Talking about Horror

Running or coming up with a horror campaign isn’t easy.  After all, fear is a very personal emotion, one that people know and acknowledge to be uncomfortable.  In fact, most people aren’t fans of being frightened at all, and consider actually being afraid during a game to be a sin on the part of the GM.

When I’m running a game set in the World of Darkness, be it Mage or some other system, I try to go back to the very foundation of the setting.  It is, at it’s heart, a horror game.  And as such, the player characters should be exposed to things that can scare the characters, if not the players.

I think it’s important to make that distinction.  Player Characters are relatively fair game… for as long as it does not stand to emotionally harm the Player itself.  That’s why in-game rape of a player character is a big NO as far as GMing goes.  Irreversible harm to a Player Character should be handled with sensitivity.

Horror is also a genre that requires a keen sense of pacing.  Threats in a horror campaign aren’t just a mob of zombies around every corner.  Making something too common runs the risk of making it ordinary.  I like my threats to be rare, dangerous, and risky to research.

Horror relies on taking away the familiar and adding stressors to a situation.  To paraphrase  from Elizabeth Barette’s incredible article:  “Elements of Aversion: What Makes Horror Horrifying”, Horror works with two main sets of motifs.

Elements of Absence – These are motifs that take away from normalcy.  Ripping away at the familiar, the normal and the sane.

• The unknown – What we don’t know can hurt us…
• The unexpected – …and we don’t even know when it will strike.
• The unbelievable - The threat is impossible, interacting and behaving in ways that should not be
• The unseen – We know that the threat exists, but there’s no means to verify it’s position, making it impossible to be certain if you’re safe.
• The unconscious – This motif represents the fear of ourselves, of things about us that we are afraid to discover.
• The unstoppable – Tireless, relentless forces extinguishes hopes of being able to get away alive.

Elements of Presence – These motifs add something alien, uncomfortable or unwanted into the stable equation of our peaceful lives.

• Helplessness - The inability to do something is paralyzing.  While this is a good motif, it has to be used very carefully in the context of an RPG as the player characters must at least have some way to change their helpless situation.  As long as the Players are aware that this is so, then you’re fine.
• Urgency – Something needs to be done, and it has to be done right away.  Without urgency, horror turns into the measured pace of a mystery or procedural.
• Pressure – There is something at stake and the protagonists cannot afford to fail.  This is the kind of thrill that makes RPG die rolling so compelling.  The potential of failure that will result in very bad consequences.
• Intensity - This motif talks about the intensity of emotion.  People lose control of themselves and their composure.  It’s good to note that nWoD actually has an Attribute called Composure.
• Rhythm - The clever use of rhythm for rising and falling tension is a good way to keep people hooked.  Likewise a randomized Rhythm of threats can break a person’s expectations and push them again into uncomfortable territory.
• Release – As with fiction, RPGs must also offer some form of denouement.  After the horror has been faced and defeated by wits or strength, there has to be a time allotted for the Players and their Characters to sit back and relax.  Too much tension all the time can burn out players.

With these motifs firmly in mind, I can more or less keep my edge in Horror games.  While I throw in elements of comedy or action, the core of my campaign must always remain faithful to these motifs.