Horror Roleplaying Part 2: The Setup

• Tweet
• Share
• Email

• Tweet
• Share
• Email

The success of your horror roleplaying campaign can sometimes be determined before you even pick up the dice to make your characters. More than any other genre, a horror game requires some careful thought and preparation. This is necessary because creating a sense of horror is a careful and delicate matter; it requires you to manipulate the psychology of your players, and unless you are some kind of prodigy, playing people like musical instruments doesn’t happen off the cuff. You have to prepare yourself to create this sensation.

Playing a horror game is not frequently the default option of a gaming group. So the act of choosing this genre requires your players to buy in to the experience. Make sure everyone is on board! If you have someone who is likely to not enjoy the genre, you might need to have a discussion with them to figure out why they’re reticent. Better to get these issues out in the open rather than have the person disturb the atmosphere you’re trying to create. More than any other genre, the horror campaign needs people to collectively buy in to the experience. Everyone likes a joke around the table, but too much horsing around can really kill the mood. So before you get started, make sure you’ve aired this issue with your players and asked for their help in maintaining the mood during session. People will still crack jokes, but at least you’ll be able to ask them to keep to their agreement. Don’t be so hung up on the atmosphere, however, that you kill the fun – after all, that’s the main reason to have a group come together regularly for a game anyway. Just try to keep the moments of levity restricted. Let the players have their joke – join in, for goodness sake – but don’t continue on with the game until the moment has passed. Take your time and be patient. There’s no point being so doggedly determined to make headway in a plot that you end up having a session that’s not horrifying.

Horror plots require the game master to be thoroughly aware of the details. This is more true than in many other settings. In a fantasy game you can always throw a few monsters at your players if you can’t be bothered to think up a great story. Keep them active and they’ll be satisfied. In almost any other game, you can sling foes or mysteries at your players willy-nilly, on the fly. Not in a horror game. If you end up reaching for the “Big Book of Undead” and have a thousand zombies suddenly arrive out of nowhere – that’s not horrifying. You need to put a bit of thought into how you intend to scare your players. If you’re running a published scenario you need to know it inside out. It can destroy the mood to fumble about in your campaign book for the information you’re after or having to ret-con something after the fact. “Sorry, guys – that tentacle monster wasn’t in the drawing room after all. Pretend that whole thing didn’t happen. Jim, you’re still alive.” Not horrifying. Not in the good way at least. So take the time to know your plot inside out.

A real help in establishing a sense of horror is to pay a lot of attention to the suspension of disbelief and blending the boundary between the real and the imagined. The first way to do this is to establish your setting. I would recommend, if you have the choice, going with a modern setting. Whereas there are some negative sides to this – it’s difficult to isolate the characters in this day and age, your players might know more about a particular place than you do – the immediacy of the imagined experience will be a lot more poignant. Your setting must be believable, and that’s easier to achieve when it’s familiar. All roleplaying – in fact all story telling – involves an element of truth and an element of fiction. You get people to set aside their disbelief and buy into the experience when you take pains to couch that fiction in the truth. Setting your story in an immediate locale or time allows you to twist reality just slightly, facilitating your player’s suspension of disbelief.

A little research will get you far. If you’re writing a campaign, have a look at some newspapers and use the events described as a basis for your plot. Use ancient mythology to people your world with the extraordinary. There’s a real potence in using world mythologies to underpin your stories. If you follow a Jungian argument, the motifs found in myth speak to a deep, hidden part of ourselves, our subconscious, the place of our dreams. Use this connection to manipulate your player’s mood. As a benefit, as your players investigate these episodes from myth or history, you won’t have to spend effort creating or writing props – just find them. Point your players to the sources online. Present your players with a real tome of mythological lore, the appropriate page bookmarked. Touching the physical object, a mundane object from the real world, reinterpreted into a horrific paradigm, should have your players locking their doors and checking the shadows.

Which brings us to props. I’m not an expert on prop making, but I really wish I was! Spending a little time and effort to source or create a physical object for your players to encounter further blurs the lines between reality and your fiction.

Above all, take the time to think about horror and how you might create it. There are some great studies of the genre and thoughts on how to write horrific literature. Much of this information can directly translate into your game. Spending a little time thinking about the construction of horror and how to scare the wits out of your players will really pay off.

Similar Posts:

• Joshua Hoffine Cthulhu Horror Photography
• A post on setting the scene for a horror roleplaying game
• H.P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book
• Mixing up your Roleplaying Game: Cast of Characters Roleplaying
• I AM THE GAME!