The Campaign Builder's Guild

May was a delightfully creepy little flick. 8/10 would watch again.

One thing about campaign settings and horror that's kind of strange/unique is that frequently, horror doesn't take place in an invented world but in our world, in the here and now - in part, perhaps, because seeing the familiar world get disrupted or violated or rendered unfamiliar is more jarring than seeing the same in a fantasy world.  Freud claims that "The imaginative writer may have invented a world that, while less fantastic than that of the fairy tale, differs from the real world in that it involves supernatural entities such as demons or spirits of the dead. Within the limits set by the pressupositions of this literary reality, such figures forfeit any uncanny quality that might otherwise attach to them."  I think there's some truth to this claim.

Okay. I'll be the hick here.

Horror-Comedy gets my vote:

Tucker and Dale v. Evil
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1465522/
Absurdly hilarious slasher-genre spoof

Army of Darkness

Some of the non-trashy "Scary Movie" movies.

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I can't really take most horror movies seriously. I laughed during most of the Exorcist and Signs and Gremlins.

I found John Carpenter's The Thing more interesting than frightening.
and Dog Soldiers was more of an action movie than a horror.

The ones that aren't ridiculous are boring.

Saw was interesting and the first one at least was neatly put together, but it was not innately scary...I did find parts of it disgusting, however- so that's a reason I don't watch much horror- I don't particularly want to see blood and gore. I can "stomach" gore, but I'd rather not have those images in my head.

So... I suppose I avoid most general horror movies because they either seem as thought they might be long and plodding and boring; or they're too bloody and annoying to watch.
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If I hadn't only voted for one, for my second, I would have chosen "No Horror genre" or possibly "gothic horror", because it's silly...but once again, I only enjoy the gothic/cosmic pieces that don't take themselves too seriously- like Lovecraft or Poe or Hawthorne.

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That probably should come as no surprise to those of you who are familiar with my contributions to the CBG...

Well, Gremlins you're supposed to laugh at, and Signs is kind of so-so as a movie.  But I take your point.

Gothic is pretty silly, sometimes.  The Castle of Otranto is practically Pythonesque in places.

You run Call of Cthulhu sometimes, don't you Light Dragon?

Yes indeed I do run Call of Cthulhu!

I suppose you're getting at asking what type of horror I focus on with those types of games.

Isolation is a focus; the horror knowing that those with you are humans, yet that inside those humans is the capability for 'monstrous' acts is another- I set the characters up with pre-sets who have reason to backstab others at convenient times.

One I ran had the players near Srebrenicia in July 1995. I had a UN soldier, a serbian scholar, a serbo-croatian army deserter with a plan, a bosniak who was trying to pass for croatian, a kidnapped Chinese Ambassador, and a reporter all holed up in a castle during shelling while the horror that happened in real life was going on just outside. They were menaced, in turn, by forces of nature as a storm arose, animals (the UN soldier had a bit of a nasty run-in with a bear), loss of power, their own backstabbing agendae, military shelling, bloodthirsty troops, cthuluesque powers hidden in the rotting castle, and more. Several players ended up killing each other before the night was out. I can't say that anyone was frightened by it or disturbed, but they did find it exciting and I hope that some reflected on human nature... they created their own hopelessness... the scenario was survivable if they could work together, but they were, by their pre-set personalities, almost doomed to fail. I think a few walked out alive, but only a few... the reporter and the serbo-croat I think were the only ones who made it out alive.  The game did have its own amusing interval... when the UN soldier went mad, he latched onto a simple garden toad that had freaked everyone out because I kept describing the **** thing every few minutes as it hopped around. The soldier kept insisting that the toad had special powers. This got him gutted because he was in the words of one player: "beyond redemption" after he started licking the toad and carrying it around on his head.

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Cannot say I was previously familiar with Otranto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_of_Otranto, but the description does seem mildly comic. I also find parts of Gormenghast amusing- it's so seriously GRIM that it's hilarious in the over-description.

Quote from: Light Dragon
The game did have its own amusing interval... when the UN soldier went mad, he latched onto a simple garden toad that had freaked everyone out because I kept describing the **** thing every few minutes as it hopped around. The soldier kept insisting that the toad had special powers. This got him gutted because he was in the words of one player: "beyond redemption" after he started licking the toad and carrying it around on his head.

Could you let his player know that they're my hero. This is amazing (you too for successfully instilling toad-driven chaos into your group).

Interesting, Light Dragon.  It sounds like for that game political-military concerns were almost more important than the Lovecraftian horror elements - is that a fair assessment?

Also, was that player Coyote Camouflage by any chance?

Quote from: Light DragonI also find parts of Gormenghast amusing- it's so seriously GRIM that it's hilarious in the over-description.

Definitely an amusing novel.  The Twins in particular crack me up all the time, as does Fuschia.  Although I don't think Gormenghast is very horrific, much as I love it with an all-abiding passion.  Weird, yes; surreal, yes.  Maybe some of Steerpike's machinations (especially when he really goes off the deep end) might come close to horror.

"Boy in Darkness" is horror, though.

Quote from: SteerpikeSince the collection is complete and there's no order to the tales I'd try At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, or "The Call of Cthulhu," as those are the highwater marks in my book.  The Dunwich Horror is pretty good, too, and The Whisperer in Darkness is creepy and fun in a kind of cheesy 1930s B movie sort of way.

I would absolutely second all of these; Innsmouth and Whisperer in Darkness especially.

Quote from: PolycarpThe stories always struck me as really repetitive; once I had read a few, I'd basically read them all.  I think part of this may have to do with the subgenre itself, because "cosmic horror" is almost by definition a plot-free zone - the "cosmic horror" has no personality, no discernible goals, no characterization.  It's not really good or evil, nor is it really a protagonist or antagonist; it's just there, which is sort of the point, but means it forms a more or less inert part of the backdrop.

Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath is sort of a nice subversion of the norms of standard-issue HPL cosmic horror. It's got a much more goal-driven protagonist, and the story has more of a point to it than "some guy discovers bad shit is happening and slowly discovers the supernatural nature of said bad shit before said bad shit shows up to ruin his day."

Quote from: PolycarpI feel sort of the same way about this.  Religious horror often takes the form of "sinister Catholicism" which seems faintly ridiculous; maybe it's more credible among those whose knowledge of Catholicism is limited to "weird dudes in robes speaking ominously in Latin."  I very seldom see examples of religious horror that are not either explicitly Catholic or Catholic-fantasy-equivalent, so maybe I'd enjoy it more if it was based on a tradition I was less familiar with.

It's funny, but the mythos depicted always seems to have more in common with certain Evangelical Christian elements than with Catholicism. I think Catholicism's popularity has mostly to do with its iconography, ceremony, and hierarchical nature. But the horror very frequently deals with possession, demons as a source of sin, and an apocalyptic focus. It might be interesting to tweak the focus onto some other theology (like predestination or the idea of people being born elect or not-elect) or iconography (like from Orthodox or Evangelical Christianity).

Quote from: HoersThis makes me curious: for the settings on the CBG considered to be under the horror umbrella, how might each be classified? Cadaverous Earth has already been mentioned, but we must have at least a handful of other settings that can be labeled as such.

EDIT: I guess this applies more to instances of horror, given that a setting might not be solely about running from zombies or being brain-devoured by Cthulhu. So, when it comes to everyone's projects past or present, what kinds of horror would you say you were going for? What kind did you actually achieve (if any)?

The Arm has a bit of body horror or body-horror-based slapstick at the moment, despite being overall more weird fiction in a fable milieu. Hopefully that captures the gist of what I'm going for, though I'm not sure it will.

Quote from: beejazzDream Quest of Unknown Kadath is sort of a nice subversion of the norms of standard-issue HPL cosmic horror.

I agree with this (although Dream Quest isn't one of my favourites, it's still a good story).  When Lovecraft wrote it he was going through what some critics have thought of as his "Dunsanian phase," when he was really, really into Lord Dunsany to the point where he was kind of writing pastiches of Dunsany stories, with all the weird quasi-Asian deities and King James Bible phraseology.  Dream Quest is the last great Lovecraftian story in the style and mode of Dunsany; after that he really exorcises Dunsany's influence to a large degree and starts writing what we tend to think of as more classically Lovecraftian fiction, i.e. the Mythos.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: beejazzDream Quest of Unknown Kadath is sort of a nice subversion of the norms of standard-issue HPL cosmic horror.

I agree with this (although Dream Quest isn't one of my favourites, it's still a good story).  When Lovecraft wrote it he was going through what some critics have thought of as his "Dunsanian phase," when he was really, really into Lord Dunsany to the point where he was kind of writing pastiches of Dunsany stories, with all the weird quasi-Asian deities and King James Bible phraseology.  Dream Quest is the last great Lovecraftian story in the style and mode of Dunsany; after that he really exorcises Dunsany's influence to a large degree and starts writing what we tend to think of as more classically Lovecraftian fiction, i.e. the Mythos.

I haven't quite read all of Dunsany, but between Tales of Three Hemispheres and Gods of Pegana, I think he's got a few of the same issues that make Lovecraft less accessible. His wanderers, unlike Randolph Carter, are a little more aimless and touristy by comparison. I wasn't aware of the timeline, but I kind of wonder both why he picked up such a goal driven character in aping Dunsany, and dropped that model in his later work.

In general I think that, for Lovecraft, character doesn't really matter much.  What matters are the grand vistas of weirdness, the unease, the atmosphere, the sense of wrongness; characters, people, humanity, are kind of besides the point, at some elemental level of things.  In Dream Quest I think the protagonist's quest is basically an excuse for Lovecraft to describe a bunch of strange lands and creatures - as opposed, say, to the way that Elric's character is important to Moorcock's writing, or Conan's is to Howard's, or something.

You are the master of punctuation.

Quote from: Steerpike
In general I think that, for Lovecraft, character doesn't really matter much.  What matters are the grand vistas of weirdness, the unease, the atmosphere, the sense of wrongness; characters, people, humanity, are kind of besides the point, at some elemental level of things.  In Dream Quest I think the protagonist's quest is basically an excuse for Lovecraft to describe a bunch of strange lands and creatures - as opposed, say, to the way that Elric's character is important to Moorcock's writing, or Conan's is to Howard's, or something.

If I read the ending right, Carter is one of the few Lovecraft protagonists to actually change something on a cosmic scale. Sure he's just an excuse for the travelogue most of the time, but he's far from insignificant.

[spoiler]I was pretty sure Nyarlathotep sort of tricks Carter into taking the sunset city back, thereby forcing the gods of earth back onto Kadath. It's been a while though.[/spoiler]

That's true, beejazz, and is a moment that's strangely "plotty" for Lovecraft.  "The Dunwich Horror" - a personal favourite but one which some critics quite malign - in some ways has a similar ending.  I like it when Lovecraft's protagonists get little victories, even if there's a sense that in the big scheme of things they're pretty irrelevant.

Steerpike is quite the wordsmith; but, the real master of punctuation:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1997/06/09/1997_06_09_110_TNY_CARDS_000378543

(Keep in mind that the web content is shortened from the original... thus the inappropriate ellipses)

I will try to respond to the rest later. :)