How to run horror?

[Nev3rmore]

Hey playground! I will be starting a campaing with my group based on Poe's short story: The Masque of The Red Death, while preping the encounters and all that good stuff I started to wonder: How can I make my players feel powerless and fearfull for their lives without being to cheesy or flat out cheating?
Also, do you guys know any Madness or Insanity mechanic I could use? It would be really helpfull.

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I'm a first time Gm so.. :smallsmile:

[Trickquestion]

It's possible to inject horror into a Dungeons and Dragons game, but I'd recommend looking for methods besides powerlessness. If you want that brand of horror, I'd suggest just using a different system entirely. Heck, if we're still talking D&D I'd suggest Pathfinder over 5th, it's got a lot more horrible and Gothic material to draw from.

But system quibbles aside, I'd avoid trying to make the players helpless as it's pretty hard outside of a system designed for it. Establish mystery and paranoia, they'd be perfectly capable of killing the thing if they could just get their hands on it, but considering the horrible, twisted black ritual they found in the last basement they trudged in, searching is not something they're looking forward to, and add sickening and horrible spice to the generic enemies. When you have a non-humanoid enemy, play up the terrible elements of it, the squirming, putrid inhumanity of a Gibbering Mouther, the sharp, intelligent glint in the beastly eyes of a Bulette with red stained teeth. Add some spice to the humanoid monsters to make them less of an odd-colored human: The orcs ride to battle in horrible, painted masks with immense teeth and burning eyes, their bodies scarred with ugly wounds and moving tattoos, the Hobgoblins discard humanity in pursuit of war, crudely sewing metal plates onto their flesh as permanent armor, leaving swollen, stitches together masses. When Goblins fell a villager or guard, the greedy monsters swarm over the downed corpse to tear out the chunks while the meat is still warm.

Or try to dip into Psychological Horror. Have standard dungeon crawling begin in normal environments that slowly becomes evermore surreal and symbolic, where the party is sure what they're dealing with is real anymore and everyone they encounter is incomprehensible and unhelpful. Hide things in the shadows and never show them directly save for consequences, to set the player's minds running wild what it could be. A good rule of thumb is that a person's own mind will do a better job scaring itself then any outside force.

If you want direct references, the best thing I can think of for something scary but with extremely capable protagonists is probably Tom Baker's run on Doctor Who, back from the 70's. Image of the Fendahl, The Deadly Assassin and Terror of the Zygons are probably the scariest.

[Regitnui]

To build on the above, use monster stats, like orcs and ogres, for 'humans' the players meet or fight. Use the "wrong" stats for monsters as well; goblins with the zombie stats, wolves with the tiger stats. This should give a sense of unreality or oddness. Imagine a wolf pouncing on a player, or a goblin getting backhanded and getting right back up because of the Undead Fortitude trait.

Another thing to consider, right out of the Plane Shift: Innistrad book, is to have players gain a Sanity score for the adventure, and loss of San is associated with gaining "abilities" that can help or hinder them going forward; a +2 boost to Strength that lowers AC and Dex, being flavoured as a grotesque muscle growth along the arms and shoulders.