TheSword
Legend
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.
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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 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 think that D&D is an absolutely terrible game for trying to create a sense of horror in play
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 say that is an untenable position.I think that D&D is an absolutely terrible game for trying to create a sense of horror in play