Running an effective horror campaign.

[Avianmosquito]

This is a place to share your tips and tricks on running an effective horror campaign. This can be very hard to do in tabletop, but there's some of the most enjoyable campaigns you can write. I'll start us off.

1. Run non-horror campaigns in this setting first, with the same players. This is step 1, all my later steps will relate directly to this step.

2. As an expansion on step 1, let your players get comfortable in your setting. Don't bring any horror into campaign #1, at all. You can have hints at the horror that will come later, but no actual horror in the first campaign. You want them emotionally disarmed before the **** hits the fan. After that, leak it in slowly and only in the background before suddenly dropping a full-blown horror campaign on them, and don't tell them it is a horror campaign. The hints in the background should have been there the whole time

3. Let them think they know how the setting works. Make rules, hard and steadfast rules. Let them have plenty of evidence that these rules always apply and can never not apply in this setting. Allow them to know and understand these rules, allow them to conclude on their own that these are the fundamental order of the setting and cannot be violated. When your horror campaign begins, start breaking rules. Twist the laws of magic and the laws of physics, allow your horrors to override or subvert them. This is the single most powerful tool of horror, the sudden realization that the normal rules that you rely on no longer apply.

4. There should be no closure in horror, just like there is no closure in life. Escape is a possibility, temporary victory is a thing that can happen, but there is no conclusive end. Design your campaign so the horror will persist after the campaign's end, even if the protagonists escape. Make it so your players don't have the means to end the horror permanently, and make it so the horror they have escaped, whatever its nature, could easily threaten them again in the future and if they can do anything about it they can't be absolutely sure it won't come back. This isn't just sequel bait, it creates a gnawing uncertainty in future, non-horror campaigns in this setting. This is the one genre where closure is a bad thing.

Do these four things, and your horror games will be much more frightening. And if you don't want to make them more frightening, don't run a horror campaign.