When running a darker game, how do you go about establishing horror?
Well, in terms of rules, it is very difficult to scare the players of high-level characters because they are exceptionally powerful. So, play with lower-level characters. It makes it easier, because they are inherently more delicate.
The first thing to realize is that the people you have the frighten are the players, not the characters. Real fear is visceral and involuntary, and not role-played. Scare the players, not the character.
Other than that, there are several things that are inherently frightening to players, and in general:
- loss of control (by physical means or by plot)
- the perversion of the body/self (body-horror)
- perception of being alone, or being left alone
- the world turning against them
- the unexpected or strange
- perversion of innocence (demon-babies, evil children, etc.)
- rape
- torture
- loss of perception (blindness, deafness, etc.)
- infestation and parasitical growth
- living decay
- pain
- desolation
- extreme environments (that cannot be overcome)
- running out of time
- nothing to trust
- anything that gets inside your body.
- anything which is intelligent, hostile and utterly inhuman.
- anything which can engulf or swallow you whole.
- anything pathetic, disgusting and desperate.
There are, of course, many more things that are frightening, but that's a pretty basic list.
Here are some things that work really well. Warning: described gore.
I like creatures with a kind of freaky wrongness.
Clive Barker does a good job conjuring creature like this.
Take something- or someone- familiar, and do something really horrible to it.
Examples:
Animated bed sheets stained with semen and the blood of someone raped and murdered on them. They flap and flutter around, conforming to a quietly moaning person's form when at rest, moving hypnotically and sinuously... when you reach down to pull the sheet back... nothing is there. While you stare at the nothing, the sheet whips into a tight coil around you, and forces itself into your mouth, and down your throat, twisting and knotting itself into your lungs.
A suit of living armor made from the interlinked corpses of murdered innocent children. When worn, it hides the evil of the wearer, and all attempts to scry it out reveal nothing but a group of kids. To attack the twisted screaming child-faces, you must overcome revulsion and your instincts not to harm children.
Your family, familiar enough to inspire all the emotions family does, but subtly and horribly different... operating my nightmare logic. You Mom serves up a piping hot bowl of fingers, and before you can jerk back, your Father and little brother happily tuck in and start eating. Your mother says, "What's wrong, are you not feeling well?" and you blubber for a moment, your little brother says, "Dibs on what he doesn't eat!" and your Father says, "Your mother spent all day getting this meal ready! At least try to be polite!" And their faces slowly... elongate, tongue licking at their cheeks, lapping up the tears of purple blood leaking from their black-washed eyes, and your Mom grabs you from behind in grip like Boa constrictors, and your little brother dangles a stir-fried finger your face, the painted nail and slim digit obviously the finger of a woman, and he says "come on! try one!" and while your father holds your mouth open with his twitching hands, your brother feeds one finger after another into your mouth while you vomit and heave around them.
Yeah.
Something like that.
I only run horror sessions on Halloween, because I don't like to do horror; it doesn't mean I'm not very very good at it.
The unknown is a LOT scarier than the known. Once something can be named, it can be understood and fought.
---
DM: As you approach the temple, you see several corpses outside. Slowly they start rising, standing upright, evil glittering in their empty eye sockets.
Players: Right... zombies. Cleric, get ready to channel energy. They're DR/Slashing, right?
DM: While you watch, the skin of one of the corpses falls away, revealing the decayed underlayers of muscle and fat. At the center, where the heart should be, is a black twisting mass, with one compound eye glaring in your general direction. It quickly unravels, reaching out with whipping tentacles that have various... body parts... strung along its length. Wizard, you sense that something is trying to worm its way into your mind.
Players: WTF? Run!
Kilborne: Thanks for the suggestions, a lot of those are creepy. How do you usually depict them, though? Do you accompany your games with music? Print outs? Objects?
Further, what sort of pacing do you use when describing a setting to the PCs? I've found usually when I attempt this, I either describe too little and the PCs feel nothing, as nothing seems out of the ordinary -- or I overload them with crazy s%*t!
Dilvias: That's happened in my group before! When the monsters are seen as stat-bags the game definitely loses its kick.
I know I've contributed to three threads asking this same question over the past couple months. Anybody got any links to the others? I gave some great advice in those.
;)
Music and lighting help, but aren't necessary. Don't go overboard on props. In fact, NOT using the battlemat helps, as it keeps things vague and different than usual. If the players catch you making a mistake, just smile at them and say "well, that is what you thought, too bad you were wrong." :)
For description, usually less is better. Obfucation, darkness, strange mists. If they want details, ask them to make a perception check... if they dare. Usually a few descriptive details are enough. Don't just rely on visuals either. the skittering sound of bone being dragged across the tile floor... the sickly-sweet stench of a piece of fruit that has rotted... the feel of walking through cobwebs even though no cobwebs are visible...
For horror gaming, its time to break out those condition modifiers you don't normally use. Being shaken, nauseated, poisoned and confused while the strange monsters you don't recognize have you surrounded, closing in... it's the players that will start getting nervous. Also, if there is something you don't normally do, now is the time to do it. If you don't use a lot of traps, load 'em up. Rarely use sunder? Time to break out a sundering monster. Most people don't like change, so if you change up how your regular adventures go, they'll start to worry. (Also, they may not know those rarely used rules as well as those normally used.)
Make the players second-guess themselves. Used judiciously, the phrase "Are you SURE you want to do that?" can work wonders. Try to get the players hesitant, trying to figure out what to do next. Then while they are dithering, hit them with the next thing. Keep up the psychological pressure. Try getting them to suspect anything and everything, even the other characters.
Remember, it's all about the terror. Don't go for the kill, go for the pain, go for the capture. Once a character is dead, the horror is over. Don't let it be over. Once they are captured, then the real horror begins...
(There is a reason why my group doesn't let me run horror games any more.)
good stuff
Thanks a lot!
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I ran a 5 year long D&D horror game and ended up writing a guide to horror in roleplaying from what I learned. Check it out.
When running a darker game, how do you go about establishing horror?
Non game mechanically?
Dim the lights for starters. Not so dark that they can't read their character sheets, but dimmer than usual. If you can trust your players not to catch anything on fire candles are a great option. Along with this, playing at night is a must.
Secondly, music is always a great aid. If you're planing on running Carrion Crown there is a list of good music to set the mood in the Haunting of Harrowstone's foreword.
Thirdly, try playing in a different room than you usually do. The change in location will put your players off their guard. If you can leave a door at their back that's a great option, I find a dark empty hallway behind my players makes them extra jumpy. And open windows, if it's night outside.
Finally, one of the things that works best is only to use a battle mat for combat. This will force the players to use their imaginations at all times, therefore fully immersing themselves.
Anyway, hope these help!
I've found that separating the players from the GM helps to make the game the ominous, and makes the players feel more isolated. When I ran a Ravenloft game, I would have my group sit around a small table while I ran the game from the bar in the kitchen, about six feet away, and it really seemed to help.
Awesome article Ernest.
Well my take, I have ran a couple horror campaigns. What I have done to aet the mood, I un-think game mechanics, I usually don't allow players much access to the core book, Never, tell my players their conditions, as well not making their current hit points known. The more descriptions the better.
Watch horror movies. Unfortunately this genre has degenerated over the years as gore, guts, and blood have replaced the terror of the unknown. Great horror actors such as Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Bella Lugosi, etc. etc. are all actors that you should put on your radar. Of course, it is a different style of acting and cinema all together that has been dubbed as "cheesy," but they're really fantastic to watch and a lot of fun.
The original Frankenstein with Karloff is wonderful and can help give you a feel of what you should shoot for. Also, Vincent Price's House of Wax is another good one. The Mummy with Karloff is another great along with Christopher Lee's legendary Draculaalong with his role as Lord Summerisle in The Wickerman.
More contemporary horror films that I find brilliant are Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, Sam Raimi's Evil Deads (ending with the climactic Army of Darkness), and Peter Jackson's early films such as Dead/Alive, are all terrific examples, all of which border on the quirkier side of the genre, but nonetheless magnificent.
Damn, I did not mean to type this much...well, if you're reading this part of my response, thank you for reading thus far to the ramblings of a college student at the end of Spring Break.
EDIT: Also, stay away from torture-porn. The more grotesque it gets does not make it scarier. It only makes it more uncomfortable for the players as you describe it. The scariest stuff is the unknown. What you cannot directly perceive and can only imagine is the scariest. Take the concept of death for example. Think of how scary mortality is simply because you don't know what lies beyond this mortal coil? bahahahaha!
Thanks everyone, for everything.
I scare my players all the time....
The first one of the best things is make them break the rules of a horror movie...and also gaming.
Purposely split up the party...take each player separately and describe what happens to them...then tell them not to tell anyone else what happened and call in the nest player. Their imaginations will make them...more prone to being scared.
While I know this can be time consuming and such...it is effective.
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Further, what sort of pacing do you use when describing a setting to the PCs? I've found usually when I attempt this, I either describe too little and the PCs feel nothing, as nothing seems out of the ordinary -- or I overload them with crazy s%*t!
I feel like I've posted about this on other recent-ish threads too and I don't want to repeat myself (boring!), so I'll just comment on this one issue:
Pick one thing per description. One really vivid sensory detail (and when you can, use the more unusual ones, like smell/taste/touch, rather than the more obvious sight and sound) that you want the PCs to focus on. Use that. Everything else gets bare-bones coverage -- straight nouns and verbs, although they can be as evocative as you can make 'em.
This prevents overloading the PCs with too much abstract information at once and also really tightens the focus to whatever particular aspect of horror you're trying to convey at that moment. If the PCs are in a fight, they wouldn't have time to notice every tiny detail at once anyway, and this keeps the pace from bogging down too much.
Then, in the next room (or the next round of combat, or whatever), pick another detail. Go with that. And so on.
Later you can play around with the basic formula to achieve specific effects, but as a general guideline, "one detail per description" has worked well for me.
I scare my players all the time....
The first one of the best things is make them break the rules of a horror movie...and also gaming.
Purposely split up the party...take each player separately and describe what happens to them...then tell them not to tell anyone else what happened and call in the nest player. Their imaginations will make them...more prone to being scared.
While I know this can be time consuming and such...it is effective.
+10000
I've played in enough Call of Cthulhu games to verify that this works wonders. You really are trying to scare the players and not the characters so much. Every time I'd be split up I'd start trying to legitimately stay with the group... alas if properly done you can force a player away from the group.
Once they're on their own all the advice in this thread is doubly effective. If a party of adventures is frightened by an unknown enemy or creature, imagine a lone PC in the same situation.