PDA

View Full Version : Advice for a horror game?



Gmmaster42
2008-10-19, 06:24 PM
Hey, I'm planning on running a true horror campaign for the first time. I'm planning it to be in the Call of Cthulhu d20 game system, modified for my own purposes. I was just wondering if anyone had any advice for me, I hope to do the horror aspect justice. Anyone got any experience with horror and/or Call of Cthulhu they could share? Thanks!

streakster
2008-10-19, 06:34 PM
Everyone dies horribly. A lot.

Might want to have them make a couple characters, for when their first ones go gibbering and frothing.

mabriss lethe
2008-10-19, 06:39 PM
It's easy to fall into "blood and guts" style horror. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a few well placed scenes of horrific butchery. Because those can really be the icing on the cake. Work more on building suspense and creeping your players out than having a gore fest. Strange voices, sudden noises, inappropriately matched things (Imagine a circle of homeless children, half starved and covered in sores, droning out a chant in deep, bass filled voices reminiscent of mongolian throat singing. Suddenly something starts to waver into existence within the confines of the circle)

Innis Cabal
2008-10-19, 06:41 PM
Leave alot of things undefined. Don't give straight answeres during ooc things. Keep the PC's guessing. Whats behind that door? Who knows, but lets not open it, it might be awful.

Thane of Fife
2008-10-19, 06:42 PM
Here's my compulsory link to Strolen's Citadel:

BOO!!! Horror Effects in a game... (http://www.strolen.com/content.php?node=1277)

bosssmiley
2008-10-19, 06:45 PM
Read lots of Lovecraft. Late at night. Remember that creeping feeling of agoraphobic terror. Try to reproduce it in play. :smallwink:

Brauron
2008-10-19, 06:46 PM
Separate the party, especially if you can also plunge them in darkness. There are few things more terrifying to human beings than being alone in the dark.

NEVER say "There's an Ogre in front of you." Never use the monster's name from the rulebook. Describe it as evocatively as you can, without spending ten minutes in rambling description. If it's in shadows, tell them they see a shadowy figure. Have them make Spot checks if they want more detail.

Have them make listen and spot checks, even if nothing's there. Tell them they think they see something moving on the edge of their peripheral vision, or that they think there might be the sound of footsteps following them.

The biggest trick to master with GMing horror is to not overdo things. One or two spot checks over the course of a four-hour session that reveal nothing but a motion at the edge of peripheral vision is enough to make the players nervous.

Vexxation
2008-10-19, 06:54 PM
At least one dream sequence.

Or make notes telling the players what they dreamt about, each revealing a small, seemingly insignificant detail that's used later on.

Dream sequences can include illusory beings, shadows, figments from the past, or you can go my favorite route, and have an unannounced attack by a BBEG sort. During the fight, incapacitate (or kill) everyone, regardless of the numbers. When the players are both angry and/or scared for their characters' lives, the creature/BBEG/whatever runs off, and they wake up, having share the worst nightmare ever.

Fun stuff, horror is.
Also, I second the Lovecraft suggestion.

Lycan 01
2008-10-19, 07:08 PM
If a character goes crazy, make them leave the room. You then take control oh his character and go to town. :smallbiggrin:


Smirk and roll dice at random times. This has a serious psychological effect...


Mention strange sounds in the distance, ominous lighting, dead silence... setting and mood go a long way.


Overwelming odds. Nothing is scarier than seeing your bullets bounce of the thing eating your friend's spine - which is no longer in your friend's back.


Get the d100 edition. :P Its the one I use, and I hear the d20 edition pales in comparison...

allonym
2008-10-19, 07:14 PM
Give the impression that nothing is as it seems by messing with a few really basic ideas. Everyone has a dark secret, it's just that most of them involve sleeping with the neighbor's wife as opposed to communing with the darkness.

Get d100 Cthulhu. Seriously, you'll be using a d100 for SAN anyway, and it gets people out of the D20 mindset and out of concentration on stats anyway.

Vary things. Horror can be cosmic evil lurking in a cave network, its sick tendrils corrupting the land for miles around. Or it can be a cult worshipping a great evil god. Or it can be satanists. Or cannibals. Or serial killers.

Try to give your players the impression that they were always one unlucky roll away from death. Shield your rolls in important times to lie to them about them.

And the best thing is, when the old war vet has to hit on 1/4 skill with his battered .22 rifle to hit a chain holding a hanging in place to send the candles crashing down and burn the place down in a blissful oblivion, and only has one shot...make the roll using an opaque cup, describe everything else beforehand, and then reveal it.

Lycan 01
2008-10-19, 07:28 PM
Use everything against them.

One guy wanted to play as a guy with PTSD. By the end of that session, he'd killed his friend with a point blank shotgun blast to the stomach because he thought he was back in the trenches of Europe.


Or yesterday, when due to a series of uncanny rolls somebody blew up a vodka bottle in mid-air and lit a cultist on fire. I conceeded that to succeed... sadly, the also ignighted the curtains and the desk that the important document that they needed was in. :smallbiggrin:

Project_Mayhem
2008-10-19, 07:32 PM
If a character goes crazy, make them leave the room. You then take control oh his character and go to town.

I have to say, I much prefer it when the player's allowed to roleplay it

Doomsy
2008-10-19, 07:40 PM
You should keep everything as close to the vest as possible. Never let them see the whole plot, never give them anything but bits and pieces to build from. The same goes for monsters. More importantly make the overwhelming odds more subtle than just numbers - the dark things of the Mythos are truly ageless. Everything is in their favor. No victory is anything but temporary, a fleeting spark of light in a darkness that will never end. There is always another cultist, always another dark plan, always another hand reaching to put out the flame - and eventually one day you will fail.

And so comes the night.

I personally would recommend not pulling punches. Preroll combat stuff if you can so it moves fast and hard. If it goes bad, let the bodies hit the floor. This is realistic. The bad guys sometimes win, and sometimes bad things happen. Your band of PCs are not heroes with destinies, they are gamblers and eventually luck runs out - normal people who will lose their jobs, their sanity, and their lives, and if they are very lucky it will be in that order.

Keep it close and keep it realistic.

Use ambiance, use little clues, use that sense of being a small fish in a very big pond full of sharks and worse, of big things passing by very closely and barely glimpsed.

Lycan 01
2008-10-19, 07:40 PM
Even if they have NO CONTROL over their actions? :smalltongue: I don't mean like "You start to scream and cry" or anything like that. I mean "You scream out proclaimations of faith to Great Cthulhu, and you proceed to carve strange runes into your face with the nearest pointy object" :smallamused:

Thurbane
2008-10-19, 08:31 PM
I have found the following books very useful for horror based games (not sure how well they'll mesh with CoC d20):

Heroes of Horror
Lords of Madness
Libris Mortis
Exemplars of Evil
Elder Evils

Project_Mayhem
2008-10-19, 08:48 PM
I suppose it depends on the player, but if the DM said 'OK, Bernard McInvestigator failed his san check, lost hella sanity, his mind snapped, and now he realises the futility of doing anything other than worshiping Cthulhu' I'd jump on the opportunity. My favorite games have been the ones with a genuine IC reason to snap and betray my team :smallbiggrin:

Calinero
2008-10-19, 09:32 PM
One of the most important (and overlooked) things is to set up a good atmosphere for gaming. No techno music in the background, have as few bright lights as possible. Avoid overly comfortable chairs if you can. Don't let players get up and go for snacks or drinks every ten minutes. The trick is to try and make them forget they're playing a game--actually get them involved. Make them care. I don't know if you're a good actor or not, but try to be as creepy as you can without being melodramatic. Speak quietly, stay deadly serious--no matter what kind of antics they pull. Oh, and be sure to work on your serious stare. It comes in handy.

If you are quiet most of the time, it opens up a lot of opportunities for scaring them later with loud noises. I scared the crap out of my players just by banging my hand against a table. It was quite awesome.

Some advice on the adventure itself: show is much, much better than tell. Don't say "The thing uses its telekinesis to lift up a pen near you." Say "You hear a scratching noise on the desk nearby. As you turn to look, you see a pen being lifted up into the air. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any human source for the lifting." Or something like that. Keep them guessing, never give them any more specifics than you have to. If you describe a monster too thoroughly, someone familiar with the game might recognize it. "The shape" is a lot scarier than "The dimensional shambler."

One thing that worked really, really well in a game I played in (but didn't DM) was giving the characters horrible choices to make. Example: My character walked into a room. Totally dark, but a flashlight rolls out of the darkness. I pick it up, and turn it on. Looking around, I see toys and such scattered about in the darkness. I then feel a small hand take my hand, like the hand of a child. There's nothing there when I shine the light, but I can feel it. I see a lightbulb (turned off) in the middle of the room, and begin walking towards it. I feel another hand on me, then two more hands, and hear little children started calling out to me. "No! No, don't turn on the light! Don't do it! He'll come back! He'll come back and beat us again! Don't do it!" As I hear these voices, I started moving faster. The hands grab at me. I start running towards the light, shaking off the hands. I reach the lightbulb, and by that time there's just screaming. I grab the chain, pull it....

The screams stop. I look around. There is blood. Everywhere. On the toys, on the walls. There are two little dresses, torn to pieces. Covered in blood. On one of them is a note, reading simply "....why?"

My character was an alcoholic dentist, who had killed a young girl while drunk and performing surgery. Needless to say, this hit him very, very hard. But here's the kicker: after the rest of my group left the room, I hung back. I stayed by the light chain, and had to make a choice. I could try and turn the light off again, see if it would bring the children back. But what if they were angry? Or what if something else came back instead?

I chose not to pull it. And I still do not know what would have happened. Hopefully, my friend will tell me after we finish the campaign. But yeah, go for something like that.

EvilElitest
2008-10-19, 10:15 PM
an alcoholic dentist? ouch
from
EE

Calinero
2008-10-19, 10:22 PM
Well, the game was Insylum, so my character's backstory isn't set in stone. I made myself an alcoholic (I like playing them), but was thinking I might be an author. Then it turned out I was a dentist. But that works too, and it went very well with that scenario.

Prometheus
2008-10-19, 10:39 PM
One thing that worked really, really well in a game I played in (but didn't DM) was giving the characters horrible choices to make. Example: My character walked into a room. Totally dark, but a flashlight rolls out of the darkness. I pick it up, and turn it on. Looking around, I see toys and such scattered about in the darkness. I then feel a small hand take my hand, like the hand of a child. There's nothing there when I shine the light, but I can feel it. I see a lightbulb (turned off) in the middle of the room, and begin walking towards it. I feel another hand on me, then two more hands, and hear little children started calling out to me. "No! No, don't turn on the light! Don't do it! He'll come back! He'll come back and beat us again! Don't do it!" As I hear these voices, I started moving faster. The hands grab at me. I start running towards the light, shaking off the hands. I reach the lightbulb, and by that time there's just screaming. I grab the chain, pull it....

The screams stop. I look around. There is blood. Everywhere. On the toys, on the walls. There are two little dresses, torn to pieces. Covered in blood. On one of them is a note, reading simply "....why?".
This is very much true. The important elements is something dramatic that demands action on your part when you aren't sure whether or not you are doing harm or good. The player is either scared into inaction or prompted into personal horror. Someone else had posted about how they entered a room full of creepy dolls whose eyes followed him. Unnerved, he destroyed them all with the weapon he was carrying. While he did, they bled and screamed and he left the room soaked in their blood. He has to ask himself whether they were the incarnation of evil screwing with him or innocents that he destroyed in madness. Perhaps he was possessed by a spirit, reenacting a scene from the past and was completely unaware.

Don't God mod. I read someone's horror campaign that told them how they had reacted and that is not good gameplaying. For example "You run out of the room screaming you are so scared" would be what not to do. Instead whatever in the room should be so scary that they are forced to choose between the rational choice of running away or cowering and hoping it doesn't notice you. Insanity is tricky, the player is by definition god-modded. You have to think of it as a more horrible or intermittent way to kill a character rather than an injury or something that a character lives with.

Another DM on the board (forget who) posted and a point system that sounded like a really good idea (I don't know if this was a standard of the system or a variant that he added). Whenever a player does a commendable action, that is, roleplays well or takes a risk, than they get a point. So the way to win the game is not necessarily to survive, but to get the most points before dying (which will happen eventually). Living longer helps accumulate points, but points represent living a real life rather than simply existing. Moreover, it gives players the feeling that there is a point to being alive at all.

If you want players to live longer than the average horror game, give them alternate character sheets to start the game with and have these characters immediately slaughtered horribly. Will the real players see that horror later, they will be scared, even if it is metagame knowledge.

Leewei
2008-10-19, 10:57 PM
One of my favorite horror games form back in the previous millennium was Chill. They had a great vignette illustrating horror. It went something along the following lines:

A crew of paranormal investigators spend the night debunking a haunted house. The house, it seems, has other plans. The crew is attacked by something vaguely human, but covered in gore and smelling like rotten meat. One of the crew is killed instantly; the rest scatter for their lives. The front door is locked and won't budge, the lights don't work, and the dwindling investigators occasionally glimpse each other in their flight, only to hear blood-curdling screams and wet, violent noises.

At last, the lone surviving victim has barricaded himself in a room, certain that if he lives to see the morning, he can leave and never return. Every second is an eternity. Every sound is magnified into a roar. Could there be something moving in the hall outside? OH GOD, IT IS. And it's scratching at the door. It keeps scratching and snuffling. It won't stop! Oh please, just let it GO AWAY! Eventually, for no apparent reason, it finally does.

The sun comes up, the desperate man smashes out the window in his room, sliding down the porch roof to escape. Just as he does, he glances back and sees the scratch marks on still-closed and barricaded door inside the room not ten feet from where he lied huddling in despair all night.,,

Yukitsu
2008-10-19, 11:03 PM
Go for a standardized set of character sheets, printed out about 50 times, with different names on them. It will save a lot of time throughout the campaign.

Gmmaster42
2008-10-20, 03:26 AM
Wow, lots of comments. Thanks for the great suggestions. My big worry is that the players won't get into it, especially getting attached to their characters enough to develop them past rolling an attack and swinging a weapon around.

Doomsy
2008-10-20, 03:59 AM
One of my favorite horror games form back in the previous millennium was Chill. They had a great vignette illustrating horror. It went something along the following lines:

A crew of paranormal investigators spend the night debunking a haunted house. The house, it seems, has other plans. The crew is attacked by something vaguely human, but covered in gore and smelling like rotten meat. One of the crew is killed instantly; the rest scatter for their lives. The front door is locked and won't budge, the lights don't work, and the dwindling investigators occasionally glimpse each other in their flight, only to hear blood-curdling screams and wet, violent noises.

At last, the lone surviving victim has barricaded himself in a room, certain that if he lives to see the morning, he can leave and never return. Every second is an eternity. Every sound is magnified into a roar. Could there be something moving in the hall outside? OH GOD, IT IS. And it's scratching at the door. It keeps scratching and snuffling. It won't stop! Oh please, just let it GO AWAY! Eventually, for no apparent reason, it finally does.

The sun comes up, the desperate man smashes out the window in his room, sliding down the porch roof to escape. Just as he does, he glances back and sees the scratch marks on still-closed and barricaded door inside the room not ten feet from where he lied huddling in despair all night.,,

I need to find this game system, pronto.

Also, if you are worried about your players not getting attached - don't do the multiple character sheet thing. They'll play it like that Gulch episode of Knights of the Dinner Table, using each new character like a bullet to plow through another few inches of story and choke the enemy with their dead.

Best idea is to actually enforce a character limit and if a character gets royally maimed or hideously effed up? Make them play it. It breeds either simmering rage or a real bond with the character. Or suicidal attempts to ditch it. Some peoples personalities just do not mesh with horror. Their brains are not wired for it or something.

Lycan 01
2008-10-20, 11:40 AM
Believe me, they'll become attached to their character. Its not like DnD where you level up and get to pick your new stats. Your character evolves in Call of Cthulhu. They get scars, they lose their will to live, they grow stronger or weaker, they get better at what they do... Its quite a realistic system, especially the skills - practise does make perfect.


When I first ran The Haunting, I made the house seem like it wasn't haunted. The first two players searched the first floor, and found very little of interest, besides a few statues of Jesus with their faces lined with thousands of miniscule cracks. This perturbed them slightly, but they still doubted that the place was actually haunted.

One guy went outside to sit and relax. The other went upstairs. As the one upstairs approached a door, he heard... something... on the other side. Like something scratching on glass... His response?

Paranoia overtook him. He drew his gun, cracked the door, and fired 4 shots into the room. I told him to roll for the shots - they were all "hits" and would have struck whatever might have been in the room. He realized that he'd spread his shots out, and if all 4 had hit something, that thing had to be big.

Meanwhile, the dude outside was debating wether or not to go in after hearing the gunshots - he was very chicken-livered.

The upstairs guy finally worked up the courage to kick open the door. He discovered an empty room, save for an old dusty bedframe. He then heard a scratching noise by the window. Slowly walking over, he opened the window, and looked outside to see if a branch had been scratching on the glass. There were no trees on that side of the house.

Its at this point that the poltergeist picked up the bedframe, hurled it across the room, and knocked the player out the window. He landed on his face, broke his nose, dislocated a knee, and was reduced to 1 HP.

The scared guy promptly ran around the side of the house, found his fallen comrade, and carried him to the nearest house to call an ambulance.

---------

Now, this is a good example of subtle stress and paranoia taking over. Player A freaked out when he saw the Jesus statues, and wanted out of the house. Player B disregarded them, and kept exploring, hiding his own growing fear. When Player B was finally faced with a possible force of evil, he snapped and opened fire without thinking. Upon discovering it was "nothing" to worry about, he entered the room, dropped his guard, and paid dearly for it.

Player A also learned a rather nifty spell from a journal he found in the house, and Player B lost an Appearance point due to his new crooked nose. :smallbiggrin:

One week later...

----------

2 more players have joined the game - they're cops assigned to investigate the "assault" against Player B that took place at the old house last week.

Player B has recovered most of his HP (I was nice...) and can now stagger along quite well. So him, Player A, and the 2 cops head back to the house to finish their investigation.

Players A and B decide to stay downstairs and search for clues - in reality, they didn't want to go back upstairs. They managed to find some items of interest... several bottles of wine, to be precise.

Players C and D doubted the validity of their stories, so they went upstairs. Player C had been quiet about the whole thing, while Player D had been bragging about how her character didn't believe the house was haunted, and that he wasn't afraid of anything.

A few minutes later, Player C is standing their in silence while Player D has a nervous breakdown after the ceiling started to bleed several gallons of blood on top of her head.

(Edit: It is also worth noting that Players A and B casually drank wine downstairs as they listened to Player D scream and cry incoherantly... they just shrugged and kept drinking.)

--------------

I was proud of myself for breaking the "brave" character. :smallbiggrin:


As it is, Player A has gone on to become a Latin teacher at the Miskatonic U, Player B founded a paranormal investigation agency, Player C is one of the best cops on the Arkham PD, and Player D doesn't play with us that much anymore. :smalltongue:


So there you go. Good examples of character developement, and how to freak your players out. :smallamused:

Hiisi
2008-10-20, 12:51 PM
The haunting was the first CoC adventure I played. Ahh.. the memories.. the screams of terror :smallbiggrin:

My group was full of almost pure hack'n slash high magic DnD purists with 10 years of gaming experience when I first introduced them to Call of Cthulhu. Now they run from every dark shadow and odd noise (as they should). Call of Cthulhu totaly broke my munchkins.. and I've never been happier. Buying that coffee stained book at half price was the best purchase I've ever made.

Actually we just started playing DnD again... they smiled and said they felt so safe now. How wrong can they be :smallwink: Oh yes.. after CoC I know what it truly means to be an evil DM.

Krhm.. Advice.

* Get some music. I found music from games to be a good source for a creepy atmosphere

* Keep jokes to minimum. Honestly. Nothing spoils the tension as monty python quotes.

* Don't babysit them. If they do stupid things, they die. Let them learn.

* Don't be out there to get them. You don't need to. They 'will' do stupid things and they 'will' die/claw their eyes out/lose their sanity... and then things start getting real ugly.

codexgigas
2008-10-20, 12:56 PM
I've never run CoC, since no one else in my group is interested, but I have run a d20 Modern Lovecraft-themed campaign, so I do have some suggestions.

1. Keep combat rare. It breaks the suspense that you've created and the players are now dealing with mechanics. Still, you do need to break the suspense at times.
2. Think carefully about what mechanical information the players know. Mine never knew their current HP (I gave them a general description about how their characters felt), their current Sanity, or how much damage they were doing to the abominations from beyond the known universe. This lack of knowledge played with their minds.
3. If you decide to play atmospheric music, make sure that they players don't know what it is. Nothing kills the game faster than that. I recommend classical music (you'd be surprised how well it can fit, if you avoid A Night on Bald Mountain).
4. Make sure the players know what expectations you have. Mine knew that I wasn't going to cheat, either for them or against them, like I normally did. They also knew that they weren't going to know a lot of information that they normally did in our games. We worked well with that understanding up front.
5. Plan each session carefully. The tension needs to build, and then relax, then build to a false peak. Keep the players guessing, and finally deliver the adventure's climax when they no longer have any idea what to expect.

Gmmaster42
2008-10-26, 07:23 PM
Yeah, I've told them that most of the xp will be roleplaying or story based, so to that end I'm requiring to be more than just a walking sword trying to kill everything they see.

I think I'm going to use a plot sort of along this line: Some years ago, there was a day in human history when the sky went black, there reports and earthquakes to prove that multiple nuclear power plants had all at the same time gone critical and blew up, releasing huge amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. Then they came. About 3/4 of the human population was annihilated, the rest are being toyed with. Chaos and madness reign supreme. There are reports of people being taken and never coming back, being the lab mice of terrible experiments. The name of the game is survive or escape.