Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

In the 3e version of Ravenloft we finished a couple of months ago it was mostly annoyance rather fear that we felt.

We'd be trying to camp out for the night and the player on watch would see wisp of fog coming from the wall and we'd just say "Oh, it's Strahd again. Cast Flame Strike on him and tell him to go away.".

That's the thing about trying to do horror with experienced and highly competent characters. They've not only seen it before, they can usually do something about it too.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Whenever I GM I always have horror. Rarely the kind of horror that can kill you though. Situations where the shadows seem to actively try and smother the flames. Where you walk through a door and your on the edge of a cliff overlooking and endless desert beneath a sky rolling with black clouds. Surreal stuff.

I try and make situations like
PC's: "Um, I'd rather not go in there."
NPC: "The walking dead are horrid, but they must be destroyed!"
PC's: "It's not the zombies I'm worried about. It's the other stuff."
NPC: "What other stuff? I didn't see anything."
PC's: "Exactly."

Horror is about the unknown. What you can't see. The moment the PC's know what they are fighting, the horror fades. The demon is only scary when its still trapped. Once released, it just becomes something that either you kill or kills you.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

That's Ravenloft the adventure; I think b-dog was talking about Ravenloft the campaign setting. I got a lot of my design and editing experience working on Ravenloft netbooks, so my opinion of Ravenloft as a setting should be pretty obvious. (My opinion of the Arthaus version of the game, however, is decidedly more mixed, and I've come to the conclusion that if there's a 4/e version of the setting, it needs to be drastically revamped -- no pun intended.)

Kromm is also correct that, as written, the setting is challenging but not horror. That's not how I have run it in the past, however; in my games, there's no hope of defeating Strahd and similar iconic characters, unless they choose for reasons of their own to allow the PCs to think they have been defeated. The goal of my RL campaigns was not to defeat evil, but to hold it in check. Had my games gone for a longer time than a summer apiece, we might have gotten into the metaphysics of whether it is possible to redeem people given wholly over to evil, or whether one can only oppose or kill them, but we never got that deeply into it.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Yeah, as far as having the really, really bad guys being undefeatable, that is exactly what I mean. There is no way to completely defeat them, but their are ways to stop their evil plans. For example, Cthulhu's followers set up an evil temple which creates havoc upon the land. Characters would be able to kill the cultists and maybe break a magical gate that allows Cthulhu to send elder things into the world, but there would be no way for a character to kill Cthulhu by direct combat. They would only be able to thwart his schemes.

But as far as the Fright Check thing, I guess I will use my own rules. I want characters to have something like mental hit points to coincide with physical hit points. GURPS has no way to do that. Just as characters whose physical health declines as they lose hit points through combat, I want something where there is a mental decline as characters encounter indescribable horrors. It would be similar to a character picking up the Hand of Vecna or the Wand of Orcus, they would soon end up mad, evil ror worse unless they get rid of the item. This wouldn't be like an ordinary Fright Check for mundane horrors, it would be for things of utter evil like elder gods, demon kings and other ultra wicked beings.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

That is my view, entirely.

I think a total horror setting -as CoC- isn't Fantasy, but a different genre.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I like to have CoC-style elements within a "standard" Fantasy game simply because it gives a framework for the Unknown. Fantasy horror often relies a lot on standard tropes such as vampires, ghouls and so on. All great stuff but a little predictable. Sure you can have zombies that spit acid, but I feel that just looks a little too desperate to make a cliche into something different.

By adding alien gods and their followers, you truly have beings which are different for good reason. They think and act differently, and have different weaknesses and strengths.

I also have Fright Checks in my game. The idea is that a normal townsman is going to be just as scare of the walking dead as you or I would; PCs can easily become immune to such "mundane" frights by adding a few levels of Fearlessness or similar. It is the CPs that make a PC stand out, and this method is no different to having them master swordsmen or whatever by spending CPs. In short, they are buying the things that make them heroes just as they buy the things that make them great warriors.

Call of Cthulhu is a great game to play and run. It is set, however, at the wrong "level" for Fantasy, just as Fantasy would be set at the wrong level for CoC characters. They are different games for a reason, but there is no reason the two cannot be married as long as you realise that it will change both genres.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Wow. Just...wow.

They didn't tell the GM to have Strahd cast Invisibility before he uses his gaseous form?

That's just...rookie. Rookie mistake.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Why wouldn't Strahd use a sort of fog spell to get your characters to waste their spells and then attack. He is supposed to be quite intelligent.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Okay, then. (Note: I'm attacking both the "invincible monsters!" and the "Main characters must die/be crippled" arguments in this thread; I accept that there must be death, but it doesn't necessarily have the be the main character's.)

Exception: Silent Hill 1, the game.

Horrifying? Very.

Can you survive, with a happy ending? Yes.

But under your definition, you NEED to die or be crippled, if you're the main character, or you are not playing a horror game.

Which, given this example, would make you wrong.

Let's see if you engage in the aforementioned fallacy now, neh?

I'd also state that the Resident Evil series were horror; they're referred to as "survival horror". Yet you can survive those games (although you do lose most of your allies when you do so).

The werewolf stories are horror, but you can kill the werewolf with silver. Which puts it ouside of the "invincible monster"; and the main character of the story kills the werewolf with silver. According to multiple definitions here, the werewolf is not a horror monster.

The vampire can be killed, through a multitude of ways. But then again, what made the Nosferatu frightening (in the old film), was that it required a sacrifice to kill him; which does make it a bit more horrifying, admittedly.

However, stating that only your definition makes something horror pretty much gets rid of every single possible example of horror that I can ever think of; because, except in the books that go the most extreme, there's ALWAYS a ray of hope, no matter how thin.

Cujo was made no less or more horrifying because the kid died; the movie had him survive, the book had him die, yet both were, quite frankly, horror. And in Cujo, you don't have an invincible monster; just a rabid dog that happens also to be a St. Bernard.

If you want to go for the "hopeless horror" that is absolutely impossible to fully escape, then yes, you have H.P. Lovecraft. So if you want Lovecraftian horror, there is always no hope in the end (although there is a possibility of pulling out and just leaving things to their own devices, but that probably won't go well). Well, maybe a ray of hope, but it's unlikely. However, Lovecraft has never defined horror; he has his own brand. And to state that his brand is the only brand, is false.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

That's not really my definition. My definition would be more like "Horror exists when you can see something terrible and abnormal happening and find yourself unable to take action to prevent it." That was the point of my roller coaster metaphor which you are taking too literally.