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

[Remathilis]

In the Call of Cthulhu story, the good guys win. Cthulhu is banished/sent back.

Nightmare on Elm Street movies - Good guys win in quite a few of the movies. Yes, many die, but usually the monster is beaten in the dream world.

The original Dracula novel - good guys win.

The Walking Dead - tragedy abounds, but the good guys often win a local victory.

All of these are certainly horror and the good guys do win.

Agreed. Horror is not always a classical tragedy; there is a reason one of the main tropes of moden horror is "survivor girl".

 

[Remathilis]

You could build that kind of adventure using the D&D rules, but unless you tweak the rules and assumptions of the game and get your players to buy into those changes, you're still not going to run a horror story, because your players might just decide 'naw, I'm just going to take the Crossbow Expert feat and modify my crossbow to fire wooden stakes, and we can beat Strahd that way'. You might want to tell Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the mechanics of D&D ensure you'll only end up telling Steven Sommers's Van Helsing.

Which basically is my point: without extensive retooling, D&D ends up more Castlevania than Silent Hill.

 

[MGibster]

Well, no rules can create an atmosphere of dread, revulsion, and fear in the players. Such RPG rules are not for the players: rules are for the player characters. No page in a book can make a player feel anything.

Rules can support the creation of that atmosphere which is why those arguing in favor of D&D being good for horror games sometimes bring up the special rules applied in the Ravenloft setting for 2nd edition AD&D.

 

[MGibster]

All of these are certainly horror and the good guys do win.

You are correct. And I quite honestly tend to prefer horror stories where the protagonist are competent. In Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box, the protagonist, an aging rock star named Jusand Coyne, deals with an insidious curse and haunting. He's not an expert on the occult nor does he have any supernatural powers, he's just a regular person who behaves in a competent manner as he attempts to deal with this unfortunate situation he finds himself in.

And you're right about the examples you used. Dracula for instance. Many adaptations treat Jonathan Harker as a wimp of a secondary character but in the original story dude whips out a naughty word kurki and slashes Dracula's throat. It's been a while but I think he served in the Britsh army as some point.

And then there's A Nightmare on Elmstreet and again we Nancy who is just a normal teenage girl with no special powers or abilities. She figures out about Freddy and comes up with a way to defeat him. Still a horror story.

And then we have The Walking Dead, and, man, sometimes the characters are really hit with the idiot stick by the writers and those are often the episodes I like least. Dale's death in season two was spectacularly stupid but I understand the actor wanted to be written out of the show after his friend was ousted from his producer position.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There are lots of videogames what mixtures action and horror, for example Clive Baker's Jericho. Other example is Metropolis, the plane from "Kult: Lost Divinity".

Horror isn't only about to face the monsters, but to fear unpleasant surprises what sometimes, or usually, happen, or worry to leave a safe zone because the characters need more food and supplies for the rest of the survivors in the camp. Horror is when the players are tempted with tainted powers with dangerous side effects, or when you start to see the ghosts of the people who you couldn't to save. Horror is when players notice a direct attack is a serious mistake. Horror is the fear to be infected by a bite.

 

[TheSword]

The reality is that some people prefer other systems and as a result try to say horror isn’t possible in this system... it mystifies me why they can’t acknowledge both.

There are also attempts here to try and apply a very narrow and clearly non-standard definition of horror to try and justify why horror isn’t possible in D&D.

• Claims the PCs can’t be competent
• Claims the PCs can’t win
• Claims the adventures have to be futile/insignificant
• Claims horror will be ruined by spells, or magic items, or turn undead... or even barbarian rage
• Claims the rules can’t be adjusted (even when there are written optional rules)
• Claims that sanity mechanics are needed (even though they exist optionally in D&D)

Do not listen to these claims, they are simply not true for any normal definition of horror. Don’t listen to people who believe they can tell you the ‘true’ form of D&D.

Nobody who is interested in giving a 5e horror campaign a go (possibly because that’s their groups go-to system) should be put off by what’s been claimed in this thread. There are lots of great tips from people here to build a horror campaign.. As I said, our horror campaign was the most satisfying i have ran.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The reality is that some people prefer other systems and as a result try to say horror isn’t possible in this system... it mystifies me why they can’t acknowledge both.

There are also attempts here to try and apply a very narrow and clearly non-standard definition of horror to try and justify why horror isn’t possible in D&D.

• Claims the PCs can’t be competent
• Claims the PCs can’t win
• Claims the adventures have to be futile/insignificant
• Claims horror will be ruined by spells, or magic items, or turn undead... or even barbarian rage
• Claims the rules can’t be adjusted (even when there are written optional rules)
• Claims that sanity mechanics are needed (even though they exist optionally in D&D)

Do not listen to these claims, they are simply not true for any normal definition of horror. Don’t listen to people who believe they can tell you the ‘true’ form of D&D.

Nobody who is interested in giving a 5e horror campaign a go (possibly because that’s their groups go-to system) should be put off by what’s been claimed in this thread. There are lots of great tips from people here to build a horror campaign.. As I said, our horror campaign was the most satisfying i have ran.

So, I've read your posts on how you do horror in 5e, and they're good advice but have almost nothing at all to do with using the 5e system to do horror. Most of it is entirely system agnostic. The points you do make that touch on the 5e system are all about how to change that system to facilitate horror, which appears to implicitly acknowledge the premise of the OP. Can you make an argument that shows how specific 5e mechanics lend themselves to enabling horror? That would be the argument that makes your point, not that mood lighting, good soundscapes, and use of system agnostic tropes make for good horror.

To do the opposite, and make the mechanical case against horror, I'll point out what's already been said about PC's power levels being difficult to challenge, but I'll focus on the combat engine more closely. The 5e combat engine is a detail oriented, systemic approach to combat. It breaks a combat into clean, clear chunks where things are rather clinically resolved. Sure, you can punch up the descriptions, but you have to do this because the combat engine forces it. Because the combat system is so detail oriented, and outcomes are limited to those the engine produces (largely status effects and hp loss), you don't have a great breadth of either stakes or outcomes to play with. To generate scary monsters you have to make them very powerful relative to the PCs so that hits are dangerous, and you have to make them resistant to things the PCs have. This, within the engine, tends to generate frustration in the players because you have to go through the steps even when it's clear the numbers are weighted against them. This deflates tension and erodes the horror feeling by becoming mechanical, even with good narration. You can ignore the combat engine, if you want, but this, again, admits that the 5e system doesn't do horror well.

None of the above is to say that you cannot do horror in 5e, just that the nature of the system fights you when you do. You can use props and mood setting at the table to help overcome the system, as well as good pacing and use of horror tropes in play to also overcome the system's resistance. That you can do it doesn't actually show that 5e is a good system for horror or that the way that the system is structured doesn't actively act to counter horror in many regards. It just says that you've done the work and overcome the system. I do this quite often in my 5e games -- I like a lot of eldritch horror in my games so they all tend to get parts of it -- but I do it knowing how the system works and then work around that. Some of the other games I run have systems that don't get in the way of horror, and it's easier to lean into the horror tropes because the system enables them rather than fights against them. This is, largely, what the OP is talking about -- not if you can run a horror game in 5e, but if 5e's system works for horror or fights against it.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

If I want to run a Lords of the Rings game in 5e, I take the base 5e structure and change it like the now dead AiME system added.

If I want to run a more swords and sorcery campaign, then Primal Thule is a good modification.

Why is it “fighting the system” to apply a few modifications to fit a horror theme? The game is set up to run a high fantasy campaign in the forgotten realms or a similar place. If you want a more steam punk setting, then Ebberon.

Why is that such a chore to imagine for horror?

 

[Ovinomancer]

If I want to run a Lords of the Rings game in 5e, I take the base 5e structure and change it like the now dead AiME system added.

If I want to run a more swords and sorcery campaign, then Primal Thule is a good modification.

Why is it “fighting the system” to apply a few modifications to fit a horror theme? The game is set up to run a high fantasy campaign in the forgotten realms or a similar place. If you want a more steam punk setting, then Ebberon.

Why is that such a chore to imagine for horror?

You've changed the system, which is acknowledging that the system doesn't work for what you wanted to begin with. Does the existence of AiME say that 5e does Middle Earth well, or does it say that you have to change 5e to do Middle Earth well because 5e doesn't do it well on it's own?

I don't understand that argument that 5e does X well (in this case Horror, in AiME's case Middle Earth) when, in fact, you have to change 5e to remove or replace the parts that cause problems. That's not an argument for 5e doing that well, it's an argument for changing 5e until it does better.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

You've changed the system, which is acknowledging that the system doesn't work for what you wanted to begin with. Does the existence of AiME say that 5e does Middle Earth well, or does it say that you have to change 5e to do Middle Earth well because 5e doesn't do it well on it's own?

I don't understand that argument that 5e does X well (in this case Horror, in AiME's case Middle Earth) when, in fact, you have to change 5e to remove or replace the parts that cause problems. That's not an argument for 5e doing that well, it's an argument for changing 5e until it does better.

I think you are making the error of assuming that the full PHB set-up for FR play is 5e. I view that as the same as AiME on top of the SRD.