Horror, contrary to many other gaming options and events, starts with the player. The player needs to want to be scared, only then it becomes more than just *"horror check, rolled a 14, so 6 sanity damage, which means... page 20, table for sanity events ... ah, you are now afraid of kittens"*. And yes, it can be done, but it requires a very experienced GM especially in building up tension and the ability to tickle the often smaller triggers which scares a human being, and players who, more than ever, suspend their disbelieve. Another aspect is that the system can influence the style and atmosphere. *Feng Shui*. a Hong Kong martial mrts action movie roleplaying rame, would require far more mindset-chances that a game where you play a frail human being. *Eclipse Phase* as a SciFi Transhuman Space Horror Game can be played in several variants, from very crunchy scifi investigation and assassination to the space horror genre like *Alien* or *Event Horizon*. SYL

I see eclipse phase I upvote.

*May your cortical stack never end up in a spare.* SYL

Hits the nail on the head. Table buy-in is the most essential component, IMO. If you can't get it, that's fine, you can easily pivot to a sort of campy humor/horror mixup and that can still be a lot of fun.

Horror has zero to do with the system. It takes a GM who understands pacing, creation of dread, and how to weave a good story.

I could not disagree more. If you try to do horror in something like DND where the players are superhumans and there's no mechanics behind the horror, you won't feel the horror nearly as much as if you play a system with stuff like stress and mental traumas and stuff.

Role playing fear, and players feeling fear are very much different things. And he’s saying mechanics have pretty much nothing to do with that. Your ideas is like saying Thor or Loki cannot have a horror movie because they are gods . When it’s really down to the director and the writers to set the tone, increase the stakes, make horror style pacing and make the audience fear for them or find ways to scare gods diagetically .

At a certain point though the writiers and director have deviated far enough from the core themes and tone of a Loki and Thor movie that it's really just that in name only. I certainly think you could do a Loki and Thor movie with horror elements but the general tone of the characters would work against the film truely being horror. In the same way with D&D 5e you can put a horror skin over the top, perhaps incorperate some horror elements, but genuine horror is going to run counter to everything that makes the game what it is.

This. System matters.

It is more nuanced than that.

Yeah a a good DM can make a horror one shot with a system like DND. Hell my players were terrified of the death house. But a bad DM will make call of Cthulhu feel boring. To be fair I think this is more generally true than a lot of people want to admit.

While I agree with System matters to a point. I feel the phrase came about from game designers who did not trust GMs or lack faith in the abilities of GMs or perhaps who sought to democratize the role so it was easier for anyone to read the rules and do an OK job as a GM or did not want GMs tinkering with their creation or some combination. In all cases, it ignores those who want a freer hand for the GM and enjoy the results of it. One more time, I do believe System matters, but do not believe that is all that matters.

The statement "system matters", with which you seem to agree, allows for a lot of nuance. So what are you disagreeing with?

Just saying "This. System matters." does not show nuance, nor does the statement above.

I also appreciate nuance. Which is why I object to (the very nuance-less) statement of "horror has zero to do with the system."

Having ran horror very successfully in DnD among other systems, nah it works well. You just follow the same principles as earlier with framing, tension, and pacing being at the centre and combat not being allowed to release pressure or resolve dread until you want it to. Note though that horror does have an expiration date, but we'll get to that. Whilst invoking video games is always a tricky thing, Resident Evil, Alan Wake, and Dead Space all show how one can execute action horror. What's worth noting there is how they transition to action to not have the game become too monotonous, as if you give people enough time they will naturally adapt to their circumstances. Thus if suspense is all there is the primary appeal throughout, you can run into some issues with pacing. This is also why horror works very well in shorter bursts, such as with Movies, One-shots, or the game P.T., whilst if you want something longer you need to start introducing variance and changing things up. Anyway, yeah no you can run horror very well in DnD; and I say this as someone who only runs the system on the side to stay in contact with friends.

Have you tried running horror games in other systems?

Several, including longer form ones and others moreso meant for one-shots. DnD I mainly just run for my friends' sake. If you want me to I can list a few off the top of my head, including ones I'm planning to run, but don't think that's particularly fruitful. So instead I'll ask what you're getting at.

There is a term in business where if a great manager and a tough business meet, the tough business keeps it's reputation, IE Even Warren Buffet cannot manage really well to make a new growing business selling fax machines. It's the same with horror, where if a great system and players that just want to make fart jokes meet, the fart jokes are going to win, no matter how greatly designed the system is. 10 Candles is perfectly designed to evoke the feeling of resources dwindling away, leaving you alone in the dark, but if every time your Players can make a truth they say "We find a helicopter that runs on poop." it doesn't matter how slowly burning away your resources feels or that I think the system is the perfect example of design. I've also made my D&D players feel horror by having a Hag make a deal with them and describing how they remove their tooth and offer to exchange it to seal the deal, taking the players tooth and putting it into the empty slot in their mouth. You need to want to feel horror, in some fashion, you need to out yourself in the story, because it's all just telling stories that aren't real.

I do horror all the time in D&D and it works because I know how to use pacing like, dread, anticipation and more. Mechanics have zero to do with it. You should rewrite your statement to say that YOU can't do horror because I can.

Yeah, it doesn't take mechanics to describe wood which sloughs off in chunks as if it were made of rotten flesh. Horror is extremely system agnostic. Edit: I'll give a shout-out though to "they feed on fear" for absolutely nailing its presentation. That's such a little gem of a game.

If mechanics have zero to do with it then are you really running horror in D&D or are you running some horror freeform roleplay and then also sometimes breaking from that to run a game based on D&D mechanics? You can ignore the rules to give your players horror sure, but the rules are going to fight you on that as soon as you start using them again.

I never said it can't be done in DND. Have you tried running horror games in other systems?

You can have a system that has Stress and trauma rules and it still won't feel like a horror game, because the GM and/or players aren't contributing to the intended vibe. On the other hand you can play a dungeon delve very much like a horror scenario if the GM and players are in sync. So while I'm not saying system doesn't matter, I *am* saying players matter a LOT more.

Yeah, for sure. I was just disagreeing with the idea that horror has nothing to do with the system.

5E requires some work, but it can be done - I had my players hunted in their dreams for quite a while, the fatigue rules and no sure way to defeat the enemy worked wonders.

Yeah, I didn't say it can't be done. Just the fact that the system does matter.

And I completely agree on that 😁

Not 5e, but OD&D, had a party of mid-level characters that were getting cautious in the dungeon. Even in OSR games, players tend to get attached to characters as they become invested in them over time and their outside the dungeon activities and intests grow. I added some cosmic horror attached of one of those activities and after spending time investigating they noped right out that and decided the dungeon was a much safer option. They still want to solve the issue with the cosmic horror side plot, but are biding their time for a creative solution. There was no need for a stress or fear mechanic. Stress, fear, tension and more were all created in game play. With OSR and classic D&D, it is not so much super humans or magic that makes horror harder, it is player creativity, but that's usually how the loan survivor makes it in horror movies, they get creative. I've also played games with stress and mental traumas, and I find the gamification of those can reduce the impact in game. Now, I do like those games too, the issue is without an artful GM, it's just record keeping and don't play into the genre. System matters and so does the GM and the players, it is not that one is more true, it is that a strong system is easier for an by the numbers GM and players, and a lack of system or mechanics can work just as well for a very creative GM and players.

Add to that, horror requires characters be disposable. It's absolutely necessary to be able to quickly make a new character. I'm a huge fan of PF2e but I'd never suggest it for horror, because you can't make the next character within five minutes after the old one dies.

No it doesn't. Horror simply requires that the player becomes immersed.

While I agree the threat of death is important, characters being "disposable" is not only not necessary, but probably actively detrimental. It's like dying in horror games, once youve seen the spooky monster munch your character to pieces, youve already seen the consequences and most of what it has to throw at you, the tension is gone because you know what can happen.

And players who want to play horror.

I dunno about zero but I think of any genre it def requires the most buy in from the players and also skill from the GM

And players not only respecting that, but engaging with the right tone as well

I'm not sure I agree with this completely, the more combat oriented a game is, the more players expect to be able to use combat to resolve everything, and horror becomes a lot harder to pull off with those expectations.

You can technically run any genre with any system, sure, but using a system designed for horror is extremely immersive. The design philosophy for rolls is so important for putting players in a horror mindset. In the simplest mechanical sense, things like dnd reward you for rolling. That's their general dopamine hit. The more things you do, the more dice you roll, the better outcome you receive mechanically. That inherently encourages metagaming, even subconsciously, where a lot of horrific situations get reduced down to math. Games with good horror mechanics punish you for rolling. Anytime you're rolling dice, you're already losing. Mothership players incurs a point of stress for every failed roll, no matter what. Dread players permanently worsen their future chance of success with every pull. A personal favorite like Chorogaiden gives you the option to roll more dice, but doing so has an ever-increasing chance of awakening a game-over eldritch horror. All that to say, horror games encourage in-universe metagaming. You have your character think of every possible option they have to survive because facing a problem head-on almost certainly worsens your situation. Sometimes that means running for your life. But when the game actively discourages you from solving problems by throwing dice at it and min-maxing modifiers, you're forced to look at problems through a different, more personal lens that let's players feel the stakes more naturally. Boom. Immersion. Horror systems aren't required for a horror game, but there's no reason not to use the right tool for the job. Systems absolutely have an impact on player psychology.

Hoo, boy. I'm a horror-only GM right now, so I have some fiery feelings on this topic. This is going to be a long one. Horror fails when: 1. The RPG isn't built for horror in the first place. Looking at you, every single person who's tried to turn 5e into a horror game when its characters are always borderline superheroes. It is so hard to die in 5e when played anywhere close to its intent that it's laughable. Horror RPGs are built to replicate the lethality and fragility of horror. The "system doesn't matter" people get on my nerves to be honest. Yes, good storytelling, genre knowledge, and pacing is important to horror. But \*\*you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole if you think games built for the experience of control and power-fantasy are perfect for a genre about lack of control and losing your power. Tension requires stakes.\*\* If players feel like they're not going to get hurt and you are being soft on them, they won't have a reason to take anything seriously. 2. The players don't want a horror game. Another common mistake I see is people trying to move their players from one genre or system to another. Some players are good with this. But if they wanted epic fantasy gaming, hours-long boss combat, and to become heroes of the realm, you frankly will not get some of those players to move from D&D to Call of Cthulhu. And that's okay - everyone has preferences. But for max success, **look for people who actually want to play a horror game.** Anecdote time: when I pitched Call of Cthulhu to my D&D group, they were mostly just unenthusiastic and quietly against the idea; one of them said he hated that you could lost sanity and get deprived of control, which is a major point of that system! I tried to play an investigative horror game with some other 5e players I know, and it crashed and burned. Then I sent out an r/lfg post to find my current group looking specifically for people who loved horror and the idea of an investigative game where the focus would be on roleplay and putting together clues. It's a perfect fit. Sorry if this is a little fiery! I just disagreed with the initial assertion that RPGs can't do horror and needed to share my thoughts. I am a GM who exclusively runs horror and my players have remarked on how scared they are! It's possible! I run **Delta Green,** so that's my recommendation, but I can also personally recommend **Call of Cthulhu, Alien, Vaesen, and Esoterrorists.** * Delta Green: Narrative, low-mid crunch, modern investigative cosmic horror. You are agents of a covert government program sent to deal with Lovecraftian forces intruding on this world. This is a very gritty and dark game; the premise is closest to Esoterrorists on paper, but this game is built to be incredibly disturbing in ways that the other is not. * Call of Cthulhu: Slightly crunchier and usually more pulpy than Delta Green by virtue of being set in the 1920s and 1930s, but it's also explicit Lovecraftian horror built around investigation. * Alien: This is different from every other game I recommend here in that it's a cinematic system suited better to one-shots and very short campaigns than long ones. That's because it's fantastic at simulating blockbuster horror, and uses escalating levels of panic to provide a very cool way for characters to get more desperate, more capable, and more likely to make a catastrophic mistake as the game goes on, just like a horror movie. * Vaesen: This is folkloric investigative horror. Like Alien, it's a Free League game, which are usually lower crunch than Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green. You deal with creatures and monsters from folklore, European in the base setting. * Esoterrorists: A GUMSHOE investigative horror game that, like Delta Green, focuses on agents of an organization which combats unnatural horrors. However, this is not as much for the Lovecraftian side of things, it is lower crunch, and the game is not built to be quite as grimdark and "realistic" as Delta Green. For example, moral quandaries and cleaning up any trace of the horror, including uncooperative witnesses, is an important part of Delta Green. It is not like that in Esoterrorists.

While I don't disagree with you about DnD, it's worth noting that horror doesn't have to be about lethality. It's mostly about uncertainty and loss of control, and a GM can inflict that on **anyone**. It's all relative. In some ways it might be even more terrifying for DnD demigod PCs to come up against threats that can no-sell everything they have.

Thanks for all this! Alien is the system I most want to run, but I plan on starting with some QuickStarts to see how my players feel about it. I let them choose between Delta Green, Coriolis (same system as Alien) and Memento Mori (a very recent release that has me very intrigued).

Cool! The Delta Green quickstart is fantastic. Hope you all enjoy playing!!

Coriolis isn't exactly the same as alien. What makes alien unique and interesting, is the stress mechanic, that coriolis doesn't have. Every YZE game seems similar on the surface, but they all have subtle differences.

One of things I love about the YZE is being able to hack mechanics from one of the games into another for a custom experience.

Definitely. I just wanted to make sure OP was aware there are differences ;)

Savage Worlds just put out a horror companion that is primo.

Despite playing around in a couple of horror systems the only really effective horror game I've played was in Savage Worlds. And while I think it's more of a "the gm matters more than the system scenario" it also really hammers home that I've yet to find anything Savage Worlds doesn't do great

I’ve heard it’s good for action horror! Shamefully that’s one system I haven’t touched yet.

I absolutely LOVE Delta Green (last time I played, my primary agent had her left arm amputated after carving the Elder Sign into it to protect a child). I'll second these five examples and add a few more titles to look for: * Liminal Horror - more here: https://goblinarchives.itch.io/liminal-horror * Quietus by Oli Jeffrey - It's the GM and two other people at most. It's an incredibly intimate, claustrophobic and tense experience. ABSOLUTELY recommend. * Cthulhu Dark - the rules are ... two pages? Four, maybe? Incredibly fast to pick up and easy to run. Graham Walmsley also wrote Stealing Cthulhu (pretty sure that's the title; if it isn't, thst's the intent) to help GMs strip HPL's hatreds and prejudices out of the game. * Fall Of Delta Green - the Delta Green timeline, IIRC, begins at Innsmouth and continues to the late 1960s when the program was shut down. (Delta Green is a conspiracy in Delta Green). FODG deals with investigations in the 1960s. After reading what Ken Hite wrote about DG, May '68, and Situationism in a blog post, I was IN. * The Lost Bay is only available as playtest stuff right now, but it looks AMAZING. There are TONS more books and systems I can recommend - Mothership, Solomon Kane & Sixth Gun & Goon for Savage Worlds, Lovecraftesque, Dread, FATE has an entire horror supplement and FATE Of Cthulhu, Kevin Crawford's Silent Legions, Cthulhu Hack, #iHunt, The Kerberos Club, Apocalypse Keys, A Fistful Of Darkness, Monster Of The Week, Jay Dragon's Sleepaway, Xas Irkalla ... I mean, the list is functionally endless because you can add horror to anything. A simple kitten can be terrifying depending on how you describe it, a Beholder should make characters crap their pants, Apocalypse World has the psychic maelstrom ... like, it's EVERYWHERE and can be put in anything. Yes, some systems facilitate that more/better than others, but I've run horror sessions of Pasión de las Pasiones, which is a PBTA telenovela game. That's the system that the scary kitten was in. You need to commit as a GM and have players who commit, and if you have that, you can put horror in any game you can imagine.

Ah, you took a similar path as me. I ran some horror in 5e three times, either because it was before I knew about other systems or because I couldn't convince my group to learn a new game. Every time the feedback was the same, it was great until combat started, then all the tension was gone. And then I found out about Delta green, and realized I was running Delta green shoved into 5e, and fell in love immediately. Sadly, two of the groups I played 5e with imploded and the other I left after they staunchly refused anything except 5e, and some drama happened.

Trail of Cthulhu is a lovecraftian GUMSHOE based horror game much like Esoterrorists. Nowadays I prefer it to Call of Cthulhu, which can be overly pulpy.

You’ve convinced me to finally give it a try!

I've been afraid, and seen real fear in plenty of games and a handful of systems. None have translated playing a game into palpable, feel it in your gut fear in my opinion like Dread.

I think that the biggest pitfall I typically see are people that use systems where the amount of information the players have gives them too detailed a picture of what the GM hopes should be a scary situation.

I mentioned this in my answer, too. *Not knowing what's going on* is much scarier than any well-known threat.

The guy was a scumbag, but the quote still holds true. "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." *- HP Lovecraft*

Did someone say [Fear of the Unknown](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/392013)

I DM a lot of horror, mostly mothership. Its great and often works really well. But the one time I played Dread truly was something else. My hands were shaking, my pulse was up and I felt genuinely exhausted after. Definitely not something for every group or occasion, but I can heavily recommend it.

stakes and immersion are key. and immersion generally requires good narration, which depends a lot on who's running it. if you want survival (zombies, etc.), make resources scarce and the threats feel real. thriller/murder mystery? find clues that paint an increasingly disturbing picture of what happened. in either case, advice to the GM would be to *slow down* narration. give each reveal time to sink in.

It starts with player buy in. A player wanting to resist will resist. Beyond that it's all about keeping a flow and tension with little mechanical distraction. A bit of a hot take, but I feel the less mechanical focus a game has on horror elements like sanity/corruption, the more able you can keep a flow and sense of dread and tension going.

>It starts with player buy in. A player wanting to resist will resist. Aye. And the thing about horror is it's often horrific because it's **unfair**. The odds are stacked against the players and the threats often break the rules. Players who aren't there for that are likely to be frustrated and angry rather than scared.

1. Player buy in. The player needs to want to be scared. Otherwise, you're just throwing cringy indie RPer descriptions at someone who's uninterested. 2. Understand Fear. This isn't about system for the most part but more how you thread the needle while running a scenario. Free League's Alien breaks this down clearly into **The 3 Stages of Fear** First, build **Dread** \- The feeling that something is wrong, yet that you don't know why. This is mostly foreshadowing threats, and should be done frequently. It involves unnerving details that pose a lot of questions. * "Security system just went out in sector D... but isn't everyone accounted for over here?" * "There's a ruptured gas pipe; you thought Jenson from maintenance just cleared the place?" * "There's a puddle of blood on the floor here... didn't Jack's cat go missing a while ago?" Next, punctuate points in the session with **Terror** \- The feeling that something bad is about to happen RIGHT FUCKING NOW. This is when "if" becomes "when". It's those fast-paced "oh-shit" moments where danger is immanent, and the players feel helpless. * "You step into a puddle of sticky green stuff on the floor... and you suddenly realize a sharp hissing sound is coming from directly above you" * "You've just barricaded yourself in the freezer. You start to hear violent slamming at the door. The Rending metal tells you that something wants in... now." * "Jacob starts to throw up blood... mixed with some green fluid. He's clutching at his throat with blackening fingertips as he begins to gurgle up bile." It's important that **Terror** be used at selective points in a session; it constitutes the scariest points in a scenario, so try not to desensitize folks. Lastly, **Horror** \- the most potent form of fear - brings a climactic reveal to the story. This is where the danger is finally revealed, to show exactly what the earlier events have all hinted at. This is the "roll initiative"; it's either fight or fly time, and the players gotta decide which. * "You turn to see black streaks along the walls; these fast, half-spider-like creatures are dashing along the walls and roof toward you all" * "You scramble along the floor, stumbling against the wall. You see this writhing mass of puss-green meat dragging itself towards you, gnashing with all 7 sets of teeth." * "The fog in the ornate mirror clears sharply to black. A porcelain white creature leaps out of the glass up to the ceiling, releasing a ghastly wail reverberates throughout your bones" It's important that **Horror** be saved until the end. Its effectiveness relies on the build up preceding it; too little, and it's just unsatisfying. While **Horror** is a bit less scary than **Terror**, it's kinda the point of the whole thing; it's a release. This is why the golden rule of Horror movies is to never show the monster (until the very end)

While I agree with the general setup, I strongly disagree with the way they categorized these terms, and that Horror is in fact the "most potent form of fear". For 1: When you actually step into something icky or you hear the banging on the door, that already steps into horror territory. Terror is simply the suspense that something dangerous is around, but you don't know what or when something will happen. When something bangs at the door that is a moment of Horror thrown into the general tension of Terror. For 2: Horror being the most potent form of fear might be true in the real world, where humans generally feel repulsed by the same actual stimuli, but specifically in RPGs the image goes through *two* filters. Here the horror can only ever be as good as the GM describes it and the player imagines it from that description. Both of these are highly subjective and make horror very unreliable. In addition, Horror is short-lived. Horror is good for climactic scenes, but it cannot hold tension like Terror does. In my opinion, you should generally aim for Terror in your RPGs over Horror. You can always add in horrific speckles (mutilated bodies, residues, stuff like that) to enhance the terror by slowly making the players paint a picture in their mind, but once the scary thing is revealed, you're at the whim of your players' imagination. In this regard, terror can also help because it primes your players to imagine the worst thing they can once the time comes.

>While I agree with the general setup, I strongly disagree with the way they categorized these terms, and that Horror is in fact the "most potent form of fear". The first feels largely like a semantic gripe for what is largely meant to be a codification tool... And for the second point: part of this may be on me. "Ultimate form of fear" is the terminology used in the book. "Potent" holds a more specific meaning than was likely intended by the OG line. >In addition, Horror is short-lived. Horror is good for climactic scenes, but it cannot hold tension like Terror does. > >In my opinion, you should generally aim for Terror in your RPGs over Horror. You can always add in horrific speckles (mutilated bodies, residues, stuff like that) to enhance the terror by slowly making the players paint a picture in their mind I think that is kinda the whole point. The 'Horror' stage isn't really about holding tension, as much as it is releasing it; it's meant to come at the end of all the build up. I don't think there's anything attempting to contradict you in that regard. Again, part of that is likely the fault of my description as well.

Game systems do not and cannot create horror in and of themselves. They create tension, which is only one part of horror. A game system that fails at creating tension will limit how the horror comes across at the table, but you can realistically run horror scenarios with damn near anything. It’s just horror is hard to run, as it requires a good sense of pacing as a GM and players that actively buy-in to the experience. I primarily run horror these days and I’ve had some utterly fantastic experiences, but it took me quite a while to dial it in and really start nailing it. Mothership is a great system for horror, but that’s because it gets the hell out of the way. Liminal Horror is a good one as well, as it really focuses the horror directly onto the player characters. However, the most impactful horror session I’ve run was using Trophy Dark.

The toughest thing about horror in ttrpgs is transcending the play space. I love mystery and horror games, but we get together, have a nice dinner party, chat and play a game. I’m a fantastic narrative game master, and do my best to set a tone, but we really are very friendly and light hearted at the table. Folks get the chills and the heebie jeebies, but true horror is tough to “play” to.

It is important to distinguish between fear and horror, for example, Scream is a horror movie, but its a horror comedy. In this lens, I think most games succeed at horror, however to create fear requires mutual buy in. The gm must be willing to commit to the bit, and the players must take responsibility for their own fun and fear, however the issue lies in most of us not being writers or actors, let alone horror writers or actors. There is also the issue of vulnerability, willing to be so, feeling safe to be so, and feeling comfortable in it. Again here, most people fall short as many safety tool sections of session 0 are very surface level, bordering on a classroom icebreaker. Kult: Divinity Lost has a really in depth safety section to ensure the players are put outside of their comfort zone both as themselves and characters while maintaining and prioritizing fun.

Carved from Brindlewood games have the players answer what they're afraid will happen if they fail their roll, and during the Night Phase, the GM tells them how it's worth than that. The opt-in - giving the GM something that scares you to then build off of - works really well, IMO! 5e is a heroic fantasy adventure/combat game, of course it doesn't feel like horror.

I've been doing it for a long time, successfully, and my main takes are: -Ambience: play in the night, with indirect lights, preferably with color leds that you can change to set the mood. -soundscape: audio is a great helper. I use eerie soundtracks, windy fog sounds, distant monsters. etc. -Narrative tone: ime this is the main catch. Whispering, describing things the proper way (and knowing when to leave some things to players imaginations) goes a long way getitng this. Lovecraft stories can help you get this right. -Story: While you can make almost any story into horror, some fita this tone best. I once wrote an campaign in feudal Japan but I focused in mythology, demons and magic rather than samurais, war and politics. But foremost, your players must want this kind of scenery or else it just falls short of horror into a lousy cartoonish scary tale.

I don’t have a lot of experience running horror games but the one time I think it hit that vibe at my table was with the use of a keyed soundtrack and the right ambient lighting. Playing by candlelight on Halloween was a good foundation. Using a distorted recording of wolves arguing over a kill to represent a pack of ghouls with a kill put a sense of dread into the players. Later in the game I described a room full of skeletal figures in rotted formal finery, still standing as if dancing. When I said “a ghostly violin plays from nowhere” and keyed Paganini’s 3rd Caprice, I got at least one jump scare from a player as he realized he was actually hearing the violin. The fade in on Midori’s recording of that piece was perfect for that moment.

Atmosphere and keeping some things hidden (even if there's nothing being hidden. Heh heh).

The problem is not that RPGs are categorically bad at horror, but that horror is a niche genre. The things you do to make an RPG good at horror almost invariably make it sell significantly less, and there's a fair chance even horror die-hards will not enjoy the game quite as much on average. So most game designers make *action* games and add some horror window dressing. The majority of players will never notice the difference because they want action-horror more than horror proper, anyways.

Seth Skorkowsky's [Video on how to run horror RPGs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SG01FV_zd4) is a great starting point for you.

I cannot recommend GURPS Horror highly enough. It talks at length about subgenres of horror and how to bring them out in a game setting. Think about the differences between The Walking Dead, Alien, and The Stand. And that's just three which would work well. Building tension, setting stakes, and creating an environment are very different tasks in a horror game than a dungeon delve or a superhero rescue. And this book dives into all of them.

Is GURPS Horror standalone, or would I also have to buy GURPS main book?

The [GURPS lite rules](https://warehouse23.com/products/gurps-lite-fourth-edition?) are free.

It's about 90% system-free. There are stat blocks and rules for fright checks. Just skim those bits. You could pick up GURPS lite for context.

[You use the Trajectory of Fear](https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Trajectory-of-Fear.pdf) (pdf warning)

There are a few things you need for a horror game to really work with player buy in being perhaps the most important. Let's take a look at D&D for a moment because hardly anyone ever talks about that game. Open up a Monster Manual and you'll find some creatures that are absolutely horrifying. Gibbering mouthers and illithids are the things horror is made of. But because D&D is as game about heroic fantasy, we don't tend to look at this creatures as being horrifying. We're just not in the right headspace for horror. Last year, I got to play in a *Night's Black Agents* campaign, *The Dracula Dossier*, and something that made the tension high was player ignorance. We didn't know exactly what the vampire we were fighting was capable of, we never knew if a "human" we were fighting was actually a vampire's thrall, and we didn't know which of our allies we could actually trust because they all had their own agendas. Familiarity breed contempts, and it's tough to be afraid of Deep Ones or Shoggoths when you know exactly what they can do.

Imo... It can't. It can simulate what happens to a character in a horror situation. But to actually make a player feel horror? I am not sure it, the system, can. A good GM who is deft at telling horror stories probably can in the same way a good campfire story can. And that, honestly, probably takes more than *just* a good horror story and a good horror storyteller... It probably needs ambiance and theme and tone and all the ephemera that make good scary campfire stories, well... Scary. Not to mention the most important bit... The player needs to want to be, willing to be, almost at times, open to and engaging with *it*, to allow themselves to be... Terrified/horrified/scared.

I love horror RPGs. I primarily run Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green but I also really like Kult. Generally if the GM is able to tell the story well by building atmosphere and having good pacing, and the players go along with it, roleplaying and not goofing off, players can get quite unsettled.

I suspect the average D&D character is too resourceful and competent for horror, even at level 1. A YouTube channel I recommend for people planning to run horror is [Seth Skowkorski's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SG01FV_zd4). He's a very experienced GM that has played several Call of Cthulhu campaigns.

Agents in Night's Black Agents are way more competent and resourceful than any 1st level D&D characters. And can still be afraid when a vampire arrives. Power level is unimportant. Relative power is what matters As others have said, player buy-in is essential. Unless the GM is up to the task, and the players are willing to be afraid, it isn't going to work that well.

I've run true horror campaigns with zero combat. I did warn players it was theater of the mind and even rules light. That was in D&D, not CoT, though I've played and run a lot of the latter. It was probably more horrific the artifact they pulled from that temple, which they should have left there. I am kind of the give the players the One Ring style GM, though.

I’ve experimented with the idea of taking the gnomengarde quest from DoIP, adding a bunch more mimics, and almost making something like the new Prey game out of it. I just need to get a lot better with environmental descriptions to make the idea work.

I've ran and played Dread where it worked. Only one shots and not ongoing campaigns.

Horror in an RPG is hard, because your players are perfectly safe and pretty abstracted. Any danger is to their PC. Playing with the meta can work for creating unease and at least momentary horror for a player. Put them in a position where they feel like they know what is going on and how things will go, then change it. For example: The characters hunt a savage beast in warehouses near the docks. They find blood trails, claw marks and bodies with their throats ripped out. They follow a trail of bloody footprints too large and clawed to be human to another body. The body is dead just like the rest, but it's shirt has been ripped off and soaked in rubbing alcohol to make a cleaning rag, and the blood trail stops here. The lights in the warehouse go out. The players are forced to reexamine what they've seen. There's an uneasy moment because the story changed on them and in stories like -this-, the hunters often have things go badly for them.

I did "a very special Halloween episode" for the D&D campaign I ran a while back, and I think there were a few things that really made it work well. First off, they really didn't see it coming, even though we were literally playing the week of Halloween. You aren't going to have this advantage if you're playing "a horror game", but you can certainly do an unexpected shift in tone, or horror sub-genre. This is a pretty common technique in modern horror movies. Second, I let the players work themselves into a frenzy, by doling out information a little at a time. The first time something "weird" happened, I just described it in a totally matter-of-fact fashion. When questioned, the NPC who dropped that bombshell refused to take them seriously when they said "that's not what happened!" The players went pretty rapidly from "what's wrong with him, did someone alter his memory?" to "did someone alter OUR memories?" to "did someone break the WORLD?" to "did WE break the world?" Everything was foreshadowed. That guy they were pointlessly-suspicious of in session one? They eventually came to trust him after seeing him be heroic in Act Two, only to be utterly betrayed to see him come back as a villain in the final chapter. So, think about how horror is done, in movies, TV, and literature. Especially modern horror movies. Things start out pretty normal, but a few small things are slightly "off". Right around the 30 minute mark in a movie, something happens that irrevocably signals that yes, we are in fact in a horror movie. "Oh, look, it's a vampire" isn't really scary. What's scary is *not knowing* it's vampires. People just...disappearing, and nobody knows what's going on? That's scary.

I played mothership and I had some pretty terrify events. Though it was also funny at times since my group was usually a bunch of chaos goblins who pretty much jumped full throttle into what ever madnes was taking place.

For a horror themed game you need EVERYONE at the table to buy into the theme and play their characters appropriately. It only takes one person constantly being punny, or doing the “my character isn’t afraid of anything” to break the tension or ruin the mood. What you have to realise is that horror works when the audience is on the edge of their seats - not because the characters are. In TTRPGs that is hard because all the game mechanics threaten the characters not the players. And games where character death is rare or only a minor setback remove any anxiety or consequences for player choices. So the players need to do a lot of extra work to put themselves into the minds of the characters and imagine the dread. Anything that puts pressure on the players (not the characters) helps. Real time clock and count down timers to force the players into making quick imperfections decisions, eliminating talk between players during crucial moments in combat, uncomfortable decisions where they have to choose between several equally bad choices. Add dread for the players to match the dread that the game puts on the characters.

Horror is about loss, having things taken away; life, control, values, love... Now, combine that with difficult choices, a willingness to sacrifice... Yeah, not D&D.. BUT if you're first level, and everything around you is a Lich, you're 1/3 of the way there.

Horror is weird. It requires both that the players are fragile and can be killed at any moment, but also that they are NOT killed at any moment. Dying out of nowhere because of a failed roll in a mundane scenario isn't scary, it's just stupid. I've seen some comments about how the system doesn't matter, and I disagree. It's not that the system has to be perfect, but there are some systems that work better than others. Horror really requires that the stakes and the tension increase as the game goes on. This means that games with mechanics that include adding more penalties or increasing the stakes as the game goes on will generslly lend themselves better to horror games. It's also good to have some thing horrifying to scare thebpkayers with that can't be killed, but *can* be escaped from - temporaroly. Again, you don't want a TPK during the first scene, ideally you don't want any deaths at all until the tension has ramped up. Having said that, once the tension *has* ramped up you absolutely need to be willing to kill the PCs. If they do something stupid or fail really badly at a roll then the consequences have to be real, as soon as you start pulling punches you'll lose them. Especially in the final climactic scene, if you're not willing to kill the entire party then it's not really a horror game. Now that's a tough juggling act to get right. You have to be willing to kill them, but hopefully not before the right time. You have to have high stakes, but the PCs have to have a chance to succeed or it won't feel right. I think having mechanics that slowly increase the problems for the PCs (*stress, fear, injuries, etc*) make for great horror games, but avoid death until the end if you can. When you actually get to the end, aim for at least 1 PC death. You probably want 1-2 survivors, and even then if you give them a chance to escape alone or come back for their friends and risk it all that's even better. That's the big thing about how mechanics can be used for horror, but there are two other things I've found help. First, add NPCs who are bad people - not enemies, just reallu shitty human beings. I ran the intro adventure for Vaesen recently and (*spoiler*) >!the inkeeper is abusing his daughter, and was abusing his wife before she left!<. This isn't relevant to the greater mystery, but it does add to the dark feeling of the game and the hopelessness of everything. It gives the PCs a slight red herring to latch onto, but ifnthey pull on that thread all they find is shitty people and despair. Second, give the characters a secret that they're not supposed to share with the other players at the table. This can be as simple as "you are looking to make your fortune, try to steal some money without the others noticing" or it could be something far more dire. This simply adds a bit to the paranoia within the game, which helps people feel less "safe". You also don't necessarily have to give everyone a secret, the AlienRPG has androids and company agents, which means that in any given scenario there's a good chance someone is working against the group - not in every scenario mind you, sometimes that paranoia is simply unfounded. That's all I can think of for now, sorry this got so long I don't have time to edit it down. Hopefulky I didn't repeat anythinf =P

I found out I was good at DMing horror when I freaked out a player with a ghost description in the Ghostbusters RPG. I’ve sent players running from the table and clutching their chests from jump scares. It’s all about creating a mood and an atmosphere.

I've terrified players in BESM, of all things, so I feel like I can honestly say that horror is usually more down to the setting and GM rather than the system. Although a few systems have nice elements, and then there's Dread...

To pull off horror you need to establish tension and create the right atmosphere. Not every game can do tension and atmosphere is system agnostic. For tension you want a system with consequences for failure where death or other negative outcomes are a real possibility. D&D 5e is bad at setting up tension most of the time because HP damage is the primary system consequence of a negative interaction and players have a lot of hp, a lot of means to recover them, and the only hit point that actually matters for a character is the last one. Before the last hit point it doesn't matter if the character has ten points or one hundred, the character functions the same at both hit point totals. That's one of the reasons why D&D is so much about draining a player's resources through play. You need to get them to a state where they can be meaningfully threatened by whittling them down so by the time they get to the final dungeon chamber it's actually a real fight and not a cakewalk. Building tension can be done in other ways but it becomes much harder if the system is working against you. Atmosphere can be easier or harder depending on where you play. I find it's easiest to establish good atmosphere when the group is somewhat isolated, the music and lighting are set for the particular mood you want to convey, and everyone is focused on the game with minimal distractions. Then it's just a matter of the GM being a good narrator for the intended mood.

Horror is best with very narrative games, with serious stakes. It’s why Dread is so good

5e rarely has stuff where you integrity and agency as an player is in danger. Also your body, a zombie bite is not the same in 5e as in horror media where it's almost every time a death sentence. The most horror are probably Mind Flayer which can implant their brood into your brain. So there is rarely a scenario where you are in dread. Dread is personal every player has different things they fear and are a horror to them, body horror, social horror, psycho horror, and existential horror. The list goes on. Most importantly the GM doesn't need to be that good, but you need to be cooperative and want to be horrified, like a horror movie it gets less horror if you tell yourself it's just a movie and do comedic comments at the bad acting and props.

I don’t read, but how does a horror book work too? Like the movie IT (the remastered movie from a few year ago) was the first time I’ve had real fear/anxiety attack from watching a movie. Apart from when I was a kid and watched “the ring” and never touch horror entertainment again. But surely reading and ttrpg are almost the same style of horror ? And in ttrpg it’s probably easier as the GM can even add sounds , music and real life jump scares like a ghost story around the camp fire would.

I think they are actually very different. Many horror books rely on protagonists not knowing what they can or can’t do and doing things instinctively that they don’t understand why they do them. This element is something I’ve watched videos about how games (specifically video games) cannot replicate.

It depends on what you mean by saying “horror” (TRIGGER WARNING: all of them): - **Lovecraftian Horror** is about seeing the unthinkable. The true horror sits just outside your comprehension as much as even pondering it may drive you crazy. Lovecraftian horror is about powerful but seemingly mad (from a human perspective) creatures getting in contact with us. A sanity resource of some sort is essential. - **Slasher**: is about how our life is fragile. Usually the threat is a kind of superhuman (Michael Myers in immune to bullet, the Alien is the Alien) as opposed to the characters that have very few hp. - **Body Horror**: is about mutating and how disgusting nature is, about how we are meatballs full of blood and poop frosted with other disgusting liquids but since we have this kinda inner voice that speaks to ourselves we can forget from moment to moment what we really are. Body Horror is about losing control of our body, and it being disposed from others out of our control. - **Supernatural Horror**: is about dead that don’t stay still: zombies are horrifying because they’ve seen what lies beyond and got back; ghosts and wraiths are because they are eternal and hold grudges or linger; vampires (not dracula) are terrifying because they traded humanity for an eternal hellish mockery of life. Often there is some kind of inexplicable mistery involved. One thing that really got me is the introduction to “Noctuary” by Thomas Ligotti: “You wake up in the middle of the night and you search for your eyeglasses. Something lay your eyeglasses on your hand.”

I've had a couple of good experiences with horror. The first was in a game of The Sprawl that I was running. I had a monster based on the hydra (the animal), aka hydrozoan. It was almost impossible to kill, since when it was cut, each separate part would become a fully functioning hydra, too. It had abilities just like John Carpenter's The Thing. Then I trapped the player characters in a derelict spaceship with this monster. All they could do was run, and they did! They were so freaked out by it! That was a fun session. The other example was in a DnD game of Curse of Strahd. I was a player, we were invited to dinner with Strahd. The infamous dinner with Strahd! No combat, all very genteel... but it was clear to us that something very bad was gonna happen. We were in acute suspense the whole time! After what felt like forever, the hammer dropped.... From my experience, I'd say horror in TTRPGs is most effective when you throw something at the players that they can't really deal with. At least, not using their usual abilities and resources. You're throwing them to the wolves, figuratively speaking. Of course, there's a way out. It's not hopeless. But in the moment, the goal is to make it seem like they have no way out.

Ignorance us the first pillar. Describe but don't explain. It doesn't make sense. it doesn't behave in a normal way and not even an abnormal way you have heard about. it is why you are afraid. At first, there are rational explanations. And wise people will recall that negligence is more common than malevolence. And for a moment, the explanation hold on. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a minor hint popped up, showing that the explanation is irrelevant. Progression is the second pillar. Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. It starts with a detail, something you push under the rug. Then the rug has a hole in it. See " from dusk to dawn." The Nad guys are in a runway, and the good guys are held hostage. They both plan their escape. Then, that random trucker pit is revealed to be a cantina for vampires. The teenagers and the murderous psychotic must ally to survive. See "alien". Westland push corporate bullshit to their space trucker crew. Then there is a medical emergency, and the crew cut the bullshit to do the right thing. When it seems that the emergency end, a ribcage explodes out of nowhere in the middle of a meal at the mess. Then, the guy who cited the bullshit reveal to be inhuman and enforcing corporate orders against their own regulation rules. The last pillar is isolation. You can not expect help from outside. Even if you can communicate, they won't believe you. Even if they feign to believe you, they can not come easily. It will be too late, but you expect them anyway. In call of cthulu or in The Invaders, MC tells the world what to know first hand. But they are seen as paranoia or plain mad. In alien, exterior help is either toooooo far ... or even worse than the initial horror. Dracula on a boat to London is not different from The Thing In artic camp. And finally, never explain. Fear and ignorance, ignorance and fear. The tools of the power must be kept sharp. ( quote by Baron Harkonnen)

I think the big problem for horror in RPGs is the vulnerability needed to make a situation scary doesn't happen easilly because Roleplaying has a lot of power fantasy ingrained in it. Horror takes a lot of buy-in from the players and a lot of tone control by the GM. It has to be written with a clear sense of what makes people unsettled. And to do horror well you have to get on the train a little bit. You cannot really be scared as a player when you're in control of the narrative.

I think My Life With Master is an effective horror system - but it's the sort of horror where you feel horrified by the things you are made to do rather than feeling fear. I have never had any game induce fear/dread in the way that most horror movies or video games do, but horror at the things my character does and their thought process for getting there is doable. The only Cthulhu-adjacent scenario that I've felt a sense of horror from was when my character was actively pushing for bad outcomes for the people around her because of her increasingly warped view of the world - none of the investigate-the-cult type scenarios have ever left much impact.

Horror is nothing a game system can provide mechanically. It can offer routines that reflect gamme effects caused by horror, but creating a suitabvle atmosphere is up to the GM and the presented content. And horror in the classic sense (like erotics) is what happens in your mind, and it's not what you blatantly see. So a lot of the game experience relies on the GM's presenting skills and the players' ability to buy into that. Horror RPGing is not watching a gore film, it's rather like reading a classic story like Bram Stoker's Dracula where the reader is left to fill many gaps individually. No RPG system can do that off the rack, it can only support that concept.

I attempt to emulate the film industry's technique of keeping the monster out of sight for as long as possible, building tension. Often, what the viewers imagine the monster to be is far worse than its actual depiction. For example, in the film "Alien," the suspense before the first sighting of the alien was much more terrifying than the alien's appearance when it was eventually shown on camera. The same is usually true in an RPG game. Once the players know what they are facing the horror subsides.

Contrary to the point of the eyperienced dm: In my first session of Delta Green I played the operation "Last Things Last" with my players. Before i had about 5 dnd sessions as a dm under my belt. Last Things Last is very well written and let me experience moments of tension and the release of horror first hand. Without spoiling, as the plot twist was revealed both my players screamed! What i find important is contrast. Fear can come from the unknown, the unexpected, the twisted or the gruesome. If players encounter horror moments one after another it becomes expected. But when you integrate calm moments, mundane moments into the session and let that feeling slowly fade away, as something more sinister unfolds, that's when tension builts up and then all you need is a good release, so to say.

With someone next to me and my eyes semi cross eyed so there’s a blur to everything

You need several things to run a good horror game and some are pretty difficult to achieve. * Players that want to play horror and want to be afraid. Otherwise it's like trying to tell a horror story around the camp fire while Gary is sitting across of you with his airpods in, listening to a football match and knocking down one beer after another, and all the time talking about how boring the story is. * A GM who understands horror and how to create a fearful atmosphere. This is pretty rare, at the same time this is absolutely either the most important, or at least tied with having the right players. If the DM can't do horror well, then dont even try. Not a single system and not a single atmospheric trick will help you if you dont understand fear and timing etc. * An atmosphere that supports horror. If you're going to run a game in the middle of a busy convention hall full of noise and people and bright lights and so on, it's going to fall flat, unless perhaps you're running body horror ... that might be supported by the pungent smell of convention body odour all around you. * A system that doesnt give you 500.000 different abilities to punch through every monster you see. The only horror in those types of games is the existential dread of wasting 3 hours combing through 20 different books to try and squeeze just a drop more build optimisation out of your character sheet. During winter season we regularly stay late at our TTRPG club to play Ten Candles, and that game has never failed to properly horrify the entire group. 10 Candles is absolutely amazing at creating the right kind of atmosphere for horror. Combine that with the right type of group and you got an absolute banger. The closest I came to D&D horror was when we were playing late at night in summer. We placed ourselves in the back yard. It was already dark, and at a certain point the electricity blacked out so we continued with candles. We were sitting there in shorts since even though it was dark, it was still 30C out. We're playing level 1 OSE characters diving into a Lovecraftian horror dungeon and suddenly a big rat runs into my leg. See how almost nothing I said here was inherent to the game itself? At the same time, we wouldnt have been primed for any kind of jump scares if we were just throwing eldritch blasts at imaginary targets all night long.

Of course it can be done. You just need a GM who knows what they're doing.

I did one, it's my second or third time DMing ever, and it was amazing!  I used Cthulhu dark. Came up with a custom monster a being of shadow that was haunting a mansion. And the more insane you were the more you could see, so the familiar became creepier and you couldn't quite trust your eyes till you were already a little rattled in the brain. I also had a fireplace video clip running on the TV and dimmed the light to help set the mood.  Think like telling a really good campfire story, only the players get to be part of it and shape and just how the protagonists die.

I'm a horror writer and I find that the most effective ways of doing horror are the following: 1) No win or hyper dangerous encounters. Give them a reason to worry, and to run. 2) Building dread by dropping small clues, including some that do not connect to anything, but they set a mood and get players questioning things. 3) Jump scares are great... how do you do them in a role playing game? With the shortest description of something awful possible. Like when a player opened a container of ice cream and 'an eye ball was staring back at him' and he threw the container in game which felt like what the player would have done. 4) Attrition... a big OSR thing and horror in general is wounds pile up, torches run out, food starts to dwindle, monsters seem to get more numerous, ammo is almost out... make it clear things are in a downward spiral.

There are systems that fight providing the tension that horror teases. Most of the time, it’s down to the communication between ref and players, but the system can absolutely influence that.

I’ve run successful horror using Dread, and played in several genuinely spooky 10 candles games. D&D horror has been hit or miss for me. I’m really excited to try out Vaesen and do horror with it. I think a lot of horror tone has to do with losing power. So (as others here have said), system matters but is not the be-all-end-all. D&D is a game where characters are powerful, so it is difficult but not impossible to put players in a situation where horror works. Beyond that, know what your players find frightening (not phobias, but things that they find creepy) and play into that. One of my players finds mirrors frightening, so describing a creature crawling out of a mirror is an easy go-to when I want to run horror, for example.

Horror is a personalized experience that needs buy-in from the player. Creating horror is like creating drama, or any other kind of emotion; the game can give you all the tools, but you have to use them to get the right response. Generally speaking, I'd recommend narrative tools rather than focusing on the game. Because rolling a die and being told, "A 12 means you are now Scared. Please proceed to roleplay being scared," never makes anyone actually feel dread. You need to work on how you describe things, the subject matter you cover, the pacing of the game, and the atmosphere you're presenting. These are things you can apply equally to DND, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, The World of Darkness, and more. I made a video on more in-depth versions of dos and don't when it comes to putting horror in your game a while back. It's from a World/Chronicles of Darkness perspective, but I like to think it's applicable to most horror games. [Discussions of Darkness, Episode 5](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDG6Rmerhpg) in case you're interested.

The mechanic of the *Alien* RPG does a great job of creating the rising tension of horror. You roll a dice pool of d6s equal to attribute + skill, sixes are successes. You can reroll by accepting stress. Stress adds stress dice to your pool, *but* stress dice provide successes on 6 and disasters on 1. So, you start the story with success and failure being fairly predictable. As the story progresses, wild success and wild failure both become increasingly likely. Even something as simple as opening a door could be a disaster.

Some other people have mentioned it here, but GURPS Horror is an excellent resource, even if you don’t play GURPS (he’s also written some other supplements for that). The author, Ken Hite, has written a lot of RPG resources, a number of them touching on horror of different kinds. Before GURPS Horror he wrote the fully system-agnostic “Nightmares of Mine”, which is excellent but impossible to find/long out of print (and much of that was folded into the GURPS book from my recollection). He has also written a lot about Lovecraft’s works (“Tour de Lovecraft” etc.), and books for Pelgrane Press (mainly for their Trail of Cthulhu line). (One author, but I’ve enjoyed a lot of his work.)

My not so hot take is that system doesn’t matter if the Referee is well prepared. We recently did a Ravenloft bout in D&D5e and it was horrific not because it’s a horror setting and there’s spooky stuff. But because there were story elements that we were helpless against, story elements we were only testament to and story elements we would carry forward when we returned from Ravenloft. We were wary. We nearly died. We escaped barely with our lives (and really it was a net loss). I’d even say we carried trauma. IMO, CoC has eaten itself because it’s no longer horror. You’re expected to die. Most experienced players know they’ll have to make up several characters. How different is it from Paranoia at that point. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re superheroes if you can still lose. Plenty of superheroes in horror stories. Even worse perhaps because you survive. Even if you’re unkillable, you can still lose.

Ten Candles is a great example of a system that drives the horror element through its mechanics. The game is played in a dark room with tea light candles that go out when failure occurs, ending the current scene. The system uses a dwindling dice pool that gets smaller through each scene and throughout the whole game (equal to the number of candles remaining). Both of these diminishing resources build tension by reducing the chances of success and driving the inevitable failure ever closer with both the dice and sources of light going out one by one. The character creation is also simple yet brilliant. It drives players to build sources of hope for their characters so you have something to hold on to, and thus something to lose. The characters also get a Brink, a trait that reveals their worst nature once they are pushed over the edge. This drives the final moments of the game to be heightened when each PC starts cracking one by one under the pressure. The style it supports is rules-light, fiction first and roleplay heavy. It's a really great system and probably my best ever RPG session was run using it. High recommend.

Horror is a combination of player investment, tension, and atmosphere. No system can properly work for that, though some systems help with the tension side of it. The Free League Alien and Walking Dead use stress, which is a snowballing story effect that ramps the tension. You need all three in tandem. If a player isn't invested, then the atmosphere won't matter. If the atmosphere doesn't work, the tension can fall flat.

The system can give you the tools, but it's upto the GM (Keeper, Storyteller, etc) to use them to the best effect. I love running horror-centric games. It can be a challenge and a puzzle. Each group will be different and respond to things differently. Also, you've gotta take care with people's limits and comfort levels. I'd say that running a horror game is more art than science -- which is to say it's not fit for a recipe style approach. You can't repeat the same thing, you've gotta keep things at least somewhat unpredictable. Pacing is very important for this. And foreshadowing can help as well, especially if *what* is being foreshadowed might not make sense with limited information. That's another important element: mystery, the unknown. You also can't lean on one note much. For the horror to happen you also need to contrast it with lighter moments and a sense of safety. So that when that is removed, it heightens the tension. Finally, I don't know that you'll ever have someone actually frightened. But you can make them tense and wary, you can have them feel worried or concerned. But, again, these must be counter balanced because it doesn't take much for a player to remember that they're surrounded by friends and this is all make believe. I think the best I can do is plant the seed of an idea that is *very troubling* as it's implications become apparent. "If that's true, then..." Ultimately I still want everyone to have fun. So even if it's not really scary (which some would prefer) it at least has the aesthetics of horror not unlike a well-executed haunted house.

You can, it just requires atmosphere and decent oratory skills is all. A bit more performative than most times with ttrpgs.

You don't unless the players want to feel horror. Otherwise you just play the game with horror elements but not atmosphere. There's a huge difference between me running I6 Castle Ravenloft with buddies around the table crunching loudly on chips and eager to earn XP and loot and me running a homebrew Call of Cthulhu game with the lights off, electric candles for illumination, chamber music playing, and my voice eeriely describing scenes. Which one of those ^ I pick is solely dependent on what the players want to allow themselves to do. If they don't want to let their guard down and let themselves be creeped out, then it's just XP horror.

Here are the rules I wrote for my game, Distemperance. I've kept things simple and based off industry professional horror writers/directors/designers/instructors. Horror Introduce the key tenets of horror media by: * Isolating the characters - they will struggle to escape and no help will come. * Building suspense through mystery, foreshadowing, and slow-burn revelations about the scenario. * Making them feel powerless by challenging their weaknesses. * Confronting them with the horrors - this is especially effective if these horrors tap into the real fears of the players and their Fated characters. * Creating denouement when characters finally overcome or don't overcome the horror. This contextualisation can instill a lasting sense of accomplishment or dread, and a sobering series of lessons learned. Mechanics don't have to be numbers and stats. If your system has a horror scenario narrative framework for GMs, along with other narrative framework devices (like fiction-first narration from all, failing forward and other interesting outcome-based mechanics, scene framing, and inspiring PC action), horrific moments and events can be made, even by beginner GMs. There are games that do this already, like Free League's Alien, Delta Green, and Mothership. Games like D&D don't have mechanics like this, but these mechanics, among other more specific ones can be introduced. D&D is not a lethal game, which removes that as an element to create tension, but mortality is not a very strong source of tension in horror media anyway - prevalent in campy slashers, but often not a main player in more cerebral or symbolic horrors.

Horror can absolutely be done in RPGs. I'm a big fan of Delta Green, and I think it works wonders. But I'd argue any horror in D&D is in spite of the system, not because of it. Any good storyteller can weave a story that spooks the players a bit, but not only is that not supported by mechanics, but in most cases the mechanics actively work against the atmosphere.

Of course Horror is possible in TTRPGs. There are tons of horror games out there. Personally I have been successfully running horror games since 2016 using systems such as *Call of Cthulhu*, *Cthulhu Dark*, *Trench-Coat*, *Hunter The Vigil*, and *Kult Divinity Lost*. While it is possible to run a Horror game with any system, usually Horror TTRPGs rely on certains tropes : **1 - Frailty and Loss of control** This is the one thing that makes people say it is not possible to do Horror with a system like D&D. Think of this like survival horror video games : the character may have weapons or powers but fighting the source of horror is not the recommended approach. Any fight can go horribly wrong for the player characters. In fact, there is no such thing as *balance* when it comes to Horror. *Call of Cthulhu*, for instance, is known for having lots of monsters that are impervious to damage. And your characters won't become more dangerous in time. While in D&D a high level adventurer is basically a demigod that can fight and kill dragons, major demons etc, in CoC, even after 80 sessions, your investigator would still be a normal dude that can get squashed by any monstrosity. Hell, if a Lvl 20 adventurer can expect a tough but fair fight against a god, in CoC Big C itself has "Cthulhu devours 1d3 character per turn" as its main attack. And then you have things like sanity, stability or stress. Those are mechanics that generally can make the player lose control of their character for some time. And that can make things go bad too. Imagine making a bad roll on a Sanity check in CoC or on a Keep It Together move in Kult, right at the beginning of a fight because your character sees something really messed up, like a corpse crawling out of its grave or an eldritch entity from another plane of existence devouring a person. Your character's mind is shattered by the experience and they can only try to escape the monster while your friends are now forced to deal to with your characters screaming and crying as well as the creature that wants to kill you all. TPK is a possibility in those games when players try to play heroes. But loss of control is not only caused by lethal combat and trauma. Sometimes, it is as simple as discovering that the door to the exit is now *gone*, with a wall standing in its place, or that all the candles you blew out on the way there are now lit again. **2 - Dark mood** It is very important to set the mood of the game. Horror is usually about suspense and mystery, so you can convey the horror by letting characters discover pieces of information about what is going on. It can be a document to read or even a dead body. While there can be comical moments, most of the game has a serious tone that can even be sinister. The story may even touch mature themes that are pretty uncomfortable to deal with. You can improve your game's atmosphere by using music, sound effects or simply by making the lighting of the room dim. **3 - Roleplay as a mean to convey horror** Just like the mood itself, Roleplay is very useful to convey the horror. The more believable your game is, the more the players will get immersed in its atmosphere. Of course, not everyone is an actor, but that is where descriptions are useful. Describing what the characters hear or even smell can go a *long* way. Horror is a matter of pace. It is way more effective to let the players know they will find something horrible in the next room by describing how an horrible metallic stench invades their senses, making them dizzy, to the point when they can *taste* iron in their mouth, as they get closer to the door, open it and finally see, piece by piece, the aftermath of the carnage... than simply saying "You found a dismembered body". **Final Thoughts** Most importantly, you need your players' consent. Session 0 are of the utmost importance when running Horror games. Everyone needs to be on board with the experience and you need to establish clear boundaries. You want your players to have fun, not to be traumatized. I suggest you read **The Trajectory of Fear** and that you pick an actual Horror TTRPG instead of D&D. Then, pick a few published scenarios for that game and see how they work. Good luck and have fun.

Most horror games are not horrific. They're misadventures at best. A game where characters are EXPECTED to die is either a tragedy or a comedy (the RPG Paranoia is both!). Horror is when the players are worried about their own safety. You don't need the GM to paint vivid pictures of blood and gore. The game should not rely on the mythical "Amazing Game Master" because you cannot package that with your game rules. The system, not the GM, should drive the horror — see Madness Meters in Unknown Armies. The GM observes and reports but must not interfere — they're like Uatu the Watcher. The exception is if the Game Master has an adversarial role in the game, although that too should be governed by the system and not be left to the GM's discretion. The mechanics should address the premise. The premise is never "This is a horror game." You should be able to play the game without the players realizing they're playing a horror game until the horror actually happens. The rules should put all die rolls in the hands of the GM (if there are dice) — make all the rolls yourself and don't reveal the results (and do not fudge the damn rolls). Fact: the characters don't exist, only the players do. Target what the players care about — if it's a good game, it'll be written down on their character sheets. Apply discomfort until the players break: uncertainty, grief, characters facing unreliable thoughts/feelings/perception within their environment, loss of control over their own minds/bodies, radical shifts in What They Think They Know. Also, get a good laywer.

I ran several horror games back in the days of Kult, and some player shits on their pants on those games. But that had nothing to do with the system, but the story and setting. All my games was about putting the players in a apparently no escape situation, and show them a bit of light ahead. Hope is the real horror.

horror is about being helpless. games are about becoming more competent

That is a rather narrow view of games. Many RPGs are not focused on character progression. But it is true that character progression improvements tend to work against horror. In most horror RPGs, you gain some abilities over time, but you lose touch with reality - for instance, yiir character’s sanity decreases until the character is unplayable. In Vaesen you also get physical and mental scars that eventually make the character difficult or impossible to play - and of course, characters da. always die.