How disturbing are your games?

[tetsujin28]

For D&D, nothing more horrible than you'd find in a Conan story. Horror games are a whole 'nother matter.

 

[Numion]

Mine are mostly good olde kill dragon, take stuff adventures. I've inserted some nastiness in my games, at least on the consequences side. Like when a good cleric put a Mark of Justice on an NPC thief, that would activate the clumsiness if he ever stole again. Couple of months later they found his body on an alleyway, people commenting that he was the worst thief ever. Not horror, I know, but just showing downside to completely good action.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I've run horror adventurers. A previous group of players adventured in a bizarre haunted house filled with nasties. Occasionally, they'd come across an imprint of something that had happened in the house in the past. Some of them were merely confusing. One in particular was downright unpleasant.

[Possibly sensitive issue, highlight to read]

Spoiler

The party encountered a room in which a rape had taken place, and was being continuously "replayed" in ghostly fashion.

[End blackout]

The scene actually led to a wonderful little gem of roleplaying. When the PCs got to that room, I asked them which PC, specifically, had opened the door first. I then wrote down what could be seen in the room, and passed it to that player. The player then proceeded to usher away the one juvenile PC we had, making excuses for why she needn't enter that room. The player of the juvenile PC didn't find out what was in that room until the end of the adventure.

Other than running horror adventures, the horror in the rest of my games tends to restrict itself to monsters. I often enjoy taking a set of monster stats and creating my own imagery for it. When I used stirges, the showed up in-game as small, porcelain dolls that crept toward the PCs, and when they lunged their jaws distended to reveal needle-sharp fangs with which they attempted to bite down on the PCs and drain their blood.

Similarly, I've used an ettin that appeared in game as a group of miners (the PCs were exploring a mine that had suddenly stopped producing ore,) whose bodies had somehow fused together.

And I once threw in a water elemental that showed up in-game as a blood-creature that formed itself up out of a pool of still-warm blood.

So my self-made monsters tend to have an element of horror to them. Other than that, my game generally restricts itself to heroic fantasy.

 

[Krafen]

*snip*
Killing a wizard to return a kidnapped child to the mother, just to learn that the wizard was the father and had custody

Oh, that is wonderfully evil.


And to the original poster, nice sig link. Quite entertaining. For even more fun, google the author's name.

 

[Tinner]

My D&D games could pass for episodes of the D&D cartoon. Maybe it's because I started playing so young, but I keep D&D pretty innocent for the most part. There's an occaisonal PG-13 romantic interlude, but that's it.

My Shadowrun games on the other hand are DARK.
I'm a huge cyberpunk fan, and love that dystopic future feel. So my PC's have faced everything from cyber-zombie babies, snuff-fetish leather bondage elves, choir-girl abusing demonic possessions, and a lot more that I probably can't post without really doing some damage to Eric's grandma!

Very different styles of game.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I run some pretty disturbing games but it is kind of at player request.

The main game I run is a supers game and I come up with some pretty nasty and frightening villains. I took the concept of the Batman rogues gallery and decided that was something I wanted to do but really intensified their evil and eerieness.

Now, as far as a fantasy game goes, I try to make sure its not overdone. I do not want every moment to be one horrific and dark element after another but that kind of thing does come up. I guess most of it is in description rather than constantly having undead babies or necromancer rapists.

 

[Buttercup]

As one of the other players in the game Spider is talking about, I wasn't shocked, really. In fact, it brought to mind a couple of fantasy stories which featured demon possessed babies. I had to leave before the after-game conversation, but I did have lunch with Der Kluge (who also played) the next day, and we touched on the subject. His comment was that the round robin games always seemed to head in a dark direction.

My own games have featured slavery, rape, torture, drug dealing, and all sorts of unpleasant things. I don't describe these things in loving detail, just make clear that they're happening or have happened. I like to make my evil villains really evil, and to do that, I think they need to engage in despicable behavior, not just twirl their mustachios and laugh maniacally.

I haven't really used demons all that much, only because they just haven't really been central to the plot, not because of any discomfort on my part. I'm sure they'll play a major role sooner or later.

 

[genshou]

As one of the other players in the game Spider is talking about, I wasn't shocked, really. In fact, it brought to mind a couple of fantasy stories which featured demon possessed babies. I had to leave before the after-game conversation, but I did have lunch with Der Kluge (who also played) the next day, and we touched on the subject. His comment was that the round robin games always seemed to head in a dark direction.

My own games have featured slavery, rape, torture, drug dealing, and all sorts of unpleasant things. I don't describe these things in loving detail, just make clear that they're happening or have happened. I like to make my evil villains really evil, and to do that, I think they need to engage in despicable behavior, not just twirl their mustachios and laugh maniacally.

I haven't really used demons all that much, only because they just haven't really been central to the plot, not because of any discomfort on my part. I'm sure they'll play a major role sooner or later.

Anything I might say in support of your post would end up being a spoiler for my story hour, both for past events concerning various NPCs and for future plans in the campaign itself. But all manner of unpleasant things are going on both in the foreground and background of Mikhael Rahl's, Evendur Greycastle's, and Shirl Ravenlocke's adventures.

 

[Nareau]

You mean formerly good-aligned characters.

Well, ya gotta know the circumstances, man.

The demon pact was made in an attempt to salvage an otherwise doomed character. However, the player and I talked about the situation, and we turned it into a great "path to redemption" story arc. In fact, that very same character committed suicide in order to be reincarnated, and escape the pact.

The captives were killed because the PC's didn't see any other viable option. If freed, the captives would have gone back and alerted their terrible demon masters, and many more would have died. Still, the couple of times it's happened were very grim sessions.

The halfling brains had been made into cheese by an insane (yet very friendly) fungus-demon-worshipping druid. The PC's didn't realize what they'd eaten until it was too late.

So not all of these horrific acts were entirely evil.

Frankly, if I played in a game at Gen Con that was like that, if it wasn't advertised as a horror game (and a fairly grisly one at that) I'd talk about it for years as one of those "bad con games" you hear about.

Yeah, I get that now. Rest assured, I'll tread more carefully next time I run any kind of game with strangers.

I see D&D as a game you play to depict heroes, not anti-heroes, and certainly not villains.

It's interesting that you say that. I guess I sometimes find heroes to be rather bland. I'd much rather hang out with Batman than Superman. While I love depicting heroes in games, I think that concept is made much more interesting when contrasted against depraved evil, moral quandries, and no-win situations.

If you can't find it on Hercules, Xena, Star Trek, or Stargate, you're unlikely to find it in my games.

Hrm...even those shows have some pretty horrific things going on. Heck, just from SG-1: Monstars that burrow inside your brain and make you betray your friends; the "splat" sound of your enemies liquifying as they hit a wall; captives who are killed/resurrected/killed in an infinite loop of torture.

Wait a minute...maybe that's why I like that show so much.

Thanks for all the feedback. While I'm glad to know I'm not alone on this, I'll certainly keep the horror to a minimum if I'm not gaming with my regular group.

Spider

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

If you can't find it on Hercules, Xena, Star Trek, or Stargate, you're unlikely to find it in my games. I like to keep a "TV Action Adventure Hour" feel to our campaigns, and we structure adventures by acts, with timed "Commercial Breaks" for food, potty, etc.

wow...have you been spying on my games? This is how I prefer to run, as well. I can make things very creepy and disturbing in a game, but I only do so rarely. Do it too much, and it just becomes boring. Plus, I have my son and his friend joining my games, and I prefer to keep the adventurers more action oriented and light hearted rather than dark and horrific.