1. Most of the ideas a lot of GMs have for increasing player tension (taking their gear, taking their character) aren't so much scary as GM Fiat. Yes, most role-players, especially people who favor combat games like Dungeons and Dragons, rely too much on weaponry. This shouldn't be a huge issue for games like Call of Cthulhu as most of the monsters are barely effected by human weaponry, but plenty of groups run under the philosophy that anything dies if given enough rounds. This is a problem for most horror fiction in general. When you look at stuff like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's really an action show with people beating up monsters instead of criminals or soldiers or whatever. Most RPG characters are at least competent in combat.
The shortcut to good character conflict is to put your PCs in situations that your characters AREN'T already equipped to deal with. There's a reason so many great stories involve meek characters who rise to challenges or strong characters learning compassion from being forced to interact with softer counterparts. Figure out who your characters are and then create situations that take them out of their comfort zones.
ABSOLUT. Die genannten Punkte empfinde ich ebenso. Besonders das Problem mit der Kampf betonten Konflikt Regelung ist bei Horror Szenarien oft ein Problem.
Die Spieler müssen lernen umzudenken und der SL sollte Kreaturen präsentieren, die nur mit Gehirnschmalz zu bezwingen sind.
Bedingt. Eigentlich ja in der Aussage und Zustimmung, allerdings kommt auch es auch auf verschiedene Faktoren hinzu, wie ob es ein Oneshot oder Kampange ist oder was genau die Themen oder welche Aspekte betont werden sollen. Es kommt auf die Zielrichtung hinaus. Ingesamt finde ich es deutlich lohnenswerter eine Mythoswesen durch Idee und Logik zu besiegen, anstatt mit stumpfer/uninspirierter Gewalt. Jedoch kann es auch dem Zweck dienen genau dies möglich zu machen oder gar zu kombinieren.
2. A lot of GMs believe that horror role-playing is primarily about off a bunch of player characters. Horror role-playing isn't about amassing a body count but it's about creeping out the people at your table. A dead character is at best a distraction. It's not that hard for a GM to get a body count. It's a lot harder to get people emotionally invested enough to scare them.
In that vein, don't get too in love with descriptions of gore. Good gore can be evocative, but too much gets fappy.
EHER NICHT. Meiner Erfahrung nach funktioniert eine lovecafteske Beschreibung von Ort, Opfer oder Kreatur mit vielen Adjektiven auch heute noch. Ich schreibe mir für derartige Szenen immer einige Adjektive auf, um die Phantasie der Spieler unserer Runde anzuregen.
Da darf es gerne auch mal zu dreckig, zu blutig, zu glibberig oder zu abstossend beschrieben sein.
Absolute Zustimmung in der Aussage des Läuterers. Ich beschreibe gerne, intensiv und abstrakt als auch teilweise massiv detailiert. Die meisten Spieler wissen dies zu schätzen, auch wenn ich hin und wieder der Wunsch geäußert wird den Gorepart etwas weniger intensiv zu nutzen.
3. (the big one): You HAVE to control the environment you play in. You cannot scare people in a brightly lit room with music playing and cell phones going off. You can maybe evoke the trappings of the horror genre in your game but without the proper physical environment you're just playing an action game dressed in fangs and a taffeta cape.
You have to play in the darkness. Because I favor the simplicity of Call of Cthulhu's rule system, I play in a small circle, either by candle light or by a single very dim light. My character's most important scores are written very large on index cards so they can be seen in dim light.Have your players use their cell phones so they have just enough illumination to read the cards for their skills. Have dice corrals so they don't hop all over the place in the dark. Distractions are kept to a minimum and I take a ten minute break every hour so people can pee and fiddle with their phone. If you're doing your job right, people will need breaks in tension.
ABSOLUT NICHT. P&P Rollenspiel hat mMn viel mit Behaglichkeit zu tun. Ich mag es weder kalt in einer einsamen Waldhütte, noch unbequem auf groben Findlingen. Alles schon mal gehabt - brauch ich nicht. Das ist etwas für LARPs. Und dunkel mag ich es erst recht nicht. Das macht mich, besonders als Spieler, müde und schläfrig.
Sehe ich so wie Mondsänger, reduziertes/gedimmtes Licht schaft eine andere Atmosspähre. Eine passende. Der Fokus ist mehr auf dem Tisch. Andererseits spiele ich gerne mit dem Licht, also verschiedene Lampen, unterschiedliche Lichtintensität oder auch die Spieler sitzen im komplett Dunkeln (für ein paar Minuten) und sind auf das "Hören" reduziert oder jeder hat eine Taschenlampe, eine andere Lichtquellen gibt es nicht.
4. You have to cultivate a ghost story voice. I tend to view horror role-playing as an interactive campfire ghost story, which is why I take such effort to control the environment. Keep descriptions very short, but with strong central imagery for the players to work off of. For scenes of high tension, where I have my characters creeping through an old house, I drop my voice low and make it soft and feminine. When my players encounter a scene of awful violence, I break up my descriptions and raise my voice in hysterics. When I come to a point of obvious danger, I stop speaking abruptly and force the characters to make their choices from a point of imbalance.
And, yes, I occasionally slam my hand on the table. I used to scream, but that shit was corny. A heavy book slammed down gives you the jump scare you occasionally need without being comical.
BLÖDSINN. Wenn man so etwas machen möchte, dann braucht man dazu intensives Training, fast wie ein Sänger. Wer will schon mit Halsschmerzen und/oder stimmlos die nächsten Tage zubringen.
Würde dem Autoren gerne jubelnd sagen, genau so. Allerdings ist dies in der Praxis kaum zu leisten und hat mir beim versuch schon genau das Problem beschwert wie der Läuterer anspricht. Etwas kann man allerdings schon mit der Tonalität spielen, also das was Mondsänger schreibt.
5. As much as you need to cultivate the right physical environment, you also have to cultivate the right group.
There are a bunch of people I play with in other genres who I'd NEVER put in a horror game. They like goofing around, they undermine mood, and they don't engage with the in-game world in a serious way. They're basically playing Grand Theft Auto in any game they're put in. That's totally fine and they're a lot of fun when I run superhero games, but I need someone who's willing to buy in to the mood. A lot of people simply can't.
EINSPRUCH. Aber bedingt richtig. Ab eines gewissen Alters hat man nicht mehr so die grosse Auswahl, wie noch zu Studi Zeiten. Das ist einfach (leider) so. Dennoch sind die richtigen Spieler idT sehr wichtig für das Spiel.
Ebenso bedingt. Man kann mit den "richten" aka "passenden" Spielern einen anderen Fokus nutzen. Es ist gezielter und vermutlich mit größeren Effekt, da ja eher "massgeschneidert" allerdings nimmt dies auch Überraschung und Flexibilität.
6. Combat is the hardest thing to pull off in horror gaming. Most RPG combats are either tactical by nature, where you have to problem-solve as much as fight, or they're like a football game where two groups of bruisers whale on each other. Combat takes the GM's role from active to reactive, where the players and their decisions are in charge and you are bouncing off what they do. It turns atmosphere and storytelling into a series of numbers.
Horror is about powerlessness. Most gamers don't like that feeling. If you want to get that feeling across, have your player's goal be less about killing or subduing the monster and more about escape.
Example. Most character-to-character fights are like Jason Bourne vs. some other Treadstone assassin. They're both highly competent and evenly matched and it's a skill-vs-skill thing until the hero triumphs. A horror fight should be like Leatherface trying to capture a frightened teenager. She crawls into someplace small to hide, he's reaching for her, she's kicking his hand away and hitting his arm with a wrench she grabs off the ground. He's stronger than she is, she can't do much damage to her, but she might be able to fend him off.
BEDINGT RICHTIG. Hilflos und/oder chancenlos sollten die Chars mMn niemals sein. Es sollte immer gewisse Mittel geben, die jenseits des Kampfes liegen. Und als letzte Chance sollte eigentlich auch immer noch die Flucht eine Option darstellen. Sonst kommt nur Frust auf. Irgendwann sollten die Chars aber auch begreifen, dass sie auf verlorenem Posten kämpfen.
Von Kultisten und Kropzeug einmal abgesehen, ist es, wenn es gegen Mythos Kreaturen zum Kampf kommt, bereits im Vorfeld falsch gelaufen. Die Chars dürften so einen Kampf gar nicht erst in Betracht ziehen.
Jup, wie der Läuterer schreibt.
7. As an example, I ran a CoC event every year at a gaming convention. I requested a private room so I could control mood and set the scene for the players before starting. You have to create fairly conservative scenarios when you're running convention games and I ran a nice simple story involving Cthulhu.
The hook of the story involves the ghost of a little girl. The girl's father was a well-known and successful artist who started having dreams about R'lyeh. As his visions became more apocalyptic, he drowned his daughter in his bathtub to spare her from the second coming of Cthulhu before hanging himself. The players all knew these facts before entering the family's abandoned house in search of some Evidence.
When they got to the house I turned ALL the lights in the room off except for my tiny central one. I described the house in very simple terms, basically that it looked like a normal for-sale property but knowing the sad history of the place gave it an ominous feel.
When they said they approached, I paused. Without saying anything like "are you sure", I made it clear by slowing down the way I spoke and pausing at points that they were entering hostile territory.
After screwing around and searching a couple of rooms, I had them make listen checks. One made it and I whispered in their ear that they heard splashing and the sounds of struggle from the rear of the home. The player passed the information onto the others (it works better than a general address to the group, which prevents the game players feeling like a hive mind and casting doubt on the bearer of the information)
They find the bathroom that the artist drowned his daughter in. I make it a point to describe it as antiseptically white and clean but that the tub is full and there are lots of strands of jet black hair (my ghost child had long black hair.) As they're standing in the doorway, I dropped a heavy book on the table to symbolize the bathroom door slamming shut. As the players freak out I describe, in fast breathless panic tones, the sound of the father drowning the daughter from behind the door.
At this point I ask the person who has the lowest current sanity score to make a POW x3 check. He/She does and I make a note of that. I tell that player that their character has wandered off. The other players have been distracted by the sounds and they believe that it's possible one of their number could have slipped off.
At this point, I have the others making a listen check. While they're doing so, I tell the POW x3 player that he/she is in the master bedroom and he's looking at the ghost of the artist who hung himself. The hanging didn't go well. I have him/her make a sanity check and, whatever the results, I ask him/her to freak out when the other players find them.
The players return with their listen results. They hear the sound of a rope creaking and realize their friend is missing. The sound leads them to the master bedroom, they see the ligature mark on the beam, and the other player is freaking out. In the bedroom is the clue they needed. That's it. No guns fired, no players wound up dead, but that scene works EVERY DAMN TIME.
KAMPAGNE VS. CONVENTION. Persönlich bevorzuge ich Kampagnen. One Shots geben mir wenig, da sie für mich keine Char Tiefe zulassen.
Conventions sind für Cthulhu äußerst unideal, zuviele Störfaktoren (andere Spieler, Lärm, Tisch kann nicht umfassend Vorbereitet werden, Spieler kommen und gehen genauso wie Zuschauer-/hörer).
Kampangen bieten den Reiz der Entwicklung und einer längeren, meist intensiveren Story.
Oneshots dagegen sind jedoch meist experimenteller und man kann vieles ausprobieren, aber vorallem sind sie konzentrierter.
Ich bevorzuge definitiv Oneshots, genauso wie ich Kurzfilme oder 90min Spielfilme vor Langspielfilmen aka 150+min Epen bevorzuge.
Mehr Ideen und mehr Abwechslung in kürzerer Zeit. Es kompensiert längen.