Best Horror Role Playing Game

[MGibster]

There was Night Shift, a game that came out almost the same time as the original Vampire, and was also a “you play the monster” game. Production values and writing put it more in what I call a “fast food” category of rpgs, but it was still fun.

If you mean Nightlife, which also came out in 1991, I owned it but never played it. I'm not too proud to admit I bought it partly because of the salacious cover. 1991 was a very different time.

I would have liked Vaesen if my players had embraced the "figure it out before you try to end it." They didn't try hard enough to figure out the monsters and so failed two of them horrendously. They weren't having fun.

I've encountered this problem in a few other horror games as well. In the very first game of Vaesen I ran, the player characters find out Castle Gyllencreutz is haunted and one of them seriously lobbied the others to just burn the place down before they even looked into it. Thankfully the others decided they wanted to play the game for more than thirty minutes. I had a player react the same way to the Corbitt house in a Call of Cthulhu scenario. "You want to burn down this house you were hired to investigate? The house that's in a densly packed neighborhood made up of other wooden houses?"

Every game needs player buy in, but nothing kills the vibe of a horror game quicker than players who don't get want to engage. I've seen Call of Cthulhu games stymied with players too afraid to read books or explore musty attics for fear of losing their sanity or coming to physical harm. Uh, to their characters I mean. Yeah, their characters. Not the players.

Just a note that in some respects all three editions were pretty different in the kind of experience they provided, even if they had similar premises.

Chill was another game I never played though a friend of mine owned it. He described a creature in the game that could only be killed by blowing on a flute carved the the heart of a particular type of tree that was a certain age. I think the flute had to be carved in the moonlight or something too.

 

[Sir Brennen]

If you mean Nightlife, which also came out in 1991, I owned it but never played it. I'm not too proud to admit I bought it partly because of the salacious cover. 1991 was a very different time.

Doh! You’re right. Updated my original post. I do remember it embracing what it called “splatter-punk” style, reflecting a lot of the horror literature and movies of the late 80’s, especially of the urban ilk. That includes the style of video box covers, which the game cover reflects as a product of its time, for better or worse.

 

[overgeeked]

Every game needs player buy in, but nothing kills the vibe of a horror game quicker than players who don't get want to engage. I've seen Call of Cthulhu games stymied with players too afraid to read books or explore musty attics for fear of losing their sanity or coming to physical harm. Uh, to their characters I mean. Yeah, their characters. Not the players.

Exactly. When the players actively avoid the horror it's the biggest clue that they aren't actually interested in playing a horror game.

Luckily some modern games will incentivize engaging with the horror. Like Mothership. Your stress becomes your XP. So the more you engage with the game and with the horror, the quicker you advance. It's such a simple little thing it's surprising it's not more common.