D&D has released a lot of horror based gaming material lately. Personally, I love horror movies. I read horror books. I’ve played a number of horror games and systems at conventions. But I don’t do a lot of horror in my regular D&D game. Why? One reason is because horror can be really freakin’ difficult to do right. It might not be the hardest genre to pull off in all of gaming, but it’s up there.
This is a thread to talk about common horror gaming pitfalls in D&D. And maybe some general tips on how to avoid them.
For the purpose of this discussion, let's say that we’re discussing actual scary horror here; legitimate spooky and emotional stuff. I suspect the answer to “How do you do horror?” is that many tables simply don’t. They just plop PCs into a horror setting and play the exact same way they would in a medieval fantasy or magitech setting. But just because you drop your party in Ravenloft and dress all the NPCs in goth gear doesn’t make a campaign scary. This discussion isn’t about those pseudo-scary games, it’s about the True Scotsmen of horror (with self awareness).
The Big Buy In
More than most genres, horror requires an agreement from everyone at the table that they are dedicated to a horror game. Everyone has to agree that the goal is to be scared. Because building tension is real work, but breaking it can be cheap and easy.
It only takes one person who doesn’t want to play by the horror genre rules to break the spell, and the fear is gone. And that’s not always the comedian in the group, either. Being the wrong kind of heroic, too much metagaming, or even just refusing to follow the story can be a horror killer. In a way, the horror part of an RPG is its own character that needs to be a respected and supported member of the team.
Players Are Desensitized
Think of staples of horror like zombies, skeletons, big spiders. These are all things a typical D&D player faces at level 1. Even werewolves and vampires eventually feel relatively mundane. And let's not forget about the effects of having easy healing, Remove Curse, and multiple methods of resurrection.
D&D has taken horror basics like monsters and death and completely normalized them into things your PC deals with before breakfast. So when you want to make horror scary again, you have to find ways to do something different and push the limits. It takes scarier monsters. It takes DM tactics. It takes planned scarcity. It takes lots of work.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Horror games face a unique problem: peak success is a very delicate balance. It’s rare to have a problem with a comedy game being too funny, or running a game focused on fey with too many fey. But too much horror can be a bigger failure than too little horror. The horror genre pushes people to the limit of what they are comfortable with. But if a DM goes past that limit, the entire game might have to stop.
X Cards can be a critical tool here. And using an X card doesn’t mean a game needs to end, it might just need a pause and a redirect. But the card only tells people when to pause - it doesn’t help you restart.
What makes this problem harder is that people have both individual and malleable thresholds for different types of gore, violence, sex, etc. And hopefully people are good about being up front about it. But communication is never perfect. And sometimes people don’t even know their own limits until they go past them.
Scarcity of Resource Scarcity
Lots of horror games - other RPGs, video games, even board games - rely on limited resources and survival tropes to make things scary. But modern D&D (I’m calling you out, 5e), has minimized this greatly. Everyone can heal on their own. Food and light are amazingly easy to obtain. Carrying capacity is bypassed by a simple magic item or two. And nowadays, you can’t even make a magic user run out of their infinite cantrips.
It’s easy to fall into RBDM tactics to fight this. Players are attacked at every rest, every quest is on a short timer. But over time that is no longer scary, it’s just antagonistic.
--
So it turns out horror is a kind of fragile genre. What can you do about it? Obviously, Session 0 is an important starting point. Make sure everyone wants to invest in horror, get everyone’s phobias straight, set up the rules for X Cards or other safety options. But session 0 isn’t a panacea*. Session 0 is just a starting point. In the long term, you need constant communication; not just at session 0, but at the end of session 1, 2, 3, and all the others. Also, Session 0 doesn't actually alleviate the work. Session 0 shines a light on the problems, but doesn’t always provide solutions. So what do you do to make D&D a true horror game?
*As a fun forum game, take a shot every time someone didn’t bother to read this far and opens their post with “This is why Session 0 is so important.”
This is a thread to talk about common horror gaming pitfalls in D&D. And maybe some general tips on how to avoid them.
For the purpose of this discussion, let's say that we’re discussing actual scary horror here; legitimate spooky and emotional stuff. I suspect the answer to “How do you do horror?” is that many tables simply don’t. They just plop PCs into a horror setting and play the exact same way they would in a medieval fantasy or magitech setting. But just because you drop your party in Ravenloft and dress all the NPCs in goth gear doesn’t make a campaign scary. This discussion isn’t about those pseudo-scary games, it’s about the True Scotsmen of horror (with self awareness).
The Big Buy In
More than most genres, horror requires an agreement from everyone at the table that they are dedicated to a horror game. Everyone has to agree that the goal is to be scared. Because building tension is real work, but breaking it can be cheap and easy.
It only takes one person who doesn’t want to play by the horror genre rules to break the spell, and the fear is gone. And that’s not always the comedian in the group, either. Being the wrong kind of heroic, too much metagaming, or even just refusing to follow the story can be a horror killer. In a way, the horror part of an RPG is its own character that needs to be a respected and supported member of the team.
Players Are Desensitized
Think of staples of horror like zombies, skeletons, big spiders. These are all things a typical D&D player faces at level 1. Even werewolves and vampires eventually feel relatively mundane. And let's not forget about the effects of having easy healing, Remove Curse, and multiple methods of resurrection.
D&D has taken horror basics like monsters and death and completely normalized them into things your PC deals with before breakfast. So when you want to make horror scary again, you have to find ways to do something different and push the limits. It takes scarier monsters. It takes DM tactics. It takes planned scarcity. It takes lots of work.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Horror games face a unique problem: peak success is a very delicate balance. It’s rare to have a problem with a comedy game being too funny, or running a game focused on fey with too many fey. But too much horror can be a bigger failure than too little horror. The horror genre pushes people to the limit of what they are comfortable with. But if a DM goes past that limit, the entire game might have to stop.
X Cards can be a critical tool here. And using an X card doesn’t mean a game needs to end, it might just need a pause and a redirect. But the card only tells people when to pause - it doesn’t help you restart.
What makes this problem harder is that people have both individual and malleable thresholds for different types of gore, violence, sex, etc. And hopefully people are good about being up front about it. But communication is never perfect. And sometimes people don’t even know their own limits until they go past them.
Scarcity of Resource Scarcity
Lots of horror games - other RPGs, video games, even board games - rely on limited resources and survival tropes to make things scary. But modern D&D (I’m calling you out, 5e), has minimized this greatly. Everyone can heal on their own. Food and light are amazingly easy to obtain. Carrying capacity is bypassed by a simple magic item or two. And nowadays, you can’t even make a magic user run out of their infinite cantrips.
It’s easy to fall into RBDM tactics to fight this. Players are attacked at every rest, every quest is on a short timer. But over time that is no longer scary, it’s just antagonistic.
--
So it turns out horror is a kind of fragile genre. What can you do about it? Obviously, Session 0 is an important starting point. Make sure everyone wants to invest in horror, get everyone’s phobias straight, set up the rules for X Cards or other safety options. But session 0 isn’t a panacea*. Session 0 is just a starting point. In the long term, you need constant communication; not just at session 0, but at the end of session 1, 2, 3, and all the others. Also, Session 0 doesn't actually alleviate the work. Session 0 shines a light on the problems, but doesn’t always provide solutions. So what do you do to make D&D a true horror game?
*As a fun forum game, take a shot every time someone didn’t bother to read this far and opens their post with “This is why Session 0 is so important.”
