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GunDragon
2018-08-17, 12:13 AM
I'm running a Survival Horror game and it is starting soon cuz that is what my players wanted. The setting is Vatega, which is a homebrew setting I have made just for the occasion. It is like our modern world, but there are a few differences. Supernatural elements are a lot more common, for example.
The players already have their characters made and ready to go, but I have serious writer's block when it comes to building their first adventure.
I was hoping some of you might have some ideas on where to begin.

Yora
2018-08-17, 01:48 AM
What kind of horror will they have to deal with? Demons, mutants, ancient cave creatures?

Drache64
2018-08-17, 09:19 AM
When I have writers block I rip off something popular but most of my players either never catch on or don't get it until later.

Mastikator
2018-08-17, 11:33 AM
One of the key features of horror is to not show your monster and never make them feel like they are safe. They don't know what's out there and whatever it is it might always be watching them. And it needs to be much more powerful than they are, defeating it is not a reasonable goal, surviving it is.

Arbane
2018-08-17, 11:44 AM
One of the key features of horror is to not show your monster and never make them feel like they are safe. They don't know what's out there and whatever it is it might always be watching them. And it needs to be much more powerful than they are, defeating it is not a reasonable goal, surviving it is.

Or, the monsters are weak, but there's SO MANY of them that running is usually better than standing and fighting. The risk is getting worn down over time, not sudden instant death.

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Someone pointed out to me once that a sufficiently old-school D&D dungeon crawl is survival horror - the lamp-oil is running out, the Cleric's almost out of heal spells, everyone's tired, and there's multiple flesh-eating monsters, deadly traps, and a half-mile of rock between you and ever seeing daylight again...

Just actually pay attention to things like light-sources and wandering-monster checks, and it can get pretty tense.

Mastikator
2018-08-17, 12:39 PM
Or, the monsters are weak, but there's SO MANY of them that running is usually better than standing and fighting. The risk is getting worn down over time, not sudden instant death.

True. The endless horde of little buggers is just as valid as the xenomorph with godmode on. Actually having them be tiny venomous spiders that lay egg in your bloodstream and eat you out from inside is a pretty terrifying idea, sure you can easily squash them beneath your heels but so what? There are millions of them.

Calthropstu
2018-08-17, 01:25 PM
You start on a ship. A cruise ship.

When you are 1 week out, the ship is forced to run aground. The island you are on is completely uncharted. There are 800 people, and food enough to last another week and a half. A search team is put together consisting of much of the ship's crew.

They never return.

People start getting scared. A group of volunteers is called for...

oudeis
2018-08-17, 02:05 PM
How much do the players know about the world? Are you using well-known monsters and mechanics, or are these homebrewed as well? What would the characters reasonably be expected to know about their world? If you can find or create a dead zone between these spheres of knowledge you will have the territory you need to lay out your mythos.

Mastikator alluded to a key element for games like this: mystery. The fear of the unknown will be crucial to both the survival and horror aspects of your setting. If the players have more-or-less memorized the stats of everything they are going to fight, the game will likely become a tactical shooter as they focus more on getting the right gear to blast the baddies than exploring the story you create. Cthulhu Mythos games avoid this by making most creatures effectively impervious to human weaponry, but since most serious players are intimately familiar with the setting the only real suspense is guessing who is going to die first, last, and most gruesomely. This is a lot of fun if done right but it's not really a horror game.

Segev
2018-08-17, 02:12 PM
One of the key features of horror is to not show your monster and never make them feel like they are safe. They don't know what's out there and whatever it is it might always be watching them. And it needs to be much more powerful than they are, defeating it is not a reasonable goal, surviving it is.

This is common advice, but I feel like it's a bit misleading. Especially the "never feel safe" part. It's true! But it's easy to take that the wrong way.

One of the keys to horror, in my opinion, is that you CAN be safe. You can even KNOW HOW to be safe. But the rules are both counterintuitive, and easy to break without constant vigilance. In Deadly Premonition, the shadow-zombie-things can only perceive you by your breath. If you hold your breath, you're invisible to them. This is an easy rule to follow...for a short time. The longer you hold your breath, obviously, the harder it is to do.

A Quiet Place, the recent movie, is another great example. In theory, being quiet is pretty easy. But accidents are easy, too. And keeping constantly aware not to make noise, when sound is so much a part of our sensorium and means of communication, and accidental noises happen all the time just moving around and doing everyday things...it becomes stressfully nightmarish.

Another aspect is atmosphere and building expectations. From the moment we see a nail in a particular scene, the tension starts to rise because we can SEE how everything will go wrong. (I'll say no more, because spoilers.)

Yes, showing the monster diminishes its terror. But more important is leaving mystery about what else there is. It is also important, once you've shown your monsters, to have them be consistent in why they're dangerous. Don't build them up more than they need to be to be scary; make them "too scary" by making them too powerful starts to strain credulity. Zombies that not even the military can handle? Ehn. Not terribly believable. Zombies are scary due to numbers and "could happen to you." Getting military-grade weapons should help!

Though that also brings up safety-at-a-cost. Dwindling resources take you from confident you can handle anything to worrying that you're about to be overwhelmed.


A semi-comedic example of the essence of horror lies in this image:https://www.askideas.com/media/24/Bless-You-Why-Scream-Funny-Cat-Comments-Image.jpgIn this, we see the betrayal of expectations that undermines the feeling of security. This, again, isn't about denying any safe haven or ability to be safe, but about occasionally taking that which had been safe and revealing it to be no longer so.

For your first adventure, start by looking at the PCs your players have made. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? Do their backgrounds suggest any threat that would unify them in their common interest?

A medusa or a basilisk (D&D-style or Harry Potter-style) is a great horror monster. The rules for safety are simple: don't look at it. But...it could ambush you before you can avert your eyes, and if you're fighting it, fighting blind when peeking just a moment could let you get your bearings is enormously stressful. The classic gorgon-Medusa would be even better, since she need not see you; you just need to see her hideous visage. So even tricks like turning out the lights and using night-vision would only be detrimental.

Perhaps the clues point to "a Medusa," and there are a few femme fatales who may be the scary woman in disguise. They keep their eyes covered for various reasons - one's blind, another is just that fashionable so wears sunglasses all the time, a third is muslim and wears the full-covering, including a veil over her eyes (but sounds gorgeous). The real culprit is a blind man who has "the Staff of Perseus," a spear with the real Medusa's head impaled upon it. But he's been trying to set up one or more of the women, or just create the idea that the original gorgon is actually back to cover his murders for his own purposes.

GunDragon
2018-08-17, 03:40 PM
Thank you all for these ideas. Some of them are truly wonderful.
I did some brainstorming and I have come up with a rough outline for the first adventure.
There is an ancient burial site that was recently found. Rumor has it that the ruins contain a magic treasure that can grant wishes. Each character on the expedition, including the PCs and NPCs, have their own motivations for finding the treasure. And some are lying about why they really want it.
The Professor is there purely out of scholarly curiosity, the Cheerleader wants fame and fortune, and the Soldier is there as hired muscle and to him it is just another job. He's skeptical about all this ancient magic stuff. There is also a cultist NPC who wants the treasure to advance the agenda of his cult, an Engineer NPC who wants to use the magic treasure to heal his sick and dying daughter, and wealthy nobleman who claims he is there for scholarly curiosity, but really he wants the treasure for himself and is willing to kill the others so he can have it all to himself.

The discovery of this ancient burial site is generally kept hush-hush, so only a privileged few actually know about it.
I was thinking that in this ancient tomb there would be nasty traps of course, undead guardians, and even an ancient vampire who has been kept in a sleeping chamber for hundreds of years.
But little do the expedition members know that the treasure they are seeking is actually cursed, and no one will really get what they want, at least, not without a price.

I have other ideas too and I could go on, but I think I will try to focus on one thing at a time.

Calthropstu
2018-08-17, 03:47 PM
Thank you all for these ideas. Some of them are truly wonderful.
I did some brainstorming and I have come up with a rough outline for the first adventure.
There is an ancient burial site that was recently found. Rumor has it that the ruins contain a magic treasure that can grant wishes. Each character on the expedition, including the PCs and NPCs, have their own motivations for finding the treasure. And some are lying about why they really want it.
The Professor is there purely out of scholarly curiosity, the Cheerleader wants fame and fortune, and the Soldier is there as hired muscle and to him it is just another job. He's skeptical about all this ancient magic stuff. There is also a cultist NPC who wants the treasure to advance the agenda of his cult, an Engineer NPC who wants to use the magic treasure to heal his sick and dying daughter, and wealthy nobleman who claims he is there for scholarly curiosity, but really he wants the treasure for himself and is willing to kill the others so he can have it all to himself.

The discovery of this ancient burial site is generally kept hush-hush, so only a privileged few actually know about it.
I was thinking that in this ancient tomb there would be nasty traps of course, undead guardians, and even an ancient vampire who has been kept in a sleeping chamber for hundreds of years.
But little do the expedition members know that the treasure they are seeking is actually cursed, and no one will really get what they want, at least, not without a price.

I have other ideas too and I could go on, but I think I will try to focus on one thing at a time.

Why on earth would a cheerleader be at an archeological dig site? Seriously, this sounds pretty bad.

oudeis
2018-08-17, 03:58 PM
Because one of the players chose to play a cheerleader?

GunDragon hasn't given us nearly enough information to pass judgement on his campaign.

GunDragon
2018-08-17, 04:41 PM
Cheerleader is one of the backgrounds you can choose in the game. She's not actually a cheerleader anymore, she's a treasure hunter.

Calthropstu
2018-08-17, 08:42 PM
Cheerleader is one of the backgrounds you can choose in the game. She's not actually a cheerleader anymore, she's a treasure hunter.

See, that makes more sense. I just imagined a teenager waving pompoms at ghosts.

Rhunder
2018-08-17, 10:27 PM
See, that makes more sense. I just imagined a teenager waving pompoms at ghosts.

"We have spirit. Yes we do. We have spirit, how about you..." Someone make this a thing.

Calthropstu
2018-08-17, 11:49 PM
"We have spirit. Yes we do. We have spirit, how about you..." Someone make this a thing.

Obviously the school is haunted by... School spirit.

Segev
2018-08-18, 12:35 AM
Pom poms coated in iron dust and salt!