Do you like horror with your fantasy?

[Desdichado]

Well, like I said, CoC has such good horror rules that it seems a shame not to borrow them. The Sanity rules are absolutely great.

I think a significant portion of it is also setting the character's mindset at the beginning. Play at night, if you can, and keep the lights dim. Get spooky soundtracks, like Signs or Bram Stoker's Dracula or something like that. Tell them up front that you're running a horror game. And then introduce them to the sanity rules, the lowered death from massive damage threshold, the fact that they're essentially playing NPC classes, or whatever other rules changes you're thinking of. Kill a few characters near the beginning of the campaign so they have to roll up new ones and have a healthy respect for the campaign.

But to me, be sure and tell them this is a horror game. That's the most important element. If they are sitting around joking about Monty Python or something like that all through the game, there's very little you can do to make the game horrific.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

I guess I was wondering how to keep things fresh for the players and prevent them from becoming jaded to it.

Ok- well I always am of the opinion that the foundation of most horror genres is that man is expendible (especially in man vs. the unknown .. commonly used in Mythos writings).

Are you willing to kill characters? That will be the most impacting way to keep horror fresh, but it does not lend itself to keeping campeigns going.

It will all depend on the type of horror your scenario will take, but the basic advice is probably the same.

Start small and don't even let the players understand the full impact of what is going on until the final few scenarios.

Example- man vs. nature
Specifics: Rats have turned against man
Area: A large city- about to face its monsoon season

Adventure #1:
Children are turning up missing in a city.
They all seem to disappear around sewer entrances.
The players descend into the sewers- find some old half-orc hag cooking children. The party will probably (the city will definitly) blame the hag for their deaths- though she claims her innocence on their deaths.. but admits to planning to eat the remains she found.

Through out descriptions- rats are present half the time. Spot checks on the children bones note markings from small animal bites.

Players "solve" the mystery- get a slap on the back, but might suspect something else is going on.

Adventure #2:
A disease starts to break out in the city- a quarentine of most of the city is declared. The disease is spreading too quickly for clerics to deal with, and no one is sure of the source.

The party gets involved with a general run-around session- the city is on the brink of a riot, the guards need help, the clerics need help, nobles are willing to pay for help.

While on some mission- they hear the local rat-catcher union (hey, modern india has them, heh) complaining about a big increase in the rat population.

Have them attacked by some aggressive rats in the alley way.

Players may or may not help find a way to fight the disease- but either way.. the disease is still present through out the city.

Adventure #3:

Food stops coming from the north. The city has sent a herald to find out what is going on, but he never returned. Someone the party helped in the last couple adventures suggest the city leadership send the party. They are hired to find out about the herald and the food.

They travel north.. where the monsoons have already hitting.

They find no animals on the way- the first farming community is a couple weeks to the north.

When arriving at the first town, they find it in chaos. The local leadership claims they have no food to send- rats have been into their crops.. and they are dealing with a huge influx of refugees from the north. Most nearly dead from a famliar disease. A few semi-coherent refugees are obviously a bit low on their sanity.. as they just ramble about rats.

Word is the herald travelled further north.

If they travel to the next community- they find it in the middle of a war with rats. The few people still alive are locked up inside their own homes- most of the area is flooded.. and the areas dry are covered in rats.

a local explains that with the rain- the rats came pouring out of their holes in the ground..

hopefully you don't have to slap your party in the head to get them thinking about the city and a flooded sewer..

Adventure #4+

A large city with little food, suffering from a disease, and now under assault by countless rats- you have many opportunities for adventures here.

Adventure finally:
This is the toughest- do you make some agent behind the rats, or just leave it as man versus nature.

If the latter, then your best bet is to have the rats wipe out the city.

Summary- your players may laugh at the idea of being afraid of a rat. They would be right, but when that rat has countless friends- then things get a bit different.

The key with starting small is not just in knowledge of the horror being faced, but in the consequences it brings. The party should barely suspect the horror, and if they do suspect it- it should seem largely inconsequential.

As the adventures go on, then the party should find themselves in a situation that is nearly beyond them. Why? Because this is horror- if it was within the pc's ability to handle, then they will just hack&slash their way to a solution.

Heh, sorry for such a long post.
I hope it made some sense.

FD

 

[Furn_Darkside]

But to me, be sure and tell them this is a horror game

hmm- I somewhat disagree.

If you let the players know they are in a horror adventure, then they will have expectations set.

It is best to surprise them.

For example- I ran a 1920's based d20 CoC recently with the spycraft rules. The players thought they were going to be doing some gangbusters-type play- little did they know the adventure was going to involve the mob's use of the medical journals of Dr.Frankenstein.

If they are sitting around joking about Monty Python or something like that all through the game, there's very little you can do to make the game horrific.

You can tell them this is a serious game, and you (the dm) would prefer as little ooc coversation as possible- and you will penalize, in xp, people who break the mood with stupid ooc jokes.

FD

 

[Desdichado]

Furn, you're could be right.

Then again, I think part of the reason spooky movies are so spooky is because we go in with that mindset from the get-go. If you go in expecting Independence Day and instead get Signs you're probably be more disappointed with the movie rather than appreciating it as a horror movie.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Then again, I think part of the reason spooky movies are so spooky is because we go in with that mindset from the get-go. If you go in expecting Independence Day and instead get Signs you're probably be more disappointed with the movie rather than appreciating it as a horror movie.

You got a good point.

I guess it would depends on the group and the adventure.

I will need to rethink my wool-over-the-eyes horror method. haha.

FD

 

[Desdichado]

Haha indeed! You've caused me to rethink my up-front player preparation method! You're anecdote about the rats there was a darn good story. Reminds me of some Warhammer stuff I've read about the Skaven, to tell you the truth.

I would make it supernatural, not just natural. I'd use slitheren stats from Scarred Lands to be an underground rat race that controls the rats (like the Warhammer skaven -- I really love these guys actually) and maybe even make some kind of rat-demon as the ultimate source of the evil.

I think your point about horror in making the PCs helpless to completely stop the problem is crucial. If the PCs can hack-n-slash their way out of it, it's not horror. Thus my suggestions to Gothmog on making sure those demons are truly terrifying in combat: not something the PCs can really have a good chance of beating regularly.

And you're right: occasional PC deaths are good for this kind of genre.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

I would make it supernatural, not just natural. I'd use slitheren stats from Scarred Lands to be an underground rat race that controls the rats (like the Warhammer skaven -- I really love these guys actually) and maybe even make some kind of rat-demon as the ultimate source of the evil.

heh, as I was writing that I thought of a short story I like a lot.

*ponder* The title won't come to me, but..Dean Koontz wrote a novel called Watchers- it is about genetically altered animals(a pair of dogs).

He has a short story in another book.. err.. Strange Highways (I think) about the same people making intelligent rats that escape and terrorize a local farm house.

I find this concept very interesting. Rats do a lot of damage in this world today- imagine if they were intelligent.

Oh man, I am going to make a cool adventure with this- haha.

FD

 

[Desdichado]

Lovecraft has a very spooky rat-demon story as well: Rat's in the Walls maybe? Can't remember for sure the name.

 

[barsoomcore]

Besides, it's fun to be the Evil DM (tm) once in a while.

Are you suggesting that it's fun to be Nice DM? Maybe I'll try that sometime. Heh.

I love to scare my players. The first trick to horror, and this holds true in every truly scary film ever made, is to yank the player's expectations out from under them. They have to feel like ANYTHING is possible, that nothing is going to play out the way they think it is.

In Psycho, Hitchcock kills the main character twenty minutes into the picture. The audience is shocked and suddenly feels like they have no idea what's going on. Panic sets in.

In Alien, the same thing applies -- the best-known actor in the film (when it was released) was John Hurt, and he's the first to die. In an incredibly graphic and horrifying way. After that, the audience feels like anything can happen. And so they spend the rest of the movie jumping at shadows.

You don't have to kill a PC but you do have to disorient them, make them think they don't know what's going on. Confusion will scare your players more than CR 15 monster every time.

Add to that urgency. They need to feel like the clock is ticking, so they can't just stand around arguing over every little detail. Remorselessness is crucial -- if they don't decide the ghouls are going to overrun the town and people will start dying.

Finally, you have to disturb them. There has to be at least suggestions of things the PLAYERS themselves will find not just repugnant but foul, not to be tolerated. Horror is at some level about violation of the natural order. You have to imagine truly horrible things for your bad guys to do -- whether it's explicitly stated or not. At the end of a good session my players are usually shaking their heads, asking me how I think this stuff up.

Okay, great. All done.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Lovecraft has a very spooky rat-demon story as well: Rat's in the Walls maybe? Can't remember for sure the name.

IIRC- that one did not actually have rats in the walls.

You may be thinking of Jenkins from Dreams in the Witch House.

FD