Friday 2 August 2013

The Problem of Horror Games

Let's talk about the problem of running horror games.

Last year I went through a phase of reading almost exclusively horror - I was ploughing my way through Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, and Thomas Ligotti stories faster than you can say "the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep". I naturally started thinking about running Call of Cthulhu again, and even bought the 6th edition core rules.

But I also started thinking about how difficult it is to run an actual horror game. I use that wording advisedly, as a way of distinguishing it from games with the furniture of the horror genre. These are not difficult to run: it isn't hard to run Call of Cthulhu or Unknown Armies, especially if you are making things a little bit rail-roady, but also if you are willing to set up a more sandboxy investigative type game.

However, having the furniture of horror is not the same thing as horror itself, and there are elements of the horror genre that I think are not only nearly impossible to emulate in a traditional game, but actually militate against it. Proper horror, in my view, revolves around two things:

1. Powerlessness of the protagonist. While a protagonist should be active, and usually is, ultimately his fate should be out of his hands. That's what makes it scary. It may simply be that the protagonist is unable to curb his own curiosity. But still, horror seems crucially to be, to some degree, about DEPROTAGONIZATION. And I don't mean whiny "I'm not allowed to be awesome, boo-hoo" style deprotagonization. I mean the GM mandating that unutterably shit things happen to your character for no other reason that "It's horror and your fate is out of your hands".

2. Bleakness. I'm not a believer in the hero or heroine triumphing over evil in a horror story. Even if he survives, he should be physically or mentally ruined. Ramsey Campbell is the master of coming up with endings which imply that some unfortunate soul will be in torment forever, and Ligotti is expert at implying meaninglessness and complete lack of hope, but more mainstream horror can be just as pessimistic - in most of Stephen King's books there is a genuine streak of sheer nastiness in the endings, giving the sense that everything has changed for the worst. But this, in a traditional game, would be equally as DEPROTAGONIZING; generally, you want your character to have goals, to improve, and raise his or her standing. Not face ever more hopeless situations unto gruesome death or eternal suffering.

That's not to say you can't have powerlessness and bleakness in short bursts. Murderous Ghosts manages this - it lasts an hour, terrible unspeakable things happen, and then it ends. And you don't care because it's an hour and it was fun. But it isn't the stuff campaigns are made of.

52 comments:

  1. But can't RPGs represent a different kind of horror, where a protagonist actively follows a desire, only to find out out that that desire is ultimately unnatural, dehumanizing or monstrous?

    I'm thinking in particular of Ligotti and sometimes Lovecraft. Desire in a player is most easily achieved by giving their character some way to achieve a bonus power or get some treasure. You want to be a special snowflake? Sure, you slowly realize you have Deep One blood.

    Consider implanting the denouement of The Shadow, The Darkness as the side effect of an artifact or some mysterious chamber. Your character from now on passes all mind-based saves but has given up his self -continues to talk and walk as before but is now a philosophical zombie, liberated from the need to be consistent or feel only good things - which in fact is only the realization of the character's ontological status at the mercy of his or her player.

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    1. Is that really a fun game, though? It sounds more like an interesting hour-long thought experiment. I'm not sure I would want to be a player in a game in which I had desires which turned out to be dehumanizing and monstrous and it was an entire campaign lasting dozens of sessions.

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    2. I wasn't suggesting it be the only focus, just an element in the eclectic stew that is an adventure game. Indeed there's a case to be made that RPGs are more fun when they crib from genres rather than trying to emulate them.

      My argument at greater length.

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    3. I absolutely agree with that. It's sort of what I mean when I talked about the furniture of the horror genre. Call of Cthulhu is nominally a horror game and has horror trappings but it doesn't actually really emulate what a Lovecraft story is all about.

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    4. "But can't RPGs represent a different kind of horror, where a protagonist actively follows a desire, only to find out out that that desire is ultimately unnatural, dehumanizing or monstrous?"

      Some of my best horror RPG moments have come from simply providing the PCs with enough rope to hang themselves by. Players who are used to modern D&D-style play are especially prone to this, as they assume that any tome or artifact they pick up is going to be useful rather than inimical. Had a campaign once where the party came into possession of a brass head early on, learned the ritual for activating it, and, as the ritual involved copious amounts of blood and fire, set it aside in a locked vault. One of the players, though, remained convinced of its utility and finally did the ritual during a particularly desperate point in the campaign's penultimate session. A gruesome death ensued, and the player loved every minute of it. Again, though, definitely more "thrills and chills" than outright "horror".

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    5. Basically no experience running horror myself, but I can think of two things that might be relevant along the "give the players enough horror-rope to hang themselves with" line.

      The first is a post by Fr. Dave from a while back. I really wish he'd give some examples. Link: http://bloodofprokopius.blogspot.com/2011/10/meditating-on-horror.html

      The other example is LotFP modules, the one that stands out most in my mind being The God That Crawls. You've got the chase element that seems to fit horror pretty well, and it's also possible to use magic items that might take an emotional toll on players, depending on how jaded they are (at least some of my players would get an emotional hit from interacting with, say, minotaur excrement), and even the tools to accidentally destroy the multiverse, which could be horror if they in fact do so.

      I'm pretty inexperienced with horror, though, so I'm not really sure.

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  2. For my money, the best in-depth analysis of how to do horror in an RPG is a book called "Nightmares of Mine"
    http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1558063676

    It's not game-specific, covers most genres, and unfortunately is out of print. You might keep an eye out for it in the used section of your FLGS though.

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    1. you are in luck, sir/ma'am/you! Hite incorporated most of Nightmares of Mine into the 3rd and 4th editions of GURPS Horror, which are the gold standard for this subject.

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  3. Horror (in my mind) requires non-immediate consequences (time to dwell on whats coming), but also in a game it requires the slimmest margin of hope (even if actually false).

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  4. Horror as a genre is one of my least favorite, in or out of gaming. Horror as an element of story and role playing is among my most favorite.

    The problem with the Horror genre for me is that it has come to mean a very different thing from what it originally represented as a genre term, especially in film.

    If you watch any of the classic horror movies of cinema's golden age, you will see that the protagonists, the PCs if you will, are not completely powerless and they often have hope as Zzarchov notes (although they may still fail).

    The mighty Dracula can be held at bay with a cross and garlic and even he fears the sun. The rampaging Frankenstein's monster can be communicated with. In the classic film 'The Uninvited', a template I often use when designing horror scenarios, the horror has a purpose, a reason for haunting the home. Come to terms with that reason and appease the ghost or have it face it's own issues and you may well be rid of it. Fail to do so in time and everyone in the house may well be joining it.

    One of the most successful games I've run in the last 5-10 years was a Ghostbusters game in which the players felt both downright scared and a least one was moved to tears. I know what you're thinking, 'Isn't Ghostbusters a comedy?'. Yes, but I tried to make it smartly funny, not silly. All the while I was developing scenarios based on established ghost stories and urban legend in the state of New Jersey. The atmosphere of the game was mysterious, creepy and at times, quite scary.

    Why was it so successful?

    1. The PCs weren't powerless. They had ghost traps, PKE meters and unlincensed nuclear generators on their backs. These weren't usually the answers to their problems but they helped. More so, they did research, talked to NPCs and found out why the ghosts were still on this plane and what could be done about it. An intelligent person is never powerless or unarmed.

    Most modern horror fixes this by filling the cast of characters with complete idiots.

    2. The situations were dire not bleak. Bleakness is depressing. It sucks. The situations I created were bad and could result in loss and death, UNLESS SOMEONE DID SOMETHING ABOUT THEM. To me that's not just the key, it's what makes it viable as an RPG.

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    1. I think that a lot of horror's tension is exactly what you say, with #1 - the protagonists are empowered, in some way, but the fear comes from the constraints they face with that power. I feel that the best way to handle it is to give the protagonists power, but in a completely different realm from that which they need to directly combat the threat.

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    2. This is true. Modern horror is almost always both nihilistic and absurd. Bad enough as a movie, but untenable as a game, though as a 1-off it has some potential, arguably.

      The fact that things can end well, and well enough to continue as a campaign (the characters aren't by definition mentally broken at the end of a single story) is what makes it work. (If done correctly, you can even make White Wolf's World Of Darkness into proper horror instead of high-powered goth fantasy... in theory. Never seen anyone even try it, personally.) The trouble is that horror is by nature even more desensitizing than most genres, and the anhedonia (if that word even works for the genre) builds fast. Smartly funny seems to me a decent way to stave that off for longer.

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    3. I'm sure it was a cool game, and it's how I would run horror games too, but I think then it's stopped being an emulation of the horror genre and has become something else.

      On G+ somebody made a similar comment to yours and I said yes, that's exactly the way to run a good horror game, but it's not really horror - it's more like a dark fantasy, or a paranormal investigation game, something like that. It has the trappings of horror and it might be a bit spooky but it's not quite emulating the genre.

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  5. One way I imagine this could work as a campaign is taking the tv show American Horror Stories in it's basics as a template (for one, I didn't think they'd be able to pull it off for exactly the reasons you're stating). And I'd give it one more spin: give the players two characters. One doomed (with a slim chance to get away) and one facilitating that doom (with a slim chance to be doomed). Take the second season as an example. It plays in an asylum (with all the known horror tropes). In this scenario one character would be a patient, the other a warden, doctor or a nurse. Decisions a player makes for one character might doom the other character (maybe reflected in the xp or some kind of karmic balance?). And it's not just important to get rid of the patient. No, the longer they suffer, the better for the other character. To make it work, I'd let them alternate between characters from session to session. To go with the example, I'd start with the personal of the asylum. The decisions they'll make will influence the situations of the patients for the worse in the session after that. This way the players have to decide what they do and wonder what the consequences for the others are, but in separating the characters, a player has no direct influence on his other character (let's say, the characters in the first session realize that some doctor is doing terrible experiments with the patients. To stop him could have severe consequences for the characters in the session (murder charges, whatever), but to leave him be, or even help him, will have even worse consequences for the characters in the next session...). This goes for a couple of sessions (maybe 12) and in the end the karmic balance (they collected) decides the final fate of the characters (and maybe the situation for the next "season"). The balance would be key. A dead or arrested character could easily be replaced (maybe with a penalty of sorts on the balance sheet). In the end, a concept like this could even make a player decide to keep playing with a, say, mutilated character to get his balance in order...

    Anyway, it's just what came to mind right now. Wouldn't know which system to use for this, for instance. I like Barking Alien's idea, too.

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    1. Hmm. That sort of reminds me of Murderous Ghosts, and I bet you could use the mechanics of that to run it.

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  6. Who says it has to be a campaign instead of a bunch of one shots?

    Look at shows like Tails from the Crypt and Outer Limits: different heroes every week. Maybe there's a reason for that.

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    1. Yes, there's a reason why by and large the best horror writers (including Lovecraft, Campbell and Ligotti) are short story writers.

      Stephen King is an obvious exception but that's because Stephen King is remarkably sadistic and likes to draw things out. (I say that as somebody who is increasingly a fan of his stuff.)

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    2. "Stephen King is remarkably sadistic"

      One of the best bits of advice for running longer horror campaigns I've heard is: "Why kill when you can maim?"

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  7. I think you have hit the nail on the head. You can do supernatural themed games, especially things that can be seen as based upon on the Jules De Gradin or Xfiles model of "psychic investigators. I used the old Justice Inc. rules effectively, but never pulled off a sandbox-style game this way. Yet you're right, you never really quite get the gut-level reaction of fear, no matter how many howling mobs of half-ape, half-men chase you through the back alleys of Singapore. Horror fiction is often a one note symphony, selling fear just as a romance novel sells love. All you really end up doing is changing the veneer of fantasy RPGs, like a theme park labeling it's roller coaster the vampire racer.

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    1. All you really end up doing is changing the veneer of fantasy RPGs, like a theme park labeling it's roller coaster the vampire racer.

      Yes, precisely that.

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  8. Nice post! I've never been a fan of the horror genre in role playing but I could never really put my finger on why. You've done a nice job of putting it into words. Roleplaying for me is about problem solving and world building, and neither of those things are represented in the horror genre.

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  9. I think horror, the feeling, is pretty much a personal experience. Its hard to have a shared game experience of horror.

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  10. As someone who runs the majority of his games with "horror themes," I actually agree with this post. I think it's impossible to run a "pure" horror game outside of a one-shot. Something like Murderous Ghosts, or Graham Walmsley's purist scenarios for Trail of Cthulhu. As soon as you get into campaign territory, you're aiming for something more akin to "thrills and chills" than "horror". But to me, that's how I read the genre label--"We're playing a horror game, which means we want to aim for those moments of creeping dread or tingling chills that we get when we sit around and tell each other ghost stories."

    I heartily second the endorsement for checking out GURPS Horror 3rd or 4th edition or Nightmare of Mine--Ken Hite provides invaluable insight into how the GM and players can cooperate to produce an optimal horror RPG experience. Essentially, his point is that in order to play a horror game, one has to approach it with a totally different mindset than an RPG in pretty much any other genre:

    "In addition, many of the details of character creation, development, and play can differ when the goal of the game is not only to gain [experience], but to enjoy the mood of the uncanny that the GM and other players will create. The player’s goal is to help build fear. The character’s goal is entirely different—it’s probably just to survive and thrive as best he can. Nobody needs to play the girl who suicidally wanders into the crypt alone at midnight in her nightgown…but that can be a lot more fun than playing the girl who stays safely locked in her apartment with her cat!"

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    1. I will try and check them out. But yeah, I absolutely agree with you, and was sort of what I meant: we're playing a horror game so let's enjoy trying to get chills up the spine. That's fun and cool and that's how Call of Cthulhu plays out in my experience. And I like it. But's not what I think of as actual horror.

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  11. I seem to do fine with horror.

    The trick is to remember horror isn't about standing 50 feet away and doing the numbers and analyzing whether situation is bleak or not, the trick is horror is about _moments_ .

    The game rolls along like any adventure and then you grab and shape what comes up until you can work it into a _moment of real horror_ and then the players die or don't and are scarred or not and then you keep going until you find another wave to catch.

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    1. Nicely put. Of course, most RPGs are about chasing moments, when I think about it. With horror games, though, it's less about "Hey, remember that time your thief rolled a crit on his backstab and took out the demon lord in one shot?" and more like, "Hey, remember that time your skeptical doctor woke up tied to his bed and proceeded to have his teeth pulled out with pliers by little charcoal men?"

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    2. But isn't that more to do with thrills and spookiness rather than actual horror? Maybe my definition and the way I view the genre is really narrow. But take the example of The Mist (spoiler alert if you haven't seen it and want to: don't read the rest of this comment).

      I think that's one of those most horrific films ever. Not because of the spooky spine-tingling moments or gory bits (there are some, though it's by no means the scariest film in the world in that respect), but because the implications of it are so bleak. The true horror comes out of sight, after the film is ended: this is a guy who does something truly, mind-bendingly awful because he feels like he has to, only to realise literally seconds later that actually everything would have been fine. The genuine horror comes from thinking: How the fuck would you ever recover from that? It is right up there with the worst things that could ever happen to you and there is basically no consolation you could possibly have that would make you okay again.

      That's the kind of thing I think it's not really possible to replicate in anything other than a one-shot game, or at least which I would have no interest in replicating. And that's the kind of thing that seems the quintessence of horror to me.

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    3. Well in that case either:

      A) No, there are no RPGs that can replicate that kind of post-coital literary emotional effect (or horror or otherwise) because RPGs done well are too collective and too fun.

      or

      B) There may be games that can do that or try to but they're excruciating story games for excruciating people

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    4. Well, in that sense of horror, you actually get that just as much in campaign games as you do in one-shots, I think. It's just on a player-by-player basis. Usually, I find, you have one PC who suffers a truly horrifying fate that leaves you ruminating on it long after the campaign has ended. One of the PCs in the Bradford Players' actual-play recording of Horror on the Orient Express had this happen. Or an example from the last Cthulhu campaign I ran, in which a Scotland Yard detective had his mind switched into another man's body and ended up in an insane asylum. Eventually he got used to his new condition and was able to convince asylum staff that he no longer believed he was this "Inspector Pike" fellow, so they let him out. Even now, I often think of the mind-switched Pike, having to start a new life in another person's body. Horrifying.

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    5. Something like the Mist can easily occur in a horror RPG, it just can't be easily guaranteed in advance. The emotional impact may well be lessened and its direction cannot be ensured; most people generally don't get the same level of belief that, for example, an NPC is real as a character well realized by an actor in a movie. But sometimes players will feel bad that their actions led to bad results, even if sometimes they'll laugh or someone will make a "sad trombone" noise, etc. But then I laughed at the end of the Mist.

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    6. Maybe my definition and the way I view the genre is really narrow.

      I really don't want to be an arse, but I think this might be the "problem". I see no obstacles to running a successful horror game, but I don't think any example I could give would satisfy your criteria for what horror is.

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    7. That probably comes across as far more arsey than intended. Sorry.

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    8. As with so many things, it all depends on how you define the term.

      The type of horror you are describing here than is not the kind I am interested in playing or even subjecting myself to on a regular basis.

      I'm sure there is a way to create such a gaming experience but I would much rather experience that sort in a one shot. I don't want to campaign play that.

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    9. Heh, The Mist is the only King story that actually gave me nightmares! The short story, not the movie though. The movie has a relatively happy ending that takes the edge off the situation.

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    10. Zak and Barking Alien and Kelvin: I think you guys are all saying what I said in my post but much more efficiently than I did and with slightly different terminology.

      David Larkins and Cole: You both make excellent points, actually. I also laughed at the end of The Mist but it's almost because you just have to laugh - what else are you going to do?

      E.G.Palmer: Okay, now I'm curious. How is the ending to the story different?

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    11. There is no rescue with tanks and flame throwers to signal the horror is over, and everything will be ok to the viewer. They just continue driving south through the mist, and deep down, they know that there isn't any end to it.

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    12. I thought that was going to be the ending, actually. I can understand why they went the way they did, because they felt that as a film it needed a more "in your face" ending. I like it though, because they still had the balls to do something unexpected.

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  12. The two things you mention in your post are literary furniture themselves, and it doesn't necessarily make sense to transport them into an RPG. Horror as a genre is traditionally defined by the emotions it creates - horror (like in the downer ending) and terror (like with the powerless protagonist). If your story horrifies and terrifies, it's safe to say it's a successful horror story. Everything else is means to an end.

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    1. I'm trying to define what "horror" is. If my definition is right, then obviously the horror won't be there without what I described, so the story won't horrify.

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    2. I'm talking about horror the emotion, not horror the genre. I'll refer to it as "abhorrence" to avoid confusion. Abhorrence is an emotion, it doesn't revolve around anything so specific as the two things you described. I'd describe it as fear flavoured with revulsion. Terror is fear flavoured with anxiety. You feel terror when you're endangered, you feel horror when you're disturbed. You're terrified when you see the serial killer, you're horrified when you see what he's done.

      The idea, which isn't my own, is that terror and abhorrence are the two sides of the emotional coin that all horror fiction tries to evoke. If you look at any work of horror, all the "stings" can be fitted into one category or another, in varying intensities. The two techniques you described above are ways of producing these emotions, but it's obviously untrue to say that they're the ONLY way; emotions aren't that narrow.

      Basically, I think A) you're focussing on abhorrence to the exclusion of terror/dread, which is also an extremely important part of horror fiction, and B) you're confusing the emotion itself with certain tools used to achieve it.

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    3. I'm not confusing the tools with the emotion; this post is precisely about why a horror game will find it difficult to emulate the horror genre. It isn't about emotions and I am specifically ignoring them. If you disagree with my definition of the genre, then, fine.

      What I am absolutely not talking about is "abhorrence", by the way. I find the abhorrence/terror thing a bit trite, to be honest, but setting that aside, "abhorrence" is the cheapest emotion to replicate. Anybody can think up horrible things a serial killer has done - it's adolescent. And it's a component of thrillers and crime fiction just as much as it is of horror stories.

      I am trying to define the philosophy of horror, here, and go beyond the emotional reactions; it seems to me that the heart of the genre is those two things I described. Perhaps they are what ultimately generate the emotional reactions, but I'm not interested here in just saying "scariness and revulsion are the horror genre".

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    4. You scorn "abhorrence" as adolescent, yet you're effusive with praise for the ending of The Mist, which is a clear example of a scene evoking the very emotion I'm talking about. That's by the by, though.

      I look at genre in terms of the emotional and intellectual response it creates. You say you're trying to define the philosophy of horror, but to say it consists of those two things seems to me to be missing the forest for the trees. I'm confused. Is it really the specific fictional circumstances you think are important, rather than the reactions they create? Or am I badly misinterpreting?

      If it's just a matter of porting the genre conventions of horror literature into RPGs, I'd agree with you that it's pretty much impossible unless the convention already fits - just like you wouldn't port cinematography conventions into a book.

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    5. In what sense is the ending of The Mist "fear flavoured with revulsion"?

      I'd argue that looking at genre in terms of emotional response is really odd. What emotional response does crime fiction set out to achieve? What about Westerns? What about SF?

      I'm not sure what you're misunderstanding. Can you think of any examples of horror fiction where the horror doesn't come from either lack of control on the part of the protagonist, or bleakness, or both?

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    6. The horror doesn't come from any danger or sense of threat in the ending of The Mist, it comes from a loathsome situation with loathsome consequences and loathsome implications. It's not terrifying so much as a deep sense of aversion and repugnance. Same goes for, say, most of Lovecraft - I'm not really afraid that Azathoth is going to pop out and eat me, but I'm repelled by the notion of Azathoth and its similarities to certain unpleasant aspects of our own universe.

      Crime fiction is a fuzzy category, but a detective story usually tries to arouse a sense of mystery and the reader's intellectual curiosity, primarily, whereas hardboiled fiction usually goes more for cynicism, apprehension and sometimes a sort of low-key horror, plus commentary on society or human nature. Westerns are usually morality tales. You could write a film about the setting rather than the people - say, a story about how hard it was to live in the Old West - but it wouldn't be a "traditional" western movie and it's not what most people would want. Et cetera.

      Sure, lots. The Thing is a good example. The protagonists aren't helpless - they've got flamethrowers - and the ending is ambiguous. The horror comes mostly from fearful anticipation on the part of the viewer, the creepiness of the Thing, and the tension of the humans trying to kill the Thing before it kills them.

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    7. I didn't say helpless; I said powerless. I think that's an important distinction. The characters in The Thing can fight against it, but they are powerless against it because they don't know who has been infected with it. And the ending is incredibly bleak: whichever of the two guys left over is The Thing doesn't matter, really, in terms of the immediate situation, because even if, let's say, Kurt Russell is not infected and manages to kill the other guy, he'll freeze to death in short order. The consolation is that he'll have stopped The Thing, obviously, but for him the situation is hopeless whatever happens.

      You seem to be just using different terminology to me, to be honest. Azathoth is not scary in the sense you say, no. But he's the ultimate in bleakness: at the centre of the universe is just evil, meaningless chaos. Label that as "loathsome" if you want, but I'm not sure what the difference is.

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  13. If a bad GM mandating things and drowning you in bleakness is a horror game, then I've played a few unsuspectingly. I did notice the flawed roles, overused bodily function/part abuse, and nicotine bolstering right away. Why the game is often identified as something else when I sign on must be part of the deprotagonization...

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  14. Sorry to bring up the company that must not be named, but given ghostbusters but serious has already been brought up I thought I'd put in a good word for Orpheus. In particular I think it notices the mistake most attempts at horror games make which is to choose survival as there goal. The trick is to give the player a different goal, like revenge, which forces them to put their character through horrifying scenarios. so they are orthogonally disempowered: unable to escape their fate but able to face it on their terms.

    Granted this is what every white wolf game tries "oooh you've defeated the elders but you will never see the sun agaiiin your victory is ashes in your mouth" it's just that corporate slave ghost isn't anyone's empowerment fantasy.

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  15. Basically I think the problem with horror is it clashes with the "gm and players against the game setup" that distinguishes RPGs from let's pretend. Or at least it clashes if the horror is of the 'something nasty falls out of the sky and eats you". The idea behind world of darkness games is that the horror is baked into the setting so that the player deeos like they are choosing to take their character down a path that is inevitably horrific in the same way the dungeon is inevitably dangerous. Though Orpheus was the only time that actually worked

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    1. I'd never even heard of Orpheus until I saw these comments. What's it all about?

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  16. Horror is brilliant; all you need to do is be a bad GM with a vivid imagination who doesn't understand people's criticisms.

    Because then suddenly you have a world who's vividness suggests you can interact with it, who's creative effort encourages equivalent investment by you in your character, but where interaction just doesn't do quite what you intend, where the basic interaction is full of disorientation.

    Actually bad GM could be taken the wrong way, you need to start recreating some of the failings of inexperienced GMs, those who disregard any semblance of appropriateness in challenge, frequently run their own plans over yours, randomly make decisions for your characters when their imagination runs away with them, and in the moment not see any distinction between this and being friendly.

    There are an additional set of skills, about starting with something slightly weird and random and then following it’s aesthetic wherever it goes, and basically daydream some weird nightmare as the game goes on.

    So it's a particular set of skills, but ones that work against skills you learn for keeping a stable and playable campaign going.

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  17. My opinion is that horror is anything that scares the player. Bleakness can take you only so far. Once it becomes obvious that you will lose, it's easy to sink into despair or even apathy. However, so long as you broke up the horror games with a variety of other genres it would probably work out as the player might not get as cynical.

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  18. Have you tried outlast? It's on Playstation 4. Very good game.

    http://www.playerup.com

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