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Unpopular Opinion?: D&D is a terrible venue for horror
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<blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 8102665" data-attributes="member: 54846"><p>Forgive me for not reading the last 13 pages. But as someone who is planning a <strong>4e</strong> Survival Horror game, I have opinions. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>10 months ago I was on both sides of this issue. I was seriously jonsing to run a horror game, but hit a wall. There are systems out there that do horror REALLY WELL, but because I don't have a dedicated group (RL or otherwise), I could not find anyone willing to play anything not D&D/PF. I had a long thread here of <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-do-you-do-horror-when-running-d-d.669562/" target="_blank">banging my head against a wall</a> because I wanted to run a game with powerless PCs who ran from danger, rather than fought, and that was just the antithesis of D&D. The posters here really fought me on that, and I had to concede it really was trying to shove a round peg into a square hole, and abandoned the idea.</p><p></p><p>Now I am back at it. What I'm going to do is an entirely different tact. Rather than the system reinforce the horror, rather than take the power away from the PCs, it is purely what the players imagine. It is the "Horror of what you cannot unsee". Of what your character will become. The characters are going to be trapped in a mega-dungeon that's been sucked into the Far Realms, so <em>normal</em> encounters are going to look like John Carpenter's The Thing. Then there's the Lovecraftian mind-screwery.</p><p></p><p>The players will start with no equipment. This is intended to make them scavenge and struggle; fighting phasing insects with a shard of glass or a table leg as their only defense, until they can find some decent equipment. But the real actual powerful things are going to mess with them. "Magical items/weapons" that are going to exact a toll; making a bone sword burst from their wrist, and then their body begins to harden into a carapce, functioning as armor and sword. A "gristle gun", a lamprey latched to their arm that will spit teeth as a ranged weapon, but it must feed on enemy's flesh to create its ammo.</p><p></p><p>Encounters like a monster that is just a stretched skin across a stick-figure frame--until it "swallows" a PC, wrapping itself around them like a suit of living power armor, and begins using the PC's abilities against the group as it sucks them dry. So once they beat the current abomination into a bloody paste, they will ask themselves "What fresh hell is next?" And that's not touching on the fragmented minds and other elements of psychic wickedness they'll encounter.</p><p></p><p>For instance taking an extended rest, I've got this bit of text ready for the first time the characters fall asleep. "You are flying. You land in a pool of blood; your blood. The blood crystalizes around you and you are a fly trapped in crimson amber, your beautiful insignificance art for any to see. You see yourself as the fly, and you also know that you are bacteria in the gut of a frog, being eaten by a squid, in an aquarium on the top floor of a house made of bones, on an isle of graves. That island is the pupil of a giant eye. It blinks, the eyelid a crashing wave of screams that drowns all in a sea of discordant agony. The tides rise and wipe existance away, and then the ocean dissolves...leaving...silence..."</p><p></p><p>But one of the most important things, one thing that kept popping up in the thread I linked to: players have to be aware of it from the start. They are buying into a horror game, aware of what they are getting into, rather than expecting Middle Earth and getting Silent Hill. I am fully advertising the game as survival horror, and making reference to a lot of the inspirations.</p><p></p><p>Ultimately, will the game be Scary? Will the players even be creeped out, or say "WTF man"? I don't know. That's just the tone and aesthetic I'm going for. The players could be like me, and simply find everything I've described COOL and FUN.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rechan, post: 8102665, member: 54846"] Forgive me for not reading the last 13 pages. But as someone who is planning a [B]4e[/B] Survival Horror game, I have opinions. ;) 10 months ago I was on both sides of this issue. I was seriously jonsing to run a horror game, but hit a wall. There are systems out there that do horror REALLY WELL, but because I don't have a dedicated group (RL or otherwise), I could not find anyone willing to play anything not D&D/PF. I had a long thread here of [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-do-you-do-horror-when-running-d-d.669562/']banging my head against a wall[/URL] because I wanted to run a game with powerless PCs who ran from danger, rather than fought, and that was just the antithesis of D&D. The posters here really fought me on that, and I had to concede it really was trying to shove a round peg into a square hole, and abandoned the idea. Now I am back at it. What I'm going to do is an entirely different tact. Rather than the system reinforce the horror, rather than take the power away from the PCs, it is purely what the players imagine. It is the "Horror of what you cannot unsee". Of what your character will become. The characters are going to be trapped in a mega-dungeon that's been sucked into the Far Realms, so [I]normal[/I] encounters are going to look like John Carpenter's The Thing. Then there's the Lovecraftian mind-screwery. The players will start with no equipment. This is intended to make them scavenge and struggle; fighting phasing insects with a shard of glass or a table leg as their only defense, until they can find some decent equipment. But the real actual powerful things are going to mess with them. "Magical items/weapons" that are going to exact a toll; making a bone sword burst from their wrist, and then their body begins to harden into a carapce, functioning as armor and sword. A "gristle gun", a lamprey latched to their arm that will spit teeth as a ranged weapon, but it must feed on enemy's flesh to create its ammo. Encounters like a monster that is just a stretched skin across a stick-figure frame--until it "swallows" a PC, wrapping itself around them like a suit of living power armor, and begins using the PC's abilities against the group as it sucks them dry. So once they beat the current abomination into a bloody paste, they will ask themselves "What fresh hell is next?" And that's not touching on the fragmented minds and other elements of psychic wickedness they'll encounter. For instance taking an extended rest, I've got this bit of text ready for the first time the characters fall asleep. "You are flying. You land in a pool of blood; your blood. The blood crystalizes around you and you are a fly trapped in crimson amber, your beautiful insignificance art for any to see. You see yourself as the fly, and you also know that you are bacteria in the gut of a frog, being eaten by a squid, in an aquarium on the top floor of a house made of bones, on an isle of graves. That island is the pupil of a giant eye. It blinks, the eyelid a crashing wave of screams that drowns all in a sea of discordant agony. The tides rise and wipe existance away, and then the ocean dissolves...leaving...silence..." But one of the most important things, one thing that kept popping up in the thread I linked to: players have to be aware of it from the start. They are buying into a horror game, aware of what they are getting into, rather than expecting Middle Earth and getting Silent Hill. I am fully advertising the game as survival horror, and making reference to a lot of the inspirations. Ultimately, will the game be Scary? Will the players even be creeped out, or say "WTF man"? I don't know. That's just the tone and aesthetic I'm going for. The players could be like me, and simply find everything I've described COOL and FUN. [/QUOTE]
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