Author: Sam Chupp (---.204.106)
Date: 10-31-2001 13:19
Take any WoD game, throw out the setting completely, and use some other setting you design yourself, and you have a fairly ideal game.
There were ideas kicked around when we were working on Wraith - "Do we release this game without a setting? Do we release it with just a bare minimum of setting, and let the stuff ooze out slowly over the course of time? Do we really want "Discipline-style" powers, or more fluid, "Sphere-style" powers? If death is the great equalizer, then how do we make "Clans" for Wraith? And the truth is, you really can't, and preserve the horror of the setting. What I personally decided was that the only way Wraith would achieve the most terrifying roleplaying was in a two-person game, one Storyteller, one player....no clans, and the setting is totally unknown to the player from the start. Heck, if the player character *has* powers and abilities, let him find out about them totally by happenstance - give them, take them away, limit them, change them without warning, keeping the player off balance.
To paraphrase Stephen King in "Danse Macabre" ...fail to achieve psychological horror - terror - you go for the gross-out. Which, I believe, drives the "juice" behind most of the Black Dog books - going for the gross out, instead of trying to hone a finely tuned atmosphere of pure terror.
I think that the economics of role-playing games limits the quality of horror games. You can't put out a book with no setting, no meat to it. You can't create a long-lasting game financial success without marketing to players, and you can't market to players without books that expand upon the player experience. Like the Pulp meta-genre, the Horror meta-genre has to wait patiently for those wealthy, brave, or artistic enough to create games that satisfy the need while being willing to fail to make a decent buck.
....Sam
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