Category: writing

When our machines can converse with us and have agency on par with our own, what separates us from them?  This question comes up time and again in cyberpunk literature, but the answer is found as much in the aesthetics as it is in the symbolism embedded in the stories.  It is perhaps the one coping mechanism in the genre that is described emotionally but never stated outright or addressed beyond the sensations the appearances give.  Not doing so makes sense in light of the bleak landscape.  The emptier the interior becomes, the greater the level of aesthetics in the story and the darker the external world appears.  Why, though?

The progress of science works to uncover every secret of nature and to fully understand how it works with the best tools a society can produce.  At some point the lenses of the various fields have to turn towards a central object that is at the heart of the questing: humanity.  When everything else seems on the verge of bending to human will, what else is there left to examine than that very will?  Perhaps this is one of the symbolic purposes of so many camera eyes to remind the audience and the inhabitants of this dark world that they are under the microscope.

Being espied upon so much is problematic in and of itself.  The genre compounds the problem by introducing entities that have the same properties of inner life as their creators—simulated or otherwise.  Does one blend in and become part of the faceless mass indistinguishable from machine life or break free and defy the body of research that has spilled out the contents of that inner world and rendered their former mystery mundane and predictable?  Responsible for all this is the tool that promised to liberate humanity from its bonds of labor: the computer.

The calculating nature of the machine sped up work and helped create art in ways once too difficult to produce by hand at profitable rates.  Thus, art and artifice moved into mass culture in new ways while simultaneously solving other problems, such as creating textiles and labor-saving devices to give people greater productivity, which translated in some areas as free time.  Now, the idea of free time is not new to the industrial revolution, but its enjoyment by virtually all levels of society comes about at this time.  Art and culture flourish in idle time, but until machinery opened it up to a wider audience, most leisure was reserved for the upper echelons of society.

The more machinery took away the need for human labor to do menial tasks, the more time was available for leisure.  We have a tendency to take this for granted, so when the various elements of culture, fashion, art, aesthetics, and sensuality appear in cyberpunk, they often don’t stand out as much as they should for the symbolic and rebellious natures they possess.  It makes sense that it doesn’t feel so subversive or out of place to see so many people express themselves in myriad ways.  What differ are the attitudes and associated reasoning, and these differences matter.

In reality and in this genre, machinery has removed humans from the manufacturing equation for much of the assembly process.  Where they diverge is in the machine’s ability to mimic human consciousness to the point where artificial intelligence passes the Turing test.  Such technology has severe consequences for society.  Barring the fears of the singularity point where machines outstrip our abilities and we’re replaced, a computer that mimics what is considered the providence of humanity is a terrifying thought.  Add to this the continued divorce of humanity from its own labor and the sense of isolation and alienation is nigh complete.

There is a problem with too much free time and not enough work to justify a person’s existence.  This isn’t a social construct, but one of personal meaning.  The psychological implication is what drives people to invent new avenues of being either through new industries (what we would refer to as innovations) or repurposing what already exists to fill in a niche that guarantees gainful employment.  Now, money isn’t the end goal, but it is a reflection of the value of that personal meaning.  The emptying out of the interior leads to the hollow existence that fuels anxiety in the real world and magnified to excess in cyberpunk literature.  How, then, does one combat the intrusion of the machine into the psyche when it can pass the Turing test?

This is where sensations come into play.  A lot of flesh is on display in most cyberpunk settings because it is a representation of not only what is real, but also of what artificial intelligence is incapable of possessing.  Machines can record, document, and observe events as they unfold, but the lack of true sensations prevents the machine from the most human of responses: experience.  Artificial intelligence can only describe what its raw data provides.  This is an interpretation of numbers.

Sensations are part of the basis of emotional responses.  As such, the level of sensuality, and thus sexuality, in cyberpunk stories is a direct relationship to encroachment into and alienation of the individual in the work space and the subsequent struggle for meaning.  In other words, it is as much a coping mechanism as it is a refutation of, rebuttal to, and rebellion from the computer’s dominance of human endeavors.  The problem is that the tools that were meant to make labor easier have reached their logical ends and replaced the need for people to perform most of these tasks without the economy shifting to a model that provides the vast majority of the population what the rich and powerful possess: leisure in excess.

Sex, sexuality, and sensory input are the height of human expression in a world where there is nothing but free time.  Cyberpunk literature depicts the poor as having to sell their bodies in some form to make enough to survive if they aren’t smart enough to get by when most of the infrastructural services that would create an equal playing field (e.g. schools, libraries, etc.) are virtually nonexistent.  The world is turned on its head as the poor are more idle than the rich, who have to hustle to maintain their positions and privileges.  And with nothing left but the feasts of carnal delights and their associated sensations, fashion, which is used to enhance sexuality, is used by the rich and poor alike to create an aura of allure.

Most of these displays are subconscious given the drive to use art as a physical manifestation of a person’s cutting edge prowess in an ever-changing world.  They also are divided along lines of class.  High fashion is associated with the rich, who spend their time collecting the fine art treasures of the past.  Displays that leave little to the imagination or are flamboyant/garish have a similar purpose for the poor.  They are meant to invoke feelings and garner attention to use the physical to express the skills and experiences possessed.  In short, they are productions of meaning.

When the view is that work will eventually set the whole of humanity free, the conflation of work and pleasure or work with pleasure is inevitable in the cyberpunk genre.  After all, the haves have more while the have-nots continue to slide into abject states of being and both are driven towards leisure.  However, the discrepancy between the two groups leads one to see leisure as luxury and the other as enjoying what one can with what is easily attainable.  This divide is quite Victorian and is why the dystopic nature of the genre can be disturbing to some as confirmation bias is easily read into the tropes.  Doing so misses out on the truth that these are aesthetic escapes from the artificial intelligence hiding behind the monitors and camera lenses of the digital world.

Sensations and the drive to experience them can be dark.  They are also illogical.  People give in to their impulses freely in the cyberpunk genre because their positions or the technology at their disposal makes it not just possible, but also grants indemnity.  This is a place clearly where the artificial mind cannot follow.  It also feeds into the production of meaning that all this sensory stimulation produces.  The characters aren’t indulging for the sake of indulgence, they do so because it’s not only expected, but also a release from social pressures.

To express the true magnitude of the horror of the dystopian world in the cyberpunk genre, characters have to give in to carnal delights to survive.  The pure decadence serves not only as an escape mechanism from the societal pressures and struggles, but also as the balm that provides some modicum of succor to the psyche.  The broken world and destruction of meaningful employment at the hands of our own machines is a true nightmare and the regression of the human spirit into carnal arts is the self-medication and remedy that holds the social fabric together and builds cohesion since everyone is in this together.  They use sex, sexuality, and sensuality as a means to an end.  An end that has one purpose: identifying who is human. It is in effect a way to turn the machine into the Other.

Continued from Part 3.

By now you probably have a good idea of how to run your story and keep true to the fear-inducing tale. What might not be so apparent is how to immerse the players in the story. The simplest method for this is to create a sense of dread for the players. You might not be able to get the players to empathize with their characters, but you can make them dread the characters’ fates. Setting the atmosphere in your play space and in your descriptions will go a long way. Moments of terror and horror will leak through.

In both stories the threat must be something combat can’t solve. For terror, this means villains and monsters too powerful for the group to do lasting harm; for horror, the threat is often intangible or outright the characters’ fault. Terror stories are essentially mysteries under extreme duress. Horror is about corruption and hubris. Thus, the option to fight is banished from the equation early on.

Alien and Aliens are great examples of this concept. No matter what the characters arm themselves with, they are virtually helpless. In both films, the character Ripley has to jettison the creatures out the airlock. That isn’t a weapon; it’s using the setting’s landscape to flee the monster, making it a hideous game of tag.

At the end of a terror story, players will be in a daze but when they later recall the story it’s usually with mirth and some version of “remember that time when we….” It’s like veterans comparing scars: harrowing in the moment, but retold in the future with a sense of accomplishment. Once the players solve the riddle, the terror loses its power. In fact, the players might laugh at how they acted before they figured out how to defeat their antagonist.

Horror stories don’t have happy endings. The players often look at each other and say things like “I can’t believe you….” One d20 Star Wars games saw a player force choke his mentor with a critical success. Though that was not the intended outcome, the fact that the player had his character go along with the request is. The action split the group for the story as the choices made by the player led his character down a darker path and a conflict with the Jedi Order mainly embodied by the rest of the group. The gamemaster created a moral dilemma with no easy choices while we tried to each take the least repulsive option for our characters.

This leads to the final thing to note for scary stories. The best tales use elements of both terror and horror. In films you often see someone unleashing the malevolent force on the world and die as a result. This often leads us to revile stupidity and it horrifies and terrifies us that we can be just as shortsighted as the rube we on the same level reply to with the snide comment “nice going, jackass.” All the while we’re afraid that could have been us, even if we can’t admit that to ourselves.

In your games, the horror will shift to terror for the players watching the decision of one of the group. If you spread the decisions out amongst the group, each will get to experience the horror and terror wondering if they’re next, not to mention vicarious horror through shared psychological states. Who knows, the suspense just might kill them only to bring them back for more.

Previous installment can be found here.

One of the things that gives terror its power is its primal nature. You don’t have to think about why it’s so frightful; your amygdala will already have told you. Terror is universal and it hijacks the brain in the same manner for adults as it does children. This stems from two things: the instinct response triggering flight-or-fight takes away our agency and reduces us to the level of basic animal functions; and the awe caused by a world rendering us as insignificant, a position children understand all too well. Terror is straightforward and overt, which makes it easy to see.

Horror, on the other hand, is nearly the polar opposite. It may begin small and insignificant, but it grows in power much the same way as terror. The character always has a choice and continues to do so throughout the entire ordeal. In terror stories, there are choices but fewer in number and less about the character’s humanity.

At its core, horror is about personal corruption. The character knows the choice is wrong on some level, but gives into the vice that feeds the urge. The reason is almost always rationalized as something that leads to the greater good. In both fiction and film, there’s no visual method to show this corruption, so it is displayed externally. The fallout for the character’s choices begin to take their toll on the world around the character. At first, this will be the hurt feelings or minor physical injury to the person or thing most valued (often a combination of the two with the valued object belonging to the person).

The damage at first is transitory, but it must grow in severity and duration. This is why as things begin to spiral outwards the character’s environment becomes all the more tortured. Someone or something must always pay the price, otherwise you don’t have a horror story, you have what amounts to a gross parity of the power fantasy (e.g. Gorean) or political piece about the dangers of X, a form of dystopic fiction.

Now, the cost to undo or contain the malevolent force should terrify the character. This price is what drives the character to find another way to solve the problem. It’s terrifying to the individual and needs to feel a steeper cost than any other choice available. The peril for the choice is deeply personal even if the cost for ending the horror is transferred to someone else. The pain the character faces should be more mental than physical, but it should still include physical anguish.

This leads us to an interesting place with horror—and to a lesser extent, terror. The choices should revolve around a quality which works with the fear to create a sense of overwhelming dread: revulsion. In horror, the choices are always tinged with a hint of revulsion, but the choice that would bring about the end of the horror is the most revolting choice of all. Thus, the character will avoid it in hopes an easier solution is possible. Every choice is a bad one to some extent; this is part and parcel of the genre and adds to the fear of horrific decisions.

When using this in a game, there are a few landmines that can ruin the session in a hurry. First off, there is the issue of player agency. Too much revulsion in the choices and you’re likely going to end up with people feeling railroaded. The horror should come as an outgrowth of conscious decisions. Secondly, there is a line that is too far to cross and offends your players. Additionally, there’s the metagaming issue where the player not only knows the genre, but also his or her own motivations can differ from what the character knows and feels.

The good news is there are a few ways to get around the issues and preserve the horror experience. Stephen King wrote an essay on why we enjoy horror. In it, he describes the motivation that brings us back for more. In game systems like Fate, players are incentivized for taking the hit to their characters foibles. It might not be realistic feeling to the genre, but future bonuses gained from falling deeper into complications provides a hope economy for the climatic showdown when the need to keep one’s faith in the face of supreme evil is most crucial.

Horror is often primordial and ill-defined. The more amorphous you can make the nature of the horror before its effects spill out into the world, the greater the unease in player decisions relying on information he or she doesn’t have. This also personalizes the horror for the player. Take a look at the works of Poe, Lovecraft, and Mary Shelley. Much of the horror is left unstated. In film, the malevolent force is kept off-camera save for fleeting glimpses. This plays on the audience’s psyche as a sympathetic echo of the character’s.

The slow build and gentle nudge of revulsion keeps you from passing a point of no return for sensitive subject matter. It also lets your players imagine the terrible details for themselves.  The added benefit of this is that you draw upon two tried and true techniques from film and fiction. With the former, the audience lets the suspense eat at them to cause their own psychic “trauma;” and the latter, the ability to reflect on the character’s mistakes and the resulting corruption eating the soul while the world suffers as both character and audience watch.

There’s one more problem in horror stories that sets them apart: there mentally exhausting. In Call of Cthulhu, this is represented by Sanity. Too much fear and you have the amygdala hijack leading to terror. That leads to an animalistic reduction of the character. Horror, however, gives us two other signs which lead to the inhuman: laughter and crying. Terror is abandonment of what makes us sociable and it’s transitory. Laughter or crying in the face of your own problems inflicted on the world is alienation of the self. It’s much more destructive and lasting.

Here’s the thing, though: laughing or breaking mentally in the face of the grotesque is a natural human reaction. These are defense mechanisms against the horrific. If you look at soldiers and homicide detectives, they develop such a form of humor to hold the horror of their situations at bay. It’s when their behavior becomes constant that the signs of madness and inhumanity manifest. When your players make jokes more often than usual, your story is having the desired effect.

Conclusion here.

If you missed the first part, find it here.

Before diving into what makes a good terror story at your table, let’s look at a few common elements that both terror and horror use. As discussed previously, fear is central to these stories, but so is hope it’s always just out of reach of the characters, but is always there. Failing to include that hope is tantamount to creating and exercising cruelty. That single, solitary spark is what keeps the characters (and the plot) moving forward.

From the character’s perspective, terror is everywhere, overwhelming, and chaotic. That includes the unfathomable elements for why this is happening. All of this combined is terrifying. The threat comes on suddenly and builds in power while the characters try to make sense of what is really going on.

The external force, on the other hand knows why it is doing whatever it is committing. It might not be aware of the reasons motivating it however. It can even be an obscure biological process, but no matter how alien, it has a purpose. What deepens the fear and dread is the inability for the characters to get to the root cause. What they find is too bizarre to fully decipher.

Following the standard formula for terror stories, the first few attacks happen to people unaffiliated with the characters. The attacks are usually weak, but odd. The next stage comes after disturbing evidence is found. This is when a friend of a friend of a friend is the victim. The crime is shocking, but it doesn’t elicit fear, just the shivers. The forcefulness also increases.

Having the malevolent force close in on the characters makes the villain to feel everywhere. The first few attacks establish the random pattern and prevents the characters from feeling this is personal —even if it is. And that just magnifies the scope of the terror as it feels indiscriminate. In films, this is when the protagonist first learns what the audience already knows.

From this point on, the attacks are closer because the protagonist attempts to learn what the threat is and how to stop it. This is one of the few points of control the protagonist has in the stories direction: he can ignore what’s happening and what others suffer, or he can intervene and those closest to him suffer. How do you choose the world over family? Fear that they could be next.

Rather than being the hunted, the characters are the hunters. This requires the malevolent force to react to the characters. Growing power brought to bear on the protagonists does double duty here. It not only gives a metaphorical sense of proximity, but also the overwhelming force it can bring to bear. Using these elements to close in on the protagonists gives the impression that they are being singled out and hemmed in.

Terror also requires the universe to be indifferent. The less the cosmos appears concerned with the characters, the more isolated they will feel. The message here is no one is coming to save you. This is why many terror plots are connected to rural settings. The isolation is palpable. “Sorry, kid, you’re on your own” reverberates across the landscape. The more you leverage this, the more terrifying your adventure will be.

Shift the setting to a city and you can amp up the cruelty factor. Now the characters have more allies for their cause, right? Nope. If anything, an urban setting just amplifies the isolation. Not only do the characters have to face the malevolent force alone, now they have to do it with the display of humanities base qualities.

Every vice is brought to bear against the character’s agency. Still want to save the world in the face of willful ignorance? Do you really love your friends and family that much? Answering in anything but the affirmative makes the protagonist just as monstrous as the malevolent force and worse yet, their own kind. And now the terrible choice is truly awful.

So, the external threat is made more monstrous in that it’s attacking the very soul and character of the protagonist. Choosing not to fight makes them just as callous and humane as the rest of the world. This should be a frightening concept writ large enough the setting and story display it without it needing to be said. Thus, you can do this by describing the way the world looks and showing it through the nonplayer characters’ actions (“show, don’t tell,” as writers’ references say). It also shows the setting—no matter how cruel—isn’t the enemy, it just won’t help you.

How do you provide a sense of hope in such a bleak world? The characters’ agency. Protagonists have the power and wherewithal to overcome the source of terror, they just don’t know how to—yet. And that’s the thing you want to maintain for as long as possible. It’s the climax of the story. This is where elements of the mystery genre will serve you well. Characters find clues over time that help them figure out how to defeat the monster, ofttimes at the cost of someone else’s life.

Each new encounter with the malevolent forces a crisis, but it’s the dangerous opportunity to try out a new strategy that feels plausible. The characters should suffer as a result, but ultimately come out ahead for all their efforts. Even if there’s a setback to their efforts, they should gain some future advantage.

Part of the scope of terror stories is how much the world appears to thwart the character’s efforts. When they get close to the truth, something should happen to prevent a full understanding of the way to stop the malevolent force leaving them with just a little bit more information. This lets the players and characters know the story is on the right path to conquer the challenge. The closer they get, the more they’ve learned and the harder it is to get the last pieces. This only helps to magnify the sense of power the villain has.

Finally, while terror sources can be defeated, they always leave something behind the keeps the fear in the back of the mind for a brief period of time. The physical damage hills quickly, but the spiritual and psychic trauma can last for years. Feel free to use coincidental echoes of the encounters in future sessions just to keep the fear alive. The evil men do lives on long after they’re gone and this is a good way to let the players see the trauma reflected in the eyes of the survivors.

Summer is winding down in the leaves are beginning to change if not make their way to the earth. It is slow, but inexhaustible the coming of crisper weather, the slow dying of the light of days. The season of mortality is upon us and so are the stories that remind us that all must perish. Night is inevitable and with it comes the hunter’s worst fear: the loss of sight, that sense of all primacy to predators. That sense of helplessness and fear give rise to the stories which hold their greatest potency in the gathering gloom.

This is the season of the witching hour and the tales that make people cling all the tighter to one another. If you’re writing fiction or telling ghost stories around the campfire, this is easy to do compared to the issues roleplaying games pose, not to mention problematic structures in entertainment definitions. The problem is rooted in the confusion of terror and horror into a single genre.

From the studios’ perspective, it makes sense to conflate the two. For one, they both induce pathos in the audience. They also focus on the negative emotions that feed into our primal fears. But there’s a fundamental difference between terror and horror. Visually, terror is easier to depict. The stories are about external elements that can’t be comprehended in full nor can they be placated or mastered as a result. Hence, the proliferation of the slasher film. Terror is visceral.

Horror, by contrast, is the internal made monstrous. Horror stories are about characters with agency haunted by the knowledge of the consequences of their actions. Horror involves the character’s willingness to perform such terrible acts for good or ill. Thus, it is often contained within the character and ripples out or undercurrents emanate from the character into the surrounding world. Horror is subtle and disturbing.

Subtle and disturbing is hard to do on film successfully. The medium is too quick and the flood of imagery too intense to let the mind register every detail. In fiction, however, there’s more time to process these details and get a true picture of the horrific moments. Unfortunately for RPG players, this is hard to replicate in a game. Each person at the table has his or her own views on what should happen in the story. This makes it hard to incorporate real horror into a game. While easier, terror is also difficult to harness.

Roleplaying games have two disadvantages going against them: characters are assumed to be possessed of their own agency, and thus more capable than their fellow beings; and it’s a game, so players can walk away at any time. On the surface both of these reasons create barriers to experiencing terror and horror. They also happen to be your strongest weapons against disbelief and a slide into melodrama or camp.

Roleplaying games are interactive multimedia play spaces. If you have a group and they already know the genre or various tones in your campaign, you have several advantages going into a horror session. You can set the environment and create the atmosphere. I’m not in your home, but I did what I could do set of mood with the opening of this piece. Your gaming area is like a film set. Use it to establish mood and tone viscerally.

The next part is a little tricky. Roleplaying games borrow as much from film as literature, but you can’t force players to fit the narrative. They’re here to have fun however they define it. This is where a little knowledge of genre tropes can go a long way. For terror games, you need only to intimate that the villain is larger-than-life and overwhelmingly powerful.

Each time the characters encounter the villain or an aspect thereof, the encounter should be near fatal for at least one character. Also, these brushes with death should have something in common and intensify visually if not in ferocity or cruelty every time. Doing this will tell the players how close to losing their character they are. This, in a nutshell, is the basic formula for terror.

Horror stories are harder to implement because they are internal. Even roleplaying game that uses a lot of literary devices only go so far in letting the audience inside the character’s head. One of the best examples of internal conflict in RPGs is Wraith: the Oblivion and its use of the Shadow to develop internal dialogues everyone at the table can witness. Thankfully there are a few ways to get round this if the game system isn’t built around such a concept.

Players aren’t important in terror and horror games, the characters are. You still want to be respectful as these are your friends, after all. But the emphasis has to be on character development, not player development or maximizing the power fantasy fun. Horror is about choice and the consequences.

Good people often make bad decisions with disastrous results. This is something everyone will eventually experience. What horror does is amplify the tragedy caused by unintended consequences. The problem here is the issue of player knowledge versus character knowledge. It is also the reason you don’t want to focus on players. The players get the tropes and conventions of genres, but character should never be aware they are in a genre, though their dialogue can allude to that if it’s setting appropriate. Otherwise, how do you amplify the consequences of actions to monstrous proportions without players circumventing the genre?

You always want to give players a series of choices, but here’s how you drive forward horror games: Orson Scott Card calls it the terrible choice. The characters presented with two equally bad (or good) choices. No matter the choice, the outcome sucks. Either something equally terrible happens, or the character has to wonder what could have been. This dilemma will increase the sense of dread the players fill not knowing which choice will eventually make the nightmare end. This is why horror isn’t the prevalent form of scary films and why some writers’ stories don’t translate well.

In the next two installments we’ll look at how to get the most out of these genres at the table.

Part 2