What's your pointers for running Horror in TTRPGs?
What's your pointers for running Horror in TTRPGs?
As the title says, I was wondering what'd make for good horror in the medium, and thought I'd try to ask here!
Trajectory of Fear is a must read: https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Trajectory-of-Fear.pdf
And it's really important that the table has at least somewhat common understandin of what kind of narrative they are trying to achieve.
This is excellent. Most of the answers here are what game to play, in other words, what mechanics can be used to force the horror feeling. This is purely about narrative, which can apply to any system. Thank you for sharing.
Honestly, this is sort of exactly what I wanted out of asking this, thank you so much!
Resist the urge to run Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons. Those systems empower the PCs to fight evil, and win. That power undermines the horror so completely, it may as well just be a coat of paint. You might think "hey, what if I just make the monster too strong to actually fight?" That's going to lead to a TPK 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, the spellcaster will pull a wild move you didn't anticipate and come out on top anyway.
Nonsense, Pathfinder and D&D (not 5e) do horror fine. I mean, obviously, if you just dump the monster in front of them and tell them it's a scary fight you're not going to get anywhere, but other games don't do that either. The horror comes in the build up, the discoveries they make along the way, and the feelings of helplessness they induce.
You can't fight a small town tradition that's just a little bit off, or a room full of humanoid bones that are unusually small. Combat has already finished when the party realises the monster they just defeated was only a pawn of something even more sinister. There's nothing to roll initiative against when the party is discussing what they've discovered so far and can't quite get the pieces to fit together.Overwhelming personal danger from the monster itself is an incredibly small part of horror, and 5e couldn't balance a fight to save its life, but 4e and PF2e are extremely built for it. From a skill challenge as "combat" against an enemy that can't be beaten, to a PL+3 statblock and some hazards for a challenging fight with a high likelihood of killing players without causing a TPK, you can very much tune the difficulty of combat. Even PF1 and 3.x can do a good job at lower levels.
I'm a big proponent of using the right system for the job, but horror is such a broad, circumstances dependent genre that it's a lot more about using the right horror for the system. There's plenty of classic horror tropes that Ellen Ripley would shrug off, which is why she faces xenomorphs instead. A warhammer space marine wouldn't find a zombie apocalypse particularly inconvenient, but trudging through a chaos and xenos infested hulk is still pretty terrifying for them. All horror has to be customised to fit the context.
In Pathfinder 2e, you'll more likely get a chance of martials getting more crits than anticipated than wild spellcasters moves haha.
It can be done... but only by making the monster unfightable. Not "too strong", literally invincible. To some, that's horror enough haha.
That said, horror games are indeed the perfect setting to try out other systems, there are some out there like Mothership where the rules hold on one page.
My favourite tip take your time. Start with the boring life. The danger about online dating is to meet a walking soviet-parade of red-flags, not to meet a vampire who want to suck your blood. Spending a night camping in the wood is pretty fun, what you really fear is to be snitched on and get fined for "illegal camping" and an unplanned thunderstorm can definitely turn a fun evening into a bad experience, nobody really fears the witch from the woods, it's a talefor kids isn't it ?
Then once you took the time to play some "normal" elements, slowly put some uncany elements, a_ctually while you've feel like you spoke for hours with your date your watch tells you only 5 minutes passed, and your coktails are still full_. The night camping was pretty fun, but why is the forest so silent in the morning.
This help ensuring that there is a strong link between Player and character, and avoid falling in the comedy horror where fighting Zombie with blood up to knee is the new normal (Note that comedic horror is a genre by itself, and can be pretty fun to play too, but it's different than real horror)
Not a DM / etc but our DM had us all fill in a horror questionnaire to gauge what can and cannot be included in campaigns. We never did run a horror TTRPG (yet) but it was a nice thought.
Dread is commonly recommended but I haven't tried it myself yet.
Trophy is another one. Listening to their podcast, I found it creepy indeed.
+1 for Dread, it's so easy to play
Instead of dice, you play with a jenga tower. It's a physical manifestation of narrative tension, and that goes a long way in getting the players into the vibe
I've run 10 Candles a number of times and had an absolutely fantastic time every single time. It's perfect for a horror one shot and character creation is built right into setting up the game. Definitely talk with the group beforehand whether you all want to play a more light hearted comedic horror or something scarier.
I love a horror game.
First having a system designed for horror will really help you to build tension. As someone else said D&D etc are bad for horror because you're supposed to be powerful, it can work but takes more effort.
Next you need player buy in, everyone needs to want to be a little scared or uncomfortable. You're also very unlikely to get horror movie levels of scared and trigger that fight or flight response as you're all sat round a table playing games together.
Having a good session zero for horror is especially important, to make sure you do it safely, have your lines and veils or your X card available and discuss your boundaries. Some people will be fine with body horror but can't manage anything with children or whatever.
Pacing is key to horror, leave the monster in the dark as long as possible, let the players imagine it and what is going on before you show them with a description. Give them downtime to decompress after a particularly tense moment. Let them make jokes but don't join in during the tense bits, join in during the chill out section.
If your looking for recommendations: Trail of Cthulhu (gumshoe) was great. I ran a SCP style game, just picked a monster and had the PCs try and work out what was happening.
Delta Green is a really easy system to intro new people to, it's d100 roll under and you're playing X-files so people have a strong base to work from. Has some great modules to get you started.
Mothership is wonderful and my current obsession. It's also d100 roll under and it's basically Alien/s in terms of the setting but you could easily fit in whatever you wanted sci-fi wise. The modules that come with the box set are brilliant.
It's easy to inject horror into most settings, my party were really light hearted and jokey in Blades in the dark but I had a few sessions where an automaton was hunting them which they found genuinely scary.
Honourable mention the Fate horror toolkit mostly for the GM advice.
Happy to give thoughts on anything horror related if you've got more questions.
Next you need player buy in
This is huge. I tried to do a horror game once and one of the players just wasn't taking it seriously, and it ruined it completely.
As another user said, find a system that fits horror. Some are more accommodating than others and it all depends on the quirks of the system you use. I have a horror session planned for my Gamma World campaign and it only.works because death is always one bad dice roll away in Gamma World.
Choose a genre of horror first. Choose a system that emulates it well. Choose an intensity. Is horror the main focus, or do you just want a splash of it here and there? Make sure everyone is on board obviously. Resarch works from the specific genre. A psychological horror is gonna play out differently than a slasher movie inspired session.
If you want to use dnd 5e sandy Peterson did a couple adventures and a base ruleset called Cuthulhu Mythos. Theyre a lot of fun and totally built around suspense. Page 70 starts the chapter where they review insanity and dread. I love the dread mechanic.
I want to bring up "Silent Legions". It's an OSR horror game by Kevin Crawford. Softcover is $25 on drive thru rpg. It has tools for setting up Antagonists and world creation. Its simpler to run than Call of Cthulhu and cheaper than Delta Green. Great system and uses the same OSR style system as any of his other stuff so is real easy to learn and run.
