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Vitruviansquid
2009-11-26, 01:12 AM
So ever since we decided to play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for Halloween (by the way, intensely scary game at times, very silly at other times), my gaming group has been really into Call of Cthulhu and enacting the horror genre in RPG's. We've played 2 separate one-shots of Call of Cthulhu, and my fellow-DM (we actually DM two separate campaigns of Savage Worlds, alternating by week) has expressed interest in bringing the party to Hell for a Dante's Inferno themed arc.

As far as I've experienced it, I've never really come close to the feeling of terror in any of our tabletop gaming. Any time we come to a situation that *should* be scary, I've felt one removed from it. For example, my character is terrified when he finds a dismembered corpse in his closet, but I'm thinking "Oh. I guess it looks like the cultists found my address. Better move to a hotel now."

So okay, maybe my group just sucks at writing horror. I haven't ruled that out yet.

But on another level, I think Call of Cthulhu is just... not very scary. The form doesn't fit the function. The game wants to scare you, but in reality, it's just a mystery solver with an extreme de-emphasis on combat and emphasis on hilarious situations caused by insanity ("I saw a Shoggoth and lit all my friends on fire with a molotov cocktail! LOL!"). It's also kind of hard to run DnD with any sense of horror. It's just a tactical board game no matter how you look at it.

So in the interest of scaring the poop out of my friends, I'm going to ask: have any of you had any experience with or insights into a truly horrifying tabletop RPG? Is it possible? What concepts, homebrewed or kidnapped from other RPG's, do you find heightens the horror atmosphere?

Polarbeast
2009-11-26, 01:34 AM
I love CoC, and even continue to play the original Chaosium version. I think part of it is that all the players dig on Lovecraft and are ready to "get into it."

Helplessness is the key to it, it seems. What one faces here isn't understood, or can't be hurt.

I think that in modern horror, props help. If the players are given a stained handwritten journal that's been burned around the edges, with some clues and some hint of what the writer was going through page after page, they create the horror in their own minds as they read it and pass it around. If they find a slightly eerie black-and-white photograph with one of the occupants fuzzy around the edges, or a photo of an old hallway with the paint peeling from the walls, I think it adds atmosphere.

In D&D, there isn't much I've encountered that really generates horror, because of its tendency to become a stats-based chess game. Hence the lack of helplessness... and the fact that death isn't always death, and even if it is, well, roll up someone new.

The Demented One
2009-11-26, 02:08 AM
Look at Dread. It uses a jenga tower as a resolution mechanic. Sounds cheesy, but great for building tension and pretty well-loved.

Optimystik
2009-11-26, 02:25 AM
If you want to feel fear in D&D, get a Deck of Many Things.

Satyr
2009-11-26, 07:03 AM
One of the key factors of horror RPG's is the feeling of vulnerability and helplessness. Therefore, more realistic, gritty systems are almost always the better choice, because they carry a more detailed feeling of how vulnerable the character really is.

So, good gaming systems for Horror games are etiher a few which are specifically created for this purpose (my personal favorite here is Little Fears, because it is very well conceptualized, and the game's protagonists - children facing the fear of their own nightmares - make sure, that it pretty much remain a horror game, and does not end in an Action RPG with an arsenal to blow the supernatural into bits. Think of "It''.
The more realistic games that are easy to adapt are stuff like All Flesh Must Be Eaten (it is pretty generic, and fun to play), Gurps, etc.

But the system will never be as important for the game as a good gamemaster who can create and maintain an eerie atmosphere. That is much harder, but also much more effective than a change of the system.

Brother Oni
2009-11-26, 07:45 AM
My brother was DM-ing a horror game once - he set the atmosphere by playing the various Silent Hill soundtracks constantly in the background at an audible but non-intrusive level.

He got half way through the session before his players asked him to turn it off as it was freaking them out. :smallbiggrin:


If you're more into substance than cheap tricks, try setting up the material/plot in a way that makes the players uncomfortable.

Be very careful about what material you use though and make sure your group is all right with their sensibilities being challenged. The point is to take them out of their comfort zone, not deliberately antagonise them.
If necessary, tell them beforehand that the story arc has some possibly disturbing material and ask whether they want to run that adventure or not.

For example in a modern CoC campaign, the Investigators are following a trail of what appears to be ritually sacrificed people.
They find that people have been secretly taping these sacrifices and distributing them as snuff films, thus the Investigators have to trawl through some really nasty seedy places both on the street and on the internet on the trail of these films, not to mention watch them to look for background clues as to where these sacrifices are taking place.

When they finally catch up to the cultists they thought they were chasing, throw in the plot twist - the films aren't actually being secretly taped, they're being intentionally taped and being distributed as 'secretly taped' as a viral marketing gimmick.

Of course that's when you throw in a reverse plot twist and the ancient symbols in the background that alerted them in the first place, turn out to be copied from a really old book the director found in an attic somewhere...


If snuff films aren't suitable, substitute something like a paedophilia ring, or a human trafficking chain. Remember that you're playing with friends and ASK FIRST whether they'd be happy with this sort of material being in the gaming sessions.

FoE
2009-11-26, 12:45 PM
This is sort of a little essay I put together, as this question seems to come up every couple of months. :smallbiggrin:

Horror is hard to do in D&D, largely because characters face the stuff of horrors on a regular basis and kick its ass. But it's not impossible. Leon Kennedy beat the crap out of a lot of scary monsters in Resident Evil 4 and I was no less scared by some of the stuff I saw.

Here's some tips:

1) One of the elements of good horror is isolation. Look at Alien, Night of the Living Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead (OK, that's a comedy), The Thing, Resident Evil, etc. A lot of those movies involve isolation in one form or another.

Maybe your heroes are trapped in a particular location and can't escape. Maybe the monsters have found a way to strike at the heroes in such a manner that they can't get help, like in dreams. Or maybe the heroes are alone in a world full of monsters.

The point is, there's no help coming. You're on your own.

Here's a fun idea: what if the players went into a dungeon and the entrance collapsed behind them? What if they had no way out past the rocks? Suddenly, the search for treasure turns into a quest for survival. The stakes are raised.

2) Don't turn everything into a trap. At least, not right away. Some things have to be safe for the players …*so that later you can turn them into traps.

I remember one time my players encountered a room with nothing but several corpses in it. One of my players said they were obviously going to raise up as zombies the minute they searched them. Sure enough, they did. Surprise, surprise.

On the other hand, the same trick gets pulled in the video game Bioshock (dead bodies suddenly spring up and attack the player) and it was incredibly creepy. Why? Because you've spent the entire game rifling through the pockets of corpses without consequences. So when one jumps up at you, it's damn creepy.

3) Remember this old rule: nothing is scarier (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NothingIsScarier). Sometimes all you need to freak the players out is the suggestion that something is going to jump out and tear their heads off. D&D players in particular are paranoid this way: when they find a big spider web, they think they're going to fight a giant spider. So they get themselves worked up to fight a giant spider. But what if you screwed with their heads and had nothing attack them? This can actually be more effective than having a big ol' spider suddenly appear.

I remember one time my friend and I fought and killed some orcs. We left their bodies in a room and then came back to it later. The bodies were gone, the only trace of them a bloody smear indicating some beastie dragged them off. We just about pissed ourselves thinking about the horrible beastie that was going to jump out at us any minute.

Another guy on this board once mentioned that the scariest adventure he had was the ghost town where they expected some zombies to attack them. But nothing jumped out to attack the party until nightfall. When the zombies actually showed up, it was almost a relief.

But take caution! This trope should be used only in small doses. You don't want adventures filled with the party wandering from empty room to empty room.

4) Change up your players' expectations with the creatures they face. A lot of D&D players know the MM inside and out, so they know what to expect when, say, facing off with vampires. Shake things up. (I think this is a suggestion in Heroes of Horror, too.) And consider using Mundanger (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mundanger) now and then.

5) Don't overdo it, by the gods! Horror requires a bit of a fine touch. Dead children can be unsettling. Zombie children can be scary. A zombie giant made of dead children is just cheesy, although it might be appropriate for splatterhouse horror.

Overall, though, it's easy to go overboard in horror. This was a pretty common complaint with Clive Barker's Jericho, where pretty every enemy is a hellish abomination that will tear you limb from limb, blah blah blah. "OMG, that monster's wearing human flesh like an overcoat. Just like the last dozen or so beasties we faced. Well, time to kick its ass."

GolemsVoice
2009-11-26, 01:44 PM
In my experience, CoC works best when each of the players knows what's supposed to go on in a CoC game. Not that they should start to go insane over everything they see, and begin waxing purple prose about night's plutonian shores, but maybe talk about how Lovecraft's protagonists behave, and ask them to try to get into the whole "the world is not as we know it" thing. Lovecraft works best (or, maybe, works only) the reader/player is willing to adopt Lovecraft's mindset, even if he may not share it.

Also, and this works for every game, make the players do something they might be uncomfortable with in real-life. As with all such things: Talk to your players first. Do NOT push them if they do not want to do something. Do NOT force them. A little encouragement maybe, but no more.
For example, have them exhume a dead body, because information was buried with him. Describe in vivid detail just WHAT they are doing and maybe even hint at them how the characters are willing (or forced) to do such depraved things in order to gain information.

Vitruviansquid
2009-11-26, 05:40 PM
Thanks for the good advice on how to create a horror atmosphere, everyone. Dread, in particular, looks like it'd be really fun.

To shed more light on why I'm asking this question, I've been trying to design a horror campaign (perhaps just a one-shot :() for my players in Savage Worlds. I want the form of the rules to follow the function of horror - it's not just that the game should be scary, but the core mechanics of the game should be scary.

Thus far, without explaining the rules of Savage Worlds as a whole, I have come up with this:

The campaign consists of the players coming into contact with and accidentally being "Tainted" by demons. They gain some kind of power from this exchange, depending on what demon they've come into contact with, but at the same time, the Taint is evil and malignant, threatening to consume and destroy them. They're trying to find a way to free themselves of the Taint before it consumes them or before they're hunted down and killed by demon hunters.

The basic effect I'm going for in this game is as follows:

Players face formidable challenges that they can only defeat by tapping into demonic powers.

Tapping into demonic powers makes players more corrupted. They become more specialized builds, but lose general statistics until the character becomes unplayable and dies. This process is irreversible.

Thus the players are always choosing between short term gains in demonic power or long term gains in keeping their humanity/sanity.

If you want an analogy, think of it as a drug addiction for which there is no cure. :smallsmile:

It is in the context of this project that I'm asking for input on how RPG mechanics can generate effects of horror.

(if you want to find my progress as of last night, complete with terms from Savage Worlds that you probably wouldn't understand if you've never heard of it before, it's in their official forum:

http://www.peginc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25611)

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-26, 05:48 PM
Thanks for the good advice on how to create a horror atmosphere, everyone. Dread, in particular, looks like it'd be really fun.

To shed more light on why I'm asking this question, I've been trying to design a horror campaign (perhaps just a one-shot :() for my players in Savage Worlds. I want the form of the rules to follow the function of horror - it's not just that the game should be scary, but the core mechanics of the game should be scary.FATAL, then?

Vitruviansquid
2009-11-26, 06:00 PM
FATAL, then?

Warn people not to look this **** up! :smalleek:

GolemsVoice
2009-11-26, 06:22 PM
Well, if you are forcing them to chose, you already HAVE horror in the game machanics. Either they chose not to gain bonuses, thus making the game harder, or they chose to take bonuses, but gamble away their humanity. That's a really good idea.

Another idea you might try is this, I lifted it from teh game Unhallowed Metropolis (check it out, I love it, by the way)

Each character must chose one corruption path. Each path has 5 ranks, with one being almost no corruption, and five meaning you're just barely human.
Corruption paths were things like the character becoming ever more monstrous, or that he can only feel pleasure from ever more depraved activities, or an addicition he just can't shake off. Each rank had mali for the character, of course, like being forced to roll if you can control your addiction for this day, etc.
But on the other hand, each point in a path afforded the player one reroll, that he could use any time. Thus, the more corrupt you are, the easier it is to get along, as the character learns to cut corners and becomes more and more ruthless.
Once per game session, you could also call on the devil's luck. The GM was then forced to engineer the situation so that the character in question can escape, but the character must in turn raise his corruption rating one point. Maybe you can make up your own paths and drawbacks.

Kelb_Panthera
2009-11-26, 10:13 PM
One thing you really have to bear in mind, that I haven't seen brought up yet: no matter how creepy the scenes, no matter how helpless the characters are, no matter how the mechanics work, you absolutely cannot scare the player if they don't have any emotional investment in their character. If your players treat their characters like pieces on a chess board, and treat character death by saying "oops, guess I need to roll up a new one," you're probably not going to scare them all that much, no matter how hard you try.

Vitruviansquid
2009-11-27, 04:43 PM
I actually prefer systems with less detailed character generations for horror games because characters are going to be dropping like flies and you don't want to spend hours rerolling.

Secondly, I find that no matter what you're playing, as long as the players actually enjoy the game, they'll be attached to their characters. The thing is, roleplayers will find death horrifying because they're naturally attached to their characters. Rollplayers will find death horrifying because rollplayers absolutely hate to lose.

I've been in a Call of Cthulhu one-shot where a player arrived well after the session had started and handed the Keeper (the DM) his character sheet from our last one-shot: a Chinese antiquarian named "Tom Yum Goong," (which is the name of Thai movie, if it sounded familiar to you). When told he couldn't be Tom Yum Goong because he went insane last game and he should be over 80 years old this game, we just settled on him being Tom Yum Goong Jr..

Now, at the climactic battle of this one-shot (I was a bit let down by how much action there was in this campaign), we were all killed by DM fiat as part of the climactic ending. The player later told me it was lame that his character had to die.

Let me remind you that this was a character named after a movie he had heard of in passing (after watching Ong Bak, I think), we had no qualms with just changing the character to Junior after realizing he's incompatible with our timeline, this was a one-shot and we were discarding our characters are the end anyways, and the player had even arrived in the game late.

Kelb_Panthera
2009-11-29, 08:56 PM
I didn't say the game wouldn't be enjoyable anyway, just that it's difficult to produce any real tension for the players when their characters are in danger if they have no investment in the characters. "Roll Players" in a CoC game know they're going to lose their characters and tend to end up more amused by the madness/horror than scared by it. CoC really is geared more toward the "Role Players."

(roll players and role players are in quotes because I very firmly believe that character investment and rules-savvy-ness are not mutually exclusive.)