Add Horror To Taste

Before I get into this post I’m going to give two warnings, both of which should be heeded.

One: Horror Games are hard, and you’re not going to see the same reactions that you’d get in a movie. At best you’re going to get an interactive ghost story if you’re hunting for that kind of reaction. A horror game is going to focus on lack of information, suspense, and complete player uncertainty. Your players are going to be unnerved, uncomfortable, and potentially disgusted, but if done right, they’ll like it, and not be able to tell you why.

Two: Okay, you know how I said your players will like it? Some won’t. Horror games just aren’t for some players and you should make sure your players are up for a horror game. You’re going to be unleashing the stuff of nightmares, and some players don’t like nightmares. Seriously, take caution.

Running a horror game is rather context dependant, and a game can vary wildly based on your campaign. However, there are a number of tricks and tools you should keep in mind, and that’s mainly what this post is about.

Gore

Gore is the bread and butter of the horror genre now a day, and as such you should view it as a two sided sword that cuts through players resolve just as easily as through the atmosphere. Unnecessary gore is your big danger here. Just think about it for a moment, your players might spend most of their time running around cutting down enemies left and right. Increasing the gore for a horror game might just be a matter of describing in greater detail things your players see all the time. As a rule horror needs to be about putting your players off balance.

On the other hand, the proper use of gore can greatly enhance a game. Gore works well as a horror seasoning. It’ll probably be present to some degree throughout, but it shouldn’t be over powering, it’s really about presentation. For example, say you have zombies in your game. Zombies are a big part of popular culture, and if you say “Rotting Zombies” your players know what you’re talking about, and further exposition is at best redundant, but gore isn’t just about sight. Instead of explaining what the zombies look like try describing their smell. And try to work with smells the players know.

You burst through the door and reel back against the smell of rot. The room is filled with a small horde of zombies all deep in stages of decay. Their smell clings to you like garbage left in blistering heat leaving you gagging, and wishing for untainted air. The horde stands still, except for one. The zombie turns its head in a series of short jerks. Each jerk makes a bone cracking noise that echoes around the room. His empty eye sockets focus on you, and he emits a low moan. At the sound the others turn their heads…

Also notice the addition of sounds with the smells. The basic idea here is that your player’s imagination is your best friend here. Let it to most of the visual work while you add in sounds and smell. The only time you need to put any great detail into gore is when the specific injury means something, and that gets us into the next tool…

Psychological Horror

Here’s where the big fun comes in. You’re playing a Role Player Game, so if you want to scare your players you’ve got to get into their head and knock them off balance. This is more or less the first rule of psychological horror. Your first goal is to break an established rule of the game. Are you players used to gritty dark settings, put them in a normal or bright setting, and make sure they don’t expect to be there. In a recent game I decided to go with a Silent Hill style hospital setting. The Hospital had been “dimension locked” as I called it and the players had to force their way in. The windows were blacked out and they had no knowledge of what they were getting into. When they finally got into the locked wing they were met with a perfectly functioning hospital with doctors and nurses running around treating patients. My players actually paused me and asked me to repeat the set up.

Once you’ve knocked them down, never let them get back to their feet, and in this case I say, “Start Small.” While you can try something big, frankly doing that too early without a good enough set up basically amounts to going, “Boo.” Work with details.

In the hospital game the players were sitting uneasy with set up, but began walking around to question the staff. They walked up to the nursing station and noticed that each document on the table held only the same word repeated again and again. Something the nurses were blissfully unaware of.

You can actually find a good use for gore from a psychological standpoint if use it carefully. The focus of gore should not be on its presence, but on how it was created or what it stands for. In my game the attending had visible injuries which represented their regrets. My particular favorite was the pediatrician. While he beamed at the group he was weighed down by babies and children clinging on to him. Many were injured or malnourished. The group was visible shaken by the scene simply because they were forced confront someone else’s past. Gory? Yes, but not simply for the sake of it.

So where am I going with this section? Well, you may have noticed a pattern. They faced insanity when they realized they were the only ones seeing the horror. They faced lethal regrets and people trying to cover them with a smile, and through every door the party had no knowledge one what lay on the other side beyond little more than a name plate. Psychological horror relies on its atmosphere and details. Don’t force your players into fear, let them sink into it. Play with more fundamental ideas. Things we all fear, even if we don’t realize it.

Boo

Finally, all this build up has to go somewhere. Each detail should be worse than the last, each sight has to be more horrible, and because of this the climax really has to be something. Don’t disappoint your players; a bad ending can shatter the atmosphere. Because of this your ending needs some careful designing. If you use some kind of encounter, make sure the turns are short. Long terms always stall the game, but in this particular instance they can kill a game. Have some way to force your players into action. In the hospital game a psychic field constantly chipped away at the group’s wisdom scores, and while it was in essence based on round counts it would have been used it they were taking too long to act. While I will go over the specifics of my own choices for this fight in another post, it shouldn’t be a normal encounter. It should focus on skill checks or social encounters, potentially a ritual if banishment is involved, but you want the end to be something the players simple don’t want to face. Make sure they must, but at the same time ensure that the situation is one that if given any choice they would leave. Give them some of the information, the reasoning for what they’ve faced, but don’t give them all of it. Leave your players with some uncertainty. Remember, if you’ve done your job right, your players are already shaken and suspicious, your climax could very well involve a situation or character that at any other time could seem normal, but is tainted by… something.

Also, while this is personal preference, in the case of a horror game I think it’s important that your players actually feel a “win.” It’s easy to have an action game where players are forced into a sadistic choice, but in the case of a horror game I suggest an ending where your players feel they have accomplished their goal. It’s your resolution, and in this type of game a resolution can be important to return the game to its normal tone. In the case of the hospital game the players wanted greatly to just blow the whole thing up and run, but they managed to kill the source of the psychological energy tainting the place, and as such were rewarded with a hospital full of confused, but safe innocents. Remember, a game is not about the ending, it’s about the game, having a happy ending doesn’t spoil a twisted middle, it just makes it easy to swallow. Now… if you’re playing a Lovecraftian game, feel free to ignore everything I said and just mind fuck your players into the deepest abyss.