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A lot of my current, recent, and planned #DnD projects are horror or horror-adjacent and honestly I'm just kind of vibing
Turning over the final edits of EEoE and a couple contracts is freeing me up to get back on the kind of genre-exploration stuff I've been finding a lot of creative joy in.
With Eberron, twisting the setting a little to fit a Wild West adventure or a noir mystery flavor was a lot of fun. Now I'm on a big horror kick, exploring that from a few different angles in a few different ways.
I'm also still working on Sharn: Murder in Skyway Manor. It's a semi-sequel to the pulpy noir story, but this time it's a trapped-in-the-mansion murder mystery a la And Then There Were None / Knives Out territory.
The more time I spend on the #DMsGuild, the more I slow down on churning out every design-gap-filling product I identify or every hardcover-adjacent thing I think of, and eff around with pushing at different corners of design and 5E's soft limits so I can explore as a designer.
As a design note, I don’t think a true horror experience is possible in #DnD or almost any RPG, at least not how we think of horror through the lens of film or literature. A lot of the concepts of horror are delivered through avenues that require a certain lack of agency.
And RPGs are literally about player agency, and a lot of table problems often boil down to robbing players of agency. So making horror in RPGs requires approaches that are /not/ directly lifted from film.
Horror systems in RPGs usually add formal structure, but as little of that structure as possible should ever be visible to the players, in my opinion. Like a DM screen, you’re worrying about the tables and numbers on YOUR end: the players are getting the shiny narrative product.
The more you layer player-side mechanics into your horror, the more it becomes RPG math, but spooky
However, this can be counterbalanced by an equally (or more) important part of #DnD / RPG horror: buy-in.
Players. Have. To. Buy. In.
Everything about the horror experience is better when players agree to take the horror seriously and roleplay emotions genuinely.
Players. Have. To. Buy. In.
Everything about the horror experience is better when players agree to take the horror seriously and roleplay emotions genuinely.
No shit, right? “Roleplaying is better when people roleplay”, what a concept
I’m saying I think it’s both MUCH more important AND much harder to genuinely buy in to a horror experience.
I’m saying I think it’s both MUCH more important AND much harder to genuinely buy in to a horror experience.
Good horror roleplaying asks players to do something that RPG players, especially D&D players, find very hard:
Fake a loss of their own agency.
Fake that you’re scared and don’t know what to do. Fake that you’re terrified and don’t immediately fireball a motherfucker.
Fake a loss of their own agency.
Fake that you’re scared and don’t know what to do. Fake that you’re terrified and don’t immediately fireball a motherfucker.
Horror D&D is hard because D&D leans heavily as a combat game, and a game where you can beat the SHIT out of the monster has some problems being scary
The more you try to push D&D, kicking and screaming, into horror, the more you’ll have to de-emphasize standard combat and emphasize exploration, social interaction, and narrative delivery. All of these can be hard for even experienced DMs.
I’m a player in a Curse of Strahd game right now and it’s just super interesting to experience as a player and reflect on the experience as a designer. The campaign needs to broadcast futility with deadly areas and an enemy that can’t be defeated without fulfilling the narrative.
The book seems to structurally assist a horror narrative; very grim, very macabre. Discrete areas don’t know about other discrete areas because dour residents don’t care about dour residents of other places.
Regardless of how much structure CoS provides, there’s a reason player experience varies wildly based on how the campaign is /narrated/ and how Strahd is /portrayed./
Sweet I’ve been awake for 20 hours at this point and it’s time to C R A S H thanks for listening to my RAVINGS
If you want to see me embarrass myself and answer your questions about #DnD writing swing by the Venture Maidens stream this Sunday hey presto https://twitter.com/venturemaidens/status/1275488902372098048
