Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

CoC is a dark fantasy game already. There are weird monsters and occult tomes and magical rituals ("Do not call up that which ye cannot put down."). There are rules for PCs learning spells and mythos lore... and having their sanity pay the price.

And many many fantasy games already have horror elements. Every time a party of hardy adventurers gets frustrated and then frightened by that vampire whose lair they can't find, and who keeps picking off their allies one by one, that is horror. In playing fantasy games we want our characters to be more powerful/competant than the peasants around us, but there will always be the vampires/dragons/liches/etc that are far beyond that power level. Facing those challanges knowing that one may not survive is what gives the thrill in a fantasy game.

Not every fantasy game is horrific, nor is every horror game fantastical, but they are certainly not opposites.

-- The Bearded One

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

"Horror" is not about being a little bit scary. Riding the roller coaster is a little bit scary, but you're fine at the end and that makes it not horror. If on the other hand you see the coaster coming apart ahead of you...and then you plunge to your deaths...or you wake up and the doctors tell you you'll never walk again...that's horror. So is Ravenloft really horror? Not the way I think it is generally run. It's Buffy in medieval dress.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Ah, so they weren't playing a true scotsman... I mean, a true horror game, as you've defined it. ;)

It seems that everyone has their own ideas as to what "horror" is.

"OMG YOU MUST ALL TPK" doesn't strike me as the "only" way to do horror, personally, but what do I know?

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I remember reading an essay by Stephen King where argues that Fantasy and Horror are sort of like brothers. Most horror is a combination of Fantasy and Horror. Alot of fantasy is the same thing.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Are they horrified? If so...why? The "No True Scotsman" thing is when you start out making a blanket statement and then simply ignore the exceptions as not counting. Simply setting forth a definition is not in itself engaging in the fallacy.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

In any case, I am not talking about a game where a PC goes to the doctor and is diagnosed with cancer and then dies. I am talking about the type of game where the boss bad guy at the end is a true fiend or a servent of a true fiend which can truely over power the characters unless they are very smart. Lord of the Rings had a lot of elements of Horror, the ring bearer was hounded by ring wraiths and they didn't go and just kill the boss bad guy, they had to figure out how to kill it by destroying the ring.

Games like Elric have a lot of horror elements as well, it even has a sort of futile feeling to it. Gygax, always managed to inject some sort of horror into the game. The temples of the Elder Eye were scary because tenticles or pseudopods would come forth from the alter and strike players down, not always death but something terrifying. Characters felt futility here.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I personally love this combo. Ravenloft was one of my favorite settings in 2e.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

If there was a Dungeon Fantasy: Horror which covered evil temples, black magic, demons, devils, elder things, undead, evil faery and cursed items; I would bet money that it would sell very well.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

For a time I ran a modern Fantasy campaign where the horrors happened to the NPC's (usually) and the players were fighting the good fight in trying to stop it.

One campaign element that I enjoyed was a situation where an occultist found a manuscript that permitted him to make a bargain and attain the unaging advantage. It required a horrendous sacrifice to be made to seal the bargain with the forces of the devil. Instead? The occultists son could not bear to live with the cost of the sacrifice, and instead, ran off with the book that detailed how the entire ceremony had to be done. Unfortunately for the man, his soul forfeit upon death, had neither the unaging advantage nor the other benifits of the pact. Every 13 years, the man had to engage in the ritual in such a manner as reinitiate the unaging pact, gain the advantage of unaging for 13 years, and either complete the pact properly, or fail, and have to reinitiate a new pact.

This individual became wealthy, made friends with wealthy people, and even initiated a few other truly rich and amoral individuals into the secret - helping even them to stay alive longer. The man even had his own "pet" demon masquarading as his wife (a truly lust inspiring beauty no less). The player characters were all on the tail end of this, trying to investigate why certain children were dying in such grotesque manners, and why a particular name kept cropping up in their investigations. That is when they found the Vodun Priestess from New Orleans (away from NO because of the Hurricane no less). That is when they discovered his connection to the Russian Mafia in New York City. They managed to save the original soul of his first victim (saved because of the Masonic Lodge brotherhood and their knowledge of magical arcane architcture) and they managed to give the one maniac his just deserts.

Was that Horror? Was that the equivalent of a Modern Fantasy? I traded the swords for Guns, the Nobility for Aristocrats with corrupt government officials, and I traded the idea that all of this heroic struggle occurring in the open with all of this must be suppressed and hidden.

My inspirations for that campaign were largely dependent upon ARMAGEDDON, WITCHCRAFT, and IN NOMINE. I have since run a second campaign based on a similiar structure/genre, and enjoyed a brief bit of fun with that as well. So...

Horror is when you're a 20 year old caucasion student getting into a car only to have a malicious ghost invade and possess your body, jam down the accellerator peddle of your car, drive towards a bunch of black children in your neighborhood, and then leave you to face the music. Horror is when you realize that the wife of a particularly vile and rich man is a demon in disguise. Horror is when you carry a bunch of unregistered firearms and a hotel clerk is calling the police because of your suspicious behavior regarding the storing of said firearms in the motel safe. Horror is when you arrive at an address to conduct business only to discover that it is a trap and you walked riiiiiight into it like a trusting lamb.

It is the intense feeling that what ever it is you are up against, that you're not going to win despire having a strong emotional desire to win and knowing that lives and souls are at stake when you lose.

That's my gut instinct anyhow. ;)

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I personally can't imagine dungeon fantasy without horror elements -- curses, demons, Elder Things, magical and psychic fear, monsters picking off anyone who ventures off alone, possession, temples of pure evil, undead, etc. The horror genre is right up there with fairytales, myth, heroic legend, and so forth as a major influence on the dungeon fantasy subgenre. From that point of view, b-dog is 100% right. I'm just not sure about sanity-blasting horror and threats the cleric can't turn, the knight can't chop, and the wizard can't blast. Ravenloft was lots of things, but it wasn't horror; it was a direct port of the elements and trappings of Gothic horror into the dungeon fantasy world. Everything there could be turned, chopped, and/or blasted.