What, two Trope posts in the same week?
Why not? It’s been ages since I wrote any of them, and this is Halloween after all.
With a satisfying ‘thunk’ Tragak the barbarian sheared the Orc Shaman’s head, sending it flying in the room’s dank, dark corner. As he was looting the body, he failed to notice the eight spindly spider legs bursting out of the shaman’s brain case and 2 huge mandibles pop out of the head’s eye sockets in a jet of aqueous gunk. Tragak was in for a surprise.
A lot has been written about Horror RPGs and how to host a scary game. The word out is that it’s not easy scaring players, even less easy to scare PCs without coercion.
Well I decided to add my voice to the echo chamber by digging in the deepest wells of my depraved soul to come up with some seriously troubling imagery.
And what better way to look for new ways to scare the guts out of your players than looking at one Horror Trope I find intriguing and troubling:
A catch-all term describing stuff in popular culture that gave us nightmares, whether they meant to or not.
To really be effective Nightmare Fuel, as our examples show, you’ll need something that was meant to either amuse, entertain, or be only slightly scary to the audience. In execution, they’re so trauma-inducing that they may cause even adults to void themselves in terror.
When the effect is 100% intentional, the trope becomes Unleaded.
Take an aspect that defines your favorite Roleplaying game but push it too far and see the result. Go for out of this world creepiness that will make your players skin crawl.
Fantasy Nightmare Fuel #1
The PCs are asked to recover a legendary suit of plate mail armour renowned to be nearly weightless and make it’s wearer nigh invulnerable. As the player race to recover the item against a recurring villain, they arrive just too late and see him wearing it.
During the ensuing fight, the villain is hard to hit and the armour lashes out with tentacle-like metal spikes whenever it is hit. However, as soon as the villain becomes bloodied/badly wounded, the tentacle dig in the Villain’s wounds and the armour starts flowing inside the wearer’s body!
Screaming inhumanly, the villain’s organs burst out from all sides as the armour fuses with his wearer’s muscles and Bones, becoming a dread construct of gore and Steel, ready to unleash its true potential.
Fantasy Nightmare Fuel #2
While eating at the Inn and waiting for the next dancing plot point to show up. the PCs hear disgustingly wet popping sounds all around them. Looking up from their mutton, they notice that all other customers are turning inside out, exposing their insides and rising as freakishly bloodied and chunky zombies… Then have the Innkeeper’s family burst out of the kitchen, fangs-a-showing, telling the PCs that ‘this meal is on the House’
Modern Nightmare fuel #1
A lone, very anxious 6 year old is running scared and crying in the streets of your campaign’s metropolis. Whenever people stop to help her and look her in the eyes, she screams in fear as they turn into grotesquely inflated fanged psychotic clowns!
The circus is in town, and the only way to stop it is to wake the sleepwalking girl, gently…
Modern Nightmare Fuel #2
On a dark night under the shadow of some ancient evil, a gun fight erupts between the PCs and a street Gang. An inordinate amount of screaming and cries of pain are heard throughout the fight. Investigating leads to the gruesome discovery that all bullets are alive and doing all the screaming, drowning in blood and suffocating in the bodies of the dead people…
Further investigation leads to the discovery that a twisted priest of chaos has trapped the souls of countless innocents into ammunition and is engineering gang violence to sacrifice all these souls to bring about Chaosocalypse.
Modern Nightmare Fuel #3
One name, The Corinthian
Fear is in your head
Horror roleplaying is about atmosphere, setting, mood and description. Don’t try to scare PCs, go for the players. Give them the creepiest WTF moments you think they can handle… and the ask them how their characters react.
Therein lies you next drum of nightmare fuel that will leave your players creeped out long after the game.
Happy Halloween.
Credits: Robin Stacey (Ragz), Sandman comics (The Corinthian)
Unspeakably awesome. I’m sooooo going to steal some of these. 😀
Thanks man! I don’t GM horror a lot, but when I put my mind to it, the looks on my players faces is so worth it!
I think I like Fantasy Nightmare fuel #2 the best. But wouldn’t something that severe require something along the lines of a fear check for the PC’s?
This is definitely one of Rip’s strong points is to add horror to the game. Even though we’re already playing a “horror genre” type game in Ravenloft, if the DM is no good at it the game will flop. The majority of the game we’re in currently, Rip has wrote himself, only using the box set “Masque of the Red Death” as a guide for his world. He’s shocked us more than once at the table, and myself and the other players have had a ball with it.
Personally, I think if anyone is looking for advice for adding horror to the game, he’s definitely the go to guy.
@Tala: I curently object to fear checks in the Heroic games. I play in, I find them to be too artificial.
I found that scaring/creeping the player automatically makes the PCs they control being played as more cautious and fearful.
Why don’t you get Rip to chime in here?
I’d love to see his take on horror RPGs.
I’ve always found that one key to gamemastering horror is to present situations that are not only creepy, but aren’t affected by the players’ abilities and thus cause some anxiety. “Okay, you can’t hit this with regular weapons… magic weapons don’t seem to work… silver weapons ineffective… RUN!!!”. Then they have to figure out how to deal with it. It turns hack and slash into a mystery… so they can go back to hack and slash.
The other thing is to make the threats vague along with making situations and adversaries creepy. You play “hide the monster” and only let the players see the after-effects — people gone made, half-eaten bodies, the brave NPC who’s not afraid of anything suddenly freaking out. Make it so they’re off-kilter and not sure what to be prepared for. Sew seeds of doubt in their ability to handle the situation. Set it up right, and you can have a friggin’ kobold jump out at them and they’ll crap their pants.
Berin Kinsmans last blog post..Friday Brunch: October 31, 2008
I love horror movies!
Again – great stuff! Fantasy #1 strikes my imagination the most. I can see the scene in my head (great storytelling here).
We don’t delve into horror often in our group.
It reminds me of one time, when our GM had one PC kidnapped during the night during his turn keeping guard. We woke up with the sun and he was gone.
We had to track him down in a dungeon where we found him at the mercy of some sort of creature (some kind of brain with tentacles – can’t remember the name).
We found the PC completely eviscerated, the creature munching on its brains.
That was quite a shocker!
(I think the player that got his PC eviscerated was /in the know/ and looking forward to rolling a new character…)
Eric Maziades last blog post..Quendy’s Log: That kobold problem…
Man, I had forgotten about the Corinthian… doesn’t he show up at a Serial Killers Convention? I remember just that concept by itself being nightmare fuel…
Dave T. Games last blog post..Mean Things I Have Done in Horror RPGs
You sir are a prince among men…
(Just testing the notify by email plugin)
The Crunch Overlords last blog post..#012: That Can’t End Well
Ho ho. These are awesome, even for someone who doesn’t rp very much.
The little girl one is especially cool.
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