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

[Ovinomancer]

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.

As the combat section is in the basic rules, this isn't an argument against anything I've said. I'm not assuming anything from Forgotten Realms at all, I'm actually working entirely off the basic rules document.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

As the combat section is in the basic rules, this isn't an argument against anything I've said. I'm not assuming anything from Forgotten Realms at all, I'm actually working entirely off the basic rules document.

Exactly how does the combat section in the SRD help because it is an assumption of most horror that the protagonist is over-matched?

The SRD has no real flavor in it, so you customize it. How is the 5th level fighter going to win against the CR 12 Shoggoth? Straight D&D 5e Combat, but the DM does not balance encounters or make them winnable?

Add in Sanity and remove the FR assumption that fighting horrific creatures does not drive you mad? Fear?

Works fine for horror for me.

That is not fighting monsters, like Monster Hunter, Inc. or something. This is a Freddy Kruger monster that hauls you into a dreamworld and picks off party members one by one.

How does the 5e rules stop that?

 

[Myrdin Potter]

There is another sub-genre, more of a thriller instead of just plain horror. I think the Aliens movies are a type of horror film, but the aliens are going against well armed and motivated troops at time and it is more a jump scare fire fight feeling than supernatural horror.

That reminds me of the AD&D games I use to run when I started 40 years ago. Encounters, traps, etc. were not balanced and XP came from gold, so fighting was dumb and to be avoided.

I think it is important to remove yourself from the common tropes and think of how you would run a horror game instead of imagining how your current group would use their current characters and play a horror game.

I linked Eldritch Tales (first link in my post up above). Perfectly serviceable 0e core with a layer of settings rules for horror. Certainly D&D.

 

[jayoungr]

You've changed the system, which is acknowledging that the system doesn't work for what you wanted to begin with.

Do you consider using variant rules from the DMG to be changing the system?

 

[Voadam]

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.

The original post was not that 5e does not lend itself to enabling horror, it was that D&D is a "terrible game for trying to create a sense of horror" and that the "only time it is even remotely possible is at low levels."

I think that D&D is an absolutely terrible game for trying to create a sense of horror in play. The only time it is even remotely possible is at low levels where PC competence and survivability are very low (the cutoff depends on the edition), and even then it is a specific "I'm going to get killed" sort of tension rather than actual horror. Mechanically, the only way to induce horror in D&D is to break the standard rules (instant death instead of HP loss, for example, or something like domination that represents a loss of control). Ultimately, PCs are too competent and the mechanics too codified for real fear to creep in. And, on a different horror scale, D&D characters generally don't have enough to lose, emotionally, for personal horror to mean much.

The argument that D&D is terrible for horror is generally that PCs are competent and can generally take on monsters and win. Competent characters in horror media seem to be a counterargument.

If horror can be enabled system agnostically, to counter the OP all you need to show is that 5e or D&D in general does not stop you from doing that system agnostic horror.

If D&D characters are strong enough against balanced foes not to fear monsters, the answer of using monsters higher on the CR chart than the default balanced encounters seems an easy fix to put competent combat characters into the normal horror situation.

Using fewer monsters of higher CR would match the pacing of horror stories and typical specifically horror RPG adventures without making any changes from the core D&D rules.

I am a big fan of agnostic horror techniques and the Ravenloft style gothic horror as defined in the first 2e setting box. Mechanics are very low on the scale for me.

The two biggest D&D inhibitions for horror for me would probably be detect evil and teleport.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Do you consider using variant rules from the DMG to be changing the system?

No, which is why I haven't mentioned them. Clearly, altering the rest schedule puts more stress on the resources of the players, but those resources are still mostly extracted via the combat engine, which, to me, is a primary issue with resolving conflict in a way conducive to horror tropes. Again, it's not impossible, but the 5e system in general, and especially with the combat engine, works against the effort. You have to do extra work to overcome the system. To me, this is a hallmark of a system not well designed for that style of play.

And, to say it one more time, this isn't to say that you cannot do horror in 5e, but that you have to overcome certain things in the system to do it well. That's something you can do, clearly, but being able to overcome the system doesn't mean the system is good for horror. Some of the options help, but, if you ask me, the options that help the most to do horror are the success at a cost and fail forward options. These two allow for being able to layer on additional stress and more clearly evoke the descent into horror during a session. The typical failure condition for checks of no progress does little to no work to aid evoking a scene where consequences are imposed but the action keeps going forward. Note that success at cost isn't at all part of the combat engine and fail forward could only be used at the end of a combat, where it would stick out due to how combats in D&D tend to end with the removal of all hp.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The original post was not that 5e does not lend itself to enabling horror, it was that D&D is a "terrible game for trying to create a sense of horror" and that the "only time it is even remotely possible is at low levels."

It is -- the system does no work at all to enable horror. Any horror you bring to the table is, at best, orthogonal to the system and often in spite of it. You can do it, but 5e doesn't help at all.

The argument that D&D is terrible for horror is generally that PCs are competent and can generally take on monsters and win. Competent characters in horror media seem to be a counterargument.

If horror can be enabled system agnostically, to counter the OP all you need to show is that 5e or D&D in general does not stop you from doing that system agnostic horror.

If D&D characters are strong enough against balanced foes not to fear monsters, the answer of using monsters higher on the CR chart than the default balanced encounters seems an easy fix to put competent combat characters into the normal horror situation.

Using fewer monsters of higher CR would match the pacing of horror stories and typical specifically horror RPG adventures without making any changes from the core D&D rules.

I am a big fan of agnostic horror techniques and the Ravenloft style gothic horror as defined in the first 2e setting box. Mechanics are very low on the scale for me.

The two biggest D&D inhibitions for horror for me would probably be detect evil and teleport.

I disagree that the only thing you have to do is show that you can do system agnostic horror in 5e to prove 5e works against horror. Setting mood lighting and having a good soundtrack or using a creepy voice are all system agnostic things that you can do that don't at all show 5e isn't bad at horror. The only measure of 5e being bad a horror is to look at when you use the system -- does it enable, not matter, or fight against what you're trying to do. You point to two specific spells as inhibition to horror, and I rather disagree with your choices. Being able to detect evil can be a great enabler of horror, or it could cut against it, depending on what tropes you're trying to enact in the game. Teleport is a better example because it does short circuit horror tropes that require the PC to be in danger and unable to easily escape. To me, one of the biggest problems in the spell section against horror are the attack spells, in general, alongside healing spells. These enable PCs to actively confront and fight horrors or mitigate encounters with horrors. Even if you're working a deep psychological horror, or one that impacts bystanders and allies, the ability to fight effectively is empowering and that cuts against a number of horror tropes. Usually, in horror, to be able to fight effectively against the horror requires that the protagonists have already made a costly sacrifice or two. Combat spells are things you already know, which means, for those tropes to work, you have to modify the game so that they don't work as well, either by changing how spells work or specifically adding resistances to the things that are doing the horror. And you're still saddles with the granular combat engine.

I wonder if those that think that 5e is good for horror have much experience with other systems with a more narrative bent that tend to do horror pretty well. Not doing horror well isn't a knock against 5e -- it wasn't built to do so, and you can work around it with effort, so it's not that big of a deal.

 

[jayoungr]

Clearly, altering the rest schedule puts more stress on the resources of the players, but those resources are still mostly extracted via the combat engine, which, to me, is a primary issue with resolving conflict in a way conducive to horror tropes.

There are more variant rules than just alternate systems for rest and healing. Sanity tracking, for example, is a variant rule in the DMG.

Any horror you bring to the table is, at best, orthogonal to the system

You frame that as a bug, but I would say that the ability to bring in a wide variety of "orthogonal" story modes is a feature.

 

[Coroc]

There is at least one horror scene in Jackson's LotR movies. It's no coincidence that it involves only the weakest protagonists - the hobbits, the undead-like Nazgul, and no combat.

try to get a hold on Bakshis 80s version of this scene, it is even better.

 

[Coroc]

D&D 5e is difficult for horror, as how posters above already wrote, it is to abstract.
The most innerving lingering "debuff" is the exhaustion mechanic.
A good way to reinforce horror elements is, to introduce a little house rule and make some beasts needing special material or magic weapons to be hit at all again, thereby making these weapons hard to get.