ah, my kingdom for a life's work

[Username17]

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

1. Arkam Horror
2. Shadowrun
3. ?????
4. ?????

Seriously Frank, WTF is going on?

[Talisman]

Okay, this thread has gone completely into WTF? territory.

I remember something about a horror RPG at one point...

[CatharzGodfoot]

1. Arkam Horror
2. Shadowrun
3. ?????
4. ?????

Seriously Frank, WTF is going on?

Anyway, it would totally work. Would you just straight-up use the AH rule set, or do some fixing of TNs? Since this probably isn't a board game, speed would need to have a different use.

[Draco_Argentum]

The tracks for abilities in Arkam Horror would be pretty appropriate. Since boosting your will drops your logic and so on it does add some tension. Nothing worse than having a slider in the wrong spot when some unnamed horror forces a check for sanity loss.

[Username17]

Since this probably isn't a board game...

Wait, why wouldn't it be a board game?







-Username17

[Orion]

Can I take a moment to ask why we feel a horror-themed RPG should be scary?

Seriously, Fear and horror have a more complicated relationship than simple equivalence. One reason you don't see as many horror stories adapted across media as in other genres, is that the actual function of the horror story is different in each medium.

In my experience, heart-racing terror is a relatively modern approach to horror. There may have a been a few genuinely terrifying old horror films-- I'm not a film expert. But certainly it got much easier to evoke terror with the advent of color, sound, and sophisticated special effects.

But terror /= horror. And if you look back at the greats in horror literature, like Lovecraft, his stories are in fact rarely particularly scary. They tend more towards disgusting or, well, horrifying. They make you look at thigns that simply should not be .

Stephen King's better works are like this too. The Green Mile isn't about scary monsters that kill you in the dark. To the extent that it's "horror" at all, it's because it's about how terrible life used to be. "Storm of the Century" has plenty of gruesome deaths at the hands of the wizard, but that's just a sideshow to fill time. The real payoff is the revelation that communal action can be deeply immoral.

I think RPGs have more in common with novels than with movies, and a horror RPG would have more success trying to evoke revulsion and loathing than visceral terror.

[RandomCasualty2]

I think RPGs have more in common with novels than with movies, and a horror RPG would have more success trying to evoke revulsion and loathing than visceral terror.

This much is true, though in most cases, it still means you probably don't want to have many concrete rules.

Rules still only explain the phenomenon and thus make it less scary. This even applies to stuff like trying to horrify people at human nature.

When you've got some evil priest who has convinced the people of the town to sacrifice their first born children, and the people went along with it, that's pretty horrible. It becomes less so if you can justify it that the people did it because the priest succeeded at a diplomacy check or something. Since it's no longer a matter of human free will and more just that the rules of the universe forced them to do it. Thus in the PCs minds, the act isn't really so vile or horrible because it's an "act of God", not a conscious choice of human free will.

[Draco_Argentum]

I wouldn't agree with that RC.

Boolean, how would you propose to do that, mechanically speaking? I can see mechanics that inherently counter horror, like true res. But what mechanics would foster it?

[Orion]

RC -- What the hell are you talking about

Draco -- I have some answers for this actually, but no time right now

[Bigode]

When you've got some evil priest who has convinced the people of the town to sacrifice their first born children, and the people went along with it, that's pretty horrible. It becomes less so if you can justify it that the people did it because the priest succeeded at a diplomacy check or something. Since it's no longer a matter of human free will and more just that the rules of the universe forced them to do it. Thus in the PCs minds, the act isn't really so vile or horrible because it's an "act of God", not a conscious choice of human free will.

Your "free will", actually, is just your mother succeeding hardcore at Diplomacy when you were young, so I fail to see the difference.

[RandomCasualty2]

RC -- What the hell are you talking about

Here's what I'm talking about.

When the bad guy charms some good guy and get shim to do horrible things, it doesn't say anything bad about human nature. The mechanics forced the person to do it. Same with diplomacy rolls.

The whole while you're saying to yourself "this village isn't really evil, they just got victimized by someone with a high diplomacy."

Where you should be saying, "Man these guys are horrible, how can people willingly sacrifice their children to an evil god?"

But really, once you enter rules in it, the act just isn't so horrible, because it's no longer made by free will in the eyes of the rules. The villagers didn't have any more choice than they would if they were dominated.

[Bigode]

That's for people who think will isn't bound by rules.

[Username17]

The villagers don't have free and separate wills. They do whatever the Director tells them to do. The actions of every "normal" person are determined by the same force that determines the actions of the slasher in every medium, so if you require separate free choice to be horrified then horror cannot work in any media. Full stop.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

The villagers don't have free and separate wills. They do whatever the Director tells them to do. The actions of every "normal" person are determined by the same force that determines the actions of the slasher in every medium, so if you require separate free choice to be horrified then horror cannot work in any media. Full stop.

Not quite.

While it's true that ultimately the will of the villain is controlled by the director (or in this case the DM), this is based on an actual personality for the villain, not by any real rules. The rulebook doesn't say that the villain has to murder babies, that's just something he chooses to do, and that's in fact what makes him a cold blooded evil bastard. And that's how the PCs see him.

Now, if the villagers make that same choice because their personalities say to do so, then this also makes them appear to be cold blooded evil bastards. However, if some rules influence does this instead, like a diplomacy check, that says that the villagers must go along with the villain simply because they're being dominated by a mechanic, then the villagers actually go from being cold blooded evil bastards to being victims in the eyes of the PCs, because at that point they're incapable of making choices between right and wrong based on their personalities. So really, at that point the village cobbler has a reasonable defense to why he turned all evil and that's because he no longer could choose his own actions.

And there's a definite difference there in how the PCs will perceive something. And given that horror is all about perception, this is a very important point. Star Trek approaches alien races with a sense of wonder, exploration and discovery. Lovecraft paints them as horrific encounters that chill you to the core.

[Orion]

Okay, in either case, if we want to evoke emotion, we have to have things in the game that the players care about. Getting players to care is a complicated proposition, but the first step is establishing a contract where players understand what they are supposed to care about. The default "victory conditions" of D&D are to accumulate gold and XP. That's not going to work at all. I suspect in a horror game even the idea of accumulating gold and XP has to go out the window, because otherwise every session feels like a "success."

There are two routes I can see taking here, depending on what we want players to be worried about: themselves or others.

Option one models slasher movies, survival horror, and Cthulhu RPGs. In this case, players are worried that their PCs are going to fucking die. This isn't my favorite way to go, but it is certainly possible.

The key to making this scray is that PCs sould not advance in power. Like, at all. Actually PCs should get steadily *less* powerful the more oyu play them. Equipment gets destroyed and people get miamed and turned insane.

This paradigm has two important consequences. First, campaigns have a limited natural length. The way this works is that the DM starts with a specific, defined goal for a short miniseries of adventures. The PCs win if they can find and defeat the cult of the Old Ones before they are all insane or dead.

Second, character death needs to be reexamined. We want things to feel deadly, but we don't want to kick people out of the game. On the other hand, letting dead players respawn at full strength isn't an option either. So we have two choices. Either, when a PC dies, a NPC Extra can be converted to a PC, but at a power level commensurate with the amount of debasement the PCs have already suffered. Or, you could run it as a 1-3 player game in which each player controlled multiple characters, but the dead ones cannot be replaced.

---

The second option is to model other aspects of cthulhu, loathing-based horror, and buffy/supernatural style hijinks,

In this case, PC survival shouldn't even be an issue. I wouldn't even write a PC death mechanic in-- you always survive and recover. Because we don't even want you to waste time worrying about yourelf. The "victory points" are the innocent people and places that will be killed or corrupted if you mess up.

Note that this game actually could have some advancement, though it should be de-emphasized by comparison to D&D.

[Draco_Argentum]

Actually, RC, mind controlled NPCs are more horrifying. Nobody feels bad about killing Bob the Baby Torturer. Players might actually feel remorse for killing mind controlled baby torturers.

[Quantumboost]

In real life, there are actual ways to manipulate people into doing things that are genuinely horrible and which the person, if you asked them beforehand, would say is completely against their nature. It usually takes a while, but it really does come down to a "successful Diplomacy check".

So if in-game horrible things don't evoke horror solely because the villagers "just got victimized by someone with a high diplomacy" but, say, hearing about the Jonestown Massacre doesn't? The GM is doing it wrong. They're the exact same thing - they're both manipulating rules (in the first case RPG mechanics, in the other psychology) to condition other, originally normal people to do horrible things.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I feel compelled to mention Dread, the horror RPG which uses a Jenga tower for its resolution mechanic. The basic theme is that when a character attempts a non-automatic task, their player must pull from the tower. Refusal to pull is a failure, pulling without toppling is a success, toppling is death.

It's wonderfully atmospheric, because players are always aware of the progressively unstable tower. Also, the process of resolution gets to be very suspenseful.

Just another take on the genre to think about.

[RandomCasualty2]

Actually, RC, mind controlled NPCs are more horrifying. Nobody feels bad about killing Bob the Baby Torturer. Players might actually feel remorse for killing mind controlled baby torturers.

Not in the case of diplomacy, because once you've got a social system that lets NPCs get manipulated like that, the NPCs are no longer people in the PCs eyes, they're reprogrammable robot sheep.

[IGTN]

Not in the case of diplomacy, because once you've got a social system that lets NPCs get manipulated like that, the NPCs are no longer people in the PCs eyes, they're reprogrammable robot sheep.

Nor in the case of dominate spells, because once you've got a magic system that lets NPCs get manipulated like that, the NPCs are no longer people in the PCs eyes, they're reprogrammable robot sheep.

[Talisman]

Not in the case of diplomacy, because once you've got a social system that lets NPCs get manipulated like that, the NPCs are no longer people in the PCs eyes, they're reprogrammable robot sheep.

Nor in the case of dominate spells, because once you've got a magic system that lets NPCs get manipulated like that, the NPCs are no longer people in the PCs eyes, they're reprogrammable robot sheep.

Not quite. The thing is, anyone can theoretically use Diplomacy, whereas Dominate is relatively rare and exclusive - you have to be a spellcaster, and not merely an apprentice.

I think the issue here is human horror vs. supernatural horror. A serial killer is scary because he (or she) is a normal (?) human being who made a conscious decision to brutally murder people according to some arbitrary system. That's scary because it's the abyss looking back at you. If Joe Schmoe - an otherwise normal guy - could suddenly decide to go around mutilating redheaded women without any outside agency forcing him to, what's to stop anyone you know - or even you, yourself - from snapping and grabbing an axe one day?

By contrast, if Joe Schmoe has been controlled by a wizard, or the Demon of the 13th Circle, or nanobots - that's scary because something utterly inhuman has seized control of Joe and forced him to commit acts he normally wouldn't.

One is human horror - what people, without the influence of demons, magic, or other evil forces - are capable of. It makes us recoil from the people who did the deeds. The other is external horror - some outside force seizing control. It makes us empathize with the perpetrator, who is also a victim. The truely evil person is the one behind the dominate spell/nanobots.

[TarkisFlux]

Why are you assuming that the mechanics that apply to the poor NPC villains/sheep don't also apply to the PCs? Would it be more unnerving if the PCs could fall victim to the same effect that caused teh friendly neighborhood mailman to start sacrificing babies and puppies? Several horror plots involve solving the problem before you become part of it, not just eliminate bbeg or die.

The diplomacy/dominate is probably a terrible comparison for these things (like lots of dnd metaphors probably are) because you don't want a binary thing here, you want to spread out the decline and maybe even allow for partial losses of control under certain conditions (like facing the source directly) or the "last desperate stand of the mostly gone friend" trope. Treating it like a slider, or like a damage pool separate from hp, that is either private or gm managed would fix that (with slider location affecting check to retain control), and generally put you in the position of losing control of your character and suffering the same fate as those poor villagers you're trying to help.

[Bigode]

Not in the case of diplomacy, because once you've got a social system that lets NPCs get manipulated like that, the NPCs are no longer people in the PCs eyes, they're reprogrammable robot sheep.

Nor in the case of dominate spells, because once you've got a magic system that lets NPCs get manipulated like that, the NPCs are no longer people in the PCs eyes, they're reprogrammable robot sheep.

Not quite. The thing is, anyone can theoretically use Diplomacy, whereas Dominate is relatively rare and exclusive - you have to be a spellcaster, and not merely an apprentice.

High diplomacy's rare and exclusive, but exists in the real world, and it does make people into reprogrammable robot sheep. How about you stop ignoring me having been saying this for some time already?

[Talisman]

I will never stop ignoring you!

...Oh snap...