GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I was just curious about what people think of games like Ravenloft and maybe Call of Cthulhu mixed with fantasy. I would say that I enjoyed the times I played Ravenloft games ( used to have a DM that loved horror ) and would enjoy playing Call of Cthulhu with a fantasy character. I think that Horror and Fantasy are a great mix from dark temples of Elder Things to dark castles of evil vampires. What do you think?

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

If a GM tells me that he likes Call of Cthulhu, or enjoys GMing or, or thinks it is good or has any intrinsic value, then I know everything I need to know about him, on order to decide whether or not I should ever try playing in a campaign of his.

(Same with X-Files, by the way, although for somewhat different reasons.)

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

That could have been both a positive and a negative opinion of him, Peter. Care to elaborate?

Personally, I wouldn't mind playing in a game like that, but I WOULD ask the GM to at least give me a CHANCE to survive... I don't like playing a game in which you don't have a prayer.

Of course, if I did something stupid, then I deserve it. ;)

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

For my part, horror is an important component of most fantasy. If the evil nasties weren't a little bit scary it wouldn't work very well (and if a lot of them, including even standard RPG monsters like orcs aren't at least a little scary for you, you probably don't have a lot of imagination).

That said I think that to really enjoy a fantasy RPG I need to be able to at least contemplate triumphing over the boss monsters in one way or another, which would make a straight COC conversion a little bit shaky in my view. Ravenloft on the other hand would be more or less right up my alley.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I'm not necessarily saying deadlier, just scarier or creepier. Maybe the dungeon has strange shadows darting just out of sight or there are scampering noises that sound like something is in the walls or strange howling or wailing coming from somewhere. That kind of stuff. There may be less fodder monsters but there would be more creepy elements like a room with skulls hanging from chains that are attached to the ceiling.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

You would have a way to defeat monsters directly such as a vampire, werewolf, evil cultists or lesser minions of some eldritch fiend. But your characters would have to thwart the plans indirectly of a greater horror like the Devil or an Elder God possibly through finding some secret scroll of banishment or destroying the magic items that allow the fiend to come to this plane. There would be Fright Checks in this kind of adventure.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

If, by fantasy, you mean the sort of swords and sorcerey you find in conventional fantasy RPGs, I prefer not to mix them. A significant component of conventional fantasy games is power fantasy. One plays the cunning wizard, mighty warrior, etc., precisely because they are or can potentially be very effective relative to the threats they can encounter. Even ignoring that, the defining characteristic of most character types is courage.

CoC-style horror, by contrast, is essentially a futility fantasy. Although one may overcome this or that individual threat, you know that you're facing ultimately unstoppable opposition and face inevitable decline into madness. Even ignoring that, the defining characteristic of most characters is that they're often paralyzed or driven off by fear.

So it seems to me that conventional fantasy and horror are trying to achieve almost completely opposite ends. Either is totally cool on its own, but I've never experienced them mixing well. When I see them combined, one of them inevitably comes to predominate. You either get a conventional fantasy game with squidgier monsters or a horror game where the PCs happen to carry a different class of useless weapons.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

This is good analysis and I agree with it.

The paralyzed by fear part is also quite relevant. CoC is something that happens to ordinary people and usually only once.

On the other hand, when you add up the things that have happened to a mid to upper level D&D character _and they've survived_ (swallowed by Gelatinopus Cube, carnivorous beetle swarm, Tyrannosaur, Dragon) having them paralyzed by fear just isn't very reasonable.

This is not to say that a game of Conan the Vampire Slayer might not be amusing but like the Sunnydale Scoobies everyone involved should have bought Unfazeable (with at most a Quirk-level residual fear) after the first season/couple of levels.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I don't think Horror and 4-color dungeon fantasy go well, but in a world where the supernatural is an unseen rumor to most, it is appropriate.

For instance, a world much like the middle ages. No one has seen the undead, but rumors abound. then a group of adventurers go out on a quest and meet them for the first time. I think they would poop in their armor. this would work for me.

Also, I was thinking about converting Midnight to GURPS, and I think fright checks or sanity are appropriate for that world.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

"CoC-style horror, by contrast, is essentially a futility fantasy."

Oh, I don't know.

Robert E. Howard managed to merge the 2 quite well in many of his Conan/Krull/Pulp Mythos stories.

And 'futility' is a relative term....yeah, sure, one day, The Stars Will Be Right, and humanity will become extinct.

But not today, unless the players totally frack it up.

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.

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.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

When your only examples are dying on a carnival ride, OR losing your legs, that definition didn't become very clear...

Yes, because it is entirely possible to read "Horror exists when you can see something terrible and abnormal happening and find yourself unable to take action to prevent it.", in very clear letters, when you state "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." Sure.

In Other Words: Your metaphor was not a good one for conveying your overall point. Maybe if you followed up with a clear definition, or had a clear definition beforehand, your metaphor could have made a good example. But as it was, you left your own definition clearly not well defined.

And you still miss my examples. "Unable to take action to prevent it"? So you still think that the werewolf, or the vampire, or the Frankenstein's monster, are not examples of horror monsters? You can take actions to prevent *them*. Yet they are some of the most core creatures to the horror fiction.

And you also ignore my examples where you can survive to the end, and get a "happy ending"; and potentially fail and die. By definition, you are doing something about it if you get to the happy ending. You may not be curing the entire problem, but there is still something you are able to do about it. There may be some of the monster that survives to fight later, or it may have a method for "coming back"; but you still did something to it earlier.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

They are monsters who have been in horror stories, certainly. But not every story that has them is a horror story. These days, not even most.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

So...

I guess you're going to say that in any story where the main character can and does kill the werewolf or vampire, it's not horror?

That's a very narrow definition. I'm not sure if I'd want to restrict all my horror-watching into your (very narrow) definition. I'd end up just watching slasher flicks with invulnerable creatures. As if the only horror that exists is Friday 13th or Halloween.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

File all complaints about "Strahd didn't act as cleverly as he was supposed to" with Wizards of the Coast. Our DM was only doing what the adventure said Strahd was doing.

It was all sort of petty harassment anyway. Strahd just wasn't powerful enough to defeat our group and we couldn't kill him (permanently) until we methodically went through first the countryside and then the Castle and eliminated all of his "specials".

There just wasn't that much to it in terms of D&D. So Strahd's a vampire? Big deal, none of us were wimpering peasants. My character was a Rogue Dragon Shaman. He drank blood, I breathed fire. <shrug>

That's why horror and dungeon fantasy don't really work together. The Big Bad of true horror (and not just things with some horror elements) has to be much Bigger and Badder than the PCs and there can't really be a climactic battle scene. He'd win.

Instead, in horror the Big Bad has to have some weakness or achilles heel written into his story for the PCs to exploit. It's actually rather predictable and the sort of reason I find horror boring.

Playing CoC? just ignore the SAN loss and read everything you stumble across until you've picked up all the bread crumbs the GM has scattered.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I've belatedly moved this thread because, except for the title, there's virtually no GURPS content.

BTW, some of the posts are getting a bit testy. Dial it back a few notches, peeps. (My use of "peeps" is your Easter present. Enjoy!)

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I'd happily play in a Horror/Fantasy crossover GURPS campaign.


I'm a big fan of Ravenloft. I personally think it would run better with a non-D&D rules set, even though I currently run it using 3.5 [in an online game]. GURPS would probably work wonderfully. As it is, I run my Ravenloft games with low magic, low treasure, and limited options for PCs.

I find CoC 100% playable with the rules as written. The SAN rules are great! I wouldn't want to play without them, in fact.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Ugh... It might qualify as topical content also ;P

"Peeps" *brr*

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I think the best insanity/fear rules I've ever seen exist in the game Unknown Armies.......

Which, among other things, happens to be better at Teh Horrerz than CoC, IMNSHO.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

How do they work?

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

Horror/Fantasy is one reason I like the Warhammer setting so much. It blends the two perfectly for my (and my players) tastes. I also tend to infuse a bit of horror into other games that I run. For instance, I usually do Shadowrun very dark and gritty with a lot of horror elements thrown in.

I also really like the sanity blasting horror. It adds a nice roleplaying challenge and I've always compared it to "Shellshock" or "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome" from the real world. While it might not be "heroic" for a character to gradually go insane, it certainly is realistic.

Re: GURPS Horror Fantasy, fun or unfun?
 

I agree with this. A character knows he is hurt only by the fact that his hit points are reduced and likewise a character knows his character is going insane because his sanity is being reduced. Elder things, demon princes and the like should be able to affect both body and mind. I think I am going to use affliction power rules for this, ( madness, panic ect. ) instead of just fright checks. A character shouldn't be afraid of a tentacle thing unless it has some supernatural power along with it.