D&D General Unpopular Opinion?: D&D is a terrible venue for horror

[Flamestrike]

Why does Horror = [threat of dying]?

Surely there are other ways to instil and evoke horror other than a constant fear of getting yourself killed.

In a many Horror genre games, PC death is not the source of the Horror. Take games where the PCs are Vampires or Ghosts already. Death isn't a factor at all. Conversely there are games like Paranoia, where death is a constant threat (and happens hilariously often) and that certainly cant be described as a Horror genre.

 

[TheSword]

I agree death is not required to make a game horrific. Just look at bloodborne... your character is unable to die. It doesn’t mean the game isn’t firmly in the horror genre.

In a game when all a character’s interactions with the world are narrated by a DM who controls exactly what they see and how things react to them I suspect that could be very scary if portrayed right.

It could definitely be achieved with earlier editions. In which case it can be achieved in 5e. The rules of D&D do not require playing every single monster, spell, magic item as it is written in the book. There are whole chapters in the DMG about creating your own versions of these, or even modifying existing version. If you want to add permanent Dex damage it is entirely within your capability to do so.

This requires a competent DM and player buy in. Not because it requires house rules, but because players need to be willing to be scared.

Incidentally humour can definitely work alongside horror. The players joking around in one scene makes the next scene more poignant. When It turns out the hanfling innkeeper is infested with an alien fungus and has been feeding them and the rest of the village it in her homebrew beer.

 

[Azzy]

For a large part, I agree. If I were to run a horror game, D&D wouldn't be my first choice (or my second or third). That said, I think you can do a decent horror campaign with D&D, it's just you're fighting an uphill battle to do so. But would it be worth it? Sure—as long as you and the rest of the group are having fun.

 

[akr71]

For horror to work well, it is very dependent on suspense and mood, which are not D&D mechanics. Suspense and mood are entirely dependent on the DM and/or the writing in the adventure.

Like with a lot of other game styles, its not that it can't be done in 5E - its just that there might be better games out there that have that feel 'baked-in.'

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'd definitely agree with the thread premise. As @Azzy says, you're fighting (ice-skating?) uphill trying to make horror work in D&D. I'd also agree with @Reynard that the fact that PCs in D&D generally have little to lose, and the lack of mechanics for losing control of oneself really detract from the horror potential.

I've succeeded at it myself, quite a few times, but it's something where almost any other system is going to be more suitable, especially outside T1. I definitely wouldn't want to run a horror campaign in D&D. Ravenloft doesn't really seem like a horror campaign, though, as much as a campaign set in a scary/gothic place, so that's still on the table.

The rules of D&D do not require playing every single monster, spell, magic item as it is written in the book.

I think this is potentially important. Probably the only times I've really felt a horror adventure or campaign was working in D&D as a player myself was when I was dealing with systems/monsters/diseases etc. which were not out of a book, and didn't follow established patterns.

 

[Burnside]

Evoking terror in players has nothing to do with mechanics, and you’re also not going to terrify them simply by confronting them with overwhelming opposition - that is more likely to demoralize them than terrify them.

Terror is created by turning the players’ imaginations against them. Delay reveals. Let them know they’re being watched. Provide evidence something’s been in their camp while they were sleeping, leaving them personal messages.

In other words, think Blair Witch Project, not Hellrazor. Whatever they imagine is going on will be much more terrifying than showing them explicitly.

Fortunately, many D&D players tend to be imaginative people, which makes it easier to terrify them. Unimaginative people are much harder to scare in this way.

Sustaining terror over the course of an adventure is doable. Sustaining it over the course of a CAMPAIGN? I don’t know. You can use it multiple times over a campaign, but there’s a reason horror stories aren’t generally very long. Look at The Walking Dead, which is on what? Season 10? And stopped being scary when? Late in season 1 or early in season 2?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Evoking terror in players has nothing to do with mechanics, and you’re also not going to terrify them simply by confronting them with overwhelming opposition - that is more likely to demoralize them than terrify them.

Horror and terror are different things, though. I agree with most of what you're saying re: terror, but horror needs more of a realization of how screwed you are, rather than just "AHHHH I DONT KNOW WHATS GOING ON AND ITS BAD!!!!" which is basically what terror amounts to (I love terror, of course). Horror is more "I know what's going on, approximately, but I don't like it, and I don't know how to deal with it, and it keeps getting worse".

Like, I once managed to evoke tremendous horror just by describing a giant's castle in a lot of detail, and emphasizing how much bigger everything was than the PCs. They weren't confused, I wasn't delaying reveals, or even making them wonder what was around the corner - they knew what was going on and were relatively safe in their invisible exploring, but it was sufficiently upsetting that they became horrified anyway, and had things gone pear-shaped (which was unlikely but possible), they knew they were totally stuffed, which helped reinforce the horror.

Whereas terror is more like this tomb they were exploring once where bizarre things kept happening and they couldn't make sense of it, and whilst they didn't die or take damage or anything, it was just perplexing and threatening. And it all derailed and went to 0 terror the moment they worked out how it was all working.

Mechanics can rarely support terror, but they can definitely support horror, because knowing the potential consequences and being concerned they will occur is a big part of horror.

 

[Burnside]

Horror and terror are different things, though. I agree with most of what you're saying re: terror, but horror needs more of a realization of how screwed you are, rather than just "AHHHH I DONT KNOW WHATS GOING ON AND ITS BAD!!!!" which is basically what terror amounts to (I love terror, of course). Horror is more "I know what's going on, approximately, but I don't like it, and I don't know how to deal with it, and it keeps getting worse".

Sure - but terror is basically a more elevated/finer emotion than horror, and in storytelling terror > horror in terms of an artistic experience. In other words, if you CAN evoke terror, I can’t see why you’d choose to do horror instead.

I think Stephen King said something like, “My goal is to terrify you. If I can’t do that, I’ll horrify you. If I can’t do that, I’ll go for the gross-out.”

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Sure - but terror is basically a more elevated/finer emotion than horror, and in storytelling terror > horror in terms of an artistic experience.

I don't think it's possible to convey how hard I am rolling my eyes over the fact that I have managed to discover that there are in fact people who are massive, pointless snobs about terror vs horror. Good grief.

They're different things. The idea that one is "better" is laughable. There are ton of situations where you can only potentially evoke one or the other, or it'll make a huge mess to evoke the other. In reality, they complement each other, rather than one being "superior".

(Thomas Ligotti shows how delicate an edge terror walks too - my brother found his books intensely creepy and disturbing - I found them unintentionally hilarious.)

 

[Burnside]

I don't think it's possible to convey how hard I am rolling my eyes over the fact that I have managed to discover that there are in fact people who are massive, pointless snobs about terror vs horror. Good grief.

They're different things. The idea that one is "better" is laughable.

I mean, you're of course entitled to your opinion. Stephen King, literally the most successful horror author of the past hundred years, and the third most successful writer overall in that time (I think Patterson and Rowling are probably bigger at this point) completely disagrees with you. I'm gonna give his take more weight that yours on this one.