On Running a Horror Game

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

While there are things horror games will have in common, different games/settings will have tonal differences. Alien is different from The Body Snatchers is different from Hellraiser is different from The Stand ...

My inclination based on the name is to suggest you go read you some Manly Wade Wellman.

Wellman's great, but not particularly scary. Old Gods of Appalachia has a podcast that's probably a must-listen before running the game.

King and Bradbury have a lot of great rural horror stories as well.

 

[billd91]

Go with subtle creepy stuff -- the travelers go past an abandoned farmstead in Appalachia and see that someone has disturbed the local family graveyard, digging up the corpses of the young children buried there -- and then don't explain it. Not knowing what the hell is going on is a lot scarier than someone opening up an RPG bestiary, pointing to a picture, and saying "you see that. Roll for initiative."

Definitely. Lack of solid information (particularly meta game information like stats) is a big help in horror. Descriptions that evoke senses rather than definitive labels works better - something the AD&D era Ravenloft adventures used to encourage. You don't have werewolves sniffing around outside your door, you have some kind of snuffling sound and a low growl. It's about letting the players' imaginations fill in the gaps they don't know. Let them imagine their worst case scenarios.

 

[Tonguez]

It's been a while, but my experiences in CoC were that there were characters who Just Didn't Want to Know, and characters who Had to Know Everything, in the same parties. That didn't, that I remember, damage play much. I'm not sure how relevant CoC is to Old Gods of Appalachia, though--I'm unfamiliar with the game or its source material.

I’ve not seen the game but I have listened to the podcast and they do have a very CoC feel to them

 

[Umbran]

Make sure the players know that within the framework of the campaign, their PCs are supposed to confront the horror...

Confronting the antagonist is an expectation of adventure fiction. I'm not sure that's really a horror trope, though. In much horror, the hope is more about surviving, rather than confronting and beating the antagonist.

 

[MGibster]

First, I would hunt down Ken Hite's Nightmares of Mine, which is nothing but advice on how to run horror games. Barring that, an abridged version of his advice is in one or more editions of GURPS Horror.

I see you're also a man of culture with refined taste. I'm going to drag my GURPS: Horror book out of it's tomb and give it another read.

Not knowing what the hell is going on is a lot scarier than someone opening up an RPG bestiary, pointing to a picture, and saying "you see that. Roll for initiative."

One of the biggest problems a horror game can contend with is familiarity. It's tough to be scared of Cthulhu when you've got a cute little Cthulhu plushie on your couch. You can't just have Bella Lugosi's Dracula show up because he's about as scary as Seasame Street's Count these days. Yeah, dealing with the unknown or uncertainty is part of the horror.

 

[MGibster]

Confronting the antagonist is an expectation of adventure fiction. I'm not sure that's really a horror trope, though. In much horror, the hope is more about surviving, rather than confronting and beating the antagonist.

It would make for a fairly boring story if our protagonist didn't confront the danger. Ripley comes face-to-face with the alien, Ginny confronts Jason and tries to convince him that she's his mother, Nancy turns the tables on Freddy, Rosemary uncovers the truth about her baby, MacReady confronts the Thing, etc., etc. It's not much of a satisfying story if the protagonist doesn't have some sort of confrontation with the antagonist. Of course confronting and beating the antagonist are two different things. Sometimes the best you can hope for is survival. Sometimes survival's not on the table and the best you can hope for is to stop the antagonist.

 

[billd91]

Confronting the antagonist is an expectation of adventure fiction. I'm not sure that's really a horror trope, though. In much horror, the hope is more about surviving, rather than confronting and beating the antagonist.

Hard disagree. If the players are just surviving the horror of the scenario, they're not doing anything to fix it, stop it, or in some way resolve it. They might as well just run away as fast and far as they can, not read any books, do any research, or, really, anything. But confrontation doesn't have to be head-on and physical like a brawl or direct fight.
The horror genre of RPG pretty much depends on the PCs having the guts to try to do the right thing by ending the threat to themselves and others to the best of their ability.

 

[prabe]

Hard disagree. If the players are just surviving the horror of the scenario, they're not doing anything to fix it, stop it, or in some way resolve it. They might as well just run away as fast and far as they can, not read any books, do any research, or, really, anything. But confrontation doesn't have to be head-on and physical like a brawl or direct fight.

It's certainly not likely to be carefully calibrated to their level, the way the players might reasonably expect in modern D&D.

The horror genre of RPG pretty much depends on the PCs having the guts to try to do the right thing by ending the threat to themselves and others to the best of their ability.

This is plausibly a distinction between horror as a genre of authored fiction and horror as a genre of TRPG

 

[MGibster]

Hard disagree. If the players are just surviving the horror of the scenario, they're not doing anything to fix it, stop it, or in some way resolve it. They might as well just run away as fast and far as they can, not read any books, do any research, or, really, anything. But confrontation doesn't have to be head-on and physical like a brawl or direct fight.

I'm going to side with my esteemed colleague Dr. Umbran here. Sometimes the goal is to survive rather than solve the problem. I still think the PCs will need to confront the antagonist in some way, shape, or form, but it's not necessarily required that their goal is to defeat it and save the day. Their goal might simply be to make their way out of the haunted woods and that's fine.

 

[aramis erak]

1) Make certain they're onboard as a horror game, and which type: investigative? Elimination? Survival?
2) get them to care about their characters
3) telegraph many upcoming encounters ,,,
4) ... but not all are the bad guys. If every encounter is the evil, it's not horror, but lazy dungeon fantasy
5) roll in the open, let them see how dangerous it is
6) use the backstories
7) Describe, rather than label

It's perfectly fine to put a mundane deception "critter" (Scooby-doo style) in place of a genuine thing of horror, especially early on - the mix of some being real and some being hoaxes helps set a tone of caution. Unless the players or their characters are psychopaths.