What do you consider the best horror TTRPG?
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What do you consider the best horror TTRPG?
or alternatively
What is your favorite horror TTRPG?
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While I do enjoy horror quite a bit, I have unfortunately not had a lot of experience with horror TTRPGs. I think the only thing I have played that classifies as horror is Candela Obscura and it was quite enjoyable, granted, it was also the first narrative focused game I had played and might hold a higher esteem for that reason. However, since playing it I have looked into a few other games and I can see many of them pull off the same concepts but with far more polish and pizzazz than CO.
I have thoroughly enjoyed a Call of Cthulhu actual play that is working their way through Masks of Nyarlathotep, so much so that I bought the module myself. I've also seen several APs done by Chaosium themselves, also very good and more theatrical than anything else I've seen. Most recently I have been reading about The Old Gods of Appalachia, and I'm this close to buying it just for the cover art, but I'm holding to my wallet with just my fingernails.
My depth of knowledge of the horror TTRPG landscape is unacceptably thin and I am looking forward to reading everyone's suggestions to broaden my horror horizons!
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I think there are two ways to approach horror in TTRPGs: a horror setting in terms of aesthetics, and a horror story. One is frightening for the characters and the other evoke frightening ideas to the players as well as to the characters. Settings such as Raventloft or Zombicide are frightening to the characters but not at all to the players, while something as Kult could be even pleasurable to the characters but unthinkable to the players.
I certainly love horror TTRPGs and the best GM I can think of is my best friend, that is a clinical psychologist and create NPCs inspired in what he knows and works with, so every time he describe those NPCs and show how they act, the realism of the situations keep all of us players on the edge of our seats, because how close those stories are to reality. He always GMs Lovecraftian horror themes and make the stories as close to reality as possible, so we can think "well, that could be almost possible", on a absolutely normal and everyday place. So the setting for the characters is not particularly frightening at all, but the situations are horrible.
So I think what makes a TTRPG good or bad in this regards is what you're looking for, an aesthetically frightening setting like Warhammer 40k? That would have a lot of skulls and blood and screams, but for the players is just an extreme action movie. Or maybe something that makes you think or question morality and that makes you think that that would be very frightening to experience like a story based on Clive Barker books (probably Kult)? That could take place maybe in your current city focusing on conversations between characters in a Starbucks, not aesthetically frightening at all, but the ideas could be horrendous.
If I were to choose I'd choose the second option, the frightening stories. And for that I think the game itself is almost irrelevant. Any game that allows you to play normal people in a setting were anything could happen, is a good game, as long as the system don't interrupt the story. When my friend GMs and we want to play a horror story, he stopped using Call of Cthulhu years ago and now we just use Rats in The Walls, a super simplistic CoC rip-off, and we played the most memorable stories using something as rudimentary as that.
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A clinical psychologist writing/running a horror game sounds like the most terrifying experience ever. "As you feel your way around the darkened street, you eyes catch a fleeting reflection in a shop window. You stare, spine strait and mouth agape as a soft whisper finds your ears, 'You are not enough, no matter how hard you try, you will never amount to anything.'" And that is when I quite playing forever.
Seriously though, having someone like that run a game would have to be an insane experience. Just their knowledge of human behavior and how we react to things would give them a crazy ability to pull the right strings. Not to mention that I'm sure, for legit schooling purposes, they have read some of the most depraved acts done to, for, and or by humans, and nothing cold be more terrible than what we have truly done to each other.
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There are lots of great horror games out there, to be sure. Call of Cthulhu, Old Gods of Appalachia, Vampire the Masquerade and All Flesh Must Be Eaten are fine choices. To be completely honest though, I feel like I could run a horror game using almost any system. It's all in the narrative and the atmosphere, you know?
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A clinical psychologist writing/running a horror game sounds like the most terrifying experience ever. "As you feel your way around the darkened street, you eyes catch a fleeting reflection in a shop window. You stare, spine strait and mouth agape as a soft whisper finds your ears, 'You are not enough, no matter how hard you try, you will never amount to anything.'" And that is when I quite playing forever.
Seriously though, having someone like that run a game would have to be an insane experience. Just their knowledge of human behavior and how we react to things would give them a crazy ability to pull the right strings. Not to mention that I'm sure, for legit schooling purposes, they have read some of the most depraved acts done to, for, and or by humans, and nothing cold be more terrible than what we have truly done to each other.
And I'd say that probably one of the keys is the unexpected, when they make you lower your guard...
I remember a one-shot he GMd were we -the group of investigators in the mid 1920's-, had to go to a small town in a desert area of our country to investigate some disappearings. We arrived at a train station and then had to take a small bus that would take us to the city. During the ride the people were very reluctant to talk. He described the personality of the rest of the people of the bus and that already was kind of unnerving but not in a terrifying way but rather a sort of a "what's wrong with these people" way.
At some point after leaving the bus, we asked for directions to get to a guesthouse our employees had prepared for us, and people completely changed their attitude from "ok, what do you want now, we're working here" to "jeez, really? to Christina's house? you guys are definitely not from here, are you" (I don't remember any names from the story so I'm just making them up).
Although later we arrived at a guesthouse/manor, where the lady that received was very kind and helped us with a smile on her face. That was a relief after just awkward conversations from the beginning at the bus. Christina was a lady on her 40s, widowed, in charge of a too-big-for-her house, frowned upon by the rest of the people as a "spinster".
Christina prepared us some dinner and talked very proudly about her son that was outside doing some chores or something. She talked very lovingly about him, calling him Andrecito (diminutive for "Andrés" or "Andrew", a way of making a name sound more sweet, usually used by mothers). She talked about how good hearted her kid was, how much he helped her around the house and warned us of how good a talker he was.
We were already sitting at the table, talking about life, asking her questions about the city while she prepared and started putting food on the table. So she asked us to wait a second so she can go and bring Andrecito with us so he could help us a little a bit more with information about the city and even probably taking us there as he was way more active and outgoing as she was.
At this point I should remember that this friend of mine apart from being a clinical psychologist also worked for several years with kids and families, so he can certainly make any everyday-people NPC VERY realistic. We were already very happy talking to this easy-going lady. She was very sweet!
She went out of the room and a couple of minutes later we hear some squeaking of wheels outside the door. The door opens and we see Christina pushing an old wheelchair. Sitting on it was a person. He was around 20 years old. Completely paralyzed, in an awkward position, dirty clothes, messy hair, drooling, with his eyes looking at some random spot in the air, trying to breath as calmed as he could. "Andrecito! These are the people I told you about! Go on, don't be shy say hello to our guests"...
Man, we were frozen. We the players were looking at each other without knowing what to do or what to say. Our characters therefore were shooked as well, but Christina was in her own world. "Oh, my dears, please don't mind him, we don't received many guests lately so he's probably a little shy today, usually he's the life of the party, but please go ahead and ask him what you need".
After a couple of minutes we started talking again and trying as best as we could to not disturb this lady and act as if everything were just fine. But man were we wrong, every couple of minutes she did something unnerving. From feeding him with a spoon, where half of the food just dropped and half he swallowed TOO slow, to pushing us to talk to him, to what we received just slow and awkward eyes movements or involuntary drooling.
But that was just the setting of the story. From that point forward everything wen to hell. I couldn't remember everything, but as a sample... That night we went upstairs to try to have some sleep on the guests rooms. For obvious reasons Christina and Andrés had rooms downstairs...
At some point one of us heard something on the hallway outside our rooms. She was already super uncomfortable with everything, so she reluctantly walked very slowly to the door and put her ear on it. She heard a very faint metallic sound, as the sound of a very old door knob... or a wheel... She opened the door a slit and peeked out... there was the wheelchair, empty, on the middle of the hallway.
Anyway. Never play horror games with that kind of people
PS: during that session we didn't rolled a single dice. So yeah, systems for that type horror could help, but are not THAT important I think.
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I think there are two ways to approach horror in TTRPGs: a horror setting in terms of aesthetics, and a horror story. One is frightening for the characters and the other evoke frightening ideas to the players as well as to the characters. Settings such as Raventloft or Zombicide are frightening to the characters but not at all to the players, while something as Kult could be even pleasurable to the characters but unthinkable to the players.
I certainly love horror TTRPGs and the best GM I can think of is my best friend, that is a clinical psychologist and create NPCs inspired in what he knows and works with, so every time he describe those NPCs and show how they act, the realism of the situations keep all of us players on the edge of our seats, because how close those stories are to reality. He always GMs Lovecraftian horror themes and make the stories as close to reality as possible, so we can think "well, that could be almost possible", on a absolutely normal and everyday place. So the setting for the characters is not particularly frightening at all, but the situations are horrible.
So I think what makes a TTRPG good or bad in this regards is what you're looking for, an aesthetically frightening setting like Warhammer 40k? That would have a lot of skulls and blood and screams, but for the players is just an extreme action movie. Or maybe something that makes you think or question morality and that makes you think that that would be very frightening to experience like a story based on Clive Barker books (probably Kult)? That could take place maybe in your current city focusing on conversations between characters in a Starbucks, not aesthetically frightening at all, but the ideas could be horrendous.
If I were to choose I'd choose the second option, the frightening stories. And for that I think the game itself is almost irrelevant. Any game that allows you to play normal people in a setting were anything could happen, is a good game, as long as the system don't interrupt the story. When my friend GMs and we want to play a horror story, he stopped using Call of Cthulhu years ago and now we just use Rats in The Walls, a super simplistic CoC rip-off, and we played the most memorable stories using something as rudimentary as that.
I certainly love horror TTRPGs and the best GM I can think of is my best friend, that is a clinical psychologist and create NPCs inspired in what he knows and works with, so every time he describe those NPCs and show how they act, the realism of the situations keep all of us players on the edge of our seats, because how close those stories are to reality. He always GMs Lovecraftian horror themes and make the stories as close to reality as possible, so we can think "well, that could be almost possible", on a absolutely normal and everyday place. So the setting for the characters is not particularly frightening at all, but the situations are horrible.
This GM existing is frightening enough to me haha
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