What’s your favourite horror RPG and why?

Morrus · Oct 23, 2018

Quick update, I thought it would be more fun to start a poll. So there's one here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?654482-Poll-Vote-For-The-Top-10-Horror-RPGs!

Flexor the Mighty! · Oct 23, 2018

My gaming buddies have never been the type to get into horror games, outside of Chill for a while in the 80's. Nobody is interested in playing a scared dude, they want to go on the offensive. When horrors would threaten they never said "oh my lets run" it was "Oh hell no, get the shotguns".

CleverNickName · Oct 23, 2018

Definitely Dread, for its core mechanic that [MENTION=6588]pogre[/MENTION] mentioned. A good horror story should build tension over time, and Dread does it better than any other game I've played. Seriously, ya'll should check it out.

Bedrockgames · Oct 23, 2018

I chose Call of Cthulhu because it always delivered a good experience for me at the table (whether I was behind the screen or a player). I think it is a classic for a reason. But my favorite horror setting, without any doubt, is Ravenloft during the 2E era (the 1E modules are amazing, as well of course). For whatever reason, classic horror and hammer inspired adventures just clicked instantly with me. And the visual style of Fabian's art pulled me into the setting and gave me endless adventure ideas. I particularly liked the Van Richten Books and adventures like Feast of Goblyns and Castles Forlorn.

The Crimson Binome · Oct 23, 2018

Of the ones in the survey, I went with Cthulhutech, because it feels more like a real world and less like a cheap horror movie. There are certain conventions of the genre which just don't lend themselves to long-format serious campaign play, and this sidesteps most of them.

Nagol · Oct 23, 2018

CleverNickName said:
Definitely Dread, for its core mechanic that [MENTION=6588]pogre[/MENTION] mentioned. A good horror story should build tension over time, and Dread does it better than any other game I've played. Seriously, ya'll should check it out.

One of my most frequent players has a strong palsy. Dread is great if everyone can participate.

Tristissima · Oct 24, 2018

My favorite horror game ~ as in, my favorite kind of horror ~ has to be Unknown Armies. You Did It, after all ~ the beautiful horror of broken people pursuing esoteric means to break or fix or both the world by means of utterly mundane banality is one that just tickles me even pinker than usual.

It's not particularly Hallowe'eny, though. When it comes to the reason for the season, I'd probably hafta say that Deadlands, especially Hell on Earth, has to come second to the World of Darkness (1st edition thru 20th anniversary edition) for me. I was exactly the target market for it in a lot of the ways back in the 90s, and many of the ideas I encountered therein have been embarrassingly influential on who I've become since. I like to run or think of menagerie games, blending in the Chronicles of Darkness, hoping to build complicatedly deep, incredibly specific, themes by bashing together the various cosmologies and ethics and things.

I've met two of my absolute favorite fan-authors for In Nomine in very not-RPG settings, one of them the night before last, so it's on my mind. It strikes me that there's plenty of option for horror there, but I don't think I've ever seen that potential quite made use of . . . . I might hafta get on that.

Nagol said:
One of my most frequent players has a strong palsy. Dread is great if everyone can participate.

As the child of a mother whose Gillon-Barre affected her hands in such a way that she could never play Jenga, even if she somehow developed an interest in RPGs, thank you for pointing this out.

CleverNickName · Oct 25, 2018

Nagol said:
One of my most frequent players has a strong palsy. Dread is great if everyone can participate.

Tristissima said:
As the child of a mother whose Gillon-Barre affected her hands in such a way that she could never play Jenga, even if she somehow developed an interest in RPGs, thank you for pointing this out.

Agreed, that is an important point. One of our Game Night regulars has stage 2 Parkinson's Disease, and she can't play Jenga either. Our GM has offered to let her roll a stack of d6s against a scaling DC as a house-rule, but she always politely declines because truthfully, it just wouldn't be the same.

Games with physical challenge mechanics are difficult for players with physical disabilities...and that is certainly a weakness of Dread.

Morthrai_17 · Oct 25, 2018

Practicality makes me choose Call of Cthulhu because it's been around for so long you can apply it to pretty much anything, no problem. It's what i gravitate towards at conventions and it also seems to attract Keepers who are creative in ways that I enjoy as a player.

However, as anyone who knows me will be aware an all-time favourite RPG of mine is Dark Conspiracy (despite the many flaws inherent in the original edition!) - here's hoping the new edition will be properly bashed into a coherent shape!

Jer · Oct 25, 2018

Depends on if I want "horror" or if I want "adventure game with horror trappings". The latter is what my players mostly want to play - playing actual horror games is not something any of them are interested that much in (which is weird, because they love horror movies - they just aren't as interested in gaming that narrative I guess). They want to play games that are more like Buffy and Supernatural, rather than Oculus or The Ring.

For adventure gaming with horror trappings, I like the Gumshoe games - Trail of Cthulhu and Esoterrorists especially. Easy to run, easy to explain. My players aren't really big on the resources management aspects of Gumshoe, though, so we don't play that often. We've got the new Torg Eternity in our rotation now, so I'll probably send them to Orrorsh the next time we start feeling the bug to play an adventure game with horror trappings.

I am, however, going to try to get them to play a one-shot of Purgatory House one of these days. I picked it up at Origins this year and given the setup and the simplicity of the game I think I might be able to get them on board for a one-shot. (I haven't played it yet, but I really want to).