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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9693207" data-attributes="member: 86653">Re: horror as genre vs horror as tone. It's both. Some genres are defined by plots, others by characters, others by setting, and others by tone. Comedy and horror as genres are based almost exclusively on the tone they present. There are some distinct plot, character, and setting elements, but they're both almost pure tone. Which is why they blend so well with other genres. Sci-fi horror just makes sense. It doesn't create dissonance for someone who comes across that notion the first time. It's easy to imagine what that would look like. Same with a romantic comedy, or a space western, or any one of dozens of other mashup genres. This is because you're mashing up a tone-based genre with a setting-based genre, or a plot-based genre with a character-based genre, etc. Where you start to get a little dissonance is mashing up two genres that slot into the same space. Like a mystery and romance, both genres based mostly on plot, one will dominate and the other will become a subplot. Or you get tonal whiplash in some horror-comedy stuff. It's also why it's so easy for horror to fall into comedy. Just a little too much blood, just a little bit of overacting, and you're suddenly in camp or horror-comedy. Re: referees, players, and mechanics. The referee can absolutely make or break a horror game. Obviously. But they can only do so much. Any referee who can spin a horror yarn at the table so well that they entrance their players completely and never need to look to mechanics at all should immediately start writing horror. In the almost 40 years I've been playing horror RPGs I've never met a single referee who's that good. Ever. And I've played with a lot of referees. Player buy in is absolutely a must, but that buy in can come, to some degree, from the mechanics. If the referee or players are cracking jokes regularly or not taking it seriously, you're either no longer playing a horror game or you're playing a horror-comedy game. Nothing wrong with either, horror-comedy is one of my all-time favorite genres, but the tone of horror is absurdly fragile. That fragility can be protected by mechanics. I'm a firm believer that system matters. System matters because it provides that narrower range of options and explicitly pushes a particular style of play. System provides limits to the imagination and points it in a particular direction. In other words, system provides focus. But, the thing most people miss is that system is not the only way to provide focus. The referee can provide that focus. The players can provide that focus. But, and this is incredibly important, the system can shore up players and referees who aren't 100% invested in the genre or particular story. Because if the players aren't quite feeling it, the system can help quite a lot by providing mechanical points of tension for the player to feel. Players get really invested in their characters, so screwing with the character tends to make the player feel something. The PC loses hit points, the player feels tension and maybe dread at losing their PC. Or sanity or stress or bonds or any one of a dozen other mechanics. This works because while the player might not be fully invested in the horror genre or horror story being played out, they will almost always be invested in their character. For an example of system mattering in the context of horror, look at the death moves from Daggerheart and compare those to death in Mothership. In Daggerheart, when the PC hits zero HP the player gets to pick one of three options. Make an action that automatically crits before they die, go unconscious but live, or make a roughly 50/50 roll to heal up or die. In Mothership, when the PC hits zero HP (technically marks their last wound) the referee secretly rolls a 1d10 and hides it under an opaque cup. Only if the other PCs check the body will the result be revealed. While the 50/50 roll in Daggerheart is tense in the moment, it doesn't build or maintain tension over time. I think that's one key to really good horror mechanics. Things like dwindling resources can absolutely build and maintain tension over time. So even if the players aren't 100% invested in the horror of the story, they most likely will be invested in what's going on with their character. Same is true with things like ticking clocks. The player is sitting at a table playing a game. They're not in any danger or rush, but if you put a ticking clock on something, suddenly the players lean in and become more invested. The player feels that pressure and tension. I think Nordic LARPs call that bleed. That can absolutely suck players into the horror.</blockquote>

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