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Old 04-19-2011, 10:40 AM   #21
blacksmith
 
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

I will cite two movies, aliens and zombieland. The former is much more horror than the latter while having much better armed and more competent victims. I might put the colonial mariens at more like 200 to 250 but those in zombieland are maybe 100. If you want horror you can find it with any character.
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Old 04-20-2011, 02:19 PM   #22
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Originally Posted by ciaran_skye View Post
Aliens, Predator and the film version of Vampire$ certainly give good examples of how it can be done.
For an even better example, check out the book version of Vampire$, featuring a hyper-competent hunter team with proper gear and tactics placed into several situations where they are unexpectedly out of their depth, rather than the meatballs we see blundering to their deaths on the big screen.
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Old 04-23-2011, 01:31 PM   #23
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

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Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen View Post
I'm sorry, but:
400 CP =! horror
It can. Horror is as much a mood and an attitude as a power level. The exact same situation can be horror or not depending entirely on the perspectives. A 'power gamer' who just wants to slaughter monsters will still be that, even if he has only a few points to work with, for that matter. He'll just have to work harder to do it, but he'll still be approaching it as an action--adventure or first-person shooter rather than a horror gamer.

A very powerful character can find himself in a horror situation in many ways. For ex, he might be more than a match for the monsters, or most of them, but he knows there are millions of them out there somewhere.

Imagine a 400 point cybered up combat machine or mage or something like that, but he's skulking through a bombed out city crawling with monsters that are individually easy prey, but en masse could tear him apart. He has to watch the noise, if he does fight a monster he has to take it out quietly to avoid attention, so even if he has fireballs and/or a machine gun, he has to be wary of using them. It's dark, he's far from help, and he has to find someone before the monsters do something vile to them, so time is of the essence, he knows he must move fast, but move stealthily...which tend to be conflicting imperatives.

Or the old 'who is who' bit. Imagine our 400 point super-dangerous dude knows that there are monsters that look human among the innocents around him, but who are they? How does he identify them, and then what does he do if there are a lot of them? What if he has evidence that one of his family or friends has been turned, but he doens't know which one?

His 400 points of firepower and abilities are of limited use here, he might be better off trading 200 points of firepower for 20 points of detective skills in that situation. And suppose the 'turning' is involuntary, a form of possession or mind control, but our character suspects he will have to kill one innocent friend or relative to save the others, even afer he finds out which one it is. That's horror, and it's just as horrible at 400 points as 40.

And there is the implication of horror. For ex, you might be more than a match for a given vampire, werework, whatever...but what does it imply that these things exist in the first place? What does it say about how the world works? If vampires really exist, what else might that you always thought did not, or could not, exist? What is moving around out there in the shadows beyond the firelight?

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 04-23-2011 at 01:39 PM.
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Old 04-23-2011, 01:50 PM   #24
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

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Originally Posted by blacksmith View Post
I will cite two movies, aliens and zombieland. The former is much more horror than the latter while having much better armed and more competent victims. I might put the colonial mariens at more like 200 to 250 but those in zombieland are maybe 100. If you want horror you can find it with any character.
Many, many years ago, the old Legin of Superheroes comic did a sequence where Darkseid emerged into the 30th century. It's relevant to this thread because the way they did it was tinged with elements of horror, a gradual reveal, escalating perception of threat, the full scale of how bad the situation was not immediately apparent. These characters would have gargantuan point totals, back in those days Mon-El was the equal of Silver Age Superman...but they caught a horror feel.

One of the keys to horror is that it tends to be gradual at first, to give the characters time to understand that there is a reason for fear.

It's also often found in various contrasts. For ex, the first Halloween movie. Michael Myers is murdering people amid the routine normality and familiar (and falsely reassuring) surroundings of a small town in Illinois. Only Doctor Loomis understands the danger, at least in part, the rest are blissfully unaware of what is happening...at first. Then they start finding the bodies...

Something else to watch for is that horror and comedy are first cousins. Misfired horror often becomes campy comedy, and a horror story that goes on too long or to repetitiously almost invariably becomes comedy. Witness the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and the Friday the 13th movies. Toward the later end of each series they had morphed from horror into wisecracking self-aware self-parodies.

(Actually, pretty much all genres tend to degenerate/evolve into comedy if a series or story goes on long enough, I suspect comedy might actually be the 'default' genre of human storytelling and entertainment, but it can happen really fast, and really easily, with horror.)
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Old 04-23-2011, 03:57 PM   #25
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

I think having a high will or unfazeable does more to the actual playing of a character in a horror game then does any points.

Afterall, C3P0 is like a 4 million point character and he certainly seems to be afraid...
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Old 04-23-2011, 09:28 PM   #26
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

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Originally Posted by LemmingLord
I think having a high will or unfazeable does more to the actual playing of a character in a horror game then does any points.
Yes, and if everybody has those sort of traits, it's a strong indicator that you're not in a horror game :)

If one character is like that, they'll usually be the first victim ;)
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Old 04-24-2011, 06:19 AM   #27
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

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If one character is like that, they'll usually be the first victim ;)
I know in my one shots I like to play it out that way... I'll give a victim numbers on all the PCs/NPCs to see who the murderer / monster goes after first... usually racial minority characters and characters who are competent and characters who are overly sexual... have earlier dead numbers..

If you are playing an former vietnam vet that is an african american who is having sex with a dallas cowgirl cheerleader...expect him to be dead the first chance I get...
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Old 04-24-2011, 09:22 AM   #28
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

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If you are playing an former vietnam vet that is an african american who is having sex with a dallas cowgirl cheerleader...expect him to be dead the first chance I get...
*Idea* What if you played horror the same way you played Paranoia? Characters die off quickly and easily, but you have replacements ready to go, and the whole thing is treated less seriously than is typical for the genre... It has already been done, right? What was the name of that game?
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Old 04-24-2011, 10:02 AM   #29
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

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It has already been done, right? What was the name of that game?
Scary Movie? ;)
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Old 04-24-2011, 11:31 AM   #30
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Default Re: Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

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Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery View Post
*Idea* What if you played horror the same way you played Paranoia? Characters die off quickly and easily, but you have replacements ready to go, and the whole thing is treated less seriously than is typical for the genre... It has already been done, right? What was the name of that game?
It Came From The Late Late Late Show may be what you're thinking of; you don't necessarily have replacements ready to go, but you can call for a stunt double to take damage for you, or in extremis invoke a film break which lets you skip forward to the next scene having effectively resolved the previous one off-camera.
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