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Unpopular Opinion?: D&D is a terrible venue for horror
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8102135" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>Sure, point conceded -- survival horror is a genre of horror where people often learn or improve skills. So, the levelling mechanic doesn't fight survival horror, but it still fights lots of other horror tropes where people don't develop or improve. It's neutral in one sub-genre of horror and still actively against other sub-genres. Also, in the sub-genre of survival horror, the protagonists tend to get better by killing monsters, so.... I mean, you could do a trope inversion and have a survival horror game that doesn't look to improve the ability to fight the monsters, but then D&D levelling is almost entirely about getting better at fighting, so that doesn't really match well, either.</p><p></p><p>D&D leveling focuses primarily on adding combat effectiveness with occasional ribbons of other pillars. Horror leans much more heavily on the exploration pillar than the combat pillar, and occasionally on the social pillar. D&D has extensive combat pillar rules which bias the game towards combat. You can avoid this, but then you're fighting the system. D&D doesn't have very strong mechanics in the exploration pillar, so, again, you as the GM have to do the lion's share of the work here with little to no support form the exploration pillar rules in D&D and still fight against the combat pillar structure.</p><p></p><p>Again, D&D is a great game, and I love 5e, but it's not well suited for horror because it's built to emulate heroic fantasy. Heroic fantasy tropes don't align well with horror tropes. As has been said upthread a few times, D&D can do dark fantasy pretty well because those tropes do align better with heroic fantasy tropes. But, to do horror, you have to avoid a lot of what D&D is best at to get it to work well, and this thread is full of advice to do just that -- it's good advice, but it's showcasing that 5e needs changing to enable it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8102135, member: 16814"] Sure, point conceded -- survival horror is a genre of horror where people often learn or improve skills. So, the levelling mechanic doesn't fight survival horror, but it still fights lots of other horror tropes where people don't develop or improve. It's neutral in one sub-genre of horror and still actively against other sub-genres. Also, in the sub-genre of survival horror, the protagonists tend to get better by killing monsters, so.... I mean, you could do a trope inversion and have a survival horror game that doesn't look to improve the ability to fight the monsters, but then D&D levelling is almost entirely about getting better at fighting, so that doesn't really match well, either. D&D leveling focuses primarily on adding combat effectiveness with occasional ribbons of other pillars. Horror leans much more heavily on the exploration pillar than the combat pillar, and occasionally on the social pillar. D&D has extensive combat pillar rules which bias the game towards combat. You can avoid this, but then you're fighting the system. D&D doesn't have very strong mechanics in the exploration pillar, so, again, you as the GM have to do the lion's share of the work here with little to no support form the exploration pillar rules in D&D and still fight against the combat pillar structure. Again, D&D is a great game, and I love 5e, but it's not well suited for horror because it's built to emulate heroic fantasy. Heroic fantasy tropes don't align well with horror tropes. As has been said upthread a few times, D&D can do dark fantasy pretty well because those tropes do align better with heroic fantasy tropes. But, to do horror, you have to avoid a lot of what D&D is best at to get it to work well, and this thread is full of advice to do just that -- it's good advice, but it's showcasing that 5e needs changing to enable it. [/QUOTE]
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