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Call of Cthulhu as a Horror Game
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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7538491" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>The best CoC games I've ever played were one-off scenarios at conventions. At least when you know that you've got a four hour slot the mechanics of insanity and death create some stakes that can create tension. I haven't played in a scenario that actually <em>scared</em> me, mind you - but I've played a lot of scenarios where playing with the tropes of horror was fun and where there was at least some tension if not actual fear. Personally I think that might be the best you can do - create tension as a substitute for actual fear.</p><p></p><p>I've never been able to pull off a horror campaign that doesn't turn fairly quickly into "horror-themed adventure" - my pitiful attempts start resembling Supernatural or Buffy fairly quickly. Part of that is the groups I play with, part of it is my own inability to be scared by traditional horror tropes (I don't think I've been scared by a horror movie since I was 12) and I assume part of it is an unwillingness to bring the things that actually scare me into games (there are some Unknown Armies scenarios that I've read that would probably horrify my players if I ran them, but holy cow would I be uncomfortable running them. And I still don't think it would be scary - just horrific.).</p><p></p><p>(To top it off, I don't find Lovecraft particularly scary in the first place. A universe that is indifferent to whether humanity lives or dies is not particularly scary to me, his fear of people different from him strikes me as more pitiable than scary, and giant monsters rising from the sea and leveling the Earth sounds more like a reason to build giant robots to fight back than something to go mad and faint over. I enjoy playing with the tropes in his works but nothing in his stories has ever struck me as particularly <em>scary</em> as opposed to just weird.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 7538491, member: 19857"] The best CoC games I've ever played were one-off scenarios at conventions. At least when you know that you've got a four hour slot the mechanics of insanity and death create some stakes that can create tension. I haven't played in a scenario that actually [I]scared[/I] me, mind you - but I've played a lot of scenarios where playing with the tropes of horror was fun and where there was at least some tension if not actual fear. Personally I think that might be the best you can do - create tension as a substitute for actual fear. I've never been able to pull off a horror campaign that doesn't turn fairly quickly into "horror-themed adventure" - my pitiful attempts start resembling Supernatural or Buffy fairly quickly. Part of that is the groups I play with, part of it is my own inability to be scared by traditional horror tropes (I don't think I've been scared by a horror movie since I was 12) and I assume part of it is an unwillingness to bring the things that actually scare me into games (there are some Unknown Armies scenarios that I've read that would probably horrify my players if I ran them, but holy cow would I be uncomfortable running them. And I still don't think it would be scary - just horrific.). (To top it off, I don't find Lovecraft particularly scary in the first place. A universe that is indifferent to whether humanity lives or dies is not particularly scary to me, his fear of people different from him strikes me as more pitiable than scary, and giant monsters rising from the sea and leveling the Earth sounds more like a reason to build giant robots to fight back than something to go mad and faint over. I enjoy playing with the tropes in his works but nothing in his stories has ever struck me as particularly [I]scary[/I] as opposed to just weird.) [/QUOTE]
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