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shadesofgray
2009-01-11, 03:50 AM
Hi. I'm gonna be a first time GM next Sunday and I was thinking of experimenting with having a horror encounter/ campaign.

I got a few of my ideas from Heroes of Horror [3.5th Ed] but what the stuff described there, especially the encounter monsters seem very... western, if that is what it may be called.

I don't know if anyone guys notice the difference, but there is a difference, especially in the movies, between Asian and Western monsters/ ghosts. Personally I get freaked out by Asian horror/ ghost movies, but then again, I'm an Asian living in Asia. The rest of my group are likewise Asians who have lived our entire lives in Asia who have listened to ghost stories set in Asia. Yeah, I know, too much repetition of Asia there. XD

This link might articulate what I'm trying to say here.
http://cinemaratty.com/article/a4db4bf1880d05eae1dc012c9cc1162a

So to get down to my main question, is there any stats for Asian, specifically Southeast Asian ghosts/ monsters out there?

I'm asking for stats on things like the Pontianak, Toyol, Chinese Zombies, Langsuair, Kuntilanak, and so on so on. Even things like the Japanese Yuki-onna would be good as well.

I may be wrong here and overgeneralise, so point me out instead of getting angry please? Ditto if I had posted on the wrong thread.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-01-11, 03:52 AM
There are no stats, but why not just re-fluff the current zombies, ghosts and whatnot? It seems to me most of the characteristics of these monsters are either purely fluffy (Chinese vampires move by hopping) or are easy to tack on to the current stat blocks.

It's really easy to do in 4E. Honest.

KKL
2009-01-11, 04:19 AM
If you wanted to put in the work, you could also create them. Monster creation's easy.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-01-11, 04:48 AM
Additionally, a real "horror" campaign relies more on DMing than stats. The horror found in any RPG doesn't come from how many attacks your zombie gets; it comes from the descriptions you give to empty rooms and the terrors that your villains inflict upon the PCs and others.

You sound like you know what an Asian Horror campaign should look like - so make it! Pattern it after movies you've seen, stories you've heard, and whatever you know freaks out your players. Mix in some simple refluffing and reskinning of monsters, and you should be done.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-01-11, 05:43 AM
Additionally, a real "horror" campaign relies more on DMing than stats. The horror found in any RPG doesn't come from how many attacks your zombie gets; it comes from the descriptions you give to empty rooms and the terrors that your villains inflict upon the PCs and others.

Indeed, stats are pretty much antithetical to horror. Once it can be killed, it is no longer scary. (Zombies rely on the fact that you can't kill them fast enough.)

At the very least, all scary monsters need superior stealth or mobility, or relatively invulnerability. That doesn't really jive with how 4E works. Horror is nearly impossible in 3.5 (at least without heavy houseruling and just throwing the DMG out the window), but 4E magnifies the things that make it not work in 3.5.

Ippolit
2009-01-11, 07:31 AM
If you don't mind converting the stats then the Oriental Adventures [3.0] book has a whole bunch of monsters that fit the description such as: hopping vampires (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Hopping_vampire.jpg), dokufu (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Dokufu.jpg) and my personal favorite the pennaggolan (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Pennaggolan.jpg). It also has various forms of eastern style ghosts, gaki (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Jiki-ketsu-gaki.jpg) and oni (demons) (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Shadowlands_oni.jpg) as well as Rokuro-Kubi (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Rokuro-kubi.jpg), Yuki-on-na (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Yuki-on-na.jpg) and Hebi-no-onna (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Hebi-no-onna.jpg)

AslanCross
2009-01-11, 07:38 AM
I agree on horror requiring DMing more than monster stats. Actually I thought horror could be done pretty well in 3.5, though. We were able to do it well for a one-shot, even if the party was overpowered.

Freaking out players (and PCs) isn't just about how deadly the monsters are, especially not because it has high stats. Players will eventually know how much they need to hit a monster. Once they figure out its AC or its defenses, it isn't really so scary anymore. I'm not saying that you shouldn't stat it; I'm saying that beefing monster stats alone isn't going to make horror horrifying.

Asian Horror in particular is highly dependent on creepy sensory elements that need not be physically threatening. Something like this:

"You hear a thumping sound off in the distance. It seems regular, and comes from an open door down the dark hall."

"As you walk down the hall, the sound gets louder. A stream of dark liquid flows sluggishly out the door. "

"As you enter the door, the stench of pus, coagulated blood, and urine assaults your nostrils."

I probably didn't do that well, but you get the idea.

shadesofgray
2009-01-11, 08:15 AM
Hmn, I agree with more RPing in a horror campaign, I'm very very very good at telling ghost stories, IRL at least, written down ghost stories are never as good for some reason.

But the thing is, now I'm wondering if there should even be stats for them. I honestly don't know how my players are going to take it and I'm more of an off-the-cuff storyteller/ GM.

Re: Godless, that looks interesting, I will ask around my group if they can get their hands on a copy for me. And the illustration for the pennangolan made me laugh so much. Its also known as Languair and looks.. well, the basic principle of the drawing is correct, disembodied flying head plus intestines, but less... I don't know, less like that. XD

Thanks for the input so far!

Llama231
2009-01-11, 01:10 PM
Do you have 'Heroes of Horror"?
It is always useful.

Edit: Even in 4e, it is still useful for fluff.

hamishspence
2009-01-11, 02:24 PM
stats don't necessarily ruin horror, but they should be the last thing to come in, after the monster has been causing major trouble. Horror-ish flavour is description first, stats very late.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-01-11, 02:27 PM
But the thing is, now I'm wondering if there should even be stats for them. I honestly don't know how my players are going to take it and I'm more of an off-the-cuff storyteller/ GM.

Y'know what you could try?

Pick up a copy of Call of Cthulhu (the RPG) and read over how they do things. It's an excellent horror system in general, and I'm sure it can be adapted for your flavor of horror without too much trouble.

The problem with D&D (well, 3E and higher) is that PCs are just too darn tough for anything with stats to frighten them. Now, pick up 2nd Edition AD&D and a Ravenloft module and see how horror used to be done :smallamused:

hamishspence
2009-01-11, 02:33 PM
Lords of Madness suggests not sticking to CR- first encounters should be "Run away!" ones- then working way up from easy to Big Bad.

"it's likely to kill us" is only one of many ways of doing horror, from creepy Town With A Dark Secret, to Body Horror to lots more: Tricky part is evoking horror with verbal descriptions, without overdoing it and making players blase.

Shades of Gray
2009-01-11, 02:59 PM
An asian horror campaign seems interesting, solid idea.

...

Name Stealer.

elliott20
2009-01-12, 04:52 AM
a lot of the creatures he's talking about were in the 3E OA book. so if anyone here is handy with conversions maybe they can help him out.

Now, if you can work this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbvP7dT3Dx0) into the game, that would be awesome.

Prometheus
2009-01-12, 10:33 PM
It sounds like you want the creatures from asian horror, and the feel of asian relative to western when it comes to horror, but not necessarily a horror campaign. Of course, you can have a horror-adventure hybrid. Where the things that the PCs are meant to be scared of are not the same as the ones that the PCs defeat. It would be important that you keep those two categories separate as while it is is critical in Adventure for PCs to advance in power it is also critical in Horror for foes to reoccur more scary than ever. Of course your players may build themselves for running and hiding, but you will make it clear that those abilities are nearly useless when truly confronted with the horror.

Kalirren
2009-01-12, 10:41 PM
The problem with Asian horror as a genre is that most Asian horror is comedy.

In Western society you have this presumption of God who is capable of doing -anything- and the devil who has to be able to challenge God. There's a lot of room between omnipotence and Average Joe Peasant. So there's a lot of room for monsters that are strong, or smart, or conniving, or the like. You have pit fiends and daemons and winter-witches and fey.

Not so in Asian society. In Asian society there really isn't an all-powerful God to set the bar so high. Humans are the smartest things out there, and the literature is full of humans who outwit and control the spirits, the undead, etc. Their ghosts can't turn corners, their zombies are basically little moldy dust bunnies that hop around (the 6-inch thresholds of traditional Chinese doorways are said to be exactly that high to keep them out; they can't jump 6 inches, for goodness' sake.) A typical Chinese horror film consists of a joke Daoist priest who gets called in to clean up some farcical mess caused by his brother-in-law with mad silly elemental monk moves.

My two cents: genre veto.

Bassetking
2009-01-12, 11:03 PM
The entire point of Asian Horror is the crushing, overwhelming, thundering insignificance of you, in respect to the world at large. You don't matter, nothing you do matters, And the only things that seem to take any kind of personal interest in you are mind bending horrors. The dawning, creeping, expanding exploration of the relationship between you and these malevolent entities is where the distinct discomfort and fear stem.

Western Horror is very much Cause and Effect. Morality Plays. Very Direct.

VERY personal.

You screw at the lake, Jason Kills you. You're a child of the parents that burned Freddy? Freddy kills you. You solve the Puzzle Box? Pinhead kills you. Because of who you are, or what you do, Your butt is Hunted and killed

Eastern Horror?

Eastern Horror doesn't CARE. You're in the wrong place, at the wrong time. You're trying to find your wife in Silent Hill. You moved into a house in which a man beat, killed, and burned his wife and child. You happen to see the ghost of the woman who died in that house. You see seventeen seconds of movie. You're in a town besieged by spirals. Robot Dead Fish return from the oceans.

Eastern Horror is scary because of the impersonal inevitability.

This is very, very difficult to carry over into an RPG group, as avoiding involving the characters in any meaningful, personal backstory is kinda hindering to a character driven plotline.

elliott20
2009-01-12, 11:21 PM
that's because you're taking the material from cheesy HK films.

If you take from say, Liuzhai or some such, it's no longer comedy.

a lot of it goes back to karmic retribution though, and it's far less horror than it is morality play. i.e. a man who murders another finds the skull of his victim haunting years after the fact, and he's eventually killed by it.

the thing is though, most of these are supposed to be normal people as opposed to adventurers. It's harder to say how you can do the same for adventurers.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-01-13, 02:07 AM
the thing is though, most of these are supposed to be normal people as opposed to adventurers. It's harder to say how you can do the same for adventurers.

The best way to do this is to make them "the audience" for one of these morality plays. Now, this is hard to do without making the players feel marginalized, but it can be done.

EXAMPLE
For instance, have the players be hired by Cloaked Man in Tavern (tm) to find a stolen ancestral sword. The PCs discover that the thieves who stole it were killed by some monster, save for one guy who escaped. They track him down and find him a shattered wreck of a man who kept gibbering about "The Shadow." Interrogation reveals that he had escaped with the sword and, shortly before his breakdown, managed to sell it to a collector.

The PCs track down the collector and find him dead and the sword alone stolen. The burglarly was recent so the PCs track them back to a nobleman's manor. Eventually, the PCs manage to get the sword from the sealed vault deep beneath the manor and, as they are about to escape, they are confronted by the Lord and his personal guard.

At this point, the PC wielding the sword (it's a powerful magic item) is overcome by a surge of intelligence and is transformed into a shadowy wraith, desiring to kill the Lord. The PC retains control of their character, but if they attack anyone aside from the Lord, they have to make some sort of check to do so.

After the battle, with the Lord dead and decapitated, the possessed PC returns to normal. For extra creepiness, the Lord's head should not die and just keep screaming in pain unless the PCs cut out his tongue or something drastic.

Eventually, the PCs return the sword to the Cloaked Man and he reveals himself to be the ghost of former business partner of the Lord who was murdered to allow the Lord to consolidate his fortune. As the last of his line, the Cloaked Man could not rest until the Lord had been killed, but he could only work through wielders of his ancestral blade. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, the Lord managed to seal the blade away in his keep, where none could get it, until the Cloaked Man hired some thieves to steal it...

His quest done, the Cloaked Man turns to dust and the ancestral sword shatters; the PCs will have to console themselves with whatever else they could steal from the Lord

elliott20
2009-01-13, 04:42 AM
Oracle Hunter: Yoink! I'm so gonna use that next time I try to get a game together.

Dunkelhand
2009-01-13, 11:25 AM
Horror is about the style. Use scary music, candles, etc. Frightening the chars is easy, but for a nice horror campaign you'll need to scare the players as well.

Confuse them. Don't show them the monster(s) at first, and if they defeat the monsters, make sure there remains vanish in a way that they can't be sure if it's really gone.

Also, make places scary. Even w/o monsters. Give them sounds, scary visuals, separate them and let bad things happen to them. Bad things as in they can't talk anymore, get blinded, hear things, you might even melt them into a puddle (only for a short time - they must never know if something is real or an illusion). Real horror can never be grasped.

bue52
2009-01-16, 10:23 AM
The problem with Asian horror as a genre is that most Asian horror is comedy.

In Western society you have this presumption of God who is capable of doing -anything- and the devil who has to be able to challenge God. There's a lot of room between omnipotence and Average Joe Peasant. So there's a lot of room for monsters that are strong, or smart, or conniving, or the like. You have pit fiends and daemons and winter-witches and fey.

Not so in Asian society. In Asian society there really isn't an all-powerful God to set the bar so high. Humans are the smartest things out there, and the literature is full of humans who outwit and control the spirits, the undead, etc. Their ghosts can't turn corners, their zombies are basically little moldy dust bunnies that hop around (the 6-inch thresholds of traditional Chinese doorways are said to be exactly that high to keep them out; they can't jump 6 inches, for goodness' sake.) A typical Chinese horror film consists of a joke Daoist priest who gets called in to clean up some farcical mess caused by his brother-in-law with mad silly elemental monk moves.

My two cents: genre veto.
You do realise she is talking about ASIAN Horror and not CHINESE Comedies that makes fun of traditional chinese folklore. Sorry for getting a little over emotional here, but I strongly suggest you try looking at these three cultures which incidentally are classified as asian. The Thais, Malays and Japanese. And even then, there is a lot of cultural context you need to understand before you can truly claim what you have said. I believe you haven't addressed on pontianak and banana trees. What you have claimed about Chinese culture is the way the Hong Kongers were making fun of some silly superstition. Please tell me you do not really think a four leaf clover brings good luck, and that you really break your mother's back whenever you step on a crack?! On a side note, the elemental monk thing is pure avatar, most of the times,Chinese folklore depicts super human abilities in terms of energy rather than GREEK elements. Especially since the chinese elements have one other substance in the cycle, which Professor Wikipedia would be more than willing to share with you.

The Sandman
2009-01-16, 11:09 AM
Read up on Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos between 1954 and 1980 or so, with some of modern day Burma thrown in for good measure. If you're willing to leave Asia, try Rwanda and Burundi, or the seemingly endless 2nd Congo War in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yes, I am being completely serious. Supernatural horrors are easier to deal with; even if you can't just kill the monster in the finest of D&D fashion, you can at least console yourself with the fact that it was something completely different from normal humanity and so of course you wouldn't really be able to deal with it. The horrors of those locales, however, are far more immediately comprehensible while still being far too great in scale for any group of five people, no matter how powerful, to fix.

Brigham
2009-01-16, 07:05 PM
The problem with Asian horror as a genre is that most Asian horror is comedy.




In Western society you have this presumption of God who is capable of doing -anything- and the devil who has to be able to challenge God. There's a lot of room between omnipotence and Average Joe Peasant. So there's a lot of room for monsters that are strong, or smart, or conniving, or the like. You have pit fiends and daemons and winter-witches and fey.

Not so in Asian society. In Asian society there really isn't an all-powerful God to set the bar so high. Humans are the smartest things out there, and the literature is full of humans who outwit and control the spirits, the undead, etc. Their ghosts can't turn corners, their zombies are basically little moldy dust bunnies that hop around (the 6-inch thresholds of traditional Chinese doorways are said to be exactly that high to keep them out; they can't jump 6 inches, for goodness' sake.) A typical Chinese horror film consists of a joke Daoist priest who gets called in to clean up some farcical mess caused by his brother-in-law with mad silly elemental monk moves.

My two cents: genre veto.


"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Granted, this is out of context, but the emphasis stands.

You actually bring up a really solid point, though it is deeply masked in ethnocentrism (and limited exposure to cinema). Asian and Western horror concepts are strikingly different due to apparent cosmological and phenomenological traditions. The convergence of the spiritual and material is more broadly accepted than in Asian culture in the West. For this, spiritual beings and realities bring much more in the way of inspiring fear.

In the West, though, capitalism (perhaps more so, American capitalism) has emphasized the material over the spiritual such that, even though a large majority believe in some form of greater being and spiritual realm, the two don't merge; at least, not in any personally meaningful way. The embattled spiritual realm is abstract from and unrelational to the material.

Of course, this is directed at "most" people; there is variance to account for.

And, as Bue52 stated, you are confusing cinema with culture and tradition.

LurkerInPlayground
2009-01-16, 07:26 PM
The problem with Asian horror as a genre is that most Asian horror is comedy.

In Western society you have this presumption of God who is capable of doing -anything- and the devil who has to be able to challenge God. There's a lot of room between omnipotence and Average Joe Peasant. So there's a lot of room for monsters that are strong, or smart, or conniving, or the like. You have pit fiends and daemons and winter-witches and fey.

Not so in Asian society. In Asian society there really isn't an all-powerful God to set the bar so high. Humans are the smartest things out there, and the literature is full of humans who outwit and control the spirits, the undead, etc. Their ghosts can't turn corners, their zombies are basically little moldy dust bunnies that hop around (the 6-inch thresholds of traditional Chinese doorways are said to be exactly that high to keep them out; they can't jump 6 inches, for goodness' sake.) A typical Chinese horror film consists of a joke Daoist priest who gets called in to clean up some farcical mess caused by his brother-in-law with mad silly elemental monk moves.

My two cents: genre veto.
Irrelevant.

Asian horror is more ambiguous, since the concrete existence of a God is disputed. Therefore, religion is no guarantee of safety against the Powers That Be. Nor is it a guarantee of moral certitude in the face of supernatural forces.

There's literally no Deus Ex Machina and there aren't philosophical issues like the Problem of Evil to worry about, since the bad guys aren't automatically weaker in the face of an all-powerful and all-benevolent being.

And because everything is so ambiguous, everything is exactly is as strong as you want it to be. But that isn't even remotely the point since you can just make stuff up in fiction.

Likewise, the Evil Dead series is "comedic horror" as well. And a good majority of "serious" Western horror movies are slasher gross-outs, with no real emphasis on psychological horror. So I fail to see your point.

Leewei
2009-01-16, 07:30 PM
Modify Vampires and Vampire Spawn by adding the Pounce special attack as well as a flaw which requires they charge when attacking. They'll be funny for about 30 seconds, then PCs will be screaming and running for their lives.

Introduce a Colossal demon with Swallow Whole that has a demiplane in its stomach infested with other nasty demons. To kill it, PCs must fight their way to its liver and destroy it.

Create an NPC ghost with several Beguiler levels. Have it charm, seduce, and otherwise utterly entrance a male PC. Send PCs out on a quest on her behalf. Have her taken prisoner by the BBEG. Have her die tragically in front of someone and yet mysteriously reappear with no memory of the event. As time goes on, PCs discover she's been dead for 300 years. Have her become more obsessed with her paramour. Her temper may get the better of her, causing her to attack PCs over some slight, real or imagined. Tragically, her lover kills her. She returns again later, forgiving him. She can't live without him, you see. The maiden in distress becomes instead an implacable opponent that PCs must find a way to appease and allow to pass to her next life.