Horror RPGs

[mythago]

Dracula - Let the Right One In
Frankenstein - Reanimator (there's a more recent one, but I can't think of it off the top of my head)
Wolfman - Netflix series Hemlock Grove
Mummy - The Mummy (which is also getting a remake soon)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - the BBC series Jekyll (from Steven Moffat)
Invisible Man - Hollow Man

If you can't play in the pool of tropes that is gothic horror and not manage to scare your players, that's your own fault. Also had to do any sort of horror in a heroic fantasy RPG because the players are almost always going to be strong enough to kill the monster. They can fight back. Hate to keep plugging the podcast, but our last episode literally talked about how to run a horror game.

Abstruse, as you yourself said, when you mention "Dracula" to people they're more universally likely to flap an imaginary cape, not reference a recent Swedish horror movie. (Or, more likely, they'll think of Twilight, which is....not horror. Hemlock Grove is not exactly doing gangbusters on TV or in the public imagination, and I suspect that, again, way fewer people have watched or heard of it than, say, the sexy shirtless 'spirit wolf' dudes in Twilight. Etcetera, and we're back to talking about cereals and kitsch.

To be clear, by the way, I'm not saying it's impossible to use these tropes and scare your players or do well-run horror. I'm saying it's much harder to do so in a culture that has moved away from these as the epitome of monstrous terror. I mean, the most notable and popular riff on the Frankenstein monster is the Hulk.

 

[Abstruse]

In case you guys were curious about the podcast I kept referring to, it's currently up on the Gamer's Tavern website! Ari Marmell, Ross Watson, and I talk about horror RPG games and setting worlds including over an hour on World of Darkness (considering Ari's work for White Wolf and Ross and I both being big fans, that's not surprising), but we also specifically talk about Ravenloft and whether it would work as a setting in the current