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

[TheSword]

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.

... ... ...

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.

Woah woah woah. At no point did I say that D&D was specifically designed for horror or had mechanics that were better than other systems. I disagreed with the title and the premise of the thread:

I think that D&D is an absolutely terrible game for trying to create a sense of horror in play

I think it is a good system for modeling horror along with many other genres. I’d go so far as to say it’s a great system for customization and flexibility. It’s what means I can convert a WFRP adventure to 5e or a Pathfinder AP without breaking a sweat.

The plethora of advice on this thread from many other people goes well beyond mood lighting and sounds. It looks at encounter design, resource management, character background, plot and a host of framing methods. Yes these are in some cases system agnostic but they also have 90% of the impact of creating a horror canpaign.

You have already said that you don’t consider optional rules to be changing the system. So your claim that I’m suggesting changing 5e to something fundamentally different to 5e, is unfounded. If you want a specific list of things that within the 5e mechanics make the game suitable...

• Bounded accuracy makes the CR range of foes much wider without auto-kill or feeling like being punched in the face by yoghurt.
• Easily customizable monshers that allow for trivially easy conversion from earlier editions, other literature or mythology
• A wide range of optional rules: madness, rest variants, stat generation, sanity scores, fear, horror, chases, slow natural healing, massive damage etc.
• Milestone levelling that takes away the link between progression and killing.
• A magic item agnostic system that doesn’t expect every Pc to have a magic sword.
• The subclass system that allows easily customizable classes.
• The background system with easily customizable character motivations, flaws and flavors.
• Customizable Planar effects such as described in Curse of Strahd.

You seem to suggest that customizing the game stops it being 5e. I say that 5e is designed to customized and draw on 4 previous editions worth of resources. Let’s be clear that the changes suggested don’t go anywhere near as far as AIME which is still built on the 5e chassis and is still recognizably 5e. We’re not removing spells or fundamentally changing races or classes.

Remember once again... this was the bar that was set for this discussion...

I think that D&D is an absolutely terrible game for trying to create a sense of horror in play

I say that is an untenable position.

 

[Jd Smith1]

5e must be house-ruled to do horror well.

1) Give the object(s) of horror abilities which allow it to drain magical items, permanently excise feats and reduce attributes.

2) Give it attacks which do damage in such quantities that PCs will only survive one or two solid hits, and add a nature in which the beast feeds off its victims so as to get around the lame 'three saves to live' rule, if you haven't already junked that stinker.

3) Make it immune to almost (but not quite) anything in combat terms.

4) Make it preventable; IOW, if the PCs can do X, Y, and Z before specific time A, it will not manifest for B amount of time. Meanwhile, have the Dark Force's ordinary minions busy trying to move A and B up. This gives the PCs a slender thread of hope, while forcing them to play whack-a-mole on cultist plots, always running against the clock.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I suggested altering the standard game the same way that AiME did. Perfectly normal and what the SRD is for. Still 5e. Nope, has to be the standard.

I pointed out that there is nothing that says that encounters need to be balanced. Crickets.

Others have pointed out that the DMG has quite a few optional rules that fit a horror game. But those are not all good enough.

The combat system is pointed to as a main stumbling block but not why rolling a d20 to determine if you hit and then some other die for damage is bad for a horror game.

At a certain point, I cede the point to the ever ruling - you play D&D the way you want to.

 

[TheSword]

5e must be house-ruled to do horror well.

1) Give the object(s) of horror abilities which allow it to drain magical items, permanently excise feats and reduce attributes.

2) Give it attacks which do damage in such quantities that PCs will only survive one or two solid hits, and add a nature in which the beast feeds off its victims so as to get around the lame 'three saves to live' rule, if you haven't already junked that stinker.

3) Make it immune to almost (but not quite) anything in combat terms.

4) Make it preventable; IOW, if the PCs can do X, Y, and Z before specific time A, it will not manifest for B amount of time. Meanwhile, have the Dark Force's ordinary minions busy trying to move A and B up. This gives the PCs a slender thread of hope, while forcing them to play whack-a-mole on cultist plots, always running against the clock.

I honestly don’t think these are house rules... 1-3 are just part of monster design. With the exception of removing feats (which are in their own way optional). Monsters with these abilities would be high CR sure but I would expect a smaller number of high CR foes.

I disagree with the need to make the game lethal in that way in order to make it horror, but as long as shadows and intellect devourers exist such ideas aren’t impossible in the existing 5e framework.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Woah woah woah. At no point did I say that D&D was specifically designed for horror or had mechanics that were better than other systems. I disagreed with the title and the premise of the thread: I think it is a good system for modeling horror along with many other genres. I’d go so far as to say it’s a great system for customization and flexibility. It’s what means I can convert a WFRP adventure to 5e or a Pathfinder AP without breaking a sweat.

I never claimed you said D&D was specifically designed for horror -- why would I when you haven't made this claim at all. You've actually gone further here than you have previously and claimed D&D is a great system to model horror, to which the challenge I present above stands -- you can show where system elements exist that enable horror. So far, everything you've strongly presented has nothing to do with the 5e system.

Secondly, if you're altering the system -- something you can do with any system so not a particular strength of 5e -- then you're tacitly admitting that 5e needs to be changed to enable horror.

The plethora of advice on this thread from many other people goes well beyond mood lighting and sounds. It looks at encounter design, resource management, character background, plot and a host of framing methods. Yes these are in some cases system agnostic but they also have 90% of the impact of creating a horror canpaign.

Irrelevant to the premise of the thread -- if things are system agnostic, then 5e cannot claim them as strengths. Instead, what elements of 5e's system enable horror? Given that the advice that does go to 5e's system is advice to change that system, this is not a strong argument that 5e does horror well.

You have already said that you don’t consider optional rules to be changing the system. So your claim that I’m suggesting changing 5e to something fundamentally different to 5e, is unfounded. If you want a specific list of things that within the 5e mechanics make the game suitable...

• Bounded accuracy makes the CR range of foes much wider without auto-kill or feeling like being punched in the face by yoghurt.

This actually cuts against horror by empowering PCs to be able to effective fight, which limits available horror tropes to survival horror.

• Easily customizable monshers that allow for trivially easy conversion from earlier editions, other literature or mythology

Again, goes to empowering PCs to fight.

• A wide range of optional rules: madness, rest variants, stat generation, sanity scores, fear, horror, chases, slow natural healing, massive damage etc.

You've listed rest variants twice, which I've acknowledged add resource stress on PCs, but sanity is just hp by a different mechanic -- I'd say it undercuts it's goal to make players scared and just adds another way to remove PCs via a non-scary resource system. Stat generation has nothing at all to do with horror. The madness rules also don't have much to do with horror -- they're required roleplaying elements that are forced onto players by the GM, meaning they're entirely external to the player and not making the player feel scared.

In other word, a lot of these are thing that might be mean to the PCs, but don't evoke horror in the players at all. I don't really care if the PC's are told they are scared.

• Milestone levelling that takes away the link between progression and killing.

Nothing to do with horror. Enables no horror tropes. Horror does not involve progression.

• A magic item agnostic system that doesn’t expect every Pc to have a magic sword.

This is, at best, neutral to horror, in that not giving PCs magic swords retains the status quo, whereas having magic swords strongly enables PCs to effectively fight horror.

• The subclass system that allows easily customizable classes.

Entirely orthogonal to horror -- what horror trope is enabled by subclasses?

• The background system with easily customizable character motivations, flaws and flavors.

You've finally caught something in your wide net that can enable horror in 5e, and it's something a huge number of tables ignore.

• Customizable Planar effects such as described in Curse of Strahd.

This could also go to horror, but does so by taking things away from PCs, usually, which also acknowledges that the base 5e system assumptions need to be changed to enable horror.

You seem to suggest that customizing the game stops it being 5e. I say that 5e is designed to customized and draw on 4 previous editions worth of resources. Let’s be clear that the changes suggested don’t go anywhere near as far as AIME which is still built on the 5e chassis and is still recognizably 5e. We’re not removing spells or fundamentally changing races or classes.

Yes, if you're changing rules, you're not using 5e anymore, you're using a customized variant of 5e. If it's those exact customizations that are enabling horror then it's not 5e that's enabling horror, it's your customizations. Any system can be customized, so easier than others, so this cannot be a strength of 5e to do horror. Saying, "5e does horror great! You just have to change it so it can do horror," is just not a great argument that 5e does horror well. The focus on combat in 5e, for instance, I've already shown multiple times cuts against horror tropes by making fighting a horror a procedural thing with limited outcomes.

Remember once again... this was the bar that was set for this discussion...


I say that is an untenable position.

5e is bad for horror -- the system does absolutely nothing to enable horror and often fights against it. Which is why most of the advice in this thread for horror is to do things that have nothing to do with the system, and, when they do, it's to change the system. That you claim these non-system elements and the ability to change 5e's rules where they conflict with horror as strengths of 5e is baffling -- it's your strength as a GM to set mood and describe things that are scary, not 5e's. It's your strength as a GM to note the places 5e has issues and change them to enable your game, not 5e's. I don't understand why you're so eager to take the things you're strong at and gift them to 5e.

I do not understand the need to defend 5e against any and all criticism. It's a great game, I love it. It's not perfect, even at what it does well, and it doens't do everything well. D&D's biggest strength is in doing D&D. It's okay if it's not great at other things. You can absolutely do horror in 5e, but you're working around the system to do it, not with it. You have to make changes, both to how you present the game and to the rules of the game. It's telling that no one suggests running 5e with no options and no rules changes and no special setting rules as a good horror game. This clearly shows that vanilla 5e is bad at horror. There are a few optional switches you can throw that help, but you are still going to require some house rules or setting rule changes to get close, and then you're still going to have to work around the system.

 

[Oofta]

I suggested altering the standard game the same way that AiME did. Perfectly normal and what the SRD is for. Still 5e. Nope, has to be the standard.

I pointed out that there is nothing that says that encounters need to be balanced. Crickets.

Others have pointed out that the DMG has quite a few optional rules that fit a horror game. But those are not all good enough.

The combat system is pointed to as a main stumbling block but not why rolling a d20 to determine if you hit and then some other die for damage is bad for a horror game.

At a certain point, I cede the point to the ever ruling - you play D&D the way you want to.

I agree. Obviously D&D is "terrible" for horror because it doesn't use the same ruleset as other games without ever discussing what those other rules implement that can't be closely emulated in 5E.

About the only thing you didn't mention is another aspect that people don't discuss. The permanent drain that presumably can't be reversed. I don't get how that works - if it's actually used the PC becomes pointless after a while.

But I guess I don't run a D&D game because my player's PCs don't glow like Christmas trees, no PC has ever been raised from the dead because it's not as simple as casting a spell, I don't care for long distance teleport so I banned it* and to plane shift you have to access a portal.

To me, minor tweaks to the system are what D&D is all about. I already do just about everything "required" for a horror campaign outside of truly permanent drains. Does that mean we're no longer playing D&D? My players will be quite shocked. Horrified even.

*If you don't want to ban/modify a handful of spells there are plenty of ways to stop teleportation for specific locations. Given enough time and resources the area could be huge.

 

[TheSword]

I never claimed you said D&D was specifically designed for horror -- why would I when you haven't made this claim at all. You've actually gone further here than you have previously and claimed D&D is a great system to model horror, to which the challenge I present above stands -- you can show where system elements exist that enable horror. So far, everything you've strongly presented has nothing to do with the 5e system.

Secondly, if you're altering the system -- something you can do with any system so not a particular strength of 5e -- then you're tacitly admitting that 5e needs to be changed to enable horror.


Irrelevant to the premise of the thread -- if things are system agnostic, then 5e cannot claim them as strengths. Instead, what elements of 5e's system enable horror? Given that the advice that does go to 5e's system is advice to change that system, this is not a strong argument that 5e does horror well.

This actually cuts against horror by empowering PCs to be able to effective fight, which limits available horror tropes to survival horror.

Again, goes to empowering PCs to fight.

You've listed rest variants twice, which I've acknowledged add resource stress on PCs, but sanity is just hp by a different mechanic -- I'd say it undercuts it's goal to make players scared and just adds another way to remove PCs via a non-scary resource system. Stat generation has nothing at all to do with horror. The madness rules also don't have much to do with horror -- they're required roleplaying elements that are forced onto players by the GM, meaning they're entirely external to the player and not making the player feel scared.

In other word, a lot of these are thing that might be mean to the PCs, but don't evoke horror in the players at all. I don't really care if the PC's are told they are scared.

Nothing to do with horror. Enables no horror tropes. Horror does not involve progression.

This is, at best, neutral to horror, in that not giving PCs magic swords retains the status quo, whereas having magic swords strongly enables PCs to effectively fight horror.

Entirely orthogonal to horror -- what horror trope is enabled by subclasses?

You've finally caught something in your wide net that can enable horror in 5e, and it's something a huge number of tables ignore.

This could also go to horror, but does so by taking things away from PCs, usually, which also acknowledges that the base 5e system assumptions need to be changed to enable horror.


Yes, if you're changing rules, you're not using 5e anymore, you're using a customized variant of 5e. If it's those exact customizations that are enabling horror then it's not 5e that's enabling horror, it's your customizations. Any system can be customized, so easier than others, so this cannot be a strength of 5e to do horror. Saying, "5e does horror great! You just have to change it so it can do horror," is just not a great argument that 5e does horror well. The focus on combat in 5e, for instance, I've already shown multiple times cuts against horror tropes by making fighting a horror a procedural thing with limited outcomes.


5e is bad for horror -- the system does absolutely nothing to enable horror and often fights against it. Which is why most of the advice in this thread for horror is to do things that have nothing to do with the system, and, when they do, it's to change the system. That you claim these non-system elements and the ability to change 5e's rules where they conflict with horror as strengths of 5e is baffling -- it's your strength as a GM to set mood and describe things that are scary, not 5e's. It's your strength as a GM to note the places 5e has issues and change them to enable your game, not 5e's. I don't understand why you're so eager to take the things you're strong at and gift them to 5e.

I do not understand the need to defend 5e against any and all criticism. It's a great game, I love it. It's not perfect, even at what it does well, and it doens't do everything well. D&D's biggest strength is in doing D&D. It's okay if it's not great at other things. You can absolutely do horror in 5e, but you're working around the system to do it, not with it. You have to make changes, both to how you present the game and to the rules of the game. It's telling that no one suggests running 5e with no options and no rules changes and no special setting rules as a good horror game. This clearly shows that vanilla 5e is bad at horror. There are a few optional switches you can throw that help, but you are still going to require some house rules or setting rule changes to get close, and then you're still going to have to work around the system.

I actually said it’s good system for a horror campaigns and a great system for flexibility and customization. But meh, who cares.

I’m not going to do a point by point rebuttal, mainly because I don’t think it’s a very nice way to have a conversation.

I think you’re missing a trick with Milestone levelling though. By disconnecting experience and progression from the grind of killing/overcoming monsters and specific encounters you can dramatically change the expectations around adventure design that does encourage a horror campaign. No longer are you required to churn a certain volume of monsters to progress. Single monster adventures are feasible in the system and goal based milestones as in Curse of Strahd create a much more realistic goal orientated style of adventuring that suits the urgency and sense of pressure that good horror can sometimes need.

Anyway, we disagree. we’re approaching this from opposite sides and based on your responses I’m not going to change your mind because you seem fundamentally to object to the monster creation, spell creation and world building customizations in the DMG. If you look at the Curse of Strahd modifications and say that isn’t D&D because it has new monsters, milestone levelling, varied spells and limited NPC spellcasters etc then good luck to you.

 

[TheSword]

I agree. Obviously D&D is "terrible" for horror because it doesn't use the same ruleset as other games without ever discussing what those other rules implement that can't be closely emulated in 5E.

About the only thing you didn't mention is another aspect that people don't discuss. The permanent drain that presumably can't be reversed. I don't get how that works - if it's actually used the PC becomes pointless after a while.

But I guess I don't run a D&D game because my player's PCs don't glow like Christmas trees, no PC has ever been raised from the dead because it's not as simple as casting a spell, I don't care for long distance teleport so I banned it* and to plane shift you have to access a portal.

To me, minor tweaks to the system are what D&D is all about. I already do just about everything "required" for a horror campaign outside of truly permanent drains. Does that mean we're no longer playing D&D? My players will be quite shocked. Horrified even.

*If you don't want to ban/modify a handful of spells there are plenty of ways to stop teleportation for specific locations. Given enough time and resources the area could be huge.

Modifying spells Is good practice for any number of campaigns. To be fair that doesn’t have to be a hard baseball bat approach. You can change thematic elements like in CoS, you can modify key spell effects, or remove individual spells if really necessary.

You can always say to you player, ‘hey John, what do you think about taking a different spell to rope trick this time, I think it’s going to spoil the horror atmosphere, what do you think.” Depends on your relationship with the players.

IF you’re playing with people who can’t have these conversations. Firstly... try and find a new group, a good experimental DM is wasted on them. If that isn’t practical. I have visions of the Darklords being able to see people into extra dimensional spaces. I think it would be hard to sleep if you can see the flaming eye of sauron burning into your 10’ x 10’ extra dimensional space.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I actually said it’s good system for a horror campaigns and a great system for flexibility and customization. But meh, who cares.

I’m not going to do a point by point rebuttal, mainly because I don’t think it’s a very nice way to have a conversation.

I think you’re missing a trick with Milestone levelling though. By disconnecting experience and progression from the grind of killing/overcoming monsters and specific encounters you can dramatically change the expectations around adventure design that does encourage a horror campaign. No longer are you required to churn a certain volume of monsters to progress. Single monster adventures are feasible in the system and goal based milestones as in Curse of Strahd create a much more realistic goal orientated style of adventuring that suits the urgency and sense of pressure that good horror can sometimes need.

RE: customization: Fair enough. I don't really get the great system for flexibility and customization, as games like FATE or GURPS actually do customization better, but you can customize it fairly extensively so that's undisputed.

RE point by point: Normally I agree, however you threw out a huge amount of different arguments in a small space, so trying a long form response would have been confused and tedious.

RE Milestone leveling: No, I didn't miss that, my argument was that progression is disruptive of horror no matter how you do it. That milestone leveling is less disruptive by not focusing on killing monsters doesn't alter the issue that levelling -- gaining more power and competence -- fights against horror in general.

 

[TheSword]

RE: customization: Fair enough. I don't really get the great system for flexibility and customization, as games like FATE or GURPS actually do customization better, but you can customize it fairly extensively so that's undisputed.

RE point by point: Normally I agree, however you threw out a huge amount of different arguments in a small space, so trying a long form response would have been confused and tedious.

RE Milestone leveling: No, I didn't miss that, my argument was that progression is disruptive of horror no matter how you do it. That milestone leveling is less disruptive by not focusing on killing monsters doesn't alter the issue that levelling -- gaining more power and competence -- fights against horror in general.

Ok. There are lots of examples of cases where horror causes people to develop and improve... Walking dead???