Do you like horror with your fantasy?

[Desdichado]

Yes, yes, that's the one. That one spooked me pretty good when I first read it in high school.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Salutations,

To keep with the rat-based horror hijack, heh, there is a recent novel King Rat by China Mieville.

I have yet to read it, but it is on my long list of books to eventually consume.

FD

 

[Buttercup]

I'm not a big fan of horror. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't find ways to make my players...nervous, shall we say. But it's more in the nature of not knowing who to trust.

 

[the Jester]

I love mixing horror into fantasy. Another key to making it work is not to do it all the time; not to overdo it. If you always see the horrible blah blah whatever, it loses its impact. I like to have things happen "off-screen" sometimes, so pcs stay off balance.

For a great example of Cthulu dnd, check out the 2e module The Gates of Firestorm Peak, by Bruce Cordell. Holy crap! It's great, with some of the most disturbing stuff in any module I've seen.

 

[ForceUser]

Do you like/use many horror elements in your fantasy games? If so, what style do you like (gothic, cthulhu-esque, gritty, etc), and what are your tips/techniques for setting the right mood and scaring the bejeezus out of your players? Do you use any house rules/home-brewed stuff when you do horror in d20? Finally, in your experience, how effective are horror elements/scenarios in a fantasy RPG (D&D or otherwise)?

I once ran a Ravenloft adventure at night, by candlelight. I had a remote-controlled stereo with some monster sounds pre-programmed on my remote, and I handed out little archaic-looking notes. The group dug it, and I scared the heck out of my players when I illustrated a bricklayer NPC getting jumped by a zombie. One lil old zombie scared a group of eight 2nd-3rd level players out of a graveyard in broad daylight. It was great

I tend to go for creepy horror vice gory horror (unless I can make gory creepy, or use gory to illustrate the creepy). I like Victorian-era stuff as opposed to modern-day for horror - thus, Ravenloft run properly is great. I've found that in 3E you've really got to work hard to inject a little frightfulness into the game.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, gory isn't ever truly horrible unless it's real anyway. Too many campy slasher pics to spoil that angle.

Stuff like Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, now that's horror. I'd like to add that to my list of influences to D&D along with Robert E., F. Leiber, JRRT, etc.

 

[mmadsen]

Stuff like Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, now that's horror.

Mary Shelley? Horror? Frankenstein's an important book, perhaps even the seminal sci-fi book, but it's not all that scary. Or good, really.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Mary Shelley? Horror? Frankenstein's an important book, perhaps even the seminal sci-fi book, but it's not all that scary. Or good, really.

Yeah, but Horror is not just about being scary. Horror goes beyond fear, the same way science-fiction goes beyond technobabble.

FD

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Stuff like Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, now that's horror.

Wow, I usually place Bram Stoker as the grandfather of splatterpunk (gore horror).

Read The Dualitists.

The ending can be guessed from a mile away, but the scene itself is very gory.

He has other stories that are quite gory as well- including parts of some his dracula work. (There was one about a black cat, but its name won't come to me.)

FD

 

[Limper]

If you know and love the matrerial it will show through naturaly.

I always add Cthulian elements to my games... and for 20+ years I've kept them new and surpriseful (hey look I went to Pres Bush school of vocabulary!). I've already stated the how I use... hope it helps.