gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
It was late (or very early in the morning) when I posted that, I meant to say 'retribution' not redemption.
Horror - how dark is too dark?
- Thread starter gamerprinter
- Start date
It was late (or very early in the morning) when I posted that, I meant to say 'retribution' not redemption.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
This has probably already been said, but understanding your players and tailoring the material to their tastes and boundaries is a good place to start.
wedgeski
Adventurer
I'm not your target in this, but to follow-on from Rechan's most excellent and pertinent Stephen King quote, I find terror next to impossible to create at the table (in any sense other than, the player is terrified their PC might get killed today), horror rarely but sometimes achievable, and the gross-out eminently achievable but effective only in moderation.
"Creep-outs" are in my opinion massive traps for the unwary DM, mostly because he either pulls from his own phobias, which more often as not won't be shared by anyone else, or because he pulls from the zeitgeist and ends up inflicting hordes of pale, staring children on them or sending armies of killer dollies after them at night. (I'm as guilty of this as the next man.) Good creep-outs don''t rely on a schtick, they develop naturally from the scenario and take everyone by surprise.
"Creep-outs" are in my opinion massive traps for the unwary DM, mostly because he either pulls from his own phobias, which more often as not won't be shared by anyone else, or because he pulls from the zeitgeist and ends up inflicting hordes of pale, staring children on them or sending armies of killer dollies after them at night. (I'm as guilty of this as the next man.) Good creep-outs don''t rely on a schtick, they develop naturally from the scenario and take everyone by surprise.
Achan hiArusa
Explorer
First Edition Wraith introduced using safewords much like in the BDSM community so that players could express when they felt you went too far (given that it was far darker and more personal than Vampire, that was probably good advice). You can set up a similar setup and if some of your players want to go farther you can split the party for a bit to give the other players what they want.
DragonLancer
Hero
In my experience horror is very difficult to get across in any roleplaying game (though I did once freak myself out as a player at a Call of Cthulhu LARP weekend), purely because the visceral evidence isn't in front of the player. The player isn't experiencing the horror or the discomfort. These days I rarely worry about it and just focus on the story.
The only games I have ever actually tried to introduce a sense of unease, though never directly, have been Call of Cthulhu and Vampire Masquerade/Requiem.
With Call of Cthulhu isn't easy once but then it's old hat, especially for experienced players of the game. With Vampire it can be much more subtle. For instance, I ran a chronicle many years ago for Masquerade where one minor plot dealt with a panic-embraced childe of the clan Ventrue (an NPC). The first "prey" she encountered after her embrace was a child. Alone and starving she killed the child and her clan flaw became that she could only feed from children. In the weeks to come she stole into orphanages, hospitals and unsecured homes to feed upon children. She didn't want to and the thought of it repulsed her but she had no choice. The idea was to see how the players and their characters reacted to something that was child abuse, murder, and perhaps (in some eyes) rape. Would they destroy the vampire because of what she had done, would they try to help her? How much of what they would do was because of the imagery that the story imparted or because of player reactions out of game? It doesn't sound much but it's the sort of thing I find can make the players think and introduce an unease to the session.
Actual rape, incest and so forth is not something I would include directly in a story, but certainly in the background it is fine. Gothic horror is ripe for such things.
The only games I have ever actually tried to introduce a sense of unease, though never directly, have been Call of Cthulhu and Vampire Masquerade/Requiem.
With Call of Cthulhu isn't easy once but then it's old hat, especially for experienced players of the game. With Vampire it can be much more subtle. For instance, I ran a chronicle many years ago for Masquerade where one minor plot dealt with a panic-embraced childe of the clan Ventrue (an NPC). The first "prey" she encountered after her embrace was a child. Alone and starving she killed the child and her clan flaw became that she could only feed from children. In the weeks to come she stole into orphanages, hospitals and unsecured homes to feed upon children. She didn't want to and the thought of it repulsed her but she had no choice. The idea was to see how the players and their characters reacted to something that was child abuse, murder, and perhaps (in some eyes) rape. Would they destroy the vampire because of what she had done, would they try to help her? How much of what they would do was because of the imagery that the story imparted or because of player reactions out of game? It doesn't sound much but it's the sort of thing I find can make the players think and introduce an unease to the session.
Actual rape, incest and so forth is not something I would include directly in a story, but certainly in the background it is fine. Gothic horror is ripe for such things.
gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
The feeling of horror is always difficult to convey in an RPG.
However, Kaidan is built to include the tools, the mechanics, the discussion provided for every encounter on how best to present it to convey the feelings of dread, fear and hopelessness. There's even discussion on how to handle parties that want to break from the mold of module to go on their own way, how to redirect them and what consequences occur should they still not get under control.
We hold the GMs hand, because we know horror is more challenging than typical adventures. Though there is no guarantee that you will be successful in scaring the hell out of your players, but the modules and supplements do try and help you do this.
The first really creepy scene in The Gift, the first adventure occurs, about half way through that module - it's penultimate horror, with the creep factor dialed up to 11. I think it would take an awful GM to mess it up. Woven within that encounter is all the best Japanese ghost stories and haunted house experiences I have witnessed or read about.
If you follow the setup text provided, approach the monsters as presented, you should have no problem creeping your players out. This is how Kaidan is designed.
At present my adventures aren't designed to force the players to be murderers, torturers, I don't think it's necessary to force the players into being the elements of horror themselves - the setting is enough.
However, Kaidan is built to include the tools, the mechanics, the discussion provided for every encounter on how best to present it to convey the feelings of dread, fear and hopelessness. There's even discussion on how to handle parties that want to break from the mold of module to go on their own way, how to redirect them and what consequences occur should they still not get under control.
We hold the GMs hand, because we know horror is more challenging than typical adventures. Though there is no guarantee that you will be successful in scaring the hell out of your players, but the modules and supplements do try and help you do this.
The first really creepy scene in The Gift, the first adventure occurs, about half way through that module - it's penultimate horror, with the creep factor dialed up to 11. I think it would take an awful GM to mess it up. Woven within that encounter is all the best Japanese ghost stories and haunted house experiences I have witnessed or read about.
If you follow the setup text provided, approach the monsters as presented, you should have no problem creeping your players out. This is how Kaidan is designed.
At present my adventures aren't designed to force the players to be murderers, torturers, I don't think it's necessary to force the players into being the elements of horror themselves - the setting is enough.
Last edited:
fireinthedust
Explorer
having read only the title, I'd say too dark is when you can'[t read the character sheets or see the dice. Bam!
1) don't confuse sexual for "dark" or horror. "adult" themes may make people uncomfortable, especially sexual violence, but shock value isn't "dark" and it isn't quality.
2) Humour and safety are SO important to horror. You have to care about the family and their chemistry together before it matters that Freddy is eating the kids. Better example: Discworld novels have threats, but they're to these characters who, compared to serious novels like Wheel of Time or even Game of Thrones, are silly. However, in less than 300 pages Pratchett gets readers to care about these silly people: silly on the surface, but with a deeper explaination that makes its own sort of sense within the world of the book. Threats to that "ecosystem" if you will, matter.
3) Dark tends to focus on gritty issues, imho, but gritty in terms of realistic issues. However, they also tend to have a level of hopelessness involved. [sblock=spoiler for The Ring] The Ring, for example, has numerous people in situations that are just depressing IN CONTEXT: the parents who are old and lost their kids. That is huge, because you're tapping into the loss of their family life, and the idea that they're basically just growing old: no one will care for them when their bodies fail, they're just living out their days watching other people have lives.
The insane asylum is, sadly, used as a hell hole for the mentally ill (and the reason no one funds good institutions that WOULD be an Asylum, merely for the fiction trope. Grr, Arkham!). It's drab, there isn't hope, no one's getting better.
Contrast that to the protagonist: a mother trying to protect her son from the video tape.
Japanese culture has a lot of traditional value on having kids, on family. Tapping into the fear of that loss is frightening.[/sblock]
3) To be effective you also need a firm understanding of good, of hope. Sadly, people who like horror or make it nowadays are so far gone from reality that "good" doesn't have meaning. They like the twist of the knife so that characters are fodder for some horrorific critter who becomes the star. Remember how Freddy Kreuger (a pedophile!) gained folk hero(!) status in the 80s? As a kid I saw kids in Freddy masks, with t-shirts! He's a pedophile!!!!!!
Without a respect for a healthy family life, a sense of justice, and of sexual morality, we WOULD NOT have the horror classics that modern fans judge new films by. At best they're thrillers or torture films which, and I can't stress this enough, are NOT horror films. Horror relies on having a person who can be horrified by acts: there needs to be good in order for bad to have meaning. I can cut a steak, but it's not a horror act unless the steak is alive, screaming, and we the viewer actually see the harming of innocent steaks as wrong.
So to answer the title of the thread more seriously: dark is only existent as far as you can make light that it surrounds light. So far as you can make your players or readers care about the light.
Otherwise you're just making a torture film, at which point you don't have dark. No dark, just cutting steak. And hey, steak is just steak, so who cares?
1) don't confuse sexual for "dark" or horror. "adult" themes may make people uncomfortable, especially sexual violence, but shock value isn't "dark" and it isn't quality.
2) Humour and safety are SO important to horror. You have to care about the family and their chemistry together before it matters that Freddy is eating the kids. Better example: Discworld novels have threats, but they're to these characters who, compared to serious novels like Wheel of Time or even Game of Thrones, are silly. However, in less than 300 pages Pratchett gets readers to care about these silly people: silly on the surface, but with a deeper explaination that makes its own sort of sense within the world of the book. Threats to that "ecosystem" if you will, matter.
3) Dark tends to focus on gritty issues, imho, but gritty in terms of realistic issues. However, they also tend to have a level of hopelessness involved. [sblock=spoiler for The Ring] The Ring, for example, has numerous people in situations that are just depressing IN CONTEXT: the parents who are old and lost their kids. That is huge, because you're tapping into the loss of their family life, and the idea that they're basically just growing old: no one will care for them when their bodies fail, they're just living out their days watching other people have lives.
The insane asylum is, sadly, used as a hell hole for the mentally ill (and the reason no one funds good institutions that WOULD be an Asylum, merely for the fiction trope. Grr, Arkham!). It's drab, there isn't hope, no one's getting better.
Contrast that to the protagonist: a mother trying to protect her son from the video tape.
Japanese culture has a lot of traditional value on having kids, on family. Tapping into the fear of that loss is frightening.[/sblock]
3) To be effective you also need a firm understanding of good, of hope. Sadly, people who like horror or make it nowadays are so far gone from reality that "good" doesn't have meaning. They like the twist of the knife so that characters are fodder for some horrorific critter who becomes the star. Remember how Freddy Kreuger (a pedophile!) gained folk hero(!) status in the 80s? As a kid I saw kids in Freddy masks, with t-shirts! He's a pedophile!!!!!!
Without a respect for a healthy family life, a sense of justice, and of sexual morality, we WOULD NOT have the horror classics that modern fans judge new films by. At best they're thrillers or torture films which, and I can't stress this enough, are NOT horror films. Horror relies on having a person who can be horrified by acts: there needs to be good in order for bad to have meaning. I can cut a steak, but it's not a horror act unless the steak is alive, screaming, and we the viewer actually see the harming of innocent steaks as wrong.
So to answer the title of the thread more seriously: dark is only existent as far as you can make light that it surrounds light. So far as you can make your players or readers care about the light.
Otherwise you're just making a torture film, at which point you don't have dark. No dark, just cutting steak. And hey, steak is just steak, so who cares?
gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
Speaking of phobias, the third adventure in the Curse of the Golden Spear trilogy, Dark Path, heavily relies on phobias and included are a variety of the most common so each player might experience a moment of terror around their particular phobia. The adventure includes spiders both large and small in the form of swarms, closed in spaces, limited sight range, the dark and many more. One of the phobias might grab a particular player, while others do not - they are available for someone else to get them...
The first adventure is really moments of extreme creepiness with long stetches of build up - the fear of the unknown in a gothic style. While the second adventure focuses on dread and hopelessness.
Every tool and circumstance for emulating horror is presented throughout the whole series.
@fireinthedust - the mature content is intended to create a level of discomfort, but the horror of Kaidan doesn't revel in the mature content it is only touched upon as background information or as part of the setup. The horror presented isn't really as shock value, except for surprise moments of terror, but then that isn't specifically dealing with the adult situations. Some of the horror presented is 'in your face' type incidents, while most is gnawing effect with moments of dark epiphany.
The point of Kaidan is life is hard, life is cheap and death is but a revolving door. Ghosts, demons and dark things populate the land to the point of being thick with them. On one hand the setting feels like Oriental Adventures, on the other it feels like Ravenloft. Kaidan is really its own thing though.
Last edited:
That's how it is to you, in your head, sure because you're the creator. But ultimately it's going to be how those that read the product take it.
This entire thread is "Hey you guys is this too much?" "Yes" "But it's not like that! It's ok!" "Still too much." "But it's not like that".
This entire thread is "Hey you guys is this too much?" "Yes" "But it's not like that! It's ok!" "Still too much." "But it's not like that".
Similar Threads
