Quote from: jan paparazzi;812754Supernatural never hits the horror tone to me.

In general no, and in later seasons certainly not... but in the beginning it was quite a bit darker and the adversaries were sinister/mysterious/scary. It had an atmosphere full of sadness and regret as well.
The brothers were financing their zealous monster hunting with crime and were in constant peril of slipping deeper into the darkness of their own moral decay... that of course is not where the show went, though I really wished it had.

How "gothic" would you say the Hellboy-verse is? Lots of mystery, decay, supernatural elements, melodrama there, but there are also pulp and supers tropes. Urban fantasy? Supers horror?

I wouldn't call that gothic at all. It's pulpy dark superhero with sf elements (weird science, alternative timeline) I think. It's a weird and very cool hybrid, but it isn't gothic. Not by a long shot.

Truly gothic in an rpg makes me uncomfortable playing it. In new Vampire there was canonical female vampire in one of the books they wrote who was a priestess of the Lancea Sanctum (can't remember her name) who works at a homeless shelter. She uses temptation by planting drugs for the addicts and if they resist she kills them out of mercy. Because then they can go to heaven without sins. Well brother, I would be very uncomfortable roleplaying a character like that. It wouldn't be very fun either. Anyway there are people who want to play something as bleak as that, but not me.

Anyway, I don't really know what genre Hellboy is.

Hmm...
This is odd.
I do not define "gothic" as uncomfortable at all.
Decay in the form of ruins and decadence, sure, and something unseen constantly lurking, clearly, but I do not see it as automatically uncomfortable.

To me it is more a romance-like reference.

I can see how romance mixed with horror and/or terror easily becomes uncomfortable, but discomfort is still not the primary thing in gothic horror for me, but it is clearly a common by-product.

Quote from: Opaopajr;812834About high school football team members riding a bus & getting into an accident, returning for the one-shot's eponymous event. Waking up they find themselves scattered from each other in an unrecognizable town, and scattered from themselves as unrecognizably late middle-aged. Obviously it is their own hometown, just in advanced future decay.

Something is trying to consume each of their last secret hopes in an effort to skip their lives to their joyless sunsets.

Gothic & playable?

It seems gothic to me, given the weird and unexplained changes in themselves and their town, and the menace of something unexplained hanging over them. My previous impression was that it was a conventional story of an aging athlete; like "Death of a Salesman" but with a former sports star.

Multiple evenly placed characters, a mystery to solve as minimal goal, grim and terrible threats. So I would say playable with the right players.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;812923Anyway, I don't really know what genre Hellboy is.

Supernatural detective. Like Carnacki, the Ghost-Hunter, Repairman Jack, and Dylan Dog.

The anthology Dark Detectives, which Mignola listed as his primary influence in creating Hellboy, is devoted to this particular small genre. Mignola adds in a lot of pulp stuff, and folklore, which is his unique take on the genre, but its pretty well-defined by the classic supernatural detective story tropes, to the point Mignola has actually adapted several of the stories just inserting Hellboy in the place of the protagonist.

This is referring to the comic, btw, the movies are their own thing, and don't really resemble the comic much except visually.

The Wikipedia entry actually sums it up pretty thoroughly what constitutes gothic fiction. Discomfort is not a defining feature of gothic fiction as established. It is however often a feature of horror in general and hence also gothic horror.

Quote from: 3rik;813064The Wikipedia entry actually sums it up pretty thoroughly what constitutes gothic fiction. Discomfort is not a defining feature of gothic fiction as established. It is however often a feature of horror in general and hence also gothic horror.

Ah yes, of course.

Quote from: 3rik;813064The Wikipedia entry actually sums it up pretty thoroughly what constitutes gothic fiction. Discomfort is not a defining feature of gothic fiction as established. It is however often a feature of horror in general and hence also gothic horror.

I view "Arrrgg! Zombies!" as horror and "Oh my God! What have I become?" as gothic horror.

There is obviously a difference between classic victorian literature and modern literature like Anne Rice. But they have something in common. The main character is cursed. Modern gothic dropped a lot of the classic trappings though, like the castle on top of the mountain. VtM is Anne Rice plus conspiracies. They toned down the conspiracies later making VtR even more Ricean than VtM. Instead of fearing the monster that rips you apart, you play the monster that rips people apart and doesn't give a fuck.

Edit: I might be wrong. What I see as typically gothic is probably typically Anne Rice, who reversed the roles.

"Hey those guys are Zombies!" = Horror
"Hey I'm really worried about zombies!" = Gothic
"Hey I'm a zombie!" = Gothic Horror

Quote from: 3rik;813064The Wikipedia entry actually sums it up pretty thoroughly what constitutes gothic fiction. Discomfort is not a defining feature of gothic fiction as established. It is however often a feature of horror in general and hence also gothic horror.

I think that's pretty much the actual definition accepted by academics and not what others imagine when the hear the word "gothic".

I came across a pretty gothic pc game called Darkest Dungeon. It's a dungeon crawler which puts a lot of emphasis on the psychological stresses of adventuring. The characters become tainted by their experiences and get all kinds of psychological afflictions like paranoid, depressed or hopeless.

I think this sums up gothic. It's where the main characters become tainted with what they experience or do. They don't just walk away and shrug it off.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;816273I came across a pretty gothic pc game called Darkest Dungeon. It's a dungeon crawler which puts a lot of emphasis on the psychological stresses of adventuring. The characters become tainted by their experiences and get all kinds of psychological afflictions like paranoid, depressed or hopeless.

I think this sums up gothic. It's where the main characters become tainted with what they experience or do. They don't just walk away and shrug it off.

If you keep the party's stress levels low, they do not develop ailments that much, if at all, from what I've heard.
To me, those ailments is not gothic as such, but it is a possible(not necessary) ingredient.
That game is clearly gothic in so many other ways too though, like dark areas, catholic influence, ruins, and so on, so I agree that the game is clearly gothic.

I recently stumbled across the Ghastly Affair rpg, and my first thought was, "this is what Ravenloft should have been."

Seems to be hitting all of Mister Guingol's bulletpoints so far as I read it.  And while the book is dense, the system is quite simple.

I plan to use it the next time I do a Gothic horror game.

Quote from: Catelf;816329If you keep the party's stress levels low, they do not develop ailments that much, if at all, from what I've heard.
To me, those ailments is not gothic as such, but it is a possible(not necessary) ingredient.
That game is clearly gothic in so many other ways too though, like dark areas, catholic influence, ruins, and so on, so I agree that the game is clearly gothic.

Yeah true gothic would be starting off with an ailment which can't be removed. Thief the kleptomaniac.