“An in-depth examination of horror suitable for any role playing Game.”
That is the tag line on the front cover of the book and that is really a good description of the book. This book is all about horror role playing. It does not matter the system, it does not matter the game. This works because as the book says “Horror…. is not so much a genre as it is a goal”. The book discusses how to do horror. It is not a mechanics book at all. It is not tied in any way to any role playing game. It is just a complete discussion on how to play, run, and get better at a game that involves horror.
Nightmares of Mine is one hundred and seventy two page book. It is a smaller book in paper size then the typical role playing books. It is published by ICE Inc who is best known for their HARP line of books right now. The book is black and white and a bit light on art but the art is good and lay out well done. The book is written by Kenneth Hite who has become rather well known in the past few years.
The book is really does a great job of covering everything in a horror game. From the introduction to the bibliography and filmography everything revolves around horror. The book is set up very nicely. There are chapters and then many subsections for each chapter. Each sub section is like an essay on the topic. They are well written, in depth, and very informative.
The book starts with explaining what exactly horror is and why people would play it. One section I really like is horror defined by intent. This is further divided into three other things: dread, terror, and gore. Each is then described and detailed in nice detail. The completeness of the thoughts and writings is impressive.
This is a DM’s book unlike other DM’s books. The fact that it is generic system wise makes it so universally useful it is amazing. This has ideas for using horror as an encounter, a session, or even a campaign. This can be used in existing games or to construct a new campaign. The book is very versatile. It was written about six years ago and while we have seen many new and interesting books come out this book is as useful then as it is now.
The bibliography and filmography are small areas of the book but really important for anyone ho wants some great examples of the horror genre. There are over a dozen pages of novels, movies, TV shows, comics, and even role playing games presented here. The very best of them are asterisked. Though it is according to Kenneth Hite who himself says “Take my opinions with a grain of salt; anyone who ranks Edward Gorey as ‘better’ then Nathaniel Hawthorne obviously has something seriously wrong with him.”
This book is very useful for anyone wanting to run a horror game. It covers fantasy to sci fi to pulp and beyond. It discusses ways to use humor and how to deal with accidental humor and get back the horror tone. It discusses in detail how horror is different and how to use props and music to help set the game. It has advice for different amounts of supernatural and reality one wants in the game. Very importantly it also has some typical pitfalls of the horror game and how one would avoid them. Some are the Scooby do Syndrome (every story arc being the same), the Kolchak Syndrome (variety for varieties sake), abbot and Costello Syndrome (not taking the threats seriously), Darkside is Strong in This One (players beginning to act like the horrors they theoretically oppose), and the Plan Nine Syndrome (when nothing makes any sense). While the book is about horror I am amazed on how some of the advice and potential problems can be applied to a normal campaign.
I believe I will be a better DM for reading the book. I do not know to what degree this will be seen at the table but I learned a lot by reading it. Running a horror based game is not the easiest of games to run but this book does a nice job of helping one find a starting point and where to take their game. This book is as close to a must have RPG book as I have ever seen.
