Author: Mungo (---.115.86)
Date: 08-29-2001 06:50
It often seems to me that there can be too much reliance on gore to create horror. Certainly horror stories or games can have gory elements, but horror is not just gore. I think a good example of the difference is when you compare The Blair Witch Project with HellRaiser (any of them really). Whatever you may think of the movies (I liked them both) they take very different approaches in trying to scare their audience. Blair Witch has very little gore (just one blurry shot) while Hellraiser used tons of red ketchup packets and macaroni noodles. Blair Witch I found genuinely frightening, whereas HellRaiser wasn’t really frightening, it was just, well, gory.
Where this gets to be a problem is when a GM or game designer thinks that all they have to do is throw some fresh intestines around their game to make it a horror game. What this does is make people go “eeww” - it doesn’t really frighten people. Horror is all about mounting tension, atmosphere and knowing that the player/reader/watcher will always imagine something far worse and more terrifying than you can ever describe or show.
One of the most frightening scenarios I’ve ever run (and I’ve run it several times with the same result) is “The Haunted House” – a short introductory adventure in the main CoC rulebook. In that scenario I’ve had players scream out loud over nothing more than a piece of furniture banging against a wall.
Mungo
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