Horror in Isolation

[virgil]

Pretty much a staple in the horror genre is isolation. Many games try to work in this level of suspense by isolating the players via the setting conventions; far from civilization, infrastructure fallout, antagonistic Big Brother, etc. Even After Sundown admits that it needs to roll back the clock by a decade or so to accommodate its horror themes in the face of cell phones.

What about keeping the advances of modern tech, and using other means of isolating the player besides having signal be lost? Is there a way to hardwire social isolation and difficulty in creating sufficient veracity in ones claims?

Am I just going back down the road for Doubt, which feels like it suffers from the same arcane fate of its themes?

[mean_liar]

I would imagine making the PCs some kind of distressed population could be shoehorned into the task: refugees fleeing a war being stalked by a supernatural terror, for example. You could also push things into a post-apocalypse future, or even a dystopian one where some identifiable racial minority has their legal status stripped (like say Hamas detonates a dirty bomb in Tel Aviv and Palestinians as a whole aren't even granted their current protections).

[Username17]

The Harry Potter solution is just to set everything in the 90s. No ubiquitous cell phones, and the ones that exist don't have GPS or cameras. The Nowhere Man solution is to have the player characters voluntarily throw their phones away because the conspiracy will track them through any electronics they employ.

Having horror work when characters do have cell phone reception and phones on their cameras that can upload directly to facebook is something that hasn't worked out super well. I think the found footage genre is ultimately going to be the one that comes up with a solution, but most of the found footage movies are extremely terrible (to be fair, most genre horror films are pretty terrible).

-Username17

[Harshax]

In real life, most of the shit people post to FB or any other media outlet is just fake. Why would a world with supernatural horror suddenly make cellphone footage more valid?

Cults of personality, radio hosts and vitriol spewing "news media" persons make blatant false claims all the time on topics ranging from vaccines to government oversight to environmental impact. People believe them because these personalities are on that shiny box that replaced the fireplace decades ago.

Photoshop. 'nuff said.

One's capability of being complete anonymous on the internet and the power that anonymity grants you to make completely unsubstantiated claims and blatantly invent sources for your claims happens constant ALREADY. Which is why people still share links claiming a doctor will cure a kid's cancer for "Likes".

Basically, take every pessimistic and objective opinion of every datum of information present anywhere and call bullshit on it.

Werewolves aren't real, that's a cutting room floor clip of CGI from the last Twilight movie.
Zombies aren't real, witness was high on bathsalts.
Getting high on bathsalts is real.

For fuck sake, I had an argument with my entire family at dinner last year when one of them claimed this special color of honey found in France cured cancer, because TV told them so. I had to show them the fake internet article the TV used. Then I had to show them the real internet article about dye spillage from a local candy factory was altering the color of honey among hives surrounding the factory. Me arguing with ten or eleven adults at the table. They thought I was batshit crazy. I thought they were batshit crazy. I'm not even sure I was able to convince more than half of them.

Just X-Files the crap out of your game. The Truth is Out There and the only person you can trust are the people that actually went there and saw the truth in person. This leads to people working in trusted cells. Making contact with another cell is difficult and a time consuming affair. You have to expose yourself and possible collaborate on missions hoping that you're not being set up by the conspiracy or the monsters. Only after you actually encounter the Truth can you begin to trust those members of the cell.

[mean_liar]

That reminds me of the game I was once in where the Weekly World News was the only reliable non-compromised media outlet in the world.

[Harshax]

That reminds me of the game I was once in where the Weekly World News was the only reliable non-compromised media outlet in the world.

Men in Black? I know it is a scene in the movie, where Tommmy Lee Jones' character buys all the tabloids to find the scoop on an arms deal. I also believe there was a MiB RPG.

[Lago PARANOIA]

What good (emphasis on good) horror movies have there been where the killer/monster/alien/etc. struck during some unrelated disaster that created an environment highly amenable to horror movie hijinx? You know, stuff like werewolves being forced to relocate during Hurricane Katrina; bushwhackers carving a trail through citysteads that leave an opening for wendigo; serial killers on the prowl after an earthquake.

[Username17]

Do we count the original The Thing? The scientists are trapped in the base by a blizzard, and the alien runs amok killing people. That shit was pretty tight.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

That reminds me of the game I was once in where the Weekly World News was the only reliable non-compromised media outlet in the world.

Men in Black? I know it is a scene in the movie, where Tommmy Lee Jones' character buys all the tabloids to find the scoop on an arms deal. I also believe there was a MiB RPG.

Ah crap, I'd forgotten that. Same concept, only the game I was in I participated in during high school in the early 90s. It was a Champions superheroes game with the feel being a cross between The Illuminatus! Trilogy, They Live, the X-Files, and the black helicopters government paranoia of the time.

[Harshax]

Do we count the original The Thing? The scientists are trapped in the base by a blizzard, and the alien runs amok killing people. That shit was pretty tight.

+1

Also Ravenous - trapped in a snow storm and lost supplies leads to cannibalism and turns the antagonist into a wendingo/vampire.

Tremors - Mining Prospects unleash land sharks. Funny, but technically horror.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is sort of a disaster movie, but a very mundane disaster - We ran out of gas/broke down in Cannibal County, TX.

[TheFlatline]

Pitch black?
Evil Dead/Evil Dead 2?
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? (Okay not a horror movie but isolation does create the tension at the end of the story).

Almost any thriller actually like that relies on a similar trope.

[Whipstitch]

I wasn't really a fan, but a lot of people seemed to like The Descent which is basically Trapped Cavers vs Morlocks.

[ACOS]

probably an extreme example, and virtually unworkable for a game; but Buried, I thought, was basically isolation horror.
(also an example of how to make a good movie when you've spent your entire budget on a single actor).

[JigokuBosatsu]

wendingo

I realize that's probably a typo, but it would be a great blaxploitation/Z-grade horror movie. Well, not great, but you know what I mean.

[hyzmarca]

Having horror work when characters do have cell phone reception and phones on their cameras that can upload directly to facebook is something that hasn't worked out super well. I think the found footage genre is ultimately going to be the one that comes up with a solution, but most of the found footage movies are extremely terrible (to be fair, most genre horror films are pretty terrible).

-Username17

Its doable. You just have to emphasize that you're still isolated in spite of your connections. If it takes eight minutes for the ambulance or the police to get there, that's probably eight minutes too long.

From personal experience, when someone is dying right in front of you then the help is a lifetime away even with cell phones. Yes you have cell phones. Yes you can call for help. No it won't get there in time.

Jeepers Creepers took the Terminator route with it. Yes, you can get to the police in time. Yes, they'll believe that you're in danger even if they don't believe the exact details. No, it doesn't matter. The police just get slaughtered.

Then there is true inevitability, where your enemy is greater than not just the cops, but society as a whole. Time will kill you, everyone knows that. No one has discovered a way to stop time yet. In this everyone is powerless, so even if you aren't isolated it doesn't matter. There is nothing that anyone can possibly do to help you. You've got the incurable plague. Thankfully, your medical insurance covers a gun with one bullet. Here it is.

And, of course, there's the one where being connected actually makes things worse. The Ring does this. The video is a visual plague. Uploading it to youtube will just kill a lot of people.

The idea that people who see a thing or learn about it or whatever die horribly is a very meta way to make things scarier. You tell a ghost story about a demon who kills anyone who listens to ghost stories about him and it blurs the lines between fantasy and reality just enough to make people scared. Curiosity wars with fear. Curiosity usually wins. Usually. You could make a tabletop RPG about a tabletop rpg that kills whomever plays it.

There's also The Lottery style isolation, where the rest of society is in on it and wants you to die.

Then there's isolation by paranoia. You don't know who to trust.

[fectin]

For fuck sake, I had an argument with my entire family at dinner last year when one of them claimed this special color of honey found in France cured cancer, because TV told them so. I had to show them the fake internet article the TV used. Then I had to show them the real internet article about dye spillage from a local candy factory was altering the color of honey among hives surrounding the factory. Me arguing with ten or eleven adults at the table. They thought I was batshit crazy. I thought they were batshit crazy. I'm not even sure I was able to convince more than half of them.

Honey can be a drug; it's not even weird: http://modernfarmer.com/2014/09/strange ... mad-honey/

[Meikle641]

Given that police response times in a city can range from 10 to 20 minutes, being anywhere in the country (depending on area and isolation) can make for response time ranging from hours to, "I'll check in tomorrow".