Running Horror TTRPGs, Part 1

As we prepare to launch our next Kickstarter (a dungeon on a bookmark for Mork Borg), I’ve been thinking about horror games. They can be tricky!

A large part of that is the clever players and their agency. If you’re writing a book or making a movie, you can have that protagonist making all kinds of terrible decisions. They don’t run when they should run, they don’t open the terrible door, etc, etc.

When you’re running a game, however, players can just decide not to engage. In one game of Call of Cthulhu I ran, for example, the first time the one of the PCs came across something eldritch, they just burnt down the whole building and nope-ed out.

I’ve been running games for over thirty years at this point and I’ve gotten a lot of things wrong during that period. The first time I ever ran a Ravenloft session, it bombed so badly I didn’t know if I’d ever do it again. I kept trying, however, and I’ll tell you what – there are few things as rewarding as realizing you’ve inspired dread during an RPG session (with consenting players, of course).

One of the key tactics I’ve learned is pacing (though this is really important for any type of RPG). Dread needs time and space to fester. It needs to build slowly. Here’s the thing, though – dread doesn’t build when the danger is present. Dread is what happens when we start populating the empty spaces with the worst case scenarios in our head. If you’ve ever had anxiety, you know what I mean – what we come up with in our own minds is worse than anything reality has to throw at us.

So how do we do this? It’s not with monsters, at least not at first. If you throw some evil, horrible looking thing at the players, all that’s going to make them do is roll initiative. If they can take action against their terror, it loses a lot of power. Instead, we use clues.

Here’s an example of what I mean by that. In an ongoing superhero game I run, the PCs were in the house of a mad inventor. (“Dungeons” exist outside of fantasy games). When they were in the bathroom, the drain pipes of the sink just rattled and made a terrible noise – like something was scurrying through them. By the time the PCs could act, whatever made the noise was gone, but the situation served it’s purpose. It let them know *something* was there.

Eventually, they made their way down into the kitchen. Guess what – the kitchen sink was going off as well. The drain pipe kept violently rattling.

At this point, they started to argue over who would check it out. They knew that the *something* was there, but they had no idea what it was. This is the dread that filled the empty spaces. When one of them finally looked down the drain pipe, something that looked like an esophagus with metal legs scampered out. They were disgusted and horrified.

Now imagine if I didn’t have those clues and the first time they knew of this creature was when it came out of the pipe. I can guarantee that the reaction would be different. They wouldn’t have had time to be afraid – they would have just rolled initiative and nuked the thing.

This is what the Hunting Dice attempts to do for DnD random encounters and likely why I like it. You know something is coming for you, and depending on the rolls, you start to get clues.

This isn’t the only technique, of course. I’m releasing another blog post in a few days with a really important one. If you want a reminder email and you aren’t signed up for my list yet, you can do so here (and get a free PDF of Mork Borg monsters while you’re at it).

Hey, while you’re here, do me a favor – go give our latest Kickstarter a follow. It’s for our Mork Borg bookmark, and I have a feeling it’ll be the cheapest campaign during zinequest. It’ll be launching February 1st.

Now get out there and get scary.