Well, Horror is a mood, and in d20 games it is a mood that can be easily broken by someone's phone beeping at the wrong time. Doing the truly scary in a RPG isn't impossible but many of the tools used to shock, frighten, or horrify people, we as GMs just simply lack. What we do have to work with can also be easily shattered.
Which is why we generally ban the allowance of phones and most other electronics in our gaming area. There's a table outside where all that stuff goes before we go into the room and play. Of course, since most of the group has been playing a while, we use books, not electronics for our games. I actually print pertinent pages from any needed PDFs rather than using a IPAD or something. Surprising phone rings doesn't happen when we play - and that's all gaming, not just horror.
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Well, Horror is a mood, and in d20 games it is a mood that can be easily broken by someone's phone beeping at the wrong time. Doing the truly scary in a RPG isn't impossible but many of the tools used to shock, frighten, or horrify people, we as GMs just simply lack. What we do have to work with can also be easily shattered.Which is why we generally ban the allowance of phones and most other electronics in our gaming area. There's a table outside where all that stuff goes before we go into the room and play. Of course, since most of the group has been playing a while, we use books, not electronics for our games. I actually print pertinent pages from any needed PDFs rather than using a IPAD or something. Surprising phone rings doesn't happen when we play - and that's all gaming, not just horror.
This is all true but isn't always easy to achieve. Unfortunately in a Horror game, someone passing gas or making a silly remark could be just as disruptive to the mood as a cellphone. I guess the point should be in those cases where the mood can be killed easily in horror, the effort should be directed towards something else instead to set the mood.
Actually taking the cell phones away would be a step in right direction, not in removing distractions but by making the players uncomfortable in general. Use some dimmed lights, and walk around the table as a GM. Stand behind a player while reading a scene might add to the mood. Could help reminding them who is in control here.
... Going back to your favorite published adventures, how many of the best elements were simply things the author wrote in, that had no mechanical explanation? They were situational. You couldn't just dispel them or teleport around them. You had to DEAL WITH THEM ...Depending upon what you mean by this, very few of them.
Usually when the author has just written in something that "had no mechanical explanation" it did not feel like horror. It felt like "ah, ok this is one of those things where I have no influence, I'm just watching the author's story unfold again." it is so random and silly that it completely throws me out of the story and all I can think about is "well that doesn't make any sense it doesn't have anything to do with anything," or it is ridiculous that the author/GM expected the characters to come up with the 'only' solution.
** spoiler omitted **...
I don't think you understood what I meant (you probably stopped at that part and did not read the rest). I'm talking about a story element which you must involve yourself to solve a mystery.
Just because you cannot dispel it with dispel magic, does not mean you cannot interact with it, and resolve it through character action and interaction.
You are limiting yourself.
The simplest example I can give of this is that you might have to find a certain key to get through a door. A more complex example might be that you have to investigate the history of a house in order to resolve some issue for a ghost after you find that no amount of fighting or exorcising it otherwise works (it eventually comes back). These elements may go beyond what the Bestiary says about the creature in particular, or what the rulebook says about a particular spell. But that is the point of the thread, isn't it? The OP asked how terror and horror work. Well, they are not dependent on what spell you can cast at X level. They are independent of that. They are more bound in story, which is why you...
No, I did not stop reading. Yes, the story is more important than the rules. (Though I don't think you often need to throw out the rules for the story. There is usually a way to fit most stories within the rules.)
I am not limiting myself with the mechanics. The mechanics are part of the game. If you are just throwing them out without telling anyone you are not playing the same game and didn't tell the players you are playing a different game.
I do not mind an interaction where you have to figure out some non-standard way to solve a problem. If there is a reasonable expectation that it is possible to solve a problem. Puzzles aren't my favorite, but neither do I hate them. (I also don't usually see/feel much horror in a puzzle.)
What I'm saying is that many of what I have seen for horror that is attempted by adding something "with no mechanical explanation" does not often engender any horror with many of us players. Many of them seem to have no reasonable way the player characters can be expected to solve the problem.
A mechanic has been added that flat contradicts the currently accepted mechanics. (Must target hinges with your attacks. But the current rules say you can't target a specific point and it wouldn't have any in game effect if you did.) With no indication that anything has changed there is no reasonable way to expect the player to know the rules were significantly altered to the point you need to try things already know to not work.
A creature weakness with zero forshadowing, clues, or information of any kind. And the weakness is so bizzare that there is no way to 'think' of it without metagaming information from a book you likely haven't read.
Yes, the story is more important than the powers at what ever level. But many of these things that get added with "no mechanical explanation" have nothing to do with the story. As far as we could tell, they were added purely for horror effect. But contributed no horror effect.
Those kinds of things seem to be common in several of the published horror adventures over the years. Maybe some people find those horrifying. Many of us do not. It is simply frustrating.
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While I agree phones are distracted and should be put away, I think we shouldn't think of horror as more fragile than it really is. People pas gas during horror movies as well, and still enjoy the movie.
I think Kadasbrass was on to something when he spoke of actually using the knowledge of the players against them. For example:
The PCs have been hired to fumigate a haunted house. During the day they investigate, and discover some clues about what they're likely to face, so they stock up the right kind of weapons and wait for nightfall, because that's when the monsters are known to show up.
However, there's disinformation at work. An NPC didn't tell the PCs the whole truth, or the monster actually laid some false clues, or the monster is just clever, or another enemy is working against the PCs. The result is that the players prepared wrongly; the monster doesn't have the weakness they were counting on, or it's not actually that kind of monster. It's important you prepare this part very thoroughly, in such a way that the players are honestly fooled. They shouldn't cry foul at you for cheating them into this. Instead they should be cursing themselves for falling for the "trap". This is HARD.
Then during the night, work to cut off exit routes. Players will nod, all genre-savvy like. There's a snowstorm, or there's other scary monsters out there. Maybe there's heavy fog, and a % chance every minute of PCs wandering out there getting split up and lost - and who knows what they might run into? It's even nicer if the cutoff is self-imposed; maybe the PCs used a ritual to force the haunting to stay in the house, but if they break it before the haunting is defeated, the haunting will be free to leave, even more powerful than before. This part can be a little cheesy, but players will probably accept it because it's a genre trope. However, be prepared for them to attempt to escape. Know what you'll do if they try. If they do, warn them honestly that they might die faster if they try it. Make sure escaping is hard; it should only work if the player comes up with a really clever solution. After all, your blockade was meant to stand up to mere brute force. (One high-probability way of escaping is to sacrifice another PC as a distraction. Feel free to suggest this option to the players. Even so, it's not a guarantee that you'll get away. Even thinking about this possibility should make players a bit uncomfortable.)
Next up, some encounters. The point here is attrition. The players won't regain spells until morning, and probably can't leave until then either. So they have to parse out carefully what they have. Use some encounters that aren't actually the main BBEG to drain some resources, to make the PCs think about which supplies they want to conserve.
Special note on paladins here. Make sure you know exactly how many Smites he has available, and how many he'll need to deal with the BBEG. Make sure to present some tempting Smite targets. The goal is to make the player want to use Smites to deal with nasty enemies faster, but to make him worry about how many he'll need for the final fight.
Do things that inflict conditions, particularly nasty ones that can't be ignored (like Nauseated) to force them to use curative resources. Also inflict some unusual conditions that can't really be dealt with immediately, but that aren't immediately crippling either. Like a curse or a scary disease that worsens every hour. Stuff that gets progressively nastier is good here.
Now it's important to know if your players are mentally capable of retreat. You'll have to figure this out yourself; some players have a fight to the death mentality, others know that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.
If your players are the retreating kind, have them encounter the BBEG and realize the weapon they thought they were going to use won't suffice.
If your players are the stand and fight type, use a fake BBEG instead, that can be defeated in a somewhat tough fight. But after the fight it turns out he wasn't the real BBEG (leave super obvious clues), and that the planned attack mode didn't work on the fake BBEG, foreshadowing that it won't work on the real BBEG either.
Now the PCs are low on resources, and they're not going to get away (not easily) without confronting the BBEG, who's running around being noisy and scary, and taunting the players.
Now it's pretty scary; the players KNOW that the stuff they rely on doesn't work, or that it's already been spent. They KNOW that they can't easily leave. They KNOW just how far away dawn and new powers is.
Now they have three choices (and you need to prep all of them):
- Try to escape. Most likely not everyone is coming back.
- Hold out until dawn and powers can be prayed for and such; survive until you regain powers, at which point the party can really lay the smack down on the monster.
- Figure out the monster's real special weakness. Use the leftover resources they have to mount a renewed attack.
The third option is preferable, but again requires good GM preparation. The monster's real weakness should be discoverable while the PCs are in this precarious situation. Ideally, it wasn't possible to do so they day before. Only know, having observed the monster directly, having talked with the monster, having tried various things, are the pieces coming together. Maybe the house also holds clues whose importance is now coming to light.
It's really important to do that part well. It shouldn't feel like a Deus Ex Machina, it should make sense within the context of THAT adventure (not some movie the players haven't seen), it should be discoverable (use the Three Clue Rule), and it should still be possible, given the bad state the PCs are now in.
I mentioned earlier "having talked to the monster". Horror monsters tend to talk. Even if it's just a "here's Johnny!" thing, they talk. When running the fight, make sure to talk in every combat round, at least in the first 3 rounds or so, to make the impression on the players. The monster might give away clues, because it's probably insane or secretly hopes that people will kill it and end its misery.
Also, weakness. Horror monsters are never killed with the normal tools. You don't set out to kill a horror monster using Standard Operating Procedure. Events will conspire to prevent it; you have to use those resources before meeting the monster, or the monster is immune. You always need to do something unusual.
If that's not the case, you were playing in an action movie, not a horror movie. There's nothing wrong with that, it just isn't horror.
Also, a final important thing. If the players come up with a good alternative approach for the monster's special weakness, or another creative way to make a last stand. That's okay - it can and probably WILL work. The important part is that the players didn't get to kill the monster using their first choice of methods, and that they're HOPING the second choice of methods will work. Basically, if the players provide you with an alternate ending for the adventure that suits you, roll with it.
...It's important you prepare this part very thoroughly, in such a way that the players are honestly fooled. They shouldn't cry foul at you for cheating them into this. Instead they should be cursing themselves for falling for the "trap". This is HARD.
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This is extremely hard. I would probably go so far as to say mos GM's can't manage it. I have only known a couple of GM's that can do this and they don't get it right all the time.
Most of the time when a GM tries this the players are just rolling their eyes. "Well of course we can't fight it, the GM just railroaded us into it up so we have to lose. Gee that original and fun..."
I will gladly admit; the few times I've seen it done well, it was a most excellent adventure.
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Indeed Ascalaphus, really good stuff there.
One thing you touched on that I forgot to include in my post. In horror, the Monster is the Star of the show. Aliens, Dracula, the Wolfman, Cthulhu. The monster is the center of attention and unless its a brooding horror, it doesn't just sit in its lair waiting for the heroes, its an all powerful creature with few weaknesses and it knows this and it goes out there playing the part of the monster.
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Thank, I had some sudden inspiration :)
I agree, the monster needs to be out there, doing stuff. Brooding horror is probably not going to work in an RPG.
@Kydeem: yes, it IS hard. I suppose a simple example might be in order: let's say that our bad guy is a lich. However, he only goes out at night, uses Alter Self to look like he's still got flesh, doesn't enter uninvited, and uses Gaseous Form, Dominate Person and Beast Shape spells to assume wolf form.
So the players go into his mansion prepped to slay a vampire. After a hard fight they have him on the ground and stake him, actually killing his current body. But then his Alter Self spell wears off, and the players now have a skeleton that obviously has no heart to stake, and a suspicious lack of dust.
This requires a bit of bending the rules on the lich's rejuvenation; instead of acquiring a new body in 1d10 days, he's got a Contingency spell rigged up to Magic Jar him, so that he can try possessing a PC, boasting that he's going to use this soon-to-be corpse as his new body. The PCs will probably manage to expel him, using Protection from Evil to make it unattractive to stay in this body.
However, the building is full of bodies that this lich can possess, so now they're trying to find the Jar, while continually getting assaulted by new host bodies as the lich tries to play for time. The lich needs some time to refresh spells and maybe smuggle his phylactery out of the building.
(It's weird - I thought liches were always able to animate any nearby corpse as a new host body. Maybe that's a 2nd edition thing, when liches were still at least 17th level wizards, instead of the schmucks they've become.)
1. If you are just throwing them out without telling anyone you are not playing the same game and didn't tell the players you are playing a different game.
2. What I'm saying is that many of what I have seen for horror that is attempted by adding something "with no mechanical explanation" does not often engender any horror with many of us players....
3. A mechanic has been added that flat contradicts the currently accepted mechanics. (Must target hinges with your attacks. But the current rules say you can't target a specific point and it wouldn't have any in game effect if you did.)
4. A creature weakness with zero forshadowing, clues, or information of any kind. And the weakness is so bizzare that there is no way to 'think' of it without metagaming information from a book you likely haven't read.
1. I'm not talking about throwing mechanics out. I'm talking about elements that are not directly dependent upon them.
2. Missing the point. You don't add something with no mechanic resolution for the hell of it. You add some frightening element that is made all the more frightening because it does not have an immediate, convenient resolution.
3. I am not talking about this at all. An obsession with each and every tiny detail of every mechanic is one type of playing style. Some people like it. That style is not conducive to good horror campaigns in my extensive experience.
4. Who said there was zero foreshadowing, clues or information? Horror is mystery. The whole point is to involve yourself in the resources available to you and solve that mystery.
I get that you've had bad GMs. Horror is hard, so it's worth stating that a bad GM is going to mess horror up even more than whatever else it is he's running. Kydeem, it is also clear you want to win an argument here. But my advice is good - it's worked for me outstandingly, and it's worked for others I've helped with this sort of thing. I'll try one more time to illustrate what I am getting at, for anybody who still wants advice on this.
Flatliners... Anybody remember this movie?
Does this mean he cannot ever use his class abilities? Is he nerfed? No. He is still a surgeon. He can still use what he knows to help him solve the mystery. What he cannot do is simply wave a magic wand and make it go away. If he could, if he could simply destroy the recurring, dreaded, always-lurking danger that he knows is bound to visit him again tonight, it would NOT BE HORROR. It would be CONVENIENCE. And convenience is just not frightening.
The solution, as in a lot of horror, is quite simple. He must own up to the fact of what he has done. He must find peace with his past.
Now, the solution in a game might be as varied as there are horror stories out there. And just because you have to do something extraordinary and outside dice rolls and spell lists does not mean you do not use all your normal resources in the process of finding things out -- you do. And I would argue that this sort of balance between story, clues and mechanic has been a point of the game since its inception - it certainly has been the way I've played it for 33 years now.
But my point remains. Horror is not horror if you can simply wave a magic wand and make something go away. The elements of horror MUST be persistent, they must invoke dread of their reappearance (or in some cases, new appearance), and they must somehow be balanced beyond the strict game mechanic, and not solvable with simply kicking down a door or casting a spell, or the thing is not scary.
That's it. Take it as you will. If you're ever in the SF Bay Area, look me up and I'll let you sit in on our upcoming Silent Hill campaign and you can see it in action.
"Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear."
- Stephen King, 2008
I'm something of a horror buff. I like my horror games and movies to instill a sense of dread and paranoia that lingers for days. Amnesia comes to mind.
Back in the day, Ravenloft was the closest D&D came to true horror. From cult classics like ghosts, vampires and werewolves to more disturbing concepts, like a demented woman who guts her guests and turns them into clockwork dolls, it was a campaign setting that had something for everyone.
Ravenloft is not dead yet, its alive! ...or maybe undead? And kicking. Were you aware Of the 3e Ravenloft books by White Wolf/Sword & Sorcery? Check out the Fraternity of Shadows website & forums. Ryan Naylor posted his excellent PF conversion of Ravenloft recently. It's a great community and resource (the netbooks are excellent!) for a horror fan.
There's also the fan created Mistfinder PDF.
As for other good horror products, check out Raging Swan Press' Against the Cult if the Bat God. It got a rave review by horror and Ravenloft fan Thilo Graf. RSP's Lonely Coast setting is pretty dark in general and they offer great products from adventures to GZm aids to 100% crunch NPC books. Check out the Retribution, the Town/Settlement line, and more... Free previews available for many products on the publishers site, also a money back guarantee. I kid not.
Kaidan has already been mentioned and I heartily suggest you check out at least the free module...
There's also TPK Games Reaping Stone and Bleeding Hollow adventures.
Paizo has the Ustalav products and Carrion Crown AP, Classic Monters Revisited, Undead Revisited
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1. I'm not talking about throwing mechanics out. I'm talking about elements that are not directly dependent upon them.2. Missing the point. You don't add something with no mechanic resolution for the hell of it. You add some frightening element that is made all the more frightening because it does not have an immediate, convenient resolution.
3. I am not talking about this at all. An obsession with each and every tiny detail of every mechanic is one type of playing style. Some people like it. That style is not conducive to good horror campaigns in my extensive experience.
4. Who said there was zero foreshadowing, clues or information? Horror is mystery. The whole point is to involve yourself in the resources available to you and solve that mystery.
I get that you've had bad GMs. Horror is hard, so it's worth stating that a bad GM is going to mess horror up even more than whatever else it is he's running. Kydeem, it is also clear you want to win an argument here. But my advice is good - it's worked for me outstandingly, and it's worked for others I've helped with this sort of thing. I'll try one more time to illustrate what I am getting at, for anybody who still wants advice on this.
Flatliners... Anybody remember this movie?
Movie plot spoiler:
...Now, the solution in a game might be as varied as there are horror stories out there. And just because you have to do something extraordinary and outside dice rolls and spell lists does not mean you do not use all your normal resources in the process of finding things out -- you do. And I would argue that this sort of balance between story, clues and mechanic has been a point of the game since its inception - it certainly has been the way I've played it for 33 years now.
But my point remains. Horror is not horror if you can simply wave a magic wand and make something go away. The elements of horror MUST be persistent, they must invoke dread of their reappearance (or in some cases, new appearance), and they must somehow be balanced beyond the strict game mechanic, and not solvable with simply kicking down a door or casting a spell, or the thing is not scary.
That's it. Take it as you will. If you're ever in the SF Bay Area, look me up and I'll let you sit in on our upcoming Silent Hill campaign and you can see it in action.
{sigh} No I am not trying to win an argument. I was trying to make a point to the people that are going to try to run a horror adventure. What I see in a lot of publish or GM homemade horror adventures does not invoke horror in many of us. It is just frustrating. In a novel or movie, it might be horrifying. In an RPG, it wasn’t. If they were my GM, I would rather not see them follow that example.
I am not saying horror can’t be done well. I have occasionally seen it done well. But not by following the script out of most of the published works that I have looked at or been run through.
I don't think we are as far apart as it seemed at first. I now believe that our difference is over your use of the no mechanical explanation phrase, keeping control, don’t be bound by the rules, can’t be fought, etc… I would say everyone of those authors/GM’s would agree and that they met those guidelines.
You example doesn’t match what I think of from those guidelines. As I understand from your example you mean persistent problems that can’t be easily solved. Problems have a key or weakness that the players must investigate to find. Single simple spell that most PC’s can cast won’t take care of it instantly. Still have story and clues with the players using their resources to investigate, learn, and survive. I agree with these, but this is not what I took away from your first 2 posts.
{I would also posit that all of this can be usually be taken care of well within the rules, but that is a different subject.}
I have not watched 'Flatliners.'
There is a chance my boss will send me to Calif this summer. If I'm in the area with some spare time, I might take you up on the offer.
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Horror requires the players buy in.
The system, like a lot of people have said, doesn't matter. There are also different kinds of horror. Psychological, cosmic, and the 'booga booga booga' type.
The trick is that certain kinds of horror just don't work in certain situations, or with certain people.
I'll give a perfect example.
There is a sad and sick creature, a twisted non-human abomination that lives in perpetual starvation locked in a tower and worshipped by bloodthirsty cultists who mutilate their bodies in attempts to mimic the strange impossible shapes of their trapped 'god.'
A setting for a horror story? Nope. Its a Conan tale. He just charges in and AM BARBARIANs the crap out of everybody before walking on thinking the creature was sad.
A lot of our classic horror monsters aren't as scary to the average PC because their statblocks sit for their easy perusal, they're understandable.
Pinhead's very scary in Hellraiser, even if we get goofy and say he's a CR 7 Kyton creature, he's all be insurmountable to a little level 1 commoner girl. To a party of adventurers? He's meat.
The trick with the horror game is putting heroes into the mindset of not being the conquering heroes. This is the real trick and to be honest, something I'm not 100% sure of how to accomplish.
I was in a group once that made kittens of the Ravenloft Gothic Earth supplement. The group didn't approach the game like timid researchers, but instead like adventurers. They found out the secrets of the enemy and then demolished them (sometimes in ignoble ways). Dracula died a peasant's death thanks to high pressure waterhoses for example. Its an adventurer mindset.
Even most classic horror movies have this issue. Putting aside the schlock of the slasher film, or the shaggy dog stories that most j-horror ultimately are, its tricky to have protagonists do the protagonist thing and still be well, frightened.
This is why the most successful options are usually Cosmic Horror, or Psychological Horror (and why they sprang to my mind first). You need to start looking outside the average horror movie for inspiration, and you need to ask 'how can I make the party still feel enfranchised, while making them simultaneously feel in danger and with little power.'
The zombie plague is scary, but every gamer/horror fan has fifty plans for dealing with zombies of different flavors. If you start to mess with the zombies though, if say the zombies are dangerous but the zombification is like a spirit who departs the zombie when its destroyed and takes over someone else, at random, they become scary again, even for a party of adventurers.
Suddenly, its not just a matter of taking a shotgun to the things. You have to avoid them (even if they're still just shamblers) because to have to take the violent option potentially dooms some other poor person to zombification, and potentially might decimate innocent people by having a family member just /become/ a zombie. You reward them for being clever, but they also feel dread because they have to play counting coup with the things.
I ran one real horror game. It was in the Alternity system, and I think it worked primarily because..
1.) The players were unfamiliar with the system. They knew what they could do mechanically, but didn't know the details of the world they were in, or even what PL it was. Information was scarce, which made them feel in danger and off-balance.
2.) The scary things were little. Unease as opposed to shock. There could have been rooms festooned with entrails (and at parts there were), but they instead had a lot of situations like.. they'd access a space station and find it completely empty, abandoned for a while, but meticulously clean, with buckets and mops still wet, but no life signs. It made them uneasy.
As an aside to point 2. Humor is good. Whistling past the graveyard has a time honored place in horror. People use humor to break tension, and you need the tension broken a little so people will relax, so you can make them tense up again.
3.) Play fair. Make sure you know what kind of bad guy you have. Heroes will spit blood, justifiably, if a normal serial killer seemed to exhibit almost supernatural capabilities. One of my major complaints with the Serial Killer horror is when a guy who lives in his mother's basement has the inexplicable capability to get by security systems using only his Serial Killerness.
*If you have a human opponent, have him be brilliant or have access to something on his ken.
*If you have a supernatural opponent, establish the rules and methods it works by (don't advertise them).
*Watch some of those stringy haired ghost girl j-horror movies. Never structure an adventure like them. Most of the ones I've had the misfortune of seeing are about an hour of atmosphere, following a ghost who's reasons, methods and goals are totally ridiculous and inexplicable, culminating in a shaggy dog pay off. This isn't a horror-thing, that can be scary, its a horror-game thing.
From a player perspective, these kinds of shenanigans aren't scary s much as irritating .
Seriously, look at Ju-on the Grudge, or The Ring, and ask yourself, what would the heroes be doing here?
If everything you think of the Players doing would get immediately no-sold or destroy the vibe, don't base a horror adventure on it.
Man, I need to stop babbling in these posts...
In Pathfinder players rarely feel out of control because of the CR/EL system they expect challenges they can overcome
Nailed it. The trick is not adjusting encounters around players. The players should adjust themselves to the encounters.
Lv1 group fighting a vampire? Run away or die.
No problem with throwing something that is obviously beyond a party's capabilities at them. Teaches a party humility.
Of course, sometimes the party surprises the GM by defeating the thing anyway.
And that makes some parties think that they can always do it, so they throw themselves at the Tarrasque and die in a blaze of stupidity.
Step one: The players set up camp in a tiny village between their adventures.
Step two: Make the players get attached to some of the NPCs. This is by far the most difficult step.
Step three: The PCs discover one of these NPCs is attempting to give The Monster (a incorporeal lich, a demon or Lovecraftian horror) a physical body. They discover that this creature is already able to interfere with the world and is trying to interfere with their efforts to stop him.
Step four: The PCs defeat the evil NPC and rescue the victim he was going to sacrifice, thwarting The Monster's ambitions, condemning it to continue to exist in its crippled Haunt form.
Step five: They return to the village. Everything is oddly quiet. They look around. As GM, you now become very specific and detailed in your descriptions, creating a sense of unease and allowing time for creeping dread. There are abandoned tools, doors hanging open. The rescued sacrifice victim freaks out completely, can't bear to go on.
Step six: As the PCs rush to see what's happened to their friends, you continue to describe everything in unnecessary detail: half-finished meals, strange creaking sounds, a bloody fingernail on the floor. Finally, they discover someone they know, weeping in the corner, unwilling to turn and face them.
Step seven: Have her eyes been gouged out? Was she possessed and forced to kill her own children? Is she undead now? It doesn't really matter what it is. If you've narrated it well, the sense of horror has already been created.
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In Pathfinder players rarely feel out of control because of the CR/EL system they expect challenges they can overcomeNailed it. The trick is not adjusting encounters around players. The players should adjust themselves to the encounters.
Lv1 group fighting a vampire? Run away or die.
I quite agree, but the party is going to 'catch up,' with that vampire, and it'll become quasi-farcical if they discover the entire world keeps scaling up at CR+5.
You also want to avoid inculcating despair, as that doesn't make for a good game experience.
If I am always incapable of doing anything of note, if my every accomplishment gets swept away and I have to listen to the DM smugly posture in the form of his NPCs over every step of it, I'm going to find better ways to spend my evening.
The CR+5 angle did make me think of a sort of horror themed fantasy that might be useful, namely the Black Company books by Cook (or the Myth the Fallen Lords games inspired by them). The Taken/Fallen are definitely scary folk, and the "heroes" end up having to deal with shadows, necromancers, and were-leopards. Its not as much 'quake in fear' but its definitely got that grungy low-key horror of like Dark Souls. The opponents are terrifying, supernatural and bizarre, but you can also take them on if you're metal enough.
Myth had the added horror of the heroes of a past age becoming the next's villains (and knowing it) in addition to the more sundry extradimensional giant spiders; species that remembered the literal creation of world and considered mankind as merely flickering/squishable candles; battles fought with dreams and nightmares; mages of spectacular and bizarre ken; 'allies' who's schtick was stealing away people's will with casual ease; demonic hellbeasts trapped in a non-euclidian prison of uncertain ken; barbarous forest-dwelling cannibals who grafted masks to their face; ghoulish ape-men who sacrificed the heads of dwarves to a giant rock they believe was their god; dozens of hideous undead creatures and so on.
The trick again is the dark fantasy isn't quite horror, but it can definitely touch on some of the same things
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I quite agree, but the party is going to 'catch up,' with that vampire, and it'll become quasi-farcical if they discover the entire world keeps scaling up at CR+5.
Maybe Horror just doesn't work so well in long campaigns.
Doesn't mean it has to be a one-off adventure only, but the long climb uphill in power of PCs is a bit at odds with the sense of being outclassed that horror thrives on.
I think a horror campaign might work around one central goal, from the start, like a vampire nemesis of the PC's family, that they're chasing. They have several adventures tracking it down - discovering what it is - and eventually have a final confrontation. Along the way they chase it across several countries and have some side adventures. But after the final confrontation, the campaign is over.
It's really hard to introduce a new archvillain in a horror campaign. I think Buffy deserves credit for pulling it off several times (Angelus/Spike/Drusill in season 2, the Mayor in season 3), but even that got stale as the series went on and on.
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Another idea that can make things both scarier and more realistic at the same time is to not tell the players how many hit points of damage their characters are taking. Tell them that it's only a scratch, or that it looks pretty bad, or they're bleeding and dizzy and about to pass out, or whatever best describes the wound, but not the exact number of hit points they've lost until after the battle.
The same applies to other conditions. For example you can say, "the wound burns like fire. Your arms are starting to ache and your sword feels like its ten pounds heavier." Was the character poisoned? Did they suffer STR drain? Is it just fatigue? In the middle of a fight there's no time to stop and find out.
This is a lot more for the DM to track in the middle of a fight. Beware of slowing everything down in a d20 fight while the DM recalculates numbers and does most everything in his head or on paper the PCs don't see and the PCs sit around waiting.
It is easier to use this technique in something like PBP where there is not so much of an immediate time crunch for pacing.
Personally I have always been a huge fan of using Heroes of Horror and Book of Vile Darkness for the darker "horror-esque" type games (ala things like Clive Barker's Jericho).
The Depravity and Grotesque (i think that is what the physical form of depravity was called) mechanic is actually pretty cool.
The other big thing to do is to run the game in a more E-6 or E-8 style. That prevents things like high level magic from pretty much ruining things for ya.
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I think one of the biggest aids to creating a feeling of terror and horror is to lay on the adjectives and dial back on the dice rolling. Also, check out this Tumblr post from Wes Schneider that has a bunch of useful links regarding Horror in RPGs.
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Now, I don't think there's any call for *that* kind of language! ;)
Well, I ran a pseudo-horror style campaign. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece of true terror--I used the 4E rules, and I am physically incapable of passing up on cheap jokes. Still, I think I managed to do pretty good at traumatizing my players. Here are some things that worked pretty well for me.
1) The campaign was site-based, in a city that was abandoned by all but some motley community of people--no more than 300. That meant that the NPCs the party dealt with was pretty small, but recurring. There was an incompetent mayor, a surly guard captain, a drunken merc leader, a ditzy priestess who ran the orphanage, a crime-lord turned scavenger boss, etc. Sometimes these NPCs gave the party trouble, intentionally or otherwise. Other times, they helped the party out, or held down the fort while the party was out getting other stuff done.
Only one NPC really went out of her way to be friendly and helpful; the rest were as likely to be dismissive, cross, or just incompetent as they were to be valuable. But they did have their moments, and most were useful to the party in some way, even if they weren't liked or trusted.
After five or so levels experience, the party was comfortable with dealing with the NPCs. The stage was set for me to start screwing with them, revealing the ugly truths behind their odd habits or poisoning them with the dark powers that lurked in the city. Even when it was NPCs they didn't like, I could hear them grimacing over the v-chat at each ugly revelation.
2) The bad guys weren't just monsters. For the first half of the campaign, the major villains were actually people. Captain Wickers, a genasi pirate, was planning to invade the city with his followers for unknown reasons. Dr. Thalimere Jakkel was a mad scientist type whose aims were only guessed at by the party. Old Man Tates was a sailor cursed with the blood of Dagon, who had finally succumbed to the call of his demonic sire without anybody noticing. The villain my party was preparing to bring down before schedule conflicts ground things to a halt was the Magnificent Empress, an oni witch who controlled the remnants of the city from the shadows.
The party hated and feared these villains with varying degrees of paranoia--one party member starting swearing when I used an old pog of Dr. Jakkel as a counter. I think this was mostly because, through a little ingenuity and a lot of luck, I managed to constantly catch the party off-guard with the means and methods of my villains.
When Wickers finally invaded the city, he used his powers of wizardry to send a tsunami at the town, when everybody had been planning defenses against an invasion by foot. After the party's first scuffle with his beached pirate ship, he gathered his things, summoned demons disguised as dead pirates, used contingency magic to "time" a munitions explosion in the lower deck, and used a magic mouth ritual to leave a prerecorded message daring the PCs to come down into the ship after him. Though they were cautious, the PCs still fell for the trap, and almost died in the combination of fire, suffocation, and demons.
As another example, for the longest time, Dr. Jakkel was just creepy. He'd show up randomly in town, usually when a party member was alone, and probe them with odd, personal questions, in a way that all but screamed "Someday, I'm going to spread you open on a dissection table." The party killed him for this--more than once--but the body would always revert into a dead changeling, then rip itself into ribbons from sheer contortion. The party did find old, abandoned "side laboratories" of Thalimere's more than once, however, and the remains experiments inside, even though half of them were dead or inert, left a lot of room to imagine what Jakkel was up to. Still, when the party found Jakkel's secret base, and proof that Jakkel was allied with the evils of the city, they weren't prepared for the mad logic behind many of his experiments, or the truth behind Jakkel's apparent reincarnations.
3) The xet were entropic demons that lurks throughout the southern half of Lankerton. They could fit in tight spaces, stretch out to attack someone from across the room, and some could grow as large as a two-story house. They were also a bit dim, a little crazy, and sometimes seemed almost approachable.
After the fourth or so encounter, the party made it their business to avoid xet any time they could. I came up with the xet while I was raising a particularly annoying, possibly-feral black kitten. Like the xet, she could be all over the place, her mood was difficult to predict, and when she did set her mind to something, she would try everything to succeed.
Instead of being monolithic and completely alien, the xet were closer to home--they were otherworldly, sapient wild animals. The party knew they were dangerous, and they were guaranteed to be hostile... usually. Sometimes, they just watched the party, and ran away if spotted. Sometimes, they would appear in front of the party and demand things. Sometimes they left "presents" for the party where they knew the grisly gifts would be found. Once, a xet shoved its arm through the desiccated corpse of a past victim, lowered it down to the first floor in front of the party, and pretended to be a tollmaster with a set of random, "funny" tests the party had to perform.
But, eventually, if the party stayed around a group of xet long enough, they would attack. And the xet were always strong enough, or numerous enough, to be a challenging fight, even if it didn't look that way at first. Even if the xet did nothing to the party for the entire stay, the demons would sometimes stealthily follow the party and try to attack them while they slept. The xet appeared to have human motives and drives, but at the same time were almost impossible to predict accurately--they only spoke when they wanted to provoke the party in some manner, and their features were only passingly anthropomorphic. And because they were always a pain in the neck to kill, the party was loathe to just "fire and forget," because this was a city full of zombies, ghosts, alien horrors, and other threats that could not be so easily avoided.
In that way, the xet created a lot of uncertainty and anxiety without being truly unknowable horrors. Instead, like predators in the savannah, they were "safe" to be around until they were hungry--or angry, or paranoid, or perhaps just ready to play a cruel joke. The uncertainty of the xet didn't come from the impossibility of their goals, so much as because they were so difficult to get a read on compared to more mundane beasts and villains.
IMO...
I found the best way to invoke genuine dread in my players was by using implied description, rather than overt description.
For example, instead of saying "the doorknob has blood on it" just say it's dark, then ask them if they want to touch it. When they do, "it's wet and a bit sticky, and you smell a faint familiar odor... maybe iron?"
Similarly with describing grisly scenes - describe the smells, describe the sounds, describe the heaviness of the air, and describe what they see in part, rather than giving them the punchline. Ask for confirmation ("are you sure?").
Describing monsters in terms of how they move or sound is also great. Remember if a room is dark or not and use that... or obscuring effects like dust clouds.
Lastly, too much horror just become desensitizing, so use it on & off, not constantly.