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Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid


Wolfgar

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

The animals smelling evil I might give you if any of the idiots in the movie actually took that as a bad sign. They generally wonder what is wrong with Rover and then dismiss it.

 

Which makes them deserve to die even more. :eg:

 

Though it does give us someone to pull for to live "Run, Rover, you the only smart one in the bunch" :doi:

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Cliches you never have to worry about as a GM -- at least not with any group of RPers I've ever gamed with...

 

Good Guy finally gets his hands on a decent weapon -- gun, knife, whatever -- but then leaves it behind for no good reason.

 

Good Guy(s) hits/shoots/stabs the Bad Guy once, Bad Guy goes down... and Good Guy(s) doesn't check if Bad Guy is actually dead or just stunned/faking.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Cliches you never have to worry about as a GM -- at least not with any group of RPers I've ever gamed with...

 

Good Guy finally gets his hands on a decent weapon -- gun, knife, whatever -- but then leaves it behind for no good reason.

 

Good Guy(s) hits/shoots/stabs the Bad Guy once, Bad Guy goes down... and Good Guy(s) doesn't check if Bad Guy is actually dead or just stunned/faking.

Very good point... I also doubt quite seriously you can easily slip in an evil NPC into a PC party and not have at least one player suspect.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

I think the world still has plenty of room for evil clowns as well' date=' although I must say I've never really understood the phobia.[/quote']Personally I'd rather see a group of clowns portrayed as heroes.

 

Heroic clowns versus werewolves and vampires.... now there's an image! :D

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I think' date=' into the mix, I'd like to throw Witches and Nazis. For some reason, NO ONE who writes horror seems to know what 'witch' means, or even care. They go with the hollywood pointy nosed crone idea. And Nazis... good GOD! Apparently, according to most horror, they are responsible for every truly evil act in the last hundred years.[/quote']

 

A really good horror flick concerning witches, that I saw as a new release when I was a young man (gives away my age), was "Race With the Devil" It had 2 couples goin on an innocent vacation in there brand new motorhome, on the first night the two husbands stumble across the coven holding a sacrificial ceremony. At first when they see the naked women dancing around the fire they think "wow, hippies", then they see the sacrifice and are discovered by the witches when they gasp too loudly at the bood shed. and the chase is on... They go to the sheriff... unawares that he is the leader of the coven. They take their inevitably damaged motorhome to a garage unaware that the mechanic is one of the witches. They run away and drive for miles before stopping at an RV park unaware that it is infested with more witches. And the movies end when they run away and stop once again in the middle of the desert thinking no ne can find them out here, and suddenly from out of the darkness a fire ignites and a spreads into a ring of fire around the motorhome.... then the credits roll. I had trouble being comfortable camping in the desert for a while after this one.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

I always found the hardest part of a Horror game is having players who think like their characters, who don't realize that they're in a horror setting.

 

The cliches are useful though. Use them to disorient your players, or to get them thinking along one line, then hit them with what they don't expect.

 

Examples-

 

The pcs retreat to a cabin as the shuffling hordes of zombies approach. Suddenly, they hear a scream of someone in terror. Outside is a person who's not having much luck escaping the zombies. The PCs will either realize that she's a zombie and its a sucker play, or they'll think she's the magguffin.

 

WRONG. She's a zombie and there are a bunch more waiting in the grass as an ambush.

 

Or

 

The Pretty-and-Good witch versus the Ugly-and-Bad witch has been done to death in film. The Ugly-and-Good witch versus the Pretty-and-Bad in cartoons. Start it looking like one of the both. LIES! ALL LIES! Both are evil, both want the PCs to be sacrificed. They're competing against each other to do it. One's just sneaky enough to ask the PCs for help against the other. OH!!! better yet, as the PCs help one, she grows in power. Becoming more cruel and dangerous. If they switch sides, the other grows in power, becoming more cruel and dangerous. Whatever power they witches serve is granting favor to whomever the innocents support, as an act of corruption. The way to keep the power forever is to sacrifice them.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Wolfgar, as a person who was scared poopless by clowns as a kid. People like me can easily undertand it. :doi: Course, now I cant have kids because of the clown at the kid's birthday thing. Might scar a kid for life if daddy went to jail because he gave the smack down to the birthday clown. :eg:

 

:thumbup:

 

I think it'd be a good thing; show the kid how to handle PITA people.

 

Still, had to rep :thumbup: this post for the image of dady beating the snot out of a clown in front of a bunch of kids. "Hey look, Mr. Smith is killing the clown! Yay!" And all the kids cheer.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

1) Overused set pieces: decrepid castles' date=' graveyards, camp by the lake, etc... When done right, they can be effective. But far more often, they are just a joke. Try setting supernatural horror in a shopping mall. That's the ticket....[/quote']

Read Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett for some ideas on horror in the shopping mall. Just cut out the silly bits, rearrange a little, file off the serial numbers, and there you go. ;)

 

3) Animals show the foreknowledge of evil: Just once' date=' I'd like to see Fluffy's head ripped off without any indication of Fluffy having known something is up.[/quote']

LOL. Yeah, rip up a few cute+fluffy animals. :eg:

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Personally I'd rather see a group of clowns portrayed as heroes.

 

Heroic clowns versus werewolves and vampires.... now there's an image! :D

 

 

Nope, sorry, Bob. I have an easier time believing the werewolves and vampires are the good guys. :D

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

I think it'd be a good thing; show the kid how to handle PITA people.

 

Still, had to rep :thumbup: this post for the image of dady beating the snot out of a clown in front of a bunch of kids. "Hey look, Mr. Smith is killing the clown! Yay!" And all the kids cheer.

 

 

Well when watching the Bond movie Octo****y when I was 8. And those twins killed the clown. I do kind of have to admit I cheered. :o

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Second paragraph. Yeah they overdo the Nazis are evil (they were but isnt we going a we bit too far with the Nazi-occult thing) and the ugly hag witch. What a GM should do is throw the pretty girl as the evil witch and the ugly hag as a good witch trying to stop her at the characters more often. Might fool someone who has seen one too many movies involving witches. Cant help you with Nazis' date=' they just evil.[/quote']

With Nazi's I could see going several ways:

a) Lt. "I was ordered here" - some Nazis were just soldiers, this poor guy drew the short straw and had to go on a mission with Dr. Freak-o, now he's stuck here, the person he was sent to protect is a puddle of goo, and he just wants to go home to his wife and kids.

B) Modern day white supremacist, similar he is stuck with the group, not a pleasent person, but when you are being chased by the unknown it feels safer to be in a large group.

c) "Now I see the evil I have unleashed" - A Nazi occultist realizes (too late) what he has unleashed and now seeks to make it right. He may still keep some of the hated views and be a party hard-liner, but thinks even this time he went too far.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Just once' date=' I'd like to see a horror movie where the sexually free and non-hung-up gal is the one who survives. :)[/quote']

 

Ripley was supposed to have a sex scene with Dallas in Alien. Does that count for anything?

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

And a deleted scene implied she also had sex with Lambert(!).

 

I never heard that one!

 

(BTW -- as originally written, the crew of the Nostromo were "sexless," meaning no one character was supposed to be male or female).

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

I just recalled reading a Dean Koontz "horror" novel many years ago where the secondary protagonist was a Time Traveling Nazi. Thunder' date=' I think was the title.[/quote']Close. The title was Lightning. I was actually thinking of that book the other day. A lot of Koontz's books I would consider less horror and more thriller. Come to think of it, I don't recall any of them being horror in the sense of genre convention. They have trappings of horror, but most of them violate the law of "everything going wrong to screw the protagonist."
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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Close. The title was Lightning. I was actually thinking of that book the other day. A lot of Koontz's books I would consider less horror and more thriller. Come to think of it' date=' I don't recall any of them being horror in the sense of genre convention. They have trappings of horror, but most of them violate the law of "everything going wrong to screw the protagonist."[/quote']

 

Yeah, Koontz is OK. I've read some wth some good ideas. Most remind me of a DC game, actually. usually theres at least 1 really competent protagonst, the bad guys are defeatable... blah blah. You get the point.

 

I remember thinking that Twilight Eyes would make a good basis for a campaign

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

The cliche I've always hated is the uncaring police officer.

 

This si the small town sheriff who blows off any teenagers who try to tell him about the monster in the woods, or the murder and/or dead body they just saw, with the claim that they're making up the story and lying, despite how sincere and worked up the teens are, and whether they are the types of kids who would make up such a story. If an adult comes in with the same story, the sheriff may (relucatntly) go and check the story, but it will only be a half-hearted search, and the officer will easily miss any clues besides a corpse dripping blood and a sign saying "monster this way."

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Cliches to avoid?

 

Authority = Stupid. Typically this applies to the LEOs or the Army. It is nice to occasionally see authority or governmental figures as real people with even average smarts e.g. 'Slither' and 'Dog Soldiers'.

 

Sex = Death. I believe this cliche arises from the T&A factor and the idea that the inherently good / pure will win through. Doesn't wash with me other than the idea that you should be saving your energy for running and fighting instead of wasting it on shagging.

 

Purity & Innocence >> Evil. It really bugs me that the mighty Powers of Darkness are consistently pimpslapped by 12 year old virginal idiots-savant :idjit:

 

Evil = Suave & Charming. One of the most overused cliches, more so in modern times as it panders to Goth tendencies. Closely related to the 'misunderstood' evil villain. Save the charm / angst for the poseur crowd. I'll take King's Mr Barlow over Coppola's Vlad Dracul on any full moon of the year :sneaky:

 

Horror = No Need For Logic. This one is my biggest PITA and comes primarily from Hollywoodland output (with a few notable exceptions). I may be watching a horror genre flick but I still expect logic and common sense to apply to plots and, where appropriate, to character actions. Nobody would ever go down into the dark basement armed with only a candle and a baseball bat. Get a grip!

 

Horror = Gratuitous Violence. Second biggest one for me and again something that is prevalent in the flicks. I find this to be an overused substitute for good writing and plotting. Often times less is more.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

With Nazi's I could see going several ways:

a) Lt. "I was ordered here" - some Nazis were just soldiers, this poor guy drew the short straw and had to go on a mission with Dr. Freak-o, now he's stuck here, the person he was sent to protect is a puddle of goo, and he just wants to go home to his wife and kids.

 

Technically, that guy's probably not a Nazi. Most of the soldiers who were Nazis were pretty hard-line, and most of the soldiers who were more reasonably laid back weren't Nazis.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Evil = Suave & Charming. One of the most overused cliches' date=' more so in modern times as it panders to Goth tendencies. Closely related to the 'misunderstood' evil villain. Save the charm / angst for the poseur crowd. I'll take King's Mr Barlow over Coppola's Vlad Dracul on any full moon of the year :sneaky:[/quote']

Wasn't Barlowe suave and charming in the book? I'm trying to remember. I believe Rutger Hauer played him in the remake.

 

Though it's funny that suave villains with smooth voices and aristocratic English accents have become so cliche that some English folks actively resent it.

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Wasn't Barlowe suave and charming in the book? I'm trying to remember. I believe Rutger Hauer played him in the remake.

 

Barlowe was the Master vampire, green skinned and repulsive? I recall a nice scene where he faces down a priest who has placed his faith in a crucifix...

 

Remake? Surely not :confused:

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Re: Horror Hero: Cliches to Avoid

 

Sex = Death. I believe this cliche arises from the T&A factor and the idea that the inherently good / pure will win through.

 

If we come up with explanations that metaphysically fit, though, a way to reverse the cliche will naturally arise ;)

 

Doesn't wash with me other than the idea that you should be saving your energy for running and fighting instead of wasting it on shagging.

 

Let's assume that there's a reason the evil monsters always target the people who have had sex. Why? The GM shouldn't be imposing reasons from out of game, only roleplaying the monsters. So what motivation does the monster have in this?

 

Maybe shagging is fighting.

 

Think about it. Procreation is an act that creates life. Recreationally, it's also a way of generating good feelings (positive energy). Either or both of those could be harmful to evil beings. It might also be repulsive, in the literal sense; of these shaggers, how many have died during the shag - and how many have only died after, when the monster can get to them?

 

Perhaps, in the end, a monster's fatal weakness is that it can't endure sex (kind of like that Inskipp guy in Michael Hopcroft's sigline ;)). At the least, characters who decide to have sex in their last moments together should be permitted to survive (if not the only ones to survive).

 

Technically' date=' that guy's probably not a Nazi. Most of the soldiers who were Nazis were pretty hard-line, and most of the soldiers who were more reasonably laid back weren't Nazis.[/quote']

 

Technically, that guy may very well be. Remember that Nazi was short for National Socialism, and the general populace of Germany freely chose to support the National Socialist Workers Party. Even the "reasonably laid back" members still endorsed the core political views (which, by the way, were fairly decent), it was only when that philosophy was carried out to its logical extreme that its flaws were made apparent. This not being the NGD, I'll shush here, but you're welcome to PM me for elaboration.

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