Horror Ideas

[Bear]

Hey folks,

I am starting to think about prepping for my annual Halloween Horror One Shot.  I have been doing this for a while and I am starting to wonder what to base this around.  I typically try for some theme or genre and attempt to stay in it (with some twists, of course  ).  I am not sayin' the "well is dry" here, but I am dropping the bucket a long ways. 

Anyone have some suggestion?

Past halloweens have been the following: (in no particular order)
Things man was not meant to know Based in the Falklands (1920's)
Out of Africa Based in German Congo (1930's)
Devil within Based Boulder Colorado (Modern 1990's)
Voodoo rising Based in Old West (1860's)
One discovery to many Based in Kansas (Modern 1970's)
Scooby Doo team up with Josie and the Pussycats - Crikey its real! Based in Cartoon land (1970's)
The cult of Slaanesh Based in the University of Colorado (Modern 1980's)
Invasion Earth Based in the United States (Modern)
Zombies everywhere Based in California (1960's)
In space no one can hear you scream Based on Mars (Future - 2050's)
HG Wells War of the Worlds - the other landings Based in Old West (1890's)
Body snatchers Based in the stone age (indeterminate)
Land time forgot Based in the Antarctica (1930's)

There are probably some others that I have forgotten to list (but if I forgot maybe they need to be revisited)

[longcoat000]

Universal Monster Mash-up based on a Hollywood backlot in the 1930's - Characters all work on the Universal lot when something strange starts up.  Maybe the young starlet in thier latest picture gets killed by persons unknown in a rather gruesome manner.  Maybe they find out that all those movie monsters really didn't need as much time in the makeup trailer as they thought.  Hijinks ensue.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer based in Victorian London.

A Nightmare on Elm Street during the American Revolutionary War.

[JMeganSnow]

Why not try something more mythology-based?  Russian, Norse, or Celtic mythology would be pretty awesome.

You could do another HG Wells-type thing based on time travel: watch the most recent Time Machine movie for inspiration.

Read a novel by Victor Hugo and adopt his setting.  Good ones include Les Miserables, Ninety-Three (it wasn't called the Year of the Terror for nothing!), Notre-Dame de Paris.

Set it in Russia during the Bolshevik revolution.

Cannibals on New Guinea.

[VV_GM]

I prefer horror based on the mundane tainted with evil. Some examples from famous films:

Poltergeist - What made the film so frightening was that you could have lived in that home. It wasn't a haunted house on some dark and dreary hill somewhere. It was your average suburban home.

The Exorcist - Some Satanic cult member possessed by the Devil is lame. A young girl barely in her teens who likes to do arts and crafts suddenly inhabited by Lucifer himself though? Still sends chills down my spine. She could have been your daughter or your sister.

The Blair Witch Project - You have probably been in woods like the ones we saw in the film. You have probably been woken up by strange sounds at night while camping in a tent. You probably have gotten lost or loss your sense of direction at one time or another. This film just kept compiling those type of moments into a very scary experience.

My point is that nothing is more frightening than the familiar suddenly revealed to be a danger. It catches you completely off guard.

And now for the shameless self promotion:

http://www.treasuretables.org/2006/09/make-the-bugs-scary-little-touches-for-horror-rpgs
http://www.treasuretables.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tips_for_Running_a_Horror_One-shot_for_New_Players

[Bear]

Hmmm...  I like 'em all.    I am not sure which way to go now.  From "I don't have any ideas" to "which cool idea to choose".  Thanks for the great answers.

[Bear]

I read your article links.  Great stuff!. 

I think you need to put in a section on descriptions.  I have noticed that people like things described to them visually.  "your character sees..."  If you describe things using other senses it throws them out of their comfort zone (same as dimming the lights - also I think it enhances the effect of low light).  Also, describing things with scent is good.  Your sense of smell links directly into one of the more primitive parts of the brain.  As a result scent can evoke strong memory responses.

I also like to make the room just a little bit cool (easy at halloween).  The slight chill makes most people somewhat uncomfortable, and moves them in the right mood.

[Rick_TWA]

We had a great thread on Haunted Houses a while back too.

[Bear]

Awesome thread.   

I have tried some of those tricks, but a ton were either brand new, or a different use.  I am going to have so much fun with this one.   

[longcoat000]

One more to throw out - rather than use ancient / foreign mythology, why not Modern American?  There's tons of stuff to pull from - Bloody Mary, The Hitchhiker, The Man with a Golden Arm, and The Geek have long been told around campfires or during sleep-overs for at least one generation.

What about a Blair Witch / Jersey Devil mashup?

Back in '97, Lynda Edwards wrote a piece for the Miami News Times called Myths Over Miami.  It's about how modern folklore is being created by homeless children living on the streets.  I think that in itself would be a pretty good idea for a one-shot, but it would make a better campaign centered around the characters as children.

Captured on South Beach, Satan later escaped. His demons and the horrible Bloody Mary are now killing people. God has fled. Avenging angels hide out in the Everglades. And other tales from children in Dade's homeless shelters.

[Kestral]

Another thing I'd suggest is to mashup some things together. But I also agree with the classic movie theme, focusing on three different periods: 1930s, the mid-to late-1950s and early '60s, and the '80s/early '90s. Add in the various science fiction films we now would class as horror too and we get Universal Horror, Hammer Horror, Little Shop of Horror-type films, alien invasion films, giant mutated thing films, cosmic horror films, science gone wrong films and the pre-Scream slasher films (they had less self-parody, as Scream was itself a parody of Wes Craven films directed by Wes Craven...) So it becomes a case where you can really utilize your players metagame knowledge, as it's entirely reasonable that their characters would have similar knowledge, if you did it right.

I notice you've pretty much covered the bases so far with the types of horror doable in a game, so by making it ALL fair game and making a theme that attempts to keep some semblance of unity among them, you get something you haven't done. And from what I can tell, you haven't really used the Hollywood Horror theme yet...

The suggestion to use the Hollywood backlot idea is a great one. I would probably have it be a small horror movie-focused house and have several different casts and crew working, but have the entire thing be otherwise empty... so when things go wrong (and the PCs become the only ones not mind-controlled by aliens/turned into classic monsters/crazed, nearly invulnerable supernatural slashers/weird cultists) there's no one around to really help them. It also lets the players metagame without breaking plotline believability; the characters would be expected to know just as much about horror films as the players themselves, so who cares if your players know the traditional weaknesses? And of course it lets you lampshade hang and mock horror completely while at the same time be creepy as all get out. I would probably inject a lot of humor into it, by having side comments by NPCs just before they die like "Of course everything is going wrong! Who in their right mind shoots horror films on the night of the full moon while a UFO hits the earth and some members of the studio conduct a weird ritual to summon some... thing... that probably shouldn't have been summoned?! This company does, apparently! I QUIT! HEAR THAT?! I QUIT! I should probably expect to die now, by the hands of some, random, unexpected slasher! It's the only thing we haven't got yet!" whereupon they promptly die to the slasher. (Yeah, I go in for that sort of humor really strongly.)

[Telas]

The suggestion to use the Hollywood backlot idea is a great one. I would probably have it be a small horror movie-focused house and have several different casts and crew working, but have the entire thing be otherwise empty...

You mean like during a writer's strike or something?   And all those monsters actors are out of work, and starting to get a bit... hungry.

Telas

[Kestral]

The suggestion to use the Hollywood backlot idea is a great one. I would probably have it be a small horror movie-focused house and have several different casts and crew working, but have the entire thing be otherwise empty...

You mean like during a writer's strike or something?   And all those monsters actors are out of work, and starting to get a bit... hungry.

Telas

Heh. Yeah, perhaps that. But the main thing is just to not imagine a MGM studios or Universal backlot type deal where there are a bunch of civilians (aka people not working for the film company) around. What few there are might still be involved in production or fans who won a contest or something else that makes it reasonable that they'd be there. Obviously, most of those should be PCs. So if one of the PCs is supposed to be a fan of horror films, it'd be OK, but there won't be some few hundred random joes around.  I don't necessarily think that the monsters should all be out of work actors but instead there should a mix of all the different classic horror movie plots, so no matter what your players think, they're correct. The out-of-work actors are going around acting as slasher killers, the production crew for one of the films has been mind controlled by a group of hostile aliens, another group is being attacked by werewolves, vampires, and other classic horror monsters, and then there's the people getting sucked into a mad scientist's evil plot. (He comes complete with Igor, Frankenstein-type monster, and Beautiful Daughter just waiting to get away from her evil Daddykins)

It might be hard to manage, though. Possibly funny to do as a Halloween LARP.

[JMeganSnow]

Something you may want to try that you may find fun is the good old bait-and-switch, for example:

The game starts out with the PC's exploring a Victorian-era Sherlock-Holmes-esque murder mystery, and winds up fighting off an alien invasion with period weapons.

The PC's are a combat team assaulting a city where the inhabitants have apparently been turned into zombies, only to find themselves trapped in a psychological game of cat-and-mouse with a madman.

[phindar]

There was a small indie film that came out last year called The Signal, which was about a radio or television frequency that made people go psycho.  Not having seen it this is just based off the concept, but it seems like it'd be a little like a zombie movie except instead of zombies you'd have slasher/mass murderer/serial killer/spree killers running around, guys and gals and little kids with claw hammers and chainsaws and machetes and power drills.  The pc's would then be part of the relatively small percentage of the population resistant to the frequency.  Depending on how over the top I wanted to go with it, I'd probably make up a Random Psycho Killer Generation Table.  You'd want to be able to pull out a lot of different Slashers if you had to.  (It'd probably also be a good spot for a bunch of Horrorclix minis, if you had them.)

[JMeganSnow]

As an addendum to phindar's idea, there has been a recent discovery that there are some frequencies of sound that are only heard by young people--due to age-related hearing loss that sets in when you hit about 25.  So maybe you could do a game about a bunch of geriatrics fighting off a wave of psychotic teenagers and kids.

[Bear]

Okay.  Hmmm...  You folks sparked off a ton of good ideas.  I am thinking about a geriatric ward thriller.  The characters are all "old".  They have lots of knowledge, but a ton of physical, and/or mental issues.  I think that could be very scary (and all to real).   

Now I am wondering wether to make it not a cult, but a governmental thing (futuristic, maybe?).  Remember the A. Clark story where everyone over 60 was "put down"?  Something like that, but more secret (cost saving measure in this time of budget issues?).   

[Telas]

Where have I seen something like this?

Ah.

Telas

[phindar]

Before I clicked the link, I was thinking Logan's Run.  Or, for that matter, Soylent Green is Less Filling!  Tastes Great!  Less Filling!   Or something.

[Telas]

Good movie, for a half-million dollar budget; it deals with a lot of issues that have nothing to do with mummies, Elvis, or JFK.  

It's also really damned difficult to watch, when your recently-deceased grandmother just spent her last years in an east Texas nursing home.

T

[phindar]

Makes me think that an interesting modern Call of Cthulhu game could be retirees in a nursing home who were investigators in the 40's.  (The 20's would be pushing it, unless they were little children at the time.)