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."
Comments (1)
Hmm...mass I'd definitely agree with. Just about ANYTHING is scary if you have enough of them. Even cute fluffy bunnies. (Honestly, that's the only one that *really* stayed with me out of the Petshop of Horrors...)
Motive, too, very much...I think a lot of horror comes in having motives that are "alien" to the players, in whatever way.
Mortality I think reverses in horror. In regular games, it's important to know that when the PCs triumph, that's it, the villian is down and they've won and they can go collect their reward. In horror, it's almost the other way around...PC's have to have an expectation that they COULD die (very little is really scary without at least the possibility of it), while the villains get very, very hard to keep down...as noted, the hand always pops back out of the grave as soon as they...well, turn their backs to go collect their reward.
Posted by lintking | April 4, 2003 5:21 PM
Posted on April 4, 2003 17:21