It may be just me, but I've never taken the tropes of Lovecraftian gaming (or fiction) as actual "horror" subsequent to the first time I read HPL at age 13. I enjoy it, but there's no sense of cosmic horror, weirdness, etc. It's just give me the clues and let's get to it. And I think that 4th wall attitude goes back right to some very early published CoC material such as doggerel verses inserted into early editions and so on. It was never really horror any more than DnD was ever "imagine actually going down into a dark hole looking for gold and meeting ferocious monsters".
It's always been gamey, and that's fine.
Has that been your experience?

For a CoC game to REALLY work and be kind of "Scary", both the Players and GM have to buy into it and immerse themselves into the RPG and situation.
I did play not that long ago in a CoC mini campaign and we all got right into it.
We refrained from the usual cracking of jokes you see in Dnd sessions and tried to stay in character and react as if it was real.

It was a lot of fun and whilst it was never truly "Scary" as in any of us as players "Scared", we were immersed in the game and felt the sense of urgency and RP of character fear.

It was a lot of fun.

I agree. There's definitely a distinct "feel" to Lovecraft's fiction and the mythos in general, and I like it and have been a fan since I discovered Lovecraft as a 12 year old. But I wouldn't describe that feel as "scary".

The "horror" of Lovecraft is hard to grasp, which is why CoC often becomes a game of "last Investigator standing/sane" rather than anything scary.

I don't find HPL's fiction scary at all. I did find Crouch End by Stephen King unnerving, and I once scared myself GMing The Haunted House, whereas my player/wife wasn't scared at all!

Quote from: RandyB;1106599The "horror" of Lovecraft is hard to grasp, which is why CoC often becomes a game of "last Investigator standing/sane" rather than anything scary.

This has been my experience as well.

So far, the scariest horror game I have run was using Colin Dunn's ideas for Pentapod technology in 2300AD, where human beings are viewed as just components for the Pentapods to use in their technological constructs - kind of like what we see in OATS-Zygote and the 3rd season of Stranger Things.

While I enjoy HPL fiction I did start becoming less afraid of reading it, as too often the sense of doom and futility he projected about humanity vs the Cthulhu Mythos just began to annoy me. Yes humanity is fucked and screwed going up against them you know it would be nice to have the constant futility of doom and gloom for humanity. The only HPL fiction which had both a sense of doom and gloom vs humanity learning from and fighting back towards the Mythos. Is from Brian Lumley Mythos Omnibus which is panne by many HPL fans as how dare humanity fight back with knowledge and tools and the Eldar symbol they find and acquire over time.

Buy-in is everything as dansemacbre has said.  That macho guy who swears horror is lame and doesn't scare him isn't invulnerable as he thinks he is but he is a disruption for the other players.  Horror is one of those things you can't even begin to pull off with the X-Card crowd because going there is exactly how horror works.  Yeah you can dim the lights and use candles and black curtains and that's fine for ambience but horror works on discomfort and teasing.  Because if Cthulhu bursts out of the water and starts destroying New York while fighting the army he's reduced to a Kaiju.  Similarly if you go the SAW route and just have the PCs tied up an tortured for the whole session you probably won't have any players next week but if you imply that it's a real possibility it'll make them sweat.

The problem with Lovecraft's work as modern horror is that it was very much aimed at an audience that went to church on Sunday and looked forward to the second coming of Jesus Christ with a bit of existential terror.  The idea that god is coming and doesn't love us and doesn't know us and doesn't care about us is very important subtext to the story Call of Cthulhu.  The vampires, and werewolves don't scare us much anymore.  But the crazy guy with a knife, the stalker, the false friend, these guys still resonate.  There's still room for the supernatural but it plays better if it can be shored up with some science.  But one other issue with horror is that it takes time to build up the immersion in the setting and story that are needed to make it work.  They have to care before you can scare them.

Fear is just one of the words associated with horror. Other words include repulsion, dismay and dread. The easiest for us to feel as either readers of the stories or players of the game are repulsion and dismay. We might, if we're really into the story, experience a sense of dawning dread as things progress. Breaking the fourth wall and experiencing fear is quite difficult for any author (or GM) to do. I don't think I've ever personally been afraid while consuming any form of media. Those other forms or horror are far more likely to hit home.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1106614Fear is just one of the words associated with horror. Other words include repulsion, dismay and dread. The easiest for us to feel as either readers of the stories or players of the game are repulsion and dismay. We might, if we're really into the story, experience a sense of dawning dread as things progress. Breaking the fourth wall and experiencing fear is quite difficult for any author (or GM) to do. I don't think I've ever personally been afraid while consuming any form of media. Those other forms or horror are far more likely to hit home.

It's hard to make a rpg game downright scary, since many horror game roleplayers are into everything horror like books and movies. When you're young you might find a certain movie scary but it's very very hard to get that feeling as an old hardcore horror movie fan. But you could achieve creepy with scenarios and roleplaying sessions. Lovecraft was just as much about body horror as cosmic horror. Deformities, incest, disease and things chained in basements is easier to make something creepy out of than some cult about to summon some cosmic horror. Maybe it's just me, but I find the end of the world and all humanity less frightening than the odd, diseased end of a loved one.

Also the loss of familarity is a very frightening concept in my book. It's easier to play out in Kult where the illusion might be thinner in some places, but it could work in CoC too. A scenario that's inspired by capgras delusion for instance could be quite disturbing.

I don't know think it was every scary because I never found it the least bit interesting. That's not a stab a people that like it, but it's not the flavor for me just as I have never enjoyed watching Dr. Who despite having a wife that loves it. Where I have encountered HPLs stuff and made gaming use of it was in Conan games where my HPL mixes with REH and there I don't find it particularly scary because the protagonists tend to be the ones that survive while every damn NPC dies horribly. Every once in a while a PC goes down, but that just isn't scary in any sense.

This thread is full of excellent ideas. Yes, horror RPGing can be "scary" if the players want to be scared. Much like a horror movie. People buy tickets to a horror movie because they want to make believe the movie is "real" and they want to be scared, that's enhanced by the darkened room, the lack of outside distractions and the ambient sounds and music.

Also, different people find different things "scary" or "creepy" and what affects one or more players might not affect all, but the key to horror gaming is significant player buy-in to the concept and immersion.

Real life can be scary because the stakes are real and things can happen you have no control over but desperately cling to prayers or any unlikely hope; scary in a way people can't enjoy.

Movies or books can be scary in a way people can enjoy (although not everyone does) because filmmakers and authors are good at manipulating the audience to care about the characters or situation, and the audience has no control over what happens beyond cheering on the characters they identify with and hoping things work out so their favorite character is OK. They can cover their eyes or put down the book and remind themselves that none of it is real, but that means the scariness worked.

It's a lot harder in an RPG because the mechanics of the game distract and by design give the players a lot of control over what happens and a lot of knowledge over how things work. The best case for scary in an RPG is for the players to care about their characters (usually by virtue of investing playing time in developing them and their place in the game world), and to be put in a situation where they are uncertain of what to do but believe that their character might e OK - the stakes are their precious character and they are scared that each choice they make might in hindsight be obviously, tragically wrong. Cthulhu is likely to fail at scary because it's hopeless - the characters and the world are doomed, so players don't value their characters or their place in the world; and there's no hope that anything good will result if they're just lucky enough or good enough.

I still get some zing out of reading original Lovecraft, but never did get much out of his direct imitators. Lovecraft draws on a LOT of different influences. His cheaper fans just draw on Lovecraft.  
The Mythos is NOT the part that's scary, it's weird, can give you that sense of alien vistas... but not scary.
Yet so many hacks seem to cling to name dropping Cthulhu and its whole family tree.
 
Lovecraftian tales that work for me pretty much dispense with the Mythos references. Something like Alien or Uzumaki hits me in the right places without trying to summon Lovecraft's soggy ghost. Same with a lot of Thomas Ligotti and Robert Aickman (who I doubt even read much Lovecraft).
So I try to aim for the same in games... keeping things immediate and personal (and generally shunning the big pulpy CoC world-hopping campaigns). The Mythos is out there, somewhere, but needn't be conjured by name... it's just a foundation to build on. Certain themes like alienation, vast cycles of time, inexplicable events, corruption and madness.

Still, 'scary' is a hard target to hit. I've had a good number of 'scary' experiences in gaming, but I think that has more to do with my being receptive to such things... WANTING to be scared... than it does with anything the GM did, except not getting in my way.
As a GM I won't even attempt 'scary' unless I've got the right group... no lame jokes, references to pop-culture, no min-maxing. Instead I'll just steer towards 'weird and disconcerting' and hope I miss the reefs of 'silly.'
Smaller groups of Players, shorter campaigns, Players who genuinely WANT to be scared... that's my base formula.

Quote from: The_Shadow;1106590Has Cthulhu role-playing EVER actually been scary?

The last Cthulhu game I was in was. But then I actively look for players to be in a game with now that are also looking for scary to happen. In high school, I didn't know HPL, so games played like Indy Jones (not scary).