Are "High-Powered" and "Horror" compatible?

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by knarf

There was also a game called Slasher Flick by Cynthia Celeste Miller.

Whoa... I remember her from her occasional posts on the GoO forums. Still treasure that Z-Man Omlevex book. I got a lotta use from the characters in my SAS games :)

[stdbuk]

Unless the system has drastically changed:

400 CP (Supers) == 100 CP (Psionics) OR 50 CP (Cyberpunk)

It's just that bad!

All that aside. Horror isn't about points and it doesn't HAVE to be about builds. It's truly psychological warfare against the players. CoC and Paranoia rpgs have helped with this. Here's some things I've used to accomplish this:

1. Location Location Location! Throwing the characters into an unfamiliar setting will put them on edge. Now just add strange occurrences just beyond their perceptions. Let them chase a few red-herrings to nowhere, see a few disturbing things. The power gamers will want to roll. Let em and roll right back like something's "preventing" them from seeing what's up. If one gets a crit., take him aside and relay a nasty vision followed by a temporary mental disadvantage for "knowing too much".

2. Sanity: As mentioned above, mess with the character's senses and mind, but don't tell the players. I've passed notes to player B ,after a "knowing nod" to player A, stating that character A spots a glint of metal from character B's hand and a menacing look. If A says something to B, then weirdness occurs, since B wasn't up to anything and thinks A is going crazy.

3. Betrayal: 1 and 2 lead up to this and it's optional. I've had characters distrusting each other using dopplegangers, dreams, visions, omens, ghosts, tweaked perceptions and serendipitous coincidences. You use 1 on 1 talks, notes, nods and fake roll requests to players to pull this off. By the end, the players are at each others throats or have split up. Hence the horror genre continues.

4. Lack of Control: This goes hand and hand with distrusting senses. Have and ability or power backfire for some unknown reason. Hit the characters where it hurts with their weaknesses and the players by not telling them anything. The fear of horror is the unknown first followed by the helplessness. Have one of the chars get abducted a bit just to find them unconscious later and somehow "molested" even if only in personality. DO NOT explain anything to the players just let their character "notice" things w/o explanation. This is Horror not Scooby Doo or Star Trek.

5. Monsters: A "monster" doesn't have to BE tough. It just has to "Appear" tough. Using an actual npc build is sometimes tricky, but always doable in GURPS. I've had a 400+ cp group surrendering to some 200 - 250 cp npcs because it was the npc's forest and they specialized in plant magic. I've used illusions, mind screws, mirrors, industrial equipment and whatever to make npcs seem tougher than they are. It boils down to giving the villains knowledge OVER the PC's while not giving the players anything. This knowledge will be about them, the terrain and/or arrival location/time. This works well because when it's time for the heroes to strike back, they will usually succeed with a little teamwork and surprise against the seemingly invincible foe.

So that's gist. I hope it helps. I could put down more system examples or builds, but you know your players better than I do. Done right, high-powered horror is really fun if only for the "WTF?" expressions the once all-cool-and-powerful PC's get across their faces.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Alien was Horror, Aliens was a Thriller.

That's an important point, and it should be noted that the latter is the natural subsequent of the former, story-wise. Also, it depends on which character is the viewpoint character. In the second movie, Ripley knew (in general) what they were up against, and for her it was now a war story. For the Marines, at first it was very much Horror as they first encountered the monsters.

Horror is based on things like uncertainty, doubt, things that 'don't fit' into one's way of thinking, things are just shouldn't happen. It's about being alone, or thinking one is alone against the night. In part, it's about dreading the future and waiting, tension.

When the menace first appears, when it's still concealed by the shadows and you don't know what it is, or aren't even 100% sure there's something there or not, when you're still trying to figure out what it all means and whether there's any chance of escaping it or fighting it, that's horror.

When the menace is in the light, when you can see it, when you've survived against it for a while and adjusted your world-view to the reality of it, now it's not horror anymore (usually), though it may still be terrifying and dangerous, not it's an enemy to fight or escape from.

For example, discovering that, say, there really are vampires, just like in the movies and novels (horror vampires, not romance vampires), is horror. You're scared, you can't go to the authorities (unless you like the idea of being trapped in padded cell and drugged when the vampire comes for you), you're understanding of hte world is shaken (if vampires can be real, then there's something seriously 'off' in the scientific and maybe religious framework most moderns view the world through). This is horror.

If you survive the discovery, kill the first vampire, and have spent the years since hunting them down, learning their secrets, if everybody knows they're real now, it's no longer horror. Now it's a war story and your world-view includes vampires just as it once included, say, rapists and murderers. Bad, dangerous things that exist, and are horrifying but not Horror. You know vampires exist, what they can and can't do, etc.

Another example, modern war is horrifying but not Horror, to moderns. An enemy armed with a sniper rifle is a threat, but comprehensible.

That same sniper would be Horror to a soldier from the Middle Ages or earlier, able to strike one down with total impunity at an impossible distance with what could only be a supernatural force. Or better yet, a Predator drone is Horror to a person from a tech level that can't produce or envision them.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by stdbuk

Unless the system has drastically changed:

400 CP (Supers) == 100 CP (Psionics) OR 50 CP (Cyberpunk)

It's just that bad!

It has changed drastically in regards to the bad choices made in regards to Superpowers, Psionics, and Cyberware respectively.