This is a C+V from the FtB thread



There is a link to quick start rules available toward the top of the page.

Interesting. That seems to be a good way to create tension in encounters, but my only thing is that just because it's tension doesn't necessarily mean that it serves the horror theme.

Something that was discussed elsewhere is the notion that anticipation, especially anticipation of death, can build horror.

But check out the test drive and see if there's enough there for you to run that sort of game.

In my experience you really need the right group to do a horror game well. It's a very different mind space than the “usual” RPG character occupies. I've done a few 4 session “mini-campaigns” in the horror genre, usually as a kind of palate cleanser between more typical campaigns of different genres. The game that I'm currently running is winding down, and I'm looking to bring it to a close in the next 5 sessions or so, and I've been eyeing Dread for our mini-horror fix. The escalating tension of the Jenga tower seems tailor made for an episodic horror game.


I think that a horror game is among the hardest to get “right” at the table. Maintaining the mood is a much greater challenge than in a “standard” game, and you really depend on the players to seriously buy in. This was killing me the first few times that I tried to run horror because one of my players seems physically incapable of playing a character who is really, really afraid of something. He can play nervous, even a bit jumpy, but as far as gut-churning, mind-blanking fear... not so much. Then again maybe he's great at it, I wouldn't really know... I've never really seen him try.


So there we were, a GM and 3 players really trying to get into a horror game, and one guy just not seeming to feel it. Finally I decided to sit down with him after a session and talk about his feelings towards the game (yeah, I know I should have talked it over with him after the first session, but I was young and inexperienced... I waited until the second session). We talked about it for awhile and what came out of the discussion was that he really liked the concept of a modern (sometimes modern-ish) horror game, but he hated playing a “scaredy-cat”. He liked doing the investigations, he liked dealing with the NPCs, he liked the creepiness of the events, he liked everything about horror... except the being afraid part.


Well this seemed kind of strange to me, but being passable facsimiles of reasonable people, we eventually came up with a workable solution. We wrote up his character's back story as “the experienced guy”. So if the characters were unexposed to the harsh “realities” of the horror setting, (like the fact that there are zombies, or that in his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies, dreaming) then he plays an ex soldier who's seen some combat. If the investigators are part of a group that knows about these things, then he's been in the field before now, and has encountered the supernatural before.


So he still runs from the zombie, but he runs because that last bullet didn't work any better than the first three and he needs to withdraw, not because he's terrified of the walking corpse. He still frantically searches for clues and pursues investigations, but out of a desire to figure out how to overcome whatever is going on, not out of any kind of desperate fear. He even gets edgy and nervous about the general creepiness of it all, because he's afraid of failure, but still not really afraid to die. It sounds game-breaking on paper, but in practice it actually works out fairly well. I'm sure in a longer campaign it would cause more friction, but for the 1 – 4 session horror games we play, it works out. Then again only playing between other campaigns also keeps it a little fresher, I suppose.



Bottom line, horror gaming isn't for every group... or at least not for every player in the group.