Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

[sgtcallistan]

In my pulp-era investigation game 'Amy's Amazing Adventures in Archaeology' we had a series of M. R. James-inspired ghost investigations set in old country houses, their mazes, local churches, missing hotel rooms, also I managed to include what was actually an SF (or time-travel) update based upon Nigel Kneale's 'The Road'.

Clues had to be researched or searched for properly, so quite a bit of fudging was necessary to fill in blanks.

My players had begun to expect Victorian 'vapourous' ghosts, not the more physical medieval tradition M. R. James drew upon.

We had a couple of moments that truly crossed over into horror, especially when the players thought the ghost could only harm 'invaders' of Britain, then realised how old the thing was, and they all qualified... and oh yes it can get them...

[hal]

Originally Posted by sgtcallistan

In my pulp-era investigation game 'Amy's Amazing Adventures in Archaeology' we had a series of M. R. James-inspired ghost investigations set in old country houses, their mazes, local churches, missing hotel rooms, also I managed to include what was actually an SF (or time-travel) update based upon Nigel Kneale's 'The Road'.

Clues had to be researched or searched for properly, so quite a bit of fudging was necessary to fill in blanks.

My players had begun to expect Victorian 'vapourous' ghosts, not the more physical medieval tradition M. R. James drew upon.

We had a couple of moments that truly crossed over into horror, especially when the players thought the ghost could only harm 'invaders' of Britain, then realised how old the thing was, and they all qualified... and oh yes it can get them...

Bet that was on the same scale as "I'm not Christian" when a vampire held up a crucifix and it didn't faze the vampire. :) Would have enjoyed being a fly on that wall when you let them find that tidbit out...

:)

[ak_aramis]

I should add that that G:H campaign was played in silly mode, just to be clear. I mean, Di Di played the Werebear's DNPC as her PC. Charles played the Wearbear, who's handle was Smokey. Steve played "Steve the Hawaian Vampire, formerly known as Vladimir Tepeš, the Baron Dracul." KG played the Occultist. MMQ played the "Blind Marine with Psionic vision to 60'"...

KG's was the only "serious" character...

Sessions 3 through 5 had only the Blind Marine as continuity in character with year 1-2.

"Yugo to Hell" was still a laughing point for years later.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by hal

Bet that was on the same scale as "I'm not Christian" when a vampire held up a crucifix and it didn't faze the vampire. :) Would have enjoyed being a fly on that wall when you let them find that tidbit out...

:)

Doing that is almost as much fun as the vampire doing the "you're not a Christian" thing to the investigator and taking the cross off them... or if you like to roll out a real elder "the original was much more impressive". Of course, for a Joss Whedon theme, The Crucifixion could be sort of like the vampire equivalent of Prince's Gate balcony.

As Spike put it:
"If every vampire who claimed to have been at The Crucifixion actually had been it would have been like Woodstock. Now I was at Woodstock..."

[johndallman]

I ran a Laundry campaign for a few years. It worked pretty well, and I felt that I'd pitched the brief for each mission about right if the players had turned grim and serious by the time I'd finished.

I got to use quite a lot of real people as NPCs, none of them known to the players. One of them, who was fantastically irresponsible, maniacally inventive, and had got half-way to breaking out of the Laundry's special prison, probably had the most frightening moment of the campaign. One of the players explained the consequences of the neurolinguistics hack he'd invented, and just how many groups would be after him if he escaped. He was quite keen to go back into prison.

[hal]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I ran a Laundry campaign for a few years. It worked pretty well, and I felt that I'd pitched the brief for each mission about right if the players had turned grim and serious by the time I'd finished.

I got to use quite a lot of real people as NPCs, none of them known to the players. One of them, who was fantastically irresponsible, maniacally inventive, and had got half-way to breaking out of the Laundry's special prison, probably had the most frightening moment of the campaign. One of the players explained the consequences of the neurolinguistics hack he'd invented, and just how many groups would be after him if he escaped. He was quite keen to go back into prison.

Which gets me to thinking (nice share by the way)

In your minds, what makes for a good HORROR campaign? Is it the monsters that man should never know? Is it the personal danger where the danger leads to a fate worse than death? Is it now that death is inevitable, but in the how of it? Is it the transformation of something seemingly innocent, that becomes the dangerous? Is it the sense of being stalked?

For instance? I had one scene in which the player character investigator was caught out at night in a cemetery no less, armed with an AR-15 (illegally modified I should add), and stalking some sort of terror that made a sound not unlike a tea pot kettle whistling - and then some poor schlep would burst into spontaneous combustion. Long story short, when I described a high pitch noise, the character spontaneously...

Spun around and hosed with his AR-15, the source of the high pitched sound. Never mind it was a cat sort of screaming his displeasure that starts with a high pitched yowl and ends in a low gravelly growling noise - so, Monster hunter 1 (sort of) cat: 0.

Another episode of a horror campaign terror, was when the player showed up at his "Safe place" a base if you will of like minded hunters. He arrives on the scene to see everyone missing, but signs of blood here and there, along with the smell of wet dog fur. As he hunted about, he found in a basement, something akin to a line of salt drawn across the floor from wall to wall as if to block off the corridor. That's when he saw two of his former friends rise up from the heaps they had become on the floor, to VERY slowly shambling and jerking animated bodies (not undead as he presumed, but spirit possessed bodies from an ancient Sumerian Sorceror). Then he used his "blessed" Diasho (Wakizashi and Katana) against his foes and even beat them.

Only one minor problem. Seems that the bad guys called the police informing them that a madman was killing people and they need to hurry (Gotta love burner cell phones!). Next thing he knows, the police arrive, disarm him - and then...

"We are charging you with murder - two corpses were stabbed, cut and even dismembered, and the only weapons with their blood were the ones we took off of you."

I think he was more horrified at being named the killer, than the potential issue of werewolves, sorcerors and the like. The ONLY thing that saved his buttocks was the Medical Examiner telling the police that the wounds inflicted on the corpses were inflicted post mortem. They still nailed him for mutilating a human corpse, impeding an investigation, and suspicion of murder. Was the worst 24 hours of the character's existence...

So, what are your thoughts about what makes or made your campaigns of horror work? Sometimes, turning the tables on the player character hunters and accusing them of being the monsters seems to work nicely.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by hal

In your minds, what makes for a good HORROR campaign? Is it the monsters that man should never know? Is it the personal danger where the danger leads to a fate worse than death? Is it now that death is inevitable, but in the how of it? Is it the transformation of something seemingly innocent, that becomes the dangerous? Is it the sense of being stalked?

I think it's the realisation that something the players had accepted as normal is not. The conceptual trapdoor opening under them, as something, or many things, acquire a new and more threatening meaning. RPGs are essentially played in our imaginations, so undermining something that was a part of the players' imaginative structures is the key.

[hal]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I think it's the realisation that something the players had accepted as normal is not. The conceptual trapdoor opening under them, as something, or many things, acquire a new and more threatening meaning. RPGs are essentially played in our imaginations, so undermining something that was a part of the players' imaginative structures is the key.

I'll buy that. In thinking about all of the incidents I've run as GM for players, that which I call "the twist" is all about them not expecting something, and realizing that they are in real serious danger. Truth is however, I don't see it strictly as a "horror" aspect so much as a "There are times when my players are TOO good at not getting egg on face, so I have to set up two trip wires - one that they can see, and one they can only step on if they try to avoid the one they see.

During an "Aftermath" campaign where the players were struggling to survive the changed conditions - they started to become excessively ruthless. They latched onto some Remington rifles with scopes on them, and then began to aim for head shots non-stop. Eventually, they learned they were being called "the hole in the head gang". That's when the group they were up against (keeping this story short here) sent out anti-sniper teams who were in their own rights, snipers themselves. So, having read up on actual tactics and after action reports involving snipers, when it came time for THEM to be in the kill zone, I went by the book. The sniper caught them crossing a stream, waited until the third person crossed, and then popped the person. This set the "group" off to where they went scalp hunting - only to find that the sniper had set up grenades in a can and fish line trip wires (These were Vietnam Veterans using Vietnam tactics as it were). The "horror" of the situation was that the sniper was in a prepared position, refusing to stay in on spot, and shooting not to kill, but to wound, and then pin them down in one spot. When the scenario was over, and ultimately the campaign (we were playing ourselves in a GURPSified form) - everyone realized just how easy it was for them to lose their characters (themselves!) and the sinking feeling made us all realize "Ouch, it just got real".

I guess for me, as a GM running this - the trick is to find out what the players will get emotional about. Find out what their fears are that they themselves relate to so that when their characters are faced with something, they themselves FEEL it. Entering a campaign not knowing that the clock is running down (the character whose death day was approaching as a function of the previous incarnation being burned at the stake) was the "situation normal, but not as normal as previously thought and things just got deadly". Likewise "Hunting the monsters makes us one of the good guys, why are the police hunting ME down?" falls under that category. Granted, the whistle presaging a spontaneous combustion moment and a cat getting wasted by a full auto spray of reflexive gun fire (comic relief if I ever saw such a thing!) goes to establishing a mood, spiking with emotion. Yes, we're all at the table and we're all experiencing in my imaginations what is going on. But getting someone to FEEL what is going on - that is certainly much MUCH harder.

So - aside from using a trick here or there at the table (such as lowering your voice so that people who are cross talking at the table get shushed so that others can hear what I have to say) or perhaps knowing your players well enough to know what does or does not work - anyone here have tidbits or tricks or tidbits of knowledge that they used at their tables to get the "Horror" feeling to move a bit more easily through the veins of their players?

[The Colonel]

Did anyone ever get any play out of the Sword and Sorcery Press setting Scarred Lands - and more precisely the character called The Jack of Tears?

I never saw this part of the setting in action, but always felt that the character and his domain had excellent potential for horror (although to be fair the Dungeons and Dragons system makes playing horror harder).

For those who are unfamiliar, the Jack is a harlequin character of murky origins (possibly a fallen god) who holds court in the heart of a ramshackle carnival at the edge of a semi-tropical swamp, served by beastmen and the undead. The implication is New Orleans carnival with shades of Warhammer's Nurgle. Strong shades of a sort of unhealthy vitality, corruption and decay are implied.

Obviously The Joker would make a good starting point for characterisation, but so would more classical lords of misrule. For better depth, the Jack may have a benevolent side - or possibly a respect for "the straight man", maybe as a force for beneficial chaos in some circumstances, but he should also be terrifyingly unpredictable and prone to dangerous practical jokes and lethal mood swings.

He could easily be pinched for other games - and might make a good high fae for example.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by hal

Which gets me to thinking (nice share by the way)

In your minds, what makes for a good HORROR campaign? Is it the monsters that man should never know? Is it the personal danger where the danger leads to a fate worse than death? Is it now that death is inevitable, but in the how of it? Is it the transformation of something seemingly innocent, that becomes the dangerous? Is it the sense of being stalked?

Depends upon the group. In the case of my G:H campaign, it was that everyone was on the same page about the humor level, and that they, the PC's, were indeed the monsters. (Mind, this was before the WWG lines where the intent was to play the monsters.)

Things that I think help - everyone is on the same page about:

• humor and seriousness,
• choice of dominant voice (as in Player Voice, Character Voice, Narrator/Descriptive voice.)
• Combat modalities (Theater of the Mind, TotM+Maps, Minis on map, minis wargame)
• danger levels
• type of horror — suspense, splatter, survival, Cthulhoid, Buffyesque (Monster of the Week)

It also helps a lot if the rules support the playstyle elements.