Creating Horror

[codexgigas]

I'm planning on DMing a horror-themed campaign in the near future, and I'm looking for advice on how to create the right atmosphere for my players. I've read through the suggestions in Heroes of Horror, but I was wondering if any of you had suggestions from your own experience.

[Indoril]

Be very descriptive, and make good use of lighting and creepy music in the room in which you guys are playing.

[tape_measure]

Be very descriptive...

I've found it helpful to leave out a few lesser details as well to let the mind work it's on wonders.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Use sanity to your advantage. I played in a horror campaign once. My character was slowly driven mad by an evil god speaking directly into his head. We never finished the campaign, but as it was going, my guy was going to slowly murder each and every other player one by one.

[Khantalas]

Be a good storyteller, rather than a good rulemaster. That's given, of course.

Know what players can handle, and what they expect. Never get out of these boundaries.

Know the value of ambience tracks and lighting. Lightning would be fun, too, but it is known to be unreliable.

Read good horror stories. Examine the tools that the authors use, and shape them to your own needs. Avoid cliches while doing that.

Know the line between grotesque and horrific. A blood trail that simply disappears in a room may be horrific if you use it right, while scores of mutilated and shredded bodies may not be.

Know that game mechanics can be your friend.

[Ravyn]

Having not read Heroes of Horror, I'm not sure what territory's been covered already, so: in-game, you want darkness, other sources of poor visibility, signs of general decay, lots of places something could jump out of at any minute, enemies that can't be readily identified and seem very, very dangerous, and the perpetual sense of impending doom that comes from playing cat and mouse with something you can't identify, see coming, or figure out how to defeat. Collateral damage with expendable NPCs doesn't hurt, either. Out of game, low lights and creepy music are good for a mood.

One thing I think you might want to consider is signatures. Something that tells the group when the monster/enemy/whatever is nearby, but not where. Something subtle, that can't quite be tracked. Something that takes something simple, often even innocuous, and turns it into a mark of fear.

For instance, I have a friend who told me about a game he ran... the thing I remember most from it is that there had at one point been this demon-thing that had eaten a troop of Girl Scouts and their cookies. From then on, every time it came nearby, the group smelled Thin Mints. At the very end.... he brought a whole bowl of said cookies to session. I'm told the looks on their faces were pretty priceless.

[Shazzbaa]

...make good use of lighting and creepy music...
Heh, yay for Indoril's demonic "ambience..."

Something I've seen work really well for a GM of mine is the idea of uncertainty -- you don't know who's the "good guys" and who's the "bad guys." When your players' hearts sink as they realise that all the work they just did put world-destroying weapons in the hands of an untrustworthy villain and enslaved hundreds of good spirits to his work for his cause... you've done your job. There was a sense of urgent uncertainty in her game -- we knew things were going to hell in a handbasket, but it seemed like every one we thought was going to help us was just sending it there a different way. I can't begin to describe what a relief it was, both for the characters and myself personally, when the elder gods finally gave us an unambiguous direction to go.


For instance, I have a friend who told me about a game he ran... the thing I remember most from it is that there had at one point been this demon-thing that had eaten a troop of Girl Scouts and their cookies. From then on, every time it came nearby, the group smelled Thin Mints. At the very end.... he brought a whole bowl of said cookies to session. I'm told the looks on their faces were pretty priceless.
Bwhahaha! Fabulous!

[The Vorpal Tribble]

At first confuse them (but not too badly, you want them to stick around), but drop hints, which as it progresses they'll start to think 'Nooo way...', and make them feel out of their depth. They may win, but allow the win to actually be the trigger to something even worse. So in the future they'll always be second guessing if what they do will be he worst thing, or only a lesser evil.

Fear of the unknown is always the ticket.

*gives a broad smile to Ravyn and Tape Measure as he passes by*

[Thomas]

First, know what horror is.
1. Spooky/scary isn't horror. Don't try to spook or scare players.
2. Creepy/grotesque is horror. Compare any bit of, for instance, House on Haunted Hill (the '99 version) to the crawling-out-the-TV-scene in The Ring. It's not a "BOO!" scene, it's an "oh dear lord this is so horribly wrong oh god what is she doing now?" -scene.

I've been searching and searching for good horror movie references, and can't find any aside from The Ring (which doesn't resort to cheap "BOO," but instead builds tension until you can't take it, then slowly unravels it, then builds it again). Books are perhaps a better model for horror RPGs; they have to rely on slow tension and a feeling of "wrongness" rather than "BOO" thrills. Read anything by Stephen King, really. (1408 is the best, most concise "how to" example, in my opinion.)

In horror RPGs, the structure of the adventure - the nature of it - is essential. You need:
1. Unfairness. If there's a monster that can be confronted physically, it has to be absolutely overpowering. It can just kill the PCs at will, until they find out the right way to defeat it (by doing research, asking questions, and finding clues). It may not be defeatable in a fight at all, but must be unsummoned or something like that.
2. Uncertainty. The players must never know just what they're up against. If it's an existing monster, make sure it's not recognizable. Maybe apply a template or make up some abilities for it. The familiar is not scary; the unknown is.

As for descriptions... you need detail and vivid descriptions - up to a point. You want to describe the environment, people, items, and so on vividly and precisely. But not "the horror." Oh, never the monster itself. When the action starts, it's fast, it's frantic - you don't describe the monster. You say, in as few words as possibly, what is going on - "Suddenly, a huge, black shape leaps at you from the top of the staircase!" - and then you press the players for a reaction - "What do you do? Quick! It's going for your throat!" *

Pacing is important. You go slow and creepy for long stretches, and then you go fast and frantic for short stretches. You build tension, then you unwind it (but not all the way - not until the very end, if even then). This, at least, some horror movies can teach you; but then again, horror literature can, too.

Don't use gore. Don't use violence. A few drops of blood on a sheet is infinitely more effective, more powerful than a gory mess of body parts and intestines all over a cellar room. A character being snatched away into the darkness is better than a character being messily sheared in half.

Use red herrings. I think HoH gets that right. I've creeped out my players countless of times with... absolutely nothing. (Of course, I often have to improvise an "unwinding" afterwards, so as not to let the tension drag on and "go flat." A players totally gets creeped out by doors left ajar and vague noises while investigating an empty house, so I have to have a ghoul jump at him when he's starting his car...)

The HoH list of creepy effects is GREAT. As long as you have some general excuse, you can toss most of those into the game at any point, without much thought. If the PCs follow up, you can improvise something, but mostly it's not even necessary.


* Exceptions made for gothic horror. Dracula/Strahd doesn't jump at you from a shadow. He strides up to you, and then does something awful (like turns into a huge, grotesque werebat and attacks you).

[Golthur]

Lots of excellent advice so far.

I'll disagree about the "BOO!". "BOO!" works, so long as you follow it up with something more substantial. It's always good to get the players' hearts racing, and them running around somewhat panicked, but it's got to be followed up with something - typically of the "my God, this is so wrong" variety. The difference between surprise and suspense.

Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. It's been said in the thread, already, and it's really, really important. If you can learn what personally scares your players, all the better. Use it.

Layers are an important technique. Never give anything away all at once - and, make it so, ideally, incomplete versions of the events unfolding can lead the players to make very, very incorrect conclusions.

Red herrings, as previously mentioned, are awesome. And, don't forget one of the best red herrings of them all. The random die roll for no reason - "Hey, Joe, can you roll me a Spot check?", or "Mary, roll me a Con check.". I've had players scrambling around for hours following up on some random die roll.

[Varen_Tai]

A good horror game creeps out the PLAYERS, not just enforced character Sanity checks made via dice. One great way to do this is to make them feel powerless/ignorant. You don't need a creature that could take them easily any time it wants to. Instead, make it some force that cannot be hit with a sword, Turned, divined, fireballed, or any typical combat tricks. One of my favorite examples came from one of the 2E Ravenloft sourcebooks, I forget which one, but imagine this:

At an inn, a player is in the bath when he feels a small prickle on his hand. He looks down and blood spots have appeared on a small section of the back of his hand. There's no obvious reason why, and the blood rinses off. The next night, maybe at the same time, maybe not, he feels the same prickle, except larger. The entire back of his hand is covered in bloodspots. In a panic, he has the party mage and cleric both cast various divination/healing/dispel spells, but nothing is discovered or removed. Each night, the blood spots spread more and more. There is no obvious reason why or obvious danger (ie, he's not taking any HP damage), just the increasing sense that something is horribly wrong. Maybe he begins to feel a presence or see things/people that aren't there.

The point is to make whatever the players are dealing with outside the combat system of D&D. Within that combat system, players feel empowered - even dragons don't generate horror, just plain old, "Ohcrapwearegonnadie!" type responses, so ultra powerful beasties in D&D terms is the wrong way to go, IMHO. In the blood prickle case, an epic mage could be challenged just as badly as a 1st level warrior - if neither of them know exactly what is going on and their class combat/discovery methods don't work, then horror has been introduced. Can't smack it with a sword or hit it with a fireball, now what? That sense of impending doom combined with powerlessness and lack of knowledge is the core of terror.

[Thomas]

I'll disagree about the "BOO!". "BOO!" works, so long as you follow it up with something more substantial. It's always good to get the players' hearts racing, and them running around somewhat panicked, but it's got to be followed up with something - typically of the "my God, this is so wrong" variety. The difference between surprise and suspense.

Well, I do use it - sort of. But not the way you'll see it used in The Haunting ('99 version; the original was much better), House on Haunted Hill, and 99% of other modern horror films. The musical scores, the environment, everything is geared toward a constant stream of loud noises and sudden movements aimed at spooking people. That's not horror; that's an instinctive reaction to dangerously sudden stimulus.

The unwinding I speak of is not "BOO!" It can be - often is, in fact - something jumping out suddenly. (Like the monster, as I described.) It's tension built with creepiness, finally released in a sudden scene of frantic action. (Not necessarily combat; in fact, preferrably not!)

Unwinding is very important. It's a climax. If you have the PCs explore an abandoned house for an hour, getting more and more creeped out by red herring sounds and phenomena (i.e. they don't actually signify anything, and are just there to create a creepy atmosphere), and then you just let them leave without anything happening... that's an anti-climax. The tension dies out, goes flat, fizzles. You need to unwind it with a sudden event. (Modern horror films like the "BOO! Oh, it's just me, your friend" shtick, often heaped upon itself in countless layers in one scene, bombarding the watcher for 5-10 minutes straight. It's awful, and doesn't work at all.)

Timing is important there, too. I'd recommend a maximum of 1 hour of wind-up at a time; that's about the point where I (a more patient person than many, I suspect) start feeling antsy and bored with a film. (The Ring sort of did this. The vast majority of the film is building tension for a big finish.)

This, of course, refers to constant, active wind-up. If you do low-key tension-building, it can go on for hours and hours, but the more tension you're heaping on the players, the sooner it needs to get unwound. Once their hearts are actually racing (and that's one sweet feeling, setting those hearts flapping with fright), you need to let the tension come to a climax pretty soon. You want them to start, reacting from the gut, and left panting.

It's an incredibly complex interconnected set-up. It takes lots of experience to get it just right; reading horror books and watching horror films (even the bad ones; you will learn to spot effects that you must avoid, and possibly find ones that work better in tabletop than on film) is the best research.


Oh, I thought of some more recommendations: the movie Dagon, the novella Shadow Over Innsmouth, and the computer game CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth. They all incorporate the magnificient "Escape from Innsmouth" scene, which literally set my heart racing in written form. The game's version was so frighteningly adrenal-fueled, it's amazing. CoC:DCotE, incidentally, has a slew of excellent elements, though many won't work in tabletop.

Edit:

At an inn, a player is in the bath when he feels a small prickle on his hand. ...

Magnificient example of the sort of stuff I'm talking about. In D&D horror games, making the players feel powerless is trickier than just throwing impossible tough monsters at them; but this sort of thing works so much better. It's "wrong," it's creepy, they have no clue what it is, and they can't do a thing about it (yet). That's horror. Being deprived of agency is precisely what affects people the worst (it's why being subjected to a prolonged artillery shelling while in a bunker/trench causes shell shock/PTSD).

Obviously, when using a monster, it's important to incorporate this "loss of agency" - it's not just that you can't beat the thing, it's that you can't even begin to fight it.

I've creeped one of my players out with a black cat. It didn't do anything except keep showing up where only his PC would notice it. (Even after he "killed" it.) I never bothered establishing if it was a hallucination.

[Subotei]

Keep the Characters hit point totals a secret known only to the GM, (and don't let them work it out by stabbing each other repeatedly). Let them know how damaged they are in descriptive terms (its just a nick/flesh wound/the Zombie took your nose clean off etc). I've done this once or twice and it ups the fear factor in combat - especially against foes they know nothing about.

[RandomNPC]

if you read the HoH your on the right path D&D wise, you just need to get it made specificly for your players, not the general audience the book is geared towards. i'm a fan of the "player A wakes up with what appears to be tiny bite marks all over thier body" while handing player B a note that says "for some reason you feel to full to eat breakfast this morning" and making people spot check to notice the no breakfast thing, but i haven't gotten around to actually putting it to use yet, im saving it for a (spooky) rainy day.

[illyrus]

This has kinda been said in previous posts, but I'd just like to add that it's important to have "normal" gameplay too. Horror movies tend to have 1/3 to 1/2 the movie devoted to non-horror elements. Done well it makes the whole experience seem more believable and thus a little bit scarier.

Me personally, I'd make the campaign about one thing that has nothing to do with horror, like stopping the evil wizard/tyrant/cultists etc. The PCs will have intermittant horror elements that are unrelated to the "BBEG". That will also add in some misdirection as the PCs might believe the "BBEG" is the cause of all this. They key is to keep the PCs guessing and unable to adapt to the situation for as long as possible without them feeling that you as a DM are out to get them imo.

[Maxymiuk]

A few techniques I find useful when I want to get my players nervous:

- Significant pauses. Instead of the traditional "Are you sure you want to to do this?" I simply make a pause after a player states their course of action, and look at them as if I was assesing their chances.

- Too good to be true. If the group is in a high-risk scenario, such as infiltrating an enemy fortress where raising alarm is equivalent to TPK, make things seem almost too easy. It's tricky to pull off, especially in a group that features players with delusions of grandeur, but if done right, the players will become very nervous indeed, expecting that the "evil GM" is setting them up for a really big screwup.

- It's a trap! Lead them to expect gods know what... and then bombard them with normalcy. If they've just snuck into the wizard's castle through a dungeon full of the results of experiments in creating the perfect soldier, the last thing they'll expect his residence to be will be a neat, tidy study with volumes of poetry on the shelves and a plate with bits of unfinished breakfast on the table (eggs and bacon). When I pulled this the players were fully expecting tentacled monstrosities to suddenly erupt from the cupboard. One of them actually started praying out of character along the lines of "Please, please, please don't let there be tentacles."

- Moderation. Don't grin the grin of the evil GM. That's too generic. Just put on a vague, noncommital smile. Occasionally raise an eyebrow, as if amused or puzzled. If you grin, they'll know you're about to screw them over. My method gets them thinking that I'm still planning and once I'm done it's going to be far, far worse.


The common thread in these techniques is that you're making the players do most of the work, creating nonexistent dangers in their head. Someone here mentioned red herring, and my method is similar, but requires somewhat less work on the part of the GM.

My own variation on the "BOO!" tactic is to be describing a room and suddenly break off, point at a random player and say loudly "You! Which hand are you holding that candle in?" And after the shaken victim stammers out the answer... I continue the description, as if nothing had happened.

[Druid_lord]

Read H.P lovecraft for ides, but NEVER at night. He has invlunced almost every modern horror story. Anyone who has read his books has a spaz attack whenevr the word Cthulu is mentioned.

[Indoril]

Red herrings, as previously mentioned, are awesome. And, don't forget one of the best red herrings of them all. The random die roll for no reason - "Hey, Joe, can you roll me a Spot check?", or "Mary, roll me a Con check.". I've had players scrambling around for hours following up on some random die roll.

Even better - roll a die yourself for no reason. If the players ask why just tell them "Oh I was just making a check. Nothing big."

Then every once in a while have something happen as a result of one of these die rolls. It never has to be big. A simple "You hear footsteps on the floor above you." Or "You hear deep, quiet breathing coming from the passageway to the left ahead of you." really gets them going, especially when there isn't actually anything going on.

[TimeWizard]

My theater teacher use to say "if you're watching a tense scene in a show or movie, something passionate or frightening, turn off the volume and see if it still has that effect on you"

also, casually let the words cthulhu ryleth slip out somewhere. Once in a game we had finally defeated the faux-bbeg only to discover he had some powerful otherworldy backing. After finding a tome of some sort (fuzzy memory, it was a while ago) the party wizard had to cast a spell to decipher the wierd ancient writing. When he proudly announced the entitiy's name was "ka, katulhoo... ffahtagan?" i'll never forget the look on the psion player's face as he had his PC run from the room screaming in horror. May only work of Lovecraft fans.

[Ambrogino]

I've been searching and searching for good horror movie references, and can't find any aside from The Ring (which doesn't resort to cheap "BOO," but instead builds tension until you can't take it, then slowly unravels it, then builds it again). Books are perhaps a better model for horror RPGs; they have to rely on slow tension and a feeling of "wrongness" rather than "BOO" thrills. Read anything by Stephen King, really. (1408 is the best, most concise "how to" example, in my opinion.)



The original Silent Hill video game is a great example of the slow burn. Anyone that's done the scenes with the lockers knows what I'm talking about. Parts of the movie had this, but there were a few too many "sudden-movement monsters" on top of the general environment.

[Seffbasilisk]

Never go by the book's stats. That lets those who've DM'd a lot, or just have a good memory relax a bit. For instance, if the mage throws a lesser orb of acid at the werewolf in hybrid form and hits a touch AC of 14....tell him he missed.

Little things like higher dex, unexpected stats...maybe the minotaur dies easier then they thought....maybe the dwarf is really charismatic..

Just don't go by listed, have a little story with each encounter.

[Shadow of the Sun]

I read the Call of Cthulhu, and it didn't frighten me. Maybe some of the others will be better.. But using really obscure non-euclidean geometry in a dungeon, where things look normal is fun.

[Thomas]

if you read the HoH your on the right path D&D wise, you just need to get it made specificly for your players, not the general audience the book is geared towards.

I wouldn't go that far. It's a good book, but it gets most of the actual horror wrong. The writers seem to think Scream and Hellraiser are horror movies, which is just idiocy on their part. Gore is splatter, not horror; it's precisely what you want to avoid in a proper horror story. (Though I'll admit that Stephen King enjoys using it, but he's hardly perfect - and violence in his books tends to be of the sickening variety, which is kind of impossible to replicate in a movie or a tabletop game.)

I think HoH contradicts itself on this, too; obviously the writers had different ideas about horror. For the best advice on D&D horror, check out the 3rd edition Ravenloft books by Swords & Sorcery.


Read H.P lovecraft for ides, but NEVER at night. He has invlunced almost every modern horror story. Anyone who has read his books has a spaz attack whenevr the word Cthulu is mentioned.

You're exaggerating. 90% of his stories are pathetic Poe knock-offs; some of the Dream Cycle stuff is actually good, but it's a definite minority. Shadow Over Innsmouth is the one that's actually scared me; Pickman's Model did way back when I first read Lovecraft (at age... 13?). Dreams in the Witch House is a bit disturbing. Call of Cthulhu is a really weak story, and I'll never understand why Cthulhu became such an icon (especially considering how much more prominent Nyarlathotep and Azathoth are in the Mythos). And the only right time to read or watch any horror is at night, alone; what's the point if you don't scare yourself?


The original Silent Hill video game is a great example of the slow burn. Anyone that's done the scenes with the lockers knows what I'm talking about. Parts of the movie had this, but there were a few too many "sudden-movement monsters" on top of the general environment.

*fingersnap* The Silent Hill movie. That one was good. It gets most of the technical detail right (music, pacing, tension), although the final confrontation is a huge, gory disappointment. The movie doesn't resort to cheap "BOO!" scares, and sticks to the creepy and grotesque.


I read the Call of Cthulhu, and it didn't frighten me. Maybe some of the others will be better.. But using really obscure non-euclidean geometry in a dungeon, where things look normal is fun.

From Lovecraft, read...
Shadow Over Innsmouth;
Pickman's Model;
Rats in the Walls;
Case of Charles Dexter Ward;
Dreams in the Witch House;
Lurking Fear;
At the Mountains of Madness;
Thing on the Doorstep;
Re-Animator;
Shadow Out of Time.

Avoid everything else by Lovecraft, until you become a hardcore Lovecraft fan and can't help but want to read everything he wrote. (Feel free to read some Clark Ashton Smith, though; his books' influence on modern fantasy conventions is obvious. They're less horror and more bizarre fantasy.)


Edit: Speaking of night, we only play Call of Cthulhu when it's dark. Curtains drawn, two or three candles lighting the room. And never, ever forget music. Use something ambient and low-key, quiet, with no vocals (they distract) - the Blair Witch 2 OST CD was good and creepy, but there's a ton of other stuff (Midnight Syndicate is great, you just have to make sure the CD you pick has no songs with vocals).

[Ambrogino]

I wouldn't go that far. It's a good book, but it gets most of the actual horror wrong. The writers seem to think Scream and Hellraiser are horror movies, which is just idiocy on their part. Gore is splatter, not horror; it's precisely what you want to avoid in a proper horror story.

I haven't read HoH, but I think you're being a little unfair on Hellraiser there. All the sequels descend into gore fests and pointless effects scenes yes, but there's a lot going on in the original that adds to the horror elements - the fact that the regeneration scene is slow but not viewed by anyone except the audience, the actions of the stepmother in order to return her lover to human form, the stories basis in obsession and trying to escape the repercussions of it, and that the cenobites (in the first one at least) aren't actually evil or malicious at any stage - just inhuman.

But personally I rate Barker on the whole a hell of a lot more than King, so it might be a taste thing. I totally agree with you on slasher movies fwiw.

[Lord_Kimboat]

This is certainly one of the more disturbing threads I've read on these boards.:smalleek:

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Keep up the good work.:smalltongue:

[Thomas]

I haven't read HoH, but I think you're being a little unfair on Hellraiser there. All the sequels descend into gore fests and pointless effects scenes yes, but there's a lot going on in the original that adds to the horror elements - the fact that the regeneration scene is slow but not viewed by anyone except the audience, the actions of the stepmother in order to return her lover to human form, the stories basis in obsession and trying to escape the repercussions of it, and that the cenobites (in the first one at least) aren't actually evil or malicious at any stage - just inhuman.

I started with the first Hellraiser, and was definitely unimpressed. It's not as bad as some other movies, but it's certainly not good horror. The sequels (with the exception of Hellraiser: Inferno, which I actually liked) are just unforgiveable drek.

But yeah, horror is a taste thing. Apparently some people even like crap like Scream (because Hollywood wouldn't be gushing it out if it didn't sell). And I guess the fact that I can only think of three good horror movies (Silent Hill, Dagon, and The Ring) says something about my standards...

I generally prefer gothic horror (which is why I like Ravenloft and Call of Cthulhu; Lovecraft's main influences were gothic, like Poe, and his own stuff is sort of post-gothic), but it's apparently near impossible to adapt into a good movie. (No Dracula or Frankenstein movie has ever been creepy; they can be interesting, but that's it.)


This is certainly one of the more disturbing threads I've read on these boards.:smalleek:

Why? :smallconfused:


Incidentally... Ring is just that good? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SJAJHX8lYk) (Although the Japanese version is very, very... Japanese... and the sequels blow the story all to hell.) Hilarious!

[Khantalas]

By the way, for those who may not know, Scream is a parody of horror movies, not a true horror movie, IIRC.

It may get confusing.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Hehehe. For creepy music, use Trail of Blood from FFVII. It works really well.

And Edgar Allen Poe is just awesome- I love him.

[Ambrogino]

By the way, for those who may not know, Scream is a parody of horror movies, not a true horror movie, IIRC.

It may get confusing.

No, it's a parody of slasher movies, which turns into a parody of itself

[Ephraim]

Spoilers for the movie "28 Days Later" follow.

I may get lambasted for this recommendation, but prey on the players' sensibilities. One of the best horror movies I've seen is 28 Days Later. Yes, it has plenty of BOO! moments, but it is absolutely horrific. Consider some of the elements of the movie that have intense emotional impact:

Turning instantly on a comrade who has been wounded
Rape being justified by the "good guys"
Chaining up a comrade-turned-zombie to study it
Using the chained-up zombie as a weapon
A human character filmed using techniques used elsewhere in the movie only for zombies

Make your characters afraid of one another. Show them monsters which are frightening and then NPCs that are horrifically cruel. Force them into dilemmas where their most effective way out involves some horrible act.

[Ambrogino]

But yeah, horror is a taste thing. Apparently some people even like crap like Scream (because Hollywood wouldn't be gushing it out if it didn't sell). And I guess the fact that I can only think of three good horror movies (Silent Hill, Dagon, and The Ring) says something about my standards...

I'd certainly agree with you on those three (till maybe the end of Silent Hill). I'd also put forwards the first half of 28days later (the second half devolves so much I'm frankly amazed it's in the same movie) which as an (ex) Londoner was so creepy it was disturbing, Audition (possibly more of a thriller, but the tension building is right) and John Carpenters The Thing (yes, there's tonnes of gore and fx, but the building paranoia is excellent).


(No Dracula or Frankenstein movie has ever been creepy; they can be interesting, but that's it.)

A friend of mine had a media studies assignment years ago of scoring the original Nosferatu. That really brought home the power of music in movies to me, as well timed and well chosen pieces added to the creepiness of the film immensly, without having the composed specifically for the film pieces that jumps and scrape at all the right moments to produce false starts.

[Lord_Kimboat]

Ephraim, I hear you but I have to say I thought the film stretched my credibility to/past breaking point. No virus, disease or anything I can even think of works that fast. Also, one would hope that the military, which worked so hard with so much discipline, would take a little longer to fall apart.

But, on the plus side, thanks to your comments I think I see what the film was trying to achieve.

[Thomas]

Make your characters afraid of one another. Show them monsters which are frightening and then NPCs that are horrifically cruel. Force them into dilemmas where their most effective way out involves some horrible act.

This is great advice.

No matter what monster any author or screenwriter comes up with, real people can always be more grotesque and frightening - and it's even worse when the people in question aren't actually evil people (like serial killers, brutal warlords, what-have-you), but normal people in situations that turn them into something awful. Lord of the Flies is a classic exploration of this theme.

Ambrogino: That's exactly my problem with modern movie music. House on Haunted Hill is one of the worst examples I know; the music goes up, anticipating a "BOO!" moment, and then you get some random clatter or a "BZT!" from broken wiring. It's just annoying and startling, not creepy or scary. I prefer music that fits the atmosphere, but doesn't actually "move" with the scene itself. It should be in the background, instead fo dominating the scene and grabbing the listener's attention. Good mood music isn't even noticed until everything else is quiet.

Thrillers are also good study material for the tension-building you need in RPGs. Session 9 wasn't a horror movie so much as a thriller, but it did some good tension-building. (Although, in general, the movie was a disappointment. Might've been the editing - lots of movies make much less sense after being cut all to heck.)


More on the music front... I already mentioned the Blair Witch 2 OST and Midnight Syndicate, but possibly my all-time (gothic) favorites are the OSTs for From Hell and Sleepy Hollow. (From Hell is a nice movie, but not a great horror entry; Sleepy Hollow isn't bad, but it's not good, either. But watching just about any horror movie or thriller is bound to benefit a would-be horror RPG GM. There's always stuff to learn.)

[illyrus]

I'd just like to add that I think it'd be entertaining to play a PC set in the "Saw" movie. I never saw the second one, but to play one of the 4 or 5 main/minor characters would make for an interesting horror/puzzle game.

Same thing to be said for the "Mothman Prophecies" or the French film "High Tension".

As for music, I hate that high pitched whine sound they put in some horror movies like "The Grudge" that's meant to make shivers run down your spine. Gives me a headache.

[Golthur]

Creepy music - I got a bunch, and it's worth using if you have the right stuff. When I was running CoC, I had two CDs chock full of it. Most of it was what would be termed "Dark Ambient" - grabbed most of it using Google, ripped some from my own personal CD collection.

It worked, though - there's this constant stream of unsettling noise in the background that just threw my players on edge the whole time.

Cranked it up with some creepy Philip Glass (from the Candyman soundtrack) for the big ritual. The first note of the "evil ritual" music got an "eek" and a very worried look from my players. They spent the next twenty minutes in a state of desperate panic. It was a beautiful thing :smallbiggrin:, and I even got a "****, that was scary" from one of them at the end of the session.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

You might want to make one or two monsters that are just absolutely unbeatable by the party. I mean, if your party's around level 10, make a CR 30 monster running around. The challenge is escaping it, see. Losing your character to an actual threat is scary.

[Dervag]

Read anything by Stephen King, really. (1408 is the best, most concise "how to" example, in my opinion.)If you want to get weird as well as scary, read Lovecraft, too. Not so much for the monsters, which are kind of over the top, but for the impossible settings that defy our fundamental expectation about how the world works. For instance, you can screw with the geometry. If your heroes get too deep into 'Indian country', they start running places where they walk 40 feet down a level corridor, turn right, walk 40 more feet, turn right, walk 40 more feet, turn right, walk 40 more feet... and don't end up in the same place. I, for one, would find that really scary once I figured out what was going on.

It definitely creates uncertainty and unfairness. I mean, if you can't rely on three rights making a left and ten steps forward canceling out ten steps backward, what can you rely on?

[Varen_Tai]

You might want to make one or two monsters that are just absolutely unbeatable by the party. I mean, if your party's around level 10, make a CR 30 monster running around. The challenge is escaping it, see. Losing your character to an actual threat is scary.

But that's not horror. That's tension, yes. Horror has to do with the unknown, not the overpowering. My example of horror was not overpowering, but it still gave the feeling of powerlessness and ignorance that is critical to horror.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

That too. Make the monster really frightening and impossible to know when/where it's coming.

Also, don't just give it hefty stats to make it's CR so high. Give it abilities that are frightening. Like the ability to appear to be anything, the ability to take over bodies, or maybe it's just absolutely inescapable and is simply biding it's time, hiding just out of reach of the players and causing vast misfortune. Perhaps the party unknowingly has something with them that's keeping it at bay, or maybe the thing just can't fully manifest itself until the party travels closer to it's domain. Don't let the PC's know that, of course. Let the knowledge that they could have avoided a confrontation seethe into them in the last moments.

[Thomas]

Stealth (any of invisibility, incorporeality, exceptional mobility, disguises, etc.) is a good attribute for any creature, yes. For ideas, check out the 3rd ed. Ravenloft's Masque of Red Death setting book; monsters can be given masques: sets of special abilities that turn a regular goblin into a real bogeyman. Some are invisible to all but their victim; some can assume a disguise; some can disappear into shadows; some can slip under doors and through keyholes...

Horribly powerful creatures can be scary, too, but it's not their sheer power that's scary. How often players are actually scared or horrified at the idea of facing a dragon? Not very often. But if you play it right, you can turn even a dragon into a horror monster. (Usually of the Dracula type, though.)

My personal preferred examples of overpowering horror monsters are golems (one that can collapse a building to block pursuit when necessary) and werewolves (who are plain too fast to catch). Of course, with both of these, the details of the monster's nature must still be kept secret for as long as possible. The unknown is always scarier. When the confrontation arrives, you do the big reveal. (It need not be a final confrontation, but then you have to follow up with some sort of emotional horror; play up the reasons for the golem's existence and the obsession of it's creator, or the horror that's obvious in a werewolf's dual life....)

[Grey Knight]

[...] if you can't rely on three rights making a left and ten steps forward canceling out ten steps backward, what can you rely on?

"What can you rely on?" is a good general tip here. Find something the players are taking for granted - something you take for granted, for that matter - and break it. A common example of this in horror movies/books is the concept of "home" as a safe place; it's scarier when the zombies break into your own house than when they break into the warehouse, simply because you subconsciously associate home with safety. Perhaps you could set up the PCs' "home base inn" as a sort of refuge from monsters, only to have them break in after all later on?
Other things taken for granted include basic geometry as Dervag already mentioned above. How about money? Adventurers carry stacks of gold pieces around with them all the time; why not make some dangerous? A copper piece from hundreds of years ago that you found in the wizard's tower is blackened with age, and every time you fall asleep with it in your possession you have a nightmare (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/nightmare.htm). What's worse, whenever you try to spend it or throw it away it mysteriously returns to you.

Talk about a bad penny. :smallwink:

(yes, I did make up that entire idea for the sake of a weak joke)

[Everyman]

I'd like to second a previously mentioned idea: signals. Nothing is quite as unnerving to a player as knowing that something to fear can be seen coming, but not know exactly from where. Kind of a "Captain Hook" effect. For him, the ticking of a clock was horrifying, because he always knew that a deadly foe was nearby. This can be applied to any D&D game as well. The concept becomes even more effective if the trigger signal is something that is usually innocent. A child's laugh, the smell of fresh flowers, too many smiling faces...all of this can be incredibly unnerving if used properly. For example, hearing a child laugh is something we might expect in a town, but what if the PCs unknowingly opened a door or broke a seal that was holding something evil? The signal is created after they release the evil (hearing a child's faint laughter moments after opening a door...in an abandoned dungeon), and becomes something to be feared. If you note laughter even when the evil isn't around, you'd be surprised how tense PCs will get.

Truth be told, I've found details that are just a tad wrong to be effective too. When every cat in town just stares at you (and I mean EVERY cat), something is not right. This gets better if what is "wrong" is something human-ish. If every elf you encounter in a city seems to not see you (excluding any elf friends or party members) or every orc you encounter smiles at YOU and only YOU, then you'll be wondering what is up.

[codexgigas]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. It's given me a lot to work with. I've been reading quite a bit of Lovecraft recently, so I have a pretty good handle on how horror itself works, but I just wasn't sure exactly how to translate that over into DMing without relying on metagame tactics (such as making fake dice rolls). I especially like the idea of the abnormal geometry; the campaign is a d20 Past one set in the Victorian-era British Empire, and the thought of the players being hopelessly lost in an Egyptian pyramid sounds intriguing. Unfortunately, dropping random hints about the Cthulhu mythos won't scare my players; I'm the only one's who's read anything by Lovecraft.

On a side note, I can't really see Silent Hill as a good example of a scary movie. One of my players and I watched it together, and neither of us were even remotely creeped out by anything other than the ash children... which almost made up for the rest of the movie.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I just got a wonderfully HORRIBLE idea.

Get a co-DM that the PC's never see. Not like he's in the game but he's on your side, I mean he's literally in the house/place you're playing, but the PC's never see the guy. Have him make unnerving sounds in strange places as you play, as per the game. Maybe he can sneak up and plant things on people, like a (plastic) bloody (not real blood) knife when they aren't looking, that actually has a point in the game's progression. Drive them nuts.

[Thomas]

Actually, ironically, most Lovecraft stories are good examples of what not to do...

The Cthulhu Mythos isn't scary in itself; it's not the content, it's the delivery. There are horror subjects that are horrible in and of themselves (again, see Lord of the Flies), but Lovecraft didn't deal with them. Lovecraft's forte was gothic - he made the familiar seem terrible and grotesque. (The first paragraphs of Shadow Over Innsmouth are a great example, as is just about any part where he describes buildings, streets, and towns.)

I repeat my Stephen King recommendation, and specifically suggest getting Everything's Eventual - it's a collection of short stories specifically written to illustrate different aspects of horror writing. Very good study material.

And the Silent Hill movie was a great example of structure for a horror adventure. Like I said, it got the technical stuff down pat. Getting the technical stuff right just isn't always enough.

[Ambrogino]

I just got a wonderfully HORRIBLE idea.

Get a co-DM that the PC's never see. Not like he's in the game but he's on your side, I mean he's literally in the house/place you're playing, but the PC's never see the guy. Have him make unnerving sounds in strange places as you play, as per the game. Maybe he can sneak up and plant things on people, like a (plastic) bloody (not real blood) knife when they aren't looking, that actually has a point in the game's progression. Drive them nuts.


In my experience if it's not a LRP game that's more likely to make the players disengage from their characters and the storyline rather than find it atmospheric. People multi-task rather than bending the extreneous events into the game.

[Loingo]

I like using the amazingly unexpected for horror, theme and ambiance are, as noted in most posts above, absolutely required, but what about you villain? Liches, Vampires, necromancers, and undead in general are extremely played out, everyone expects them. The reason they get used so often is they make for Great descriptions "a twisted hulking mass of rotting flesh shambles towards you reeking of putrefied meat". Someone earlier suggested using templates, I love that idea, what above a chaotic evil druid/necromancer who plans on using undead animals to rid the world of humanity. Vampires not scary, Vampire chipmunks so wrong, and So hard to catch. What about ghoulish deer? How do you suppose your player would react to a lovely pastoral scene where they come upon a deer eating the spleen out of a freshly killed wolf, then having it turn on them?


Loingo
Just us Jesters

[Thomas]

Actually, liches, vampires, and necromancers aren't very common horror villains at all. You'd mostly see them in Ravenloft (which, again, is gothic horror, and isn't so much about the creepy as it is about dark passions, retribution, obsession, etc.; and Azalin, for instance isn't scary because he's a lich, but because ... well, so he's not actually scary...).

Carnivorous animals are mentioned both in Ravenloft and in HoH, I think; they make a nice effect, but not much of a focus. The evil druid idea is also mentioned in HoH. Animals can be scary in themselves (although, as always, the confrontation isn't the scary part - confrontation is where the tension created by a creepy atmosphere is unwound).

You're definitely on the right track, though. One of the most popular moves is to use a child as the "villain" - there's a certain visceral element there.

[Igan]

I find a good trick for creating horror is making an alien setting--somewhere where the PCs don't know the rules and limits, where they get the feeling they're not alone but anything that's there is watching and biding its time.
Another good technique is creepy grafitti, in an appropriate setting.

Imagine you're in a seemingly endless house, filled with the smell of decay, and you hear strange, subtle sounds, and distant snatches of conversation held by unfamiliar voices.

And then you come into a room, and on the wall, in large, scrawling, indistinct letters, sentences overlapping each other so that you can only read snatches, "RoUnd anD rOund ThE cIrc...i HaVE no eyeS buT...unsEen uNtil tHe VeiL iS draWn-...tOok mY eyeS...ScReam foR the yOung, shRiek foR the oL...-tty i hAd to Eat hiM..."

And either make it important...or not. And add some others, repeating a theme--Like, using that one, the writer would be going on about his eyes.

[Dark]

One thing that tends to creep me out is the "illusionary world". It's the idea that the world we see and touch, which seems innocuous enough, is just a flimsy coverup for the crawling horror that is reality. And that we can't see it doesn't always protect us. Lovecraft uses this theme a lot.

An example in a D&D game would be some kind of illusory terrain. Suppose the party starts to explore a clearly ruined castle, but as soon as they enter it seems to be in good repair, even lived-in, with continual hints that there are people just in the other room. At the same time, keep letting them know this is illusion -- they stumble over loose rocks on a smooth floor, stairways creak alarmingly and have missing steps, they feel unexpected drafts, water drips on them from an intact ceiling. Play up the sense that they don't really know what it is they're touching or interacting with, and that it might be something horrible. Then put some horrible things in :)

Of course, a well-trained D&D party will be shouting "I disbelieve!" at every new room, and this will break the mood so you'll need a way to handle it. I suggest making disbelief only work in a small area, and for a limited time. And give a chance that disbelief will strip away just one layer of illusion, revealing a different illusion underneath.

[Hileria]

You've got to mess with their perception of reality. Play with their heads. Lull them into a belief that they've figured out the pattern of what is going on, and then switch it around. A lot of it depends on the exact genre of what type of reality you're building. Is it the "Death Around Every Corner" or the SAW movies; or perhaps the "I'm Slowly Going Insane" of Cthulu.

One tip though - avoid, avoid, avoid the old, tired, overused, and hackneyed approach of playing music in the background. I say this for three reasons:

1 - if the music ebbs and flows between high dramatic moments and low, then you'll never get it to fit the script of your adventure; even if you try once the first pc does or says anything, your script is out the window. Or do you really want to sit there, trying to run an adventure, with a cd remote trying to queue up the right music? The music is never going to match the mood your trying to set.

2 - If the music has a pretty even flow to it, it's eventually just going to fade into the background - and by that I mean the players won't even notice it anymore. So it might as well not even be on.

or worse...

3 - You've got a limited library of your mood music and 3.5 hours into the session everyone is sick of listening to the same damn music over and over again.

The players should be paying attention to what you are doing - not to same crap out of a stereo.

[MandibleBones]

Some ideas I've been toying over for use in my own campaign:

1.) No clerics or favored souls. Bards, Paladins and Archivists, among others can provide healing, but it has to be planned out in advance. None of this "unlimited spontaneous fix-me-up" stuff. With the idea that every combat might be deadly, your PCs (and your players) are going to be a little more on edge.

2.) Start the campaign in "the ordinary world" - something truly classic D&D cliché. Maybe goblins have raided the farmlands, whatever. Give them a seriously over-the-top mini-BBEG. Make him or her overpowerful for the CR and complete with Evil Overlord issues, and make sure he (or she) escapes ("letting the PCs off"). After the first adventure, skip over some time (in which nobody remembers what happened) and start implementing horror things. At some point, let them find the body of the BBEG.

[Morrandir]

Usage of small children in the campaign, especially when the characters know that it's a horror-themed one, is especially disturbing.

And, like many have stated already, smaller is better. Walking into a room full of gore and bones and random meaty parts is not nearly as scary as walking into one with a single finger/toe hanging just inside.

That being said, however, there are times for incredibly gory-oozy-icky rooms. These work best when combined with other horror elements, however, so just having the PCs walk into a slaughterhouse isn't all that scary. It is, however, when there is a harmless little furry woodland creature nibbling on a disembodied arm that sees the party and runs off. Especially when said creature says something in a language that only one of the PCs knows.

One particularly good template to apply to animals in this sort of thing is the Pseudonatural, from Complete Arcane. Very nice for descriptions.

[ExHunterEmerald]

Get together a good soundtrack.
Work on some thematics--ever play Silent Hill? You have a radio and, when out of doors, you're stuck in an immensely heavy, thick fog.
Whenever something hostile gets close, before you can see it, your radio goes nuts and begins to hiss, before you can see where (or what) the monster is.
Doing something like that, like, you hear a distant door open and close and a slight change in pressure signifies the arrival of an outsider.

[Folie]

One tip though - avoid, avoid, avoid the old, tired, overused, and hackneyed approach of playing music in the background [for a bunch of reasons].

I have an idea that could still let you have music and use it effectively: only play music during a quick introductory speech that sets the tone of your game - something like "Mankind has always been afraid of the shadows," but hopefully not something quite so played out.:smallbiggrin: That way, you'd only need one or two specific background songs, so you'd get all the benefits of creepy music, but none of the distractingness that Hileria describes.

[Thomas]

One tip though - avoid, avoid, avoid the old, tired, overused, and hackneyed approach of playing music in the background. I say this for three reasons:

1 - if the music ebbs and flows between high dramatic moments and low, then you'll never get it to fit the script of your adventure; even if you try once the first pc does or says anything, your script is out the window. Or do you really want to sit there, trying to run an adventure, with a cd remote trying to queue up the right music? The music is never going to match the mood your trying to set.

Actually, the ebb and flow of the music is a problem in horror movies. I've seen perfectly decent horror scenes totally wrecked by the music "following the scene," with crescendos coinciding with something sudden happening (or false crescendos making watchers jump). It's awful.

You want low-key, atmospheric music with no vocals, in the background. You can never go wrong with the soundtrack CD for Blair Witch 2. It's all weird ambient sounds.

[MandibleBones]

Also the soundtracks to any of the Silent Hill games. Quiet, eerie piano scores and static for the win.

[Athenodorus]

One of my players is a Warlock, and has taken See The Unseen as his first least invocation, so essentially has perma see-invis and darkvision at level 1. By level 3, he will have detect evil and detect magic at will.

This makes building a good horror adventure a bit more difficult, because he is going to see anything I try to keep hidden or invisible, and can see in the dark to boot. Maybe it will just force me to be creative, dunno. ;)

[ExHunterEmerald]

One of my players is a Warlock, and has taken See The Unseen as his first least invocation, so essentially has perma see-invis and darkvision at level 1. By level 3, he will have detect evil and detect magic at will.

This makes building a good horror adventure a bit more difficult, because he is going to see anything I try to keep hidden or invisible, and can see in the dark to boot. Maybe it will just force me to be creative, dunno. ;)

Take a page from Lovecraft--the more you know, the worse it is.
Yes, he can see things--including a great slavering phantasmal beast that follows the party and never does anything and oh my god what the hell is that?!

He sees things nobody else can, or will, those who do are in denial, or possibly lying, people think he's insane, and it begins to affect him.

[Golthur]

Actually, the ebb and flow of the music is a problem in horror movies. I've seen perfectly decent horror scenes totally wrecked by the music "following the scene," with crescendos coinciding with something sudden happening (or false crescendos making watchers jump). It's awful.

You want low-key, atmospheric music with no vocals, in the background. You can never go wrong with the soundtrack CD for Blair Witch 2. It's all weird ambient sounds.
Yes, I've had rather good results with music during horror RPGs. But, as you say, I keep it as creepy, vaguely-unsettling ambient sounds more than actual music (yay, Aphex Twin); and, in fact, I rejected a bunch of music because it was too intrusive.

However, in a few cases I've used "real" music - some croony old-time songs when the PCs went into a bar in the middle of redneck country, some super-creepy thunderous "evil ritual" music in the middle of the unspeakable-thing-they-have-to-act-quickly-to-stop (of course, I also combined that with giving them very limited time to state their actions before I moved on to the next PC). I got compliments ("****, that was scary") on the last one, so I think it went well :amused:


Take a page from Lovecraft--the more you know, the worse it is.
Yes, he can see things--including a great slavering phantasmal beast that follows the party and never does anything and oh my god what the hell is that?!

He sees things nobody else can, or will, those who do are in denial, or possibly lying, people think he's insane, and it begins to affect him.
QFT. The guy who can see "more" than everyone else is a prime target in a horror environment. His abilities make him weaker, not stronger. :wink: