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

[TheSword]

The issue comes though that the very thing that D&D PCs are hyper-competent at is the one thing that helps you in a horror story: fighting monsters. A soldier might be competent at fighting other soldiers, but their bullets are useless against the supernatural horrors. A eccentric scholar might be versed in vampire hunting lore, but he's too old and feeble to face a vampire's physical might. A investigator might be able to solve crimes, but facing a killer who isn't human puts him on heels. Your typical D&D character is one magic sword away from killing anything in the MM, can max out lore abilities AND throw fire and lighting at the vampire, and is pretty good at recognizing that supernatural abilities like invisibility and flight exist because their wizard buddy does it every combat. The vampire isn't as scary when he's been turned by the cleric and is now fleeing like a scared child.

D&D doesn't do horror UNLESS you start neutering your PCs, which is how most of Ravenloft handled the issues. Turning was weakened, allies couldn't be trusted, divination was unreliable, teleportation all but unusable. It worked fine in 2e because most PCs didn't have many abilities to neuter in the first place (compare your average 2e class to its 5e counterpart as far as class features) and I recall the long lists of altered wizard, priest, psionics, and magic items. Ravenloft did horror by changing D&D, because D&D as written was poor for horror. Its a problem that only expanded in later editions and PCs got exponentially more powerful and competent at their chosen roles, so much so that trying to account for all a 5e PCs abilities and counter-them sufficiently to create horror feels almost like a fool's errand.



I mean, isn't that what they do in regular D&D? It doesn't stop the fact that baring outright burst damage, most 5th level PCs can survive encounters with typical supernatural monsters long enough to run or get lucky.



All good advice, but not exactly unknown in regular D&D though. I mean, the Caves of Chaos near the Keep on the Borderlands features several of these elements as well!



Your getting closer to the point here: its hard to write horror for D&D because horror is personal and requires certain buy-in from the players. If one of your players had objected or if one of them said "you know what? I'm genre savvy enough to know using rope-trick until dawn is far safer than exploring a haunted woods at night" then the scenario falls flat. You need players WILLING to be vulnerable (hence why I said it was an RP issue) or rules that neuter the PCs to BE vulnerable (such as Ravenloft prohibiting extradimensional spaces)



Genredumb is the probably the laziest way to work around this. I used to say RPGs let you bypass the obvious blind-spot scripting of most traditional media; to borrow the classic example, you've watched slasher flicks and screamed at the doe-eyed co-ed "don't go in the basement!" an RPG lets you actually NOT go in the basement! RPGs have to account for the fact the audience may in-fact know the tropes and take reasonable precautions. The more you try to hamstring that with "don't say the z word" blindspots, the more your rob the characters of their agency. Sure, a little playing dumb is needed for all RPGs (I mean, who would rationally risk life and limb to go into dungeons in the first place?) but I think its unreasonable to assume in a world where elves, orcs and dragons exist that PCs don't know about vampires or werewolves!

we have fundamental differences about what is reasonable from a player/campaign.

If you think turn resistance, unreliable allies, and spells altered by planar effects is ‘Neutering PCs’ then I’m not surprised you find it difficult to enjoy a horror D&D game.

If you find the well established conceit of separating player knowledge and character knowledge ‘lazy’ then I’m not surprised you find the genre difficult to handle.

If you expect PCs to have every tool in the toolbox to solve any problem they’re confronted with then I’m not surprised your PCs don't feel vulnerable.

If you feel obliged to give all PCs a magic sword and are uncomfortable adjusting monsters to not be easily slain by one then I’m not surprised your threats don’t rise to the challenge.

The writers of Ravenloft customized D&D just as the 5e Dungeon Masters Guide advises customization. Your objection to this is as bizarre as objecting to Eberron customizing D&D or Dark Sun. Would you try and claim that Dark Sun isn’t D&D? Modified spells, changed classes, unusual creatures?

In short, maybe instead of saying D&D can’t do horror (in the face of patent evidence to the contrary) maybe you should say “I’m not comfortable adjusting D&D and as a result I find it difficult to do horror.”

I’ve never cooked a soufflé and I’ve never seen one cooked but I recognize that other people apparently can. After all, recipes and instructions exist out there. If I tried to cook one and failed I’d lay off making definitive statements about how “Souffle’s can’t be cooked”, “You should eat omelettes instead.” If a chef reassured me that they could be cooked and that they had personally made them, I wouldn’t try and tell him why he was wrong.

Instead I’d acknowledge that soufflés just aren’t for me.

 

[Oofta]

we have fundamental differences about what is reasonable from a player/campaign.

If you think turn resistance, unreliable allies, and spells altered by planar effects is ‘Neutering PCs’ then I’m not surprised you find it difficult to enjoy a horror D&D game.

If you find the well established conceit of separating player knowledge and character knowledge ‘lazy’ then I’m not surprised you find the genre difficult to handle.

If you expect PCs to have every tool in the toolbox to solve any problem they’re confronted with then I’m not surprised your PCs don't feel vulnerable.

If you feel obliged to give all PCs a magic sword and are uncomfortable adjusting monsters to not be easily slain by one then I’m not surprised your threats don’t rise to the challenge.

The writers of Ravenloft customized D&D just as the 5e Dungeon Masters Guide advises customization. Your objection to this is as bizarre as objecting to Eberron customizing D&D or Dark Sun. Would you try and claim that Dark Sun isn’t D&D? Modified spells, changed classes, unusual creatures?

In short, maybe instead of saying D&D can’t do horror (in the face of patent evidence to the contrary) maybe you should say “I’m not comfortable adjusting D&D and as a result I find it difficult to do horror.”

I’ve never cooked a soufflé and I’ve never seen one cooked but I recognize that other people apparently can. After all recipes and instructions exist out there. If I tried to cook one and failed I’d lay off making definitive statements about how “Souffle’s can’t be cooked”, “You should eat omelettes instead.” If a chef reassured me that they could be cooked and that they had personally made them, I wouldn’t try and tell him why he was wrong.

Instead I’d acknowledge that soufflés just aren’t for me.

That and a lot of things that make it "impossible" can be easily countered without altering a single rule. Don't want the PCs to benefit from long rest? Don't give them a safe place to rest or use the Dream spell. Attacking with a vampire? Assume the vampire is smart and has spies so has a good idea of what the PCs can do. Send in a spawn disguised as the boss or an illusion, clerics can only turn a couple of times a day. Or if they are turned, so what? It only lasts a minute. Have improved invisible casters there simply to cast counterspell while the BBEG chuckles about how in his domain their spells are useless. Throw flesh golems and set up a trap that summons lightning hitting everyone in the room. Have ghosts that reach up from the floor to attack and then sink back down.

The main things you need for horror have little to do with the ruleset and more to do with buy in from players and the right attitude. Any game, no matter what system, can easily go from terrifying to annoying. If you know there is no chance to even get a partial victory, why even bother?

I think one of the advantages other systems have is that people go in expecting, and enjoying, horror campaigns. If you don't have that buy in nothing you do will matter. Are other systems "better"? Maybe. I wouldn't know because nobody will explain what specific rules support it other than to say that "D&D doesn't", which isn't particularly helpful.

Then again, horror, much like beauty, is probably in the eye of the beholder. Although the last time I threw a ghost beholder and nerfed all the spellcasters with it's anti-magic zone they seem pretty horrified.

 

[bloodtide]

The nature of D&D characters, their resources, the certainty of the rules system, the accessibility and ease of magic, the preternatural survivability of the PCs -- these all work directly against horror. You have to beat the heroic out of D&D to turn it into horror, so much so that it isn't really recognizable as horror.

The rules of the game are only part of playing an RPG. And a lot of what your talking about is how the game is played, and has nothing to do with the rules. In D&D, the PC's only survive so easy because the DM bends over backward to roll out the red carpet to make it that way.

D&D PCs however, have fewer vulnerabilities in the traditional sense. AC and HP shield them somewhat physically, and mental and emotional elements are really determined by the player's RP and how comfortable they are with showing vulnerability. Add to the fact your typical PC is competent at combat, has access to magical effects like healing, divination, and teleportation, and then put it in the meta-context of a bunch of people sitting around a table eating snacks and rolling dice, good horror in D&D tends to work only in short bursts, not extended drags.

The magic in D&D is easy to counter: the rules themselves have plenty of ways to do it. Then any magic the PC's have only works if the DM bends over backwards and rolls out the red carpet to them. Plus it's much more then just having magic or any ability: it's also knowing how to use it.

Horror is about creating an atmosphere of dread, revulsion, and fear in the audience and D&D wasn't designed to provide that kind of experience for its players.

Well, no rules can create an atmosphere of dread, revulsion, and fear in the players. Such RPG rules are not for the players: rules are for the player characters. No page in a book can make a player feel anything.

D&D doesn't do horror UNLESS you start neutering your PCs, which is how most of Ravenloft handled the issues. Turning was weakened, allies couldn't be trusted, divination was unreliable, teleportation all but unusable. It worked fine in 2e because most PCs didn't have many abilities to neuter in the first place (compare your average 2e class to its 5e counterpart as far as class features) and I recall the long lists of altered wizard, priest, psionics, and magic items. Ravenloft did horror by changing D&D, because D&D as written was poor for horror. Its a problem that only expanded in later editions and PCs got exponentially more powerful and competent at their chosen roles, so much so that trying to account for all a 5e PCs abilities and counter-them sufficiently to create horror feels almost like a fool's errand.

THIS is a perfect example of the problem: should a DM even think about doing anything other then bending over backward and rolling out the red carpet for the players, then most players will cry that the DM is doing something like neutering the PCs. It's even worse as the typical player reads the rules to say things like "allies are perfect on your side near slaves", "divination is always perfectly correct and right", and so on. When the rules never say anything like that. And that does not even cover the fact that silly powers only work if you know when and how to use them. The PCs might be awesome anime avatars that can teleport at will....but it is useless unless they know when and where to teleport too.

Horror is very much in the Eye of the Beholder.

 

[Remathilis]

we have fundamental differences about what is reasonable from a player/campaign.

You have a fundamental problem understanding what I'm getting at

Core D&D is terrible for running horror. Core, as in the game set to default settings as described in the PHB. The PCs are too powerful, the answers are too easy, and assumptions are built for a game that allows the PCs access to all sorts of stuff that eliminates horror. 5e, out of the box, does horror badly. It does Dark Fantasy well, because a group of vampire hunters going into a haunted castle isn't that much different than a group of adventurers going into a hidden dungeon to slay a dragon. But that's not horror.

Its okay though, because D&D doesn't do a LOT of genres well. It sucks at survival games because food and water is trivially easy to find or make. It sucks at Wuxia because only one class gets martial arts. It sucks at sword-and-sorcery because nearly every class has access to easy magic. It sucks at mystery because any good whodunit is solved with a handful of divination spells. D&D wasn't designed to handle those genres either; D&D isn't Generic Fantasy Simulator d20.

Now, you can MAKE D&D emulate those tropes better by changing the rules. Dark Sun and Ravenloft are two great examples of that. They do that by removing PC "I win" abilities. I mean, the classic example is Ravenloft removing the Paladin's "detect evil" and giving no compensation for that ability. That is a nerf; it makes the paladin weaker because the paladin MUST be weaker for horror to work. But lets not pretend that the paladin who steps through the Mists from Faerun to Barovia doesn't take a significant neutering to his class functions. By the same token, a cleric in Dark Sun can't create food and water as readily as a cleric in Greyhawk; his ability to do so must be nerfed to make the genre tropes work.

So my point stands; without significant overhaul, D&D sucks at horror.

In short, maybe instead of saying D&D can’t do horror (in the face of patent evidence to the contrary) maybe you should say “I’m not comfortable adjusting D&D and as a result I find it difficult to do horror.”

You're projecting into that I said. I would prefer you don't try to ascribe motive or guess my preferences. I say this as a long-time Ravenloft DM and one who has run some version of I6 in every edition except 1st and 4th.

 

[Remathilis]

THIS is a perfect example of the problem: should a DM even think about doing anything other then bending over backward and rolling out the red carpet for the players, then most players will cry that the DM is doing something like neutering the PCs. It's even worse as the typical player reads the rules to say things like "allies are perfect on your side near slaves", "divination is always perfectly correct and right", and so on. When the rules never say anything like that. And that does not even cover the fact that silly powers only work if you know when and how to use them. The PCs might be awesome anime avatars that can teleport at will....but it is useless unless they know when and where to teleport too.

Neutering is when an ability doesn't work as how its presented in the rules. Ravenloft gives plenty of examples of this.

• Divinations magic often provides results that aren't spelled out in the rules, such as detect evil providing a chaotic/not chaotic reading
• Summoning spells often create creatures who are hostile to the summoner, and spells that affect allies (find familiar, animal friendship) often backfire as the ally is more-often-than-not aligned with the domain lord than the PC
• Teleportation doesn't work when a domain lord has closed his borders, and it doesn't at all work to get from the Core to Islands to Clusters and at no point does it allow you to leave the Demiplane.
• Certain class features (such as a druid's ability to detect animals and water or a cleric's turn undead) don't function or function at a weaker level.

Those are all direct contradictions of what the PHB says about those abilities. In almost all cases, they are hits to the PCs power without any compensation elsewhere. Without those sorts of changes, Ravenloft would end up closer to Dark Fantasy. (For a good example; look at either Expedition to Castle Ravenloft or Curse of Strahd; both have minimal changes to the core D&D rules and both feel wildly different than any of the classic 2e setting adventures).

 

[Campbell]

How you play the game is part of the game. Games tell you how to play them. We can change those procedures, but they are just as much rules as any feat or spell. You do not prep and run a game like Quietus the same way you would D&D. The procedures of play are as different as going from Risk to Resistance.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

As a general rule, D&D is just a ruleset and as the DM, you have a lot of ability to make it what you want. Here is an example of a 0e D&D horror rule set:

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

As another example, here is a toolbox to build a mythos-themed D&D campaign that would need just a little work to turn it into something compatible with most versions of D&D:

Silent Legions

If you want something 5e, Sandy Peterson games has this sourcebook that includes good advice on how to run a horror game in D&D. There is even a 4 part campaign set in that world and another one coming out:

Cthulhu Mythos 5e

All of these examples show that you can run D&D horror campaigns and any adjustments to the system are not that hard. The rest is up to the player group and the DM’s skills.

(I would add that if you are interested in the Sandy Petersen book, I would buy the version from their own website. I think they include the PDF with printed books. They did in the Kickstarter.)

 

[Pauper]

I agree with pretty much all Remathilis's points, particularly when it comes to the old AD&D Ravenloft setting.

At the same time, I'm not explicitly disagreeing with this statement:

There are many horror films where the protagonists are competent. Not all horror has to have three gormless teenagers wandering the woods for the first time ever.

But I'd point out that the things we consider 'horror' with competent protagonists explicitly make it so the protagonists can't use their competence to succeed. For example, the movie Predator features a number of very competent, special-forces caliber protagonists. The horror in that movie, insofar as it exists, is in the protagonists realizing that the creature that's hunting them is better at their competence than they are; the characters haven't been rendered incompetent, but the monster is so much better at their competence than they are that they're not that much different from being "gormless teenagers wandering the woods".

The problem of doing this kind of thing in D&D is that, if you give your PCs a Perception check to notice the Predator, one of them could roll a 20, and if that happens and you say that they don't notice the creature anyway, your players will rightly call bullsh*t -- that's not how the rules of the game are supposed to work. You really couldn't do a Predator-style horror story in D&D, because either the characters can learn to become as powerful as the monster without going up more than one level, at which point it's reasonable to ask why they couldn't have done what they did before they went up the level, or the story becomes basically a mystery story where the PCs have to figure out why the monster seems able to get around their defenses and precautions and learn to counter those abilities, as arguably the movie itself does, changing from being a horror story at the beginning to a mystery story at the middle, all with the trappings of action-adventure sprinkled in for flavor. This is basically why Curse of Strahd isn't a horror module, but a mystery module -- learn Strahd's history, find the McGuffins that will let you defeat him, then defeat him.

You can do that kind of story in Call of Cthulhu, though, and it's not just because CoC has a Sanity mechanic, but it's because of what that mechanic represents -- learning about the things that the monster does that aren't part of the PCs worldview, which slowly warps them and, ultimately, will turn them into the monster that hunts them if they pursue that knowledge too far. In a Predator story, it might be becoming the kind of hyper-predator that will now view other highly-trained humans as the 'most dangerous game', while in a Curse of Strahd story, it might mean having to compromise your humanity so much that you become a monster yourself in order to defeat Strahd, and the decision over whether or not to actually do that becomes the true climax of the adventure, not the actual final battle with Strahd himself. You could build that kind of adventure using the D&D rules, but unless you tweak the rules and assumptions of the game and get your players to buy into those changes, you're still not going to run a horror story, because your players might just decide 'naw, I'm just going to take the Crossbow Expert feat and modify my crossbow to fire wooden stakes, and we can beat Strahd that way'. You might want to tell Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the mechanics of D&D ensure you'll only end up telling Steven Sommers's Van Helsing.

And yes, not all horror is cosmic horror -- but all horror does revolve around fear: fear of the unknown, fear of loss of control, fear that what you thought you know turns out to be untrue and that the things you think are important prove to be irrelevant. Cosmic horror hits those notes harder than other genres of horror, but every horror genre deals to some degree with those things that we fear. I can't put it any better than HP Lovecraft himself, from the opening paragraph of "Supernatural Horror in Literature":

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form. Against it are discharged all the shafts of a materialistic sophistication which clings to frequently felt emotions and external events, and of a naively insipid idealism which deprecates the aesthetic motive and calls for a didactic literature to uplift the reader toward a suitable degree of smirking optimism."

Or in other words, if the good guys win, it wasn't a horror story.

--
Pauper

 

[Helldritch]

A bit late on the thread but D&D can be used in the horror genre with no problems.
You need the following premises
A) Horror has many faces. Fear and disgust are two of these. Use them.
B) Horror needs high stakes, PC's death should be possible and the players should be warned that the game will be gritty, that they might stumble upon creatures that are unbeatable at their level and that resurrection might not be always possible. They must learn to flee. With these in minds.

1) Do not play encounters in a standard way. Use weird encounter sequence. One thing I did in fourth edition was to have the group attacked by a group of zombies. When the last zombie died, it glowed red and all zombies rose as skeletons! Once the last skeleton died, they all glowed again and their hands started to move as skeletal crawling claws. Players were not ready for that and it set the tone for that crypt (a small one shot, one evening adventure). Single handedly, these encounters were not really hard, but the sequence was not expected and thus, shocking and unexpected. (2nd edition)

2) Monsters should be harassers when it is to their advantage. Don't give the players a break.
In CoS, the werewolves were not attacking en masse, but in waves. When one werewolf was wounded and at risks of being cut down, it simply fled in the woods to recuperate. When the werewolves were far enough, they were taking a short rest, used their HD to heal, and headed back to the group to attack them again. Players were facing one wave every half an hour sometimes more. I pushed as far as having one werewolf saying:" You fight well, you suffered many wounds. How many of you will join us next moon?" With a wolfish grin, the werewolf went away.

3) Roll save dice in advance for both your monsters and the players. About 20 rolls should do the trick for one evening. I roll on the open, but even I know when a to roll a secret die. I take the first die rolled and mark it off the list and so on. Players can see the list at the end of the session if they want to. Not knowing if you made a save or not adds a lot of tension, especially on such things as lycanthropy or unknown effect.

4) Make the players hesitant to use their powers.
In CoS, the cleric had used his turn undead on ghouls. Immediately after that, Strahd appeared and said:" With that now out of the way, my brides will be able to feed on you. You don't mind that my darlings take a bit of your blood don't you?". And Strahd sent a group of vampire spawn against the PCs.

5) Make the monsters attack when the players are distracted or from unexpected directions. The following two examples are quite good. A thief listened to a crypt door only to hear:" I have been expecting you. Please come in and free me from my prison". (It was a simple magic mouth on the other side of the door, set to say these words if someone was near the door). At the same time, a group of ghouls attack from out of the ground clawing at the feet of the players. The cleric got paralyzed and the group fled as they thought there were too many ghouls (a few of the clawed hands were simply zombies) but the effect was the same. The wizard said to the group's leader:" Told you we should not enter a cemetery at night! You dope!". (1ed)

5B) Don't let the monster behave normally.
Again, a simple example. In a castle, the group was on the 7th floor. The thief starts to listen at the door and two furry clawed hand bursts through the door and grabbed him. Before the thief could react, the werewolf ran to the end of the room and jumped through a window with the thief in its claws. It was a 100 feet fall. The werewolf survived so did the thief but not very long, as he was alone against an elite werewolf (4ed).

6) Sometimes, the players must not fight for themselves. Players, especially in 5ed, are of the Heroic sort. So horror must not always be against them, but they should be witnesses. In fourth edition, I had a city transported into the plane of shadows (DiA anyone?). The city was besieged by undead and the players were tasked to help protect the northen gate. Naturally, the gate was breached. The players set themselve to receive the attack of the wights only to see the wights ignoring them to go to.... the ORPHANAGE! Every players protested and yet, they had the city map, they knew the orphanage was there. Both of my group nearly lost the orphanage. Many children were killed and transformed into wights. Even when the city's officials told them it was not their fault, the players felt cheap and sad at the fate of children. This event set the tone of the whole campaign as the groups tried to redeemed themselves.

7) A rumor can be a powerful tool to set the stage.
Players can be warned in advanced of a particularly strong enemy. The more they hear about it, the more they'll start to be afraid. This helps raise tension. I had a big infernal ogre in 3.5 edition that was a terror to the inhabitants of the dungeon. Players kept hearing about Burger Face but when they finally met it, they were in a big surprise. In the middle of the room, there was a big fire pit and the ogres was there. He grabbed the fighter and threw him in the pit. A bit at la Butcher in Diablo he was screaming:"Fresh Meat! Fresh Meat for tha PIT! BURN little pinky pigs! BURN!" the fighter failed his climbing check taking fire damage and the Ogre even succeded in getting the wizard in the pit too. Two characters died and the rest fled when they saw the ogre jump into the pit and getting his wound closed by the fire. It never occured to them to douse the fire pit with the three scrolls of create water they had found earlier. Here, the tension of knowing this ogres was to be feared made this ogre way scarier than it was for a group of 7th level characters. They got really scared and the survivors fled the place. And yet, they knew everything there was to know about the ogre. They only did not take into account what the monsters were saying, putting their words into the domain of gross over exaggeration.

8) Have a friend turn against the players.
Horror comes in all shapes and size. But having a friend betray you from no fault of his own is shocking. The closer that friend is, the better. I once had a beloved NPC be transformed into a vampire. This friend, when it was discovered that he was the vampire creating all these lesser vampires, only said:" I'm so sorry, I don't want to do this, but I can't help it. I want to die, but the curse forces me to stay alive to kill more people and to make more of myself. I'm so sorry, I never wanted this!" With these words, the once friend fled the players. But they were shocked and angry. If they destroy the vampire, their friend is lost for ever. If they let him live, they will be over run by vampire at some point. Could they cure him? Could they find the original vampire? They went from we need to kill to how do we capture a vampire. They set themselves up with incredible restrictions. Only to finally destroy their friend as he was making more and more vampires. (2nd edition, 15th level adventure or about)

9) Use random encounters if the players are have to much of an easy time, but do not over do it. If the players feel too safe, the tension goes down and so too does the stress. You doN't want them to feel relief. You want to keep them on the edge but not on the brink of death unless they were reckless or behaved as to be killed. You want them to fear for their lives.

In 5ed, there is only one thing that must be done to allow the possibility of horror. It is to modify the rest rule. I use no healing on rest. HD to recover HP only. A short rest is one hour of uninterrupted rest and a long rest is eight hours of uninterrupted rest. When rest is not a sure thing, even a short one, players get edgy and more prudent if not downright suspicious. This opens up a lot of possibility and

 

[Myrdin Potter]

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form. Against it are discharged all the shafts of a materialistic sophistication which clings to frequently felt emotions and external events, and of a naively insipid idealism which deprecates the aesthetic motive and calls for a didactic literature to uplift the reader toward a suitable degree of smirking optimism."

Or in other words, if the good guys win, it wasn't a horror story.

--
Pauper

In the Call of Cthulhu story, the good guys win. Cthulhu is banished/sent back.

Nightmare on Elm Street movies - Good guys win in quite a few of the movies. Yes, many die, but usually the monster is beaten in the dream world.

The original Dracula novel - good guys win.

The Walking Dead - tragedy abounds, but the good guys often win a local victory.

All of these are certainly horror and the good guys do win.