D&D General Horror is hard

[AlViking]

But we aren't talking about scriptwriting storyboarding or novel writing, d&d does none of those. The nerve wracking nail biting element in d&d are things like rust monsters mind flayer wights ghasts wraiths who in the party carries what and question like "can we as a party carry that thing we'd really like to carry to get the treasure we feel like we need" because those were difficult choices and extremely credible risks up until 5e. I would not be particularly impacted by a speeding ticket, but the risk is plausible enough that it affects how I drive, the same likely applies to a large percentage of posters and d&d players.

You might very much need to go back and refresh your memory of the discussion chain that started with you saying GM's should look at a series with viewer discretion warnings for "intense psychological distress" for humans as the real threat and me saying that d&d5e can't even come within sight of the horizon where that exists even if it was appropriate for a ttrpg. If you can't even accept that a show with warnings for"intense psychological distress" might be an inappropriate target for the gm running almost any system without trying to extend & quibble over individual reasons whythe system can't handle the targey, there's probably not much reason to continue talking about the target you suggested that GM's aim for to make up for the weight d&d's design no longer carries on mechanical levels.

Because of that design it can't even handle gravity of mere risk when the system is built for [spoiler["this kind of gameplay"]

[/Spoiler]
I may have mentioned the impact of overly generous overly certain recovery, but I was not the one to bring up killing PCs, please do not attribute that strawman to me just because 5e chose to remove every other risk from adventuring. Saying that PC death is now implausible has nothing to do with the gm killing PCs by that gm going out of their way to "double tap" PCs they execute. If the DM needs to "double tap" a PC for PC death to become plausible, the plausible concern is "will the dm double tap my PC and can they?"Not how plausible any other risk of adventuring is.

All I can say is that I think D&D can have horror trappings, but actually getting the same sense of unease or fear you get from a good movie? Not possible in the long run. Either you kill off PCs left and right which means people have no emotional investment in the characters they create (why bother?) or the majority of characters survive in the long term. If they survive the long term like most of the characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer then it becomes a fairly standard D&D game. Even if you throw horrific imagery after a while it looses most of it's impact. Mixing it in now and then? That can be fun. Running a more-or-less standard campaign with horror themes can also be fun but it's still going to be a standard D&D game after a while.

Fiction of course can do things we can never do in a TTRPG. Other games may have mechanical effects on the PCs to try to reflect slowly becoming numbed to the horror and suffering other consequences but that's all they are - penalties you slowly apply to your character sheet with no emotional impact on the player.

I also disagree that the PTSD and other impacts on characters or a struggle for survival make something into supernatural horror, people suffer all over the real world sadly suffer those impacts. They can be part of a horror campaign, they could also be part of a more realistic war campaign (which is a different kind of horror, just not what people are referring to).

In any case it seems like you just want to argue so if you have anything else to add about running horror campaigns I may reply, otherwise I've stated my opinions.

 

[MGibster]

That goes back to the list I made at the start in post 32 and the many many ways 5e mechanically undermines using the sorts of struggles and motivating concerns that drove the people suck narrative in fiction by severing and my PC is a person that has relevant needs from it. When you sever those needs the PCs are no longer part of that "people" group.

I'm certainly not going to disagree with you. Anyone who tries to use D&D to run a horror campaign using the rules as written will find themselves fighting against the rules. The true horror of D&D is watching the DM descend into madness under such circumstances.

 

[AlViking]

I'm certainly not going to disagree with you. Anyone who tries to use D&D to run a horror campaign using the rules as written will find themselves fighting against the rules. The true horror of D&D is watching the DM descend into madness under such circumstances.

Obviously D&D isn't designed for horror. I think it can work in small doses or you can have monsters and settings based on horror tropes.

But I'm also a bit unclear about what rules would change that? Want to have decisions? That has nothing to do with the rules. Stacking penalties? Easy to do with a few house rules, including things like the sanity rules from the 2014 DMG. Killing off PCs left and right like a slasher movie? Not a problem if that's your goal. Making survival more difficult? Don't let the group get long rests whenever they want and so on.

I've never been interested in a horror TTRPG and even find video games like the resident evil series mostly boring (Admittedly I've only tried 1 RE game and one Alien game when they went on sale). So I may be missing a whole lot of rule based mechanisms for horror games. What would they be?

It seems like the biggest obstacle is going to be player attitude and expectations. Rules don't necessarily stop a horror campaign in D&D - maybe with a handful of house rules - it's player buy-in.

 

[MGibster]

Obviously D&D isn't designed for horror. I think it can work in small doses or you can have monsters and settings based on horror tropes.

I tend to take a very broad definition of horror that can include everything from The Shining, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and An American Werewolf in London specifically to avoid discussion about what is or isn't "real" horror. My favorite D&D setting is Ravenloft and my favorite classic adventure is the original I6 Ravenloft module, so I full heartedly agree you can run a good D&D game with horror tropes.

But I'm also a bit unclear about what rules would change that? Want to have decisions? That has nothing to do with the rules. Stacking penalties? Easy to do with a few house rules, including things like the sanity rules from the 2014 DMG.

Rules as written, for a horror experience as mentioned in the opening post, D&D is not a good fit. D&D is a game where you "Battle monsters while searching for legendary treasure" and "gain experience and power as you trek across uncharted lands with your companions." i.e. All the rules in D&D are set up to create an adolescent power fantasy. That's no fault of D&D though. I don't expect my Porshe to haul as much hay as my Ford F-150 and I don't complain when my Phillips head screwdriver makes for an awkward experience while driving nails into boards.

I've never been interested in a horror TTRPG and even find video games like the resident evil series mostly boring (Admittedly I've only tried 1 RE game and one Alien game when they went on sale). So I may be missing a whole lot of rule based mechanisms for horror games. What would they be?

More than one poster here has gone over how the rules make horror a little more difficult in D&D. I know the thread is getting longer and longer, but if you haven't read those posts you might want to check them out.

It seems like the biggest obstacle is going to be player attitude and expectations. Rules don't necessarily stop a horror campaign in D&D - maybe with a handful of house rules - it's player buy-in.

That's a big one. When I sit down to play D&D I expect heroic fantasy not horror. Even when I'm playing Ravenloft.

 

[AlViking]

I tend to take a very broad definition of horror that can include everything from The Shining, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and An American Werewolf in London specifically to avoid discussion about what is or isn't "real" horror. My favorite D&D setting is Ravenloft and my favorite classic adventure is the original I6 Ravenloft module, so I full heartedly agree you can run a good D&D game with horror tropes.

I don't watch slasher movies much any more but other than jump scares, which I don't see how those can really be recreated in a TTRPG, but when I did it wasn't really scary. It was more yelling at the screen "Don't split up! Call 911!" They always remind me of the commercial ...

Rules as written, for a horror experience as mentioned in the opening post, D&D is not a good fit. D&D is a game where you "Battle monsters while searching for legendary treasure" and "gain experience and power as you trek across uncharted lands with your companions." i.e. All the rules in D&D are set up to create an adolescent power fantasy. That's no fault of D&D though. I don't expect my Porshe to haul as much hay as my Ford F-150 and I don't complain when my Phillips head screwdriver makes for an awkward experience while driving nails into boards.

So what would a horror game do differently from a rules perspective? Because in D&D I can always create an enemy they can't defeat, even if it would be considered "standard" D&D. People have said a lot of "D&D can't do it because they have healing" without explaining what other games actually do.

More than one poster here has gone over how the rules make horror a little more difficult in D&D. I know the thread is getting longer and longer, but if you haven't read those posts you might want to check them out.

I may have missed it, but the biggest things I see are "Kill a child because they're a host for a great evil", "Fight against becoming the monster" and other moral conundrums. That has little to do with actual rules of the game which is what I'm questioning. Because if Aliens 2 is considered horror, then having weapons and the ability to fight back isn't a requirement.

Or maybe there isn't really an answer and that's okay too.

That's a big one. When I sit down to play D&D I expect heroic fantasy not horror. Even when I'm playing Ravenloft.

Yep. I think the expectations are the biggest issues, most other things have work-arounds. It just wouldn't be what people expect or want from the game because they want to play Van Helsing or Buffy, not "Victim #4 who runs away screaming only to die later anyway".

 

[500 Toads]

Part of the problem is that recovery is relatively straightforward in D&D 5E. Even death can be fixed with no long-term consequence, unlike older editions. For instance, in AD&D, being resurrected permanently reduced your constitution; and the lower your constitution was, the higher the chance that the attempt at resurrection would fail and you'd just be permanently dead.

Undead, in particular, were also nastier in terms of lasting effects. Energy drain didn't go away with a long rest, but required high-level spell slots to fix (one Restoration per lost level, IIRC), and there were enemies that drained multiple levels per hit. Merely seeing a ghost could age you ten years, and that could kill you permanently; for that matter, a ghost killing you in any way, killed you permanently.

Even regular damage would wear you down faster, since simply getting a good night's sleep restored only a single hit point rather than all your hit points (and, unlike Pathfinder 2E, where natural healing by rest is also slow, there's no resource-free-except-time Treat Wounds); and I don't remember there being anything like short rests during which you could expend hit dice for fast mundane healing.

The net effect is that once a party is fairly well-established and funded in D&D 5E, they'll probably be able to simply keep going unless they're very reckless (like, say, prolonged playing with a Deck of Many Things).


If we look at, say, Call of Cthulhu, getting damaged is easy -- both physically and mentally -- and recovery is slow and hard, even when it's possible. Combat can quickly lead to investigators needing to be hospitalized or killed outright, and merely encountering the unnatural on a regular basis will reduce sanity and impose disorders. Learning about the Cthulhu Mythos permanently reduces maximum sanity, as well, enforcing decline. While ritual magic does exist, it's a bit involved to access and dangerous to use, and a relatively easy way to quickly go permanently insane; so, for instance, death tends to be quite permanent. Characters can become more skilled at what they do, but they never "level up" and gain hit dice, et cetera, so they remain very, very mortal.

 

[500 Toads]

Another way in which D&D 5E makes it trickier to do horror, at least past the lowest levels, is the availability of magic to reduce uncertainty and reveal hidden threats. If a party has ready access to spells such as Detect Good and Evil, True Seeing, and Detect Thoughts, for instance, it's a lot easier to spot threats. The threat of shapeshifters infiltrating a city and replacing people are a lot less horrifying if you can just look at them and immediately see their true form; or if you can detect the thoughts of an entity possessing a resident. Uncertainty is conducive to fear.

 

[MGibster]

So what would a horror game do differently from a rules perspective? Because in D&D I can always create an enemy they can't defeat, even if it would be considered "standard" D&D. People have said a lot of "D&D can't do it because they have healing" without explaining what other games actually do.

The ubiquity of healing, whether through spells, resting, or potions are antithetical to a horror game. Imagine this scene in Cthulhu Dark Ages.

You find Brother Thaddeus sitting in the town square, his back against the fountain, clutching his midsection as blood oozes from between his fingers before pooling into a congealed mess on the flagstones, his faced drained of color and his breathing ragged. As you approach he looks at you and smiles, "It is good to see you, old friend. Please. Water. I am thirsty." You fill your cup with water and place it upon Thaddeus' lips, but he does not drink, for he has taken his last breath."
Let's put the same scene in D&D.

You find Brother Thaddeus sitting in the town square, his back against the fountain, clutching his midsection as blood oozes from between his fingers before pooling into a congealed mess on the flagstones, his faced drained of color and his breathing ragged. As you approach he looks at you and smiles, "It is good to see you, old friend. Please. Water. I am thirsty." Your Cure Light Wounds spell heals him enough that he's no longer in danger of dying and you fetch him a cup of water.

D&D is set up so there are very few long term consequences from encounters. In the case of Brother Thaddeus here, even if he drops dead before the PCs can cast Cure Light Wounds, there's a good chance a Cleric might have Revivify on hand. A DM could always just decide CLW or other efforts at healing won't work, but that's probably just going to piss players off unless there's some good reason why their abilities don't work. It's not just a matter of coming up with a monster the PCs can't kill, it's the way the entire game is structured.

 

[Remathilis]

The ubiquity of healing, whether through spells, resting, or potions are antithetical to a horror game. Imagine this scene in Cthulhu Dark Ages.

You find Brother Thaddeus sitting in the town square, his back against the fountain, clutching his midsection as blood oozes from between his fingers before pooling into a congealed mess on the flagstones, his faced drained of color and his breathing ragged. As you approach he looks at you and smiles, "It is good to see you, old friend. Please. Water. I am thirsty." You fill your cup with water and place it upon Thaddeus' lips, but he does not drink, for he has taken his last breath."
Let's put the same scene in D&D.

You find Brother Thaddeus sitting in the town square, his back against the fountain, clutching his midsection as blood oozes from between his fingers before pooling into a congealed mess on the flagstones, his faced drained of color and his breathing ragged. As you approach he looks at you and smiles, "It is good to see you, old friend. Please. Water. I am thirsty." Your Cure Light Wounds spell heals him enough that he's no longer in danger of dying and you fetch him a cup of water.

D&D is set up so there are very few long term consequences from encounters. In the case of Brother Thaddeus here, even if he drops dead before the PCs can cast Cure Light Wounds, there's a good chance a Cleric might have Revivify on hand. A DM could always just decide CLW or other efforts at healing won't work, but that's probably just going to piss players off unless there's some good reason why their abilities don't work. It's not just a matter of coming up with a monster the PCs can't kill, it's the way the entire game is structured.

Honestly, that's a problem with regular D&D and the notion that the only way you can die is at zero HP. There are lots of ways to die that aren't hit point damage. Cancer doesn't deal HP damage. Neither does a heart attack. I wouldn't let Cure Wounds fix either. Further, HP is rarely meat, so if Thadius is that mortally wounded, he's probably beyond what healing magic can do. Time to bust out Revivify.

But that's kinda a different topic. The issue is you gave the players agency to save him by being alive in the first place. Of course they're going to try to save him. It doesn't matter if it was a healing spell, a medicine check, a healers kit to stabilize him or some medicinal herbs, if it can stop someone from dying, they will try it. So what then? The herbs don't work? DC 30 medicine check? The healing kit ineffective? How is any of that any different from "the spell fails because he's too far gone"? If he needs to be dead, either he's dead when they get there, you railroad them that nothing they can do can save him, or you accept the PCs will have SOME method to save him that works. That's a the nature of interactive storytelling.

I feel that's less an issue with D&D horror as much as it is D&D play 101. Railroads don't stop being railroads just because the train is spooky.

 

[MGibster]

Honestly, that's a problem with regular D&D and the notion that the only way you can die is at zero HP. There are lots of ways to die that aren't hit point damage. Cancer doesn't deal HP damage. Neither does a heart attack. I wouldn't let Cure Wounds fix either. Further, HP is rarely meat, so if Thadius is that mortally wounded, he's probably beyond what healing magic can do. Time to bust out Revivify.

I did mention Revivify. It's tough to preserve a horrific atmosphere when the PCs are adroit at mitigating harm and long term consequences aren't really a thing. We've all seen combat encounters that turn into hilarious games of Whack-a-Mole as a PC is downed, brought back, downed again, brought back again, and so on and so forth until the creature is finally defeated.

But that's kinda a different topic. The issue is you gave the players agency to save him by being alive in the first place. Of course they're going to try to save him. It doesn't matter if it was a healing spell, a medicine check, a healers kit to stabilize him or some medicinal herbs, if it can stop someone from dying, they will try it. So what then? The herbs don't work? DC 30 medicine check? The healing kit ineffective? How is any of that any different from "the spell fails because he's too far gone"?

I can't possibly count the number of times PCs have used healing spells to recover being reduced to zero or fewer hit points due to an orc's axe, being burnt to a crisp by a dragon's breath, dropped a few hundred feet by a Roc, or through some other comically heinous violence only to pop up as if nothing had happened to them. As a DM, I'd feel like a jerk for just telling the PCs this particular NPC was mortally wounded considering how healing spells have been used throughout every campaign I've ever run or participated in as a player.