What elements make up a good "undersea horror" game?
>Unsettling marine life?
>Graveyards of wrecks?
>Dark, crushing depths?
What scenes and setpieces are must-haves for such games? What encounters or enemies are best suited to them? How do you really put fear of the watery abyss into your players?
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Check out Diluvion. It's got all that shit you need.
I like what I'm perceiving here to be a contrast between comfort and danger. The subs and stations are rustbuckets, but warm and familiar ones, while the undersea is wondrous and mysterious but also terrifying and unpredictable.
Bingo. You want players to feel scared? You need to give them places to feel safe. If they feel scared all the time, scary becomes the new normal and it stops being scary. Have shallow regions of sea that are familiar, well-traveled, and relatively safe. There's still dangers there, of course- pirates, sudden and violent currents, etc.
When they're trying to return to these safe areas, provide obstacles, add delays. Limit how long the sub can go without docking somewhere to restock air, fuel, etc- this adds urgency when they can see this vital resource just tick tick ticking away.
The greatest source of unease is going to be that they're fucking blind in the dark depths of the ocean. Sonar is only so effective, and spotlights only go so far. What's worse?
Both are going to attract the attention of other things in the deep. Not just submarines, but creatures. If you're trying to shake a kraken, for example, the second to last thing you want to do is kick on your floodlights to make sure you aren't going to bump into anything. The absolutely fucking last thing you want to do is send out a sonar ping, because then that nasty sea beasty is going to know exactly where you are, and so will every other nasty sea beasty for miles and miles.
The players should have to decide if they want to use sonar or not. Sure, it reveals vital information about their surroundings, but it broadcasts their position to everyone. Have the players navigate a minefield while being pursued by pirates or assassins. They have to send out sonar pings to try plotting courses, but each one they put out brings their pursuers closer to plugging a torpedo/scrap cannon shot up their ass.
That puts me in mind of some location, a stretch of the abyss where a sub crew must maintain silence lest they attract the attention of something dark and terrible. No sonar. No radio. No talking or making any loud noises inside the sub at all. Test how well the PCs can use improvised hand signals and note-writing and maintain their cool when surrounded by danger they can barely perceive.
Tell me about the setting you have in mind, user. Why are the players underwater at all in the first place?
If you don't really have any in mind, I cannot recommend you play Diluvion enough. It has such a unique and colorful setting that would be perfect for a TTRPG.
In all honestly, I hadn't begun the thread with a particular game in the works. I enjoy the creative process and seeing what wonders and horrors Veeky Forums can come up with together. I thought it might be fun and inspirational to others wanting to run undersea horror games.
The first thing I would do is make a systematic chart of the sea and a nautical map.
Another thing I would do is have the locations of all sunken islands or flooded areas that have been undersea for longer than 1000 years.
Dark crushing depths are a must, but remember, despite the enormous pressure, quite a few things are huge as fuck in the deepest darkest areas, due to abyssal gigantism.
As for unsettling marine life, Dunkleosteous is a good example of that, so is the Pelican Eel and the Goblin Shark. The Greenland Shark is unsettling too, but seems to be mostly a scavenger and has small weak teeth. Anomolocaris is another freakish creature, and Hallucigenia. Note that I'm not 100% I'm spelling these latin species names right, but they're all extinct, I doubt they would get triggered by it.