Horror game where you play as the monster

[cell]

I have had this idea for a while now. I have played many games where my friends and i have gone hunting after some horrific monstrosity. But i was wondering if anyone here has played a horror game as monsters instead of human. Any advice on how to go about this? I have the gurps horror book.

[jason taylor]

I'm not familiar with Horror as a genre, but why not make humans be monsters?

[Culture20]

Sounds like a survival type game. Determining how long between hunts to wait, having unusual dietary or psychological requirements, social difficulties. Trying to outwit seemingly insane "prey animals" that attack back when their herd is alarmed.

[Anaraxes]

White Wolf made a whole career out of the idea with their World of Darkness games. Those were usually monster-vs-monster, though, as the monstrous PCs were intentionally a lot more powerful than most humans.

If your idea of horror includes the despair of inevitable failure, a la Call of Cthulhu, then you don't want the PC monsters to be too overwhelming.

If the humans are going to hunt and slowly wear down the monsters, you'll have to be careful with abilities like Regeneration. Too much recovery between encounters, and the only way for the humans to win will be a massive assault (perhaps military). Or, the monsters can be physically tough, but you use something like the Corruption mechanic to mentally wear them down and drive them uselessly insane.

[(E)]

I would think you need to narrow down the campaign a bit more. PCs as monsters is fairly broad. Is it a survival game, a light hearted we are members of the dark horde (tm) with every cheesy steriotype, a supers game were being monsters is just a gimmick, an overthrow the "true" monsters game or a dark detailed story with the pcs slowly learning by trial and error the true nature of their particular curse and the world around them.

[Kalzazz]

There was a GURPS Version of VtM for 3e, which is more or less compatible with 3e, if not so much with 4e

[Anthony]

A lot depends on how you're defining 'horror'. It's rather hard to reverse the creepy suspense movie, a lot easier to reverse a monster movie.

[(E)]

From experience as a player and GM
keep the mystery high.
You might want to stay away from monsters the players are familiar with.

Get a good villain(s)
if possible have "becoming" scenes e.g. have the first pc seduced by attractive pale woman, get bitten and wake up as a ghost or revenant. Or get bitten by said vampire and they fall down screaming while their face melts.
younger pcs could hit puberty or 18 or 21 or 260 moons and then have a change occur. They then transform probably painfully and alone. They might develop the abilities of a decendant of Medusa. (possibly without ever figuring out what happened.)

they might inherit a demon.

A necromancer type villain could also be the catalyst for the pcs becoming monsters. If so one pc could resist their change due to already being a monster of another type.

make the monsters scared of something, the government , men in black, the public.

A monster hunting organisation as a villain could imprison unmonster pcs and introduce them to the catalyst for the change to monster hood.

Suggested viewing UK being human.

Just suggestions and hopefully inspirational ones

[The Colonel]

The problem being that horror is usually about fear, which tends to related to powerlessness - if the player is the monster, then it just turns into a tabletop version of a stealth game or FPS. In horror, the monster has the power.
As far as I can tell, the only way around that is to make the horror into some form of body horror - where the player is tormented by what they are becoming. Which runs the serious risk of stripping the players of agency or removing the horror in favour of a "living with my high point disadvantage" game.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by cell

I have had this idea for a while now. I have played many games where my friends and i have gone hunting after some horrific monstrosity. But i was wondering if anyone here has played a horror game as monsters instead of human. Any advice on how to go about this? I have the gurps horror book.

Is it your intention to run a horror game where the players are monsters? Or is it your intention to run a game that uses horror tropes but the players get to be the "bad guys" who do all the slaughtering, and the game becomes, say, darkly humorous and/or action-oriented?

The first would have all the same elements of a horror story: fear, isolation, the unknown, only the PCs are monstrous. As someone pointed out, World of Darkness caters to this (or tries to): You may be a vampire, but you fear what you've become, you fear your master, you fear the world, and you only come to fear it more as you begin to unwind just how terrible the world really is.

But on the other hand, you might be running the horror-equivalent to an anti-dungeon: Instead of playing the fighter, mage and thief, you are playing the orc, lich and dragon. Only, in our case, instead of playing the cheerleader, the football jock or the nerd, you're playing as the vampire, the werewolf, the zombie, that kills the jock and drags the girl off to her fate.

The difference between the two is important. I think most people here are assuming you meant the first.

You might also mean urban fantasy, as stories like True Blood, Underworld, Twilight and Lost Girl often get called "horror" but they're nothing of the kind: there is nothing scary about them, nothing scarier than you'd find in a comic-book movie. Instead, we have darkly-flavored, street-level supers (which is what World of Darkness usually becomes). This is yet another option.

Which are you talking about?