D&D General Unpopular Opinion?: D&D is a terrible venue for horror

[TheSword]

To expand on my thought

Horror demands a certain level of vulnerability; physical, mental, emotional, etc. that the monster can exploit. Truly good horror allows the hero to overcome their weakness and thereby win through determination and sacrifice. It is literally winning the staring contest with the Abyss.

D&D PCs however, have fewer vulnerabilities in the traditional sense. AC and HP shield them somewhat physically, and mental and emotional elements are really determined by the player's RP and how comfortable they are with showing vulnerability. Add to the fact your typical PC is competent at combat, has access to magical effects like healing, divination, and teleportation, and then put it in the meta-context of a bunch of people sitting around a table eating snacks and rolling dice, good horror in D&D tends to work only in short bursts, not extended drags.

Dark fantasy is more just traditional fantasy with horror overlay. The heroes are powerful, maybe not as powerful as their enemies, but powerful enough to be a thorn in their side. The heroes do suffer setbacks, have tension and yes, even horrific moments, but its viewed from the lens of someone who has seen darkness and can face it.

Curse of Strahd is Dark Fantasy. Sure, Strahd is way more powerful than the PCs for most of the game and there are clearly elements of tension and horror in it (The Abbot, Old Bonegrinder, even the priest's son) but at no point is the group really facing true horror; there is no "naked and afraid" moment and it is quite possible to survive that adventure without suffering any greater trauma than any PC gets adventuring. Your just doing in classic Gothic environs and against classic horror monsters. It borrows a lot from horror, but rarely is it actually horror itself.

Perhaps instead of seeing HP and AC as a barrier to PC death, try looking at HP and AC as a way of tracking the physical trauma that the PC endures.

I agree that vulnerability is important but there are several methods of creating this...

• Isolation
• Removal of safe places
• Inability to effectively hurt or stop your foes
• An enemy that seems to know your tactics and weaknesses and effectively hits them.
• An enemy that hits you when you are not expecting it, or when you feel safe.
• An enemy that hits you when it’s least convenient.
• An enemy that defies And confounds you expectations.
• An inability to predict or use logic to anticipate outcomes.
• The doomsday clock that takes control of pace away from PCs.

I’ll give a few examples of how this occurred when I DMd curse of Strahd.

1. When the PCs travelled through the mists it was clear that they were not in the real world... they wandered for what seemed like hours in thick fog eventually having to sleep up against a tree, the trees were far too twisted to find rest in the branches, and the mist seemed to make the iron-hard bark-heavy branches and damp earth resist kindling. Bestial grunts and howls in the night made it clear that there were things out there. The atmosphere was a very isolated “we’re not in Kansas anymore” mood. From a thematics point of view it was accentuated by candlelight on the table, blue mood lighting, an atomizer picking up the blue light of night and the Syrinscape sound system. One player said this opening scene in the Barovia set the tone for whole campaign for him.

2. When crossing a bridge, hurrying to reach the next settlement before nightfall, the PCs met farmers hurrying the other way. The farmers stoped and said the PCs were mad for heading into the woods that they were dangerous. They asked if the PCs had silver weapons because there were said to be wolves that walked as men to the west that could only be harmed with silver. When the PCs said they didn’t the farmers said “good” and transformed into werewolves. The PCs were at first suspicious, then reassured by the conversation, then horrified that they’d admitted their own weakness.

3. Night was a doomsday clock. When the party were caught at night after the werewolf attack they started to come across individual zombies, a couple at first then more. It became clear with an attack as they tried to rest that the woods were teeming with them and they seemed to be drawn to the warmth and meat of the party. Take a leaf out of The Walking Dead and make sure all zombies have a bite attack and change slam attacks to piercing. The PCs had to press on to the destination through the night resources slowly depleting until they saw the lights of the winery ahead. Only to find it under attack by a different foe.

Horror rpg adventuring is about the setup and the buy in from players willing to be scared. Sure the party wizard could have taken rope trick and undermined all this. However, the session zero made it clear for the players to bring along characters that were flawed and willing to be scared. That was the deal. They stuck to it, I stuck to it the campaign worked. It was without doubt my most satisfying and enjoyable campaign to DM. No characters died, that wasn’t what made it work.

Another leaf out the Walking Dead book was to play in a world without zombie films. Essentially for The Walking Dead to work the characters can’t have been brought up on Zombie Slasher films, so there is a conceit that this doesn’t exist. The player characters will be built on the conceit that they had never heard of vampires, werewolves or zombies. They just hadn’t come across those things in their careers.

 

[TheSword]

D&D PCs however, have fewer vulnerabilities in the traditional sense. AC and HP shield them somewhat physically, and mental and emotional elements are really determined by the player's RP and how comfortable they are with showing vulnerability. Add to the fact your typical PC is competent at combat, has access to magical effects like healing, divination, and teleportation, and then put it in the meta-context of a bunch of people sitting around a table eating snacks and rolling dice, good horror in D&D tends to work only in short bursts, not extended drags.

Dark fantasy is more just traditional fantasy with horror overlay. The heroes are powerful, maybe not as powerful as their enemies, but powerful enough to be a thorn in their side. The heroes do suffer setbacks, have tension and yes, even horrific moments, but its viewed from the lens of someone who has seen darkness and can face it.

There are many horror films where the protagonists are competent. Not all horror has to have three gormless teenagers wandering the woods for the first time ever.

Many horror films have technology in them, which is not so different from magic. In CoS you are encouraged to add magical effects to existing spells to warp and twist them.

If the PCs think they can face the darkness then you’ve given them far too much information about what that darkness is. They need to be rudely disabused.

When your party thinks they’ve ‘defeated’ one area, it turns out that that foe was the only thing keeping the coven of devil worshippers in check and now because of the PCs actions the new town leadership is organizing their only safe place into something resembling the third Reik. Worse, they’re using the threat of the PCs (unknown to them) to cow the townsfolk into obedience.

 

[MGibster]

D&D was not designed to be a horror game. I can use my screwdriver to drive a nail into a piece of wood, to pry something open, or to poke a hole in something but that doesn't mean it does the job just as well as a hammer, a pry bar, or a hole punch tool.

Dungeons & Dragons immerses you in a world of adventure. Explore ancient ruins and deadly dungeons. Battle monsters while searching for legendary treasures. Gain experience and power as you trek across uncharted lands with your companions.

Call of Cthulhu is a tabletop role playing game based upon the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft. It is a game of secrets, mysteries, and horror.

It's not a question of whether or not you can use D&D to run a horror game. You can. But the OP's opinion is that D&D is a terrible game if your intent is create an atmosphere of horror on the grounds that the rules as written don't support it, the PCs are too competent, and that D&D characters don't have a lot to lose emotionally for horror to mean much. And I agree with my esteemed colleague Professor Reynard on all accounts.

Horror is about creating an atmosphere of dread, revulsion, and fear in the audience and D&D wasn't designed to provide that kind of experience for its players. Games like Call of Cthulhu, Chill, Esoterrorist, and Alien were created with mechanics specifically designed for a horror setting. Call of Cthulhu has it's infamous Sanity mechanic, Alien has it's stress die, and in Esoterrorist the players are forced to decide how many of their resources they want to spend to achieve success not knowing what they might need in the future.

D&D just doesn't have anything like that to support a horror game. And when players are routinely accustomed to fighting Ilithids, wights, ghosts, and all manner of creatures it's just routine and it's tough setting up an atmosphere appropriate to horror. So, yes, you can do it. You're just using a screwdriver when you might be better off with a pry bar.

 

[MGibster]

There are many horror films where the protagonists are competent. Not all horror has to have three gormless teenagers wandering the woods for the first time ever.

D&D characters are beyond competent as they typically possess fantastical abilities. Turn undead, healing, eldritch blast, and rage are just a few of the superhuman abilities D&D characters possess at first level. At that point we might have some horror trappings in the game but we're not really running a horror game here we're running high fantasy.

 

[TheSword]

D&D was not designed to be a horror game. I can use my screwdriver to drive a nail into a piece of wood, to pry something open, or to poke a hole in something but that doesn't mean it does the job just as well as a hammer, a pry bar, or a hole punch tool.





It's not a question of whether or not you can use D&D to run a horror game. You can. But the OP's opinion is that D&D is a terrible game if your intent is create an atmosphere of horror on the grounds that the rules as written don't support it, the PCs are too competent, and that D&D characters don't have a lot to lose emotionally for horror to mean much. And I agree with my esteemed colleague Professor Reynard on all accounts.

Horror is about creating an atmosphere of dread, revulsion, and fear in the audience and D&D wasn't designed to provide that kind of experience for its players. Games like Call of Cthulhu, Chill, Esoterrorist, and Alien were created with mechanics specifically designed for a horror setting. Call of Cthulhu has it's infamous Sanity mechanic, Alien has it's stress die, and in Esoterrorist the players are forced to decide how many of their resources they want to spend to achieve success not knowing what they might need in the future.

D&D just doesn't have anything like that to support a horror game. And when players are routinely accustomed to fighting Ilithids, wights, ghosts, and all manner of creatures it's just routine and it's tough setting up an atmosphere appropriate to horror. So, yes, you can do it. You're just using a screwdriver when you might be better off with a pry bar.

We’re probably just arguing crosswise here at this point, but I would say the extremely popular and long running Ravenloft product line directly contradicts this claim. Along with the fact that Curse of Strahd was probably the best received Campaign to date.

Many Racenloft products discuss the horror for ttrpg far better than I can describe here. If you had read these you would know that these horror elements are not just a skin or texture pack for the game but are fundamentally built into plot, encounter design and access to resources.

You can absolutely introduce sanity into D&D using D&D rules, along with corruption and other horror elements. These have all existed in earlier editions and are present in one form or another in 5e.

 

[Ace]

Another leaf out the Walking Dead book was to play in a world without zombie films. Essentially for The Walking Dead to work the characters can’t have been brought up on Zombie Slasher films, so there is a conceit that this doesn’t exist. The player characters will built on the conceit that they had never heard of vampires, werewolves or zombies. They just hadn’t come across those things in their careers.

Its not bad for a game I guess and its kind of OK for the TV show .

The thing that bothers me though is zombie films have been part of popular culture IRL or 50 years by the time the TV show, 80 for horror buffs . As for Werewolves and Vampires , we have lore from Ancient Rome! Its like that line in Rick and Morty "what Vampires are real?" "Who knew, oh right all of humanity for hundreds of years now."

You can even assume that if there are methods to kill them , they'd end up as rumors, innuendo at least even in Ravenloft.

What does work is subbing out 'well known monsters for really weird ones. This might not give a Gothic feel to the game but an invasion of horrors from the Far Realms could plausibly be far more mysterious than monsters that exists in nearly every culture across time.

 

[MGibster]

We’re probably just arguing crosswise here at this point, but I would say the extremely popular and long running Ravenloft product line directly contradicts this claim. Along with the fact that Curse of Strahd was probably the best received Campaign to date.

Many Racenloft products discuss the horror for ttrpg far better than I can describe here. If you had read these you would know that these horror elements are not just a skin or texture pack for the game but are fundamentally built into plot, encounter design and access to resources.

The original Ravenloft is my favorite A&D module, I've run Ravenloft campaigns for 2nd and 3rd edition, and I've run Curse of Strahd twice for 5th edition. Given my experience with these products, and my love of them, I feel as though I'm making an informed opinion. I'm happy to run D&D with some horror trappings in it, but if I want to run a horror game I'm using something else.

 

[TheSword]

D&D characters are beyond competent as they typically possess fantastical abilities. Turn undead, healing, eldritch blast, and rage are just a few of the superhuman abilities D&D characters possess at first level. At that point we might have some horror trappings in the game but we're not really running a horror game here we're running high fantasy.

Those abilities can be part of the horror.

When the healing that preciously completely remove signs of damage now leaves horrible scars. When the cleric casts revivify the character now has a shadow behind their eyes and has seen things no mortal creature should have seen.

When the warlocks Eldritch blast now takes the form of a disembodied screaming skull and the power they have always drawn upon now feels erratic. Is this linked to the tug to the south west They feel every time they cast a spell.

When the cleric turns the undead foes and the creatures disappear into the fog snarling and calling others of their kind, which answer back from all direction.

When the barbarians rage seems harder to let go and when activated the barbarian can smell and sometimes see the blood pumping through their enemies veins. They feel an almost overwhelming urge to sink their teeth into their foe to watch the blood flow.

PC abilities do not run counter to horror, they supplement it!

 

[TheSword]

Its not bad for a game I guess and its kind of OK for the TV show .

The thing that bothers me though is zombie films have been part of popular culture IRL or 50 years by the time the TV show, 80 for horror buffs . As for Werewolves and Vampires , we have lore from Ancient Rome! Its like that line in Rick and Morty "what Vampires are real?" "Who knew, oh right all of humanity for hundreds of years now."

You can even assume that if there are methods to kill them , they'd end up as rumors, innuendo at least even in Ravenloft.

What does work is subbing out 'well known monsters for really weird ones. This might not give a Gothic feel to the game but an invasion of horrors from the Far Realms could plausibly be far more mysterious than monsters that exists in nearly every culture across time.

That sounds a good way of solving the issue of player knowledge / character knowledge if it’s a problem.

For us it’s more satisfying to imagine you’re seeing a walking corpse for the first time and roleplay that horror.

Incidentally, if people don’t want to do that, the 2nd Ed Van Richten’s guides are a brilliant resource for playing on character assumptions about abilities and weaknesses. Lots of options in there that are easily adapted for 5e.

 

[TheSword]

The original Ravenloft is my favorite A&D module, I've run Ravenloft campaigns for 2nd and 3rd edition, and I've run Curse of Strahd twice for 5th edition. Given my experience with these products, and my love of them, I feel as though I'm making an informed opinion. I'm happy to run D&D with some horror trappings in it, but if I want to run a horror game I'm using something else.

Then you’ll know 2nd Ed Ravenloft didn’t see the horror element as just a skin and trappings of the game but a fundamental shift in the way the games were played.

It seems odd to say D&D can’t work for horror because of lack of Sanity rules when the d&d campaign systems you played had rules for sanity, fear and corruption?