Horror Campaign Brainstorming

I mean there's a PDF dedicated to tips for running and playing in horror roleplaying games. I don't know if it was compiled by Veeky Forums or someone else, but it was pretty solid.

I have three systems I've got my eye set on.

The first is DnD 3rd edition, since it's fairly well known to most of us and the rules can kind of be moved from setting to setting fairly easily. I want to keep this one as a fall-back though.

We've just gotten into Shadowrun recently and we've had some fun doing a couple of one-offs just mucking around and learning more about the game itself. I just don't want the game to end with a rigger making an APC out of some dustbins, an old wheelchair and the remains of the one player we have who is incredibly talented at dying just before the team succeeds.

The last one is Dark Heresy, but I've never played a game or run a campaign for it. I'm fairly knowledgeable in 40K lore and I imagine with a bit of planning I can transpose it to a different setting. I feel a system with a higher lethality factor would lend itself to the atmosphere of the game, but I don't want it to feel cheap.

Does this help you out?

Cool, do you have a link?

Well guys, we're off to a good start here.

I'll be back in a couple of hours with a goodnight bump and to see what' you've managed to cook up.

Horror games work best as one shots, rather than campaigns. Something like Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green works well in a long term campaign but loses a bit of the horror flavor.

I personally like Fear Itself for horror games. It does a great job of using mechanics to convey a sense of being worn down.

As far as general horror RPG tips go: you can't scare anyone who doesn't want to be scared. Setting the atmosphere is important. Isolate, separate, and pursue.

Make one player betray the others, talk to him before hand.
Make the other player start having 'revelations' that would help them out just to later turn into hallucinations that would constantly suggest that his friends have been replaced but while he clearly knows that he is out of his mind.

Search for any mental condition and try to emulate their effects on the players lightly at first until reaching a breaking point where they can't completely say if what their character's are perceiving is a part of their problem or because some shit is actually going on

Use paranoia, schizophrenia, capgras syndrom and many others. Make them keep secrets and always send private notes to the players to tell them what they are perceiving instead of saying it out loud.

I've never heard of fear itself before.

Would you mind giving me the TL/DR version of what it's about?

The point is that they know something is going on, which they come in knowing in my example. Panic, which is the heght of horror, comes from knowing you are in danger but not how to avoid it.

Thinking about it now, has anyone tried to run a horror campaign using Paranoia before.

The Alpha Complex already has the hopeless utopia feeling and screwing other players over is basically the name of the game.

All I need to do is find a legitimate reason for the clones to simply stop coming and we should be good to go.

The idea that's popped into my head is that the players are sent to Outside and whoever returns to Friend Computer first with the most interesting find receives a wonderful prize.

Who knows what might be outside of the safety of Alpha Complex, and of course, only one of them can receive this prestigious prize...

This coulbe a good read for you.

Im saying all that because I will try to run an horror game soon. I did took a few ideas from paranoia which I read like the premise.
But isn't the setting just too much wacky goof balls to run some horror like that?

Shit, I think was looking for the same thing today.
I remember two years ago while browsing Veeky Forums or so I stumbled upon a pdf with literally hundreds of horror tropes and short stories to base your games on

Unfortunately I can't find it on my computer any more

I have that too.

and last thing

wow, that was it! thanks

Yeah, That's what I thought. When I saw your post, It reminded me of these files too.

You have to make the players feel powerless. Most games are about empowerment but horror subverts this.

I accomplish this by forcing my players to sit at the table.naked when I'm running horror. Of course as the GM I have clothes privileges.

You next have to get your players engaged with the primal sides of their brain, the parts that were scared of shaking bushes in the dark in ancient times. I achieve this by not allowing my players to eat at the table and intact the entire day of whenever we have the session they have to fast. I of course have food privileges.

Thirdly you have to make combat in game a real rarity. How trivial are zombies now you can lawnmower them to death in games like dead rising? How weak is an eldritch monstrosity when it has hit points? So instead of attack rolls when we play a horror game the player has to aim a loaded revolver gun with one bullet at their head and fire. One click is one attack against 'The monster'. So far this has encouraged the players to run, hide and use stealth instead of outright attacking , except for that one incident with Ben...

The final rule of a horror game is that nobody talks about Ben.

Wow, thanks to the guys that posted the horror tips and creepy ideas archives.

I don't have time to give them a full read now, I've skimmed the first couple of pages of all three and they're really interesting.

Ben sounds like he was a brave man. A pity that bravery and foolishness can often be mistaken for each other.

I'm sure a braver user than I will inquire further.

Hi guys, OP here. After much thought, I have decided to run a little experiment.

I'm going try and run this game in Paranoia for the following reasons.

Firstly, as others have pointed out, the PCs must not be able to trust the world around them.

Since in Paranoia, your comrades will help and hinder you as they see fit; often with factions forming and breaking at the drop of the hat.

Any weapons you have will, at best, fire of a few semi-powerful shots before they kill you. That is, of course, if it doesn't out right explode as soon as you pull the trigger.

The same can be said about any mutant powers the players have. It could save you, it could kill you, or it could make you the monster. And of course, even if you survive, being a mutant is treason, and treason is punishable by death.

The second reason is that Paranoia has a high lethality.

If you get clipped, even slightly, you aren't walking away lightly. Coupled with the fact that your team mates will just as likely use your crippled form as bait, as they are to limp on right beside you.

The third reason is, as one user pointed out, the tongue in cheek nature of the game.

At first it will be all happy go lucky and I'll be very generous with the starting lives, so they can get a feel of how the system works before I completely blind-side them.

Death goes from being a light, casual affair to being deadly serious, since there's no Friend Computer to save them whilst their Outside. No clones to fall back on.

Traitorous back-stabbings and light hearted fratricide will suddenly become more meaningful, since your now actually wiping your team mates out. Any clones that do make it will have absolutely no memory of what happened before.

Of course, since the denizens of Alpha Complex have never seen or heard anything about Outside; indeed in normal circumstances such thoughts would be highly treasonous.

I'm sure my players will have fun working out if what I'm describing to them is completely harmless.

...or not. Imagine having no concept about what a tree or a dog even is, and then having to explore a woods.

In case the thread dies by the morning, thanks for helping me with this today guys, you've given me a lot to work with.

If I remember, I'll post again once the game is over and tell you all how it went if it was successful. I'll also try and post again if it turns out to a hilarious cluster fuck of massive proportions.

Feel free to keep adding to the thread if you want to, I personally will be unable to post here until tomorrow evening.

If any experienced Paranoia DMs could give me some advice on how to handle the genre shift, that would also be great?

Goodnight anons.

Genuine horror is impossible in a campaign. You can pull it off in a oneshot though.

If you've heard of GUMSHOE it's essentially that. It's a system where you make checks by putting out points from a pool and then rolling a d6. So, for example, if you were trying to climb a cliff and the difficulty was 6, you could spend 3 points from your climbing skill pool and then if you roll anything 3 or higher, you make it.

It's also good for investigative horror because you can't miss key clues. We had some CoC and DG games where we missed huge parts of plot because we rolled clownshit on our knowledge checks.

None of those games are really structured around horror though, they're all rather conventional RPGs (Although Dark Heresy can get close). Why not use a system that's specifically for horror like Call of Cthulhu? Lamentations of the Flame Princess gets a lot of shit because the creator is vocal snob, but the framework for a dangerous and creepy game is there. It also has a bunch of pre written scenarios that people pilfer for their OSR projects.

As others have said, horror works best as a one shot or a short story that only lasts a few sessions. You have to be a particularly amazing DM to keep tension and fear going for that long. Focus on quality over quantity, use a system that's conducive to horror, and make sure everyone is ready come session #1. It's a two way street, the DM needs to take extra care to create a tense atmosphere, but the players have to participate. If they're memeing it up constantly there won't be much tension.

Atmosphere is everything. I ran a session of a CoC scenario called The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse recently and I had a lot of success with some ambient music and soundboards. If you're not familiar with the scenario, it revolves around the PCs investigating a house that has a massive blob-like creature living in the walls. As they move around the house, the creature shifts from one floor the the next, attacking and absorbing lone PCs/NPCs. Red-herring NPCs showed up to check on the PCs, and I had sounds for their footsteps and shuffling, in addition to an ambient loop of rain, the house creaking, etc.

Props help too. At one point they discovered an NPCs remains, covered in a wet substance. I wrote his final words on a weathered piece of paper with a quill pen, got it wet so the ink ran a little, and stuffed it in a little envelope.

If you're looking for ambient music, the Resident Evil REmake has a bunch of it.

youtube.com/watch?v=CFn4m8gBfk8

>DnD 3rd edition
ogod NONONONO ITS A GAME ABOUT EPIC HEROES you literally cant make horror work in it on top of its crunchiness

>Shadowrun
Rather not, too crunchy.

>Dark Heresy
COULLLllllld work.

You should go with something super-light. OSR game at best, something with very little to hang on to for the players, and little to get hung up on. Cthulhu Dark, for example. Something where characters are fragile because you can't even accurately assess their chances against the unknown monster or THING. Also, read up on it, but there are a few sorts of being scared - being revulsed, fearing for your life, being spooked by a loud noise like a screamer, and something more primal, the fear of unknown. The kind of fear you get imagining things in the dark that make you pick up your pace just to go out in the light all the sooner. You laugh at yourself after that, but inside oyu know you were slightly terrified, jsut because something COULD have been in the shadows. Unresolved tension, imagination playing wild, trying to make heads or tails of the situation. It's possible to get that going on, but only if the players are attentive and WANT to get scared, and only in short bursts. You need a lot of insight into horror and being scared before you pull this off though.

I haven't actually ever ran a horror game, but there are quite a few tools you have at your disposal that you don't usually get to play with in your average sword and sorcery or modern settings. I'm getting the idea you're not planning on going for a mythos styled game and honestly that's probably for the best.

Know that a lot of these tools can actually seem like a bit of a dick move in other games, but a horror game is of an intrinsically different quality. One thing to try is commonly called "gas lighting", where you either narratively or in OOC discussion and materials try to get players to question their understanding of the game or reality. Things like including strange, seemingly coincidental patterns in side materials, presenting disturbing details casually and feigning ignorance when clarification is asked works very well, but it takes a delicate hand.

What's really difficult in a horror game is maintaining immersion; just including gnarly gory details and descriptions can make a gritty game, but a scary game needs to pull players in. You can try "accidentally" mirroring patterns and repeating signs like suggests, but it can be just as important to break tension and break rules when they're expected. Make the players feel like they're missing something at all times, like their allies might not be who they think they are and a general paranoia will develop that will keep players on edge.

You see, most of what makes a horror game work is the creation, breaking and twisting of in-universe patterns and rules. Let players feel just a little comfortable and shatter their belief so they'll never feel entirely safe. Of course you don't want to be too relentless, include downtime and "safe" encounters so there's room for tension to wax and wane without having some tentacle monster burst in with a gun.

Did that help? If it's too much work you can try tropes and cliches, like reading the first line of each paragraph.

Word. Word of each paragraph. Fuck. Let this be a lesson that even stupid simple shit can be hard if you don't prepare it ahead of time.

What happened next?

That's the comic end town

wait, you stole this idea from a horror comic from someone's tumblr, i remember reading it

You're a great dude user
That shall help my campaigns to come

Best horror rpg I've ever played is pic related. Just Google 'Dread rpg pd 'Dread for a download of the PDF. All you need is a Jenga tower.

Forgot pic