Horror campaign

[douchemaster]

Hello, im writing my first horror campaign, does anybody have any sort of tips, tricks, small scenarios, that wil help me terrify my players?

[Yukitsu]

Horror is a surprisingly broad genre that you can sort of break into categories. Finding out which one you're going for is going to be important if you want advice since the different types are hugely different in the way they'd play out. I'd pick a specific type of horror and stick with it rather than blending too much.

I run mostly psychological horror campaigns or survival horror when I'm in the genre so if you're more interested in something like Friday the 13th I can't help as much there.

[douchemaster]

Hmm, i Guess psychological horror. Tell me what has freaked out your players the most

[Segev]

Horror is one of the hardest things to get right. I applaud your desire to try!

It is especially hard in a gaming environment, because not only does it take buy-in from the players, but they have to be sucked in enough that making jokes and playing meta-knowledge falls flat rather than turning your tension-filled scene into a cheesy comedy.

One of the first pieces of advice I usually see when discussing running horror is "atmosphere." Unfortunately, my personal opinion is that efforts to set "atmosphere" in a meta-sense just don't work very well, if they go too far. Like (nearly) all things in horror, subtlety is going to be key. By all means, pick a quiet room in your house or other gaming location. If it happens to naturally have a sort of creepy (or at least cloistered) vibe, so much the better. But don't try too hard to set one up. A private library-type room is good. Trying to fill it with cobwebs and Halloween decorations is over the top. While some swear by it, I can't imagine "mood music" being anything but distracting, either. Lights being less-than-60-watt-bright could help, but don't stress over it and certainly don't make it too hard to read dice or character sheets.

Again: subtlety.

Now, for me, personally, most horror winds up being hilarious comedy. I don't take "omg jump scare" and "we have the monster of the week chasing us" seriously very easily. Especially in a D&D type game where I'm playing a guy who can throw fire from his fingertips or swings a sword that cuts dragons in twain. And I think this is the fault of heavy-handed presentation and a misunderstanding of what makes something frightening.

Blood and guts, at "best," are gross, not particularly scary to me. In fact, much like an ill-timed jump scare, they release the tension rather than building it, replacing trepidation with disgust.

Another point that is raised, but I think misses the mark, is the notion of powerlessness. "Horror is about feeling helpless," is commonly said. I disagree. It's not about feeling powerless. It's about feeling unsafe. By all means, have the power to do things. Let your players even have specific rules to stay safe! But those rules should clash with their expectations of what makes them safe. Or they should introduce other fears. Better still if the rule is easy to break, or becomes harder to keep the longer it's followed; this creates a time limit of uncertain duration.

An under-used but excellent example is in Deadly Premonition, where the zombie-things can't perceive you if you hold your breath. Easy enough...but you see THEM, and they're right in front of you. You just know they're going to see you. Any moment. Holding your breath can't really work, screams your instincts. Oh, and of course, the more scared you are? the less time you can hold your breath. You can't hold it forever. Will you manage to get to a safe place before you give yourself away?

Or the best horror movie done as a single episode of a TV series: Blink (from Doctor Who). The rule is: don't blink. Keep watching them, and they can't move. Take your eyes off, and they move faster than, well, you can blink.


Let the PCs have their powers and their tools. But shift the paradigm so that they're not necessarily the right tools for the job. Don't make them totally useless, but make them tangentially so. Make the rules for safety be things so simple a Commoner can do it...but make them limited and FEEL unsafe. Where possible, make the players themselves engage them. Get out a picture of a medusa when they face one, and tell them that if they look at it - if they see it - their characters didn't avert their gazes and must make a save or turn to stone. Every time they look, and if they keep looking, they keep having to save. Then put that picture on the battle map.

Or just start putting the image in various places, and have the players start being cautious about what they see.


The key to horror really is upsetting their sense of what is safe and secure. But don't make them feel powerless. Powerlessness and helplessness breed a lack of caring. Resignation. This is also why release of tension is so important. "It was just the cat" is overused, but its original purpose is still valid: let the audience and the characters feel that rush of relief. That moment of humor.

Then start building the tension again. When you let it off, never let it off completely. But it should feel nearly complete, compared to where it was before the release. As you ratchet the baseline refractory level of tension up, you can build the peaks higher and higher, and they keep feeling sharp.

[JoshuaZ]

Hmm, i Guess psychological horror. Tell me what has freaked out your players the most

I ran a campaign where the villains were using the necrotic cysts from Libris Mortis (the primary villain wanted to engage in a ritual which would allow him to meld with all the necrotic cysts and become functionally a deity). You may remember that there are a number of spells which can cause cysts to explode. At one point the villains used children who had been encysted as functionally suicide bombers. Depending on your group that may be going too far.

The Pathfinder book Horror Adventures has a lot of nice stuff and good ideas.

[Yukitsu]

I think one of the keys to psychological horror is that it raises questions that the players want answered. Things like whether or not the world is supposed to be the way it is, whether what they're seeing is actually real or if they're even losing their mind. Tell one player one thing and tell other players something else. Show a monster or entity or change to one player consistently, and others a different problem. If you have good players you don't need to note pass or anything.

An example of this, my campaign, only one player encountered a ghost of a young woman. when he looked through a lock, he'd see her eye looking right back through it right at him. When he went to investigate a chimney, that ghost was directly there but any time another party member went to look for it, she wasn't there.

Another part of psychological horror is that players shouldn't feel that anything is safe. While perhaps the players should actually be safe, they should have the tension that they aren't. Unlike tension and release common to a lot of horror, psychological horror is all about accumulation. Often unending. Uncertainty of safety, of your perceptions, or reality and finally of your own sanity continues onward until the very end of this sort of story. By the end of it, the characters themselves, or even the players themselves should be the greatest danger to themselves and to others.

An example from my campaign was that it was themed primarily around eyes. As the world began to deteriorate, the walls of the building they were in began sprung eyes which simply watched them, tracking them as they moved. It gave the players such an impending sense of discomfort that they left the building even though they weren't in any danger.

Psychological horror often has, and should have, monsters. Creatures that create an existential threat to them often add to the horror of the setting but they should not be the main "scare" of such a setting. Psychological horror should have an impact through the disorder of the natural order. What is normal or mundane, what we say is safe, the rules and ways of our society break down in ways that we can't even directly understand. While the monsters can add a sense of danger to this and add plenty of easy scares, they aren't what makes the world scary. When the world itself is just "off" it's far more difficult to feel safe or approach anything with confidence when you aren't in danger of a specific monster that you know.

By contrast to the above post, I don't like rules in psychological horror. Those are for survival horror or slasher flicks. Have these items, do things things and you live, you know what you need to do to feel safe.

Psychological horror should not allow you to feel fully safe. Yes, there should be highs or lows but when the world itself doesn't make sense to you, you can't rely on your normal preconception of what is safe or where to go or what to do.

NPCs are also important to a psychological horror story as well. Ones that perhaps seem mad to the players, or who are off in one way or another. It again adds the the impression that there's something very wrong with the world, their perception of it or something else.

An example I used was the gardener. The gardener was a young man who appeared by all means normal, sans the players saw him in the garden with a basket of lopped off arms which he was planting into the freshly dug soil like any gardener would do with a young sapling or cutting. His garden sheers drenched in blood and the familiarity of the arms made the players question whether the gardener was mad or if something else was happening. They talked to him a little and found that when asked he was according to him, just planting saplings but the players were never sure where to place that particular NPC. They never did find out if he was murdering others or how he found those arms or if there was ever any arms there at all.

Lastly, no horror works when explained but this is even more true with psychological horror. When you know what is happening and why, that's when you can start to understand. Understanding is often anathema to a psychological horror since that comprehension dispels all of your hard work in forcing players to feel uncertain and unsafe.

[Segev]

I'm not sure I share the definition of "psychological horror" being used in Yukitsu's (otherwise quite interesting) post.

To me, "psychological horror" is the least likely to be supernatural. It can, of course, but it's the least reliant on it. Psychological horror is more about how thin the veneer of civilization really is. How monstrous man can become if the rules of society are stripped away. Lord of the Flies (a novel I loathe, but that's unimportant here) is psychological horror. Misery (the one about the crazy psycho-fan who kidnaps the author of her favorite series) is another example.

The Walking Dead, from what I hear, had moved from survival horror to psychological horror, as the zombies become less important and the source of horror becomes more "other people" who have been driven to desperation...or been granted freedom to be monsters as social pressures to be civilized evaporate.


What Yukitsu is describing just sounds like well-done horror, in general, to me.


The one point I disagree on is the "steady ramping" being ever a desirable trait in horror. The reason for the "build and release" mechanism is because the human mind can't sustain a steady level of tension. It eventually becomes the new norm. "Build and release" lets the peaks each be intense without having to be too much more intense than the last one, and let's the steady build still keep the tension even of the "relief" being felt. Because the refractory period does simulate a release LOWER than the "new norm," making the resumption of "normal" tension at the bottom end of the next climb still feel discomforting.

[Yukitsu]

I'm not sure I share the definition of "psychological horror" being used in Yukitsu's (otherwise quite interesting) post.

To me, "psychological horror" is the least likely to be supernatural. It can, of course, but it's the least reliant on it. Psychological horror is more about how thin the veneer of civilization really is. How monstrous man can become if the rules of society are stripped away. Lord of the Flies (a novel I loathe, but that's unimportant here) is psychological horror. Misery (the one about the crazy psycho-fan who kidnaps the author of her favorite series) is another example.

Like all horror, psychological horror is also a broad category. What you refer to as psychological horror is, but so are elements of cosmic horror like what we see in Lovecraft, or the horror in Silent Hill 2 which is deeply psychological but which contains some sort of element of the impossible or supernatural, or the Shining which may be supernatural or it might not be, or it could be like Spec Ops the Line which is probably a mundane situation experienced by someone who is not experiencing reality. I agree that it's the least likely to be supernatural but at the same time I tend to find ones where it's impossible to distinguish between the supernatural and insanity the most interesting, Kubrick's the Shining being one of the best examples.


What Yukitsu is describing just sounds like well-done horror, in general, to me.

It's a matter of preference honestly. There are a ton of people who like horror that simply involves a powerful entity that just kills people. There's loads of people who are scared of just random torture or blood like the worst of the Saw movies. There's a lot of people that are a fan of seeing a big inevitable horde of zombies heading towards a group of survivors who need to use what they know about zombies and their environment to live and the tension of individual fights or encounters. These aren't "bad horror" to me, but are simply more emblematic of survival horror or slasher horror. They rely more on the horror of the specific monster and the deadliness of the situation rather than anything deeper which can be plenty scary.


The one point I disagree on is the "steady ramping" being ever a desirable trait in horror. The reason for the "build and release" mechanism is because the human mind can't sustain a steady level of tension. It eventually becomes the new norm. "Build and release" lets the peaks each be intense without having to be too much more intense than the last one, and let's the steady build still keep the tension even of the "relief" being felt. Because the refractory period does simulate a release LOWER than the "new norm," making the resumption of "normal" tension at the bottom end of the next climb still feel discomforting.

I like ones that just have a constant escalation where every moment gets a bit worse and worse. I definitely don't mind ones that have some sort of release, but the means of doing so are difficult in the tabletop format I find and to me they seem a bit redundant since there's always the opportunity to pause and give release. Players often inject this in on their own and I find without trying to constantly ramp up the discomfort it becomes just a bit too easy.

[Segev]

I suppose I may be drawing a distinction between "horror" and "thrillers," where what you term "psychological horror" is what I would solely call "horror."

Lovecraft, though, I certainly wouldn't call psychological horror. It's existential horror. (And, because I just can't buy into the "reality drives you mad" plotline, I view it more as sci-fi than horror. Yes, I know, horror can be sci-fi, but it just isn't...HORROR...to me, because it's too exciting in a star trek discovery sort of way. I am unable to set my disbelief high enough to accept the concept of "the unknowable." It's all just "the unknown," and if there truly were unknowables, I'd be the first to go happily mad learning them anyway.)

And Silent Hill...I guess I see where it's could be termed psychological horror. The grand scheme - especially in Silent Hill II - qualifies. But the real elements that work to make it "horror" on the ground, from scene to scene... those aren't psychological horror. They're classic horror. Limited visibility, a reliance on a sense that is secondary for your awareness, that sense reporting things in disturbing, otherworldly ways rather than straight-forward ones... (Seriously, the radio static thing is brilliantly done.)


Personally, I think a game that relied on OOC joking for its releases would lose me, as it would dispel the horror rather than contribute to it. Its like the lights coming on in the haunted house, so you can see that the shadows are cast by cardboard cutouts and the other special effects just look like the cheesy props they are.

Proper release isn't just a moment of levity - though levity can be part of it. Properly done, you're still in the horror. You're still in the danger zone. You just have a moment where the danger is further off. Where you can take a breath without the shadow-zombies turning to look at you, or you can close your eyes without the statues moving closer. They're still after you. They're still out there. You've just achieved...distance. For now.

Meta-game release, by turning on the lights and joking with your friends, is like watching MST3k over a horror movie. It pulls you out of the atmosphere. Worse, if you manage to put yourself back in, the tension never really let up for the character, so the player either is disconnected from him or sets aside the release entirely. It didn't do its job.


Now, that's subjective. And I'll freely admit I've not played many horror games. But I do know that horror wears thin on me if it's not done very well. And that I've never met somebody who likes horror that has said, "Nah, that's not scary" when I've talked about what does it for me. (May not be their cup of tea; people who like thrillers may not like what I term horror, but they tend to agree it IS scary.)

[Yukitsu]

They're all generally considered to be a part of the horror genre to a lot of people though so it's important to clarify. What you view as the only way to do horror, I sort of agree on in that those are my favourites as well but I think that a broad audience considers jump scares to be enough for them. It's good to contextualize it that way so that if it's appropriate you can include something that jumps out and says "boo" and have it be affecting. Some players simply don't pick up on subtler psychological cues and because of that, are more interested in immediate feedback sort of scares and recognizing that in a player is useful when writing a horror campaign. It's why media that is about subtler horror often still contains some jump scares.

As for the metagame release, it's an unfortunate thing I've noticed when running a game and it's why I tend to prefer making the setting one that's hard to cope with. The fact is, it's very hard to stop this sort of thing when at a gaming table, at least with my group. In fact, I noticed the more scared my players were, the more they were doing this sort of thing and it was very, very hard to keep them from doing it. So hard that I couldn't. Adding in more deliberate releases for the players, sudden scares and then safety afterwards would probably have made them feel too secure since they tend to joke about when they're relieved about things as well (which does mean when things get really tense and someone does something silly, often by accident, it can unravel the campaign for like, a half an hour.)

Silent Hill 2 as a side note, was more psychological than the others since the entirety of the game was observing reflections of Jame's broken psyche in somewhere where it's not clear that what he's seeing is actually there. Other people he talk to see something different and the monsters, sans the Abstract Daddy and Eddy which are Angela's nightmare and a mad person respectively, are all elements of Jame's personal demons. The other games in the franchise (except homecoming and downpour which just weren't as good) were about a supernatural cult thingy and don't have as many psychological overtones as 2. Your comments about the game apply well to the others, but 2 is more subtle than all that and it's well remembered partly because it uses so many difficult, metaphorical elements to create unease and tension. Taking those out leaves it more or less as classical horror, or maybe something like Kronenburg horror, but the psychological themes are so intricately linked to Silent Hill 2 that I have difficulty in categorizing it as such.