There’s a lot of campaigns I’ve always wanted to play or GM. Mostly, they’re centered on a setting more than a plot: a [non-weird] Western, a gangster or crime game, a steampunk version of WWI, and anything involving the Mirror’s Edge universe would get me on board with no more description than what I just gave. But the one I’d most like to play could be done in just about any setting: a horror game. Not just any horror game. I don’t want to play Call of Cthulhu or All Flesh Must Be Eaten. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to know it’s a horror game. At least, not until it’s too late.
I want a game that feels mundane, as games go, one with no magic and not much, if anything, in the way of high technology. Within those limits, any setting could do, including the ones I mentioned above. Maybe characters are Old West gunslingers, maybe they’re detectives in the 1930s, OSS operatives in WWII, modern gangsters, medieval knights, or near-future revolutionaries.
I don’t care about the type of horror. I’m a Lovecraft fan, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be of the cosmic variety. Traditional monsters, particularly undead, are pretty played out, but could work with the proper presentation. Even a run-of-the-mill serial killer could do; Silence of the Lambs was terrifying despite its mundanity, after all.
Perhaps the intrepid PC detectives slowly realize there’s more to these murders than first appears, gradually unraveling the grisly truth, Chinatown– or L.A. Noire-style. Maybe that truth is rooted in the worst of the real world, and they realize they’ve been unwitting parties to atrocities reminiscent of Josef Mengele or Unit 731. Then again, the mysterious missing persons might finally be found and returned home, safe and sound—until one of their families is killed, disappears, or starts behaving…differently. Or maybe PCs are criminals seizing on a sudden weakness in a rival gang, only to realize something far more sinister is at work. Suddenly, bullets don’t seem as effective as they once were, and there are some strange noises coming from the basement of the apartment building they just took over.
It would be tricky, I know. It would require a lot of trust between players and GM. The GM has to be certain that their players will buy in, that they’ll play along as things move from mundane to strange to foreboding to horrific. Players have to trust that the GM knows what they’re doing, that the unexpected genre shift is part of an awesome story and not just a way to jerk them around. It’s always good to have a pregame conversation to set expectations, but in this case, the whole point is defying expectations. Again, everyone involved just has to trust that everyone else will be cool.
From a GMing standpoint, the key to pulling off this kind of game is pacing. You can’t have the big reveal too soon. The game has to stand on its own in the genre it’s disguised as. Have your gangsters do a few collection trips and tommy gun car chases before they realize the rival family is hiding something. A few sessions later, they discover that that “something” is an atrocity even for hardened criminals. A session or two after that, reveal that the rival boss has been definitely dead for weeks, but orders are still definitely coming from him. The longer you can draw things out, the better. Let the players’ suspicions grow without confirming them. Drop hints that are easily dismissed as something else. A crazed attacker seemed almost bulletproof? Shrug, laugh, make a joke about bath salts. They’ll figure it out later, when a calm, eloquent villain displays a similar immunity. You know, once it’s too late.
As a player, the trick is to stay in character. If you realize things are transitioning to a different type of game, that shouldn’t mean your character’s personality changes. If you go into a war game with a Big Damn Hero and instead find out you’ve enthusiastically but unwittingly done something terrible, roleplay through that! How would a character meant for a 1940s war movie or Call of Duty-style campaign react to realizing his reality is more Fury or Spec Ops: The Line? How would a cowboy sheriff who has faced down rampaging outlaws react to news of something lurking in the desert? How would he react when he finally found it? What happens when the rules a character has lived by don’t apply anymore?
So yeah, a horror game that sneaks up on players. Characters (and players) who don’t realize they’ve stepped into something bad until it’s already neck deep and rising. That’s a campaign I’d love to play, on either side of the screen. Now, if only only I could get some people on board without tipping them off….
Thad Kanupp
Latest posts by Thad Kanupp (see all)
- Being the Underdog - July 22, 2016
