The Horror Genre: It Hasn't Been My Strong Suit

As I’ve been preparing to run the Alien Role Playing Game, I've been thinking about my experiences with playing and running games within the horror genre. The Alien RPG is one of action, exploration, and horror. A campaign of Alien may include all of those elements. I’d like to focus on the horror element primarily as I haven’t found a lot of successful gaming experiences within that genre.

My experiences as a player within the horror genre have been limited to playing in several Call of Cthulhu games using the Basic Role Playing engine. These games have been a mixed bag for me. The worst of these experiences felt as though the game master was using the lethal nature of the BRP game system to fuel a total party kill scenario designed for his own amusement. While that may not actually be true, it was pretty much the perception at the time. It was demoralizing to be continuously slaughtered each time the Call of Cthulhu system was the game to be played.

The best experiences that I’ve had playing Call of Cthulhu were with game masters that had crafted a fine detective story involving the discovery of otherworldly horrors. Most of the enjoyment was found in the solving of the puzzle and/or perhaps delaying some inevitable doom.

As a game master my only experience with attempting to run a horror game was using Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2^nd Edition’s Ravenloft Setting. I had high hopes for the campaign that I had created. I had become intrigued by the Demi-plane of Dread upon the publication of the boxed set. I had been a player in the Ravenloft modules prior to that. Gothic horror seemed to be something that would bring something fresh and new to our regular gaming table. To my surprise, the campaign fell flat. I had followed the advice found within the campaign boxed set. I had set the table with fascinating tales, Gothic horror creatures, and chilling discoveries. Yet my campaign felt more like the Demi-plane of Dud than one of dread.

What made those Call of Cthulhu sessions successful or unsuccessful? Were the failures caused by the lethality of the BRP system combined with a self-serving GM or was it something else? The more that I’ve thought about it the more I’ve realized that while mechanics do matter, player “buy in” is critical to the success of a game.

When a Cthulhu game was an epic fail, what was the real cause? Could it be the group of players and their mindset that was responsible for the ensuing bloodbath rather than a “killer” GM?  The vast majority of our games being played at the time were Advanced Dungeons and Dragons adventures. The standard operating procedure in AD&D is to find places to explore, creatures to fight, and stuff to loot. You can't really approach a Cthulhu investigation in the same manner that an AD&D group uses to approach a dungeon crawl.  Well, you can do that but it’s going to be one very bloody and gruesome end for the PCs in almost every case. Mechanically speaking, it seems to be a lot easier to die in BRP than it is in AD&D. I think perhaps that the group’s AD&D mindset combined with a more lethal combat system resulted in the perfect storm for failure. The fact that some of the latter Cthulhu games were successful may have been the direct result of more cautious play from the players involved than was typically found by players in the average AD&D group.

As for my failed Ravenloft campaign; I had thought for quite some time that the dud campaign was entirely my own failing to convey the elements of the setting properly. Or that AD&D was just a poor choice for running a game in the horror genre. But as with Call of Cthulhu, player “buy in” mattered. The players in my campaign treated the game no differently than if they were playing in Greyhawk, or the Forgotten Realms, or in a hundred of other fantasy settings. Their approaches and expectations were formed by the AD&D mindset. It didn’t matter if the game had Gothic horror elements or not. They were going to play the setting the same way they had played all of the other settings: Find it, Kill it, and Loot the stuff. This resulted in a facade of horror painted over the top of any typical AD&D game. The players didn’t buy in and I certainly didn’t do a good enough job in selling them on doing so.

As I prepare for Alien, I hope to do better at conveying the right mood and setting tropes. I also hope that my players will “buy in” and embrace the game as I have during my first read. The system does matter. But player “buy in” seems to matter even more. I really hope to have the right mix of system and player expectations this time around.

Has horror worked well for you in the past as a player or as a GM? Please share your thoughts if you like.