And no I'm not talking about those two books from the pagemaster...
This conundrum (which is of a decidedly uncrowlike variety) has come up within Mare Eternus. For those of you who have been unable to follow my scattered ramblings on my setting of choice or for those of you unfamiliar with it Mare Eternus is at heart a blending of high fantasy adventure and morally gray philosophy. The issue that has sprouted from this is that when I take the more grimdark side of it to its ultimate ending it becomes truly horrendous. This does not seem to mesh well with the end point of the high adventure aspect. How do you get Jack Sparrow-esque adventurers willing to dare certain death meshing with stuff like packs of clockwork warped children that run down and eat anything they find within the depths of lightless world cores? I really want both because the setting is about both. On the surface it has an air of adventure and wonder floating over the murky depths of hard choices and nightmarish situations. I was hoping initially to contrast the two almost in the sense of each one mocking the other but ultimately I'm left with the question that all of this jabbering boils down to.
How do I make high fantasy adventure work with gritty horror without heavily altering the game experience for the players?
Is it possible or will I just have to accept that a group of swashbucklers descending into the darkness will have their game switch suddenly from we're quick witted heroes that chop up mooks for breakfast to we're all going to get eaten by nameless horrors (is that necessarily a bad thing)?
perhaps have the mooks be the pawns of the nameless horror?
I don't think the contrast between areas would be a bad thing. There will always be dark places on the map, and it is in my opinion good that players of your game know that there are different kinds of danger present in the world their characters live in. An adventure that's gritty and constantly making the players wonder what's going on/what's going to happen next seems likely to do good things for the character development. I think it would feel kind of weird, really, if I didn't get to see multiple facets of the world in a game like that.
Whatever you do, don't force it. You don't want to try too hard to make the horror felt or it will feel campy or maybe just plain boring. The trick seems to be playing little mind games. Horror entities should not follow standard patterns of action.
There are several ways you can approach inducing small amounts of fear into the game (which will be easier if your players have become quite attached to their characters). Most of them will depend on how powerful the horrific creatures are relative to the players. If they're much stronger than them, try hinting to the players that they're being hunted as time goes on, and if you can, a scenario where the players can easily close off their primary method of escape and have to find another one in an area they have no knowledge of, can work well with this. If the players are stronger than individual or even small groups of the monsters, it might be better to play up the idea that if they're not careful about what they're doing, they could attract the attention of a lot of them. Vulnerability is an important aspect of this - you might try creating instances where the players have many options to deal with a problem, but if they do it poorly or irrationally they might end up losing some equipment (or a limb) that they need to return home.
Keep in mind too that there doesn't actually have to be anything there at all, or that the players could potentially never have any encounters with nameless horrors at all except for brief glimpses, which is often frightening enough if they have no idea what they're dealing with.
Personally, I'd keep both elements as part of the setting, but sideline or downplay one or the other per each game. Basically, before the game starts you choose whether it'll be swashbuckling or grimdark, and stick to that tone from start to finish.
It is my philosophy that a setting should be able to contain the potential for multiple styles, but that these need not be strongly present simultaneously in any single story.
I definitely struggle with this as well. I think a good model for blending swashbuckling heroics with horrific elements might be something like the Warhammer worlds: while exceptionally dark, the heroes in those worlds almost have to compensate by becoming ridiculously badass and larger-than-life. The horror, in essence, ups the ante for the heroics, rather than undercutting it. Elric might be another example - his world is full of dead gods and lords of chaos and ravening demon-things but as a result Elric has to be that much more insanely daring. Even Pirates of the Carribean had an element of this: a betentacled monstrosity that can devour whole ships, a crew of invulnerable zombie pirates, a vengeful, primordial sea goddess hovering on the edge of eldritch abomination, dread curses, macabre artifacts, voodoo... The horror elements up the stakes for the high adventure.
Perhaps what has to be decided is whether the horror will be subordinate to the adventure, or vice versa; but certainly I think they can coexist and inform one another rather than contradicting or clashing.
EDIT: Hellboy is another good example of the kind of "perfect blend" of horror/adventure.
I don't inherently see these two genres as incompatible, but extreme heroics does make the risk of death less ubiquitous.
An unorthodox way of handling this might be to leave behind the entire concept of character survival. I have seen some darker games do this and it might work. Instead of having characters survive and progress for the rest of eternity, have the players strive to set their heroes up for the last great fall; be it a heroic sacrifice, a trauma that robs him of his last shred of sanity, a descent into darkness, old enemies catching up, etc.
Horse also has a point about creeping horror. Build it up slowly. Let the heroes plow through more mundane menaces, only hinting at the darkness behind. The more horrible creatures should on the other hand be terrifying opponents, both visually and physically, appearing rarely to accent the underlying horror.
I also agree with Steerpike that the Warhammer 'verses are good examples of blending horror and heroics, especially 40k where the larger-than-life superhumans, aka space marines, fight epic battles and vie for supremacy with horrible monsters and perversions.
I also think
In my experience, horror works best when the players can't fight it. Something "outside the rules" definitely gives them the spooks, but you have to use it in moderation. As soon as my players can fight it, the element of horror tends to diminish (though not always the case). In that sense, horror disappears to be replaced with adventure, which, orchestrated correctly, can be loads of fun, but otherwise the two do seem to have a sort of dichotomy about them.
I think it also depends on the system. A system like 4E, 3.X, or Pathfinder tends to emphasis the heroic and awesomeness of characters, so dialing up horror in those games is going to be done differently than say, something in a far more lethal system, where horror can just as easily be something big enough to knock you down. Of course, horror doesn't have to translate into combat; it can also be the general atmosphere during a session.
I like to use sound effects to instill creepiness during a game. A distant gunshot in a massive underground chamber when one thought they were alone certainly perks the ears. A faint scream or scratching on the walls of the old church. Maybe the growl of a beast just out of sight in the blackness. I love saying "You hear this..." and watching their reactions. There are plenty of sites out there that use sound clips, so it shouldn't be hard to find one with a good selection. I also use music, which I understand to be a touchy subject with some people, but so long as it doesn't dominate the scene, background or mood music can really up the ante on a spooky situation.
In the end, I agree with Steerpike. I think it's wise to choose which element (adventure or horror) will preside over the other in a session, but I don't think they are mutually exclusive. They're certainly difficult to balance, but I believe they can exist together to form a very solid campaign.
[blockquote=The Weave05]There are plenty of sites out there that use sound clips, so it shouldn't be hard to find one with a good selection.[/blockquote]I'm sure I could scrounge up plenty on my own, but do you have any good sites for horror sound clips that you regularly use? I love the idea of integrating more sound into a game.
Sound > Image for scares and suspense, I think.
I really only have one site that's served all my gaming needs thus far:
Freesound (http://www.freesound.org/tagsViewSingle.php?id=26)
I can spend hours on there finding all sorts of neat stuff. Sometimes all it takes is a single sound to create an adventure in my mind.
Thanks for all the great replies, a few really good ideas in there. Perhaps then I have to ask, have you ever made a successful and smooth transition to or from horror in a game? How did it go? How did you pull it off?
Quote from: NomadicThanks for all the great replies, a few really good ideas in there. Perhaps then I have to ask, have you ever made a successful and smooth transition to or from horror in a game? How did it go? How did you pull it off?
Porcelain Dolls. In a dungeon crawl with my players, one of them opened up a door in an ancient, abandoned mansion to a room filled with dolls. Needless to say, before I could say anything else, he yells "I CLOSE THE DOOR." We had a good laugh.
But to answer your question, yes, I've had a short session that transitioned these things pretty well. It remains one of the few that actually worked.* I had the adventure set up in an archaic insane asylum. It was a one-shot and the players didn't really know they were getting into some freaky stuff, but they didn't mind either. I want to make it clear that that is an important detail, because I think when they know something will be scary they develop a preparedness for it on some level, conscious or otherwise. Anyways, they start out and the asylum has, lo and behold, been abandoned, but the "crazies" are still about, or so they say. I didn't have any sound clips for this adventure (but boy would those have been great!), but I did have some quiet mood music on in the background (I believe it was the Donnie Darko soundtrack... all those strange pings and tones put out a great atmosphere of "strangeness").
So there they are, some low level adventurers, generally not too freaked out and wandering around, mostly in the dark, in some creepy asylum. Occasionally they come across some half-naked people huddling in corners that are so gone from reality that any hope of saving them is abolished on sight, and soon they hit their first combat encounter (I was using Pathfinder rules, for the record). It took place in a large hall lined with bunk beds, most of them toppled over and stained with blood (as well as other questionable liquids), and filled with a good twenty or so "crazies" babbling in corners and whispering gibberish to each other. At this point they kind of understand that these people are totally gone and not worth much of their time, but they do give them the willies. They do a small amount of investigation and decide to head down to the end of the bed hall, when a hideous scream pierces the otherwise quiet room: from the head of one of the crazies, spasming on the ground, crawls some nightmarish wolf-like creature, that then proceeds to charge at the players. During the fight I had the NPC loonies running around them and screaming wildly to add to the chaos, but in the end they managed to beat the nightmare-spawned creature.
The encounter wasn't meant to be particularly bone-chilling, but it certainly got the blood flowing and made it clear that combat might not always directly present itself when something can crawl out of a person's mind on a whim. With a few scratches, they make their way to the next series of rooms.
Soon, another combat hits them, but again through surprise. They enter a smaller room with a coffin on one side that's got something locked inside it that clearly wants to get out. They can hear hysteric muffled screams from within it and it's shaking wildly. The coffin is bound in chains. One player quickly decides not to open it, but another is more curious. He walks over to it slowly - this is where I take my time in describing it all and really build up the tension. Pop-out scary almost never works in my experience, so I draw on something else unexpected.
As the player approaches, something hidden from the darkened ceiling drops down on top of the curious player: it's a mound of gnashing mouths and eyes, something truly aberrant and freakish, and it engulfs the investigating player as the others watch in horror. The creature starts eating him alive and sapping his sanity from him as it shoots darts of acid from its mouths at the watching players. The combat is quick, but the damage is worthwhile. The creature dealt damage to the player's Wisdom score, which isn't easily healed and also lowers their willpower to resist spells and mind-affecting effects. Not good, especially in an insane asylum.
Anyways, they finally open the coffin, and out staggers an NPC (a member of the facility that used to house the patients), who immediately tells them to watch out for the gibbering mouther in the room. So I let slip a little humor, oh well :). The PCs are relieved to see a sane face and they ask some questions. Turns out that the patients locked him up here and tore apart the other doctors and nurses (literally: their limbs litter the ensuing passages). This concerns the PCs because the once docile crazies and loonies that seemed content to murmur harmlessly in corners are now portrayed as possibly deadly people. Regardless, they go in further with their NPC ally.
Soon they reach the climactic event of the one-shot: a room filled with all the patients dancing in a blood-slicked mess hall with a giant, aberrant, tentacled mass standing vigilant in the center, swaying slightly to the eerie music (I actually put on a weird band for this part). Everyone was singing slightly out of tune and dancing. I can't remember what I intended for the PCs to do at the time, but they made the mistake of trying to open up the door on the other side of the room. One dancer pointed at them and shrilly cried out, alerting the abomination in the room to act, and soon even the dancers joined in unison. Cue some awesome escape sequence in which the PCs have to fight through hoards of crazy people ready to rip off their limbs, avoid some deformed beast, and basically go back through all the rooms trying to avoid the being dragged back in and thrown to the abomination. One PC had his arm ripped off by several people, but his friend managed to tear him free so he could manage a feeble escape. Another was so sure the exit was a different way than they were going that he took off without them only to find himself facing more than he could handle (and he died). The other 3 escaped, though only with 5 arms between them and almost no hit points left.
Everyone enjoyed it immensely, and because it was a one-shot character death wasn't as big of a deal (it still hurt) and I let it happen freely. By the end I had to work quickly to make sure things weren't bogged down so I could keep the breakneck pace going and maintain the feeling of exhilaration and fear. All in all, I'd say it was a really fun session that not only freaked people out but also sated their appetites for sword-swinging adventure.
I had also tried to do horror before only to fall flat on my face time and time again, so this example wasn't without literal
years of experience. Even now I still can't guarantee a solid horror vibe when I shoot for it. This may have been more of a lucky moment than a real exertion of skill and expertise (but I like to think it was the latter :)).
I hope that helps illustrate a good example for you, Nom!
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*In other instances, the horror just kinda fizzed away. The best advice I can give is to just roll with it for the time being. As long as no one is laughing about something that was deliberately supposed to be horrifying, just let them have fun with it. I think I've the only time I've made some big slip ups are when I actually tried to recharge that horror feeling to the point where things just got deliberate and humorous. I've had players hardly bat an eyelash when I tried to describe someone's face melting off, but I've had people freaking out another time when they simply had to dislocate their thumbs to escape some manacles.
Certainly horror is dependent upon the individual in question. Describing watching a man get disemboweled by an eldritch abomination might not phase the group's Saw fan but it will definitely turn the soccer mom pale. I've been fortunate in that I tend to be able to pull of the particular vibe I want (whether adventure or horror or something else). The issue has been more of how do you smoothly transition between two highly contrasting game styles. In some ways it can be easy...
For example you can flip that horror switch in a hack and slash by dumping something on the PCs that can't be killed by hack and slash. The transition itself is easy to make, but making it transition smoothly is often difficult
I've found some creepy, or even just sad/soft piano music can go a long way to setting the mood. Actually, I try to use music to set whatever mood it is, horror or otherwise.
I think easing into horror as people are more attached to their characters, the setting, and NPCs works well, but could be hard with high adventure stuff, as that produces the mindset of kill-and-win that pervades most D&D. Definitely horror without stats is more likely to ease the transition, as mentioned above.
I may perhaps have to change my draft for the ME no-stats theater I'm planning to be a bit more horror minded, a good chance to test that theory.
Quote from: NomadicI may perhaps have to change my draft for the ME no-stats theater I'm planning to be a bit more horror minded, a good chance to test that theory.
No-stats sounds ideal for theory, to me. It would be all about roleplaying, and thus the mindset of beating the crap out of your fears shouldn't crop up at all.
Quote from: PhoenixQuote from: NomadicI may perhaps have to change my draft for the ME no-stats theater I'm planning to be a bit more horror minded, a good chance to test that theory.
No-stats sounds ideal for theory, to me. It would be all about roleplaying, and thus the mindset of beating the crap out of your fears shouldn't crop up at all.
Yep and I do recall several situations where terror truly showed up in no-stats games. For example Steerpike's tempter had me running in terror from an arch angel. There were no stats, us dieing or not was a totally arbitrary decision up to Steerpike and yet here I was scared stiff sprinting like mad away from this being because of how SP portrayed him.
Quote from: NomadicThe issue has been more of how do you smoothly transition between two highly contrasting game styles. In some ways it can be easy...
Haha, I read this and was like: "Oh crap, I spent that whole time typing that out and it wasn't what he was looking for. Dammit!"
I might not have made it too apparent, but I was trying to illustrate more that I don't think there necessarily needs to be a transitioning between the two and that some level of coexistence can be achieved. I clearly overemphasized the horror aspect of the adventure, but I meant to include that yes, while they were scared at times, they still got to have plenty of awesome heroic action and adventure (most exclusively in battle) while still feeling a little freaked out. It's possible we're thinking of different kinds of "adventure," though.
Quote from: The_Weave05Quote from: NomadicThe issue has been more of how do you smoothly transition between two highly contrasting game styles. In some ways it can be easy...
Haha, I read this and was like: "Oh crap, I spent that whole time typing that out and it wasn't what he was looking for. Dammit!"
I might not have made it too apparent, but I was trying to illustrate more that I don't think there necessarily needs to be a transitioning between the two and that some level of coexistence can be achieved. I clearly overemphasized the horror aspect of the adventure, but I meant to include that yes, while they were scared at times, they still got to have plenty of awesome heroic action and adventure (most exclusively in battle).
I did get that from your post and I liked seeing how you made the two play together nicely at the same time, something I hadn't really considered at the time. Still it would be cool to see if anybody had managed to make a smooth shift from adventure to horror or vice versa.