Bump in the Night
I was musing with the LintKing in regards to the horror genre. In a lot of cases, horror seems to reside in a few concepts, including:
1) mass
The "mass" concept is that of massive odds. Overwhelming use of zombies, for example. (As if you could have too many zombies!) Large numbers of bugs, birds, breadcrumbs...
2) motive
The "motive" concept includes such things as pure malicious instinct (killer beasts), homicidal impulse (the slasher flicks), the innate force of evil (supernatural) and the like.
3) mortality
The "mortality" concept is the idea that there is a firm resolution. That evil stays defeated, once it's down. That even if you have to put the zombie in the blender, it stops coming at you. It's the horror movie "catch," where the hand pushes out of the grave, or you hear the sound of the alien's pod opening just before the credits end.
With these three in consideration, I explained as how I subscribed to the first two in most of the horror campaigns I ran. The LintKing considered for a moment, and then said, "I think what you do is `epic horror.'"
(He says the sweetest things sometimes.)
I run games where such things can be defeated. More through sacrifice than sheer power, but I'm in it for my players to be heroes.
He pointed out that the problem with this is that most systems (TORG being an exception) don't handle epic horror. "You're regular people. You end up defeating these cultists, yeah, but then the cultists down the hall start trying to raise C'thulhu next week."
You know. It's like zombies. "Crunch all the brains you've got, we want more."