QQ&A: How to do horror
Today’s question:
Say you want to put your D&D party in a zombie apocalypse, eldritch horror or survival horror situation. How do you do that?
The first step:
Realise “D&D” and “horror” are, at their core, incompatible.
I’m not saying you can’t combine them. You absolutely can. The trick is in understanding how the two systems work against each other.
D&D is about overcoming obstacles and growing stronger. Horror is about managing dwindling resources (material or mental) while struggling to survive. They naturally pull in different directions, with one being a power fantasy that undermines the vulnerability that makes horror work.
Your players understand this. They understand that the monsters overrunning the city are things they can fight. Something you can fight but still kills you is less scary than something you can’t fight at all.
Even the weakest zombies in fiction are terrifying because of their numbers. You can easily kill a few zombies, but you can’t fight them all.
Compare that to a typical dungeon crawl, where the party can clear out the whole thing.
So how to you instil a sense of horror into your games?
It’s not enough to make the enemies deadly. Tough fights can be tense, but they’re not exactly fodder for horror. Even if PCs die, the worst they’ll feel is sadness or frustration, not fear.
The way to make the horror work isn’t by making the PCs feel fear, but by making the players feel dread. Dread is the goal here. Actually killing characters is less scary than making them feel uncertain and off-balance.
Aside: I was watching a streamer play a horror game a while back. In one video, the character walked down a corridor, then was chased by a huge monster. They had to run, leap over crates, then lock and bolt the door behind them.
The first time they faced this, the streamer freaked out.
After dying and respawning a few times, they grew frustrated. “Ugh, this corridor again…”
In a game, death isn’t scary.
An enemy they can face might be scary, if done right.
The enemy they suspect is nearby but they don’t know for sure? Now that is scary.
There’s more to horror than this, obviously, but this is a solid foundation.
Speaking of solid foundations, you should check out Unboring Backstories and GM Virtues. Both are solid foundations for playing/running games that are fun, memorable and exciting for everyone.
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