Feeling the need to run a horror game.
The trouble with that is that I have no idea where to start. Call of Cthulu? I've heard of people introducing horror elements into their D&D, but I also know that D&D has a lot of features in it that are really not designed for the horror thing. Maybe d20 Modern, or even Iron Heroes, but that just takes care of the magic issue. Both systems are designed for "you shoot it and it dies" power fantasy.
The trouble with getting an entirely new system is that I have no idea if I can actually pull it off. And if I can't, if I run a session and it doesn't go all that well and I decide, well, at least now I know, I'll have a book I'm never going to use again.
But at least I'll have used it once. That's more than I can say for a lot of my gaming material.
And of course, there is the fact that this interest in horror originally revolved around a couple of D&D monsters which I found particularly intriguing. Not that I couldn't take what I think is cool about them and convert their stats to another system. But if they're designed for D&D, then it follows that they're designed to do scary in D&D. And there is always Heroes of Horror. At which I have not yet looked.
GURPS might work. Might. But I have a somewhat troubled relationship with that system.
just do something gothic. instead of a sprawling dungeon, you'd have your characters spend at least most of their time in the creepy castle at the edge of the wilderness or somesuch. you'd have to work hard planning to make sure it was more secret passagey and scary rather than "hall way, 4 doors, guess which one has a troll"
ReplyDeletebut you could do it. also, horror, or TERROR?
~Qwerty
Eh, gothic doesn't really do much for me. Yeah, it might be fun, but when I think "scary," I think "Lovecraftian horrors meet Geiger-esque steampunk."
ReplyDeleteOr: robots squid things want to eat your brain!
But yeah, I'd probably implement that through dungeon-y weirdness.
I think Shadowrun could be a good system for what you want to do, if you're considering d20 modern. It's got a fairly dark setting, flexible rules, both magic and guns...
ReplyDeleteAlso, very deadly and the dice-pool-ness of it makes for huge changes of fortune and keeps the players on edge a bit more.