Horror RPGs

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

This is October and thus the season of horror and pumpkin pie. Few RPGs involve pumpkin pie, but many involve horror to some degree.

What are your thoughts on horror RPGs? Which one do you like? How many have you played and what where your experiences? Or is it all problematic as it leads to "storytelling" and "roleplaying"?

 

[exile]

Dread is my favorite horror RPG. The Jenga-based mechanic is wonderful for building tension.

 

[el_stiko]

I turned up to see if anyone mentioned Dread, or anything besides Dread.

I was not disappointed.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I am pretty much of the view that the two 'giants' of horror rpgs are still Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: The Masquerade. Yet they are entirely different games to play.

In Call of Cthulhu, the characters are essentially outmatched by the forces they face and vulnerable. Yet the horror they investigate is ephemeral for the most part - hidden out of sight and only hinted at in ancient writings and in the 'dark corners of the world'. Moreover, the world view represents is pretty conservative in outlook - xenophobic, fearful of the future, clinging to an antiquated past and so on - whilst at the same time being coldly scientific and uncaring.

Vampire: the Masquerade, on the other hand has you playing empowered, romanticised beings (who are nevertheless vulnerable to other vampires and supernatural creatures). Their major challenges come from both themselves (the personal horror of being a monster) and other supernatural creatures of the night. As such, it tends to be more left of centre, politically speaking, casting PCs as freshly 'embraced' young turks surviving against the older, more powerful generations of vampires.

Other horror games I like include Kult (still the visceral horror setting, based on a darkly plausible gnostic world view), Unknown Armies (which combines supernatural 'post-modernism' with a Coens brother-like cinematic quality), and modern iterations of the Cthulhu mythos - Delta Green and The Laundry.

Finally, although it's lighter in tone and more family orientated, Doctor Who provides a perfect vehicle for weird, sci-fi/horror scenarios. Just imagine you got the green light for your scenario to make an 'grown-up' episode...

 

[Hand of Evil]

my favorite horror game was the old Pacesetter Chill, not the remakes, the box version. It was quick and fun and I enjoyed the monster powers, like haywire that would cause cars not to start or flash lights to go out at the right time.

 

[Crothian]

I enjoy Fear Itself and the module they made for it Invasive Procedures is easily one of the best Horror modules I have ever come across.

For a lighter version of Horror I still enjoy It Came From the Late Late Late Show.

 

[mythago]

Dread is still my favorite horror RPG, not so much for the Jenga tower as for the questionnaire mechanism. For longer-term games I usually end up going with some variant of Call of Cthulhu, planning on switching over to Trail once I can persuade my jaded gaming group to learn another system....

 

[shadow]

Does anyone know any good horror rpgs that can emulate the Silent Hill series of video games? I'm not looking for a Call of Cthulhu game where characters confront cosmic horrors and deal with things "man was not meant to know". Rather I'm looking at something that deals with personal psychological horror and a surreal setting. One thing that always found interesting about the Silent Hill series is the fact that the characters are a little unhinged to begin with and the surreal, grotesque creatures they confront are often manifestations of the dark part of their subconscious. The only rpg that I found so far that invokes this feel fairly well is Don't Rest your Head, but it is really more of a mini-game and really unable to handle ongoing games.

Any suggestions?

 

[mythago]

shadow, like you I tend more to go with supernatural horror than cosmic horror, but I've found the CoC system (and its similar genre-mates) to be fine for that. Dread is perfect for that, but suffers from the same problem you mention re ongoing games.

 

[Celebrim]

I've played Chill and Call of Cthulhu. Both are very good, but involve slightly different sets of fears.

Call of Cthulhu is about fear in the face of the impersonal universe. Betrand Russell inadvertently summed up CoC for me when he said: "Brief and powerless is Man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way." CoC pits you against cosmic impersonal horrors. The fear here is largely intellectual and based on apprehension.

Chill is completely different. The monsters of Chill aren't merely amoral and alien to the point of incomprehensibility. They are evil. They are the fears of your childhood. The terrors that haunted you in the dark and in your fever dreams. They want to not only devour you but degrade and corrupt you. They are personal. But, unlike CoC, the theme here is more heroic. You can stand in the breach. You are not ultimately doomed.

I very much would like to play Dread, but would rather a good storyteller show me how it is done than attempt it myself for the first time.

My own game is informed by horror, to the extent that I imported the Ravenloft Fear/Horror/Madness rules into it.