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It's 2023. Smartphones Exist. Horror Gaming Still Does, Too.
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9229390" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>This is where your essay breaks down and ceases being useful, I think.</p><p></p><p>If monsters existed and it was possible to record them, they'd be recorded, and people would not easily dismiss them. The gambits you suggest would work about once each - "SFX fake" and "viral promotion for horror movie" - they're fine for some one-off deal - they don't work for a campaign-based setting.</p><p></p><p>As for people ignore scientific evidence, sure, but that's a huge problem for cover-ups, not a benefit. When we're getting ever-increasing (and it would be ever-increasing) and consistent footage (and it would be consistent, too) of supernatural beings and happenings, the "I want to believe!" crowd would be both be: A) right for once in their lives so even more insistent than normal and B) very effective in disseminating that information widely and ensuring its survival. They also cross over hard with the sort of people who are into real science and quite skeptical but just fascinated by fringe stuff, who would quickly find they couldn't easily dismiss this - so you'd have a double threat. The sort of people who are into conspiracies won't be convincing themselves monsters <em>don't</em> exist, either.</p><p></p><p>So this is a real problem, and any modern horror RPG that doesn't address it isn't credible/plausible, it's just ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.</p><p></p><p>You need a solution - either magic and monsters inherently mess with cellphones and similar technologies (people will still manage to get film footage, but that'll be a lot tougher and easier to contain) - or you indeed have some kind of widespread conspiracy to suppress this information. Or the monsters are just incredibly rare, like vanishingly rare (which is rarer than they are in any modern horror RPG I can think of).</p><p></p><p>As for the rest, instead of trying to look at corner cases where cellphones don't work - which let's be real, get rarer and rarer, and are far rarer in much of Europe than they are in the US, you need to accept they will work in a lot of cases, and think about how that's going to impact things. The more you contrive reasons for them not to work, the more you weaken the verisimilitude of a modern-day set horror.</p><p></p><p>Also satellite phones exist and are only getting more common, and whilst non-explorer PCs are unlikely to start with them, if you're running any kind of campaign, that will be one of the first things PCs buy - and they are not sufficiently expensive so as to be unaffordable.</p><p></p><p>This is good for cellphones, but modern portable lightning technology has advanced insanely in the last decade or so, thanks to LEDs and better batteries.</p><p></p><p>Any character can buy torches, lanterns, super-powerful megalights and so on for less than they used to, very easily (from Amazon or wherever), which are brighter and last far longer (and may well be much sturdier) than the lights of say, 30 years ago.</p><p>That again is something to be dealt with and accepted in modern-day set horror. For one-shots you might be able to dodge it by people being unprepared, but with campaigns? Nah. You have to accept that you can't use darkness the same way in 2023 that you could in 1993, let alone 1953.</p><p></p><p>This is a ridiculously overplayed and weaksauce device in modern horror and thrillers, and <em>should be avoided</em>. People almost always look at their phone when they get a call, and whilst they might screen it, in most real-life situations where anything remotely important is happening, the caller will immediately text them - that's the nonsense in a lot of movies, which rings really false - where people don't text when a phonecall isn't picked up. We all know from accidents and illness and so on that people do text.</p><p></p><p>And people look at their texts all the time. People look at their texts at inappropriate times even. Pretending like people don't see texts and don't pick up phones is like 50%-90% as desperate as saying "your phone inexplicably doesn't work".</p><p></p><p>Smart phones do change this equation considerably, because only <em>irrational</em> skeptics will completely not believe you. Anyone who is even basically rational is going to consider things a little more seriously like, would you have been able to fake this? Do you have a motive to fake this? Is it even possible to fake this on a budget of less than tens of millions? Especially when you're in the picture doing the Oliver Queen's grave meme over the dead body of a werewolf or a mi-go or whatever. And it's a video, not a single picture.</p><p></p><p>You have to be real about this if you want to bring the players with you - people will believe reasonable video evidence. But we have cellphones, and we know their real limits - and one of those is that getting footage of quick-moving stuff or sudden events is hard and not reliable. If there's a dead or severely injured werewolf, and you aren't running away from it, you will be able to get good footage of it - if you stake a vampire and it turns to dust, you may well be able to get good footage of that. But if something leaps out and attacks the group, it's much less likely anyone will have any real, useful footage of that from a cellphone camera.</p><p></p><p>Certainly I agree that it's not impossible to run horror set in the modern day, but if you lean out, and towards trying to make stuff that should work, not work, you're not really agreeing with your own thesis, instead of you're just finding ways to negate modernity. Instead lean in, I'd suggest - don't make phones not work, but do make them capable of being screwed with by the same sort of magic and supernatural shenanigans that might have made a face appear in a mirror or blood from a statue - not being disabled, but using them as another angle to mess with PCs.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9229390, member: 18"] This is where your essay breaks down and ceases being useful, I think. If monsters existed and it was possible to record them, they'd be recorded, and people would not easily dismiss them. The gambits you suggest would work about once each - "SFX fake" and "viral promotion for horror movie" - they're fine for some one-off deal - they don't work for a campaign-based setting. As for people ignore scientific evidence, sure, but that's a huge problem for cover-ups, not a benefit. When we're getting ever-increasing (and it would be ever-increasing) and consistent footage (and it would be consistent, too) of supernatural beings and happenings, the "I want to believe!" crowd would be both be: A) right for once in their lives so even more insistent than normal and B) very effective in disseminating that information widely and ensuring its survival. They also cross over hard with the sort of people who are into real science and quite skeptical but just fascinated by fringe stuff, who would quickly find they couldn't easily dismiss this - so you'd have a double threat. The sort of people who are into conspiracies won't be convincing themselves monsters [I]don't[/I] exist, either. So this is a real problem, and any modern horror RPG that doesn't address it isn't credible/plausible, it's just ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away. You need a solution - either magic and monsters inherently mess with cellphones and similar technologies (people will still manage to get film footage, but that'll be a lot tougher and easier to contain) - or you indeed have some kind of widespread conspiracy to suppress this information. Or the monsters are just incredibly rare, like vanishingly rare (which is rarer than they are in any modern horror RPG I can think of). As for the rest, instead of trying to look at corner cases where cellphones don't work - which let's be real, get rarer and rarer, and are far rarer in much of Europe than they are in the US, you need to accept they will work in a lot of cases, and think about how that's going to impact things. The more you contrive reasons for them not to work, the more you weaken the verisimilitude of a modern-day set horror. Also satellite phones exist and are only getting more common, and whilst non-explorer PCs are unlikely to start with them, if you're running any kind of campaign, that will be one of the first things PCs buy - and they are not sufficiently expensive so as to be unaffordable. This is good for cellphones, but modern portable lightning technology has advanced insanely in the last decade or so, thanks to LEDs and better batteries. Any character can buy torches, lanterns, super-powerful megalights and so on for less than they used to, very easily (from Amazon or wherever), which are brighter and last far longer (and may well be much sturdier) than the lights of say, 30 years ago. That again is something to be dealt with and accepted in modern-day set horror. For one-shots you might be able to dodge it by people being unprepared, but with campaigns? Nah. You have to accept that you can't use darkness the same way in 2023 that you could in 1993, let alone 1953. This is a ridiculously overplayed and weaksauce device in modern horror and thrillers, and [I]should be avoided[/I]. People almost always look at their phone when they get a call, and whilst they might screen it, in most real-life situations where anything remotely important is happening, the caller will immediately text them - that's the nonsense in a lot of movies, which rings really false - where people don't text when a phonecall isn't picked up. We all know from accidents and illness and so on that people do text. And people look at their texts all the time. People look at their texts at inappropriate times even. Pretending like people don't see texts and don't pick up phones is like 50%-90% as desperate as saying "your phone inexplicably doesn't work". Smart phones do change this equation considerably, because only [I]irrational[/I] skeptics will completely not believe you. Anyone who is even basically rational is going to consider things a little more seriously like, would you have been able to fake this? Do you have a motive to fake this? Is it even possible to fake this on a budget of less than tens of millions? Especially when you're in the picture doing the Oliver Queen's grave meme over the dead body of a werewolf or a mi-go or whatever. And it's a video, not a single picture. You have to be real about this if you want to bring the players with you - people will believe reasonable video evidence. But we have cellphones, and we know their real limits - and one of those is that getting footage of quick-moving stuff or sudden events is hard and not reliable. If there's a dead or severely injured werewolf, and you aren't running away from it, you will be able to get good footage of it - if you stake a vampire and it turns to dust, you may well be able to get good footage of that. But if something leaps out and attacks the group, it's much less likely anyone will have any real, useful footage of that from a cellphone camera. Certainly I agree that it's not impossible to run horror set in the modern day, but if you lean out, and towards trying to make stuff that should work, not work, you're not really agreeing with your own thesis, instead of you're just finding ways to negate modernity. Instead lean in, I'd suggest - don't make phones not work, but do make them capable of being screwed with by the same sort of magic and supernatural shenanigans that might have made a face appear in a mirror or blood from a statue - not being disabled, but using them as another angle to mess with PCs. [/QUOTE]
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