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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8251971" data-attributes="member: 86653">It's a context thing. You watch a horror movie and they have jump scares. That scares you personally. But at no time when watching a horror movie are you personally afraid for your life. The movie might get to you and make you paranoid or worry overmuch about serial killers (or whatever) for a few hours or days. Or give you bad dreams. But that's it. Because it's not you, it's the character in the fiction that's in danger. And people are generally smart enough to avoid horror fiction specifically about the things that properly bother them, i.e. their fears, phobias, and traumas.You get a vicarious thrill through watching someone else in a fictional situation be afraid for their (fictional) life. That's horror gaming also. The split between character and player is absolute. It has to be. The player gets a vicarious thrill from watching and controlling their character in a horror situation...at no point should the focus shift from the character being scared to the player being scared. The scares and monsters you put into the game should never be designed to scare the player at the table. Again, violating the safety tools. Real people do all kinds of weird and wild and unpredictable things when they are scared.Vicarious thrills, absolutely what horror gaming is about. Trying to frighten and traumatize your players? GTFO.In part, yes. But it all depends on context. The example of parasitic spiders hits more potential problems than a generic "loss of self". You hit on loss of self, arachnophobia, loss of bodily control, bodily autonomy, rape, etc. That's why safety tools exist. To avoid hurting people. Because that's not the point. Safe vicarious thrills is the point. So one player might be fine with those parasitic spiders, but another has arachnophobia and another has a solid nope on loss of bodily control. You use safety tools to find out where people's lines are so that you don't cross them. You use things like the X card for when something no one thought of comes up and is a problem.Exactly.It depends. There are different kinds of boundaries. The ones that matter to this topic are what safety tools call lines and veils. A line is like a line in the sand. You do not cross that line, period. Crossing that line is a violation of trust. I tell you this particular thing really bothers me, then you do that...just to bother me. It's a violation of trust that ends games and friendships. Don't do that. Other things are not as hard and fast, like veils. You don't like that thing being the focus of the story so you don't want it in your face, keep it veiled and it's okay. Generally everything not covered by lines and veils is fair game. Things will come up in play that no one thought of, that's what the X card is for.Again, vicarious thrills on behalf of your character is the goal. That's horror gaming. The DM scaring the players is not.It depends on the person and the context. Some people use gaming as therapy, some don't. Some use horror in general as therapy, some don't. Some want to brush up against their traumas as a way of dealing with them, others want to avoid their traumas at all costs but still enjoy a nice vicarious thrill from engaging in horror media, whether films, stories, RPGs, or whatever.The Fate Horror Toolkit and Consent in Gaming are both great resources.</blockquote>

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