D&D General How do you do horror when running D&D?

[toucanbuzz]

If we're mixing "horror" and "terror" together with the idea that PCs in 5E aren't really "scared" anymore of monsters, there's a rationale for that. In AD&D, there were monsters that DID terrify players:

• Vampires and other life-draining undead. You lost levels. 2 per hit for a vampire. You didn't get those back after a good night's rest. Gone forever unless you had access to extremely high level magic, and even then, you were only restored to the starting XP for that level. It was terrorizing to face undead. One hit and you're screwed.
• Illithids (mind flayers). They had a 90% chance to shrug off any spell and could instant-kill you in a round or two with brain-eating attacks, of which they had 4. When they combined a vampire with mind flayer (up to 8 levels lost per attack round), yeah. The baddest worst monster to ever run into.

BUT, many players hated it, hated losing levels forever. It was a horrible punishment for some bad luck. To old-school gamers, it was a puzzle in some ways to survive. You needed to stock up on those magic items and effects that made monsters miss, that restored you, and so on. You had an incentive to find a different solution than line up and trade punches. Nowadays, perhaps that's not so. As long as you come out on the positive with hit points, most battles are simply a night's rest from being a faded memory.

If I had to make monsters invoke terror, I'd have to go back to making them have permanent consequences or extremely nasty to deal with, not just resistant to stuff but completely immune.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think focusing on PC mortality is useful, up to a point, but it's not really going to inculcate horror. At best it's hard mode. Focusing on the horror of situations, on the horror of not being able to save someone from an awful fate, especially characters the PCs know, is probably closer to the mark. D&D is mostly about having the PCs make choices that have consequences for failure. If you want horror, you need the right trappings (atmospherics etc) but I think a very strong tool is to change the equation to add consequences no matter what the PCs choose. Maybe not all the time, but at least some of the time. Horror, as a genre, generally isn't fair the way a standard D&D story tends to be, so be unfair and don't make every choice one that has a happy ending.

 

[Charlaquin]

A good article on the subject of horror in D&D:

Running Your Most Horrible D&D Adventure Ever

Running a horror adventure in D&D is a terrible idea. But if you absolutely MUST and I can’t stop you, at least I can keep you from f$&%ing it up too badly.

theangrygm.com

 

[Fenris-77]

Pretty much everything Angry does is solid gold. I'll second that article even though it's one of the few from AGM that I haven't actually read.

 

[Charlaquin]

Pretty much everything Angry does is solid gold. I'll second that article even though it's one of the few from AGM that I haven't actually read.

All his gaming advice, anyway.

 

[Arvok]

I don't see why PC death is the only thing that could engender a sense of horror. What about the possibility of the players being driven mad? If you home-brew some monsters (or just tweak some--ghosts and the 'psionic' creatures like mind flayers and intellect devourers come to mind) you could have adversaries that might render a PC or two into quivering madmen. If these afflictions can't be reversed by low or mid-level magic, the players would be a bit paranoid and frightened. Especially if you kick off the campaign with some hero of the area falling prey to these creatures and the PCs now need to go try to take down the very thing that left a 9th level (for example) hero a slavering lunatic.

Fear of the unknown is one of the key aspects of horror, in my opinion, so it's almost essential to introduce monsters, powerful cursed magic items, or spells the players have never encountered before.

 

[Rechan]

Have you looked at Call of Cthulhu? It's probably the second most popular RPG out there, second only to D&D, and it handles horror pretty damn perfectly. It's not d20 but in many ways it is better than d20, especially when it comes to the skill system, which frankly, i think is botched in 5e.

I steer clear of Call of Cthulu becaus the system is built to do things that don't interest me: 1) Everyone will die or go insane, it's inevitable. 2) It's all about sanity and I find mental illness depressing, not scary. 3) It's very INVESTIGATION heavy. While I like the imagery and body horror, Lovecraftian stuff doesn't interest me.

I don't know if he wants D&D horror or modern horror or just anything horror, as long as it's a system that can handle it.

Okay let me try to be clearer.

I. Do. Not. Like. D&D. I loathe it in my soul. However. It is hard to find players willing to play anything else, and it is hard to find a group who wants to play horror. Therefore I feel the options are D&D or not finding a group for months (or, as suggested in other threads I've started asking how to find players for non-D&D rpgs, "Go play D&D until you can convince the people you play with to play another system").

If I must play D&D, then I have to find a way to crowbar the game I want into D&D. Were this 3e I'd say "I want to use the d20 system to run horror where everyone is playing weak NPC", but I feel like if I say "d20" that will turn people off because it's "not D&D". If there are not fighters and clerics then it's too far off the reservation for players.

I don't want a lot of combat, honestly I don't want the players to fight much. That's sort of the point of this thread, because the standard mindset of a D&D player is "If it's there I can kill it" and generally PCs in D&D will kill it. From my experience, unless something is ridiculously higher level, the PCs can take it out. And the same things just don't work; even if Michael Myers is 10 levels higher and has an Assassinate ability, the players are not going to split up to be picked off one by one and a guy with a knife is simply not menacing to a group of five swordsmen, it's just a hack-a-thon.

Let me give you an example. The characters are in a room with a mirror. They can see in the mirror a monster among them, but only in the mirror. A D&D player says "How do I attack it, what's it's AC?" and a player in an RPG where they aren't a hero says "I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE" because whatever that is they have no idea how to deal with it and they are certain whatever it does will ruin them. D&D gives a ton of tools to deal with it though, so the players think they can deal with it with the tools they have.

The focus is avoid, escape, survive not stand and fight. The kind of campaign I'm looking for is very much like the 1e days in that it emphasizes exploration and is dangerous. It'd be about encountering nightmarish sights, then running away from them or finding a story way to win, as opposed to attack and damage.

So let me reframe my core question:

If I must use D&D because that's what everyone plays, I will to run a game using the D&D ruleset, not a D&D game with horror elements. How can I avoid all those rules and make them feel powerless in a game where they have tons of power?

 

[hawkeyefan]

A few things to consider:

• the unknown is where fear comes from; try to use elements that the PCs are unsure of in your game; use unique or unfamiliar monsters, change things they thought they knew, etc.
• you may want to consider using rules that leave PCs a bit more vulnerable- lower HP or make resting less potent- alternatively, grant some monsters the ability to harm the PCs beyond just reducing HP- maybe incorporate a Horror Factor or some kind of Morale or Panic rules
• don’t worry about fair encounters- have some encounters that are beyond the PCs’ ability to deal with through combat; make them unsure that they can win, and they’ll start to consider other avenues
• give the PCs something to lose, something beyond themselves; usually an NPC but it could also be an item or a location- give them connections that matter and that will give them more to lose
• theme and mood are key- I don’t mean play creepy music and that kind of stuff, but tailor the elements of your game to evoke the mood you're going for- be descriptive and use your description to focus on the elements that would be scary or unsettling to the characters

 

[Wiseblood]

I steer clear of Call of Cthulu becaus the system is built to do things that don't interest me: 1) Everyone will die or go insane, it's inevitable. 2) It hinges on sanity/insanity and I find that boring and not scary. 3) It's very INVESTIGATION heavy. While I like the imagery and body horror, Lovecraftian stuff doesn't interest me.



Okay let me try to be clearer.

I loathe D&D in my soul. However. It is hard to find players willing to play anything else, and it is hard to find a group who wants to play horror. Therefore I feel the options are D&D or not finding a group for months and months and months (or, as suggested in other threads I've started asking how to find players for non-D&D rpgs, "Go play D&D until you can convince the people you play with to play another system").

If I must play D&D, then I have to find a way to crowbar the game I want into D&D. Were this 3e I'd say "I want to use the d20 system to run horror where everyone is playing weak NPC", but I feel like if I say "d20" that will turn people off because it's "not D&D". If there are not fighters and clerics then it's too far off the reservation for players.

I don't want a lot of combat, honestly I don't want the players to fight much. That's sort of the point of this thread, because the standard mindset of a D&D player is "If it's there I can kill it" and generally PCs in D&D will kill it. From my experience, unless something is ridiculously higher level, the PCs can take it out.

Let me give you an example. The characters are in a room with a mirror. They can see in the mirror a monster among them, but only in the mirror. A D&D player says "How do I attack it, what's it's AC?" and a player in an RPG where they aren't a hero says "I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE" because whatever that is they have no idea how to deal with it and they are certain whatever it does will ruin them. D&D gives a ton of tools to deal with it though, so the players think they can deal with it with the tools they have.

The focus is avoid, escape, survive not stand and fight.

So let me reframe my core question:

If I must use D&D because that's what everyone plays, I will to run a game using the D&D ruleset, not a D&D game with horror elements. How can I avoid all the rules that makes PCs strong?

1)You may have to build your own game. Using the core rules you would need classes (perhaps custom) and backgrounds.

2)Your players will certainly need to be on board for horror.

3)foreshadowing, setting, descriptions not wordy but evocative

4) stakes must be Hidden at first

5) tension must be built and relieved ... by the DM or players cleverness/attention to detail

6) witty quips and jokes can poison the mood because the players are trying to ease tension you must control tension ( maybe even ratcheting danger Up when they try to use levity)

7) Villain need not be an invincible terminator or smug superpowered creep

8) don’t ignore or nullify player actions hopelessness leads to frustration and anger instead of dread at my table. The unknown/unexplained/and the revealed ...also there is a smile a the beginning of this part.

9) allow the innocuous to become menacing, like a child’s doll

10) don’t use your players’ actual phobias, that’s not cool.

 

[Rechan]

Guys.

I don't need tips on running horror. I know how to DM it.

My problem is that the rules get in my way. I don't want the players thinking about hit points and attack bonuses.