Widow's Bay and Horror Campaigns

[Reynard]

"Funny" is not the same thing as "comedy" in a literary sense. Widow's Bay is often funny. It is not a comedy.

 

[JConstantine]

Let's try to put this whole "Widow's Bay is/is not a comedy" thing to bed:

​

Horror-Comedy is a subgenre that is primarily horror with deliberate comedic elements (not merely unintentionally funny) to relieve tension. For example: Scream, Fright Night, The Babysitter.​

​

Comedy-Horror, meanwhile, is a subgenre that focuses on comedy while utilising the trappings of horror (often, but not always as parody). Examples include: Scary Movie, Beetlejuice, and Shaun of the Dead.​

​

On the whole, as a series, Widow's Bay is certainly a mashup of both horror and comedy. I'd say most episodes are Horror-Comedy, while episode 8 is more Comedy-Horror, which is why it feels so out of place (on top of feeling disconnected from the main through-line).

If you have seen Widow's Bay, what system would you use to run a campaign like that?

Given the show deliberately leans into its comedy elements, I'd consider Onyx Path's They Came From... series. They're technically designed for emulating schlocky B-Movies, but I think that's the closest any RPG comes to the show.

 

[Reynard]

Let's try to put this whole "Widow's Bay is/is not a comedy" thing to bed:

​

Horror-Comedy is a subgenre that is primarily horror with deliberate comedic elements (not merely unintentionally funny) to relieve tension. For example: Scream, Fright Night, The Babysitter.​

​

Comedy-Horror, meanwhile, is a subgenre that focuses on comedy while utilising the trappings of horror (often, but not always as parody). Examples include: Scary Movie, Beetlejuice, and Shaun of the Dead.​

​

On the whole, as a series, Widow's Bay is certainly a mashup of both horror and comedy. I'd say most episodes are Horror-Comedy, while episode 8 is more Comedy-Horror, which is why it feels so out of place (on top of feeling disconnected from the main through-line).


Given the show deliberately leans into its comedy elements, I'd consider Onyx Path's They Came From... series. They're technically designed for emulating schlocky B-Movies, but I think that's the closest any RPG comes to the show.

You must have watched a different show than I did.

Anyway, I feel like the defining features of Widow's Bay from the perspective of emulating in an RPG are the episodic nature with an unraveling throughline mystery, and the fact that the real horror is the choices characters have to make.

What games do those well?

 

[aramis erak]

Does horror have to come with a body count?

pretty much, yeah. but not of need the PC's.

Then again, horror isn't one unified genre, and some conflate subsets with Suspense/Mystery.

Keep in mind the classics of horror: Alien, the various Vincent Price films of the 60's, the monster movies of the 50's to 70's... the body count varies, but the body count is a large part of the source of horror.

Then there's the investigative horror of the Mythus... the body count is often not the main characters, but there's an impending body count. And the inversion of it, such as The Wickerman where the only body-count is

Spoiler

the protagonist... at the end... but the protagonizt spends his whole time investigating a murder... leading to the creeping realization something's not right and that it was human sacrifice... only for him to wind up the next annual sacrifice

. Only one death... but lots of creeping notes of prior bad acts and risks. Another good IH title is Psycho. It only has a body count of two, but uses jump scares to make for the fear earlier... it's about as low a body count as horror gets... The impending fear of horrible deaths is almost the defining elment, but that they need be many isn't really there. Just that the threat of horrible death is known.

IH and monster horror are VERY different. But within monster horror there's a variety. ALIEN: Earth, we see lots of aftermath, but little of the violence itself. ALIENS, we see people getting ripped up... both the same franchise, but different MH subgenres and styles.

Not being familiar with the show you're inspired by, I can't give more specifics, but if there's no body count, there's no horror, only suspense, and that's a different genre range. Great Horror has lots of suspense and body count.

Hell, my last Alien game, most of the party made it out... an entire colony destroyed, but they made it out.

 

[Reynard]

, but if there's no body count, there's no horror, only suspense,

You don't think psychological or existential horror are horror?

 

[aramis erak]

You don't think psychological or existential horror are horror?

existential is potential body count.
Psychological horror, without a body count, is just suspense

 

[JConstantine]

existential is potential body count.
Psychological horror, without a body count, is just suspense

This seems like an incredibly restrictive notion of what constitutes horror.
The Shining, Silence of the Lambs, The Babadook. Each is psychological horror, and none of the victims die in any. Sure, technically, Silence of the Lambs and The Shining contain the singular death of their respective antagonist, but that merely gives a finality to their reign of terror; it's not remotely necessary for the horror: ending in their arrest instead wouldn't change the horror (if anything, their survival would amplify it as they could continue in future). And no one dies in The Babadook.

 

[aramis erak]

This seems like an incredibly restrictive notion of what constitutes horror.
The Shining, Silence of the Lambs, The Babadook. Each is psychological horror, and none of the victims die in any. Sure, technically, Silence of the Lambs and The Shining contain the singular death of their respective antagonist, but that merely gives a finality to their reign of terror; it's not remotely necessary for the horror: ending in their arrest instead wouldn't change the horror (if anything, their survival would amplify it as they could continue in future). And no one dies in The Babadook.

Silence of the lambs establishes the bodycount offscreen via dialogue. The potential of what he'll do to her if he gets out is predicated on the body count before the action... we are told by multiple characters of the hideous things he's done before, and it's clear he doesn't consider himself done with doing such.

The Shining has so many close calls that it's in the potential body count range. Never heard of Babadook.

In both the Shining and Silence, it's the known prior count and the escaping the potential body count that make them work. Take away the threat of death, and the shining is just a game of tag.

(In other words, pay attention to what people really typed, because I mentioned potential body count before and you don't appear to have noticed.)

Even One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, there is the constant threat of destroying the identity as a substitution for murders... but again, it's not like the level of damage doesn't kill the mind and/or personality. But for practical purposes, it's still a body count, just that the body's still breathing.

 

[Umbran]

existential is potential body count.
Psychological horror, without a body count, is just suspense

I disagree, for a couple of reasons. And this gets a little hard to tease out, because horror and suspense are so frequently used together...

1) The core of horror, of any type, is fear. But death is by no means the only thing we can fear. Death is merely the most obvious. But, we can also fear mutilation, corruption, loss of control/agency, and so on.

And, even if fear of death is the fear being used, we don't need a body count to induce that fear - merely the potential for death is required.

2) The core of both horror and suspense is in emotion, but it is not the character's emotion that matters. It is the emotional response of the audience that tells you what genre you are in. If it gives the audience a fear reaction, it is horror. If it increases tension or anticipation in the audience, it is suspense.

And that is important - in many suspense movies, the characters may be afraid for their lives, but the audience isn't scared, so much as they are on the edge of their seats anticipating the next events or revelations.

 

[Umbran]

2) The core of both horror and suspense is in emotion, but it is not the character's emotion that matters. It is the emotional response of the audience that tells you what genre you are in.

And, to follow this on into the central topic of the thread, this is why horror is difficult in TTRPGs. Inducing an actual fear reaction in players - who are archetypically sitting around a well-lit dining room table with dice, snacks, with enough times between turns to futz on their smartphones - is hard. Maintaining fear over the course of a session, or a campaign, is even harder.

Not impossible, but harder.