As I mentioned in my previous article, I have a rather
limited experience in role playing games focused on the horror genre. I’ve also
come to the conclusion that player “buy in” is a critical element in having a
successful experience in horror games. This time I want to look at some of the
rules or mechanical aspects that I’ve encountered in those experiences that
were used to try and help set the right tone for the game.
Most of my experiences as a player came using Call of
Cthulhu, which is based on the Basic Role Playing system. In that system they
have an attribute called Sanity or SAN for short. Witnessing traumatic events
or supernatural phenomenon can cause a player to make a “SAN loss” die roll to
see if their character takes psychological/emotional damage due to the
triggering occurrence. This kind of makes sense on paper. I should say that my
only experience with the SAN rules in Cthulhu are as a player. Whether or not
my game master got the rules right or wrong is unknown to me. I can only
comment on how it worked from my side of the screen as a player.
In practice, when one of our characters would have to make a
SAN loss roll, it was more of an “all or nothing” proposition. You either
stayed sane and continued to function normally or you flipped out and either
fled in terror or you snapped enough to become a threat to yourself and others.
In either case, you pretty much lost control of your character for the duration
of the game session at a minimum. The character in question would become an
NPC. If you were really lucky, your
character would make a full recovery. If not, it would be time to make a new
character. In the end, I think most of us found the SAN loss rules more of an
annoyance than finding them to be terrifying. It didn’t really seem to add much
to the game beyond player frustration when SAN rolls were failed.
The Dungeons & Dragons Ravenloft campaign that I attempted
to run had rules for Dark Gifts (Note: A friend reminds me this is actually called a Powers Check). A player could choose actions that would grant
him gifts or favors from the dark powers that oversee the Demi-plane of Dread.
These gifts would grow in power over the course of time. There were always
consequences for these gifts and the consequences would also grow over time. At
some point, there was a chance that the character would become so infused with
these Dark Gifts they would become a dark lord of their own Ravenloft domain.
Power had a price and the dark powers always get what’s due.
In practice, it was darn near impossible to get any of the
players to allow their characters to start down the path of the Dark Gifts.
What sounded ominous and horrifying on paper didn’t translate that well into
actual gameplay in large part due to the traditional D&D mindsets so
dominant in my groups. The D&D mindset consists largely of Find, Kill, Loot
and (in our group at least) make sure to distrust/avoid anything the dungeon
master does to try and engage you in plots or subplots. It’s not really the
fault of the rule mechanics for Dark Gifts that they didn’t actually come into
play. The rules were sound. Getting any of the players to “go for it” on the other
hand seemed like a non-starter.
The Alien Role Playing Game has rules that cover stress and
panic. Stress builds up over the course of an adventure. The adrenaline rush
that stress gives to a player’s character can actually be beneficial in overcoming challenges. The risk is that every player character has a breaking
point. Some stress is good. Too much stress and a character can break. And when
a character breaks they can flee or freeze or worse. I’m very intrigued by this
set of rules as stress comes about via both “in game” events or when a player
“pushes” an ability test for success. That’s right, some of the stress is going
to happen to anyone but part of the stress is going to be self-inflicted. It
looks great on paper to me. Hopefully it will play out as well at the table and
help add to the immersion of a horror RPG experience. Time will tell.
