions capabilities.

A stinger at the end of the film reads: "Be not quiet the children of Oz, the reckoning comes by heavenly wing on the splinter of the moon and stars."

This is in a hand written Gothic script on a black background.

I use 2D4 to decide how long an encounter with a customer lasts.
I use 3D20 to decide how long a task lasts.

Need to restock the shelves, ok, it's going to take 3D20 minutes to do. O-oh, at 11:11 you are being chased by a butt pirate. Welp, you put 11 minutes into the shelves but you'll need 7 more minutes to complete this task. I find it's the best way to do a minute by minute / hour by hour game.

>>71287388
For some reason, I'm liking the watching deer and the I'm especially liking the light that needs periodic futzing. It's a relatively minor task, but it takes the character or characters far away from their coworkers and the relative safety of the station, and if it's neglected it can plunge the place into darkness and danger.

>>Tuesday night: Players 1 2 3 4 on duty.
>>1+2 spend most of the evening replacing coffee pots that keep vanishing, and 3+4 keep finding their brooms and mops chewed on. They were a lot more focused, so not much happens, except She calls for player 2, on the diner phone. 1 answers, She sounds jealous and suspicious of 1.
>>2 freaks out(He'd decided 'She' was a murderous Ex) and hides in the kitchen most of the night, staring at the sole coffee pot and making sure it stays filled. 3+4 team up with 1 to find mroe brooms/mops. They forget about the paint can kids until 4am, but manage to remember and 4 scrubs the wall clean.

>>Wednesday night: Players 1-4 on duty. Player 3 is told he can't remember anything between tuesday morning and starting shift, when asked about it by 2 and 4. 2 and 4 press him, until a deer walks into the glass of the door until it opens, walks up, grabs a bag of chips in its mouth, and stares at 3 until he puts money in the till for it.

>>they find all the lost coffee pots in the third outdoor bathroom, where the deer had been. They forget about the lights(By Wed. night I stopped reminding them about things)

>>'Her' number calls 2's personal cell phone(despite me stating early-on there's zero reception)- instead of her, it's the police. They ask 2 if he's been in contact with 2. They ask where he is and ask him to stay on the phone, because they'd like to ask him Questions. he flushes the phone and spends thursday with 1.
>>71287523
The Deer creeped out the whole party, even though they were non-threatening. They still complain the Deer(capital D) had ulterior motives. The lights at the station were a barrier and I used it to show how dangerous the place got the more lights went off.

>>Thursday - All four working. 3 wakes up surrounded by Deer just before sunset staring at him and licking his face by the dumpsters out back. 1 finds him, makes sure he's okay, gets him a bagel. Small electrical gremlins plague the store on Thursday night. The party spends most of the evening hunting them down, while they eat the batteries in the station. The batteries they need for the high-powered flashlights because the outside lights(all of them), were acting funny that night. There are no Deer during the night, just Problems. Strange things move in the dark outside, and the last hour the only lights on are in the station proper. A police car shows up, knocking on the door asking for 2. Their are two officers, one tall with a handlebar mustache.The other a short, wide-set black man. They don't seem to notice the Things outside. They inform 2 through the locked door that She's escaped and they want to protect him, but they act weird and 2 refuses. They leave as dawn comes. 1 Offers to drive 3 home. 3 is unable to tell her where he lives besides the nearby town, no matter how hard he tries to remember. He vanishes on the drive home from 1s car.The paint-can kids avoid the station that night.

>>Friday - Player 3 had to skip the last two sessions. 1, 2, and 4 see 3 in weird places outside on the security cameras(on top of the bathroom, across the street, behind the chainlink fence behind the station, but only when they're all inside.) A building has shown up across the street, the sign reads: ROCHE MOTEL. VACANCY: OPEN. >>The players are genre savvy and try to ignore it. She shows up while 2 is working on the light. She's in an old classic car, and runs him into the Motel chasing him. The Motel is moldy and uncomfortably warm. It is also staffed by man-sized cockroaches in motel staff uniforms, who are otherwise kind of nice actually. 2 is polite because they're also working stiffs.
<cont>

>>They hide 2 from Her, and tell him if he can figure how to get out of the Roach Motel, they'll run her in circles forever and She won't get out because he didn't treat them like monsters, and She's a Bitch.
>>2 manages to get out with some clever ideas(He figures out how to set a fire in one of the moldy rooms and how the motel 'shifts' so you can never leave, and escapes. He finds himself on an empty patch of road. The cops before pick him up but the inside of the car is dark, so he doesn't notice they're also roaches until they start telling him They Know What He Did. A Deer runs in front of them and the car crashes. 1 and 4 come out and save 2
>>they forget about the kids and the spray paint

>>Saturday - 1, 2, and 4 The kids finish the spray-paint Summoning sign. It summons a 9 foot tall chrome, gold, and primer white demon with a neck and head like the top of a spray paint can mixed with a demon. It sprays paint when it screams and immediately eats three of the four paint-can kids, and starts destroying the lights, wanting to use the eldritch power of the Station for its own. 4 holds it off with a flare gun from 1's emergency kit in hre car. 1 decides to tap ALL of her extra action dice for the night, and channels ancient Viking Beserker-Spirit, and proceeds to start smacking the ever loving shit out of the Demon, who is very confused.(She rolled 3 sixes and a 5 in a system where 2 sixes is a critical success)

>>4 manages to power-wash off the symbol, weakening the demon, while 2 fixes the lights. All The Lights cause it to poof. The Green Phone goes off inside, because they'd all gone outside to deal with the Demon.

>>Someone answers it.

>>They wake up in the morning and everything is fixed. Day Shift complains they forgot to keep the coffee pot filled. They're all docked 5$ from their pay for it because Day Shift's Manager logs it. Assholes.

>>71287906
That's about it. Hope it was fun for anons to read. I can go into deeper detail if anyone wants or has questions about stuff. It was a really fun, comfy campaign I ran between some other bigger, more serious campaigns for about a month and a half.

>>71287949
did you see any of the campaign prompts in this thread? Quite a few of them are really good.

>>71288183

I did.

I liked the rv/motor home idling in the parking lot. I also like the ant summoning circle.

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>>71288283
>ant summoning circle
Never trust a bug

>>71288502
I like it because its something small and probably takes time, and you could describe it happening across an hour or two a night.

>>71235429
A thought-completely-lost episode of Peppermint Park is the housing for a VCR demon who causes problems for the workplace.

>>71248548
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Night_Shift

That's generally the idea of the "official" (using the term EXTREMELY loosely) rules, or at least the ones collected in the link above. The primary goal for the PCs is "survive." Other shit, like saving up to move to somewhere that's not straight out of a fucking nightmare, is secondary.

Although, considering the ritual circles out back, dying may not necessarily be end of any given character's career at the Stop N' Gas.

>Every night at 11:35 you hear banging from the cover to the gas reservoir when you open it you see a firey pit and a demon who hands you a 50$ and politely askes you to run and grab him 2 six packs before the cut off time.

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>every time you touch the gas pump the moon turns a different color and has a letter carved into it. It's almost like it's trying to tell you something...

>>71258504
Sounds like it could be fun anon. Good luck

>>71237291
When did we get a 3rd isle?

>>71289067
>Although, considering the ritual circles out back, dying may not necessarily be end of any given character's career at the Stop N' Gas.

In at least a few old threads and anons' games, there have been ghosts of former attendants who have hung around or been stuck at the station. Some of these ghosts have been more helpful and wholesome than others.

>>71237291
I thought the new shipment of anime girls was canceled?

>>71291607
That was the garden gnomes. We don't talk about those.

>The Indian working the station across the road is trying to signal you subtly, he's clearly peed his pants, but there is no immediate threat... He's going about business as usual outside giving you frightened looks

>>71292189
>There is... something... clinging to the roof of the station. You know this. As long as you don’t acknowledge it, you’ll be fine. Probably.

>>71286602
>>71286616
>Working at a gas station in Langley

>>71287949
Can you give us the list of the random secrets you wrote up? I'm really digging what you did with it.

Question: How do you prefer your senior/more experienced night shift workers? Are they more knowledgeable about the kind of shit they deal with every night, do they know what to look out for and actively take precautions? Or are they checked out, only doing the bare minimum to get their tasks done and avoid trouble, supernatural or otherwise? The first option seems more believable as to how those people could survive that long in a setting where any small thing could potentially kill you, but it seems way too heroic for the general feel of a NS setting. The latter feels more like the kind of person who would get hired for the graveyard shift in the first place, too.

Night Shift is a neat little writing prompt but it makes for kind of a lame game.

>>71292720
I'll try looking around for them but I think I lost it since it's been 3-4 years, sorry anon. I just wrote vague statements on a piece of paper that could be interpreted a dozen different ways and wrote them 1-100 so I could roll percentile and pick for the players. None of them were more than a single line(<12 lines) though.
Some examples that didn't show up in the campaign, that I remember:
'The Manager knows your Real Name'
'Smile you're on Camera'
'You don't actually work here'
'You work for Management'(fun as a hidden secret IMO)
'You aren't real' (different than being imaginary)
'Everyone else isn't real'
'You are the Betrayer'
'You are the Savior'

>>71292919
I think a senior shift worker is one that's not paranoid or crazy, just numb to the weird. Get through the shift and go home. The best way to have senior Night Shift crew is to have very specific rules the shift have to follow, and have them know how to do it with the least amount of fuss. Play them against younger, newer workers, where they have to balance 'Do i want to deal with this shit that could kill me' vs. 'Do I let these youngins die'

>>71292986
The trick to making it a fun game is to use a system that's not very crunch heavy(The players should only be making a roll or two when SHTF tops), and give the Players a pile of things to constantly need to be doing/checking up on. The hardest balance is being too subtle vs. there being too much weird shit. Too little/subtle and the players stop being spooped. Too much and it becomes a a dumb resident evil game. Mostly, I had weird things happen whenever the Players got complacent, but also gave them time to catch a breath. It is a night shift after all.

>>71293007
The idea of giving the characters secrets is an appealing one, especially in the context of a Night Shift game. I’ll try to think up a few mundane and paranormal ones myself.

>You need this job more than the others.
>You’re haunted by a friend long dead.
>You keep your rage well bottled up.
>You suspect your girlfriend isn’t human.
>You have a warrant two states over.
>You were born under an unlucky star.
>You only have a few months left to live.
>You are being protected by something.
>You are bit of a conspiracy theorist.
>You get unearthly and unsavory cravings.

>>71292986
>>71293071
As you’ve pointed out, Night Shift is heavily narrativistic and doesn’t mesh well with game systems that rely on a lot of complicated mechanics. If you are a GM or player who prefers their games to be especially “gamey” and crunch intensive, Night Shift night not be the setting for you.

>>71293559
Yeah. A big contingent/question to horror/scary stuff is 'why would anyone stay past the first night' - and giving players secrets like being wanted criminals or very very minor supernatural elements is a good way to do it. I was up front that the Players would have a hidden secret in my game, and it gave otherwise small, minor characters a lot more personality.

>>71293701
This for sure. I think it'd be fun to use Night Shift as a one or two-session off game to build the horror aspect of a far more shooty/crunchy game in the style of Resident evil or the like though- Play the poor sods about to be gnawed to death by Zombies, then let the main campaign enter a gas station and find their old characters or something.

>>71293845
>main zombie campaign characters enter gas station
>meet one of their old characters manning the till as if nothing happened
>another character shuffles around, zombified
>but instead of moaning for brains, they moan about their tasks, which they do... slowly...
>the rest of the gas station characters treat them normally
>while the zombie campaign characters freak the fuck out
>and the gas station's night shift quirks still happen at night

>>71293992
It might make for a fun session to have a group of hardened Walking Dead-esque zombie apocalypse survivors stumble into the station. You would okay their gritty, edgy, angsty genre expectations off the Night Shift’s lighter and more lackadaisical dark humor and paranormal slice of life setting.

>>71237291
Fuck those kids. They do shit like that all the time IRL.

>Suddenly, the ceiling shatters and a man falls down from a compartment you didn't know existed. He greets you as if you're old friends.

>A venetian merchant arrives, and wants to barter goods for a bolt of dyed cloth.

>the Gestapo trashes your store searching for jews

>A crackhead attempts a robbery

>An animal rights group floods your store, chanting about unleashing the thing in the freezer

>You've just started working here, and the previous employee leaves a note saying to leave some chili cheese nuggets in the dumbwaiter. There's just one floor.

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>>71289598
But Anon, Aisle 3 has always been there.
Always.

>>71294835
>>Suddenly, the ceiling shatters and a man falls down from a compartment you didn't know existed. He greets you as if you're old friends.
hey ron

>>71295109
hey billy

>>71294946
I’m always a big fan of non-Euclidean architecture that changes every so often. I think in an old thread that it was suggested that the interior of the station doesn’t always match the exterior, and can shift in subtle ways over the course of the campaign.

>>71273321
>>71281219
There's a 75% chance Mangamenet consists of eldritch abominations.

>>71295205
Management is definitely otherworldly if not entirely eldritch in nature. When entering the Back Office, attendants should feel like they’re trespassing into a different dimension slightly out of sync with our own. Attendants should feel like they’re being watched even though the room has no windows and there’s no one inside. The dated decor and furnishings feel more like set dressing than anything meant for an actual manager to use, and the lighting has the faintest aquarium green tint to it. The green phone itself should instill contradictory feelings of dread and relief in the attendant chosen to use it.

Whats the ideal number of players for this game, not including the GM? I just learned about this game, and before reading the pdfs I assumed the optimal number was just 1 on 1 for maximum spookiness.

>>71295998
3-6. You need other people to be scared, and it makes it much scarier to have to send people into different locations alone.Add more people, there's more for them to have to remember, and more likely they'll forget shit.

>>71273321
>How much should Dayshift and Management be aware of the bullshit that goes on?
Dayshift should know next to nothing nothing, because they're mostly burnouts that can work the 9-5 hours, clock out, and go home before the weird shit happens. Management should either be immune/unaware of the horror(If a shift manager) or have strange eldritch designs of their own(if corporate).

>Also how big should the station be?
As big or small as needed. The fun thing about highway rest stops(at least in the US) is that they vary wildly in size. There's a ton of combo gas station/mini-trail museums, which could lead to fun colonial or civil-war era stuff.
>>tfw there's a rest stop I used to work at that had giant wax figures of Washington and Prussian soldiers.

>>71294835
>>A crackhead attempts a robbery
These are some of my favorites to throw in. Just have some of the threats be completely mundane. An asshole with a gun or a knife should be just as terrifying as some weird spider horror hiding behind the dumpster out back, if not more.

>>71295998
Personally, I’d say that four players would be the maximum that you’d want to have for a Night Shift game. Any more, and it becomes too difficult to keep track of their actions if and when they split up to take care of different tasks or threats. Although I think Night Shift would work well one-in-one, I feel like I’d want two players as a minimum so that they can play off each other.

>>71296158
Bonus points if the crackhead comes in just as the Viking Longboat rows into the station and starts freaking out.

>>71296202
Playing normal and paranormal events and threats off each other can be lots of fun.

>>71273321
imo, the Management should not be physically present. It doesn't matter if the phone works or not, to me, they are your hypothetical authority, who have never visited the store or ever met any employee. Any interaction is between you and a bored secretary who'll just tell you to fill out the form. Sometimes you'll get a mysterious email from them. No matter what, their function is a kafkaesque hierarchy that's completely above you, and is completely unrelated to the strangeness going on. They may be strange in their own way, but in the end, they're wholly uninterested and just see you as a regular ass employee in a regular ass gas station whose logo they bought in the 2008 recession, or something like that. THey're definitely not present, but the threat of them being present can be used as a motivator to clean up all that weird shit.

>>71296314
The Board from the game CONTROL might be a good model for our Management, though we’d probably want to crank down their overtly eldritch portrayal.

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>>71296774
>The gas station is a place of power
Remedy you hacks

>>71294946
Aisle 3 has always been the 'mystery' aisle since the shit that pops up on it, changes from day to day. I just don't bother with keeping stock of the shit there anymore.

>>71281219
In my own experience as a night guard, the shift supervisor, the closest person you'll see to management right until 8 or 9 in the morning comes in, enters the backroom and falls asleep or screws around faking busywork until the shift ends.
Meanwhile management has no idea what's going on, doesn't particularly care that you got threatened by a homeless drug addict and will become angry if you don't manage to complete the tasks they assign including what the day shift forgot to do. Every mistake is blamed on you and if you manage to accomplish the Herculean list of tasks they've left your only reward is more tasks.
You'd quit but you need the money and at least you can read a book or watch something on your phone during your buddy's rotation. Eventually you either make day shift or burnout and find another job, provided there is one.

>>71296897
I enjoy the notion that the gas station is special, somehow, and that there is a reason why the paranormal is attracted to it. Do I think that this reason should be made important or explained? Probably not, but the station could be considered a “place of power” regardless.

>A bunch of weary g-men in cheap suits stop in at the station in the midst of a minor supernatural crisis. They don’t seem at all surprised by what they see, and pretty handily find and contain the cause. On their way out they buy a round of coffees and a heap of snacks before tossing their cars down on the counter in case the attendants have any further questions, as if the whole thing were routine.

>>71297628
For some reason, I read "homeless" as "headless" and didn't think anything was weird until like a minute later.

>>71297628
Replace “burn out” with “disappear mysteriously,” or “get dragged off by shadowmen,” or “literally get set on fire” and you have the Night Shift.

You’re right that Management does not care about the attendants, or that they care about them only insofar as they are their tools and proxies at the gas station.

>>71296258
It could also add an aditional layer of need. The worst shit tends to revert back to normal by daybreak bar a bit of petty damage or mess (that gets taken out of your wages). Even dead staff members ome back (but sometimes changed).

The problem is that Mr Crackhead is perfectly mundane and not on the payroll. If he pissess off the vikings they might give him an axe to the head. The police aren't going to believe that he was killed by vikings.

>>71298264
I’d say that any threat that can cause more damage than can be explained away by the assholes on the Day Shift might be a game-over if it’s not stopped.

I’ve not really been much of a fan of idea that damage to the station and PC deaths are somehow reverted once the sun comes up, but that’s totally personal preference talking. I’m not opposed to some dead PCs coming back to life on occasion, but I wouldn’t make it a game mechanic that the characters or their players can rely on.

>>71297697
Just makes sense.

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>you hear chattering coming from the office
>you open the door to see an employee who you've never met before playing a tabletop RPG with some creatures, they don't notice your presence
>they seem to be playing as you and the other Get-Gas N Gulp employees
>one of the creatures rolls for something and you suddenly get the urge to close the door

>>71264077
>>71264142
tldrlol

>>71300272
>weird acquaintance of the owner came in and I was spooped
It's even more half-baked than the stuff he complained about.

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https://youtu.be/0FR4FdUANWw

>>71294946
>>71295146
Yes. Yes it has. However, it isn't always there.

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>>71289244

I have two friends who want to play this game with me as GM, I plan it do it over text so I can describe to one of them when the other is nowhere to be found if something were to happen- or if they split up in the store to do tasks. Think that could be spoopy, with just 2 people instead of 3 or 4?

>>71306454
There's no reason that it can't be spooky with just a GM and player, and not having so many PCs to wrangle might make things easier on the GM, but if there is only going to be one player character, I would make sure to have a few good recurring NPCs around for that PC to interact with, unless what you're going for is the feeling of COMPLETE isolation.

How about some not-so-horrible happenings?

>A group of film students visit the gas station, wanting to use the place for just a couple scenes. Their bumbling, hamfisted production provides some welcome amusement, and the PCs are even invited to be extras in background.

>There have been sightings around the station of a ghost dressed in what seems to be an employee uniform, and every so often the PCs will find that one of their nightly chores has been done for them while they were otherwise preoccupied.

>A particularly tasty order of snack items has been (allowed to) expire and must be pulled from the shelves (or hiding place) and disposed of. In this case, disposal means feasting.

>An box of old computer games on CD and diskette is discovered in the back office. Many games are unknown to the PCs and resist googling. One seems to be a simulation game based on the station and attendants.

>The night’s shift is unusually but blessedly quiet, and the radio has been playing nothing but hits one after another. The PCs are given the chance to relax and finish their tasks early for once.

>One of the microwaves on the hot food counter seems to turn things put inside it into other things depending on the settings selected. A night’s worth of experimentation yields some interesting and amusing results.

>>71308384
Isolation has always been a part of Night Shift, so running a one player game night make it scarier.

>>71297730
Given that Management has a vested interest in making sure that the Station doesn’t get destroyed and is willing to provide begrudged advice on how to keep this from happening, they’re at least nominally on the Attendants’ side.

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>>71235429
There is a correct way to run a nightshift game - there is already a system well suited for atmospheric oneshots about spiralling into madness. Just put characters in a confined space with little else going outside of it, and a whole lot happenning inside.

>>71281219
>"Hello, Management? We just had a guy come in who only speaks- Carl, would you say it's Esperanto?"
>"I'd say it's Esperanto."
>"Carl would say it's Esperanto. Anyway, we can't make heads or tails of what he's saying, and he refuses to leave."
>"All Gas-n-Go employees should be able to do whatever is necessary to assist customers with their purchases."
>"Yeah, but- he hung up. Any idea where we can find a Redditor this time of night?"

>>71309371
>There have been sightings around the station of a ghost dressed in what seems to be an employee uniform, and every so often the PCs will find that one of their nightly chores has been done for them while they were otherwise preoccupied.

This is part of the old Night Shift lore. The ghost of the Assistant Manager from back in 1987 still haunts the store, and occasionally makes herself useful.

>>71281820
Better segue still: they get transported back to 800AD, and are promptly hired to run the overnight shift at a tavern.

QuikTrip register jockey here. We're a lot more active than most gas station workers, but if anyone's interested I could give a bit of insight into what sort of tasks the players are expected to get done on a shift.

>>71311695
I remember that she featured in some early greentexts and that a few Anons storytimed games that had included her. On one hand it’s sweet that there’s this helpful ghost that wants to make sure her “coworkers” are alright, but on the other hand, how much must it suck for her to be stuck for eternity at the gas station?

>>71312235
It's not for eternity, just until her contract is up and/or her debt is repaid.

>>71312235
>stuck for eternity at the gas station
I don't get it. What makes her different than literally any other middle-aged female assistant gas station manager?

>>71312319
Oh fuck. I feel like I remember some of that “old lore” about her doing something that saved the station from a major disaster. Maybe she called management and got they help they needed at the cost of working a little “overtime.”

>>71311164
I don't think the typical "Everyone goes mad the end" shtick works very well for night shift. It's more about people who find the paranormal more annoying and expected and are just trying to do their job and at the end of the day go "wow that was crazy huh" while punching out.

>>71312342
I’m guessing that the difference between a “lifer” at a gas station and an “afterlifer” at our gas station is that the ghost of the assistant manager can’t actually leave the property and might only exist from sundown to sunup each night shift. I’d also imagine that actually communicating and building relationships with the newer attendants might be difficult.

>>71312417
Exactly. It’s part of the “charm” of this setting, if you can call it that.

>>71296314
I'd say that if we aren't going down the eldritch abomination path with managment then they should be still a mystery.

They don't always answer the phone and when they do there is often a time delay as if it's an international call. A really distant nation. And there is shit in the background. This includes but is not limited to;

>the sound of roaring fire and screaming
>gunfire and people yelling
>a siren blaring
>a helecopter
>a rock/heavy metal festival
>the sound of a life support heart monitor and hushed whispers
>an odd echo, speaking quietly and occasonally footsteps

The managment are possbly in a high-octane FPS bullet hell Doom clone with ocassional stealth levels and hub world. Or they've moved their office to Hell for the cheap rent.

>>71255295
>friendly werewolf salesman
FOR THE LAST TIME, MAN, I’M NOT BUYING ANY WEREWOLVES!

>>71314971
I actually really like this idea. You’re phoning someplace and someone you really shouldn’t.

>A ship at sea during a terribly violent storm.
>The middle of what sounds like a Catholic mass.
>Amidst a noisy swarm of mosquitos and wasps.
>In a room with monkeys banging on typewriters.

>>71315465
The important thing is that it should never be revealed what managment does, the players must never know who or what they work for. just like real life

>>71316854
The gas station is not Management's only business venture and you should not monopolize their time.

>The ceiling of the bathroom has been replaced with a giant mirror. There's nothing supernatural about the mirror but it is awkward to watch yourself go to the bathroom.
>Staff is convinced that management wants them to sell out of the strawberry mountain dew by the end of the shift or they will lose their jobs. Problem is no one has any idea where the strawberry mountain dew or if it's even a real product.
>A customer needs help filling up their car by pump 6. However when you try to walk to pump 6 it never seems to get any closer and the customer is getting increasingly annoyed.
>The mops have started multiplying again
>It's now 35 o'clock and you could've sworn you shift was only supposed to be 8 hours long

>There seems to be something inside every jug of milk inside the coolers at the back of the store. It's hard to tell what that something is, given the white opacity of the beverage, but it seems to be covered in stringy hair and angry.

>A group of teens have taken to doing some late night skateboarding outside the station, but after a while their hoots and hollers abruptly stop. Upon investigation the teens are nowhere to be seen, their boards and gear abandoned.

>A pair of eyeglasses were left on top of the gas pumps outside by a customer a long time ago. If tried on, these glasses begin showing the attendants a vision of a man wearing the same glasses hiding around the station.

>>71258195
That's actually pretty interesting. Any more stories, Anon?

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>>71320329
Wrong image

>>71282211
It's alright, Anon. You're just not in deep enough yet. Give it time.

>A group of wizards show up and draw a symble in the middle of the parking lot and perform a ritual.

>A beautiful women walks in and buys a case of beer and cigarettes you there seems to be a strange light comeing off her back that you can't quite make out it looks almost like wings.

>You find a hobo asleep in one of the back alses.

>Three old men show up and start playing craps by the frount door.

>On the toy rack in the corner is a tin toy ray gun marked 254¥ that no one buys and and most customers seen unable to see between 12:00 am and 3:00 it fires for real but is unrelyable.

how would you run a lewd night shift game

>>71323214
Like the cheesiest of b-movies.

>>71323214
You get to fuck the night creature who was causing all the problems.

>>71312417
>>71313012
Substitute "madness" for exhaustion. Now everyone has to deal with crazy shit just as safely as possible to keep their eyes open overnight and not get fired.

>>71314971
>Or they've moved their office to Hell for the cheap rent.

I like this, it's supernatural and mundane.

>>71323214
>>71323456
>>71323496
A little bit of lewd content is perhaps not TOTALLY incompatible with the Night Shift setting.

>A trio of comely women leaning heavily into the goth aesthetic come to the station in a black Volkswagen beetle and immediately begin to proposition any attendant that helps them. Are they trying to seduce a sacrifice, or just really horny? Is it worth the risk?

>Out of service stall #2 in the men's bathroom has long hosted a many-tentacled "something" that that is surprisingly non-violent in nature. On the contrary, the thing seems rather friendly and even "amorous" where certain individuals are concerned, leading to some odd ideas.

>The Ghost of the Assistant Manager has felt alone for a very long time, so when an attendant is hired who can actually see her a bond quickly forms between them. Romantic relationships between coworkers (living and the dead) are frowned upon by Management, but...

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>>71325061
>Romantic relationships between coworkers (living and the dead) are frowned upon by Management, but...

>>71325061
>As per the handy employee manual, Management discourages relationships between employees. These relationships include (but are not limited to): romance, friendship, kinship, soul-sharing, etc. etc. etc.

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>>71319495
Oh, tons, and some that are a lot more interesting. I'm not sure how many could be considered on topic for this thread, though. Only reason I hadn't told them before is that I'm not sure which board would be appropriate for them.
This pic is from someone else. You only see people this "special" once in a very blue moon, but they exist, and 85% of the time it's because of meth.

>>71324771
The mixing of mundane and paranormal elements is a hallmark of the setting for sure.

>>71285923
Is this from some pdf? Are there other examples like this?

Why do none of the rulebooks on 1d4chan actually explain what a portent is?

>>71326641
A portent is more a literary device. Take for instance that one Anon's "the deer are watching" shtick.

A series of related portents might include:

>finding human bodies outside the station gored, trampled, or chewed to the bone (suggests sacrifice or taste for flesh)
>A recurring NPC over time starts out as a breath of fresh air, but over a week starts to take on more deer-like behaviors (suggests some sort of were-deer thing; maybe you need to kill the original?)
>A band of hunters enter the gas station desperate for ammo. They think they're hunting the god of all deer, and by god they need something with more oomph to put the bastard down. One of them visited the station before years before you were hired and knows you guys have a supply of "the good shit" that should be capable of putting it down (final portent, some periodic visitation by a god of ruminants/the wilds has reappeared, and must be stopped; if left alone the deer perform sacrifices to strengthen the God deer and start turning the unsuspecting into deer. To stop it, you must get to the bottom of what the hell this gas station in particular has to do with it. Maybe rifle through the notes in the Office? Check the old displays in the roof of the stock stock room? Check the old hazmat bin that no one but the hunter can ever remembers hearing a thing about?").

It's that sort of thing. It's foreshadowing. The "story" is guaranteed to already be in the player's heads. You just need to pick enough strings and line them up convincingly to get them to connect and run with them.

Or they turn into deer. No biggy.

>>71326554
I think a few more may have been made in the old threads, but I think they were more mockups produced by bored Anons rather than a dedicated effort to create a full book of threat modules.

>>71326641
>>71326968
Portents are indeed like literary/narrative cues And set pieces that are thematically connected with whatever that night’s threat is. They usually start off subtle and innocuous and become more distracting and dangerous as the shift progresses. These cues and set pieces include both hassles and hazards for the attendant PCs to deal with as well as hint and clues that should help them identify the threat and ideally work out how to fix it.

>>71327100
>>71326968
It might also be a useful way to build a horror story without having to plan everything out from start to finish or overthink things too much. All you need to do is come up with a series of these escalating portents leading up to a doomsday scenario and let the players fill in the blanks.

>>71311976
Do tell.

>A small, wind-up toy car pulls up in front of the station and clowns begin pouring out.

>The station now no longer accepts checks and customers are not happy.

>Every night the same customer comes in to cash a winning lotto ticket.

>The employees are especially unlucky tonight.

>>71328024
Something tells me those last two might be connected.

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>>71326968
I like the deer thing. It’s a threat that’s certainly big and bad, but is also local and idiosyncratic.

>>71242738
>All the attendants suddenly come to the realization that they have "lost" the hour between 12:37 and 1:37 and must attempt to discover what happened in that span of time.
Daylight Savings Time, you mooks.

>>71329178
That's what they thought too, but the security cameras were whiting out for an hour when a vaguely human shaped blob of white light entered their field of view.

>>71329178
That, or maybe the young drifter stole a few hours from the group. She does look a lot fresher from taking so short a nap...

>>71329343
You. I like you. You're my kind of crazy.

>>71311976
If you have access to training manuals or procedural documentation that you could share, that'd be awesome reference material / handout fodder.

File: CSR-Training-Manual (1).pdf (748 KB, PDF)

748 KB PDF

>>71330021
quick web search yields this.

>>71330021
I wouldn't know how to go about sharing those, but I can explain how we divvy up mundane tasks. Basically, there's register, upkeeps, DAW, and the kitchen. Register is self-explanatory. You stand up at the register and take people's money. If you're not busy, you also stock cigarettes and the stuff on the racks by the counter. Upkeeps are your routine things you do to keep the store in shape. Brewing fresh coffee, sweeping the floor, wiping down the counters, refilling the roller grill, etc. DAW is one-off tasks that need to be done daily, semiweekly, weekly, or whatever. That's stuff like taking the tea urns off the floor and cleaning them, bagging ice, emptying all the trash cans, you get the idea. Kitchen is mostly self-explanatory. You make orders and make sure the fresh pizza slices are, well, fresh. You also clean the kitchen, do the dishes, and make sure that there's enough food prepped and thawing out for tomorrow. Depending on how busy the store is, these categories can be split between anywhere from two to six+ people. (I've seen stores that are right off a major truck route that have eight clerks in the morning.)

Obviously it's hard to translate all that into a rules-light game, but one way you might do it is with a checklist of specific tasks for the clerks to complete overnight, and a periodic skill check to see if they're doing the routine correctly. If they fail, maybe they put some improperly thawed hot dogs on the roller grill, causing them to stick to the roller grills and cause a massive pileup, with hot-dogs flopping over the edge and onto the floor.

>>71330170
This, plus some of the PDFs put together in the Old Threads night serve as good inspiration of some of us want to renew a little interest in a Night Shift manual. I’ve missed these brainstorming threads.

File: NightShift.pdf (363 KB, PDF)

363 KB PDF

Here's one of the old manuals from a previous thread.

Rolled 10 (1d20)

I roll to take a surreptitious smoke break.

>>71330609
The other attendants don’t notice you slip away and light up. Something else does, though.

>six odd-looking men wearing red jumpsuits and carrying toy laser guns walk into the store
>one of them looks at you suspiciously and asks you why you don't have any "Bouncy Bubble Beverage, tee-em" in stock

Rolled 2 (1d20)

>>71330845
Rolling to check the back

>>71331216
You find Bountiful Bubble Tea, Boing's Bouncy Tea Bubble Yum, but no Bouncy Bubble Beverage (TM).

The customer us not amused and demands to speak with a Manager.

>>71330326
Thank you!

>Memo from corporate saying that the Border Patrol has informed them of coyotes operating in the area, so be on the lookout for anyone who might be an "illegal alien"
>a succession of little green men, reptilians, greys, and two-headed Galactic Presidents come in to buy beers and smokes
>if a player asks to see their ID, most of them have perfectly authentic American driver's licenses or visas, but one gets shifty and tries to leave if challenged

>>71330239
Thanks! Stuff like the upkeeps and DAWs are the details that can help make the minimum-wage-trudgery come to life. If an 18th-century Prussian naval officer staggers into the station with an Apache arrow sticking out of his arm, that's great and all, but didn't you just get chewed out yesterday about having to mop the floor every night? Now he's tracking blood the floor and I think he's getting it all over the gift card display and I don't think this guy speaks English...

>>71247189
It's like the movie Legion, but maybe not as bad.

>>71251446
I've talked with a few bouncers for titty bars before and that's probably how it works based on what they've told me. You see tits every night it stops being novel and just becomes the job.

Humans can adapt to just about anything.

>>71255295
>Now I am trying to railroad them back to the station to stop some apocalyptic scenario to mild success.
Easy, make the gas station the crux of the problem. The baddie is from another dimension, the dimensional rift is located somewhere at the station. Seal the rift, or at least shift it, and baddie poofs back to their dimension.

If you told us more about the scenario this'd be easier.

>>71277039
>>Something has moved into one of the dumpsters out back that likes to eat garbage. Sometimes it requests specific kinds of trash, and will offer up useful items in return for the very rarest or most unsavory offerings.
>Carl, the longest employed guy on the shift who is due to move to day shift any day now, says the dumpster thing asked him for a dead body the other night. He's reluctant to admit it to you.
>You heard that Ashleigh, on day shift, was a no call no show today.

>>71281486
Piggy-backing off of this.

Let's say your group is a 3 man and they invite a friend to join in, making it a 4 man. Privately you tell your group that policy is only 2 people on night shift but due to a fuckup a third was hired and management has just not cared enough to fix it. This is a known fact by them, and honestly their best hope because it means one of them is likely to be moved to day shift when a spot opens up, but only if they do good work and don't come off as too weird.

Now the fourth you tell none of this shit to. You take him aside and privately tell him he's the newbie. Easy job easy money, just don't destroy the store. No training, he was told the others on shift would train him so he's to shadow them. Follow them around, watch what they do, he's not to be alone.

And now for the kicker, you have shenanigans go down in the store like any other session. Fourth player gets to play a normal game, your regulars get their heads fucked with.

>>71281924
>A woman walks up to the pumps, pulls one off, and begins drinking the gas without paying first.
Players do what they want to, but assuming it doesn't involve "stop that"-
>As she drinks her tits get bigger until eventually they're bulbous and obviously filled with liquid.
>If the players approach her she pulls out a lighter and threatens to bar-b-que them.
The point here is that if the register comes up short in the morning they'll be fired so the gas must be covered somehow, but the gas monster will also puke gas and ignite it killing them if they don't handle it well.
There's a couple factors to this:
How much gas was drunk? This will drive up the amount of money that must be raised to cover the til.
Do they get burnt and how badly? Or even possibly do they handle this very poorly and blow up the gas station?
Do they have enough money to cover the til, or do they need to figure out how to make some that night before day shift comes in and counts the til?

Set up scenarios thereafter, in an act-like sequence. Act 1 gas titties, Act 2 suspicious proposal to make money, Act 3 fallout from Acts 1 and 2. For a wrap-up day shift manager comes in and players get their come-uppance.

Meta-game goal is to save up money to start a youtube career or some such. Day time can be spent resting, using money to buy items, or training skills.


This is, of course, me brain-storming so take it or leave it.

>>71334006
What did Carl get in return, I wonder...

>>71309371
First one gave me an idea

>Management leaves a note saying that a tv crew will be doing a production at the station tonight, this is ok, but they are to pay for all snacks and employees are still expected to complete nightly duties.
>The TV crew shows up after a couple hours. They're shooting a paranormal show and apparently the gas station has had many reported ghost sightings. They wander around a bit before going outside to do a whisper test in the bathroom.
>The rest of the night has them running in and out of the station in fear, breathing heavily into their cameras, and generally being the pretentious fakes they always are.
>Except you notice there's less and less of them as the night goes on.

>>71333828
I’m too long winded for the scenario, but you’re not far off... the recurring ‘boss’ they have to fight is the sentient shadow of the night shift manager.

The manager is hell bent on revenge for getting his shadow stolen from him via supernatural night court, so behind the scenes the manager has been acquiring the capability to reform with his shadow to regain lost power.

The manager believes he can create a supernatural apocalypse by fusing him and his shadow to the source of supernatural energy underneath the station, and what the manager and players both don’t know is that this creates a time loop, putting players back at session 1 with all the knowledge of this upcoming betrayal and apocalyptic events.

So Here's the part that always got me: after the spooky shit happens, then what? There are a ton of prompts in the thread, most of them ae really good, but I just can never really think of a way to make them into something other than a slideshow of creepy stuff.

>>71237291
Again? Just get that fairy wand toy and say they have to go save the universe across the street.

>>71334709
Supernatural apocalypse in the sense of destroying the ties of this world to other planes/dimensions, because when no body is super, everyone is.

>while shooting the shit during some downtime, the clerks realize that nobody can recall having replaced the fountain syrup of a popular local brand of soda in several months
>inspecting the machine reveals that the bag of syrup is completely empty, but the machine still dispenses just fine

File: 15921760469_db202f82f9_b.jpg (160 KB, 765x1024)

160 KB JPG

>>71334801
That damn toy is what caused whatever the hell is happening in the first place!

>Clint the biweekly methhead comes in. He seems more shaken than usual. Says something is after him , for real this time. Runs over to the nacho machine and dunks his whole arm into the cheese leaves a fiver than runs out. Have to completely clean and replace the cheese. Find an old ring in the old batch while cleaning it out.

>The lotto machine shows the next days numbers. None of the regulars ever pick them and the one attendant that did is now the night manager. He never says why he never tried it again.

>the light on the coffeemaker is blinking again

>the same three cars keep driving by the store, the time between each pass is getting shorter each time

>boss called and said that a repair guy is coming in to fix the buzzing cooler

>there are three hornets nests out back, the exterminator went to get them a week ago but never returned

>>71334713
Night Shift campaigns tend to be rather episodic by nature, as each game session generally only cover's one night's shift and the setting as it's been characterized tends toward throwing supernaturally surreal, unrelated, one-off threats at the characters rather than there being a single over-arching storyline. This is fine for people who want to run supernatural slice-of-life campaigns or high-lethality "survive the gauntlet" campaigns but is a more difficult sell for people who want something in the middle.

If you want a Night Shift campaign with a start-to-finish plot, I would probably suggest coming up with a reason why the station attracts so much paranormal activity, and a reason why the player characters should find a way to stop it or potentially protect it. Then, you can just turn that idea into a campaign-spanning threat to be addressed, sprinkling its portents through each session in addition to the nightly disturbances and dangers the attendants have to deal with. In this way, you might be able to find what you're looking for.

>>71334333
Moved to day shift and a $0.45 raise.

Sure hope I did the spoilers right, haven't done them in literally years.

Is there a collected PDF of this game/system? Browsing the thread makes it seem pretty cool but I don't know if it's an actual homebrew game or just a bunch of ideas/'campaign hooks' being tossed around.

>>71337344
If I recall rightly, there were several potential systems that were assembled specifically for this setting or playtested with this setting to various degrees of effectiveness. The threads have been mostly about worldbuild and brainstorming though.

>>71337344
look up the 1d4chan page

>>71325193
Don't compromise store property

>>71251644

>An extremely pregnant woman and her husband come into the station to buy a specific brand of snack product that she's had a particularly strong late-night craving for. Just as they're about to check out with their purchases, the woman goes into labor and her husband, though well-meaning, is in no way equipped to handle the emergency situation at hand.

This is more terrifying than anything else mentioned so far.

Y'all are forgetting the worst threat that could happen to the folk on the night shift. Worse than any crackhead, worse than any spook, worse than even Management actually giving A Singular Fuck.

It appears in a pristine, sparkling mom van. It stomps into the store, throwing a receipt and some unidentifiable product down on the counter. It immediately starts screaming at you and demeaning you. A flush of panic rushes through you as The Karen demands to see your Manager.

>>71342070
She's just a regular human woman, isn't she? If anyone else made the kinds of unreasonable demands that she was, you'd have no trouble shutting them down, wouldn't you? But for some reason, Karen strikes a chord of fear within you.

>>71342360
Hve you ever had to deal with a Karen?

>>71342360
What if it's girl's night out?
Karen, Stacy, Virgin, and Thot?

Stacy would be driving (RIP the pumps)/klutzing about. of course. Karen would be irritated by the reckless driving, and taking out her impotent rage on anything else sapient in the nearby area. She's writing an awful lot of comments that are going into the feedback box... You don't know who has the key to it or where the slips of paper go.. The Thot would be trolling to distract and isolate one of the Attendants for a quickie/one night stand, and the Virgin is... up to something, though you're not sure if you can blame her, maybe she can be convinced to help keep the other women busy/get them out of the station before too many notes go into the feedback box...

>>71342439
Not personally, thankfully, but I was trying to give the attendant a bit of paranormal doubt about her.

>>71342360
>regular human woman

I don't know about that...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HMX-EkYUA0

>>71235429
Tell us about the gas station job experience, I work at Sonic and I'm trying to get a better job, hoping to work at a gas station or something. Is it spooky?

>>71343293
Oh no, T̛̗̭̞̹͇̦h̸̙͙̘̹̤̗e̫̠͇̩ ̛̰̹̳̩͓͢ͅK̟͖̯̪͘ḁ̛̠͚̳̟̼̺͟r̨̨̻̖̺͢e͙̣̙̜͕̩n̩͓ wants to see the manager but you are out of bullets (and complaints forms), what's your next action?

>>71343721
point to the sign that says "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and hope for the best

>>71343986
Damn dude, first day on the job? It was nice knowing you.

>>71343721
Offer to take a note of her complaint. Do not offer a refund, do not offer her store credit/free shit. Do not show weakness.

>this shit is still going
holy fuck nice. this is a week strong, and I thought /tg/ was dead. I'll have a bunch of stuff to read through tonight.

On a self plug note, would any anons be interested in me developing the system here >>71255276 ?

>>71343293
I might be overstimating this but, when did the "weird stories that happen to gas station clerks" started? The earliest instance that I've seen is actually from the first Night Shift thread in 2014. Since then I've seen creepypastas, books and comics appearing with that theme in common. Any previous instance that have a gas station make an appearance only at the beginning/end, when the protagonist finds his way to it, or the gas station make a brief appearance as whatever monster turns the clerk into a red splash on the back wall.
Correct me if I'm wrong but, did /tg/ start this flavour of slice of life horror?

>>71347151
In all honesty, I think you're dead-on. It was only in the years after the original Night Shift threads that I really noticed spooky slice-of-life stories featuring gas station attendants.

>>71347151
/tg/ has had many threads that revolved around weird and spooky things that happen in certain locations. I remember one that was about a little town in the desert, there was one about a town in the mountains. There was also a bunch of urban unease/horror threads that eventually touched upon a gas station. It was at first focused around an apartment complex, and a CYOA got built around that.

>>71348366
I think /tg/ has done atmospheric, surreal modern-day horror settings pretty well.

>>71348402
You gotta remember that there was a lot of goofy shit too. It's just that when repeating threads, the awful ideas get sorted out, while the really good ones get reposted. With enough time and enough monkeys, /tg/ can do anything well.

Archived the thread on Sup/tg/ if anyone wants it:

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=Night+Shift%3A+Different+Night%2C+Same+Supernatural+Shit

Hope we have another once this one falls off the board.

>>71348423
True enough.

>>71348366
>Those winter horror threads about courriers in snow crawler
>all the Urban Unease threads about the appartment complex
Great stuff, that one thread about the Magdalene Island in Canada was nice too

Question: I'm not so much a fan of RPGs but more of board games (main problem: we have no GM - or none of us wants to do the job -.- ) Do you guys see any way to turn Night Shift into a board game? I'm thinking... of something with a Board with a general plan of the store/station (surprise! -.- ) and a mini for every player to move from area to area (or being moved) to get tasks done. The tasks are given by pulling cards from a stack(or several, for mundane tasks, supernatural encounters, other weird stuff etc.) Every round another player pulls one or more cards with a short description and a flow chart giving your choices (simple Y/N-forks, small tables with numbers from rolling a die or counting tokens on the board or something like that) and bringing "NPCs" to the board or threats or something, to get a certain "randomness" to have some replay-value. Do you think this would work?

>>71349053

new thread

>>71342439
Diferent anon I met a wild Karen once told her to f you lady f you and lefty her ran up and screamed at me one last time to do what she demaned. Never heard a word from my boss on it.

>>71347151
There where a bunch of urban legend stuff I've heard going back to the 40s though I'd be surprised if night shift didn't jump start it.