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.