Cosmic Horror and Hard SF are both obsolete genres with crippling inherent flaws...

Not OP, but being told a thing is scary is not the same as actually being scared by it
Playing a game against monsters that essentially have a magical fear aura is unlikely to inspire fear in the player

I agree with you OP.

Cosmic horror is dead as it was intended because we as a generation are already super nihilistic and hopeless. Does nothin for us; the world and social media already remind us of our own smallness. That's not to say giant spooky alien monsters aren't good, because they are, we are just inoculated to their more philosophical horrors.

Maybe Lovecraftian horror needs to be replaced with religious horror: God is real, wrathful and you and everyone you love are going to hell for eternity.

That would be terrifying if you could pull it off, but if the PCs couldn't journey to Heaven and kill God by the third session, they would start shrieking about railroading.

I think you have half a point when it comes to cosmic horror. As an Athiest the idea that the universe is directionless, arbitrary and that I’m an insignificant individual sitting on a tiny speck that’s hustling around an insignificant star in an endless void is one I shrug and say ‘yeah and?’.

That said I think there’s still potential. You just need to innovate. First step- real back on the horror aspect. Or say reconsider it. Not everyone needs to be terrified. Some people can move past the initial revilations, so what happens to those guys after that? One way to think about it- master chief with a mini gun probably wouldn’t worry about a horror slasher with a knife.

Were you born gay or was it something you learned about yourself after experimentation.

I think this is really true. I'm a Christian and cosmic horror still does it for me but all my atheist friends think it's "2 deep 4 u" horror addition. On the other hand they get really freaked out when it comes to fiction about demon's, God, and eternal salvation/damnation. Particularly the old apocrypha and judaochristain lore.

This might be why movies about demon's haunting a house or family have become the new standard.

Yup, am guy you're responding to and I agree with you both there. Truly supernatural shit scares the fuck out of me because it opens the doors to things that fly in the face of my empirical experiences (which imo are the only thing that matters, even the science of other men is taken on faith, grounded in reason and reinforced by my experiences, but faith nonetheless) and the idea that I'm choosing to put my faith in the wrong thing is jarring for the exact same reason an honest Christian I'm sure would be terrified of hedging his bets wrongly as well.

I always liked Aphrodite and Athena in this pic

Artemis being a close third

>Hard SF is extremely restrictive, completely ignoring the possibility of future innovations.

This is literally the point of hard sci-fi, I agree its boring af tho

>Cosmic Horror only spooks people who were born in older times and had a firm Christian worldview.

This is entirely dependent on how you understand "cosmic horror" which is a fucking nebulous concept to begin with

If you are going for the "humans are insignificant blah blah" angle I agree its not going to do shit in these times of peak existential crisis

>most people aren't existentialists.

I wonder how much of a socially detached neckbeard you need to be to believe this. Just accept you are not special anymore.

I'm sorry you are a brainlet unable to comprehend experiences beyond your immediate life

>is one I shrug and say ‘yeah and?’.
Good cosmic horror takes that idea and demonstrates it to you. Its one thing to know that one a conceptual level, another to be faced with some alien horror that is 100% proof of that.

>empirical experiences (which imo are the only thing that matters,
You'd be shocked to find out how much your brain is lying to you. It's falsifying data on the fly and even making up entire experiences just to keep your world view stable, and that's ignoring all the filtering that happens while you perceive the world in the first place.

That fear aura should be portrayed in the description (or lack thereof) of the monster. The aura is just a mechanic.

>Cosmic Horror only spooks people who were born in older times and had a firm Christian worldview. Those people are already long dead, making the genre play the same role as mundane fantasy.

you're thinking of lovecraftian horror.

imagine this for example god is real, he doesn't care about you, you're food for him and his angels. your decedent secularism is just a distraction from the fact that this is your inevitable fate. Also while waiting to die do not piss off any of his servants because they re so fucking petty and on such a power trip they will start to toy with you for sport.

it isn't the lack of god and an after life I fear. It's their existence

>the old apocrypha and judaochristain lore

everyone talking bout how scary the old testament is should check out pic related it's a criminally underrated cosmic horror game that's getting a new edition really soon. not schilling just want to maybe spark some curiosity for roll20

people are really desensitized these days. I have to catch my players off guard like go on a tangent. rip my story from the news and link to the article. you need to blur the line between the game and reality to scare players

Oh I'm well aware. The vast gulf between the protons and electrons of the atoms that compose us is far greater than the volume of matter actually present; we are largely made of nothing at all. Indeed, such failing and foilable senses are what drive me to consider science a faith of sorts on its own. It seems foolish to me but who am I to deny the seemingly outlandish views of others? The flat earthers, and their ilk. I have not seen the earth from space myself and cannot truly know; I can only trust others who I do not believe have reason to lie, and the curve of the horizon to guide me.

A friend of mine asked me if I believed in ghosts, and while I wouldn't say I actively do, I would be easily swayed firsthand, should the experience be sufficient. It would be arrogant to dismiss any possibilities for our minds are small, and the cosmos is large, and I reckon does not fit so nicely into the little boxes we so much like to divide it into.

Yeah, they read some shit and think they know what it is like. Players who actually go out hiking and shit are way more fun to play with because they actually have imagination.

>fails to understand the difference between opinion and fact
This sure is a Veeky Forums post.

I'm sorry but if all I'm told is "you failed your Will save so now your character wants to run away" I'm going to feel way more annoyed than frightened knowing that the next few turns are going to be wasted.

If you truly want people to be immersed in your game, you need to give players a reason to be afraid and let their imaginations run wild, such as having them hear a noise from off in the distance, having evidence of the monster's existence (dead bodies, claw marks, etc.) to show how dangerous the monster is, and either having them be attacked by a force without knowing what it looks like or introducing the monster and showing how powerful it is so that they know the objective is escaping as opposed to fighting it.

Honestly, just watch old school horror movies like Alien or Halloween or play something like Silent Hill 2 for ideas of how to set up a horror scene.

Imagine going 200 years into the past and explaining to someone how a smartphone works.

To most people, it'd pretty much be as if you were talking about magic.

>Honestly, just watch old school horror movies like Alien or Halloween or play something like Silent Hill 2 for ideas of how to set up a horror scene.
I feel like horror novels would be a better suggestion for RPG inspiration. Other mediums have more ability to control pacing than RPGs do, as well as the advantage of visuals and a full range of audio. Books also have to rely purely on description and the reader controls the pacing so they're a better medium for comparison imo.

>that moment when your GM wordlessly picks up your figure from the board and replaces it with some chewed up bit of raw steak

That's weird, but I guess it'll work.

At the same time though, I think that good horror movies and video games help to teach people not only how to set up a scene but also how to set up a scare without outright trying to be scary, which I think a lot of people get hung up on in the pursuit of being scary.

Like Pyramid Head isn't scary because he's an imposing figure with a giant ass meat cleaver, he's scary because of what he represents in James' subconscious and how throughout most of the game, nothing you do visibly damages it so your options are to either flee or hide before he finds you.

It's one thing to have a monster going around killing and raping everything in sight, it's an entirely different beast when the game is subtly implying that the reason Pyramid Head is like that is because James is way more fucked up than he realizes and how it works into the theme of SH showing you a hell of your own creation that punishes you while showing you why you deserve to be punished.

Try explaining to a modern person how a smartphone works, and they'll probably think the same thing. Their eyes will glaze over before you've finished a ten sentence summary of how a microprocessor works.

How do microprocessors work?

Magic, and naked little girls performing illicit dances to make God look away when his laws of physics are being violated by the ghosts that clever merchants have bound to the machines you call smartphones.

They're small and they process things

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor

There are problems with that. Besides what the other user pointed out, there's the fact that there absolutely were people who could understand it, if you gave them time. Our ancestors were not dumb.
Another is that past performance is no guarantee of future results. 200 years of rapid advance may well have been a blip and we'll soon return to the slower rate of progress seen over the past two million years.
And more, what OP's on about is >implying that we can't know what's possible and impossible, but that's not true. Some things are "not possible" because they're difficult engineering problems -- supersonic flight was one of these for a long time. No material known could survive the stresses. We found better materials and boom! Supersonic flight. But it's still dangerous and impractical, and will remain so for the foreseeable future regardless of any further tech advances, (most of its remaining problems are not engineering ones) so the folks who didn't think it would ever be feasible were not so far off the mark after all.
Compare that with FTL flight. It's never been an engineering problem at all, it's a physics problem. We have proven over and over that c is the speed at which causality moves. Nothing ordered can surpass it without losing its order and becoming noise. And if it could, it then becomes trivial to send signals or even objects backward in time.

That's not something that you can engineer away. We're not going to just wake up tomorrow and find out all of these well-tested theories with their mountains of evidence are just wrong. That hasn't happened in physics yet -- Newton wasn't wrong, we merely found that in unusual cases he's only close to correct. Ever since we've been narrowing down these corner cases in which our theories don't fit, and the degree to which they're off gets smaller and smaller every time. It's NEVER going to be the case that we just blatantly overturn all of that.

>inb4 "you can't say never lol"

I've actually been looking into playing this. I have the beyond the veil edition though. Is there a different between the two?

>There are problems with that. Besides what the other user pointed out, there's the fact that there absolutely were people who could understand it, if you gave them time. Our ancestors were not dumb.
Nobody is saying that our ancestors are dumb, I'm saying that if you were to try and explain any piece of modern technology to someone born 200 years ago, they'd probably think it was magic because there'd be nothing to really reference for comparison.
>200 years of rapid advance may well have been a blip and we'll soon return to the slower rate of progress seen over the past two million years.
Technology is advancing at a staggeringly fast rate man. Consider that a decade or so ago, the concept of connecting to the web using wireless signals was a relatively new piece of technology and remember that we're at a point where almost every 1st world nation has access to wi-fi.
>Some things are "not possible" because they're difficult engineering problems
So were airplanes.

>So were airplanes.

Yes, and they're still irrelevant, the reasons they were thought to be impossible to make in the past are categorically different from the reasons that bar things like FTL travel or teleportation.
"This is hard to build" is very different from "the universe does not allow this to exist."

>and boom! Supersonic flight.
Heh.

>Yes, and they're still irrelevant, the reasons they were thought to be impossible to make in the past are categorically different from the reasons that bar things like FTL travel or teleportation.
And yet, not only were people able to figure out a way to make them but they were also able to improve upon the original design until they became mundane utilities that we use to travel who sections of the globe in a fraction of the time it'd take to walk, sail, or drive.

In a century or two, who the fuck knows how far our engineering would go and who knows what breakthroughs we'll be able to come up with in the fields of science. It's honestly pretty closed-minded to assume that things like FTL and teleportation is impossible when humanity as a whole has proven time and time again that impossible things are indeed possible if you stumble upon the right designs with the right equipment.

>And yet, not only were people able to figure out a way to make them but they were also able to improve upon the original design
>It's honestly pretty closed-minded to assume that things like FTL and teleportation is impossible
You are confusing a few very different kinds of problems.
1) science says this is impossible
Example:
FTL
This will remain impossible unless we find out that for strange reason our thoroughly tested understanding of how the universe works is completely wrong.
2) science says it's possible, our engineering skills say we can't do it.
Example:
Orbital elevator.
This can become possible once we figure out smarter ways of doing things. Space elevators have been theorized for a long time.
3) improvement of existing technology.
Example:
Faster cars, cleaner cars, whatever.
It's happening daily.

#1 will not become viable just because you can see progress in #2 or #3, and it's silly to assume otherwise.

This is a good post, too pure for this sinful board.

>#1 will not become viable just because you can see progress in #2 or #3, and it's silly to assume otherwise.
No sillier than assuming that any particular concept will remain unviable based on our current tech level and limited understanding of how the universe works.

Think about for a moment, how much of the universe do we, as humans, actually have mapped out? How many planets have we been able to explore outside of our solar system? How many many more galaxies beyond the range of our telescopes? More importantly, how many aliens have we uncovered so far?

If the answer is less than "all of them" then who the fuck knows if FTL is truly impossible for us to do? Who knows if anything is truly impossible to perform? I mean, if it were truly impossible, how come statistics always keeps stating that the odds are always "X to 1?"

I repeat, it's pretty closed-minded to assume anything without actually having each piece of the puzzle on hand.

>Cosmic Horror only spooks people who were born in older times and had a firm Christian worldview. Those people are already long dead, making the genre play the same role as mundane fantasy.
So there's no reason not to do it?

>implying physics may funciton differently in different parts of space
>even though it's been proven both mathematically and experimentally that no, it can't.

You literally have no idea what you're talking about. Put down the Star Trek tech manuals, son, and pick up a real physics textbook sometime.

Why isn't FTL/time travel/etc. possible? Can you ELI5?

Hard Sf can be cool if they use theories which are matgematically sound.

In a nutshell:

>Relativity
>Cause and effect
>Faster than Light

Pick two, and only two. And bear in mind that Relativity has a massive amount of experimental evidence. Time dilation effects are built into the design of the GPS satellites that your phone is connected to right now, for example.
If FTL is true, then causality is boned, and time travel is a real thing. We ought to be receiving signals from the future, and seeing objects fall backwards in time and so forth.

Here: youtube.com/watch?v=msVuCEs8Ydo

Thanks!

>You literally have no idea what you're talking about.
And you do? I doubt an astrophysicist is going to waste time and energy shitposting on a Bosnian Bukkake Boardroom.

Besides, you're still only looking at it from the perspective of what we can do based on our limited understanding of the universe. We could literally wake up tomorrow morning and discover that some scientist managed to come up with some formula that actually makes the concept, if not possible, at least feasible sometime within the next century or two.
>We ought to be receiving signals from the future, and seeing objects fall backwards in time and so forth.
What if our current technology just isn't advanced enough to pick up on that yet? I mean, how is our current understanding black holes and what would actually happen if something survived going past the event horizon?

You're basically arguing "hey, just because 2+3 = 5 today, doesn't mean it'll always be 5! You don't know what we'll come up with tomorrow!"

Where can I see more of this pot smoking elf?

You know, the whole "you have never touched another object in your entire life, you're just a set of nerve impulses stuck inside a bone cage controlling a meat robot with sophisticated autopilot, your eyes aren't what you see with at a because your brain fucks with you constantly" etcetera etcetera didn't actually freak me out, I was just awestruck at the magnificence of the universe. Personally I'm a lot more optimistic about our eventual knowledge base, but against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain and all that.

I grew up an atheist, so maybe it helps to have the concept of humanity as infinitesimal markings on a dot internalised properly, because nobody else seemed to share my enthusiasm. This is why I'm kinda transhumanist, I sure as hell want to see more than the next seventy years of the universe and I view the whole "accepting death" thing as damned wierd and nonsensical rationalisation.

Then again, SOMA scared the shit out of me because I played it while tipsy and interspersed with late-night reading on logic and reason and moral problems and all sorts, which led to my first proper nightmare since I was three.

I'd hope so, but I sincerely doubt that'll actually happen. Great scientific ideas usually fall or are upgraded as a result of hundreds of experiments and repeats and multiple individual wounds, they don't vanish in an afternoon of brainstorming and we haven't seen anything reverse direction quite this suddenly pretty much ever. Not going to happen, user.

As for black holes, go ask Hawking. It's interesting but beyond my capabilities to even begin to understand.

Why I went into Biology, as a matter of fact. None of my grandiose goals of biological rejuvenation a la Peter F Hamilton or something similar are outright forbidden by the laws of physics as we know them, they're just a tad difficult, so it was either biology for directly working on that or politics to try and help.

IIRC it's a german web show about a ork, a high-elf and a human sharing a flat. I sadly forgot the name though

It's a weird German comedy called World of Wolfram.

youtube.com/channel/UCXl3hzTOeEUF18rHgtUV3zA

Am I wrong though? Because I'm pretty sure there already exists mathematical equations that would prove how 3+2=4 if you go into some of the higher level mathematical shit.

The thing is though, just because it usually doesn't happen doesn't mean that it can never happen. Now I'm not saying it will and I'm not saying it won't but let's be honest here, there's always going to be that X factor that throws everything out the window (or at least starts getting people to think outside the box) and I'm not going to say one thing or another is impossible just yet just because scientists hadn't found it yet.

Cosmic horror would be better if people would stop treating Lovecraft and the vaguely 20's as the end all of the genre. Alien is a good example of cosmic horror without retreading the same trappings.

There's nothing fresh about being investigators looking into the mysterious cult, the mad uncle's manor, or the abandoned insane asylum.

>I'm pretty sure there already exists mathematical equations that would prove how 3+2=4 if you go into some of the higher level mathematical shit.

And I'm pretty sure you could have gotten a C in high school math if you had cut down on the pot smoking. But it's way too late for that now, the damage is clearly done.

...

>numbers are just words, and words can do whatever you want them to, maaaaan!
>there are no right or wrong answers in math!

So disappoint.

(You)

Hey, I'm not the one who claimed that you can totally prove that 3+2=4 in "some higher level mathematical shit." (Is that a technical term you learned in college?)
That's total nonsense and I think you know it.

Quit bumping this shitty thread, while you're at it.

Just because you don't know something doesn't mean that it's nonsense user.

>Quit bumping this shitty thread, while you're at it.
YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD FAGGOT! BUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMP!

>Duuuude, you can't KNOW things

In fact, I DO know, because I actually picked up some textbooks from time to time and learned, but that's because I'm not a stupid hippie.
If you can prove that 3+2=4, Good Vibes, I'd like to see it. Hell, I'd also like to see monkeys fly out of your butt -- just to give you something to do that you might actually accomplish. Not that you'll ever accomplish anything.

Go to bed, son! I've got a busy night of plowing your mom to get to.

Y'see, this is what I was saying about you being closed-minded. You assume you know everything and disregard anything that conflicts with your worldview.

Junji Ito does it well, as well. One of his most well known manga is a horror story where the antagonist is the shape of a spiral.

>Having opinions that are this bad

Well-known, yes, but it wasn't scary. The head balloon story was way scarier than anything in Uzumaki.

True. Uzumaki and Gyo were more compelling and thrilling than scary. The head balloons, some of the Tomie stuff, and a couple of the other short-stories are where it gets scary.

Name one story in the past 10 years that sold the cosmic horror theme that was genuinely terrifying.

Saying you can prove 3+2=4 doesn't mean jack shit unless you do it. This is math, not a support group, your feelings don't matter one bit. Show your work or shut the fuck up.

You can't, though. You don't know what you're talking about, and you're mad that other people do, and want to pretend that that everyone's opinions are equal and nobody really knows things you don't, so you can hide from your nerd ego problems without having to actually learn or work on yourself or anything. Cut that shit out.

Wow, you are really projecting a lot of insecurity onto me just because I questioned your world view. Are you usually this confrontational or is it only when you know that your actions are free from consequence?

I challenged you to put up or shut up, and you still aren't putting up, user. Science is a contact sport, quit being a pussy about it. SHOW me I'm wrong, instead of waving your hands and whining about possibilities like an art student. That's how science gets done.

While it is not exactly a "story" in the traditional sense, Bloodborne handled the concept of eldritch monstrosities and cosmic horror fairly well.

Is this what you do when someone challenges your hypothesis, loudly and angrily badger them until they shut down and apologize for questioning you?

The irony is that you're too far gone to even realize that everything that we know about modern science started off as a philosophy that grew into a field of acedemics. It doesn't matter who is wrong or who is right because the prerogative of everyone involved should be to gain a better understanding on the world around them by question whether or not they're correct.

If we're being honest here, you sound way too pig headed to be a scientist.

No decent horror story, especially a cosmic horror story, is going to have a narrative where the protagonist actually kills the monster.

Not to say Bloodborne isn't a good game but the way it's designed gives people way too much power to really sell the horror angle properly beyond making the bosses big, ugly, and as non-euclidian as you can given our current level of technology.

>Is this what you do when someone challenges your hypothesis, loudly and angrily badger them until they shut down and apologize for questioning you?

Here's how this works: You make a positive claim, then you back it the fuck up. Then I try to tear down your argument, and if it's still standing at the end, then that means your claims are solid, and I'd shake your hand.
What's actually happening here, however, is that you make a number of claims, refuse to back any of them up, and keep hiding behind feelings and shit that has no place in a discussion of mathematics and science.

Either back your shit up, or admit you're full of it and withdraw your claims.

I would argue that being socially detached is itself not special anymore, because the normies are doing it better than us.

Horror vidya is just intrinsically different from literary or cinematic horror because it has to work as a game. You're not scared because the monster can kill you: this is a video game, you'll beat it eventually. You're scared because the game itself makes you feel uncomfortable on many levels, and for most people that is their deepest fear: having to live in a state of nigh-overwhelming discomfort that they can strain against but only ever momentarily overcome.

I will do neither, because this was not meant to be a discussion where one side wins and the other side loses, it's purely food for thought that you're taking way too seriously for your own good.

In 2017, FTL and teleportation technology is impossible. In the year 2217 or later, who knows how far our technology will have advanced and what we discover about the galaxy?

You honestly remind me of every stereotypical scientist in every form of media, angrily shouts down anything that challenges their world view, views their field of study as a competition rather than discovery for the sake of discovery, and being so focused on what he already knows that he never questions how little he actually knows and feels self-conscious when encountering something beyond their depth.

I feel sorry for you but hope that one day you improve as both a scientist and a person.

What's it like finding out that "I'm smart!" isn't enough to make anyone care to convince you of something?

Whatever you're not getting in your actual life, I'm sorry you're trying to get it here.

I guess it depends on how you view the endings too. Like the interpretation that despite everything you go through, it was just a fetal god's nightmare and you've changed absolutely nothing. People will continue to come, and those inside continue to be stuck there.

>food for thought

Is not new, or original, or helpful. Tired platitudes aren't doing anyone any good.

>In the year 2217 or later, who knows

We do, thanks to all the people who've devoted their lives to the advancement of human knowledge, to building up our hard-won store of facts bit by bit with their blood, sweat, and tears, can tell you right now, nobody's going to invent pixie dust that lets us fly faster than light. If we were to do so in two hundred years, guys like you could just fly back to today and say "I told you so."

>encountering something beyond their depth.

Look, I've seen guys like you sit around and make wise pronouncements my whole life, and not one of you has ever produced anything of value with it. You sit there smugly saying that we can't know the things we know, and it's a slap in the face to everyone who ever worked hard to unravel the universe's secrets. You're not beyond my depth, you're as deep as a puddle. You have nothing to back up any of your pronouncements.

And science IS a competition. When you step into the ring, you fight hard for your claims, and you don't let other people off easy. That's how you get shit like Piltdown man, an embarrasment to this day. And yes, it's not supposed to be personal, though I'll admit I've gotten a bit personal here -- I'm sorry about that. I am a little drunk right now, but you just strike me as some asshole who thinks he can climb into a boxing ring and show everyone how tough he is, but then doesn't throw a single punch and cries when the other guy hits him. If you had anything but sophistry, you might actually have a point, and I'd really like you to have one. I wasn't lying upthread when I said I was disappointed in you. I would honestly love to be shown I'm wrong here, but you won't, and you can't, and it straight-up sucks. Stop pretending you understand things you don't. It's not impressing me or anybody else.

Fuck it, I just passed out while typing this. I gotta go lie down.

Cosmic horror may be obsolete, sure, but what about psychological horror? Is it a good idea to use your players' (because this is Veeky Forums, not Veeky Forums) phobias and nightmares in a campaign? For example, peoples' brains think up some weird shit when they're dreaming. Take a look at this and try to figure out what I was dreaming of, because it was the first legit nightmare I had and analyzed before I could forget it.

>Tired platitudes aren't doing anyone any good.
Because most people are too busy talking to actually listen to what the other person is saying. It's like saying that dancing is stupid because both parties want to take the lead.
>We do
We really don't, otherwise there wouldn't be people dedicating time and energy into figuring out a way to make it possible.
>Look, I've seen guys like you sit around and make wise pronouncements my whole life, and not one of you has ever produced anything of value with it.
And I've seen people like you too, people who assume that they have all the answers and assume that everyone who disagrees with them is an idiot until they realize just how little they know, and sink into a spiraling depression, rather than taking it as a learning experience to keep one's mind open to the possibilities.
>Fuck it, I just passed out while typing this. I gotta go lie down
Maybe you wouldn't be passing out so much if you learned to calm down a little.

Your dream probably had something to do with you being beckoned to a place you didn't know because of some force that triggered your curiosity and every step you took, you felt unease because you went from familiar territory to the unknown, with every new stimuli triggering fear because you had no idea what it was or what its intentions were.

How close am I?

>Being such a fat loser that typing out random bullshit on a basket weaving forum causes him to pass out like a bitch.
This is why I make anyone who joins my game do 10 push ups before they can build a character, because nobody wants to play with a fat loser who thinks who knows everything when it's clear that he gets most of his sources from reddit and public access television.

Pretty good analysis. The only major fault is that I knew where I was: my home church.

Here's the synopsis:
I was in the entry hallway of my church like any other Sunday morning, except there was nobody around except a shadowy woman whose face I couldn't recognize. Whenever I turned my head, she would just appear at a random point in my field of view. I got panicky and headed into the church sanctuary, but she followed me and wouldn't stop her teleporting thing. She finally disappeared after a little while longer, but then I heard hauntingly beautiful humming behind me, getting closer and closer, until all of a sudden she screamed in my ear at max volume. Lather, rinse, repeat for a while, then things got really weird. She finally appeared right in my face and gave me an incredibly cold kiss that felt/tasted like "entire tin of Altoids"+"frozen corpse". I can't remember much after that.

The trouble is that while it scared and aroused me, I doubt that sort of thing would scare my friends.

Psychological horror really requires that you understand your players more than they understand themselves, which is hard as fuck to do even if you're not suffering from autism like most fa/tg/uys do.

Beyond that, it pretty much comes down to description, because saying "you get clawed, take 9 damage" doesn't have nearly as much impact when it comes outta nowhere and the group has no idea where the attack came from.

>And if it could, it then becomes trivial to send signals or even objects backward in time.
This is wrong, fuck you. It's like saying infinity exists in reality because math can model it.