Is it possible to run a horror campaign when the players are superheroes?

This may help you.

So guy makes heroes and the villains who killed them reshape the world as he helplessly watches on?

There is a post zombie apocalypse superhero rpg for d20 (i think) out there. Was a fun read

Look up the Cosmic Marvel stuff about the Cancerverse. Basically Marvel if Lovecraftian gods existed in it.

Also Batman: Arkham Asylum comic from 1989. Basically its just Batman fighting his way out of Arkham Asylum but again it has Lovecraftian horror overtones and is more about the madness of the inmates than POW KAZAM fights.

Isn't there an X men universe horror movie coming out with Maisie Williams? Look at the comic that's based on.

Doom Patrol is a good inspiration for Weird Horror.

Is it possible to run a horror campaign when the players are not afraid?

You play up the fact that they're superheroes. They would prefer if only they had to take on the horrors that wait for them, but the people that they want to protect are helpless in the face of whatever horror is out there. There are many and heroes are few, they can't save everyone.

Depends on what kind of horror you want.
Horror can be what the defenseless civilian feels when Superman gets his skull caved in by Doomsday.
Horror can be what superman feels when he realizes that Doomsday is about to cave in his skull and that there isn't much he can do.
You can make it gritty and edgy like any of the "x kills the marvel universe" comics out there, you can go the psycological horror route and have the bad guys be massive mindfuckers.
The justice league cartoon has a great episode on this where Doctor Destiny makes every hero face his greatest nightmare(Flash goes too fast for everyone else, Superman loses control completely, etc) Batman defeats him by staying awake and humming some childish song, but that's beyond the point. The point would be that mindfuckery makes for good visual horror, but can be hard to explain in a campaign

>is it possible to crack a joke at a funeral?
Nothing stops you cept for your audience...

Same holds true for your comment, what's the point in running a game your players share no interest in. Horror is especially difficult to do if you don't have players who can be both enthusiastic about it and willing to immerse themselves in the atmosphere.

Reality is the main safety net preventing most people from clicking with the horror genre. It's not real, therefore nothing to be afraid of.
This is why immersion is important, if the players can't lose themselves in the setting, then it won't carry the same impact.

Coupled with the fact that horror is a deeply personal subject and not everyone is phobic of the same material means you also have to know your players pretty well to know how to get under their skin and instill a sense of creeping dread. It's definitely not the kind of game you want to run with a bunch of Roll20 randos'.

What sort of horror?

Personal horror, cosmic horror, religious horror, body horror, gothic horror?

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You should read Marvel Zombies.

My first thought is a Starro expy taking over the A-list heroes in your setting and the players are all B or C-listers who now have to deal with Superman and Flash and such trying to kill them but them in turn not wanting to kill the possessed heroes.

Extra points if the possessed heroes are still able to talk and are begging the other heroes they're fighting to save them.

Fucking this right here. Starro will always be scarier to me than any other DC, Marvel or Image villain save Dakrseid.

Cosmic stuff can get pretty terrifying anything from existential horror to body horror can occur.

Punisher types can be pretty terrifying on a street level as would anything that can hit the higher rungs of capeshit

The Crooked World was so fucking good, better than it had any right to be,

Oh, definitely. The entire Slaughterhouse 9 arc of Worm is great material for this.

This. Mr.Nobody in a game will be the best boss ever.

Comic books in general scare me when you think about the myriad of horrific beings that prey on the people who weren’t lucky enough for Captain Superfag to save them

Players?

Seconding Cosmic Marvel.

Also, a buttload of X-men comics and good old batman comics.

The core of any good superhero horror story is a mystery, and threats that are meaningful.

The Supernatural Handbook for Mutants&Masterminds is specifically about adding horror into supers games

The question is, why do you want to play a horror game?
Do you want to spook the players?

You on some Hellboy shit

For sure my dude. Read Jeff Lemire's run on Animal Man to see a solid recent example, complete with art so grotesque the original artist had to quit

It's possible but unlikely. Power fantasy tends not to mix with the feeling of helplessness you need for horror.

And now the DC version of that.

See Galactus Trilogy

Yes.

World of Darkness games only pretend to be horror, they're just edgelord xmen

There is a book series called EX-Heroes, EX-Patriots, EX-Communication, EX-Purgation, EX-Aisle. which exactly this, superheroes dealing with the zombie apocalypse and the aftermath. I have read the first 4 books (didnt notice a 5th had come out) and its not bad. in order to pull it off though you cant let players be superman, they have to be limited to only a couple powers, and the players have to know that the survival of humanity and humans is more important than them. Otherwise your powered players arent going to give a shit about NPC's and your humans are probably just going to try to kill your PC's for not helping the humans.

As much as people lobe to hate it, worm has bits that could be good inspiration.

Marvel Zombies gets pretty horrific, so as long as the players aren't the only superheroes then yes

Marvel Zombies was cool, but make sure some characters are resistant/immune. Marvel zombies had literally no one survive, which sounds like a "rocks fall, you die" scenario to me.

Having the PC's be strangely resistant to a disease that plagues the world would be cool. gives them potential goals to complete (study cure, uncover reason for immunity/source of disease)

Trap them in a alternate reality ruled by a crooked god.

I love the ending.
They got the necronomicon and it wasn't responsible.

Marvel Zombies, as shit as it isn

Does anyone have that image, I'm not sure of its source, about how it would be more efficient for Superman to just run on treadmills forever than to fly around beating up bad guys if all he cared about was helping as many people as possible?

That's what I reckon your best bet for super-hero horror/terror would be. Imagine a superhero setting without plot-armour or plot railroads (and don't make the mistake of thinking violence and killing is what that means; the Punisher is just as much capeshit as Superman) and then dump your players into it. Think of the abuse you can put a person through with a superpower or even better their own superpower. Like organ farming regenerators or press ganging someone who can do something really silly like grow two heads into spec-ops style wet work purely because they are technically superpowered and then not anime-ifying/plot railroading that person into some kind of a badass who can actually contribute.

The main hiccough here is that stylistically Superhero and Horror games are basically opposed to each other. Heroes are all about being powerful and in control whereas Horror is about lack of all that. Good luck reconciling the two.

>VtM
The only horror there is the game mechanics.

Imagine. A villain they can't just punch or blast away. The Horror.

This one? By SMBC.

Of course the other option is to make it a kind of play between the superman and the ubermensch, if you will.
Trying to keep your humanity while you become more powerful and less able to relate to others.

A kind of combination of Supergod, Watchmen, and Exalted. Amongst others.

>Supergod
Oh yes, I can recommend this not enough. Cold War gets Hot but instead of nukes we god artificial deities. Was a bit too short though.

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youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2HTPdv7rk

Maybe.

>Marvel Zombies, as shit as it isn
The first couple runs were fun.

Came to post this. The new storyline centered around rehabilitated, broken heroes is pretty fascinating to me. They would make a much better villain team, but they really don’t want to be.

To expand on that, they were all members of an asylum, and now they’re trying to fit back into society. A society that just went through a literal End of the World. Plus powers are starting to go haywire and kill new heroes who gain them.

Plenty of horror, tho.

Run an animal man inspired game

Probably not. The inherent idea of horror involves being weaker than the thing that wants to hurt you.

Nah, worm is unreadable shit.

I liked it. I have been accused of bad taste though.

Sure. Just give them something that their powers don't really work all that well on, or something that, despite their power, they can't really stop.

>Zombie apocalypse in the end stages
Great, now they get the horror of being survivors as the world collapses, people starve, and they have to watch governments make Hard Decisions (tm) and enact Continuity of Government programs that are abandoning people to die.

Or throw a straight-up biblical or Hindu-tier demon or fallen angel at them. You think a demon gives one flying fuck about your water powers? It's a horrifying wheel of fire, eyes, hands and incredible power. Hell, you can't even really KILL the damn thing, because it just goes back to hell and THEN COMES BACK. Even Evil Dead-style is fine, since now every dead person can come back as a suped-up human, or people can get possessed, the trees try to rape you, the buildings turn against you, or you have to chop off your hand and it will grow a New You. Get creative.

Or throw a Lich at them, where instead of super powers it just has verstile magic, where it can emulate pretty much any power, and doesn't stay dead.

Or give them a ghost, or some other spectral entity, or fucking Slenderman for all that matters. Something they literally cannot damage. Sure the ghost may not be able to harm them, but it will continue to exist. Possession is an absolute bitch, and you can only Hulk-out so much before you realize you are pasting people who have 0 control over themselves.

Definitely check out early Vertigo and pre-Vertigo comics. Animal Man, very early Sandman and Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, the Doom Patrol, Black Orchid, Kid Eternity, Shade the Changing Man and things like that. These are all still very much superhero stories grounded in the larger DC universe. Pic related is a horror masterpiece and Doctor Destiny is to this day a regular Justice League villain.

Yes. Run it on Don't Rest Your Head.

Oh god I remember what Dr. Destiny did in that diner

Send them against a cult.

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Nemesis is actually designed for this. Hell Boy esque adventures

Definitely.

What kind of horror?

Clive Barker-esque human horror, think Exalted. The more powerful you are, the more uncontrollable your human passions. The seven deadly sins loom larger, you are a tragic Herculean figure.

Cosmic horror? Well there are two routes. Either your powers are part of the cosmic horror and are thus corrupting or, more interesting in my opinion, being Superman actually does not allow you in any way to stop the inevitable destruction of human civilization and you are intimately aware of this fact.

Visceral horror? Mid-level city superheroes can kill Jasons all they want, but they always come back. Its a constant battle, keeping those teens alive, and all our Spidermans bear scars from those machetes.

Well there's Zenith and Miracleman that proposed that the heros are basically low-tier cosmic horrors.

Also The Invisibles.

Marvel does that too, what with superpowers being the result of space god meddling.

wat?!

Yeah sure, you can do superhero horror. Pic related had a whole bunch of horror stuff going on.

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New Mutants was not a horror comic tho

You forgot one.
Horror can be what Superman feels when he realizes he has to take a life if he’s to save his own and others.

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? was so goddamn good.

This. A horror that can threaten even super heroes makes it all the more horrifying. Make them street level heroes with low level abilities, and even the ones who are super strong can't stack up alone against whatever they are facing

Have the heroes face threats and situations that can't be solved by just super strength or shooting lasers. Enemies that possess strange, otherworldly powers that are not easy to fully understand, foes that are hard to comprehend. Not some cosmic horror shit, just things beyond normalcy. But be sure to remember, don't have them fight something that just outright ignores their powers and makes them useless, their powers and abilities should work, just that said powers only postpone things, but not for long, never for long.

Post some hero horror. We've had a spate of pretty good superhero threads of late, no reason this one should be any different.

>Very friendly. He's like a grandpa or a great-uncle; he's someone you know but don't get to see very often. He's always large, never under ten feet, and he's always dragging something along behind him, usually a vehicle, something large enough for people to crawl or walk into. He exudes safety, friendliness, down-home comfort. People hop into whatever vehicle he's dragging and cheer. Then he makes for the nearest body of water. The cheering never stops, even when they're in the water. And then he's gone.

Nightbane from Palladium Games is Superhero Horror

Possibly, but it's kind of a pain in the ass to build superheroes, so if you intend on regularly killing your player characters, they're gonna get annoyed at having to constantly build new heroes.

This series was kinda dumb, I was never sure why the gods tried murdering each other, instead of doing other shit.

Yes, just come up with a situation that has them facing something that is outside of their grasp to deal with.
Lock the fire manipulator in a sinking ship, submarine or space station or something like that or make the actions have terrible consequences.
Losing your shit over how little you can do to prevent something terrible from happening can be quite scary.

If you can't do that because they are too powerful or not invested enough in their characters to care then there's not much you can do.

Eh, it makes sense. You're created to serve your country, given immense powers, and you're damn certain that your way is the right way.

Anyone else who disagrees, who thinks differently... they end up being a rival/enemy.

The Rotted Capes system is kinda good for this.
The idea is its the zombie apocalypse and Superman was patent zero with the exception that anyone who was a meta-human before they were bit retains their intelligence but becomes a heartless murder-machine while normal humans just become shambling ghouls.
The players are C list heroes or villains who weren't there when not-superman called the whole justice-friends together and bit every one of them (except not-batman because he was somehow ready and escaped) trying to survive. The system can be kinda wonky but i've always loved the idea.

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What issue is this?

No. Because superheroes only quip away their problems.

When they respond with nothing but "witty" humour even to the scenes that you feel are supposed to be frightening. it takes the wind out of your sails.

You can't run superheroes in general at all unless they can foster in a quippy environment.

It's from Zenith

The old man is a eugenicist who believed that bringing about superhumans would bring about the ascension of mankind.

He wasn't wrong, but the ascension of mankind does not imply the ascension of humanity's soul. The superhumans became... corrupted isn't the right word, mantles of their infinite power, contemptuous of mankind and life and the universe, and eventually used their power to wipe out mankind and do what you see,
becoming cosmic horrors,

At least, that's what they think happened.

But what actually happened?

see
The heroes trapped them inside the Chimera.

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u

Just about all of the fights are against Krishna, who's 'saving India' from Indians and the rest of the world by aggressively terraforming the continent.

The exceptions are Morrigan-Lugus who never really fights and Dajjal, who's just bored.

The Mutant X storyline is exactly that and it is an awesome story.

Mutant X...
Isn't that Proteus?