Quote from: Sacrosanct;588160Not according to a thesaurus.

A thesaurus is a poor source for word definitions. We use dictionaries for those, and the two words have different definitions.

Most of you guys seem incapable of reading anything longer than the title of a thread. This is usually enough for you to sustain the threads all around here with endless repetition. So thanks again to Philotomy for engaging with the content of the OP.

The emphasis in the question lies on horror in entertainment, hence all the examples I gave, though anecdotes and observations from real life were welcome too. I can experience intense revulsion, loathing and disgust but not horror. I stopped feeling horror at some point in my teens perhaps when I realised that the supernatural was non-existent but I still remember what horror feels like. I used to be able to awaken it through films and books but the feeling is gone for ever Im afraid. I assure you it hasn't left several women I know who can tap into the feeling by watching any old rubbishy horror film and will remain afraid for hours afterwards, of being alone at night.

The stupid among you, who can only read thread titles and contribute one-liners (why not fuck off instead?), want to believe I am criticising women. Are many of you resident at grognards.txt? In fact the point was to wonder if it possible to create at the gametable this horror that many women can still generate watching entertainment.

Monsters don't make us feel dread but fear for the safety of our children does. I made the point that many great works of drama work on this fear and audiences enjoy these plays. I agree with Philotomy that such dread doesn't feel right to introduce to the gametable.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;588148I think it's fair to say there are cultural forces that make displaying or admitting to certain emotions socially more acceptable for one gender or the other. It's more socially acceptable for women to admit to fear or sadness, for example, while its more acceptable for men to admit to lust or anger. Men are encouraged to be "tough" and conceal fear or sadness or pain, whereas women are encouraged to conceal lustful or violent emotions, but are free to express vulnerable ones.

Right, wrong, or indifferent, that is how our culture perceives appropriateness of emotional expression, and while that may be changing slowly, there is alot of inertia.

So the OP may well be noticing the disporportionate expression of these emotions and assuming that expression is the same as experience.

I disagree that gender differences are cultural only. I used to have endless discussions about this in real life in my twenties but am no longer interested in the topic. That's not what this thread is about.

Hey ben isnt the Wendigo myth canadian? coz that could explain what you saw out in the dark woods that seemed wrong.

Guys keep it about RPGs. Happy we have a thread covering horror and roleplaying but the discussion needs to remain gaming related or it gets moved to a subforum.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;588163A thesaurus is a poor source for word definitions. We use dictionaries for those, and the two words have different definitions.

For the purposes of my statement, feel free to replace "terror" with "horror" if you like.  Both apply equally.

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;588181Hey ben isnt the Wendigo myth canadian? coz that could explain what you saw out in the dark woods that seemed wrong.

Some people have told me what I saw could have been Sasquatch. I can't make a pronouncement about it. I am a rational and logical person, as well as a spiritual person, by nature. I don't go out of my way to "believe" in ghosts and goblins. And yet, there are things in this world I cannot explain. I'm open-minded, even though I can strike hard stones at "hocus pocus" glass houses on a regular basis.

Now as it applies to RPGs, to installing a mood or ambiance that is conducive of these kinds of emotions, you need to have players who are willing and able to immerse in-character, who are willing to play the game (that is, if you come to the table wishing to be 'proven wrong' and be scared, that's not going to work because you are on the defensive), and basically all in tune in order to "play the same game." The GM needs to be able to describe things, have a sense of pace, and his own way to make the environment feel verisimilar.

It's not impossible, or even that hard when those components are assembled. And of course, mileages will vary enormously because people do not have the same imaginations, the same thresholds, the same way to perceive things in an RPG and react to them. Some people will never experience these types of visceral moments. Doesn't mean they don't exist. As a matter of personal experience, I know they do.

BTW guys this is the main RPG forum. Let's keep this thread about RPGs as much as we can, please, or it'll move eventually to the Pundit's forum. Thanks.

A number of games try to break fear/terror/horror down into separate experiences - that's something I am trying to formulate into a "psychograph" for a game I am working on now. For example, reacting to escalating violence is different from reacting to the discovery that your wife is an alien or your frequent mood swings are being caused by a colony of larvae growing inside your skull.

Horror movies seem to be dominated nowadays by "gore porn" - violence.

Unknown Armies Madness Meters were really groundbreaking in this regard.

Quote from: _kent_;588168Monsters don't make us feel dread but fear for the safety of our children does. I made the point that many great works of drama work on this fear and audiences enjoy these plays. I agree with Philotomy that such dread doesn't feel right to introduce to the gametable.

That some people might not feel dread at the idea of monsters, because of a variety of reasons that may have to do with the level of immersion involved in a game, the way it's approached, just how dissociated you become from your own self and real life issues when you roll polyhedrals and the like, certainly.

But monsters can still scare some, that makes no doubt in my mind. Monsters are metaphors, personifications of other things that resonate with different human beings at different levels of conscience, in different ways. The Vampire is a monster that expresses a link between blood, sex and death, life and death, damnation and eternal life, for instance, and playing on these things, getting at them in the game can create pretty strong emotions on the part of some players at least. It's all in the eye of the beholder, first, and in the manner in which it is effectively described, played, brought to life, second.

It won't work with everyone, but it does with some people. And this can be entertaining in the same way reading a novel of HPL to get spooked can be entertaining. Speaking of which, I can still get emotional reactions and get spooked from reading novels. Some movies can still scare me. It's all about imagination and suspension of disbelief, and how these things play with my personal experience, I guess. Like, I can still get my imagination running and visit places of dread reading HPL describing the mountains and forests of Vermont in the Whisperer in Darkness, because I know these types of areas. I live there, and I can relate.

Regarding monsters, Benoist is right, but I don't think it can sustain a game, and your mileage by player will vary.

A giant spider or a giant cockroach, depending on the player, may be truly horrifying.  In a sense, describing them in a vivid fashion may force them to confront their 'real-life' revulsion, and they may experience a brief moment of 'horror'.  

But even a horror movie, which covers 90 minutes to 2 hours, has periods where the horror must take a back seat to other elements.  Usually a good dose of 'curious exploration' followed by the horror reveal.  In addition, it's much harder to rely on some of the tricks that a horror movie will use to create the proper reaction.  'Jumping out' can be scary, but it's hard to do in a game.  Foreboding music, while it can be played, is harder to tie into the pace of the game.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;588227Regarding monsters, Benoist is right, but I don't think it can sustain a game, and your mileage by player will vary.

It can. It did for me and others. I'm speaking from experience. Now you're right the results will vary given GMs, party makeups, and so on. That'll vary tremendously, and some people won't ever experience it. But because you don't experience it doesn't mean others cannot or did not.

I've had a moment like this when, after a long game where we were basically newcomers in Venice, in Vampire the Masquerade, we finally met the mysterious Doge we heard so much about but couldn't meet until then. It turned out the Doge was in fact an NPC we knew, who was masquerading as a hands-off Primogen of the city. Her name was Scillia. She started telling us about her life and unlife, how she was the wife of Marcus something, an official of the Roman empire, how she was Embraced after his return from Africa where he caught "that strange affliction". It took a while. We were all in the zone, you know. Candles burning. In the attic of an abandoned school in Commercy, France, where we organized our local convention.

In any case, long story short, Scillia was pregnant when she was Embraced, and the way the GM role played her, we could see her, not him, and he described the dread of being dead, undead, and pregnant for two thousand years, unable to give life, nor forsake it, the trauma, and slow drift into madness... it was amazing. We felt digust. And dread. And pain for that imaginary character. And we cried. For real. All of us.

That was amazing. It can't really be described typing at a computer like this. But it is possible and I've been there.

Likewise, one of my players, still playing Vampire the Masquerade, was an Italian Ventrue who had been recruited for some strange arcane experiments on the part of the Parisian Giovanni. He became the "King of the Dead", and didn't really know what that meant until the dead started speaking to him. And speak to him they did. He was like a magnet to spirits, and they would come to him for aid, and consolation, tell him about their troubles, the things they had left behind, the things that killed them and still made them hurt beyond, in the afterlife. And man, did I struck a chord with a little girl who didn't even know she was dead. I saw the player actually tear up and try to get away from all this in a reflex of dread, like, he was in-character, and he couldn't take it anymore. It was horrible.

So yeah, you can get there. These are just two examples.

BTW, it's not dependant on the game. You can get there in an AD&D game too. I spooked some players pretty bad with a spider nest once, actually. Describing the webs, the caverns, the echos, the movement in the air. I didn't even have to show the spiders, they were already digusted. Interesting moment. You can ask my players in RL. I really like to create a vivid environment, and it can get really creepy at times.

It's all for fun of course.

Quote from: Lynn;588207A number of games try to break fear/terror/horror down into separate experiences - that's something I am trying to formulate into a "psychograph" for a game I am working on now. For example, reacting to escalating violence is different from reacting to the discovery that your wife is an alien or your frequent mood swings are being caused by a colony of larvae growing inside your skull

LOL. Very good, tell us more. Is this a modern horror game? Do you try to influence the players moods with atmosphere? Does the "psychograph" or related stat influence the players the way very low hps might induce anxiety?

The OP is wrong on a number of levels.....a huge number. It's not just women and children....not by a long shot. Also, while women are more in touch with their emotions on average, that's something that points out the fact the real issue isn't with them, its with men in our society who are taught to reign those emotions in.

You might need to back up for a self-perspective. It is possible to become jaded or resistant to horror. I can watch the movie Alien with amused detatchment now, but when I saw it at age 8 I was absolutely terrified. That doesn't mean only children are susceptible to horror, nope. It means I have been drinking from the firehose of horror film, game and fiction for going on 33 years since that time, and have been thoroughly innoculated against it...mostly.

I can tell you that horror is a very real emotion and that outside of the safety of literature and film I have felt it in real life. If you have kids, you must have experienced what I have, that terrible fear that you might lose one to some tragedy. I refuse to even watch a movie that features violence or risk of such against children and women because it evokes a sense of fear and horror at the prospect that such a terrible thing could happen to my own family.

About three years ago a man joyriding on a motor cycle without a helmet bounced off of my truck at 50 miles per hour in a 35 zone and wrapped himself around a light pole even as his motorcycle wrapped around the rear of my vehicle. That was incredibly horrifying.

So yeah....I like horror in literature, game and film because I am comfortable with it. But I try to avoid it at all costs in the real world, thank you.

Quote from: Benoist;588214But monsters can still scare some, that makes no doubt in my mind. Monsters are metaphors, personifications of other things that resonate with different human beings at different levels of conscience, in different ways. The Vampire is a monster that expresses a link between blood, sex and death, life and death, damnation and eternal life, for instance, and playing on these things, getting at them in the game can create pretty strong emotions on the part of some players at least. It's all in the eye of the beholder, first, and in the manner in which it is effectively described, played, brought to life, second.

Good point. My players do immerse themselves in their characters and the environments they explore and games can become intense but horror for me looks precarious to attain, and the failure could be embarrassing, you know corny or cheesy, and do damage to the suspension of disbelief you've achieved. But your point is well made.