One of the interesting things about horror RPGs is that almost no one who plays them is ever really frightened. Someone might play his character as if he were frightened, but I don't think I've ever seen anything in a game genuinely scare a player, at least not deliberately. That never really bothered me, because, let's face it, it's not that easy to induce fear while sitting around a table in a well-lit room with a bunch of your friends. Plus, would it even be fun to play a game where you're routinely frightened in the way you might be watching a movie or reading a book?
Even so, there's always been part of me that, as a referee, has wondered about the question of why we play horror RPGs and what we hope to get out of them. That's why I was so taken with a section in the Warden's Operations Manual for the new edition of the sci-fi horror game Mothership that addresses this very issue:
Actually scaring your players, like they might get scared watching a horror film or playing a video game is an incredibly rare thing. It is not a measure of a successful game night. Most of the time, your players simply want to have fun in a horror setting. This means they want to play characters who feel afraid, while they the players sit back eating chips and rolling dice. Sometimes you have players who love to be scared and really get into it. If that's the case, enjoy it! But don't feel bad if it doesn't happen every week. Instead focus on keeping the tension escalating.
I think this is quite close to the truth of it, at least as I've experienced the play of horror RPGs over the years. The horror present in your typical Call of Cthulhu scenario, for example, is largely intellectual rather than emotional. Very few players will ever feel frightened or disgusted by events in the game, even if they understand that their characters, being ordinary people, would probably feel those things within the context of the game world. This makes for a better roleplaying experience in at least two respects. First, it doesn't set the bar so high for the referee that he'll never achieve "success." Second, it helps maintain a little distance between the players and the often horrific things with which their characters must deal.
That said, even highly intellectualized fear, horror, and revulsion are all useful tools for the referee in presenting an engaging setting and/or scenario. After all, fantasy can be frightening and confronting frightening things in a fictional context can be very appealing to a lot of people, especially those among us who are normally not very brave. In that respect, it's not much different than the more general experience of fictional danger found in many common RPG activities, like combat or exploration. It's fun for our characters to do or to endure things that we'd never be able to or indeed want to, isn't it?
I’ve occasionally been actually frightened playing a horror RPG, and I think occasionally a good game achieves this. GURPS’ “Flight 13” freaked me out. In college some DM added a spontaneous live action element to a Cthulhu game where we had to sneak around the darkened campus buildings at night, and that scared me too, haha. - Jason Bradley Thompson
ReplyDeleteI've dabbled in horror role-playing for about 40 years now, and oddly enough, the times I nailed it, we weren't playing CoC, a game I love in theory but rarely play. The issue with CoC is that the only true way to play it is to have player characters frequently meet their demise or descend into madness, which doesn't align well with the longer campaign formats I typically run. However, if you do adhere to this approach, with players frequently swapping out characters, I've noticed a certain fatigue sets in, and a mentality of disposable characters takes hold. Another gripe I have with pre-written CoC scenarios is that they often pile on too much horror and include an abundance of monsters, which can make the indescribable seem almost mundane.
ReplyDeleteI managed to have my players genuinely scared on some occasions, something of which I'm quite proud. That happened when the supernatural manifested itself in an otherwise realistic campaign suddenly and truly unexpectedly. It takes a lot of patience to get there, and I doubt today, with families and work and 1000 other thoughts going through our minds, we could achieve that again. I remember an instance in which I had two players play as patrol agents in New York doing shifts and living their lives for about a year before I started to very slowly introduce some eerie elements. That was a blast!
Totally agreed on CoC. With the right keeper it can be very atmospheric, but the mechanics tend to favor one-shot meat grinders. I might be a minority opinion on this, but the high character turnover really interferes with my enjoyment of the game's
Deletetwo "big" published campaigns, Orient Express and Masks. When I ran Masks (in its original incarnation, not the revised version), I heavily edited some sections and fudged like crazy, because I didn't want to have the TPKs that seem to be demanded by the campaign as written.
In general, as in so many other things related to RPGs, I think effective horror relies on the GM setting a mood and the players buying into it. Mechanically, I have seen the dice mechanics of the Free League ALIEN rpg produce some genuine tension at the table, if not full blown fear.
Interesting to know about Alien, I'll look into it! About setting the mood, I have always relied upon candlelight (a must for us, always has been, because it focuses players on the gaming table and helps them forget their surroundings) and instrumental music.
DeleteWhen I ran Orient Express, it was a disaster: every city a "monster" or a deadly encounter, train schedules that really didn't make sense (train is not going to wait for you while you investigate), and many other problems. A product more beautiful to see and own than to run.
Isn't the Mothership Warden's Operation Manual great? I can't think of another book that explains as clearly and as concisely how to create and run a scenario and a campaign. It's one of those books that even if you never have any intent of running the game you as a referee are going to benefit from reading it, particularly if you run any sort of horror rpg.
ReplyDeleteI've been extremely impressed by it, myself, and really wish more GM manuals were written with the MWOM's approach. It's been enlightening and thought provoking even with forty years of GMing (much of it horror and SF) under my belt.
Delete"it's not that easy to induce fear while sitting around a table in a well-lit room with a bunch of your friends."
ReplyDeleteIt's not too hard actually. Two words: Energy Drain. Players who will calmly and jokingly go through combat with a dragon, will panic when confronting even the lowly wight who can wipe out their levels. That's the closest to terror I have seen in DnD games.
This is true.
DeleteDecades ago a game store employee told me that his young son got frightened by the magic mouths on p. 8 of dungeon module B1: In Search of the Unknown.
ReplyDeleteCoC is one of my favorites, either to play or run. I don't remember who said it (might have been Stephen King), but is was something to the effect that the best horror is where you don't see the entire monster, just a peek. Let the imagination take what you give it and let it run wild.
ReplyDeleteI do recall running the famous scenario "The Haunting" where they were just in the fact gathering part. One of the players has a journalism degree IRL. So, she decided to play an investigative reporter. In going through the evidence, she discovered the original piece to be run in the newspaper regarding the property. Then this look of surprise and maybe fear literally went across her face.
"Guys. This is weird. The article was PULLED just before going to press, with the written approval of the editor of the paper. That doesn't happen all the time. Someone higher up MADE him pull the article!"
That right there was pure CoC horror gold: the horror of realization. That things are not what they appear to be.
Stephen King, in Danse Macabre. You have a door. There's something scary behind it. You open it to find a 10-foot tall insect. "I can handle a 10-foot tall insect; at least it wasn't 100 feet tall, that would've been pretty bad".
DeleteNot my story -- read it on Eden Studios' All Flesh Must Be Eaten community board: the group of college gamers was playing a very animated zombie survival game in a lecture hall on campus, late evening. Not LARP, but vert animated group, and the scenario was trying to secure a farmhouse against the zombie horde. Before long, they're just walking around the room like it's a proxy for this farmhouse. One guy is moving around pointing and gesturing as he explains his plan. He points out the double door at the back of the hall, and, on a lark, a bystander who they didn't realize was out there, grabbed his arm and gave him a scare. Storyteller ruled he had lost the arm.
"Very few players will ever feel frightened or disgusted by events in the game, even if they understand that their characters, being ordinary people, would probably feel those things within the context of the game world."
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking, I find it much easier to evoke actual disgust when describing in-game events than I do fear. The latter is hard. The former is pretty easy, especially if you know your players well enough to push the right buttons to make them uncomfortable. Just need to be careful of whatever safety measures (lines and veils, X cards, etc.) you've all agreed on when doing so.