Writing a weird literature horror black hack/into the odd mashup right now. I HAVE MANY THOUGHTS, mostly about how to execute horror in RPGs in a way where there is at least a good chance of SOME horror sensations going on. my angle on this is: horror stat bad (panic, stress, etc), well constructed horror adventures good. which causes a problem for the game designer; what even do you do?
to be fair, there are some horror stats that I like; this really isn’t a binary thing. thinking of stress in alien here as a sorta push your luck mechanism. I think it fits the genre well (and doesn’t really fit weird lit). but I really hate CoC’s sanity (feel like encumbrance, doesn’t feel horror to me). my choice on this front was just to unify the “horror stat” and the damage system. so I don’t get rid of it, I just downplay it a bit and merge it in.
but back to the point, WHAT TO DO, in regards to my conclusion that good adventure design does most of the heavy lifting. i figure what I can do is provide concrete guidance on this. AKA, don’t just fucking write a dungeon with horror costumes on (COUGH The Bureau), create HORROR. I am coming up with a series of axioms for the GM/adventure designer to guide the process. so this is the meat of the matter: anyone have any thoughts on this? clever design choices that you have experienced in horror adventures?
example here is that for Luka rejec’s Let Us In, he did this clever thing where the zombies had a doom clock like mechanic, where they encircle the party, and incrementally the circle tightens. places that were once safe become unsafe. things seen in the former safe spaces suddenly make sense (oh, we could really use that bag of fertilizer in the shed now… too bad the zombies are now outside the house). really did a good job of playing on fears.
Ok. So I just have a loose thought no gret theory yet. I recently ran Gradient Descent as a black box. Something the players repeatedly told me was that the lack of mechanical guidelines to judge a fictional situation made them feel the tension of a horror story. And I think this is linked with the kind of agency and agency loss horror works with. So maybe there is something there and you should male all procedures gm facing?
(Little additional tricks helped as well to create the feel of horror like not having video when playing online and the same soundtrack playing every week)
Horror is certainty of danger, but uncertainty of escape.
One of my players had a brief moment of panic tonight as they realized they were locked in a hauntwd house and the water was literally rising. The player was experiencing some fear here, not just the character.
I think one of the best angles a horror system can come from is not '“What can I do?” But “Who am I?”
Who you are may make some things easier, but it wont save you on its own. The player has to think creatively, not just mash the fireball button.
but yea, I like your theory of “who am I". giving me a bit to chew on. it kinda fits with some things I did mechanically (I have a fussy damage/wound system), but I think that is an interesting angle, and a way to promote “bleed” as they say, if a player is constantly thinking in terms of what their character IS, then perhaps it encourages immersion.
so that to me says you have to move away a bit from something like cairn, where “who am I” is basically, “well you are you, except you have this stuff in your inventory.” which makes sense for problem solving/puzzle– the focus of the game. but less so for horror.
that seems to be an interesting angle as well. a lot of pbta type horror games give the players agency to shape the story, which seems to work well for genre emulation, but less well for giving a feeling of horror. or well, I guess to be fair, the genre simulation probably works for that purpose; but its just not the direction I am going. i definitely lean to GM as world authority, but did not think of moving procedures to the GM side. I fear it might create too much GM load, something I will explore.
agency loss feels really hard to pull off. i haven’t systematized it all, and have no “tips” section. might be worth it…. (HELLO SCOPE CREEP)
I don’t think it necessarily overloads the GM if you are willing to make the resolution system simple enough and then just provide enough procedures to support them.
I think Dread and Ten Candles are the two games I played that successfully created some fear or uneasiness (the good kind) in my players. Ten Candles uses darkness and collective buy in. Dread seems in a similar place as a black box game. Yeah you know the tower blocks are the mechanic and how many there are left. But there are no hitpoints or abilities to shield you from the fictional world.
tru Tru. I think I am showing my GM preferences right now. I very much want to razor focus on the world and the NPCs, and want my players to be entirely in charge of their characters.
I don’t think you’ll be able to create horror just with game mechanics, but you can evoke suspense and surprise for example. Make your job as a GM a little bit easier. What matters more for creating horror is the approach you choose: can everyone chip in and make the scene creepier with lots of narrative control like in Cthulhu Dark? Or do you want to leave your players vulnerable and in the dark like in the OSR/NSR?
Other than that, I think, horror comes mostly from good adventure writing and the roleplaying abilities of the players and the GM.