Horror Versus Fantasy


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


Not sure if this is the right section of the forums for this topic. It doesn't pertain to the Pathfinder game, per se, but I am curious how other GMs have handled this philosophy.

I was just watching the opening of 'Tourist Trap'. For those not familiar, it's a cheesy 80s movie about a telekinetic serial killer. There are some incredibly eerie and even disturbing moments throughout the film, thanks in great part to the mannequins the killer animates with his powers. As I was watching the first killing, I was struck by just how bothersome the mannequins really are, and I started imagining how I would handle the interpretation of such a threat in a PF scenario.

This is hardly a new idea, of course, and has been covered extensively in the past, I'm sure, but oddly, when I went onto Google to search for the topic, not much came up. So, I put it to the always helpful and insightful members of the Pathfinder forums.

How do you differentiate between horror and fantasy horror? In other words, the zombies in Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead' or Fulci's 'Zombi" are supposed to be terrifying, eliciting true repulsion and horror as they shuffle implacably towards our heroes. On the other hand, zombies in a PF game are often slow minions to hack through as the heroes make their way to the BBEG.

What is it about the distinction between "traditional" horror and fantasy horror that makes certain elements frightening, creepy, disturbing, grotesque, etc, versus the straight-up hack and slash, good-old swashbuckling yarns. Why are the Deep Ones of Lovecraft really eerie and threat inducing, while the Sauhaugin are just murderous fish people? They're very similar in their make-up. I know it's based on how any particular GM runs their game, but what is it about horror that allows one element to be truly scare inducing in one setting and merely a threat to defeat in another?

Does this make sense?

Scarab Sages

As far as Golarion goes, book 1 of Carrion Crown (The Haunting of Harrowstone) is a very good segue into combining the trope filled Fantasy Horror into an actual Horror category (the subsequent books not so much). lone Zombies shambling through the streets at night, possession, Nightmare on Elm Street-esque hallucinatory dreams, nasty haunts, etc. I also hear Carnival of Fear (PF Module) is a good horror story as well.

The ambiance is really the key. Having a ghostly doomsday clock running 5 miles outside of town with its juju leaking into the city at night can lead to a place where you feel as if the PCs are actually scared in-character. Plus, Ravengro is a creepy little town.


Ok, good start. Thanks, archmagi1.

I'm curious how your players reacted differently to the zombies in the streets and the Elm Street-esque nightmares. In a horror movie, when the hero/heroine (let's say Laurie Strode from 'Halloween') picks up the knife and goes up against the zombie-like killer, the weapon offers little in the way of protection or comfort. In a PF game, the heroes have their swords, maces, spells and all manner of means at their disposal to send the undead back to their graves. How do you establish that initial feeling of helplessness and fragility that is so necessary for true horror to work?


Ambiance, atmosphere, mood.

But to me the big difference is larger than that. It's about the assumptions of the genre. The deep ones in Lovecraft are terrifying abominations because of context. Lovecraft doesn't write about heroes, he mostly writes about victims, or at best, survivors. Even when one does "win" in Lovecraft, you know that they've only temporarily shut the door on unimaginable - and unconfrontable - horror. The deep ones are the tip of an immense and terrible iceberg that lurks hidden beneath the waves that would drive you mad if you were to see even a fraction of the truth.

Sahuagin, on the other hand, are wet cannon fodder, and at 5th level I can cast water breathing and we can go kick their butts in their home town.

Radiant Oath

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I've often been pondering this question. I have a player who boasts that he "never gets scared" and regards creepy things with a resounding "meh." No matter how hard I try to set up the ambiance, atmosphere and mood, it doesn't get a rise out of him. Part of that may simply be the limitations of play-by-post. It's hard to be scary and surprising when your only means of communicating it are through text. Part of it may be the fact that he's ex-military, and fear is something that's drilled out of you in boot camp. But when coming across horror trappings in-game he doesn't even bat an eyelash. He enjoys playing Clint-Eastwood sorts of characters, taciturn men who ride into town, cooly and casually deliver a beatdown to anyone fool enough to try and attack them, and treat setbacks and life-threatening situations as a temporary annoyance they can recover from and implacably march back into town to repay the favor in kind before riding out into the desert again as mysterious as they were when they arrived...How the heck do I scare a character like that?!


Partly my point, exactly, Zousha. I use music, and sometimes images, but it's difficult to "make" someone be scared.

There's more to this, though. It's not just a question of "how do we make roleplaying scary?" It's also a question of why are the same things scary in one setting and simply threatening in another? Qorin points out some very good elements of this in his post. I'm expecting a reply from one of my old GMs sometime soon who I hope will put a very keen light on this topic. He's one of the best, is,CrimTaft. I recommend following his posts. A wise, if thoroughly annoyi....I mean, a wise man, indeed.


scrmwrtr42 wrote:

Partly my point, exactly, Zousha. I use music, and sometimes images, but it's difficult to "make" someone be scared.

There's more to this, though. It's not just a question of "how do we make roleplaying scary?" It's also a question of why are the same things scary in one setting and simply threatening in another? Qorin points out some very good elements of this in his post. I'm expecting a reply from one of my old GMs sometime soon who I hope will put a very keen light on this topic. He's one of the best, is,CrimTaft. I recommend following his posts. A wise, if thoroughly annoyi....I mean, a wise man, indeed.

Because in PF the horror creatures are CR appropriate and no more of a threat to the PCs than any other monster? And the PCs are generally larger than life heroes instead of ordinary schmoes?


No, Jeff, I don't think that's it. Why does Snake Pliskin run from The Crazies? He's a war hero, he has two guns, and he's a badass, but he runs like Hell. Why? Because they scare the shit out of him. There is a point where horror becomes overwhelming, which is what, I think, Qorin was talking about.

The question is, how to achieve that fine mix? The ability to scare your players in one session, and still allow for those moments of glory in others?

Scarab Sages

scrmwrtr42 wrote:

Ok, good start. Thanks, archmagi1.

I'm curious how your players reacted differently to the zombies in the streets and the Elm Street-esque nightmares. In a horror movie, when the hero/heroine (let's say Laurie Strode from 'Halloween') picks up the knife and goes up against the zombie-like killer, the weapon offers little in the way of protection or comfort. In a PF game, the heroes have their swords, maces, spells and all manner of means at their disposal to send the undead back to their graves. How do you establish that initial feeling of helplessness and fragility that is so necessary for true horror to work?

Minor Carrion Crown spoilers below:

Spoiler:
A moment that sticks out in my mind was when the Splatterman sends nightmares to one of the PCs. The modus operandi of this former serial killer (now a way over CR'd ghost who is nerfed with dumb tactics) was he spelled out the name of someone over the course of a bit and they gruesomely died at the end. One my player's PC, Abraham, woke in the night to the shudders on the window slamming, looked out the window to see the haunted prison just outside of town, and hearing faint whispers from it. He then turned around and saw his name being scrawled into the wall in blood. His eyes started bleeding, he felt like he was dying. As the spectre started writing the M at the end, his buddies woke him up at morning. That character was sufficiently disturbed and nearly refused to sleep for the rest of the time they were at Ravengro.


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Ravenloft had great advice for horror roleplaying. Get the d20 Ravenloft Core Rules for cheap and read the advice chapters. The netbooks and downloads on the Fraternity of Shadows site (and their forums) might provide more advice.

As for scaring a tough nut player, first you need to get them invested in something. Does he have a backstory? NPCs he cares about? Take something he cares about and twist it somehow. Shift perspective , make him responsible for a horror done.

This thread might help too


Rise of the Runelords Spoiler:
In the Skinsaw Murders, my PCs were investigating a haunted house. It has all sorts of creepy tropes like murderous paintings, mold growing in a spiral, revenants and ghouls, and the house itself coming to life to kill them. But my players were unfazed by this.

However, something did catch them - all 6 of them - with the grip of fear. At one point in the investigation, the party rogue opened a curtain and peeked outside - only to see thousands of black birds sitting outside, surrounding the house and gazing straight back at the rogue with baleful red eyes.

Hope this helps. Oh, one more thing:

Spoiler:
The party was all level 5+; the crow swarms (of which there were four, each composed of a thousand birds) were CR 1 each.


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archmagi1 wrote:

Minor Carrion Crown spoilers below:

Spoiler:
A moment that sticks out in my mind was when the Splatterman sends nightmares to one of the PCs. The modus operandi of this former serial killer (now a way over CR'd ghost who is nerfed with dumb tactics) was he spelled out the name of someone over the course of a bit and they gruesomely died at the end. One my player's PC, Abraham, woke in the night to the shudders on the window slamming, looked out the window to see the haunted prison just outside of town, and hearing faint whispers from it. He then turned around and saw his name being scrawled into the wall in blood. His eyes started bleeding, he felt like he was dying. As the spectre started writing the M at the end, his buddies woke him up at morning. That character was sufficiently disturbed and nearly refused to sleep for the rest of the time they were at Ravengro.

I did roughly the same, but went a little further.

Spoiler:
One of my players was a Cleric of Desna and had the Good Dreams trait, so she got prophetic visions at night. First night in Ravengro, she had a pleasant dream that she was walking in a park with a kind-looking old man who asked her name (which was "Siphone"). He then proceeded to give an etymological discourse on the origins of that name and how it morphed over time. Then, of course, his head lit on fire, his flesh melted, the park they were in turned into a horrific hellscape, and he screamed that she would die now that he knew her name. Blood ran down her face and arms in the dream as the man ripped at her flesh. Awaking with a start, she found that she was in her room and that her wall was covered in blood that spelled, in broad and messy letters, "I know your name, Siphon-". Her left hand was bloody and cut, and in her right she held a blood-spattered piece of glass. The window in the room (on the first floor) was broken and opened, and she heard screaming from outside. The villagers had just found the statue defaced with blood from the town dog, its entrails spilling out from a clean, straight cut along its belly.

It really built up the self-doubt and paranoia that horror games need, and set up fairly quickly just how bad things were going to get.

If you haven't heard the Horror In RPGs seminar from this year's Paizocon, give it a listen. It has a lot of great tips for running effective horror games. And check out Dread as well; even if you don't use the system, there's a lot of good examples of creepy questions and advice for building tension.


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Archpaladin Zousha wrote:
I've often been pondering this question. I have a player who boasts that he "never gets scared" and regards creepy things with a resounding "meh." No matter how hard I try to set up the ambiance, atmosphere and mood, it doesn't get a rise out of him. Part of that may simply be the limitations of play-by-post. It's hard to be scary and surprising when your only means of communicating it are through text. Part of it may be the fact that he's ex-military, and fear is something that's drilled out of you in boot camp. But when coming across horror trappings in-game he doesn't even bat an eyelash. He enjoys playing Clint-Eastwood sorts of characters, taciturn men who ride into town, cooly and casually deliver a beatdown to anyone fool enough to try and attack them, and treat setbacks and life-threatening situations as a temporary annoyance they can recover from and implacably march back into town to repay the favor in kind before riding out into the desert again as mysterious as they were when they arrived...How the heck do I scare a character like that?!

It is very tricky.

Part of the problem is that players like that dont usually want to invest in a game where they might actually be scared. I note you say he likes to ride off into the sunset..so, no lasting emotional investment in npcs.

Scaring folks ( as opposed to startling them, a technique Mark Kermode calls "cattle prod horror") requires them to be worried about the loss of something they are emotionally invested in (example: a sympathetic character in a horror movie).

I've run up against this problem with a similar style player ....and the moment they are asked to invest emotionally in a game, they immediately withdraw a distance - and much like in horror movies, its extremely dofficult to scare an audience uninvested in the characters...
.
(And, as pure speculation : as ex-military, he may well have had enough of being scared in real life to last him a lifetime. Military folks dont become immune to fear, they are trained to function despite fear. Sadly, its why so many suffer from psychological problems when leaving the forces. We ask alot of our military personnel. )

At the end of the day a GM has to run games his players wants to play... And, well, like the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water...


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Thistle and Tigger have great points. If a player doesn't really care, there's no point in trying. That being said, if a player does care, information is the key.

Namely, don't hand it to players on a silver platter. For example, take Deep Ones. They are in the shadows, and something about them isn't normal. But until late in the story the character just knows he's hunted and that Bad Things ^TM will happen if he's caught. Many games devolve into 4 well-equiped PCs making knowledge rolls and coming up with something along the lines of "25 - Oh, they are in charge of the town and visitors disappear in the middle of the night . . . guess we dont' stay there." It's easier if you don't train players to rely on knowledge checks.

Want to freak players out with zombies?

Small spoiler:
Sure, there's a shambling horde, but its controlled by a hive-mind virus. And spread through blood and goo. Now the players have to worry about whether their characters are infected or not. Did the players stop to loot? Well, maybe that virus was on the treasure. Maybe the zombies get smarter as the collective intelligence of the hive mind grows and the carefully planned reach/pounce/I Built My Character This Way options are now of little use. Add a template to the zombified creature (Apocolypse Swarm or Broken Soul, for example). I just perused a book about a zombie autopsy, and the mention of tapworms came up. Zombie with a secondary attack of these worms that burrow into the PCs flesh . . . icky, and something the players want to stay away from. Especially since YOU'RE NOT GOING TO TELL THEM IT'S A FLESHWARPED TEMPLATE! Let them worry about the lingering itching of the wounds and if they need a cure disease. Maybe there's no additional effect. But they'll still have to make dex checks to make sure all the pieces of these gigantic tapeworms are removed from the wounds.

An extreme tactic is to roll the PCs saves for them. That messes with expectations, resource management, and information, so these tricks only work once per player, though. A player will remember deep ones for the rest of his gaming career.


These are all great points, and useful, but also slightly off the mark of my original question. My curiosity is where the fine line crosses from "true" horror into fantasy horror? As Qorin pointed out, it is very much about mood, atmosphere and ambience. But why are zombies frightening in one setting and not so much in another? In one film or story, a giant ant would be a horrifying encounter, while in another a nest of giant ants would be a fun battle. Staying on the movies, take Boris Karloff's Imhotep versus that portrayed by Arnold Vosloo. In one film, the Mummy is a very creepy threat. In another, you get that swashbuckling, 'Raiders' feel. In that same vein, in one type of film a swarm of flesh devouring beetles would be shudder inducing, but in the 2000s Mummy it's merely bad CGI (although still cool).

Now, how do you translate that difference into gaming, and successfully transition from one type of horror to the other, without losing the benefits of both?


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Expectations.
You go into Karloff's movie with a different set than Vosloo's.

Translating into gaming probably means changing systems. Pathfinder is high heroic fantasy. Call of Cthulhu is the opposite, where no matter your character's level of experience, a knife wound will kill you.

But neither works if the players go "oh, that's bad CGI."

And I don't think you can transition from one to the other, because if you've already set the expectation as "pulp heroes" and then try to say "mummy is horrid and you're too frightened to attack" your players are going to roll their eyes and say "Whatever!"


Very good, point, Doug.


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Part of the problem - The mindset of D&D is that the players are The Heroes and will punch their way through all conflict.

A lot of horror relies on putting the protagonists into a situation that they don't understand and are powerless to control. Pathfinder PCs are pretty well never powerless. Even Lvl-1 PCs ten to be quite powerful, able to heal wounds and throw fire-beams around. At low levels you can throw something at them that's a few CRs higher than they are and get a nice creepy crawly that they just cannot deal with and need to evade or escape. Once you get to midlevel that's harder to do without descending into DM fiat. The players tool-kit get's much, much bigger, they become even more powerful.

I'd say you make the transition from Fantasy to Horror when you put them in situations that they can't understand and cannot control. Preventing them from understanding the situation is key - Give them plenty of information and make sure none of it is helpful or suggests any way to comprehend or approach their problem. If they make a DC25 knowledge check tell them their character wracks their brain for information but only comes up with simple things "there were lots of disappearances in this area, it's been happening for a long time, and no one knows why". Make it clear that no one understands what's happening. They're succeeding on the checks - there's just no knowledge out there for them to know. If they don't understand their enemy they can't reduce it to a pile of HP and resistances as easily.

Things like Father Dagon and his deep ones - there just shouldn't be any information that can help the players understand what they've got themselves in to. Whatever information they do have should be vague or outright wrong.

To butcher an old quote - When a bomb goes off it's a surprise. When a bomb doesn't go off it's suspense. When the bomb has tentacles and can only be seen from the corner of your eyes it's lovecraft.

Player capability is a big thing. PCs can fight Aliens by using protection from acid, fire spells, magical weapons, cure disease potions to get the embryos out. They can plane-shift to the dream-lands and hunt Freddy down on his own grounds. Michael is nothing to worry about - He's just a thug with a high DR. Vampires and Zombies are disposable mooks. The creature from The Thing is more of a threat. Scary undead Sam Neil from Event Horizon would be a threat. The Deadly Mutaba Virus would be a threat, especially if it was infectious enough that you'd re-acquire the virus shortly after casting Cure Disease.

Zombies - Not a threat. Necrophages - Threat

Freddy - Threat, but one that can be dealt with if they know about the Dreamlands

Aliens - Threat, but more due to rapid reproduction than individual danger. Ticking time bomb?

Creepy undead Sam Neil from hyperspace hell - Terrifying

Graboids - Sort of a threat if you set it up right.

Werewolves and vampires - Only a threat to low level players. Usually too mundane to be scary

Dragon - Could be a threat if you set it up right as an implacable monster to be avoided instead of an opponent to be defeated.

Oh, hey, there's one - Chrysalids. If you've ever played old XCom you know and hate these things. They'd run up to your troops and melee them. If they hit the trooper it'd turn them into a zombie, which would turn into a new chrysalid in a few turns. If one Chrysalid got into the midst of your troops it could wipe out your whole squad. Many players would systematically level entire city blocks rather than risk running into a Chrysalid in close quarters. And Chrysalids would attack civilians, too. So Civilians became a dangerous liability. They could be infected and create a new Chrysalid. Chrysalids were scary because they could destroy your forces so quickly if they managed to get close to you and as they infected more and more people you'd very rapidly get overwhelmed by a growing horde of the things. No matter how well armed you were you were still in danger of being drowned in numbers or missing one chrysalid hiding in a closet. A lot of missions ended with the last guy alive arming a detpack and dropping it at his feat rather than be turned.


Part of the mumblings about giving Cthulhu and his ilk beatable stats elsewhere on these boards is that it then takes away the overarching feeling of:

Yeah. Don't even think about it, as this is so far beyond you that you're not even an ant in comparison. Just turn around now and start running very, very fast. Then again, the fact you're even at this point of needing to run away fast probably means it's probably too late anyway. You're better off all saving your energy for screaming at this point. Assuming you haven't already gone completely catatonic.

Rules for Sanity (and the ones from d20 CoC / 3.5's Unearthed Arcana probably work better than the ones in the Gamemastery guide in this case) are a good way to increase that character helplessness - it's not something you can fight off with swords and fireballs, after all, and helplessness is what drives it home to the players that they have really, really stepped into something they're not equipped to handle. Obviously so does killing them, but then there's no real horror if it's all over so quickly :)

There's only one thing you need them to understand, and that's that they've gotten involved in something they really shouldn't have.

I wouldn't say there really is a line between "horror" and "fantasy horror" other than the setting you're placing it in. Once you've stopped these things being a threat and they turn into something that can be beaten though, you've crossed the line between "fantasy horror" and "fantasy". If it's fantasy horror, then I'd say the best you can hope for is that your brave sacrifice (either physically or mentally) has delayed the inevitable for a few more years.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I think the disconnect is that people want to bring in the Cthulhu mythos to Pathfinder, expecting to get H.P. Lovecraft's stories, but they end up with Robert E. Howard's. Both are valid explorations of the Mythos, but one plays up the hopelessness against these crawling monstrosities, while the other makes them powerful beings that shrink from the conquering heroes.

Horror is a tricky beast to convey in RPGs, and the most important element is that you have to have a bunch of PCs that are willing to say "I'm OK with feeling impotent." Most horror stories start out where the protagonists have no concept of whatever it is they're facing, and their traditional attempts to combat it (guns, swords, laser beams, whatever) are useless. As they learn about the horror that stalks them, they find out how to fight it, and (hopefully) succeed in destroying the creature. If you have a PC that wants to play a Big Damn Hero, then there's not much you can do. It's the same issue as if you had said to your players that you want to do a story about the dwarves, and every PC had to play a dwarf, but one of them stubbornly said that they would be playing an elf. The payoff is equal to the investment in the story.

It can be done, and one of the best ways to do this is to take a monster that the PCs are familiar with, and make small alterations to it until they don't know what they can do. For example, zombies. Everyone knows about zombies. Hack at them with sharp weapons until you dismember them. They've got a lot of hit points for their CR, but they're only really threatening in packs. So, start changing things. They're emaciated zombies, old and shriveled, which changes their DR from slashing to bludgeoning. Or maybe they are putrescent, and every attack that bypasses the DR lops off an arm or a head. The flopping limbs crawl after the party and do a small amount of automatic damage every round while they ignore the limbs. Maybe they heal damage whenever they make a successful bite attack. Maybe they retain some knowledge of the person, and delight in slaughtering the people that knew them in life. The more you change the creature, the less they "know" how to fight a monster, and the more out of their comfort zone they'll be taken.

Atmosphere's also VERY important. Themes of isolation and alienation are prevalent in horror fiction, and you'd do well to set up scenarios that place the party in these situations. For an isolated encounter, check out the Misgivings in The Skinsaw Murders. Setting up a story for the PCs to feel alienated is even easier - have them explore a lead into an area where they're unknowns, and everyone mistrusts them. The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a perfect example of this, as is The Haunting of Harrowstone.


Don't name creatures. Long time ago a DM just described the orc in general terms and boy were the other players scared. (You'll have to take some care to do a bit better than "he's green skinned with tusks" though)

BTW I looked into my Ravenloft books and while there's a helpful section in the Ravenloft Core Setting book, it's the Ravenloft Dungeon Master's Guide which describes the Techniques of Terror and provides lots of campaign advice. There's for example the excellent section entitled “Thirteen Tips for Tension” on pages 26-33 of the Ravenloft Dungeon Master’s Guide.


Some thoughts I'd like to share from running Carrion Crown:

1)Keep track off your PCs' AC, saves, HP, Perception, and Sense Motives. This way, its easier to describe things and give a sense of immersion without throwing back the veil of mechanics. This is most important of all for setting up a horror game: a sense of immersion without necessarily realizing exactly what is happening mechanically, at least until rolls are asked for. For some saving throws, its best to just ask for a D20 roll and add whatever applicable bonuse that the character has rather than specifically asking for an 'X' save.

2) Don't be afraid to utilize tropes from horror films, provided they are done without exactly mirroring the work being mimicked. I did this by adding some encounters based slightly off 'Children of the Corn' and 'Dawn of the Dead', substituting Attic Whisperers for the Children and Festrogs for the Zombies, and it was pretty effective.

3)Music and background sound is everything. This kind of goes with the whole immersion thing, but have different themes cued for different ambiance or encounters. I've used a lot of sources, but found the Dead Space 2 and Resident Evil 4 soundtracks invaluable for some of the lurking dread present through the campaign. I utilize a host of other sound sources as well to drive in points (I got a Nature Sound Effects CD a while ago and running it simultaneously with another Media Player playing music has given the extra edge.

4)+1 on the lack of Knowledge rolls for Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Specifically for the Wake of the Watcher, I plan on not giving knowledge rolls on most of the monsters encountered, at least not without the aid of reading certain mind-altering manuscripts.

5) Occasionally throw something at the PCs that is way out of their league. Encounters like this shouldn't be designed to kill anyone but instead either give an option of running, hiding, or evading the creature with some creative trick. This helps lessen the feeling that the world that the PCs exist in is a structured game setting, and they're never going to face anything outside their power level.


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An excellent and long article on horror in gaming by Ernest Mueller.

Scaring Your Players article from Roleplayer #17


Not in any way to discount the excellent responses from everyone else, but Frank, Matt, Misroi, Thanael and Rakshaka, THANK YOU. Those were the types of responses I was really going for. All fantastic advice and direction. Methods, ideas and philosophies I will certainly be incorporating in future games.

Really appreciate the input, guys! Again, many thanks!


Doug's Workshop wrote:

Thistle and Tigger have great points. If a player doesn't really care, there's no point in trying. That being said, if a player does care, information is the key.

Namely, don't hand it to players on a silver platter. For example, take Deep Ones. They are in the shadows, and something about them isn't normal. But until late in the story the character just knows he's hunted and that Bad Things ^TM will happen if he's caught. Many games devolve into 4 well-equiped PCs making knowledge rolls and coming up with something along the lines of "25 - Oh, they are in charge of the town and visitors disappear in the middle of the night . . . guess we dont' stay there." It's easier if you don't train players to rely on knowledge checks.

Want to freak players out with zombies? ** spoiler omitted **

An extreme tactic is to roll the PCs saves for them. That messes with expectations, resource management, and...

Awesome ideas, Doug! I am definitely using the worms thing. Wow!

Dark Archive

scrmwrtr42 wrote:

These are all great points, and useful, but also slightly off the mark of my original question. My curiosity is where the fine line crosses from "true" horror into fantasy horror? As Qorin pointed out, it is very much about mood, atmosphere and ambience. But why are zombies frightening in one setting and not so much in another? In one film or story, a giant ant would be a horrifying encounter, while in another a nest of giant ants would be a fun battle. Staying on the movies, take Boris Karloff's Imhotep versus that portrayed by Arnold Vosloo. In one film, the Mummy is a very creepy threat. In another, you get that swashbuckling, 'Raiders' feel. In that same vein, in one type of film a swarm of flesh devouring beetles would be shudder inducing, but in the 2000s Mummy it's merely bad CGI (although still cool).

Now, how do you translate that difference into gaming, and successfully transition from one type of horror to the other, without losing the benefits of both?

I'm going to say this - and it will be unpopular - but it's the game mechanics and how "heroics" are handled in different RPGs.

You can make ANY game feel scary buy utilizing tools of horror. These are tools that would work in the mediums of books, movies or even narration. So if the players are immersed in the game, there are elements of horror in that game - they (the players) may actually get scared.

All that being said I think much about horror in RPGs is tied to the mechanics, specifically player character vulnerability. If I am running a modern horror game like Chill or Call of Cthulhu and I throw a swarm of slow moving zombies at my PCs, they are going to be scared. Why? Because even if they are equipped with guns, magic and skills they will still get ripped to shreds if they stand around and fight them. Because these two horror games examples I gave you are not heavy combat focused - at least, not in the sense where the PCs are going to CharOp and destroy their way through each encounter.

If I threw a horde of zombies at my group of level 1 Pathfinder PCs they would slowly by surely hack their way through the horde. I can make it start slow, with a some horror mood build ups - then trap them in an enclosed area - of course, once the realize that they are zombies using d20 mechanics they won't feel so trapped and they will hack their way out. Even if they don't realize they are zombies - first reaction: hack them up. Then deal with the DR, Incorporeal and special abilities that ARE ALL THE SAME AS EVERY OTHER CREATURE IN THE GAME.

That is why I avoid trying to run horror using d20/Heroic/Superheroic based games.

Why does Snake Plisskin run from the swarm of crazies coming out of the sewers while he has two SMGs and is a badass while the level 1 PCs in PF just stand and fight? Why should they run when they don't have to?

That is the key question here: why should they run, be afraid, crap their pants WHEN THERE IS NO REAL THREAT THAT IS MECHANICALLY DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER CR APPROPRIATE THREAT IN THE GAME?

Best advice - ditch the d20 gaming for horror or overhaul it so it supports horror tropes better. As it stands right now it doesn't. You can immerse the players in descriptions that will "put them there", but the mechanics kill all of that once the dice start rolling.

D20, great for super heroics, not so much for horror.

If you want things to be scary in d20/PF based games, you are going to have to put more work in than setting up mood music, ambiance and props/gimmicks.


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Here we go

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm

That's the OGL version of 3.5's Unearthed Arcana sanity rules. From what I remember, it should be pretty much the same as d20 CoC.


Auxmaulous, you've got great points. I guess my question goes beyond simple game mechanics, though. I'm talking more philosophically. I guess I should have made that more clear. Not only am I a gamer, but I'm also a writer. I work mostly in straight horror, with a little sci-fi and action horror, as well.

I'm trying to nail down what makes one element horrifying in one context, and less so in others. Is there more than mood, ambience, etc? Why are Lucio Fulci's zombies in 'Gates of Hell' more terrifying than the zombies in 'Zombieland'? They do all the same things. Well, truthfully, the "GoH' zombies are super strong teleporting zombies that can make you vomit out your intestines, which is scary as %$*&, but they're still zombies.

I'm rambling at this point, I think, but I have gleaned a LOT of great input from this thread, and graciously thank everyone who had something to say. I would love to keep hearing ideas, or thoughts, so please keep posting if you have something to say. I'm always on the prowl for new ideas or methods to scare the %&*# out of someone. ;-)

UPDATE: Let me be clear, I get that 'Gates of Hell' is serious while 'Zombieland' is a comedy. Perhaps not the best example, but my point remains.


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For me the answer is vulnerability. This is the reason that many above have said that D20 is bad for horror. The assumption of CR appropriate adversaries and the knowledge of game mechanics makes players fearless.

Even with the same ambiance, darkness, weird noises, enclosed spaces, shuffling dead, the fear comes from the feeling of vulnerability.

Take Zombieland for example. The problem is not that it is a comedy. The problem is that the protagonists are super-heroic. They dispatch zombies left and right and make a game out of it. At no time do you feel they can not handle themselves.

In true horror movies the protagonists never feel safe. They are always one step away, one mistake away from doom.

That is why many players are terrified of ghouls. One hit, one failed save and you are dead. You feel vulnerable.


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In my opinion horror can work in Pathfinder. One way to do it is to put the mystery back in the monsters. Don't tell players what they face. Change up abilities. Give Zombies a paralyzing touch and rejuvenation and watch the players freak out when they encounter something unknown and dangerous. Then you can play the horror game of making the characters run and hide and doubt themselves before finding a way to win.


scrmwrtr42 wrote:


UPDATE: Let me be clear, I get that 'Gates of Hell' is serious while 'Zombieland' is a comedy. Perhaps not the best example, but my point remains.

I think a better point might be familiarity. Zombieland comes from a peak in popularity of zombies, The zombies as presented just don't seem like that significant a threat, because the audience is expected to know all the relevant zombie tropes and laugh at them. I haven't seen That particular Lucio Fulci zombie movie, but I have seen a couple of his others. Their brutal and to be honest the zombies do whatever is necessary to be scary (well...in most cases gross, not scary)...I don't feel they follow any particular rules. And the characters in Zombieland know all the rules and thus can deal with zombies effectively. That is not the case in older zombie movies.

The same holds true in RPGS, as other have stated. If your players know the rules of monsters, they will not treat them as frightening, just a bit of XP they can earn with sufficient exploitation of weaknesses.

Probably the best way of avoiding "Zombieland" horror in RPGs is to:

Describe things in such a manner PC's can't easily figure out what they are dealing with.

Either use new monsters or alter the rules so the existing monsters can't be taken out by rule savvy players.

Throw out the CR system, and regularly present threats far above the power level of the PCs, where avoidance/running/hit and run tactics are more useful.

Control resources

Of course with all of the above, you need a group that is going to okay with that. WIth the wrong group poorly adjusted CR or limiting resources might get the GM yelled at.


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I agree with Jawa and a few other people in here.

Step 1.) is we kill all the lawyers throw out the CR system. It's explicit purpose is to create challenging encounters that your players can still expect to win. That's exactly what we don't want. So toss it and rely on DM-fu to keep your dudes alive until it's dramatically appropriate to snuff them out like candles in the void.

Using zombies as an example:

The standard pathfinder zombie is CR 1/2, meaning that four lvl1 players should be able to hack their way through two zombies without much trouble. They're not really a threat and a party of four to six PCs can deal with them easily.

So now the PCs turn the corner. And they come across three Zombie Troops N Medium humanoid (undead, troop). Each one consists of 30 zombies. Another shambles in from behind, partially blocking their line of retreat. There are now 120 zombies on the street (but only four "creatures" that you have to deal with!)

Zombie Horde CR 10ish?
N Medium undead (undead, troop)
Init -1; Perception +0

AC 11, touch 9, flat-footed 11
HP 200ish
Saves +10
Defenses: Zombie stuff, DR5/slashing
Speed 30ft.
Melee troop (4d6)
Space 20ft, reach 5ft,
Special Attacks: Consume corpses
Stats STR ? Dex ? Con - Wis 10 Int - Cha 10
BAB ?(+10?) CMB +20 CMD +30
etc. etc.

This isn't just one zombie you can blow up. It's a whole mess of them. And because they behave like a swarm a lot of tricks and options are removed from play. They're still slow and unable to do more than one thing a turn but they're deadly if they manage to catch up with you.

I think troops actually work really well for this, as do swarms. You can focus-fire just about anything down with a few power attacks and some good rolls. Swarms aren't as easy to kill with massive hit-point pools and immunity to many kinds of deadly attacks.

Eitherway, by throwing out the CR system and (badly) statting up a troop of zombies we've turned a minor threat into a huge mass of grasping hands and staring, undead eyes. Anyone who gets within reach of the horde will be grappled, pinned, and chewed to pieces in a round or two. Unless you have lots of fireballs, sanctuary spells, or a really good cleric there is nothing you can do except run for your life.

To ram home that this isn't a normal encounter you can have Biff the Understudy try to run through the zombies, or have a few guardsmen try to shield-wall and hold the line. Mechanically the troop will move to overlap the NPCs and deal automatic damage. In-game you can describe how the wall of undead flesh just ignores the guardsmen's swords and spears; grasping at them, ripping their shields away, dragging them to the ground and messily devouring them.

Importantly - The players cannot win this fight. There's nothing special about individual zombies. They're just normal Pathfinder zombies. But their numbers are so overwhelming that they can't be fought as individuals anymore. A party with APL 1-5 or so is going to have to run or try to find somewhere defensible to make a last stand. Maybe they can get into a building, bar the door, and try to escape over the roof-tops. Maybe they've got enough fireballs and alchemist's fire to take down one swarm and create an exit. Maybe someone can cast Fly. Point is they can't just stand and fight without dying. For extra pathos throw in some civilians that they're supposed to be protecting. Make sure to play up the betrayal when everyone but the Paladin chooses to flee. And then play up how utterly ineffective the Paladin's last stand is when the horde just washes over her like a wave.

In this case the "Victory" for the players is getting out alive. It's not about winning a combat so much as overcoming a seemingly impossible situation to stay a little bit ahead of their doom. If you were going to run a campaign with, say, thousands of zombies overrunning a city with the players trapped inside you could play up a lot of zombie movie tropes - There are no safe places to hide and recover. There's not enough food. Civilians need to be rescued and protected. Attempting to fight the zombies will always result in being eventually overwhelmed. When the players get into a proper battle they're not fighting to kill all their enemies; They're fighting to defend the civic square for as long as they can while the airships evacuate civilians. Or they're in a fighting withdrawal attempting to keep the ghoul packs from overrunning fleeing refugees. And most of the time, even if they survive, lots of other people die. In the end they might put together enough information to find the evil Necromancer and stick a knife in him. At that point they've "Won". And their reward is a devastated city still full of undead remnants.

PS - I love the idea of troops for this. instead of having to track a hundred individual zombies you just keep track of four or five troops.


As many of you have stated, characters feeling vulnerable is key to inciting feelings of horror by the players, and under normal RAW circumstances feeling vulnerable is difficult to achieve. So you need to change something in the RAW specific for a horror setting for it have any chance of successfully scaring your players. You don't need to change everything.

The Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) has many horror inducing tools to drive the fear that makes the setting work. Like Ravenloft, Kaidan is a kind of demi-plane, but it coexists with the prime material, as kind of a semi-permeable bubble. Within the boundries of the empire, PC death and reincarnation has it's own rules creating a kind of spiritual trap, even non-residents of Kaidan on visits who die there. Resurrection in Kaidan does not function as a spell, nor effect.

Kaidan's social caste system of nobles, samurai, commoners, non-humans, and the tainted caste is cosmic and directly tied to the Death and Reincarnation mechanic. Movement on the social ladder is directly related to your deeds and misdeeds done in your previous life. Your PCs are accountable for every thing they've ever done.

These two simple changes are the seeds to the horror achieved. All the various techniques described in this thread is the kind of content in the "Making horror work for your Kaidan games" chapter of our upcoming Kaidan GM's setting guide.

So to make horror more possible in Pathfinder, a few specific changes to the basic rules can be the impetus for that.


The other creepy thing to do with zombies (or ghouls or vampires or most other undead) is to make them people the PCs used to know, preferably ones they've actually interacted with on screen.

Even with standard PF zombies, not the self-replicating hordes of most zombie movies, this can work: That helpful urchin you got the clues from in the first session who got killed in the first adventure's goblin attack? He's one of the ones the new necromancer BBEG has animated. Etc.

Don't go too far and kill important people just to do this, but a little interaction can go a long way.

On another note, the standard movie zombie is much scarier than the PF version. It's that infecting others thing. How scary would even normal PF zombies be if every wound was a save or turn into a zombie? Give you a few rounds and a remove curse will fix it. Like you'll have enough of those or time to get them at this level...


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I think there are two major elements at play here - presentation and an element of the unknown. Characters, and especially players, don't really fear what they can understand. CR almost NEVER comes into play when creating actual fear. As far as presentation goes, I have a couple of examples, beginning with the lowly gremlin.

I'm planning a game for new players that features a rather abrupt genre shift. It starts of with the Crypt of the Everflame adventure, and all the PCs are young heroes. Basically, the second adventure begins as soon as they return and find that gremlins have been harassing the town while they're away. If they ride into town and I just tell them "There doesn't seem to be anyone here. There is some blood in the streets, and you soon find everyone is dead or missing," it's not too scary because there's no build up, and it's too easy to imagine a stock raid or monster attack. First step is to let them discover the handiwork on their own, and my language doesn't even have to get that fancy (in fact, if it does it just gets distracting. Show, don't tell, and use a less is more approach to descriptions. Make them ask for details, but make them want to ask.)

"You come back into town. The streets are empty." Naturally they go looking for people. They go to the tavern and find it empty. They go to the mayor's office and no one answers their knock. It would seem tempting to let them catch glimpses of a gremlin or hear a weird giggle here, but that only works in movies, because the writers have control over the characters. Doing something like that here likely results in a chase and a break in the build up. In this situation, the PCs are eventually going to try to enter a building. Whatever entrance building they settle on, and whatever entrance, they find a door slightly ajar. Now they expect something to be inside of it, even it was just a gremlin not closing the door all they way when they left. They go inside, the house is completely silent. Maybe they see a trickle of blood on the stairs. They enter a room and they find the partial remains of a corpse, its hands bound to bedposts and what's left of it covered in tiny claw and toothmarks. They find a small set of bloody forks and knives on the nightstand. The key here is that they're wondering what the hell did this. There is a build up in the presentation. They don't know what kind of monster they're dealing with, and they don't know exactly where they are or what to expect.

A similar circumstance arose in an old kingmaker game where the party got a Thawn as a random encounter. These things are lousy in fights, but their writeup mentions them hating their own ugliness and being pretty sneaky for large creatures. Instead of giving them a fight, I decided to give them a stalker. I checked which PC had the highest cha (a cleric) and decided the thawn became obsessed with her. All the encounter resulted in was a sense of being watched and a few fudged die rolls resulting in failed perception checks. AFter that, they found signs of something large following them as they moved through the Stolen Lands, and usually if they tried to follow the trail, it would end inexplicable, going up a tree or into water or something. They were making solid camps, but not setting watches, which I took advantage of up by having the thawn leave little "gifts" for the cleric in the form of small dead animals near her pack. She woke up one morning and found the contents of her backpack dumped out and tons of feathers and bloody hides around camp. Looking inside her backpack, she found it stuff with plucked birds and skinned chipmunks. Next night I sprung the encounter. She woke up to a scratching sensation on her cheek and found the thing standing over her, brushing her face with its claws. Naturally she calls for help, and the party made short work of it, but the cleric was visibly unnerved afterwards.

Bottom line is you aren't going to scare someone with simply a tough fight or something they know to be threatening, because, as you've said, it's simply a threat to be dealt with. You have to make them wonder. Keep them unsure, and keep them on their toes.


They other thing that I've found that works sometimes, especially for players that don't get scared from the atmosphere, is to invent your own mechanics or use options from 3pp that the player's aren't familiar with. some people might cry "unfair!" but I feel as long as it's balanced, keeping a few options out of the players' hands and for your own use is fair game. Create new types of DR, alter weaknesses on certain monsters (but don't overuse this - a vampire with an aversion to onions instead of garlic might be interesting once, but it's easy to hit an "everyone is special so no one is" feel here, and if players don't bother to learn stock weaknesses anymore, you can no longer surprise them by deviating from those weaknesses). I like to use a character class or a spell from 3rd party publishers sometimes, especially obscure ones. Experienced players are often impossible to scare because they've seen everything the system has to offer, and when you spring something new on them, especially without telling them about it, it tends to put them off their guard.


Ah, and one last thing - set the PCs up to fail now and again, even if it's outside of a horror-based encounter. When they succeed every time, they have no reason not to feel invincible and simply rush in. Keep in mind that in this game, they are supposed to win in the end - don't change that. And don't assume that failure has to equate to a defeat in combat. They might fail to rescue someone in time. They might loose an important (but not vital) piece of gear. Maybe they gain a permanent injury with an associated penalty (only use this if you know your players very well, though). Incomplete victories or failures along the way remind the players that failure is POSSIBLE, and that makes them feel a little more vulnerable.


Try to figure out what irks your players. If you can do so on the side; say, for example, during a conversation over a meal, tuck that nugget of information away and save it for later.

Example: one player I play with really doesn't like creepy crawly things on her. So, one adventure traveling through Hell, I made the group cross a river of blood. About halfway through the person in front of her slipped and fell in all the way. When they got up, they were covered in blood (which wasn't really that bothersome,) but more-so, they weren't aware of the 3-foot leech on their back. This freaked the other person out completely, and she still talks about how I did that to her. And it wasn't even her character; her character saw the other person! But that's what made it more effective; not knowing until they were out if they were covered waist-down in giant leeches.


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I'm running a horror fantasy game set in Ustalav presently. Not Carrion Crown, but influenced by it.

My players are level 4 and level 3 (mixed-level but all close to the start of level 4). The scariest things they've encountered so far were ghouls, a vilkacis, a brimorak, and rot grubs, though they've also faced festrogs (regular festrogs, vampire-festrogs, a menadoran festrog), Apocalypse zombies (human, wolf, and ogre), skeletons (burning, as well as bloody-acid, and mudra), rabid worgs, giant spiders, a giant rot grub, rat swarms, haunts, a human cultist of Jezelda, bandits, a bloodhound (variant bloodknight-templated riding dog) and vampiric oozes. Outside of combat they've also encountered a ratling, a giant worg, psychopomps (nosoi and kere), and are generally on good terms with a lar (except for the party's tiefling, who detects as an evil outsider).

Party consists of...:
For exposition, my over-sized current party is comprised of a male rakshasa-spawn tiefling sorcerer (rakshasa bloodline), male human alchemist (forgot his archeytpe), male dhampir ranger (formerly played a female sylph cleric of Pharasma but wanted to play a more combat-focused character), female angel-kin aasimar summoner, male garuda-kin aasimar cleric of Sarenrae (formerly played a male human fighter but swapped party roles with the other guy, basically), and recently added a new player with a male orc barbarian (war dog archetype), and occasionally a male kitsune ninja (scout archetype), though that guy can't make every session and is only half-involved when he does show.

The CR 1 ghouls were just scary because they paralyzed most of the party and would have killed veryone except for the alchemist with expeditious retreat getting them to chase him and lobbing alchemical grenades at them. One of the ghouls even started to drag away the paralyzed paladin when he realized his allies were being defeated, but the paralysis ended on other PCs and they defeated him. The ghouls frequently ran away rather than being destroyed (sentient undead), but eventually magic missile's range exceeded their speed. What was scary about the ghouls? Paralysis and ghoul fever, the loss of control of their own player-characters to the immediate paralysis and, for those afflicted, the ghoul fever was a lingering threat of "I could become that."

Vilkacis is much higher CR than the party and incorporeal and has damage reduction, so even for the ones that had +1 weapons, they were barely scratching it. (The guy with the silver weapon wasn't there that session.) The party didn't defeat it, it eventually possessed an NPC that was in the town's pillory. So since the guy was already restrained, once he was possessed, the players got the hell out of there. They knew before encountering it that it was a possessing creature too, because the NPCs in the pillory had already experienced it once the previous night and told them about it before they experienced it. It almost possessed the party fighter but he made his save against possession. Were they scared? I think so. They couldn't tell they were even damaging it. It's still on the loose. In the morning they moved the criminals into the village church, which is under the effect of a Hallow effect (permanent Magic Circle Against Evil). Instead of dealing with it, they decided they'd avoid going through there at night. They haven't realized it can actually enter buildings yet, but it's new as an incorporeal undead and maybe hasn't realized that yet either. It's scary because, again, like the ghoul paralysis, the vilkacis possession is a loss of control. Not only could this creature kill me, but it could take over my character and my character could kill the party.

The brimorak (small goat-headed fire demon) was just scary, I think, because they didn't really know what it was. It's a Pathfinder demon from outside the core Bestiaries, and it tore them up pretty badly with its miscellaneous fire attacks and spells before it teleported away (almost dead, but they don't know that for sure). They knew it was a demon foot-soldier of the Abyss but that was about it. That was fear of the unknown.

Last session they experienced rot grubs for the first time and the party sorcerer almost died. Rot grubs are scary because they're not a combat encounter, they're something to be survived. They're the worms that infest the corpse (or even an undead, giving it a +1 CR), so they've even been presented up-thread without that name. You see a corpse. Perception check DC 15 to notice the rot grubs. If you fail the Perception check and you touch the corpse, you don't get a save, and you gain 1d6 rot grubs burrowing into your skin. If you succeeded at the check, you get a DC 15 Reflex save to avoid the rot grubs burrowing into you. 1d6 rot grubs. Each rot grub does 2 CON damage if you fail your fort save on your turn. (I messed up running them and only did 2 CON damage, not 2 CON damage per grub.) You can burn them out on the first turn, but take 1d6 fire damage. You can also attempt to cut them out with a DC 20 Heal check, but take 1d6 damage from cutting on yourself in the first round, 2d6 damage from cutting on yourself the second round you attempt it, and so on. (Remove Disease also kills the infestation but that's not readily available in my campaign.) Rot grubs are scary, not least-wise because you can kill yourself trying to save yourself from them. Our party sorcerer survived his experience with 4 hp left--he succeeded his round 2 Fort save and managed to cut them out on the second turn. If I had been running the rot grubs "correctly," he very well might have died (gone unconscious). Rot grubs are one of the few instances were you have to hurt your character to save your character, and just hope you help more than you hurt. That's scary on an OOC level.

I think part of the thing that helps a horror campaign is saying a few things upfront. These are things I said at the start of my campaign:

1.) This is a horror campaign. I will be running creatures that are generally horror-themed, and you can expect that with this campaign. 2.) One thing that is scary in horror is not always having what you need. That means at times resources may be limited and I won't always be following wealth-by-level.
3.) This campaign will use the slow advancement track, so you can expect to spend awhile at low level, because in my experience lower levels are scarier.
4.) This is a limited-sandbox campaign and I'm not always going to tell you which way to go, but I will say that going some directions early on will be very very dangerous.

As concerns #2 particularly, I do think I generally stick pretty close to wealth-by-level guidelines, but I don't track my players' loot very closely. One resource I do limit though, is their access to divine spellcasting NPCs. In our current campaign the town cleric NPC is level 4 so can cast lesser restoration but can't cast Remove Disease, for instance. If they want that, they have to special order a scroll, which could take several days to arrive, and cost a pretty penny. (This will, of course become a non-issue once the party cleric is high enough level.)

I don't try to kill my player-characters, and in-fact I do try to mostly stay within +0 to +3 CR of their level most of the time. I try instead to make them think I'm trying to kill their characters, and that death of the character is a very real and serious threat. The fact is the thing they're most invested in is their characters.

Also, using diseases does a lot to help keep them nervous, I think. At one point one member of the party had ghoul fever, another had rabies (the kitsune, which was funny), and a third had zombie rot (from Apoacalypse zombies). Then they don't feel they're operating at peak performance.

Once my party gets a few levels on them, they'll be very hard to manage in a "horror" campaign, but hopefully by then they'll be very well trained in actually playing -in- a horror campaign and respond appropriately anyway.

So far player enthusiasm has been pretty good. One of them is a CE (possibly shifting to NE) sorcerer cultist of Pazuzu and routinely throws defeated monster entrails into trees as an offering to his demon lord and without the OOC knowledge of the rest of the party is also researching lichdom. Another is an N alchemist (possibly drifting toward NG) that is actually almost as afraid of the party as he is of the monsters. I recently reintroduced him to the campaign by having him be discovered in the vampire castle's dungeon being used as a blood-source. By his approval, his traumatic experience as a kept blood-source for vampires netted him a sanity check for a randomly rolled insanity. (He failed the check and has developed multiple personality disorder as a coping mechanism for his experience.) He has a real hate-on for vampires now too. A third is a NE dhampir ranger who is actively hunting ghouls because of something to do with his mother. With favored enemy: undead, he's the brave one. A few of the characters are less developed/involved but I think that has more to do with player capability than enthusiasm.

I play in a game-shop so I don't really have the luxury of mood music or dimming the lights, or some of the suggestions made in guides to running a horror campaign, but I think it's still very possible if you establish certain expectations at the beginning, and you continue to meet those expectations, that your players will get involved with the theme of the campaign. Right now, for instance, I'm considering killing off a major campaign NPC the party knows very well.


Dot for alter.


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Doug's Workshop wrote:
Expectations.

Good point.

I'd also add along those lines... in Fantasy , heroes go in expecting to be able to kill the monster.
In horror, they expect they may well die themselves first. Or at the very least, know they are taking an immense risk for possibly no gain, or even loss.

One of the disadvantages of levelled/challenge rating game systems is that the players can often tell too much sbout the level of threat they face and are therefore not frightened .

Even in real life, sometimes the scariest thing is not "yes i can change things "/" no, i cant change things"...but " there will be a disaster if I dont do something quick, and I might be able to change things, but I'm not sure what to do...and if I make a mistake, people die and its all my fault"

Horror is doable in Pathfinder...but its more difficult than in systems that dont have character levels. Even d20 Coc struggled a bit in that regard.


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Not going as far as throwing out the CR system, but read Revisiting Encounter Design (on the Alexandrian blog) to understand how CR/EL/ECL should really be used.

In fact read the rest of the blog too...

Editor-in-Chief

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First off, I'm going to drop a few links (or re-links), since this is something I've talked about extensively over the past couple of years:

...


-----

Now that the billboard is out of the way, forewarning that I've put a few footnotes at the bottom of this lengthy post, so if you see numbers in the text they're referring to whats at the end.

*Ahem*

Beyond aesthetic, beyond tips for making a game creepy, beyond rules that enhance scary storytelling, a lot of what we're talking about here comes down to character agency and consequences: on what level can characters influence a story and what sorts of ramifications are there to characters’ decisions.

In the Pathfinder RPG and games like it, characters are typically either driving factors in the narrative and are empowered to control or overcome the challenges they face. Characters are often referred to as heroes in these games, not just because they're typically good guys but because it's largely assumed they're going to win. At a core level, the Pathfinder RPG wants the characters to win and ultimately characters are more powerful (or will have the opportunity to become more powerful) than the challenges they'll face.

In many games designed to be horror games—Dread, Call of Cthulhu, Shadows of Esteren—the characters have less control, they're more often pawns or victims of the plot and the challenges are greater. Characters usually aren't thought of as heroes in these games—aside from it being a bit out of step with the game's aesthetics, does anyone really think of their Call of Cthulhu investigators as heroes? There's typically the up-front acknowledgement that a character is likely going to die—or go insane or worse—and their victory is not assumed. In many of these games—like in many horror films—a character is at her strongest and most capable at the beginning of the narrative and things go downhill from there.

The other angle here pertains to consequences.

In Pathfinder and games like it, there are really relatively few hard, statistical threats to characters. Lose a hit point? You'll get it back. Lose a level? You'll get it back. Lose a weapon? You'll get/buy another. Die? You'll be resurrected. More characters survive Pathfinder games than those who don’t—in fact, most come out on the other side of an adventure stronger than when they started. While characters decisions may affect the details of the narrative, the game is hardwired to statistically improve characters.

In games designed to be horror games, the consequences are a bit more obvious: you go insane, you die, you fail, you are not promised marked improvement. These consequences are often either set in stone or prove difficult to mitigate. So if you die, that's it. If you go insane, you have to deal with it—you're probably not getting better. If you drop your holy sword in the lava, you shouldn’t expect to get it back. Consequences have permanency and weight that your character might eventually collapse under.

I do not believe there is any combination of written rules or dice roles that make a game system intrinsically scarier than any other (1), rules don’t prescribe narrative. You could just as easily use the Call of Cthulhu rules to play a procedural crime drama as you could a horror story. You can just easily file the serial numbers off the Pathfinder RPG and run games of other types and genres (2). Certain options might be more robust in certain systems, but a game’s mechanics and thematics are distinctive pieces.

So if you wanted to run Pathfinder as a horror game, you have to ask what you really want, Pathfinder with a horror aesthetic or Pathfinder tweaked to adopt the conventions of a horror game.

If you just want to make you're Pathfinder game creepy, there's tons that you can do—use scary monsters, limit humor and distractions, lose the miniatures and grid maps, use music, etc, etc, etc (3). The game remains Pathfinder, but you're essentially tricking the players into thinking the game has fundamentally changed with an increased focus on showmanship and ambiance. It's cool and really fun, but the fundamental rules of the game and your social contract with the players has not actually been altered.

If you want to make Pathfinder a true horror game, the social contract with your players has to change (4). The characters' agency has likely shifted from that assumed in a normal Pathfinder game to something more akin to that of a horror RPG, where challenges might outstrip the character's abilities, some penalties might be particularly dire or arbitrary, and survival/victory is not assured (5). Once everyone's on board with playing a horror game, it’s easy to tweak the rules to support this type of game. For example: take resurrection and all related spells out of the game (death becomes more final); make it more difficult to effectively rest and replenish abilities (resources become scarcer); increase the CRs of encounters to be more equal to (or higher than) the PCs' level (closer/more taxing combats); increase scarcity of certain abilities/items/magic or impose ramifications to their use (limitations and danger reduces fire-and-forget effects), etc. Most of the rules remain Pathfinder, but suddenly actions have more lasting effects, the danger level has increased, resources have to more closely rationed, and the question of whether or not something is the right choice at the right time becomes much more meaningful. Layer some common horror storytelling techniques on top of this and you've cribbed yourself a horror game.

Currently, all official Pathfinder RPG products considered horror themed play with creepy elements entirely on the grounds of narrative and aesthetics. The stories might be creepier, the descriptions more lurid, the subsystems engaging more unsettling material (insanity, haunts, curses, etc), but the challenges are not designed to be any more dangerous, the characters face no change in potency, and the game remains 100% Pathfinder.

So, if you're looking to run a particularly creepy game of Pathfinder, there's tons of awesome suggestions in this thread and elsewhere to hook you up with the right adventure or help give your game a spookier vibe. But if you're looking to fundamentally change your Pathfinder game to make it play more like a horror game, think about some of these suggestions and other minor tweaks you might make to adjust the characters' control over your game's narrative and the dire reality of their consequences.

1 Let me call out and use Dread as an example real quick. There is nothing about using a Jenga tower as that game's method of resolving challenges that makes it fundamentally a horror game—you could just as easily tell a sci-fi or fantasy story with no horror elements with the Jenga tower replacing dice. The tension that the Jenga "mini-game" brings with it, however, and the "BOO!" of a collapsing tower hitting the table makes the system FANTASTICALLY effective in helping to tell a horror story. But Jenga itself is not marketed as a horror game. When overlaid with the veneer of a scary story, though, there's a potent connection.

2 For example, I ran a sci-fi game set in the Mass Effect universe earlier this year using 100% Pathfinder rules. There's a ton of details under the Mass Effect tag on my Erratic Episodes site here if you’re interested in seeing how it worked and even downloading that horror-themed adventure.

3 I and others talk about methods of this at length in several of the links above.

4 By the by, this is NOT something that a GM just gets to do. If your players come to the table expecting to play Pathfinder and you've house-ruled it into a horror game, expect them to be jarred. It's important for the players and GM to be on the same page about what type of game is being played. Lack of clarity in this regard can easily result in misconceptions, arguments, hurt feelings, and failed games. Always be talking to your players!

5 Why play a game the PCs can't win? Why watch a horror movie where the protagonists might not survive? The focus is on the danger, the challenge, the struggle, and the story. GMs in horror RPGs face a greater challenge than in games like Pathfinder in avoiding coming across as antagonists. When elements of the story end up being brutally unfair or crippling to an individual player, this can’t be a surprise. The GM has to have been upfront that such things could happen during the game and that such is to be expected, not personal, and is part of the fun. The GM remains in the position of being responsible for making sure that even a hamstrung player continues to have a good time—which can sometimes be challenging. Players who enjoy roleplaying the facets of insanity, the curse that turns them into a zombie, the challenges of a paraplegic, might really enjoy being afflicted with such developments, but some players might consider it unfair and have their enjoyment of the game severely impacted. As always, it's important to know your players and what they want out of a game, and to be clear about the type of game you're running.


Echoing what TempusAvatar said above, I've learned over the years to find out what the player is most afraid of in real life; spiders, snakes, heights, the dark, etc, and then use that in a adventure. I once had a player afraid of spiders AND heights. By the time the adventure was over he was a shaking, quivering mess.

Editor-in-Chief

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F. Wesley Schneider wrote:
  • Coming Monday: Private Sanctuary, Lovecraftian Horror
  • As promised, my talk with the Private Sanctuary podcast on H.P. Lovecraft, Lovecraftian horror, and horror in Pathfinder is up now.

    The audio only version lives here...

    while the video is up here (including glimpses of Bestiary 4, my office, my awesome Cthulhu tiki mug, Ryan's insane G.I. Joe collection, and lots of talking with my hands!). :D

    Enjoy!

    Paizo Employee

    F. Wesley Schneider wrote:

    while the video is up here (including glimpses of Bestiary 4, my office, my awesome Cthulhu tiki mug, Ryan's insane G.I. Joe collection, and lots of talking with my hands!). :D

    Enjoy!

    Awesome, thanks!

    For anyone who hasn't watched this yet, it's a good introduction to Lovecraft in gaming if you're not familiar with his works. And there's some thoughtful conversation about why there's so much Lovecraft in Pathfinder and how to find a good intersection of Lovecraft and level-based gaming.

    Also that GI Joe collection is totally nuts. Six-year-old me is super jealous.

    Cheers!
    Landon


    Shortly after I got out of the army, I worked at Bergners Department Store as a 'ranger' meaning they moved me from department to department based on who wasn't able to make it to work. Once a week or so, I was stuck into the toy department, which tended to be really slow - perhaps only 1 or 2 customers my entire shift. To keep me from getting bored, I read the backs of all the GI.Joe figures and equipment packages that gave a full: who, what, where, when regarding the packaged item. The G.I. Joe figs reminded me of that...


    Dotty McDotterton!

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