What is it?
How does it work?
How can it work in games?
Which games facilitate Horror in which way?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEikGKDVsCc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oetVvR5RQUs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWMtBYP1V5s
"Horror" describes a genre. But does it really? Is it not merely a theme that can be introduced into any genre?
Many "Horror" products do not primarily invoke feelings of being scared, helpless, revolted, or undercut. Some rely on parody, some on empowerment and action, some on mystery and investigation.
So how do the concepts of tension and relief, exposure and empowerment, the hidden and its revelation interact at the game table? How can they structure a game and how can they fail to come together?
PCs tend to be heroic and rational. Characters in horror usually are not. Players want to dominate the story with power. Horror characters are out of their element and often stretched to the limit. How does this translate?
CoC has a "second health track" called sanity, it's just a number that counts down with each harrowing experience. So it represents a scarce resource which is taxed by the story. If you metagame it makes you avoid the adventure.
UA psychoanalyzes PCs in 5 dimensions: violence, helplessness, supernatural, self (morality), and isolation. In each of these the character can grow more unstable and more hardened, even both at the same time. This not only limits character actions by forcing them to fight, flight, or freeze on a failed roll, it also provides an easy readout of how the character might react to certain events depending on what they remind them of.
Both also feature pathologies characters suffer after repeated failed rolls, like an irrational phobia, alcoholism, or a need for control.
Dread goes a radically different route. Whether characters are able or not, who they are, how they feel, and what they have just been through all folds into one central mechanism. It isn't tracked separately, it all conforms to the tension curve. The entire party has one tool to resolve all challenges and conflicts. It is a Jenga Tower, and when it falls the character whose player was handling it dies. This puts the tension on the player, not just the character. And it allows even oblivious characters unaware of their peril to drive up the tension because the players know the danger, but not what form it takes.
ToC offers the gimmick to play insanity not for the character, but the player. On a failed roll the player is sent from the room and the other players then conspire to consistently do one irrational thing to that player, like never look at them, or pretend they always speak too quietly to understand.
What else?
It depends a lot on the players. If they have their minds set on being heroes then anything the GM does to establish atmosphere or ambivalence will be received as railroading. Even if the group is playing a published CoC scenario, players who refuse to give their characters depth and flavor but reduce them to combat stats as a matter of course will refuse any attempt at atmosphere or tension. In fact they will understand tension as a challenge and attack it, then complain when that kills their characters.
Players need action, otherwise they get bored, distracted, and annoyed. They have to experience ways in which all the numbers on the sheet they took so much care writing down actually matter.
In most games that means dominating with combat. But it doesn't have to. The usual alternative is dumb success or failure skill checks. But if an inexperienced designer puts such a roll in front of key adventure clues then it comes apart and the players get stuck without knowing why.
So skill challenges should have more nuanced results. Success or failure is a vital indicator, without it what's the point of rolling? But the GM can interpret the result in many ways. The concepts of failing forward and success at a cost have been around for a while now. Both work great in horror games, at least when plain failure would mean getting stuck. Roll results should be more indicative of coming complications than a binary stop or go decision.
Just skill checks is boring. Combine them with player ingenuity, narrative pacing, comic relief, and always tension to make a game of it. Only roll when it matters, and let the result matter. It doesn't have to open a door, it could easily color the game tone, result in an altered NPC constellation, or provide flavor unrelated to the main plot.
For me horror can be summed up into a few key things:
Uncertainty: You/your players don't know whats in the dark outside of the torchlight, or whats at the end of that
Gloom/darkness: The setting it self is somewhat dark. As if the sun's brilliance is filtered by malicious clouds. Of course horror can happen in the brightest of places too, but making something darker, making the look of the world more grave can make everyone feel at unease.
Recognition: This is essential for horror as the characters realize what they are dealing with is something very dark and twisted, even alien. It can be them realizing that the dozens of missing children were all so a priestess of a forgotten god could achieve some power for her own gain. Or it could be the party realizing that there foe is some unnatural force that permeates life with a corruption that seems far worse than the nothingness of death. Equally this can be when the party realizes that they can't just punch this foe or problem, that if they stray too far into the dark something terrible will take them. It's coming to terms that the characters are insignificant compared to the nature of their foe.
Regret: When the player characters come to terms with the idea that they couldn't save everyone or that their lack of preparation lead to devastating results. And it may be something that they couldn't have really prevented, but their knowledge of the events is enough to make them carry a heavy burden..
Terror: this is the final ingredient and the most important. It's an accumulation of the preceding ideas but mixed with force. It is momentum, inevitability, the knowledge that there is malicious things stalking you right now. It is the knowledge that you are not safe, that you are not alone. It is confrontation with an abomination of darkness, composed of the dead and damned, a maelstrom of emotion manifesting in it's purest, ugliest form. It's the truth that your end will come, by one hand or another.
>>46856163
Horror is the sum of those 5 elements plus little extras. It conveys the sense that this world, its mysteries can and will rob you of your life if you let your guard down for even a heartbeat. It's realizing that you are insignificant, that there are far greater forces then you. It's coming to terms that there are monsters everywhere, and even your beacon of light shining in the darkness is no brighter or lasting than a firefly in the pitch black of a clouded night.
So foreshadowing, inevitability, helplessness, and eventually confrontation, with gloom as a personal choice?
I believe what you call recognition is mostly about negative space that the players fill with their imagination. The less you define without them, the better.
What you call terror I call climax and relief. It is the momentum that the tension has gathered throughout the story and what horror is all about. It confirms all fears and demands immediate overcoming. After that it is over.Or is it?
>On a failed roll the player is sent from the room and the other players then conspire to consistently do one irrational thing to that player, like never look at them, or pretend they always speak too quietly to understand.
Holy shit, that's hilarious. Trails of Cthulu, or a different ToC?
>>46857454
Yup, that.
Don't like it for structural reasons, but that bit is funny. Only happens for serious madness iirc.
Right now I'm trying to spice up a dungeon encounter with my current group by re-flavoring Ghouls/Ghasts to be more like wendigos or skinwalkers.
So, thankfully the best has happened, and without railroading or DM fiat, I was able to get one party member lured into the woods and captured by one of these things. Now I don't want him dead, but, when the rest of the party find him in the dungeon later, what should have happened to him/be happening to him, without going full-on edgy bullshit mode, that will make sure that he and the rest of the party are afraid of these things?
>>46857602
To make it scary?
Nothing. They are fine and remember nothing. There's a tiny scar at the back of their neck. Sometimes roll dice behind the screen when the character does something significant.
To make it horror you can play short scenes with the kidnapped character. They are set in their childhood and involve being lost in the dark forest behind the house where children are not allowed to play. Roll navigation and endurance. Never let them get anywhere. It's a nightmare. It can get strange. But anything that happens will be taken as a mirror of concealed reality.
My party had to walk through a valley of ghosts from an ancient battle. They tried to ignore the ghosts and thought the dangerous thing was paying attention to them, which was correct. A full cavalry charge went straight through them at one point, like the subway in Ghostbusters.
But when a volley of arrows actually struck some of them for minor damage they lost it.
>>46857731
I'll try this, thanks
Which is the best horror guide, regardless of system?
So when does the new Puppetland come out?
>>46863253
There wolf, there castle
>>46860610
Kenneth Hite has written a few must-reads on the subject. One is for GURPS and the other for Roelmaster, but is is almost entirely system-agnostic advice. I don't play either of those systems but consider these invaluable. The man knows his stuff:
http://www.amazon.com/Nightmares-Mine-Rolemaster-Standard-System/dp/1558063676
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/Horror/
Also, Trail of Cthulhu (also written by Mr. Hite) has great advice in it.
I'm thinking about running an undersea horror game. SOMA crossed with bits of Alien and a few SCP articles. I've got basic facility plans and all that, but I'm trying to think of how to sort out the actual threat. Right now, I'm working with "facility built around a portal to a dark version of Earth" where the site's underwater as part of its containment measures, but... What should I do for the actual inhabitants? Humans, but just slightly off? Wildly mutated?
I don't really do horror all that often, so I don't have a ton for inspiration.
How would someone run a horror game involving The Thing, or a shapeshifter? Talk to one player before hand to already be infected or make a private note yourself as the GM saying who is infected with players?
>>46870628
so something like this then?
You gotta be a scary person
>>46871489
Oh shit. Yes, pretty damn close.
>>46853451
>TV Tropes
>literature analysis
How about no?
>>46851870
This may not be the best explanation, but a lot of it requires the players to realize things themselves.
I GMed my group the Death House adventure and added lots of descriptors and added a few more creepy haunting elements that were understated and subtle.
I kept leading them to think something was ABOUT to happen by adding elements they were SURE we're going to come to life and attack them that when it didn't the tension just built up with no release for them in the form of combat.
I've been using tactics of this sort since Curse of Strahd ended and they all told me I should GM a Ravenloft game.
>>46851870
Something that I feel gets glossed over a lot when discussing horror in role-playing is that you're basically relying on the players agreeing to act scared to succeed. Unless you drag your group to an abandoned asylum in the middle of the night and play by inadequate candlelight or rely on gimmicks, there's only so much you can do. Spoopy gm voice and dimming the lighting only gets you so far with people who are used to jumpscares and visceral, graphical horror in tv shows and movies.
For this reason I think it's more fun and interesting when systems focus on giving cues to players about the role-playing, things like sanity or compulsive actions triggered by events that make the characters act scared or deranged rather than just trying to scare the PLAYERS is usually a way better experience.
Even if you're not scared you can have fun playing a character who is, but trying to make a horror campaign by just playing D&D or whatever and adding creepier monsters and trying to scare the players just ends in disaster.
