PDA

View Full Version : Old World of Darkness horror.



Shinizak
2009-10-17, 12:17 AM
How would you go about putting horror into an old world of darkness game? I'm a little new to NON combat heavy games and enjoy dark, dank places. Any suggestions?

UserClone
2009-10-17, 01:38 AM
Well, in a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game, our storyteller did things like the following:

In one scene, it seemed like this girl was getting raped in the woods by some redneck dudes, and it turned out they she was really a fomori (evil spirit creatures) just just trying to wait for the right moment to eat one of the guys, who ended up being an evil werewolf anyways. So we ended up battling them all and slaughtering them, though she was a disgusting freak of nature whose skull split open in two to reveal a huge vertical mouth and...well, the whole scene was a disgusting bloody mess. Suffice to say I was plenty horrified.

MickJay
2009-10-17, 06:25 AM
Place: abandoned, or currently unoccupied, Tzimisce lair, with all the fleshcrafted goodness - living walls, bones that suddenly pierce them and wound the party, sprays of acid, and of course any and every fleshcrafted monstrosity you can think of. Then all you need is a plot and/or reason for the players to enter the lair.

Dixieboy
2009-10-17, 08:00 AM
Place: abandoned, or currently unoccupied, Tzimisce lair, with all the fleshcrafted goodness - living walls, bones that suddenly pierce them and wound the party, sprays of acid, and of course any and every fleshcrafted monstrosity you can think of. Then all you need is a plot and/or reason for the players to enter the lair.

Yea, but how do you make it automatically scary?

KillianHawkeye
2009-10-17, 08:34 AM
In one scene, it seemed like this girl was getting raped in the woods by some redneck dudes, and it turned out they she was really a fomori (evil spirit creatures) just just trying to wait for the right moment to eat one of the guys, who ended up being an evil werewolf anyways. So we ended up battling them all and slaughtering them, though she was a disgusting freak of nature whose skull split open in two to reveal a huge vertical mouth and...well, the whole scene was a disgusting bloody mess. Suffice to say I was plenty horrified.

That sounds pretty typical for a fomor, actually. They're seriously messed up.

To the OP, the secret of horror is in the description. This is something every Storyteller needs to learn. Basic things can go with a basic description, but the more disturbing something is, the more you need to describe it in great detail. Be creative. Keep describing it until somebody asks you to move on. Otherwise, it just won't be disturbing to your players. That's the second secret: you need to be disturbing to your players, not their characters. Players won't necessarily feel what their characters are feeling, so you need to target them directly in order to invoke an emotional response.

Another good way to squick people out is to attribute an atypical feeling to certain actions. For instance, describing how much the sight of freshly sprayed blood and guts pleases and excites their character will probably mess with their heads a bit. As always, make sure to go into great detail. This is great for World of Darkness, because it's a setting that's all about gothic horror. Don't be afraid to play up the gothic as well as the horror. If the characters go down a dark alley, the important thing is that it's dark, not that it's an alley, get it?

Finally, don't be afraid to be offensive from time to time. Offensive topics generally disturb people on some level. If you really want to be horrific, sometimes you've gotta hit below the belt. Say you want something bad to happen to someone to set the mood. Make it something really, shockingly bad. Let it happen to a kid. Or maybe one of the characters' relatives. Throw in some dead animals. The third secret of horror is that the audience has to be taking it seriously, or it just fails. If what you're describing is making your players laugh, then you need to change gears FAST, because it's not having the right effect.

Oh, and one last piece of advice: a disturbed villain makes for a disturbing story. The only catch is that at some point, you need to make time for the audience (the players) to learn what makes the villain tick. Bonus points if it's something that would be totally understandable if he wasn't going about it in such a horrible way. :smallwink::smallamused:

MickJay
2009-10-17, 09:58 AM
Yea, but how do you make it automatically scary?

You need to describe it properly. It's all in the details (like any other horror material, really). Go too far, and it becomes funny, don't go far enough and it's not scary at all. Create tension by mentioning weird noises, things scurrying beyond the visible area, or behind the walls, or in the walls, describe some particularly horrific element of the "decoration", suggest that the disfigured, soft tissue they're treading on is connected to a still functioning brain, locked in a state of suffering and insanity, etc, etc.

Zeta Kai
2009-10-17, 10:28 AM
All you need to provoke fear in players, regardless of the game, is:

1) The Unknown. Don't tell them much. That way every piece of info they do have is more valuable. They only need to know what's right in front of them, & they don't even need to understand that. They should be searching for clues & jumping at shadows.

2) Disturbing Atmosphere. But don't over-do it. Bloodstains, screams in the distance, moving shadows, unnatural events, & the like are great. But if it's in every scene, all the time, it can be quickly wearying. This also runs the risk of making something sound unintentionally funny, which breaks the spell that you're trying to cast over your players. Space things out a little, to maintain proper pacing. Take you players into the very heart of darkness, then pull it back for a little while, then plunge them in again. This roller-coaster of emotion will punctuate the terror even more. Every moment of calm & happiness will make the darkness even more dreadful.

3) Loss of Control. Don't ever let your players be confident that they are in control of events. Control is one of the most potent ways to combat fear (the other is Humor; see above), so take it away from them, & don't give it back. If they control the pace of events, or they have all the information they need, or can easily defeat their enemies, then they cannot be truly scared in any decent fashion.

Delwugor
2009-10-17, 11:02 AM
To add to Zeta Kais's good suggestions.

Set a mood of despair in the characters. Nothing they do works or everyone around them is being possesed. They defeated the villian and now and even worst one took his place. Slowly remove all that they feel safe with and are used to or rely to for hope...because tere is none.

Paranoia is your friend. Make them fearful of strangers, their leaders and evey themselves. Not only is there anything to rely on for hope but now there isn't anyone to turn to.

Fear comes in many forms, and fear for saftey is the easiest and least effective. Fear of the unknown, fear of loss, fear for others, fear of others...

Setting the atmoshpere of horror in the entire campaign is the biggest benefit. With a slow, subtle but continuous atmoshpere of fear, despair and uncertainty the players start generating fear in their characters all on their own. Making the GM's job all that much easier.

As someone also said being descriptive is good. Descriptive of blood, gore and shock have their place in horror, but those tend to fade quickly. Descriptions of dark and gloomy settings and situations go much further. Descriptions of others who have faced the same horror and failed last very nicely. Descriptions of the ordinary being destroyed right in front of them...

Finally thow out the monster manuals. Forget mummies, skeletons, wrights and the usual undead. Your players know them and they don't add much fear. Instead go out and get horros from the internet or invent them yourself, I grabbed my ideas from Nightbane where horror and chaos combine to form a uniquely horrorrible creatures teh players don't expect.

I'm just now running my first horror campaign so I'm not the expert but these arethe things that I've read about and spent alot of time figuring out.

The Rose Dragon
2009-10-17, 11:10 AM
Getting rid of the usual undead may prove difficult due to the nature of World of Darkness, where players can be wraiths, vampires and mummies.

oxybe
2009-10-17, 11:48 AM
never GMed WoD, but IMO the quickest and easiest way to add some tension is to look at a player, ask them roll to see if they see something. there doesn't have to be anything in actuality... the simple act has a near-immediate effect on players that they now believe they have a pair of unseen eyes looking at them. that there was something in the corner of their eyes.

Horror, IMO, is all about manipulating that tension... up and down, up and down.

be subtle. i find the more outrageous things are described, the less horrific they are.

anyone can throw a bunch of guts on the floor, add a monster with a cleaver and yell "booga booga". that's horror, but the "slasher" horror is less effective if it's expected of the characters to face eldrich abominations or brutal monsters.

but it's that special something that's added when the cute little nine year old girl who was left unsupervised walks into the house from outside due to the sudden, heavy rain with an umbrella... yet everyone was inside at the time, no one could have given it to her. moreso if she tells the group that it was the "witch" that gave it to her... the same "witch" who then later starts killing people, leaving behind strange arcane sigils on the murder site.

anyone can make a person scared by putting a monster in front of them. it's a whole other thing to make them scared of absolutely nothing.

for a few helpful links that contains a few examples
nightmare fuel (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NightmareFuel)
high-octane nightmare fuel (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HighOctaneNightmareFuel)
fridge horror (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeHorror)

wykydtron
2009-10-17, 12:09 PM
I've never played World of Darkness either but if you want to know how to inspire fear talk to some Call of Chtulhu players. I have heard some really terrifying things coming from that game and I feel that's kind of what you're going for here, the hopeless and helpless feeling.

Shinizak
2009-10-17, 01:13 PM
I've never played World of Darkness either but if you want to know how to inspire fear talk to some Call of Chtulhu players. I have heard some really terrifying things coming from that game and I feel that's kind of what you're going for here, the hopeless and helpless feeling.

Where's a good place to find call of cthulhu players?

UserClone
2009-10-17, 02:58 PM
A really good resource I always like to recommend for any horror-based gaming (though I must have drunk too much to remember it last night) is OGL Horror, by Gareth Hanrahan, published by Mongoose. It is chock-a-block full of great advice on all the aspects of horror and many suggestions on how to invoke them. I really like the way the writer breaks down and distills each discrete element of horror and makes its application much easier for the fledgling horror DM. TONS of bang for the buck.

Set
2009-10-17, 05:00 PM
Yea, but how do you make it automatically scary?

To make a Tzimisce lair frightening, have the lair itself be alive. Tzimisce are famous for fleshcrafting, but less touched-upon is animalism, which allows them to do weird stuff like call up a whale to beach itself and then take it apart and use it's lungs to circulate air, it's circulatory and digestive system to circulate nutrients through the walls coated with skin and muscle tissue and the brain as a 'central control unit' somewhere in the basement that remains under the Tzimisce's control. The creature could be trained to recognize the Tzimisce and it's guests and the muscle tissue be connected to each door so that when the vampire approaches, the doors open automatically.

When intruders enter the lair, with it's leathery walls of whaleskin, the area begins shuddering under their feet, and doors slam in their face. Eventually they will discover the rooms where the digestive system, lungs and brain are stored, in vats, and discover that the entire fleshy expanse they've been travelling with is just an animal that has been taken apart and used as a hideous sort of security system / set of automatic door openers...

Ghouls could be fleshcrafted to have armored plates of bone on the outside of their skin (or toughened scabs of leathery skin, or organs transplanted to safer locations, making them harder to kill), and have their fingers replaced with blades of bone. Their faces might remain completely human, those of the street-people the Tzimisce kidnapped and twisted into grotesque expendable servitors. Some ghouls might be former animals, also twisted gruesomely, others humans and some no longer recognizable as either. As a ghoul can be healed of aggravated lethal damage with sufficient vampire blood, the tzimisce could, over time (which vampires have plenty of) increase the amount of bone in a person by removing a bone from one area and then healing it to regenerate the stolen bone tissue, using the transplanted bone to create spines, armor plates, etc. Keeping the face human would be key to maintaining a less 'aliens bughunt' feel and keeping a sense of loss, tragedy and horror, as the bone-plated, blade-fingered thing scurrying at you has the sad face of a missing librarian, her lank brown hair hanging down over her freckled cheeks, tears coming from her eyes as she shuffles forward.

The Tygre
2009-10-18, 03:48 AM
Where's a good place to find call of cthulhu players?

In sunken Rl'yeh, where Great Cthulhu lies sleeping.

Or the Chaosium forums. Heck, there's probably some around here if you ask around enough.

oxybe
2009-10-18, 03:58 AM
what? looking for cuthulu players?! are you crazy?! i mean seriously, it's like turquoise bicycle shoe fins actualize radishes greenly... *takes seizure, falls on floors and starts to foam at mouth*