Best game/system for Gothic Horror/Adventure?

[Bryan]

For about a month, I've been thinking about wrapping up my D&D game and taking a crack at horror. What I mostly had in mind was a Hammers Film atmosphere set in the early to mid 20th Century. I'll own that I was thinking more of classic Gothic Horror than Cosmic but I don't see the two as mutually exclusive.

I've been looking hard at Call of Cthulhu but I have some doubts. I know my players and, for example, I have one lady who is going to hear "horror campaign" and want nothing more or less than to play a witch. The CoC magic system kind of makes spellcasting... let's say, problematic. I don't want the players to be superhuman powerhouses but I'd like them to have a fighting chance.

I have to admit, I wish there was an OSR game that fit the bill. Whatever I end up choosing, I'm gonna have to learn it and then teach it to half a dozen others which is gonna kind of suck.

I still don't totally get why D&D can't work for horror. It seems to be the consensus of everyone online but then I see products for running horror in D&D all over. If it's a matter of power, why not just run them at lower level and make sure there's a solution that doesn't include head to head combat?

[HumanFighter]

You could bend D&D to be a horror game, no problem. In an older version of Unearthed Arcana, (3.5, i think?) They came up with a system for calculating a Sanity Score (if you're into that) which was Wisdom score x5, and had lists of possible encounters that could mess with your Sanity, similar to call of cthulhu, and they even worked the spell system into that. If u ever beheld an evil deity in the game, for example, you could potentially lose d100 sanity. It was interesting, i recommend checking it out.

However, if you really want to keep your players guessing and left in the dark (which for horror, is a good thing) you could potentially write your own system, that way they couldn't just look up monster stats online or something like that. That's what I am trying to do, currently, rather than try to re-invent the wheel and create yet another D&D clone system, but I am not sure if u are into that sort of thing.

[Marcloure]

Zweihänder RPG (http://vorpalmace.blogspot.com/2017/06/review-zweihander-grim-and-perilous-rpg.html?m=1), a dark fantasy game with weird magic. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but it's a pretty cool RPG from what I have experience and seen.

[Pauly]

In D&D the basic premise is that the party is more powerful than the enemies and are out there to chew bubblegum and kick a**. In horror the basic premise is you are up against something much more powerful and simply surviving, let alone defeating the bad guy, might be a valid objective.

If you want more capable heroes than regular CoC then Pulp Cthulhu might be closer to what you're looking for.

I like Dread as a horror game, but have only used it for one shots and don't know how it translates to a campaign.

[Crake]

3.5 had a fan made system called e6 which essentially capped your level at level 6. That, combined with horror atmosphere and enemies beyond the player’s reckoning/power, can easily produce a playable horror game. Thats exactly what I did for my first major dnd campaign that I ran. You could probably do the same thing in 5e, but it might not be as effective due to bounded accuracy making being stuck at lower levels not as much of a problem as in earlier editions

[Vahnavoi]

Running horror in old school D&D is dead easy. At lower levels, it naturally leans toward survival horror, because even tiny mistakes can lead to death and character abilities are low enough that random chance really does not favor players. All classic monsters from myth, folklore and movies are present, so building scenarios around them is simple.

So why is "D&D can't do horror" a meme, and has been for over three decades? It's because D&D was (and is) marketed as opposite of horror, with company policies (TSR then, WotC now) and various moral panics about what is acceptable in gaming getting in the way of giving effective game master advice for holding horror games. If everyone thinks and shows up to a gaming table expecting PG-13 heroic fantasy where good heroes triumph over evil villains, it's pretty hard to convince them that a game is meant to not be that.

If you want to see what D&D looks like when people don't think and don't expect that, get Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Death Love Doom and Carcosa.

[Bryan]

Thanks to everyone who responded. After hearing encouragement to challenge some assumptions, I looked into it and found some stuff that looks very encouraging.
"E6", "Whispers in the Dark", "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" and "Dark Horrors & Hidden Places" seem very close to what I had in mind. Now it's just a matter of going through it all and figuring out what works best for my group.
Thanks very much.

[Easy e]

D&D CAN do horror, just like a hammer can be used to open a tin can. It can be done, it is just not good at it.

So, what is horror? In its basic and simplest form, the Horror genre generates a sense of dread, fear, anxiety, shock or disgust in the players. It is intended to encourage players to feel these strong emotions during game play. Horror is always attempting to unsettle or disturb the players.

Here are some things that are essential to strong horror stories:

1. Twisting the normal into something unnatural and horrifying

2. Threats can not be easily defeated, and it takes extraordinary effort and sacrifice to do so

3. Things get harder and worse; not easier as the game progresses.

4. Damage is done psychologically as much as physically

5. Helplessness and deterioration is a natural state

6. Horror focuses on weaknesses more than strengths

These elements are what makes Horror difficult in D&D. The mechanics are not really geared for it, and instead they focus heavily on resolving issues with combat. Typically, in Horror fighting should be the absolute last and most desperate action, because you will likely die in a direct confrontation. If you lean into the core assumptions of D&D, then Horror does not work well.

So, what does it take to make a good Horror campaign? Here are some starting points:

1. Help the players make good characters that tie into themes of the campaign. Therefore, if you are going to lean into isolation, then you should have characters that have a reason to stay isolated and want to stay that way, even when it might not be in their best interests. If the key thing is to find a McGuffin they need a really strong reason they will go through hell and back for it.

2. Focus on Fear. How do you plan to cause the characters (and maybe the players) to be afraid? These can be monsters, supernatural, Instinctive fears, or even Societal tensions. Therefore, you could easily have a witch style character, but the fear can be driven by the societal tensions of being a witch in a society that hates witches plays out.

3. Know how your Horror works. The GM should know what makes the Horror scary and lean into it. Half the fun is for players to figure out these "rules" in game and learn how to exploit them. These rules can also be used to sign post danger and increase suspense.

4. Tie the Characters into the Horror. Since you spent the time to make good characters, now tie the characters into the Horror. Make is personal. Make use of what characters can do well, not do well, and really pound on their weak points. The Players and the motivations of their characters need to really drive the Horror game forward. The characters need to seek out the horror because they want or need to. Make sure they have a stake it the outcome, because in Horror their are no real rewards, like gold, loot, etc.

The easiest ways to tie in characters are mere survival, protecting others/loved ones, protecting their own identities, solving the unsolvable, or protecting your soul! The stakes can be straight forward, but can often be contradictory. For example, to save your own soul you have to sacrifice the soul of a loved one. Now, you have a horrible choice for the Players to make.

5. Create atmosphere and suspense. Horror relies on atmosphere and suspense more than other games. The players may know something bad is about to happen, but are unsure what and how exactly. Atmosphere is setting up the environment to highlight the suspense.

6. Be intentional with the Horror. Horror does not happen by accident. Keep the pace moving, and purposely make sure the players can not do everything they want, or prepare however they want. These trade-offs put the fear front and center for the players, because they can not mirrorshades their way out of it. Their is always a gap and a trade-off.

7. Twist the Knife. Horror should set-up expectations, and then pull the rug out from under the players. As GM you will need to subvert expectation about 1 in 5 times. It is important to set-up certain expectations and rhythms to the game, so when you twist the knife it is a genuine shock and surprise to the players.

Now that you can see and understand how a Horror game plays, I hope it is pretty obvious why "standard" D&D can be a tough fit for a Horror game. When you come to a table and play standard D&D you come with certain expectations and D&Disms built in. These do not align well with Horror games in my experience, and the undermining of these expectations can lead to a negative experience for the players. For Horror games to work, people need to be bought into the idea they are going to be playing horror, and willing to lean into it. D&D asks you to lean away from it with its genre conventions.

I hope that helps.

[Psyren]

You could bend D&D to be a horror game, no problem. In an older version of Unearthed Arcana, (3.5, i think?) They came up with a system for calculating a Sanity Score (if you're into that) which was Wisdom score x5, and had lists of possible encounters that could mess with your Sanity, similar to call of cthulhu, and they even worked the spell system into that. If u ever beheld an evil deity in the game, for example, you could potentially lose d100 sanity. It was interesting, i recommend checking it out.

FYI, 5e has optional Sanity mechanics too, and Fear and Horror guidelines as well. See DMG 264-266. They're pretty lightweight but could serve as a decent starting point for something deeper.

[SethoMarkus]

I ran a horror story quest in part of a larger campaign in 5e, and it was very well receives by my players at the time. I didn't run any modifications to base 5e, like limiting levels or adding sanity, though it did take place at a lower level. I think they were in the 4-6 range at that point I'm the campaign.

For me, the key to success was the atmosphere and scope of the game and story. It took place in a small town where word wasn't coming back to the big city. A wealthy merchant and his sons went to the town and never came back, prompting the merchants guild to hire adventurers to see what was going on. From there, I ripped the story from Shadow Over Innsmouth, except I had an Aboleth responsible for the weird fish cult rather than an Elder God.

The campaign had already been established as "normal", so when the PCs entered the town I was able to make subtle changes to my descriptions to make things feel off. I gave townsfolk fish-like traits, just small ones at first like glassy eyes or eyes a bit too wide apart on their face. Strange rashes that resembled scales. That sort of thing. And I made the townsfolk cordial, but shy, distant, and private. They didn't hinder the PCs, but didn't help or welcome them, either. I wanted it to be clear the townsfolk weren't monsters, they were villagers. I also made sure to repeatedly give signs of things missing or being different than expected, to make a sense of unease and paranoia. They would wake up in the morning and their window would be open but nothing is missing. A clock tower that was broken would ring in the middle of the night. They would find half-used candles and strange symbols around town in areas they had already explored.

I took away the PCs power to solve the issue with violence. They had to investigate and delve deeper, skulking around the town and discover what was going on. They could hear weird noises in the night, but never found a monster or enemy to fight, just hints at something bigger, lurking beyond their vision. Or they would encounter an NPC villager who was friendly or kind towards them.

Finally, when the tension was built up, and descriptions of townsfolk got fishier and fishier, I had then wake to the entire village congregating outside their inn room, chanting for the PCs to join them, to become "one of us". At that point, they might have been able to fight their way out, but they had connections to these people and still hadn't found any children that were missing or the merchant and his sons. They still had work to do, but time was running out.

So a TLDR would be to create a sense of what is normal, so that you can feed the abnormal to them. Foster unease and discomfort more than trying to instill fear. Make the threat something that can't be killed with a sword or magic. A vampire can still be the enemy, but you're fighting the curse of the vampire, not just one creature. A werewolf terrorizing a town isn't scary because it's a werewolf, but because it just might bite you or the friendly shop keeper and transform them as well. And finally, build it up slowly. If you introduce the big threat right away, then it becomes a challenge for the heroes to fight. Let it simmer and be something that causes anxiety and dread over time.

[gbaji]

I think that most systems *can* handle horror, but it's really a matter of getting the players to really buy in to it. You can tweak some of the skills to focus more on perception and investigation and less on combat (which is a help), but at the end of the day, if the players are in the "form into a party and go kill things and take their stuff" mode, it's probably not going to work. And there very much is a tendency for players to do this over time in just about any RPG you play.

So horror campaigns? Tricky to pull off IME. Heck, even in game systems designed around it, they usually work best when episodic. There's just a lot more you can do when part of the initiatial build up of the scenario also incliudes the PCs meeting and getting to know each other as well (which can, of course, include suspicions about each other along the way). But that's really where you want to focus on horror: Learning the unknown. What is out there? What is it trying to do? Why is it trying to do this? And finally: How do we stop it? Make it less "D&D party exploring a dungeon" and more "murder mystery to solve". And, of course, you can eventually have some sort of conflict resolutoin/fight/whatever (it's good to give the players a payoff), but prior to that point, there should be very little actual direct conflict and a whole lot of suspense and speculation/investigation.

I've played a lot of CoC. So that's a great game. It is very theme focused though. And yeah, as some have pointed out, magic is just not a thing that the "good guys" really use. Which isn't a problem for most settings in the game, but could be an issue if some players really want to use magic.


My regular gaming group doesn't do a ton of horror style gaming. But we do, on occasion, put in a horror themed scenario. Which is why I say you can put this in, using pretty much any game system. I ran a pretty successful "children of the corn" style scenario once, which went over very well (just put the focus on "figure out what evil thing is corrupting this town, and less on fighting bad guys). And to be honest, I totally cribbed that from a sourcebook, but added my own twists to it. Also did another bit (which was actually just a single portion of a larger adventure), which I totally stole from a SG:A episode (spooky abandoned village with fog monsters in it). That was a bit more of a classic "fight the monsters" bit, but with a ton of stuff that isolated and spooked folks out, and having to figure out where the monsters were coming from (and what was turning them into monsters), and how they were getting around was fun (and of course, long periods of spooky sounds and stuff, followed by short intense fight sequences somewhat at random).

How well this stuff actually works in practice though, depends a lot on the players. If they get into it, it can work really well. If they just aren't into it. The best horror based system in the world wont work.

[Vahnavoi]

You could bend D&D to be a horror game, no problem. In an older version of Unearthed Arcana, (3.5, i think?) They came up with a system for calculating a Sanity Score (if you're into that) which was Wisdom score x5, and had lists of possible encounters that could mess with your Sanity, similar to call of cthulhu, and they even worked the spell system into that. If u ever beheld an evil deity in the game, for example, you could potentially lose d100 sanity. It was interesting, i recommend checking it out.


FYI, 5e has optional Sanity mechanics too, and Fear and Horror guidelines as well. See DMG 264-266. They're pretty lightweight but could serve as a decent starting point for something deeper.

Sanity points are superfluous to horror. They are especially superfluous in D&D. Why? Because in Call of Cthulhu, they are closer to an alignment mechanic than real model of mental disorder; the whole point is that knowledge of true state of things erodes a person's ability to relate to modern human society. D&D doesn't have a modern human society, and even if it does, your party of murderhobos is already plenty unhinged by those standards by default, as is easily observable from how they interact with the world around them.

It's worth noting 1st Edition of AD&D had its own rules for insanity - basically a short list of distinct mental disorders a character could acrue through in-game events (obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, split personality, etc.). But you don't need that either. Again, your party of murderhobos is already liable to act like bunch of Vietnam vets with severe PTSD and paranoid delusions.

Lets contrast this with a Cthulhu-inspired game that used sanity points effectively: Eternal Darkness, Sanity's Requiem. Yeah, it's a videogame. Don't let that trip you up. It's still illustrative for our purposes.

The reason sanity points work in Eternal Darkness is because they aren't simply another hitpoint mechanic where the fear comes from reaching zero and then dying. They also aren't a strictly in-universe measure of character alignment. The points work, because they measure how much the game screws with the player. Because the player, not the character, is recipient of horror.

So what does Eternal Darkness do? It starts with mild stuff like slightly slanting the screen or robbing it off color. It continues with in-character hallucinations that double as interface screws, such as a character beginning to shrink as all enemies suddenly grow, turning the character into a zombie, throwing horrible visions of gory death on the screen, making it seem like the character's head exploded or that a bone thief burst through them, making a player think they screwed up and earned a game over but really just making them play a room again.

But then, it also blurs the line between game and reality by screwing with the interface in ways that are directly, and only, meaningful to the player. The game may mute itself and throw a mute symbol on the screen, making you think you stepped on a remote. It may throw up a "delete save" prompt and then pretend it's deleting all your saves regardless of your input, making you think you misclicked. So on and so forth. The equivalent in a tabletop roleplaying game, would be a game master changing their behaviour in subtle and off ways as character spiral deeper into madness.

But once you grok the principle, you don't need the points to do this as a living human. You aren't a computer, you don't need an explicitly coded mathematical variable to tell you when to act, you can simply observe how your players are reacting to various thing and then double down on things that cause shock, horror, disgust, anxiety and sorrow. For D&D game, this can look quite silly. You might ask players to roll saving throws against non-existing threats, roll openly for wandering monsters and acting very concerned of the results despite no encounter appearing, suddenly add a lot of rust monsters or disenchanter beasts to the enemy roster, hinting that one player character is secretly a traitor, give them contradictory statements of non-player characters or game geography... so on and so forth. Not because those things are scary to characters, but because they can get player to second-guess themselves... which you can then leverage for game atmosphere. When players get nervous, so will, more likely, their characters. Because player-character-separation only goes so deep.

[Psyren]

The issue though is, it doesn't matter if Eternal Darkness or Mork Borg or whatever else has the most amazing sanity system on the planet if you can't find a group willing to play it. So even if D&D offers you a less stellar horror experience, a game you can actually get people to play beats one that lives in the land of theory.

This isn't to say that I don't think those better systems shouldn't be suggested - but providing the starting points that exist in D&D is helpful too.

[Vahnavoi]

The steps one and two for getting people to play games other than D&D, is to ask for and hold games other than D&D. Failing to do so out of the belief that D&D is popular and other games are not quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Be the change you want to see.

But that wasn't the point of my post. The actual point is that if you want the scary bits of, say, Eternal Darkness for your D&D game, that's a simple thing to do, given experience with Eternal Darkness. And you can do it without a mechanical sanity meter.

[GloatingSwine]

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay can do gothic horror pretty well.

It's suitably dangerous to players, it's not too combat focused, and there are supplements and campaigns all about dealing with the setting's gothic horror bits.


TBH I think the biggest reason D&D doesn't handle horror particularly well is that quite a lot of the actual rules are about combat and the further you get away from combat even into normal investigation and social interaction the more "you figure it out" takes over. But combat is the wrong sort of tension for a horror experience. Horror needs to be about anticipation not action.

So the more you're doing horror in D&D the less of the D&D you're using.

[Psyren]

The steps one and two for getting people to play games other than D&D, is to ask for and hold games other than D&D. Failing to do so out of the belief that D&D is popular and other games are not quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Be the change you want to see.

But that wasn't the point of my post. The actual point is that if you want the scary bits of, say, Eternal Darkness for your D&D game, that's a simple thing to do, given experience with Eternal Darkness. And you can do it without a mechanical sanity meter.

Indeed, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yes, for lots of people trying to elevate their game of choice in the public consciousness in a D&D-dominated playing field, that genuinely sucks. But it is what it is.

As for "being the change you want to see," the other difficulty is that even DMs may not know if they want said change, before sitting down to read/learn/try said system. Depending on the system in question, that level of time investment is nontrivial and may not be recoupable.



TBH I think the biggest reason D&D doesn't handle horror particularly well is that quite a lot of the actual rules are about combat and the further you get away from combat even into normal investigation and social interaction the more "you figure it out" takes over. But combat is the wrong sort of tension for a horror experience. Horror needs to be about anticipation not action.

So the more you're doing horror in D&D the less of the D&D you're using.

While this is certainly true for genres like survival horror or psychological horror that rely mostly on disempowerment and combat avoidance, action horror is a genre too, and I think it's one where D&D could potentially excel. Think of games like Resident Evil (especially 2, 4 and 7) or Dead Space or Castlevania. For games like these, the horror comes not just from the aesthetic, but from mechanics designed around sheer relentlessness combined with tight resource management, as well as a healthy mix of challenges you can face head-on and those you need to flee or hide from. Equally important, action horror incorporates combat into the standard horror cycles of tension and release (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyiAR2BXtKU) via effective use of downtime. And you're even allowed a sense of empowerment in these games - better weapons, better defenses, more abilities etc - without necessarily losing that horror edge, because the threats keep pace too.

D&D can do all of that without needing to become Call of Cthulhu.

[GloatingSwine]

While this is certainly true for genres like survival horror or psychological horror that rely mostly on disempowerment and combat avoidance, action horror is a genre too, and I think it's one where D&D could potentially excel. Think of games like Resident Evil (especially 2, 4 and 7) or Dead Space or Castlevania. For games like these, the horror comes not just from the aesthetic, but from mechanics designed around sheer relentlessness combined with tight resource management, as well as a healthy mix of challenges you can face head-on and those you need to flee or hide from. Equally important, action horror incorporates combat into the standard horror cycles of tension and release (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyiAR2BXtKU) via effective use of downtime. And you're even allowed a sense of empowerment in these games - better weapons, better defenses, more abilities etc - without necessarily losing that horror edge, because the threats keep pace too.

D&D can do all of that without needing to become Call of Cthulhu.

Action Horror is a thing but action tends to take over from the horror very easily. The first ten minutes of Dead Space are terrifying, then you're alone in a dark corridor full of monsters and you have a gun and that's just the videogame comfort zone of anyone who grew up with Doom.

Horror is a matter of anticipation, and in combat you're mostly anticipating your next turn not some grisly discovery or other which is how slow burn narrative horror is going to come out at a gaming table.

Which is why a horror game needs to be lighter on combat than D&Ds design expects a game to be (you can tell from how much of the rules are about combat how much the design expects it to feature). Ideally you want it to be high stakes but not very often.

You can do horror games with D&D, but in a thread about what the best systems for horror adventures are, it's a poor fit.

[Psyren]

Action Horror is a thing but action tends to take over from the horror very easily. The first ten minutes of Dead Space are terrifying, then you're alone in a dark corridor full of monsters and you have a gun and that's just the videogame comfort zone of anyone who grew up with Doom.

Horror is a matter of anticipation, and in combat you're mostly anticipating your next turn not some grisly discovery or other which is how slow burn narrative horror is going to come out at a gaming table.

Which is why a horror game needs to be lighter on combat than D&Ds design expects a game to be (you can tell from how much of the rules are about combat how much the design expects it to feature). Ideally you want it to be high stakes but not very often.

You can do horror games with D&D, but in a thread about what the best systems for horror adventures are, it's a poor fit.

"Best" is relative; my argument is and always has been that a system you can't get a group for can only ever be theoretically better than one you can actually play. So I view advice on improving D&D's horror capability to be just as useful/practical, if not moreso, than recommending other systems.

Dead Space has good examples of ways to do this - it does actually maintain the horror further into the game, by introducing new variants and curveballs that can keep up with your growing arsenal and/or force you to switch up your tactics, or else die very quickly if you don't. The Regenerator is perhaps the biggest example of this, as its a heavy-hitting enemy you can't actually kill, and can only slow down and run from, and the game has a nasty habit of locking you in an enclosed space with it for a while before you're able to do what you need to do to flee. But Infectors, Exploders, Twitchers, Swarmers, Pregnants, Guardians and Dividers all force you to switch things up.

D&D has more than enough monster variety to do the same - strain a party's resource management and even encourage a culture of caution, trepidation and avoidance where needed.

[GloatingSwine]

"Best" is relative; my argument is and always has been that a system you can't get a group for can only ever be theoretically better than one you can actually play. So I view advice on improving D&D's horror capability to be just as useful/practical, if not moreso, than recommending other systems.

Yeah, but it sounds like OP has a group that will be open to trying a different system.


Dead Space has good examples of ways to do this - it does actually maintain the horror further into the game, by introducing new variants and curveballs that can keep up with your growing arsenal and/or force you to switch up your tactics, or else die very quickly if you don't. The Regenerator is perhaps the biggest example of this, as its a heavy-hitting enemy you can't actually kill, and can only slow down and run from, and the game has a nasty habit of locking you in an enclosed space with it for a while before you're able to do what you need to do to flee. But Infectors, Exploders, Twitchers, Swarmers, Pregnants, Guardians and Dividers all force you to switch things up.

Instructions unclear shot monster with plasma cutter. The only time Dead Space was scary after the first ten minutes of the first game was the eye poke machine in the second.


D&D has more than enough monster variety to do the same - strain a party's resource management and even encourage a culture of caution, trepidation and avoidance where needed.

Right, but it is almost certain that the foremost feeling in the players' minds will not be fear, horror, or anything related. At which point you're failing to provide a horror experience.

Resource shortage in D&D is just as likely to be met as an optimisation challenge (especially if anyone brought a cleric or wizard).

[gbaji]

I was going to make the same comment about action horror. It can be done, but once the action part starts, most D&D players (for example) will treat it exactly like any other combat against any other monsters that they may fight.

The way you manage this (which Psyren touched on) is that you introduce monsters that the PCs can't beat. This is alien to most D&D groups, who are accostomed to calculated level appropriate encounters per day assumptions (but, you know, is quite common on CoC, for example). Having the bulk of the action, not resolved by standing and fighting, but figuring out how to get the heck away from the monster(s) attacking you, totally changes the feel. The idea of "don't attack the monster, attack the ceiling supports and collapse the tunnel, so we can escape" is just not something most D&D parties will ever consider.

An alternative is a kind of Aliens style grind. There are just too many monsters to possibly kill, and as they keep running in one group, then another, then another, this becomes obvious to the players. At some point, they have to figure out that the solution is not to just fight through monsters, but figure out where they are coming from and destroy/disable/block that, or how to just escape and prevent them from being able to follow.

You can do this in any system IMO. But I think they key is to get the players to buy in to it, and realize right off the bat that "you are not going to win by just defeating the opponents". You can ease a player group into this by having a classic "haunted house" type scenario. The house is haunted. Bad stuff happens in there. Fighting or defeating the various things that appear and cause problems does nothing, since everything is just a manifestation of the evil whatever down in the basement (or attic, or whatever). You can make the haunting events somewhat minor, but again not something they can really defeat, nor stop from happening. The great thing about a haunted house scenario, is that you can have each room present the players with some events/problem, but also contain a clue as to what is happening and why. So exploring the house lets them know what to do to stop the haunting. By making this not terriblly lethal, you get the players into the mode of "figuring out what's going on is more important than fighting things". Then you can move on to more dangerous scenarios.

Tryimg to jump right in? Probably not going to work with most players, especially if playing a game system they are used to playing in a more traditional way. They're going to tend to fall back to their habits, and they will die. And that may not result in fun for the players.

I'll also comment that where you can run into issues wtih some game systems (especially ones focused more on traditional combat resolutions), is the issue of experience and skill use. You have to be really careful to make sure that your horror adventure is not just relying on the players figuring things out. Otherwise, you could just drop the game system entirely and just play this as a straight social game (which is not a terrible thing btw). But if you want the characters stats and abilities to actually matter, you have to make sure that the resolutions that matter arise as the result of making skill checks and ability uses written on their character sheets. So make sure to have characters use information gathering tools/skills/abilities to learn things, but also engage the players in figuring out what that collection of clues actually means and what to do about it. It can be a tricky balance to get right. You want to make sure the players are engaged in decision making that makes a difference, but also that they are rolling against things on their character sheets, and that those rolls matter.

[Easy e]

I think the OP asked for Gothic Horror, not Action Horror.

[Psyren]

I think the OP asked for Gothic Horror, not Action Horror.

1) The thread title calls that out, but the opening post is more explicit about what they're after, including the specific question of how D&D can do horror better.

2) Gothic Horror is an aesthetic genre rather than a gameplay genre. You can have Gothic Action Horror (see Castlevania and Bloodborne for example.)

[GloatingSwine]

The way you manage this (which Psyren touched on) is that you introduce monsters that the PCs can't beat. This is alien to most D&D groups, who are accostomed to calculated level appropriate encounters per day assumptions (but, you know, is quite common on CoC, for example).

Even aside from that, it runs into the old adage "if it has stats, we can kill it".

A good horror adventure needs the big important things to be things the PCs can't even fight. Things that are not amenable to the combat system as a solution, but have malign effects on the PCs and the world around them.

Gothic horror is all about stuff you can't directly fight. Legacies of the past haunting the present, often literally as ghosts, etc.


I'll also comment that where you can run into issues wtih some game systems (especially ones focused more on traditional combat resolutions), is the issue of experience and skill use. You have to be really careful to make sure that your horror adventure is not just relying on the players figuring things out. Otherwise, you could just drop the game system entirely and just play this as a straight social game (which is not a terrible thing btw). But if you want the characters stats and abilities to actually matter, you have to make sure that the resolutions that matter arise as the result of making skill checks and ability uses written on their character sheets. So make sure to have characters use information gathering tools/skills/abilities to learn things, but also engage the players in figuring out what that collection of clues actually means and what to do about it. It can be a tricky balance to get right. You want to make sure the players are engaged in decision making that makes a difference, but also that they are rolling against things on their character sheets, and that those rolls matter.

Which is a big reason why I think D&D is a bad fit for horror because it's very systems-light when it comes to that kind of investigation and problem solving on the character sheet. 5e moreso than before because they stripped out a lot of skills crunch.

[Psyren]

Even aside from that, it runs into the old adage "if it has stats, we can kill it".

Killing a monster doesn't have to mean it stops being a threat. Jason Voorhees, Freddie Kreuger, Dracula... and those are just film examples, all the videogames I've listed have similar foes. That wouldn't be hard to translate into tabletop.


A good horror adventure needs the big important things to be things the PCs can't even fight. Things that are not amenable to the combat system as a solution, but have malign effects on the PCs and the world around them.

You can do "unfightable" in D&D too.



Which is a big reason why I think D&D is a bad fit for horror because it's very systems-light when it comes to that kind of investigation and problem solving on the character sheet. 5e moreso than before because they stripped out a lot of skills crunch.

Just because investigation in D&D (5e) is light baseline doesn't mean it can't be engaging, or even built upon if you want something more involved.

[Vahnavoi]

Even aside from that, it runs into the old adage "if it has stats, we can kill it".

A good horror adventure needs the big important things to be things the PCs can't even fight. Things that are not amenable to the combat system as a solution, but have malign effects on the PCs and the world around them.

Gothic horror is all about stuff you can't directly fight. Legacies of the past haunting the present, often literally as ghosts, etc..

None of this is correct.

First of all, "if it has stats, we can kill it" does not hold even in D&D. A dungeon master can, even by accident, create a fight that's statistically unbeatable to player characters. Doing so deliberately is a piece of cake. The corollary being that players who buy into the fallacy will just get their characters killed.

Second, one of the most famous gothic horror stories, Dracula, introduces us the archetype of vampire hunter in Van Hellsing and ends with the protagonists hunting down and destroying the Count. For ghost stories, quite often the climax is the end of the haunting, and triumph of life over death.

The horror does not come from being unable to fight. It comes from virtually everything else. For a vampire story, it comes from fear of disease, the idea that not only are there vampires, but that you or those you love could be turned into one! For a ghost story, the horror quite often comes from shock at what has already happened - the root atrocity behind the haunting.

Death Love Doom, out of existing adventures, serves to demonstrate all these principles. Go at it with sufficiently low level characters, and their chances of survival are slim to none. But even if the characters are equipped to fight and win over the immediate threats, they're still faced with gory aftermath of a tragedy. The sequence of events can be, and often is, viscerally and morally disgusting and horrifying even if the characters can escape with no significant harm to themselves.

[GloatingSwine]

None of this is correct.

First of all, "if it has stats, we can kill it" does not hold even in D&D. A dungeon master can, even by accident, create a fight that's statistically unbeatable to player characters. Doing so deliberately is a piece of cake. The corollary being that players who buy into the fallacy will just get their characters killed.

Second, one of the most famous gothic horror stories, Dracula, introduces us the archetype of vampire hunter in Van Hellsing and ends with the protagonists hunting down and destroying the Count. For ghost stories, quite often the climax is the end of the haunting, and triumph of life over death.

Dracula ends with the count being destroyed, but the mechanism by which the protagonists do so would not be translated into a combat scene because a Vampire must be caught unawares whilst they sleep for there to be any hope of success, and the correct formula (both decapitation and destruction of the heart) must be followed.

Destroying Dracula is investigation and puzzle solving, learn the formula, learn his location, arrive in time and do it before he can fully awaken.

You can't fight him.


The horror does not come from being unable to fight. It comes from virtually everything else. For a vampire story, it comes from fear of disease, the idea that not only are there vampires, but that you or those you love could be turned into one! For a ghost story, the horror quite often comes from shock at what has already happened - the root atrocity behind the haunting.

The root fears of most horror monsters are not able to be discussed on this board as they transgress into forbidden real world topics. Disease is the most sanitised version in the case of both vampires and zombies.



Just because investigation in D&D (5e) is light baseline doesn't mean it can't be engaging, or even built upon if you want something more involved.

Right, but if you're open to and asking about systems that might do it better, the answer is not "use this system that does it worse but make up your own patches".

D&D is not good at horror. You can use all the horror aesthetics you want, the fact remains that D&D is combat-rules heavy with a light touch everywhere else, and horror lives in the everywhere else outside of the combat rules and dies in combat.

[Vahnavoi]

@GloatingSwine: you have bizarrely narrow definition of "fighting". The end of Dracula novel is a chase scene that culminates in a fight with Dracula's lackeys and the Count being stabbed to death. It would be easy to stage this as a combat scenario even in many versions of D&D. The fact that the Count was incapacitated is irrelevant. Fixating on the information gathering part proves nothing, all that investigation and puzzle solving was literally planning for an attack! It isn't even the only time the protagonist literally fight Dracula, they try ambushing him in England too. The Count manages to flee, but saying that the protagonists somehow don't or can't fight him is absurd.

[Pex]

If you're ok with still using D&D I suggest the Grim Hollow campaign setting, which you can find online. It is pure Gothic Horror having all the tropes with some new ideas. There's also a way for players to be a werewolf, vampire, abomination, spectre, etc. without breaking the game using Transformations. There are two books for players, the original and an expansion. I recommend both. I was able to download the PDFs for free, if that matters to you. I'm not sure if you still can, but you can read them online at the website anyway. Obviously there's a monster manual for the campaign as well, but I don't know anything about it since I only know the game from a player perspective.

If interested the Dungeon Dudes broadcast a Grim Hollow based game on their website. You can see for yourself how a game could look. Disclosure: The Dungeon Dudes have provided content and given credit for it to the game in at least the expansion book.

[Psyren]

Right, but if you're open to and asking about systems that might do it better, the answer is not "use this system that does it worse but make up your own patches".

I'm not stopping you or anyone else from suggesting other systems. I can even provide ideas about D&D without putting down those suggestions.


D&D is not good at horror. You can use all the horror aesthetics you want, the fact remains that D&D is combat-rules heavy with a light touch everywhere else, and horror lives in the everywhere else outside of the combat rules and dies in combat.

And I think this take continues to be an overly narrow lens of what constitutes "horror." (And "combat," for that matter.)

[Bryan]

Hello, just a little update. I ended up settling on "Whispers in the Dark"; a classless 5e variant set in the late 19th / early 20th century that focuses on investigation of Gothic or Eldritch horrors.

I think I wrote this in the original post but the reason I stuck with a 5e variant was because I didn't really want to study a new system, then tutor six people in that new system when we were already comfortable with a system that we could use almost instinctively at this point. I've already modified WitD by giving the characters d8 hit die rather than d6 and adding Resolve Points from Masque of the Red Death. MotRD also uses archetypes that any class can use and I haven't decided yet whether or not to import the concept but I'm leaning against it.

I think the system is just a medium to tell the story and every time I have to disrupt the story by looking up a rule or worse, alter the story because I don't know the system well enough to create or modify a monster or something is a real problem. Sure, I know the rules for Call of Cthulhu but I can watch a horror movie right now and if I see something cool, I could start it out for 5e in my head and run a Whispers in the Dark scenario based on it that evening.

[Bryan]

"but I can watch a horror movie right now and if I see something cool, I could start it out for 5e in my head"

"Stat it out"
Damn autocorrect 😬

[Easy e]

Great to hear! I look forward to hearing more about the game and how you create "Horror" while playing it.

In my limited GM experience, people who had not "learned" D&D first were more willing to lean into the conventions of Horror. Those who started and were familiar with D&D tended to lean on their D&D-isms which were not aligned with Horror.

I am excited to hear what your experience is!