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.