October Vibes

Well, I have to lament that I have made few posts in the last few units of time. At the end of last month I had the notion that I might throw some horror-type material onto this blog. I had the thought right when I decided that I would ear-mark a post for Halloween. Come and pass the first seven days of the Halloween month, and naught has been coughed up by the blog.

Well, here's this blog post doing something about that!

October always evokes, for me at least, a period of anticipation. During September, I notice the first couple leaves that have turned color, cooler breezes, and the first hints at the smell of autumn. October is when this feeling intensifies. I get the impression "Something is happening!" or "Something is about to happen!" As October matures, things start to get real. TV channels show tired but comfortably familiar movies like Sleepy Hollow or Van Helsing or something else -- you get the idea. Along with the American-Cheese-Horror televised cinema, there's apple cider to make everything better. Then, the shit hits the fan. Halloween. Trick or treating, drunken escapades, ridiculous costumes in the bars that inevitably garner some shade, and finally nerds sit down and play spoopy RPGs. Then it's November, the anticipation is gone, because it's cold and everything that felt like it was about to happen has already happened. Altogether, something of a disappointment. 

These are some of my impressions of October. I figure that someone else in the world who happens to read this probably knows exactly what I'm talking about. Some others maybe get what I'm saying. But everyone will know: the time of the year and the feelings it evokes. That's something that a GM can attempt to evoke to aid in immersion.
I'm sure that I'm not posting anything that anybody hasn't already thought of. Plenty of podcasts have mentioned using seasonal atmospheres to improve or add to the game. Generally it revolves around in-person gaming and bringing seasonal treats to the table. One can also introduce seasonal themes into the game. For instance, delving into an old abandoned mine to rescue some villagers who'd been abducted, only to find them all already slain by their captors and that their only recourse is revenge is certainly an appropriate Halloween plot.
Well, I will stop myself here. Hopefully this will be the most rambling and least insightful post on this blog.