Quote from: Steerpike;702590Have you ever found any media (writing, movie, game) that scared or at least unnerved/disturbed you or do you seem pretty much impervious to the lot?

Reading details about the holocaust as a child made me angry & sad.  I've never been made to feel afraid by any media.

The answer is no. The reasons why vary depending on whether what you WANT is a game where the theme is "scaryness" or where the players themselves are actually scared, but in either case, no.

RPGPundit

I'd say no with a but--

In some games there are mechanics that aren't going to help you at all: D&D, once you get past sixth level or so, becomes the realm of John Maclane heroics. A lone stalker with a hatchet just isn't threatening. Once some of those higher level spells get kicking off, well, mundane threats just aren't an issue.  
There's also the issue of linear progression: in D&D and it's servitors, there's the assumption that you'll become more powerful as you level, and that the enemies you face will be more powerful as well.  Horror and power fantasy are like water and oil.
Ravenloft didn't work very well under 3e, and was effectively impossible under 4e. Characters became so powerful, so fast that mundane threats and mysteries were a non-issue from first level.

Contrariwise, the smallest game systems can dramatically adjust how a player approaches a problem, and adjusts the assumptions of the game.  Sanity in COC inverts the power structure of D&D. As you adventure and solve mysteries, you'll become more vulnerable to failed sanity roles. Your general level of fragility means that it's rarely worth it to use violence. Skills increasing through use means that you get better at what you engage in, but there's no across-the-board improvements. CoC players are as cautious as OD&D players, but without the carrot of a level gain to drive them forward.  

In the NWoD, the Virtues and Vices system for regaining spend Willpower works well for sleazy criminal campaigns, because the players are always weighing the rewards for being skeezy. (I can't speak for Vampire or its ilk, I only ever used NWoD for criminal conspiracy horror games.)

So no, you don't need a horror RPG, but every system has it's boundary conditions, and some of those boundaries make certain types of games hard to maintain without discounting big parts of the system.

Quote from: JonWake;703455There's also the issue of linear progression: in D&D and it's servitors, there's the assumption that you'll become more powerful as you level, and that the enemies you face will be more powerful as well.  Horror and power fantasy are like water and oil.

I don't think the whole 'zero to hero' motif meshes well with horror. At least not what I'd call 'horror'.

It depends on how "need" is defined. Technically, no, but then how many games goes the hobby need? How many editions does any particular rule set need? It may not be needed but human nature makes it inevitable.

Quote from: ArduinI've never been made to feel afraid by any media.

Very interesting!  I wonder if this means you're just wired a bit differently than most people.  In a way I kinda feel bad for you - I've had a lot of fun over the years being scared by various media!

Quote from: JonWakeRavenloft didn't work very well under 3e, and was effectively impossible under 4e. Characters became so powerful, so fast that mundane threats and mysteries were a non-issue from first level.

I definitely agree with this.  I've run sessions of Ravenloft with some Pathfinder players (they're normally in the Planescape setting - if I was running a straight-up horror game I would not use any variant of d20) and it is very challenging to keep things remotely threatening.  I've adopted a few tactics to try and mitigate the problem:

- Consistently using higher-powered monsters than would normally be expected.  There are ways of making the "lone pyscho" threatening too (like giving him a whack of class levels).

- Impossible odds, like huge hordes of zombies - though I make sure to give the players a way to evade/delay/debilitate the threat.

- Grafting on Sanity mechanics (quite easy to do).

- de-emphasizing combat and emphasizing exploration, atmosphere, story, and description.

- using monsters sparingly but "teasing" them a lot by showing signs of their presence (mangled bodies, for example) or brief glimpses of them (through the bars of a portcullis, in a window, in the distance, etc).

- creepy handouts ("blood-stained parchment" etc), music.

- playing in the dark with candles.

- engineering sitations where PC equipment is missing (this can verge on railroading so I do this with great care, and infrequently).

These are all imperfect solutions, of course - d20/Pathfinder is not set up well for horror at all - but I've found they do help somewhat.