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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 6727935" data-attributes="member: 20323">[MENTION=6802639]Hypername[/MENTION] I'm going to throw out six thoughts based on my own experience GMing with horror-esque lovecraftians games...1. Make sure the players are on board with that sort of campaign. 2. Even if you prefer making your own adventure, there are good resources out there for this sort of game from Chaosium's Call of Cthulu to TSR's Night Below.3. Don't rely on mechanics (e.g. sanity/dread/whatever) to evoke fear and dread. Instead, rely on descriptive detail and clever foreshadowing. I ran a giant spider which could speak Goblin/Deep Speech and animate a cocooned zombie to speak for itself while the PCs were negotiating in the spider's lair...it was called the Mother of the Hollow. Mechanically, just a giant spider. But its personality and the evocative description I used and tense negotiations absolutely freaked the players out.4. Players will naturally break the mood of horror/suspense now and then. The degree they do this depends on your group, but ALL players do it. It's natural. They will be zany, crack jokes to break tension, and so forth. Don't fight this. Horror has a rhythm, moments of lull to decompress which then allow for tension to build again. Unremitting horror rarely works in storytelling, and that's triply true in RPGs.5. When it comes to motive, I've found that asking the players is the best course of action. Less work for you, less chance your GM ideas don't stick, and it draws the players into the game more. That said, here's an idea to get your juices running...The PCs fates are bound to a deck of fortune-telling cards which they must find and burn / exorcise before they can leave.6. You need to sit down and do the work that any novelist, mystery, or horror writer would need to do. You need to create your chain of clues. For example, if aboleths are the masterminds, you can work backward from their masterplan, establishing steps along the way for the PCs to discover. They don't need to discover the aboleths are the masterminds after discovering clue #1 or even clue #10, but the point is that each clue helps move them forward to that awful realization. I highly recommend googling the Three Clue Rule on the Alexandrian blog - basic premise is that when you want the players to reach a conclusion, you need to provide 3 clues that can lead to that conclusion, because the players will miss the first clue, and misinterpret the second clue, but the third clue they will finally grasp. Yes, that's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I've found it to be true.Do NOT do that. Horror is about emotion, not about hopelessness, not about the players despairing at the futility of their PC's pitiful existence to the point they shrug when the "call to adventure" goes forth.</blockquote>

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