Best Horror Role Playing Game

[overgeeked]

My Vaesen experience was at my FLGS' game day, so the players had to deliberately sign up for what they knew was a horror game. It's hard for me to reconcile the idea the player deliberately signed up for a horror game with them not wanting to play a horror game. There are some real weirdos out there, so I'll concede that such a scenario is possible. The worst example of playing to beat the scenario rather than play it was a one shot of GURPS Fantasy at my FLGS pre-COVID. I swore of game days at my FLGS for years because the experience was so negative. (That game had a lot of other problems as well.)

Sure. There are also a lot of people who sign up to play D&D, an explicitly action-adventure monster-killing game, who refuse to make adventurers or engage with the premise of the campaign as set out by the referee. In those cases I'd also say that those players didn't actually want to play an action-adventure monster killing game despite explicitly signing up for one. Yeah, there are absolute weirdos out there.

I don't think that detracts from my point, rather it proves it. If you do everything you can to avoid the main focus of the game you're playing, it's fairly clear you don't actually want to play that game.

Burning down the Corbitt House in The Haunting is something I'd cheer in an OSR game while I'd pause and have a conversation with the players about it in a Call of Cthulhu game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My Vaesen experience was at my FLGS' game day, so the players had to deliberately sign up for what they knew was a horror game. It's hard for me to reconcile the idea the player deliberately signed up for a horror game with them not wanting to play a horror game. There are some real weirdos out there, so I'll concede that such a scenario is possible. The worst example of playing to beat the scenario rather than play it was a one shot of GURPS Fantasy at my FLGS pre-COVID. I swore of game days at my FLGS for years because the experience was so negative. (That game had a lot of other problems as well.)

The problem I could see happening was what filter they saw "horror" through; someone going in for cosmic horror, someone expecting action horror, and someone assuming survival horror are all going to have pretty different expectations.

 

[MGibster]

Burning down the Corbitt House in The Haunting is something I'd cheer in an OSR game while I'd pause and have a conversation with the players about it in a Call of Cthulhu game.

Don't get me wrong, burning down the house might be a reasonable choice in any given scenario. But if your first reaction to learning about the possibility a place might be haunted is to burn it down before you look into it, I'm going to hazard a guess investigative horror isn't for you. In Aliens, when they suggest taking off and nuking the colony from orbit (burning down the house) it's a reasonable response based on what the characters know. If they had just decided to nuke the colony from orbit before landing then we wouldn't have a movie.

The problem I could see happening was what filter they saw "horror" through; someone going in for cosmic horror, someone expecting action horror, and someone assuming survival horror are all going to have pretty different expectations.

I don't think there's any type of horror game where the initial response to learning there might be something going on is to burn it down is reasonable.

 

[overgeeked]

Don't get me wrong, burning down the house might be a reasonable choice in any given scenario. But if your first reaction to learning about the possibility a place might be haunted is to burn it down before you look into it, I'm going to hazard a guess investigative horror isn't for you. In Aliens, when they suggest taking off and nuking the colony from orbit (burning down the house) it's a reasonable response based on what the characters know. If they had just decided to nuke the colony from orbit before landing then we wouldn't have a movie.

Exactly. It’s only after engaging with the horror and getting their asses absolutely kicked and losing people that they decide to turn tail, run, and “nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.” But they don’t do that first as a way to avoid the horror up front.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think there's any type of horror game where the initial response to learning there might be something going on is to burn it down is reasonable.

Maybe not the first reaction, but someone going in assuming action-horror is going to keep it on the plate (and honestly, those going in with cosmic horror may keep it there, too...)

Doing it right out of the gate is less about expectations than not really wanting to engage with the game at all; its like people who react to plot hooks by running away from them.