What are you afraid of?

I love horror gaming! One of our favorite games is Bluebeard's Bride, and it has a "squirm" mechanic called "Shiver from Fear." Whenever the player (not the character, the player) "squirms in her seat, shudders, or utters words of discontent" the mechanic is invoked. So, needless to say, we spend a lot of time trying to make each other other squirm with discomfort, and wow have we had some wonderfully uncomfortable sessions.

My problem is, that is so much easier for me to do in person than it is in PBP. I'm sure it is a failure of my writing, but it is also a failure of creativity on my part. Whenever we do horror in PbP, I feel like my stuff lacks punch. I put my fingers to the keyboard and nothing interesting comes out. I don't think anyone is squirming in their seats.

So, help me out. What are you afraid of? Share as much as you are comfortable sharing. I'll take words, images, anything (that is in keeping with the forum posting guidelines). I just started hosting a horror game here, and my creative juices need a jump start.

Bathophobia. That's mine. I'm not afraid of the water. I live near the ocean, and swim in it all the time. I also live on a river and love swimming and boating. No problem. But deep deep water is terrifying. The thought of being out on the ocean and the water below being unimaginably deep, crushingly deep, pitch black deep. It feels like you would sink forever. Ugh. Shivers

I remember being very young and sneaking out of bed while my dad was watching Master and Commander. I saw the part where they were trying to find out who was the "Jonah." That guy figured it was him, so he grabbed a canon ball and jumped over the side. I started crying and my dad put be back to bed, but my brain could not stop thinking about how far he must have sunk. And what it would have been like to stop seeing the surface. Then all the lights went out, but he just kept on sinking. To this day I can't watch that movie. :D

Here's another pic. It is huge so I'm not embedding it.

https://www.jooomshaper.com/data/out/4/IMG_36997.jpg

Suffocation of any kind. Especially drowning.
And rats.

Yup, this. Being buried alive, slowly suffocated while the walls press in.

Real horror in gaming is tough; real horror in PbP gaming is tougher.

Here's a question for you: Do you read horror fiction? If so, who are your favorite horror authors? Obviously, most of us are not world class literary writers, but you can learn a lot from reading those who are. My GMing and PbP writing has been influenced by Michael Shea, Stephen King, Thomas Ligotti, John Tynes, WH Pugmire, Ramsay Campbell, Victor LaValle, and many more.

(Looking at my list, I'm realizing that I am at a complete loss in terms of great female horror writers. If anyone has any leads for me in that regard, I'd love to hear them.)

As far as horror in gaming goes, I'm going to quote the singular Dennis Detwiller here:

"What makes a scenario a horror scenario? Uncertainty, risk and a lack of control. Without these essential elements, any scenario, involving even the most terrible creatures, is simply a bug hunt. In fact, that’s what most games are: go here, kill this, and take its stuff.

Horror is not about that. So, at the highest level, as a game master, this is what you must consider. Is your group content with the bug hunt?1 If they are, then horror, and the possibility of failure, might come as a bitter and unwelcome pill. If they’re open-minded or have experience in playing horror games, let’s talk."

Actually, you know what? Here. Read the article yourself. The back-end, where he talks about how to actually build a scenario, might be less useful for you - but the first few sections are crucial, in my opinion, for running a good horror game. And they're applicable to both IRL and PbP gaming.

In my PbP games, I do everything I can to keep my players in the dark about as much as possible for as long as possible. I use TONS of notes to this effect, never give more info than I have to, and do my best to never ever let them get closer to their goal without a risk or a cost. I don't know if this makes my players squirm - maybe it just frustrates them - but to me, squick is just a small part of a much bigger machine that really revolves around players not knowing what the f*** is going on and constantly second guessing, putting themselves even further into danger as a result.

Mary Shelley. If you want a suggestion on a woman who writes horror, you might try the author of Frankenstein. Body horror from a stitched together corpse, existential horror on what the nature of life and death is, brutal descriptions. It's got a lot to offer.

I've read Shea, King, Tynes (RPG stuff only), and Campbell, and none of them, except for early King (IT and Pet Cemetery), really do much for me. I mean, they're fun, and they are solid writers, but they aren't scary. I've never felt the revulsion of genuine horror trying to read them.

I tend to find a lot more horror and dread in the writings of Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, and Cormac McCarthy. Our recent Bluebeard's Bride and Dread games were a lot more like Lullby and American Psycho than they were like "The Dunwich Horror."

For more reading suggestions, I did just reread Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort. That is a terrifying book. Nick Cutter's The Troop is also pretty hard to get through in places, so I loved it. :D I love Clive Barker, especially his earlier stuff.

Some of the best lady horror I've read recently: The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley and Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes (very "police procedural" in places, so not for all horror readers). Also, if you like some "weird" with your horror, check out Octavia Butler's short stories ("Bloodchild" is the best) and Alice Sheldon's short story "The Screwfly Solution."

I liked that quote above and the article. And I agree, that's why we don't really bother much with Cthulhu and Delta Green type gaming. It is "weird" at best, and the published scenarios are rarely anything approaching "horrific." That said, the Scooby Gang type stuff in Cthulhu investigative games can be fun, and they are great games to introduce people who are new to RPGs, because they are pretty tame content-wise.
I am jealous there. You are a better GM than I, because I've never gotten that to work over more than one session. Usually, they just get bored or frustrated. :( So, I tend to take the opposite approach. I like to let them see what's coming down the road for them, and I try to make it so nasty and horrible and repulsive that they players (not the characters, the players) will do just about anything to avoid it. In fact, our games usually end up being very collaborative, and we steal the Bluebeard's Bride mechanic for all our games—When we reach a tense moment, and the players look to me to see what happens, I'll usually ask them, "What's the worst possible thing that could happen here?" They answer, and then I try to make it so much worse.

Hence the point of my post here. I'm looking for inspiration, meat for the grinder as it were.

If you like psychological horror - particularly when the protagonist becomes increasingly affected and unreliable over the course of the narrative - then I highly recommend Shirley Jackson, particularly The Haunting of Hill House (nothing like the recent Netflix series) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I regard as truly amazing.

Jackson is good. I liked Castle better than Hill House, even though it is isn't really horror. I liked the Netflix "Hill House" series too. The jump scares were fun. Something like that would make an excellent DramaSystem pithc if you have the right players. Playing the adult victims of childhood trauma and abuse ain't for everyone.

The Haunting of Hill House is my favourite Netflix show so far. I don't know why but haunting house concept is scaring me so much since I was a kid. Also it's kinda weird but I must admit that old women are scaring me. When I was 7 years old my parents decided to buy an apartment in Budva, Montenegro. There was an old woman living upstairs and in the night I was hearing water sounds all the time. I was imagining like this woman has a pool in his living room and chained people inside of it. I was calling it death pool :). When I think about it now I feel like it's a good story for a horror book :)

I ran a horror game last night that was a supernatural bug hunt. We played by candle light, and I had four mason jars with live bugs in them set around the table, one for each player. They were covered with black cloth, and when a character caught their first glimpse of the creatures, I uncovered one of them. They hissed and buzzed even louder once the cloths were removed. We took a break in the middle of the game, and I served snacks. The players did not enjoy the live props nearly as much as I did.

Haha, that's epic props-ing

I'm a simple man i have an arachnophobia

See, now Cay is underselling those bug jars. That crap was God-awful.

So, we played out on the screened in porch, around a wobbly card table. It was dark and hot and damp (deep, deep south gaming FTW). And we were crammed around this table with these jars covered with black cloth covers. And every time someone would bump the table the jars would wobble and hiss and buzz. And she wouldn't let us remove the covers. Then when my character saw the first critter up close, she told me to take the cover off the jar. And it was filled with roaches. The big flying kind. Nopenopenope. Then one by one the covers came off: a jar full of worms, a jar full of angry-ass wasps (complete with nest), and a jar full of gnats and mosquitoes and nosee'ems.

Shit was bad.

Then she served us food. I have some pictures. I'll try to get them posted later.

That sounds horrible and amazing at the same time.
Should I be worried about what I've gotten myself into with the FATE game? xD

I hope you are at least a little bit worried. Apprehension is an important part of horror. :-D

I had this afternoon off, so I was working on getting set up for my game on Friday. I was told by the other people who live in my house that under no circumstances would jars of bugs be tolerated again. It was a bit of an intervention.

And I already started catching moths to set up next to my laptop :(

If you looking for something that turns simple scenery into horror could I suggest "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman, it’s excelent writing.

For me fear is an easy emotion to evoke, in my self atleast. Any interaction with people creates an amount of fear, depending on the method of interaction and the number of people involved. Motor vehicles will turn my anxiety on instantly and of course my panic sometimes just activates for no good reason at all.

But if you want to know what truly makes me uncomfortable, there are only a few+things (all of which could be aplied in a game), I fear losing control of my own body; I’m already subject to amnesia and depersonalisation, I fear that someday I. At e tee a fugue state and somebody else wil be incharge of my body. I fear that I may become trapped in my own body, unable to exist outside of it, things like Werner’s Aphagia and paralysis. And of course a personal fear of mine, loosing the power to decide that existence is too much of a burden p. Obviously not too aplicable as I think this is only a dyeing person thing but still, you asked...

The Yellow Wallpaper ruuuuuuuuules

Thanks for sharing! There's a lot there. I appreciate your transparency. I hope to get there one day.

I had to read "The Yellow Wallpaper" twice before I appreciated it. The first time I read it, it was with a teacher who was convinced that it was primarily about Gilman's (predictably horrible) views on race. I know that is a growing school of thought, and I am not qualified to make a judgment on that. But, personally, once I read about the more traditional interpretations and the story of Gilman's life and then reread the story, the story really really resonated with me. It is a terrific story in its own right.