Pirate's Quarter: OGL Horror

[shau]

Set the hotel on fire, then have sex with it.

[Draco_Argentum]

For future reference making any reference to sex in a serious post will cause the thread to derail instantly.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I like sex. I think it's a shame that I don't have more sex than what I do.

[Cielingcat]

I feel like I've seen this all before.

[Koumei]

It's awfully familiar...

[Username17]

Not familiar enough for the count!

-Username17

P.S.: You can indeed make a reference to sex in a serious post and have things stay on topic. You just have to reference rape or child molestation or some other nominally sexual topic that isn't funny. Note that even though beastiality is technically rape because the animals don't really consent to it - it's still funny.

[tzor]

It's like that funny incorrect definition of oral sex: when all you do is talk about it but never do it.

We need to get back to the horror, which doesn't mean we have to leave sex behind so don't stop with the sex. It could be a lot worse you know, especially with horror being associated with squid monsters and they have tenticles and well I'll just stop here.

By the way you can bring in beastiality in a number of ways, from satyrs to centaurs ...

[Fwib]

Assuming the satyrs and centaurs are sentient, the definition wouldn't fit, would it?

[tzor]

1198073884[/unixtime]]Assuming the satyrs and centaurs are sentient, the definition wouldn't fit, would it?

I'm petty sure you could get into some interesting definition debates on that one. In the real world there is only one (or so we think) sentient species. In the sexual definition of beastiality in Webster it uses the term "lower animal." (But aren't they all lower ... compared to man ... as man is the measure of all things ... according to man.)

Massage the definitions well and you will discover the notions of bestiality and humanity; or of the animal instinct and the human memory. This can get us into some bizzare undiscovered territory because according to general canon Vulcan sex is "instinctual" and thus Vulcan / Human sex might indeed be beastiality. It's a lot easier when the instinct has clearly animal parts that's doing the sex.

[Maxus]

The earlier discussion on the different ways you can define and use insanity reminds me of that Gamecube game, Eternal Darkness.

Although, from what's been said of the Call of Cthulhu sanity system, ED is similar to that. Except that after you've seen so much horrible stuff, you start hallucinating and experiencing the infamous Sanity Effects, which, in tabletop terms, would give the DM license to lie to you and describe things happening which aren't actually happening, let you freak out over it, and then say, "Just kidding. That's not really happening."

All the doors in a room, including your entry point, being locked is one of the more annoying ones.

And then there's stuff like walking the ceiling, hearing phantom footsteps, screams, roars, metal implements being sharpened, the walls and ceiling dripping blood, your character's head falling off and reciting Hamlet's soliloquy when you pick it up, shooting yourself when you try to reload a gun, and, one of my favorites, you begin to cast a spell and the character's entire upper body explodes and the legs fall to floor. Screen flashes white, character realizes it can't be happening, you can continue for a while.

[Captain_Bleach]

Back to the Horror, then:
Is there an RPG system out there that fits the concept of Horror Role-playing well?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Don't Rest Your Head is the current darling. Dread had a cute and innovative mechanic. I'm told that Obsidian was full of fear-promoting goodness. Mostly, though, what you need to bring Horror to the RPG table is an understanding of how Horror works in the first place, and how to get a gaming group into the mood for it. There's been a number of articles written on the subject over the years.

[RandomCasualty]

1198093735[/unixtime]]Back to the Horror, then:
Is there an RPG system out there that fits the concept of Horror Role-playing well?

I really don't think it's possible to design a good horror system. Not so much because I think horror is unplayable as a genre, but because once it becomes part of a mechanical system, it's no longer horror. Part of horror is not knowing what's going to happen next. You just can't do that when the stats for your monsters are defined.

Really, what I like to do for horror games is to use a rules set with pretty well established rules, like GURPS or D&D or whatever, and then have the monsters totally break and bend those rules. While monsters need mechanics, they really can't be mechanics that the players know. The best fear to build off of is fear of the unknown. When a monster inflicts a disease or a curse or whatever, you want PCs to be wondering "will my cure disease spell fix that?". If they're just confident that this monster works like every other monster, then it's just not that horrible, it's just another new creature.

Now the key is that the PCs need to trust you enough to believe that there are hidden mechanics at work, instead of just blatant random DM fiat, just that those mechanics are unknown to them and they have to figure them out.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Fear of the Unknown is only part of the equation. Fear of the Known is often just as effective, and often must be used to keep players engaged. Combining them is an important skill.

I do agree that mechanics can't sustain the Horror experience by themselves, but they can definitely enhance it. Dread does an excellent job of this with its Jenga tower, for instance.

[Username17]

One of the best "horror" games I ran was straight up D&D in the OA setting. It was just going along normally and they ended up chasing a group of baddies through the Tomb of Iuchiban. Crazy traps set up everywhere and a feeling of a time limit. The other guys had forced a bunch of normal humans into the hole ahead of them so there were fresh corpses all over the place. And the players spent much of the time recreating how deadly traps worked by the vscera on the ground. By the end some of the players had entered into death pacts with each other in order to try to bring the whole place down if they couldn't stop the enemies. And I'm running a horror-esque game in Shadowrun right now via the internets.

The key is that the players have to get the forboding sense gradually. If unstoppable monsters just jump right in without giving the players a sense of normality, it just gives people a moment of shock and they move on. It's like boiling a frog. Only since humans are sapient and observant, they occassionally take stock of their situations. And the moment they find that the things that they had adapted themselves to are completely fucked that's when horror sets in.

-Username17

[Crissa]

Yes, and then you killed the one person in the party able to find traps at the very bottom of the tomb...

-Crissa

[tzor]

I agree with Frank. In the end it's not the system, it's the attitude. Horror is a style not a game mechanic. It's how you get the players into the game. The key here is that horror involves the players not the characters.

[RandomCasualty]

1198108541[/unixtime]]Fear of the Unknown is only part of the equation. Fear of the Known is often just as effective, and often must be used to keep players engaged. Combining them is an important skill.

Well, you want them to have some knowledge, just not actual rules knowledge. Like Frank said, a lot of the cool stuff may be the foreboding parts where you uncover others that the creatures killed.

You don't just drop a big monster down without any warning. You want the PCs to know that they're facing something really deadly with abilities beyond their wondering. With the increasing sense that they're getting screwed over worse and worse as time goes on.

The build up also helps to make it more of a horror game and less of a feel like "The DM doens't want us to win and is just creating unbeatable Gygax style monsters."

[angelfromanotherpin]

Actual rules knowledge can be fine as well. Honest to god, if the players know there's a shapeshifting entity with a melee-range attack that deals around 42d12 points of damage... that's scary shit. Now they have to treat all their social encounters with trepidation, because anyone could be the Thing. Fear of the Unknown kicks in when they don't know things like how far it can charge, and what the range of things it can turn into are. So are squirrels safe? Trees? How far away do they talk to people from? If someone tries to come closer, do they get any second chances?