Hello there ladies and gentlemen. Due to the finishing of a musical I was in, the final assignments of my university, and other personal stuff, I've been neglecting this blog. This is a problem that's going to be rectified, as I start today with a juicy little post I've been wanting to do for a bit.
I run World of Darkness a lot. I've played in games of Call of Cthulhu, Dark Heresy and Don't Rest Your Head. All of these are excellent games, and I keep getting asked the same question: 'How do you run a good meaty game, full of horror?' So today, I'm going to be looking at how to scare the shit out of your players.
Now, as any of my players will attest to, I'm not the most serious GM in the world. Any game I run will involve laughter and a lot of fun for all. My games of Vampire tend to resemble Saints Row a lot more than Underworld, but that's largely because that's the way I enjoy running games and the way my players enjoy them. Still, just because everyone is having fun doesn't mean that horror can't exist, even in a setting as casual as roleplaying.
The first rule to a good horror game is knowing the characters. Unless they really are the worst roleplayers in the world, characters need vulnerabilities, whether its something as simple as a Virtue or Vice, or a dark secret. The chink in their armor will always be there, because roleplayers (good ones at least) like to get the spotlight, and boring characters that are badasses who sit in the corner answering monosyllabically and slicing people to sushi with their katanas are boring as hell. He's not going to be getting as much screen time as the guy who's desperately looking for his daughter or suffering from schizophrenia or something like that. Once you find the chink in the character's armor, you can usually predict, at least a little bit, their actions and their way of thinking. Horror is very subjective, and you need to understand the people your players are portraying. Use these little personality flaws to bait the trap. If you know that a character is lustful, let her get the bang of her life, never realizing what she might now have inside her. If you know a character is prideful, offer him the world, all for 'a little favor.' The best kinds of horror starts with the individual, and adds a personal element.
The second rule of horror is the unknown. Never just show the players the tentacled monstrosity who tears their ally limb from limb, let them discover the mutilated corpse themselves. Nothing is ever as scary to a person as what they have in their own minds. Familiarity also breeds contempt, and some particularly bad roleplayers will immediately know what monster your using and metagame the crap out of it. A lot of Japanese horror will only show hints, some real, and some misleading, just to keep the main character and the audience guessing. The bait and switch works very well here. Leading the players to believe that the monster is big and stompy and unsubtle will leave them very surprised when it ambushes them out of nowhere. A slithery, quiet creature may suddenly decide to collapse the building on them. Remember that this works on a meta level as well. Repetition is really your bane here. If your players think that they can predict their enemy, they'll have the upper hand. Keep them jumping about, and never let them feel comfortable. Even moments of calm and safety should have the tension that the danger could return at literally any minute.
Now, horror is always more effective when it's personal. Even H.P. Lovecraft had a personal bent to his incredibly 1-dimensional characters, because the real scary thing wasn't the immense, multi-eyed monstrosity, but the idea that the acceptable, comfortable reality of the protagonist was a lie. There's a lot more at stake when a character's dead wife calls him at midnight, then when a three-headed bear just tears through his roof. The basic idea of losing something familiar can be enough to empathize with the characters, and the players should worry when their characters are in danger. This makes it more painful if the game is particularly unforgiving. Characters should feel genuine fear that their characters are going to die. Horror only makes for an engaging scenario if the people involved are real.
Finally, all of this stuff works with a 2-way street. Horror works when players sell, and allw their characters to be vulnerable. If they take the piss out of the situation, or otherwise don't pretend it's really happening, this stuff really won't work. That's ultimately the main flaw of this. The players and the storyteller need to trust each other enough to have a collaborative experience, just like any roleplay scenario.
I hope this helps, and I shall be returning to updating this blog as soon as possible.
- Kephn
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