The Horror Genre

[Pine]

I feel kinda' bad for making this thread not long after Jaw Breaker's, but I feel like my specific need is a different enough to warrant creating a new thread.


In any case, I want to know about the experience you guys have had with genre, mainly in relation to writing (roleplays and literature alike). I myself have never successfully been in a horror roleplay and my experience outside of roleplaying is limited to a few glimpses of horror movies or watching Goosebumps/The Shining, and out of all of that, The Shining is the only thing that managed to even remotely disturb me. Needless to say, it's something that I'm still rather new to, so I'd like to hear a little more from you guys who may be more well-versed in the genre.


Have you ever joined a horror roleplay? Did the roleplay actually manage to scare you, even just a little? Do you feel like there was anything particularly right or wrong to make you feel that way? How about some books that you've read? Any strategies you've picked up on as to how they've maybe been able to scare or disturb you? Even if it didn't scare you yourself, could you see any way that it might have that affect on other people? If nothing else, do you have any theories for what could make a successful horror roleplay?


I have a few theories of my own, but that's just it... theories. I'll keep those to myself for now, just in case what I say might somehow influence what you would otherwise say. For this thread, there isn't really any right or wrong answers. I'm just genuinely curious. and may want to know for future, personal uses heuheu

 

[Cavil]

I feel like the horror genre has gained immense popularity in recent years, but alas I have yet to join a pure horror roleplay out of fear of disappointment. Many writers that attempt to write the genre are either too eager to get to the scary portion or take the build up to extreme lengths.


They try to write it like a horror movie and it doesn't turn out very well from what I've seen.

 

[Life.]

I was actually recently interested in creating a horror roleplay buuut I feel that I won't be able to reach that level of fear I want my roleplayers to experience. There are many factors in attempting horror, I think the biggest thing is figuring out the fears of the roleplayers and perhaps leaving a sense of vagueness in the post. If one could create a post that sends chills but has a vagueness in the plot or post it will allow roleplayers to interpret the post in many ways and perhaps even scare themselves.


At least this is how I see it since this is what I tend to do with scary movie trailers. I can't even watch a movie or read a book of horror. I have read a few articles of creepy incidents or creatures that once I finished reading I began imagining too deep into the idea of it actually existing and what it can do to me.


This also applies to normal fears like spiders. Most of us are fine when we can see the spider in one place but once it scurries off to somewhere else we begin thinking of many different scenarios with it. Will I see it in my bedroom? Will it appear in the toilet? Or shall it block my path of escape?


I was also hoping that with my fear of basically the darkness and everything in it, by creating a horror roleplay it will help with my fear. But I have yet to work out good details for the story.

 

[Sunbather]

I've never been in one. I intended to make a Cloverfield RP, but that fell short for technical and personal reasons. Aside from that, I dunno... I feel like I can't be creeped in an interactive text based game. Not sure though. I'm signed up for somethingSTRANGE, which looks pretty eerie, so I'm hyped for that, I imagine that'll be my first good horror RP.

 

[Pine]

I'm likin' these responses people keep 'em comin'. *grabby hands*

Not sure though. I'm signed up for somethingSTRANGE, which looks pretty eerie, so I'm hyped for that, I imagine that'll be my first good horror RP.

Derailing from the topic very briefly, but I thought that somethingSTRANGE was a kind of light-hearted roleplay, or has that changed? In any case, I hope you have fun with that. Yuuki's roleplays are gorgeous. uwu

 

[kou]

I happened to be in one that has yet to be started, I won't falsify information when I say that due to how long the CS took I was quite disappointed when we weren't beginning after a week. It isn't my place to judge, the creator possibly lost intrigue or simply had other business to attend to. There was another one but it veered off towards romance rather than the thrilling aspect of being chopped up into tiny pieces by a troubled man donning a mask and chainsaw..


So, yeah.

 

[Dagfinn]

I've joined a few horror RPes, and none of them have ever been good. Even if the OP can create/run decent RPes, for whatever reason I've never been able to find someone that can write something truly scary.


Which is disappointing, because horror books and movies are my jam. It is my absolute favorite genre in media. I just can't pin it down when it comes to RPes.

 

[Life.]

Which is disappointing, because horror books and movies are my jam. It is my absolute favorite genre in media. I just can't pin it down when it comes to RPes.

Perhaps it has to do with the major difference between the manners of how things are written; with a novel it is just a single person so they already know what is going to happen and what things to include to bolster significance while in RPs there are multiple people with different interpretations of the text. Because of this you may receive a response from a user you weren't expecting and somewhat tarnishes your next step for the suspense/scare/plot/etc. But that would be the beauty of a successful horror roleplay (if one exists and when it means to be "successful" is that it genuinely scares people) in that the GM takes the post of the user and uses it to their advantage.


More the reason I want to create a horror roleplay and try it out myself

 

[kou]

Perhaps it has to do with the major difference between the manners of how things are written; with a novel it is just a single person so they already know what is going to happen and what things to include to bolster significance while in RPs there are multiple people with different interpretations of the text. Because of this you may receive a response from a user you weren't expecting and somewhat tarnishes your next step for the suspense/scare/plot/etc. But that would be the beauty of a successful horror roleplay (if one exists and when it means to be "successful" is that it genuinely scares people) in that the GM takes the post of the user and uses it to their advantage.
More the reason I want to create a horror roleplay and try it out myself

Not to mention the variations of users whom all have a certain precedence and taste in what horror appears to be. I've got half a mind to create one myself as well but I do believe that we have yet to see one based solely upon the foundations of psychological horror such as Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" or even a slasher such as "Nightmare on Elm Street". God, I would absolutely love to see those adapted into an RP.

 

[Gilzar]

As a previous horror roleplay maker, and avid creepy pasta author allow me to shed some of my wisdom. Some of you may not agree with this but it's my view.


The stars basically have to line up to make a good horror roleplay. I say this because everything needs to be perfect; The plot, the characters, everything. What ends up happening to a lot of really good horror roleplays is that they loose focus; sometimes trying to be too scary or sometimes focusing too much on plot or on characters. What you needs what I call the perfect balance; You need a good amount of characters that are both complex and that you can pity.


Why do you need to pity them? That's what makes horror, what really makes something scary. If a slasher were to go and kill a bunch of convicted rapists you wouldn't feel a thing of sorrow towards them, after all they more than likely had it coming. It needs to be more tragic; rather than just a bunch of convicted rapists have them be ones that have changed their ways, truly feel sorry for what they did and are doing everything that they can to make up for it and convince society they've changed. That's slightly better, but what really gets this going, and famous horror authors such as Stephen King AKA 'The Boss' (I fucking love this man) always makes characters that we can feel sorry for and pity; The guys and gals who DON'T have it coming. King often uses psychological disorders or physical disabilities to gain this, such as Carrie in his hit horror novel Carrie. The character is a shy and awkward teen that is really nice but all the other girls make fun of her and torment her at school, only to go home to a religious freak who beats who and abuses her in the name of god. Pretty easy to see how someone could snap form that, and we couldn't feel anymore worse about it because all of us can relate to that girl in some way.


That brings me to my second largest point of this rant. The characters have to be relatable in some way or else the players/readers aren't going to feel a thing. Notice how I said relatable and not real. This means that they still are somewhat fictionalized yet have that aspect that you know. I'm going to go back to Carrie again since she is extremely relatable. We've all been made fun of, some more than others, but we've all experienced it in some way shape or form. We've also all been in that situation where you need to make a friend, and we all know at least one zealous person in our life. None of us though (at least I hope...) can fully relate to carry, as we don't experience both hell at school and hell at home by a psychotic mother. That's why we feel so bad for Carrie when she snaps and does all of those horrible things, because while we kind of know what she's going through we've never gone bat shit insane. While not every character is relatable, it's somewhat needed if you really want things to be scary per say.


Now for the final: You need something that is at least disturbing and not cliche. I've been in some slasher horror roleplays before, they're fun at first but if they aren't done right they can get pretty boring. Why? Because they tend to get predictable per say. Not all of them, but a lot do. The really good ones are really situational, like the ones like The Shining where shit can get crazy real quickly yet we have no idea what the hell is going on. It's important to get a plot that is somewhat mysterious, because mystery creates ambiguity and ambiguity is what makes fear. It's our minds not knowing if something is safe or dangerous. So it's good to use things that tons of horror movies haven't used if you're really going for the fear factor. To sum it up, we all know never to go near zombies, dark basements, cursed books, little girls in scary hotels, and on and on. Paranormal can get pretty damn scary because ghosts always have different intentions. To sum it up, it really can't be something the player is knowledgeable of. A lot of people get in trouble with horror roleplays because they expect it to be action and reaction based. The logic being if something scary happens it's going to scare the player, kind of like an 1 on 1 roleplay. It needs to be more than that though...it needs to be in the atmosphere, needs to make the player do something horrible that goes against their every moral. If you can't scare than you need to disturb, if you can't disturb than you need to gross them out with gore, and if you can't gore them out then you need to make them dread it.


Eh, hope that helps?

 

[Pine]

So we're nearing the end of the month after October, and I know I saw a lot of roleplays that crept up claiming the "horror" genre. So spill it, folks. Tell me ur secrets.

 

[Grey]

I write horror roleplays for conventions every year. For Gaelcon, in particular, I bring horror RP scenarios for the midnight slot of the convention, shutting myself up in a dark room with my players to spend three hours creeping them out.


I also try to run horror RPs here on RPN, but no one signs up half the time. Which is a shame; I like to think I've gotten good at them.


For me, four things always apply.


1. Powerlessness is key to ramping up fear and tension, but rather than remove player control entirely I think it's important to either present them with options, regardless of their efficacy, or give them a choice between two equally horrible decisions. It keeps them engaged without giving them too much power, too much opportunity to fight back against whatever scares them.


2. Implication is powerful. In your descriptions, try to leave enough of a gap for players to fill in themselves. Nothing is scarier, as they say. The uncertainty and the speculation will creep them out. Encourage players to share their speculations, incidentally - they can do half the work for you, scaring their fellow players with their interpretation of events.


3. To quote Ligotti, the sinister, the terrible never deceive. The truth should always be horrible. Ideally, players will piece together the story behind the awful things happening, the components falling into place with a chilling certainty. Of course, crafting a suitably horrifying truth is difficult, but you can always draw from player speculation or leave more gaps. I find monsters that act based on some incomprehensible logic are among the best - the players divine some frightful purpose in their actions, but cannot quite make sense of it.


4. Man's inhumanity to man is a great way to enhance a horror RP. One of my most successful takes place in 1950s Guatemala, and the players were suitably disturbed by the treatment of plantation workers by American Fruit Company-sponsored dictators. This can prime players nicely before you introduce monsters - although depending on how you're doing things, you may not need supernatural terrors at all.

 

[Grin]

Personally I've always had more success running horror games as a table-top setting, where I have more control over each physical player's environment.


In all cases though, you need to paint a picture that appears vividly in the mind of your players. I can't really expand on the great examples already in this thread, but I can add a favorite storytelling technique that helps even the most cynical players get in the mood. I call it the "Cabin In The Woods Trick"


First, come up with a BASIC idea for what horror the characters will encounter, along with an idea of exactly how overpowered they'll be and what (if any) could stop them. But, don't fully create your big-bad until after the first act. Instead, place the characters in a setting where there's a lot of open potential for them to mess with the set dressing and other NPCs. Then base the big-bad on whatever person/thing the PCs treated the worst.

Example

I once ran a campaign where the PCs started as camp counselors, at a camp built on a haunted burial ground. After spending about 45 minutes having the PCs interact with the campers and setting, they all ended up fixating on a random NPC, a fat ginger kid I added for comedy relief named "Shecky" (it was the first thing that came to mind, based on "Shecky Green"). Since they ALL had so much fun messing with Shecky, I decided that the camp was built on a Pinkerton mass grave, where they buried Irish labor agitators during the turn of the century. Their accumulated hurt and thirst for vengeance called out for an avatar, and when poor little Shecky was tormented even by the adults in charge of taking care of him, they found their conduit. For the PCs, it intensified the horror once they figured out they had made themselves the logical targets of supernatural rage.

Hope that counts as a contribution...