Horror Hero rant

[nexus]

I'd like to point out that Lovecraft doesn't have a lot of "spineless losers" in his stories. Granted, my books are packed away, but I recall many character seeing various horrors from beyond space and time and surviving -- sanity intact. Some did go mad, yes, but then they also looked dead-on into some sort of sanity-blasting horror (sort of like looking into the face of Judge Fear), or were casting spells that warped the caster. Lovecraft did use fairly normal people as his heroes -- academics, teachers, writers, and the like, not the brawny self-reliant heroes of his close friend RE Howard. And these people were often not prepared for "the truth is out there." I mean, really, if you (or I) saw a dead man get up and walk, would you reach for a rifle or start running? And let's not even think about a shambling something 20 feet tall who's mere existence warps the nature of reality around it.

 

Thinking about it, SAN-checks are no different then taking damage. The difference instead of hurting your body, you are hurting your mind. Take too much SAN damage and you're not dead, just insane (even if only for a bit). It helps re-enforce a certain idea -- that of risk and fear. Tell the PCs there's a dragon (or a demon) in a haunted tower and they may say "I'm only 150 points [or first level]" and decide to wait. Tell the PCs that something is eating the bones out of people in the deserted house in Elm Street and in COC you might get "My SAN is only 20 these days... can I survive another encounter?" Same element of risk, different mechanic.

 

Eliminating these effects does run the risk of having players (and those PCs) not showing any fear or apprehension of anything. "Ho-hum, it's yet another eldritch horror. Jeeves? The shotgun please." Of course, you don't need to use SAN or Fright Checks, you can use PRE Attacks -- and when you get right down to it, aren't they the same thing? Where's the difference from a King of Edom hitting a PC with 100+ PRE worth of fear and Cthulhu causing you to lose 100 SAN in a single shot?

 

You're right Susano,They're aren't "Losers" in Lovecraft or many Horror stories. For the most part, they are normal people reacting in realistic ways to things that are completely beyond human experience, not blase Cosmic Powered Superheroes that can eat stars and fart blackholes. Yet most of them STILL MUSTER THE COURAGE TO ACT. That is heroism, not bullying something with your unbeatable powers and posturing about it.

 

I'll grant more movie characters are suffering from a severe lack of self preservation instinct, but take Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later, for example. I wouldn't call most of the characters in it "Spineless losers", but scared people trying their damndest to survive a nightmarish situation. That is what a Horror RPG should be. Character that know their human, are afraid, but summon up the will to act regardless.

 

Real people do panic, do show fear and, yes occasionally wet themselves when oh, their dead Mother's rotting corpse shows up and knocks on their door. Trust me, I am running three horror games and without some mechanic enforcing things, you have players that act in totally unnatural ways to things that SHOULD terrify them in any normal world. Completely blase. Pre is a good approximation (IIRC that was how the original Horror Hero did things. Situational Pre attacks). As for Cthullu and his play time pal, err, I mean the Kings of Edom, don't they have insanely high pre and mental transforms to simulate how "Mindblastingly unnatural" they are? Sure, the pictures aren't that "scary" but give me a break. There's a big difference between looking at picture of drooling 100 ft mound of tentacles and eyes and seeing one oozing down the street towards you. If you tell me you wouldn't piss your pants in that situation, you're kidding yourself.

 

Horror is one of the hardest genres to pull in role playing because so many player can't take that risk and give up a little bit of their ego to portray some hint of fear. Everyone wants to be Joe Ironballs Urban Commando regardless of who their character is.

[Susano]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I think one of the things that makes Horror, well, horrific, is the fact the protagonist is someone like you or me -- a guy with a lot of 8s in his characteristics and no real experience or training in being violent. The horror factor comes from not only shambling corpses but of the feeling of powerlessness. Granted, this does not make for a fun RPG (IMO), so I'd rather not see a book devoted on how to run "stupid teenagers get axe-murdered the moment they go outside with just a flashlight." However, introducing horror elements into other genres would be a fantastic book. I mean, think about it, HELLBOY is basically a superhero book with extensive horror elements. SILENT MOBIUS is a mix of fantasy and cyberpunk meeting Lovecraft. X-FILES is dark conspiracies and black helicopters meeting, well, weird stuff. 28 DAYS LATER, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and their ilk is a mix of medical disaster (.e. plague) meeting walking dead. THE THING and ALIEN are pure SF Horror.

 

The HORROR HERO needs to discuss what makes horror, well, horrific, which is that sense of the unknown and helplessness, and how to apply it to everyone from the navigator of a star-hopping tow-truck to a man of steel.

[nexus]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

Exactly, without some sense of loss of power there is no horror. That's one reason why its one of the hardest genres to run. Roleplaying is, essentially, a power fantasy. Its really those that are more into rping as a "drama" or storytelling that seem to get more into Horror roleplaying. But evidently there is a market for it, however niche. Call of Cthullu has been around for awhile.

[GamePhil]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

And yet, most people I have ever seen run Call of Cthulhu run it as a "you can't win, you're just along to go for the ride and drool" type of game. Both relatively long-term versions of the game I played in had us as nobodys who could accomplish nothing. The last individual game I was in was touted as "everyone dies".

 

I still love the genre, myself, including the possibility of being completely outclassed, but I have never played in a game that did it right. With some exceptions, the game needs to be such that there is a chance of "winning", or at least not feeling like a hanger on. I cannot blame someone who has only had my experiences and didn't have a love of horror to begin with for being bitter or at least uninterested in it.

[Edsel]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

Yep. I've run Call of Cthulhu and I've run monster hunter games using Hero system. There is definately a different feel. CoC is Horror. Monster Hunting is action-adventure with a wider variety of targets.

 

CoC just scares the players from the outset. Monster hunters want the be the one who gets the kill. Both are fun but they are different games.

[nexus]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

And yet, most people I have ever seen run Call of Cthulhu run it as a "you can't win, you're just along to go for the ride and drool" type of game. Both relatively long-term versions of the game I played in had us as nobodys who could accomplish nothing. The last individual game I was in was touted as "everyone dies".

 

I still love the genre, myself, including the possibility of being completely outclassed, but I have never played in a game that did it right. With some exceptions, the game needs to be such that there is a chance of "winning", or at least not feeling like a hanger on. I cannot blame someone who has only had my experiences and didn't have a love of horror to begin with for being bitter or at least uninterested in it.

 

These are some of the thing Horror Hero needs to address, but some players really love that doom tragic style of play. Look at the succesess of World of Darkness, after all.

[GamePhil]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

These are some of the thing Horror Hero needs to address' date=' but some players really love that doom tragic style of play. Look at the succesess of World of Darkness, after all.[/quote']

 

Yes, indeed. And for part of the book to be devoted to this is good; for it all to be devoted to it is bad. I have high hopes for the much greater usability of Horror HERO over the stinking World of Darkness (I'm not bitter) and CoC.

[Susano]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

Yes' date=' indeed. And for part of the book to be devoted to this is good; for it all to be devoted to it is bad. I have high hopes for the much greater usability of Horror HERO over the stinking World of Darkness (I'm not bitter) and CoC.[/quote']

 

I think COC is fine for what it does -- which is allow one to run within the nightmarish universe of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. But that's about it. But as I have said, that's only one aspect of the horror genre.

 

Oh, and is this a case of Man Cactus in action?

 

[yamamura]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I like the idea of survival horror. But in most cases the characters are trained professionals or normal people who to survive, rise up to the challenge. After all Tina a normal shy high school girl might get totally freaked out when she sees her first zombie, but slowly through surviving encounter after encounter, her battle skills and PRE all go up to better survive the horror. So by the final scene she is a butt-kicking and name taking battle machine (and perchance has lost her own humanity in the process). But as mentioned this scenario type can be played in any genre.

 

Now in the unbeatable Horror scenario, I would say the best people can hope for is a draw. In Le Fanu's An Account of Some Strange Distubances in Aungier Street and in Rhoda's Broughton's The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth, the horror is an unstoppable force that the best way to deal with it is to withdrawl and avoid the haunted place. Of course this sort of thing doesn't lend itself to an ungoing campaign, but to run a no-win or draw horror a one shot is the way to go. After all then it fits quite nicely inbetween story arcs or lines and can be a nice break from a regular campaign.

 

But the biggest stumbling block to any Horror campaign has been the players. If they don't want to play the genre or even if they do but have no interest in the tropes of the genre, then any artifical outside rule will be just that. Face how often have you watch a horror film and yell at the screen for some one not to do something, though in the movie (if is is a good one) there is no reason for him not to. I think sometime instead of playing their characters, players get wrapped in the tactics of figuring out how to best win.

 

G

[GamePhil]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I think COC is fine for what it does -- which is allow one to run within the nightmarish universe of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. But that's about it. But as I have said, that's only one aspect of the horror genre.

 

Oh, so do I. The "stinking" was directed only at WOD, which I played in and ran much too much for my needs (angsty pseudo-horror is not my thing), while not playing and running HERO. Much against my will.

 

Never again.

 

But CoC is hard to run well, as my experience attests. Not that these games weren't fun sometimes, that's why I kept going back. But I wouldn't run in a campaign like that at this point if I had other choices.

 

Oh, and is this a case of Man Cactus in action?

 

His infamy grows...

[Curufea]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I'd just like to point out there is a vast difference in how horror is represented in different types of media -

Specifically: movies make people stupid.

 

However, they can cover their weak characters and badly written plots with horror-inducing elements that you can't get in books - such as sound and imagery.

 

In the horror movies I've seen - I don't think I've come across a single characters close to the level of normal intelligence you find in horror literature (except possibly Hellraiser 5). It seems the script writers are unable to think of valid intelligent reasons for character actions leading to horrific situations.

[sigh]

 

Is it trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator (and should we be insulted by that?) - if so, it fails - I don't empathise with characters that deserve to be icked by whatever is out there. And if I don't empathise, I don't feel the horror of their situation. And the movie fails.

[Susano]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

In the horror movies I've seen - I don't think I've come across a single characters close to the level of normal intelligence you find in horror literature (except possibly Hellraiser 5). It seems the script writers are unable to think of valid intelligent reasons for character actions leading to horrific situations.

 

I think in JAWS and ALIEN, the characters display fairly normal intelligence. Just in both cases the horror was beyond their ability to deal with (the shark was far larger than anyone realized, while the xenomorph had abilities no one expected).

 

And yes, JAWS is very much a horror film.

[Southern Cross]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

Try watching more Fifties B-Movies then.....

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I think in too many cases, Call of Cthulhu is seen as a game where the Killer GM holds sway, and the players are just along to see how disgustingly they can die. This should not be the case at all.

 

Of course, if the players are dyed-in-the-wool hack-and-slashers and can't conceive of any other way of dealing with the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath than to shoot at it, then yes, they should die. But characters that are avoiding the nasties they can't fight directly, then taking down the cultists and gaining the knowledge they need to foil the plans of the Great Old Ones, characters who in short act like the characters in a Lovecraft story, then there's no reason they shouldn't be able to return again and again.

 

Every CoC adventure I've ever seen has had ways of defeating the ancient evil, or at least surviving unscathed.

[nexus]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I think alot of gamers get into what I call "table mentality" when they watch a horror movie. Here is what I would do in this situation in a game. But in a game you are almost completely emotionally detached. You're safe, sitting around a table in a well lighted room, maybe snacking. You know your abilites down to the percentage, that the monster MUST have limits. That's not your wife or child's animated corpse scrapping at the windows, that's some NPC you pretend to care about. You know the GM has given you a way out. It is a game, right? You just have to find it. Of course we make rationale calm descions and deride the idiots in Horror movies.

 

Of course, this isn't to say there aren't many many horror movies that have the idiot plot. Most slasher flicks, for example. They don't even act like human beings trying to surivive. But I can think of a few that have had people act with reasonable, perhaps even slightly above average compentency once you take panic and stress in account.

[Toadmaster]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I think there is alot of bad Horror gaming going on and that tends to be what people associate with. Friday the 13th HERO would be no fun unless I get to play Jason, the "PC's" are just to stupid to live. CoC can be great even if the characters die or go mad, I've played many games where the character was done by the end but if that sacrifice saved the world I probably had fun but there is a tendancy for the game to deginerate into 1,000,000 nasty ways to die.

 

Alien, Aliens, Jaws and the Ghost and the darkness are all worth seeing to see how horror can be done. Alien is basically your standard normal people faced with a nasty critter (and in my opinion a nastier android), in Aliens you have some butt kicking "PC's" who are just plain outclassed and unprepared for what they are facing, (Preditor is pretty much the same situation but with a pulpier feel), in Jaws the "monster" is really nothing special (in the supernatural sense) just a big animal but the alien environment (ocean) that hinders the PC's is almost an accomplice to the Shark and in Ghost & the Darkness you have 2 very unnatural lions, as humans we are used to being the top of the food chain, this movie shows how effective even something mundane can be quite scary (the movie is based on real events, The Lions of Tsavo is where the bit about the lions came from, Lions can be quite a bit scarier than you would think from seeing them in the zoo).

 

Horror comes in many shapes and sizes, and is more attitude than stats, I hope the new edition covers this well, I know there are many that dislike sanity, fear checks etc as an unnatural because "they wouldn't panic in that situation", I think that as gamers we tend to think we are immune to the strange and unnatural but I think horror really is about fear of the unknown which often is overlooked, if your monster hunter kills 16 zombies, 3 werewolves and 2 Vampies each month then those critters are unlikely to scare him, but when he runs up against Things man was not meant to know about, that is another story completely. There is definately room for monster gaming with unphasable heroes but I'm not really sure that is "horror".

 

Using myself as an example I've been a firefighter since 1992, fire is not really "scary" to me at this point but for most it is in the top 10 fears, I know fire, I know what it can do and know how to deal with it, most people don't. But just because I am "brave" (or more realistically stupid enough) to go up against a fire that doesn't mean I have the same ability to control my bodily functions when faced by Cthulhu (I'd like to think so but I'd like to be rich too) I haven't been to a monster hunters academy and I don't think the fact I've read Lovecraft counts for much except at least I know the name of the eldritch horror that is eating my brain

 

I don't remember what my point was but hopefully this makes some sense.

[Guest Champsguy]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

A lot of people think they know horror. They don't, and that's the problem. I see a lot of people criticizing slasher horror (someone above said the characters are "too stupid to live"), but that's usually not the case. If you avoid the cheesy rip-off movies (and no, Friday the 13th is not a cheesy rip-off), then you usually don't see that much stupidity. The problem with most of these teenagers is that they're operating on absolutely zero information.

 

Teen: I'm gonna be a counselor at summer camp! I wonder where Brenda and Charlie went. Is that them outside? Hack!!!!

 

 

 

But anyway, if players aren't scared of your monsters, then you aren't killing your players enough.

 

Bob: "Okay, I'm ready for this bastard. When he opens the door, I'm gonna cut his ass down with this chainsaw."

Steve: "Awesome!"

Dave: "Yeah, kick his ass, Bob!"

GM: "Okay, Bob, the door opens. The dark man is standing there."

Bob: "I cut him in half. Woo-hoo! I rolled a 3! I hit!"

GM: "Okay, you stab him in the stomach with the chainsaw. A sickening feeling rises in your gut as you realize he's chuckling. You look down and see that the chainsaw passed harmlessly through him."

Bob: "Oh, crap."

Steve: "Oh, crap man."

Dave: "Oh, dude, you're so hosed."

GM: "The rest of you see the dark man close his hands around Bob's head. A moment later there's a shower of blood."

Steve: "F*** this, I'm gone."

Dave: "Yeah, me too. Tough luck, Bob."

[Southern Cross]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

Of course,there's the old "characters open a door,only to find the monster right in front of them" trick to fall back on.Even an experienced monster hunter could panic if the monster they are fighting appears right in front of them.

[Curufea]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

Another anecdote

 

While in a CoC game, we went down a mine shaft to investigate - the mine had some zombies in it. We fled back to the lift - myself and the other PC investigator.

When we got to the lift the GM said-

"As the three of you ascend."

"THREE?!?!?!"

 

Scared the crap out of us. We loved it.

[The Owl]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

In the horror movies I've seen - I don't think I've come across a single characters close to the level of normal intelligence you find in horror literature (except possibly Hellraiser 5).

 

As many jokes as were in it, I think Tremors (the first one, the only one) did a good job with making their protagonists relatively intelligent Everymen. Rednecks, yes, but not *stupid* rednecks.

 

I loved that movie just because the FIRST TIME something scary happened, they tried to leave town. None of this "let's stay here while the walls bleed" crap.

[Max Callahan]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I loved tremors because it had the best bit of advice ever. "Running isn't a plan. Running is what you do when a plan fails."

[Curufea]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

Yeah - I came to realise that statement was to generalist. I realised as soon as someone mentioned Alien, actually

I should have said "most movies", not implied "all movies"

 

Tremors would be comed/horror - would Buffy and Angel be put in that category too?

[GaryB]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

Since I love the horror genre, I'll share my views on how these things (IMO) could be run in HERO.

 

Most people have to realize that in order to create a horror story, they must "adventurize" it. In many cases of horror stories, there is an inevitable terror that can really only be avoided and not defeated. This doesn't make for a good night of gaming. Such examples of this are movies and stories like "Final Destination", "The Ring", "The Grudge", "Christine", "It". While the stories have characters who are involved, the degree of fun a gaming session could have in such a setting is rather limited.

 

This is where the GM would have to step in and add to the stories above. Make challenges for the characters to overcome somehow. "Adventurize" it. Let me take Final Destination where the chief villain is essentially the force of death itself.

 

The kids in the movie have escaped Death's pre-set plan by some outside force. One of the character's picks up on the design by reading the signs around him. This leads to the escape of death and into the horror where Death begins to take out the survivors one by one because it had a plan. It's not to say a game couldn't handle this situation, it's just not that fun. For a game, you have to make it after the fact. At the end of the movie, three of the teens survive, but are still being lazily chased by death it seems (it's taking longer for Death to do stuff for some reason, this time around). What if the character who can see into "Death's Design" begins some strange cult of his own on how to avoid death. What would be the effects? What if death began to send agents into the world to start dealing with these interlopers who could see through it's design. This would make for a gaming session, direct conflict. Something tangible for the players to go up against, while still trying to avoid the direct power of death itself.

 

Now as mentioned here, there are the Monster Horror films such as Tremmors, or Aracniphobia, Eight Legged Freaks, and a slew of horrible Sci-Fi produced Monster Survivor flicks. These make for some fun direct gaming session if the GM is good. Most people are afraid of unusual monsters and the like.

 

Then you have Classic Monster films like Dracula, Frankenstein, Werewolves, The Curse of the Mummy, and even Creature from the Black Lagoon. While there is of course a direct threat in these films, if you ever watch them closely there are usually more than one or more people in the background mucking things up. For example, in Curse of the Mummy; Sure the mummy was at large, but who was the bad guy who woke the creature up and is trying to get people killed through use of the Mummy. Adding Mystery to a Horror story is one sure way to make things much better than having to face the monster directly.

 

Slasher films/stories dont really make for good gaming. At least not on a one for one basis. In a gaming session, combats would be pretty one sided for the Slasher Monster vs a bunch of Teens who are running scared. However, you can turn these types of stories around. What if your players are instead a team of folks who dealt with these supernatural psychopaths who seem to come up out of the woodwork every so often. Each one has it's own pattern and method of killing, and perhaps a method to be killed that the team must find. Jason and Michael Myers were pretty good at what they did, but they seemed just too powerful for any challenge put before them. Now they have a team of people who dealt with this sort of thing.

 

Ghosts/Hauntings. These can perhaps be the best types of Horror stories you can generate. There are limitless possibilities one can play around with. Anywhere from a Poltergeist scenario, The Fog, Ghost Story, or even something innocuous as Ghost Busters (in a less commedic sense - or not).

 

Alien Terrors - See Monster Horror.

 

Call of Ctuthu - This is classic story telling, and there is much more a GM can do with the works of Lovecraft than "Defeat the Cult" of the day. The background and resources of Lovecraft could warrant so many types of adventure apart from the Cult. For example, in the story of Dagon. What happened to all the people after Paul tried to burn himself and the rest of the cult to deny them his presence? There were survivors and Dagon was never defeated or thwarted. What would happen if the Cult's influence began to start popping up in popular culture and economics? A disease set on by the workings of Shub-Niggoroth or Nurgle, transforming many into horrors, including your characters. CoC should not be about directly confronting the terrors of the world, but also dealing with one's own horror and the sudden realization that the world is about to change around them.

 

Gore Fests - In the Mouth of Madness, Hellraiser, and Event Horizon. If a GM couldn't run a good session with these materials then they should not be running horror. The biggest thing about these types of stories is description and atmosphere. How fast the world can change from the influence of the legions of hell decorating the world with limbs and the like. How do the characters fight such evils?

 

One key thing that GM's and players need to keep in mind about Horror gaming is not to scare the players of the game, but to scare the characters in the game. You cannot run a horror game like a first person shooter. The most important thing the GM must do is get the right setting and atmosphere so that the characters can live and breathe in the world, and then realize the sinister purpose of the world they are about to enter. It is my firm belief that Horror characters need more background work from the players than most any other genre. The reason why they should be scared is to loose all that nifty stuff they just wrote about and made thier character care about.

 

"I dont have any nightmares, I give them all to you!" - Steven King

 

"My only horror comes from not being able to do my own taxes." - Clive Barker

 

"The best horror for any character to experience is from something they truely love." - John Carpenter

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

The Horror Genre isn't suited to everybody, but it makes a great Sub Genre.

 

Cheers

 

QM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BOOOO!!!!

[Curufea]

Re: Horror Hero rant

 

I've often thought of Lovecraftian horror as "Science fiction horror". Because of the basic premises in the stories. Gods are aliens, there are other dimensions, magic is science we can never comprehend, etc...