This had me thinking, I was running a game which COULD have horror as a theme, it doesn't now, and I'd never intended it to. However, feedback from my players (one who is a huge horror fan) made me think that perhaps less "space opera/space fantasy" (ala Star Wars), and more horror might be the way to go. I can't fault the idea, and I can see how much more oppressive, and dark it could be if I did so, but despite liking horror, and doing a decent job running horror games, how do I get "horror" into an RPG?

What elements help? What elements hurt? I've got another "horror" RPG in the works, but far enough on the back burner not to be ready for testing. I also think it will only have a touch of horror anyway. (Maybe one "adventure" in five having anything supernatural at all, or if it does at most it be subtle black magic, wielded by humans..)

So how do you take a concept, and spin it to make it dark, oppressive, gloomy, and help be more horror than simply "things from horror dropped into new setting?"

This is only my opinion, so i sure there will be others that will put it into a 1-2-3 process for you...

To me, and many others, horror is about mood and feeling.  Stephen King's Danse Macabre book will give yo ulots of insight into how to generate horror.

Horror can be in almost any setting, but I strongly feel that the system must support the feeling of horror through mechanics.  What I mean by that is that you can't have a game where Zombies are common place and walk around the planet all of the time, as they have done so for 200 years, and expect the characters to be shocked by this.

Horror grows out of the inability to cope with things that are, but are out of place.  Horror breeds in being isolated and feeling helpless.  This is why a majority of horror McGuffins are supernatural:  we as modern day humans do not understand, and ergo fear, the supernatural and are disconcerted by it.

How to spin a game to accomidate that?  Make the fantastic fantastic again.

To draw an example from D&D since we all know and love the game...

In D&D all persions in the world KNOW that there is magic, there are powerful and vile creatures, and that the undead exist.  The simlpest and most isolated peasant knows this.  Therefore, those things that would, to us, be fantastic and horrifying, are commonplace.  There is no horror when it is life as usual.

Horror comes from the unkown.  In order to make any game a horror setting,  think that you should tone down the fantastic to make things more mundane and common, and then introduce the environment of the vile and fantastic.

And then, by focusing on the mood, letting the feelings of helplessness and isolation grow, and allowing the antagonistic forces to be creatures of opposition, horror will follow.

The most important thing is the unkown. Have signs as to what is going on (dead bodies appearing), but leave the answers a mystery. Keep players in the dark as long as possible.

I like having danger in a horror game. Lethal danger. There should be something or things out there that hurt you badly or outright kill you quickly. This needs to be established early on (by having a PC nearly killed or having a tough NPC get killed in a single blow).

The players should have limited resources (only x number of bullets) or else should discover that their weapons are of limited use.

The number of enemies should be overwhelming at times (and other times they should appear to be completely alone and safe...

I guess the type of horror that I find works best with RPGs is survival horror. Whether it's surviving a horde of zombies, a Scream (the movie) copycat killer, or an elder evil living in the basement.

I like:
1. Danger
2. Figuring out the mystery of what is behind the danger
3. Confronting the danger
4. Realizing conventional tacts don't work and coming up with alternate ideas
5. Trying to merely get out alive

Cheers,
Jeff

I can't disagree with anything listed her so far.  To me, horror is a challenging thing to deal with.  If possible, I wouldn't even tell the players I was running that kind of RPG.  Start slowly and then introduce the elements previously mentioned.  As far as design, "nothing is what it seems", "the sense can't be trusted" are some ideas.  The canon shouldn't answer everything in a nice neat package but allow people to place their own ideas of horror into the game.  I ran out of time here for now...

Scare the players.  Fail to do that and no horror will succeed.

Suprise the players.
The ideal way to introduce horror is to have the horror be of a type not in keeping with the genre. Good Cthulu works in this way because the start of a campaing should be mundane and the characters being played are mundane, a professor, a policeman, an actor, a doctor. Then you put them into a situation that is our of sorts ie you introduce a creature beyond the norm of their mundane reality. Also I think Investigation games or genres are much better suited that other types. You can run investigation games for most systems (even D&D - I did a Name of the Rose inspired D&D with a load of clerics once in a monestary)
An example would be you are playing a modern day espionage game. The players are playing agents or mercenaries or jewel theives turned agents for a secreted goverment agency or whatever. The first thing they find after they have broken into the office of a politician who is suspected of selling govermnet secrets is not the plan of the doomsday device or even the cold corpse of the guys PA shot with a .22 at close range, no its head of the sceurity gard and it looks like its been chewed off and the whole place is covered in a sticky black ichor.
The reason why horror doesn't easily work in the D&D environemnt is just as described above the players expect undead and can handle them. You can add horror here but its very hard.
I agree that killing a major NPC in in early encounter is a great motivator especially if the players identify with their characters and have been playing them for a while (obviously you need to remove the possibility of death being temporary no magic or science that can bring players back has to be neutralised first). In fact in a Sci-fi game if I use Horror and one of the players has invested in Cloning technology or similar to have another copy of himself ready to go is to eliminate them from the off. They can then start to investigate what happened to their clone, its a nice hook and really scares them.

Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerScare the players.  Fail to do that and no horror will succeed.

Yes, and to scare your players you must know your players. Know what they fear. Horror is personal.

I don't think many players will be genuinely "scared" by any descriptions of monsters, blood, or goo splattered scenes.  They might feel unsettled or disgusted, but that's not really the same thing.

If you want suspense in a tabletop game, you need a few factors:

1)  The players need to be able to make meaningful decisions.

2)  There should be a pre-existing right and wrong choice to some of the problems that require decisions in the game.

3)  The players need to know their decisions can result in failure.  (see above)

4)  Failure for some decisions will take their character permanently out of the game.  AKA they lose.  Game Over.

5)  Inactivity or "turtling" should be understood to eventually lead to failure (see above).

Quote from: blakkieYes, and to scare your players you must know your players. Know what they fear. Horror is personal.

Very true and I suspect this is where some GMs suddenly turn into assholes. It's a very tricky thing this social activity of ours. With action, suspence, mystery etc it's kind of easy....esp if any of those involve rolling dice. But horror that's where the true skill is....in a way you as the GM have to carry out this tactic in an impersonal way all the while using information specific to that player. Very tricky.

Regards,
David R

some great tips above. I might include them in a plotline I'm running at the moment.

Something that's worked for me is for the horror generating thing (monster, evil person) to effect the area around the players or NPCs but not the players. That helps reinforce the feeling of the unknown.

Quote from: David RVery true and I suspect this is where some GMs suddenly turn into assholes. It's a very tricky thing this social activity of ours. With action, suspence, mystery etc it's kind of easy....esp if any of those involve rolling dice. But horror that's where the true skill is....in a way you as the GM have to carry out this tactic in an impersonal way all the while using information specific to that player. Very tricky.

Regards,
David R

Once apon a time there was a post on Dumpshock about a one-session Halloweeen Shadowrun game. Unfortunately I can't link directly, this was years ago and it now sits only in some dusty archive somewhere (AFAIK the site admin is still working on getting the archive up). The post was from one of the players so he didn't detail everything that went into it but it was 1 part genius, 3 parts intensive legwork.  The GM spent months gathering information and designing. He interviewed friends and relatives of the players. He did casual intel questioning of the players themselves, what their fears were. He had props that included a recording made by one of the player's girlfriends calling for help in a distressed voice. The result by the end of the night was total psychological devistation of every player at the table.

Quote from: blakkieYes, and to scare your players you must know your players. Know what they fear. Horror is personal.

Agreed.

The danger here is that you walk a fine line between an honest scare and violating boundaries, and those are things specific to the individual.  You're playing with fire, and not everyone is forgiving when you cross that line.  This is part of the reason for why professionally-produced horror genre fiction is so very hit-and-miss, and you're working with even less.

Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerThe danger here is that you walk a fine line between an honest scare and violating boundaries, and those are things specific to the individual.  You're playing with fire, and not everyone is forgiving when you cross that line.  This is part of the reason for why professionally-produced horror genre fiction is so very hit-and-miss, and you're working with even less.

Probably a really good disclaimer to tack on to my last post. That particular senario turned out OK because the players involved were OK with it. Even though it was like Jaws to those "stay out of the water for years" folks. But you are actively hitting on people's own weaknesses and some people take that very poorly.

A similar topic was posted on RPG.net, so if it's okay, I'll just post my response over here as well.

When I run horror games:

1. I try to stress the trivial details. These are the elements that bring the threat home, at least in my experience. Dead bodies are cheap and easy. You can throw these at a player all day. But if they arrive at a murder scene, and you are able to communicate the reality about the people that lived there -- the food they ate, the wedding photos they displayed, the toys scattered around the living room -- then suddenly, bloody handprints on the wall become a dreadful augury of gruesome discoveries yet to come. It's harder to laugh and trivialize gore when its presence signals the death of believable victims that remind us of our own families and friends. If you suck the humor from the room, you have already contributed to the atmosphere.

2. I try to establish patterns that threaten the characters in some unexpected way. If the investigation reveals that people are being murdered by a single stab wound in the throat with a long sharp object, then the players will eventually find themselves face-to-face with a naked old woman holding a knitting needle and staring blankly at them. Had the killer turned out to be a monster or psychopath, they would have rolled initiative with more enthusiasm. But a silent and naked old woman holding a knitting needle... it was discomfiting, and it made them nervous and hesitant.

3. I try to reveal unpleasant truths long after the core components have been presented. If the players find a series of statuettes carved from ivory, which they collect as evidence, I wait until much later to reveal that these were carved from the bones of a murdered victim. If the players find soup cooking on the stove in the house of an ordinary family, I wait until later to reveal that the food was actually human flesh, and that the good people of that home were prone to cannibalism.

4. I try to understate everything. Villains who twirl their mustaches are annoying and difficult to take seriously. People who do horrible things don't think of themselves as monsters.

Quote from: RChandlerA similar topic was posted on RPG.net, so if it's okay, I'll just post my response over here as well.

When I run horror games:

1. I try to stress the trivial details. These are the elements that bring the threat home, at least in my experience. Dead bodies are cheap and easy. You can throw these at a player all day. But if they arrive at a murder scene, and you are able to communicate the reality about the people that lived there -- the food they ate, the wedding photos they displayed, the toys scattered around the living room -- then suddenly, bloody handprints on the wall become a dreadful augury of gruesome discoveries yet to come. It's harder to laugh and trivialize gore when its presence signals the death of believable victims that remind us of our own families and friends. If you suck the humor from the room, you have already contributed to the atmosphere.

2. I try to establish patterns that threaten the characters in some unexpected way. If the investigation reveals that people are being murdered by a single stab wound in the throat with a long sharp object, then the players will eventually find themselves face-to-face with a naked old woman holding a knitting needle and staring blankly at them. Had the killer turned out to be a monster or psychopath, they would have rolled initiative with more enthusiasm. But a silent and naked old woman holding a knitting needle... it was discomfiting, and it made them nervous and hesitant.

3. I try to reveal unpleasant truths long after the core components have been presented. If the players find a series of statuettes carved from ivory, which they collect as evidence, I wait until much later to reveal that these were carved from the bones of a murdered victim. If the players find soup cooking on the stove in the house of an ordinary family, I wait until later to reveal that the food was actually human flesh, and that the good people of that home were prone to cannibalism.

4. I try to understate everything. Villains who twirl their mustaches are annoying and difficult to take seriously. People who do horrible things don't think of themselves as monsters.

Excellent post agree with all of it. Make more use of possessed children....