5 things to do to run better horror games
This is a transcript of the video: 5 weirdly-not-easy things to do to run a better horror game
I fucking love horror games. I love running them. I love playing them. So I’ve really take the time to try and be better at it because I really want to be a good horror GM. So let me share with you what I’m learning about running horror.
Explicitly ask for fewer jokes. Nothing kills horror like people laughing and joking at the table - which is a normal thing to do with you’re spending a few hours with friends. But if everyone is bought into this horror thing, you as the GM should tell your players - ok listen, for the next few hours, we’re going to keep the jokes and the laughing to a minimum so that we can create that horror ambiance.
Short games - 1-3 sessions at most; 2-4 hours per session. My theory is that horror requires you to be more immersed than most themes. And if you’ve asked your players to be more serious than normal, that’s not something you can reasonably ask more than a few times. I’m not talking about a generally dark atmosphere that you could have in a campaign, like the Curse of Strahd for D&D or Shadow of the demon lord or even Vampire, I’m talking about haunted house, finite space, horror module - like Bluebeard’s Bride.
Use descriptions that evoke all the senses. Write out descriptions of things.
CONTENT WARNING: Horror Description
Low, melancholy music with the occasional discordant note draws you down this corridor with peeling paint on the walls. Eventually, you find yourselves at a door behind which the music is coming from. You put your ear to the door, gingerly, carefully and it’s icy cold.
As you take a moment to listen - the smell of roses wafts into your nostrils .Except it isn’t a fresh fragrant smell, more the saccharine sweet smell of rotting flowers. The music takes on a hollow tone, and you hear, along with the discordant note, a woman… softly sobbing.
So yeah. Write them out. It makes a huge difference. Everything you describe should evoke at least one sense that isn’t sight.
4. Take. Your. Time. Dread comes from the pauses. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am a naturally fast talker and I’m very chatty, so this is very challenging for me, but like all i need to be contextually slow for myself because people who know me know what i usually sound like. So when I’m letting silence hang in the air, its unsettling to these folks. They are instantly like ‘something’s off’ and that’s what you want. That general sense of unease that amps up everything else.
5. Use safety tools: Ask about x-cards, lines and veils well ahead of time. Horror has a lot of big trigger points and for some reason, people are not comfortable saying they don’t like horror as a genre - they feel like there is weakness associated with not being able to ‘take’ it or whatever. I could do a whole other video about that, and maybe I will, but basically, it comes down to a lot of people - mostly men - who will sign up for horror games and be really uncomfortable with various elements of it and not have a good time. Asking if people have any lines allows them and you as the GM to better understand what everyone’s levels are. Like my brand of horror is very body horror. I know several people who find that uncomfortably squicky not fun squicky. And if I can identify that ahead of time, I can tell those people - listen, body horror is fundamental to how I run horror so maybe this isn’t the game for you. And then they can make the decision. But if their x-card is ‘listen I just get really grossed out by stuff around the mouth’ or “injections and needles man, I just can’t” i can be like ok, i’ll go back and review my stuff and if there’s any mouth horror stuff, I’ll remove it, or with needles. Thank you for telling me. Of course, you always run the risk of having something happen in game so you should be prepared to react to xcards immediately in the game, but talk to your players ahead of time. You want to give them nightmares but you also love them, so you know… balance. No but seriously, the point is to have fun right? So let’s make sure people are enthusiastically consenting to having the shit scared out of them.
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So those are my five broad things that’ll help with running any horror game - good luck!
