Horror for Superheroes.

[KA.]

I had the germ of an idea the other day.

I often hear that it is very hard to come up with Horror type enemies that are capable of 'scaring' superheroes.

They either aren't powerful enough to hurt the Supers, or they have to be so powerful that it becomes more like Godzilla, or King Kong, than a horror movie.

 

So I came up with this:

 

What would scare a Superhero, as far as his own personal safety?

(Notice: This build is probably shaky, but I am sure there is a book-legal way to do this. The concept is what I like.)

 

The Dark Claw.

 

What is The Dark Claw?

 

No one knows.

 

The Dark Claw appears as a cloud of Darkness (serious Darkness combined with Invisibility, and some type of Flash if necessary so that NOBODY can see what is in there.)

A Small Penetrating RKA with Area Effect that is somewhere Within the Darkness.

Desolidification w/ Fully IPE

Flight (A lot)

 

Basically when you meet The Claw, this happens.

 

You are on a dark street and you notice a cloud of darkness moving very quickly.

 

As the darkness surrounds you, no matter what your senses are, you can't see anything in it. You may be able to see out of it, but you can't see what is in there with you.

But it hits you.

It doesn't knock you down or knock you over or stun you.

It just does some BODY.

And it keeps doing it.

You are starting to bleed from tiny cuts all over you.

And you can't get away, and you can't stop it.

 

The Desolidification is mostly so that you can't just run into a building and get away, it is not intended that it attacks while Desolid.

 

Even if this was not built to actually kill a character, I can't think of too many that it would not scare.

 

KA.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

Scaring superheroes is much easier than subjecting them to horror.

 

Godzilla, the cloud, things like that that are more powerful than them, that can hurt them through their invulnerabiltiy, etc. can scare them, but aren't really horrific.

 

(There was an old Adventurer's Club article about this, too.)

 

The horror comes from the threat that can't be addressed with their powers, at least not directly. Lois Lane possessed by a demon. How does Superman get it out, and stop the demon from doing terrible things without hurting Lois? (OK, Superman's a bad example b/c he can do anything, but still...) What's causing all the babies being born in town to have no souls? Where are they going and how can you get them back? Are you sure you got them *all* back?

[Hermit]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

Scaring superheroes is much easier than subjecting them to horror.

 

Godzilla, the cloud, things like that that are more powerful than them, that can hurt them through their invulnerabiltiy, etc. can scare them, but aren't really horrific.

 

(There was an old Adventurer's Club article about this, too.)

 

The horror comes from the threat that can't be addressed with their powers, at least not directly. Lois Lane possessed by a demon. How does Superman get it out, and stop the demon from doing terrible things without hurting Lois? (OK, Superman's a bad example b/c he can do anything, but still...) What's causing all the babies being born in town to have no souls? Where are they going and how can you get them back? Are you sure you got them *all* back?

 

Got to agree with the Serpent supreme here. What's more, building a monster that can hurt the heroes and not be hurt (or even targetted) in return is not that hard, particularly if you know the characters limits. However, in my experience, it is just as likely to be resented as a railroad or twinking on the GM's part, as it is to inspire fear in the characters and it must be handled carefully and won't work for every PC. Of course, that could be said for any cross genre situation.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

The Dark Claw idea has potential, but it depends on how you would plan to use it. If the heroes can't fight it and can't get away from it, what DO they do? Where/when/why does it appear and attack? Does it just bloody them up and then leave? If you can build an interesting plot around it (I'm half asleep today, so no ideas are coming to mind) then it's a neat idea. Otherwise it's just a way to make your players feel helpless. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not the same thing as horror.

 

I've always found horror is far more about tone and mood than anything else. It's hard to do horror in a 4-color game, because players don't expect dark things to happen. Which doesn't mean you can't surprise them from time to time, but surprise isn't the same as horror. It's the anticipation of bad thing happening that truly defines horror, not the bad things themselves.

 

 

bigdamnhero

“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." - Alfred Hitchcock

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

While I personally don't like the horror genre, especially as a player...

 

I'd avoid stats. Have an idea of how you want the thing to work, what can interfere with it/stop it, and go with that. Stats, even powerful ones, lower the horror factor. In cases where you must use some mechanic (doing damage to a player, for instance) either just make up an appropriate number or roll an appropriate # of dice. And this sort of damage inflicting capacity can vary widely from scene to scene or even target to target as appropriate to the mood and story. How fast can it move? Just fast enough to be gaining on you, bit by bit. How tough is it? Tough enough to shrug off whatever you just threw at it. Etc.

 

Edit to add: "Take (roll) 2 body from the Mummy's Curse" is not horror-inducing. "The rot proceeds up your arm, almost to your elbow now. You're having problems feeling things with that hand, or holding anything with it. There's an odd, almost pleasant smell that comes from it. You're frequently distracted trying to shoo flies away from it, even when it's bandaged up. They go away briefly, but always return" is more like it.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

The Dark Claw.

 

What is The Dark Claw?

 

No one knows.

 

The Dark Claw appears as a cloud of Darkness (serious Darkness combined with Invisibility, and some type of Flash if necessary so that NOBODY can see what is in there.)...

It's a grue!!

 

...I'd avoid stats. Have an idea of how you want the thing to work, what can interfere with it/stop it, and go with that. Stats, even powerful ones, lower the horror factor. In cases where you must use some mechanic (doing damage to a player, for instance) either just make up an appropriate number or roll an appropriate # of dice. And this sort of damage inflicting capacity can vary widely from scene to scene or even target to target as appropriate to the mood and story. How fast can it move? Just fast enough to be gaining on you, bit by bit. How tough is it? Tough enough to shrug off whatever you just threw at it. Etc.

 

Edit to add: "Take (roll) 2 body from the Mummy's Curse" is not horror-inducing. "The rot proceeds up your arm, almost to your elbow now. You're having problems feeling things with that hand, or holding anything with it. There's an odd, almost pleasant smell that comes from it. You're frequently distracted trying to shoo flies away from it, even when it's bandaged up. They go away briefly, but always return" is more like it.

Excellently stated. Rep forthcoming. Er, later...

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

You can't scare players who think they're in a Superhero genre game. They *know* they're playing the heroes, they know they have powers, they generally know death is reversible...

 

You have to change genres for them to be afraid. Superheroes might be startled, or concerned, but they won't fear for their lives - because for a lot of them, dying in the line of duty is something they'll chance, and for many more, it's not remotely plausible.

[GoldenAge]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

I would say that you can "horrify" superheroes, but rarely can you immerse them in a horror campaign.

 

It's easy to horrify a hero... Take a villain to the extreme. Make him do things that no right-minded human would condone (and the sane could even imagine). Make him "horrific".

 

Initially you'll get an exaggerated reaction from your characters, but soon their horror will turn into resolve as they bend their considerable wills to the task of eliminating whatever horror has presented itself.

 

Good luck.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

Not being a fan of horror, I "horrorified" a couple of characters - both with the same trick in different adventures. In both cases it was a time travel adventure - and to motivate the players, every so often they would "become" thier time shifted selves (sorta like Marty McFly started to get erased).

 

In one case the current timeline had a fascist US government that hunted and killed all supers. The character in question, in this universe, was the American Himmler. That freaked out and horrified the character (who was a true blue patriot type).

 

The other was the youngster on the team. She was "dead" so when people flipped to their "other selves" she just got black. That horrified the character, and the player had it be a major growth point for the character later.

 

In both cases, it wasn't fear of death that made it horrific (well in the second case sort of) - but fear of becoming something they hated, and had no direct means to fight.

 

And that last bit is, I think, the only was to cause even the basic sense of horror in a Superhero. In a "normal" horror there is a monster that is unkillable and the humans are at it's mercy. The genre conventions of superheroes allows supers to fight (heck even be) Gods... no "unstoppable monster" will cause horror - so you have to find another way to make them helpless in direct action, but leave them a course of action that can solve the problem, with stakes so high that the threat of failure isn't just death or destruction, but but corruption or dissolution of ideals; something that the character in question would be horrified if it came to pass. As was mentioned before death just doesn't carry that scare.

[OddHat]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

Lock the doors to the game room.

 

Get an axe.

 

Be entirely in the moment.

 

Shower afterwards.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

I think the horror genre is almost the antithesis of the superhero one.

 

In my opinion the central facet of horror stories is the removal of control from the player. There is something going on, something awful, and they can't do anything about it. Of course for a good game there has to be something to do but on the face of it there is not.

 

In a superhero world the heroes have powers that allow them to overcome such things so it is more difficult to put such players (coherently within the framework of a story) in a control free environment.

 

I'm not a fan of the horror genre but one of my most successful games came with a haunted house scenario when I introduced the Black Enchantress to my campaign (a much more powerful version who got de-powered in the course of the scenario).

 

Essentially I introduced a house where the players knew that there was something powerful in the basement. The players explored the house looking for clues and I slowly closed off their options to leave (despite them blasting stuff and kicking in doors they always found another room or the first room they had come into.

 

Eventually they decided just to leave (through the door? what door? The window? What window?) and the only route open to them was towards the red light emanating from the basement.

 

It was kind of a railroad scenario based on Mental Illusions so powerful that I just didn't bother rolling dice. There was one moment that they could have escaped - when the martial artist used his Chi powers to protect his mind and found the true extent of destruction they had caused - the lack of the horror accoutrements I had been describing and an open door. He switched it back off to see whether everything was still there and found he could not switch the defence back on (powerful Mind Control stopped that!).

 

It took all the actual control away from the players, they were in an isolated environment with a powerful enemy they didn't want to fight straight up and they slowly had all their options stripped away from them.

 

Being a superhero story however they did manage to defeat the viallin with a straight up fight (obviously!).

 

 

Doc

[Trebuchet]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

It's not necessary to threaten the supers in order to successfully run a horror scenario. As long as what's happening is bizarre enough and scares the bejeezus out of (or kills) innocent normals it can still produce the desired effect. Why are people scared when they watch a horror movie when they can't possibly get injured themselves? Because being social creatures with compassion, we can be afraid for our fellow humans too. (How many times during a horror flick at a theater have you heard people yell "Don't do it!" when one of the onscreen characters is about to enter a room where the killer awaits?) It's just a matter of setting the mood (Never have it happen in daylight).

 

I've run two very successful horror scenarios for our four-color Champs campaign. One with a teen sorcerer and some magically spawned critters lurking in the sewers of old Salem Town (now a suburb of Boston); the other several years later when the same demented sorcerer turned Manhattan Island into a twisted magic realm where techology become increasingly less reliable (by the time we'd finished Cyberknight's bleeding edge powered armor had been reduced to little more than extra PD and a bit of enhanced STR), normals with evil in their hearts became werewolves, and the alligators in the sewers became fire-breathing dragons. Think heroes can't be afraid? Try throwing 20,000 werewolves at them.

[OddHat]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

I think the horror genre is almost the antithesis of the superhero one.

 

In my opinion the central facet of horror stories is the removal of control from the player. There is something going on, something awful, and they can't do anything about it. Of course for a good game there has to be something to do but on the face of it there is not.

 

In a superhero world the heroes have powers that allow them to overcome such things so it is more difficult to put such players (coherently within the framework of a story) in a control free environment.

 

Good post and good points. Horror is ultimately about being helpless. The Superhero genre is about having the power to solve problems, usually by hitting something. Horror element can be worked into a Superhero game (haunted houses, monsters, death, loss, etc), but as soon as you can solve a problem by beating up the monster, it stops being Horror. And as a player, if I'm playing a Superhero game, I don't want to explore situations where my character is genuinely helpless (appearing helpless but being able to do some good in the end is a different matter).

 

I'd say that the best way to blend horror and superheroes is to put characters in genuine peril against a foe who can't be directly attacked, while making sure that there is at least one way the heroes can come out of it victorious. It can work, once in a while.

 

Still, ultimately, the Superhero and Action genres are about problems that can be solved by figuring out who to hit.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

ultimately' date=' the Superhero and Action genres are about problems that can be solved by figuring out who to hit.[/quote']

 

 

Now that is sig worthy...

[megaplayboy]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

1. mystery--who is responsible for these horrible mutilated corpses, etc.

2. jeopardy--DNPC/sympathetic NPC(child, old mentor) in mortal danger

3. quandary--PC/DNPC/sympathetic NPC is demonically-possessed, threatening others

4. surprise--the murderer is a child super or former hero

5. disorientation--the whole world has changed in an unpleasant, uncomfortable way, and the heroes have to figure out how to change things back

 

just a few ideas...

[assault]

Re: Horror for Superheroes.

 

There are interesting points of intersection between the two genres.

 

First of all, the Marvel Silver Age grew fairly directly out of their preceding monster books. A couple of their heroes (Hulk, Thing) actually were monsters, while the character that became identified as Hank Pym began as a sequence of nameless blond scientists who got themselves into trouble through pushing the boundaries of science.

 

Furthermore, there are obvious horror-ish elements at the more mystical end of the superhero spectrum. By the time you get to the likes of John Constantine, you are in true horror-land, even though he has significant mystical powers.

 

The problem is probably one of how to get the atmosphere across to the players.

 

It probably doesn't help much if they spend most of their time in scenarios with a different flavour.