What makes a successful horror game?

[MGibster]

f you like horror, it can be incredibly fun to watch a cascade of panic ripple through the PCs. I would almost go so far to say it’s some of the best moments in horror gaming. The players losing control and their characters being forced to do things the player doesn’t want to happen, like running away or dropping a gun or firing at their friends.

I do like horror, and after playing Alien a few times I can tell you nobody in my group thought it was fun. We thought it was a flaw.

 

[overgeeked]

I do like horror, and after playing Alien a few times I can tell you nobody in my group thought it was fun. We thought it was a flaw.

To each their own. I absolutely love that about Alien. Maybe look at Mothership. It does basically the same stories but with a wider scope and handles that particular aspect of play “better” from your perspective.

 

[Mannahnin]

I am also of the opinion that the system matters. Vampire: the Masquerade claims to be about personal horror. For me though it tends to be supercreatures with claws and fangs fighting each others. Take out the whole system with all cool powers etc, and make it a pure narrative game like Good Society: A Jane Austen rpg, and it would work much better. It is clear that the system was bolted on as an afterthought. The core of the system though, with how you buy your stats etc and fill out number of dots are very simple and intuitive and you don't have to hassle with levelling up. But it is hard to have horror when you are top of the food-chain...

I only played 1st and 2nd editions, and I agree completely that the superheroes with fangs power fantasy was too indulged by the system. It would have worked better if Generation wasn't an available Background, so you had to start 13th Gen (the youngest and weakest vampires), and if Diablerie wasn't presented as an option to "level up" by eating your elders, but instead the only way for the eldest to feed, so you're literally at the bottom of the vampire food chain. Combine that with the moral implications of killing people to survive yourself and there's definitely fodder for drama and horror there.

 

[billd91]

While I love Call of Cthulhu, it is too detailed, and the more the system gets showed in the background the better. Now, CoC is a child of it's time, and back then it was created systems were not tailored to what the game was about. BRP as such is simple, and the characters feel vulnerable, and if you go in guns blazing you will fail. Sanity while a good invention basically only matters when you loose a large amount of it in a short time.

Whether or not Sanity matters only if you lose a large amount in a short time depends on whether or not you are playing a one-shot or a campaign. In a one-shot scenario, yeah, small Sanity losses aren't a very big deal. But if you plan on playing more than one or two scenarios with that investigator, the small loses matter a great deal. In fact, they're kind of awesome as you watch the character grow more and more brittle as they go...