Is There Any Horror Genre RPG Out There?

[Metastachydium]

I wouldn’t consider Vampire the Masquerade as horror because the PCs are the monsters in a horror game.

Yeah. VtM is more like just edgy in a somewhat juvenile way.

♣

Anyhow. How come no one mentioned Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouff yet (or at least the similar, albeit a tad more rules-heavy Slasher Flick)? It is wonderfully simple and user friendly, with a single stat and a very intuitive d6 based resolution system and while the setup might sound silly, it's ultimately about very fragile PCs (who get mechanically more fragile in tangible ways when hurt) all on their own trying to survive being hunted for sport by a cannibalistic predator of superhuman abilities. In fact, Shia can, in theory, be substituted with just about any abnormally fast, tough and strong monster that consumes its victims (that last bit has mechanical relevance!).

[Slipjig]

You can do horror with D&D. For an example of a very successful horror one, check out "The Haunting of Briar House" on YouTube.

That said, this definitely requires player buy-in, and horror simply will not work with certain players at the table.

[Easy e]

Any game can be horror, if you understand the tropes of horror. I have played some successful Horror D&D one-shots, BUT the mechanics for D&D are not set-up for Horror.

The main tropes of Horror that a solid RPG should have is:

1. You are mostly helpless against the threat. You can not beat it by fighting, only delay it..... maybe.
2. You do not improve in skill and ability, you degrade over time.
3. Players lack control of the situation, there are a lot of unknowns involved and times you can not control your reactions.
4. You are not rewarded, things only get worse; there are no happy endings.

So, you can see that many of these 4 points go against what many people on this forum will tell you makes a good game. If the players are not ready for this, then this can lead to really bad games. That makes it hard to fit horror into a game that is not all ready horror focused, or that the players are not prepared for a horror focused game.

[Zuras]

Mechanically, Call of Cthulhu supports horror the best out of the most popular systems.

Your first question really needs to be whether players will be Fearless Monster Stompers or Just Plain Folks.

Fearless Monster Stompers fits Monster of the Week shows like Buffy, X-Files or Supernatural, while Just Plain Folks is the normal setup for a horror movie.

Hellboy and Doctor Who split the difference with a couple of characters fearlessly stomping monsters but all the support NPCs having zero plot armor (and levels of success in an episode/adventure revolve more around minimizing casualties than doubt that the protagonist will survive).

Call of Cthulhu is one of the preferred systems because it does a good job of giving you characters that feel competent but are still manifestly not up for fighting a shoggoth.

If a GM knows the horror tone they want to maintain, D&D can do a fair approximation of horror as well, with basically any edition supporting a horror tone in a maze of death traps at low levels. 5e can support horror pretty well if you run it under an e6 rule set (limiting PCs to level 6 maximum) and incorporate the sanity rules. If you want a high body count without punishing players too much (re-starting at 1st level is rough in a horror campaign) you can also start new PCs at 3rd or 4th level. D&D PCs get too hard to kill and too powerful if they keep leveling up, though, so it doesn’t work for horror without some homebrew changes.

[Vahnavoi]

Not to derail the thread with the very first reply, but would you really consider D&D a horror game?

Old versions of D&D naturally lend themselves to survival horror at low levels, and the Monster Manual has majority of famous horror monsters from several subgenres: vampires, ghosts and werevolves for gothic horror, demons, devils and angels for religious horror, chtuloid creatures like mindflayers and aboleths for Lovecraftian horror, bandits, diseases and starvation for horrors of war, so on and so forth.

It's simply a matter of how you play it.

For a game that's rulewise not much different from Basic D&D but dives head first into the weird and the horrifying, including all the gory grindhouse stuff TSR and now WotC don't want you to have in a roleplaying game, there's Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Death Love Doom and Death Frost Doom would be my recommendations from their adventure catalogue.

[Zuras]

The main tropes of Horror that a solid RPG should have is:

1. You are mostly helpless against the threat. You can not beat it by fighting, only delay it..... maybe.
2. You do not improve in skill and ability, you degrade over time.
3. Players lack control of the situation, there are a lot of unknowns involved and times you can not control your reactions.
4. You are not rewarded, things only get worse; there are no happy endings.

These points are accurate for a cosmic horror game (Call of Cthulhu and similar) but are somewhat less grim for much other horror sub-genres.

1. Direct confrontation can work, but only after extensive preparation and research. Vampires and werewolves often don’t survive the movie.

2. Character advancement happens in tandem with degradation due to damage to body, mind and soul. An especially lucky or well-played session might allow a character to accumulate skills faster than they rack up madness points and other disabling conditions.

D&D style systems can achieve this with something like an E6 level & feat system plus lingering injuries and sanity damage. You can level and gain in power, but you should periodically be considering retiring your veteran PC for a fresh faced one with no accumulated baggage to deal with if the system is doing its job.

3. This is true across the board in a horror campaign, regardless of sub-genre. Players will fail saving throws and their characters will do stuff they’d rather not. Don’t forget to bring your safety tools.

4. You can have happy endings (again, not in cosmic horror), but only at a cost. You can seldom save everyone, and sometimes you aren’t sure if the ones you did save were worth it.

Base D&D 5e doesn’t lend itself especially well to horror because PCs are such glass cannons. Systems with more dodging and active defenses generally work better, as the players have time to figure out how the monster works before characters start dropping.

[gbaji]

Call of Cthulhu is one of the preferred systems because it does a good job of giving you characters that feel competent but are still manifestly not up for fighting a shoggoth.

I think what makes Call of Cthulhu so great is that the focus is on investigation rather than combat. The system is so rigged in the bad guys favor that pretty much the only way to succeed is to figure out what's going on, figure out where/when it's going on, then show up with as much firepower, dynamite, and whatever else you have to curbstomp the bad guys before they can complete their "evil plan", all without tipping your hand that you're doing this. It really puts the focus on the "playing" in RPG, where sometimes minor decision/actions can have absolutely major consequences.

And yeah, the Cthulhu Mythos skill and the Sanity stat is the great equalizer. You can never really become as powerful magically as the bad guys, or you risk becoming the next bad guy. It's by no means a traditional heroic game. Treating a CoC scenario like you might a D&D scenario will almost always result in utter failure. And the insanity rules provide great roleplaying opportunities for the players as well, so there's plenty of opportunity for "fun"(ish) stuff along the way.

It does require players who are willing to really play along, but the reward as the various PCs become increasingly "twitchy" over the course of a scenario is super worth it IMO. And if there's one rule to follow: Never ever ever let the chanting cultists finish their ritual to "see what we have to deal with". The whole idea is to avoid any sort of "boss battle" (cause you will just plain up die).

[EggKookoo]

It does require players who are willing to really play along, but the reward as the various PCs become increasingly "twitchy" over the course of a scenario is super worth it IMO. And if there's one rule to follow: Never ever ever let the chanting cultists finish their ritual to "see what we have to deal with". The whole idea is to avoid any sort of "boss battle" (cause you will just plain up die).

Another fun effect is that any PC that has managed to survive multiple campaigns without major loss of limb or sanity and continues to be viable takes on an aura of respect and authority that is genuine. Most adventurer PCs can boast long adventuring histories. There are very very few "old" Cthulhu investigators.

[Duff]

Another fun effect is that any PC that has managed to survive multiple campaigns without major loss of limb or sanity and continues to be viable takes on an aura of respect and authority that is genuine. Most adventurer PCs can boast long adventuring histories. There are very very few "old" Cthulhu investigators.

There are old Cthulhu characters, and there are bold Cthulhu characters...

[Khedrac]

There are old Cthulhu characters, and there are bold Cthulhu characters...

Disagree - there are insane Cthulhu characters, and there are bold Cthulhu characters...

Insanity* always gets you if you manage to survive by not being stupid.

* Includes those characters retired to a sanitorium before becoming permanently insane (Sanity usually sub-20).

[TeChameleon]

Horror is possible in any game, if you know your players and they're willing to follow the mood that you're trying to set (aka player buy-in).

I managed to run a memorable horror campaign in Shadowrun 4th Edition, which... isn't really geared for horror. I mean, it's there around the edges, but it's corporate espionage and running gun-and-spell battles with themed street gangs.

But an unknown element- especially if you manage to misdirect them as to its true nature- that is clearly hostile, even if it doesn't do any permanent damage to the PCs, is enough to make the mood very, very tense.

[Frankbit]

I think you can try Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus.

[DrMartin]

DND with its core progression "from zeros to heroes" and the general expectation that you are supposed to face the monster instead of running away from it is in general a bad fit for horror but that doesn't stop people from trying and actually having fun while at it.

But if you want something designed for horror there's a lot of games out there for it, depending on the flavor of horror you are looking for. A lot of them were already recommended upthread, but these should be mentioned:

Unknown Armies is for anthropocentric horror games at a local / global / cosmic scale, and it's great. Has a great and simple way to handle shock and insanity, and the writing is great.

Geiger Counter is a free game with many incarnations, and at its core is a GMless game for survival horror - the kind of stories where the initial cast of characters gets whittled down by the monster during the first two hours of the movie, leading to the last few survivor standing against the monster which has now gained its full power at the final showdown. It's great.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten for zombie horror.