[Sorry for the delay since last article, shield brethren and sistren. I’ve been on the mend from a neck surgery and am finally getting back to a place where I can focus on the occasional screen again.]
So if the First Crucial Element of Horror Gaming can be summed up as “Anticipate and Deliver Genre Appropriate Emotional Payoffs” and the Second Crucial Element as “Fluctuate Freedom and Autonomy According to Genre Expectations”. . . It’s a safe bet that today’s segment is also going to look hard at a piece of theory that you can use to leverage those genre expectations for maximum table benefit.
Now, whereas the First Crucial Element was about emotional payoffs in general, another way to see the Second is as a necessary precursor for creating the emotions particular to Horror genres. You need a background of Freedoms and Agency that the figure of those genre relevant emotions can stand out against.
[In genres other than Horror, the most dominant background element would be different. As an off the cuff example, think maybe spectrums of Justice and Responsibility as the background for the figure emotions of confusion, curiosity, vindication (setting things to a more moral rightness), and lightbulb moments of discovery in a Mystery game.]
So what are the “figure” emotions in a Horror game? I bet most people jumped right to—er, Horror, duh, Lon.
And you’d be right, obvy.
But don’t stop there. A truly great steak dinner has more going on than just a hunk of dead cow. It’s in the pairings and contrasts—the way the sides and beverage and company complement and accent this specific cut of meat and its particular seasonings and cook style—that it goes from being a good piece of steak to being a great steak dinner. The parts have to fit together just so to capture the magic and make every bite memorable.
For starters, you can break your Fear steak up into a lot of different cuts (horror, terror, dread, panic, etc.). No Horror Game would be complete without at least a whiff of Disgust (the experience of contamination, deformation, or perversion, and the strong rejection thereof—whether the contamination is of the body, the mind, the soul, our stuff, our friends, etc.). Consider how relevant Anger (righteous, frustrated, and defensive) can be to any Horror game feeling like it’s reached the next level.
Those big three are so relevant that to forego even one of them would leave a missing front tooth gap in your game that would be hard to recover from. But I’m here to tell you that there’s two more emotions that are even more key to a successful and engaging session: Hope and Despair
First, a definition of sorts: Hope is the emotion that signals the possibility of pleasure, success, or relief.
Despair, on the other hand, is not mere Sadness (the emotion that accompanies loss of something valued). Despair is the specific flavor of sadness that signals the loss of Hope. That’s right, it’s an emotion about another emotion. (See how rich and complex this tapestry can get?)
So here’s the Third Crucial Element of Horror Gaming:
A Sense of Despair, aka The Sadness of Declining Hope
This can of course be a predominant aspect of the genre and one that, like in Lovecraftian Dread and Frank Darabont’s The Mist, never finds any adequate relief. Or it can play more of a Necessary Trope Bit Part that OF COURSE finds relief in the climax of a serial killer flick. Because that’s what’s expected.
I’ll be talking in more detail about some of the practical aspects of making this happen in games sooner or later, but for now—with aching neck and tired eyes, here are some “big picture” concepts to consider, as you season your Horror game with Despair.
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Important resources (light, air, time, bullets, hiding places) begin to run out
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The discovery that an Option (getaway car, Sheriff’s help, just effing Leaving fergodsake!) is no longer available
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Threats become increasingly more harmful and harder to avoid or mitigate
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A crushing Betrayal of trust at exactly the moment you were counting on someone or something
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Things that used to be Easy are getting harder and harder to do.
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The Odds of Survival/Success keep getting slimmer and slimmer as the chance of a positive or at least tolerable Outcome gets dimmer and dimmer.
In other words, the players must encounter reasons to lose their hope of continuing success and ultimate survival.
In yet other words, the DM needs to cultivate a little bit of “learned helplessness” to some degree in the players.
The way to do this is so simple, it’s embarrassing to say it. But it’s also so difficult to get the balance right that it’s a kind of art form: players must experience increasing levels of failure, frustration, and unavoidable threats to some degree in a Horror Game, in order to instill the baseline sense of Desperation the table’s genre expectations demand.