RPGs, Fear, and the Social Contract

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

In RPG Theory and Horror gaming I ran across the following quote:

But as I read this thread, my mind is taking a step back from it. It occurs to me that there are perhaps three distinct kinds of fear. For the moment, I'll dub them
Creepy fear,
Startle fear, and
Desperation fear.

Creepy fear is that stuff that makes your skin crawl when things are spooky. It's an internal nervousness. Sometimes it comes from thinking something is going to happen; sometimes it comes merely from atmosphere.

Startle fear is what happens when your kid suddenly jumps out from behind the door, shouts boo, and then asks, did I scare you? I always tell my eleven-year-old that he didn't scare me, but he did startle me. Startle fear is also that punchline that hits us when someone shouts at the end of a quiet creepy story, or when the killer jumps out from behind the curtain in the movie. It is the suddenness that gets to us.

Desperation fear is the sort discussed in the article, the idea that there is something you value that you don't want to lose and there's no way you can stop that from happening.

I suspect that to do a good game, you need a lot of the first and third, but at least a little of the second.

I'd like to see some structured discussion on the topic of fear in RPGs, which has been done here before it seems. Unfortunately though the threads make some headway they don't seem to gain traction and focus enough to come to full fruition. In Horror: Simulationism and Narrativism, Ron pokes a stick at why:

I cannot, for the life of me, see that we are discussing nothing more than preferences about the following distinctions:

1) Scaring others vs. being scared oneself

2) Startlement over "dread realization"

3) Horror vs. terror as I described them in the Little Fears review

Mix and match your preferences across these variables. Suit to appropriate role-playing. Recognize that not all Simulationist horror is alike; ditto for Narrativist horror. Be done.

It seems to me as if this topic always goes into tailspins, every time, because it is that simple.

So here's my proposal. I'm looking to discuss ways that the text and mechanics of a game can facilitate a fear response from the players. Specifically I'm hoping we can talk about how to create an SC among the players that allows them to meet their respective preferences regarding the distinctions Ron mentions above, and in light of M.J.'s categories. This could include discussions of preferences which are incompatible with one another. However, in order to attempt to keep us from spiraling down the drain I'd like to see the following groundrules adhered to:

A) If you respond to the thread, and you're talking about fear you need to be explicit in terms of what type you're referring to, positioning it among the above quotes. If you decide there needs to be expansion of the types from the ones laid out you'll need to be explicit in giving why and what niche you feel the new term fills.

B) The term horror is offlimits as a stand in for a wide set off genre expectations, and so using it requires you to be explicit by what you mean by the term. I'd like to avoid conflicts with one person's idea of horror involving gore, and another's being purely psychological. If you're going to use the word, please be specific in it's use and otherwise consider avoiding it altogether.

C) Put your own preferences with regard to how you like or don't like to be scared (i.e. Ron's quote) out in the open at the beginning of your post. This is not as a polling point, but instead to give some foundation for understanding in the hopes of avoiding purely semantic debates regarding preference.

Sound good? Did I miss anything?

-Tim

[Marco]

I'm working on a horror world book project right now so this topic is fairly near and dear to me. I'll try to phrase my comments in line with what you've set out there.

A) In MJ's terms the bulk of the book would be the first and third types. The adversaries are designed to be creepy. One of the primary focuses of the game is on a specific take on madness (when the character is having an "episode" they are in a nightmare reality and their persona in the real world acts somewhat--or very--crazy).

Thus, part of the themese of the game is personal loss and fear as people close to you treat you as if you are going insane. The question was: how to make this fun.

B) There's a section on different kinds of horror in the book and it discusses the basic level of empowerment the characters have relative to their antagonists.

In the lower-power one the game may be, at it's core, unfair or 'unwinnable' in some sense. The characters are in deep trouble and there is likely no way out or no clear way out.

In the second case, the format of the game and the types of opposition may be the same but the characters are more empowered than in the other case.

There are some specific mechanics in the game which can be tweaked to produce a more empowered or disempowered environment and there are ways to shift from one to the other (if the PC's gain experience and have access to the right skills either through self-teaching or an instructor they can seriously alter their prediciament).

C) I like the creepy-fear best (if I understand that right)--scary concepts, terrible fates, and disturbing enemies work very well for me. If I am going to be disempowered in a game (a serious application of type-3 fear, I would guess) then I find it incumbent on the GM to make sure that I have a good time with that: it has to be satisfying.

I found The Ring satisfying--The Grudge (in a, well, similar genre) less so.

So that's tricker.

Scaring characters with what is called a "Boo" is easy. Startling players--not so much. I have done things to startle players to some effect but I am accutely aware that a lot of people rightly resent it and consider the 'Boo' to be more of a genere establishing element of a horror game rather than a primary payload (i.e. the cat jumps out at you and you go "oh, we're in this kind of story.)

Although we have toyed with fear-mechanics for the game, there will probably not be one in the end. There was a 'grossed-out' table that we found to be fairly funny and we might go with some 'opt-in' defects that make you roll on some reaction charts (i.e. if you are 'nervous' then you get 3pts and roll on the nerves table when creeping up to the closet door) but they won't be a centerpiece of the game.

-Marco

[xenopulse]

The times when I managed to have an impact on my players, when I was GMing KULT, were really not based on any sort of rules. They were always narrations or me acting out an NPC. For example, I managed to make them jump when I played an NPC who mumbled unintelligibly, and as the players leaned closer, I yelled out :)

Similarly, I managed to creep them out with one of the examples from the KULT book... we played during the night, the characters were in an old mansion. I set it up very stereotypically, which worked well, because the players knew something was going to be up. Then I told them they heard scratching noises from the front door. They waited. They wondered what to do. Finally, they grabbed their weapons and went downstairs to investigate. They opened up the front door, but nothing was out there. As they closed it, I told them they saw the deep scratchmarks on the inside of the door. All three players had goosebumps.

So overall, the one mechanic that maybe helped was that in KULT, players can die from a single hit. They didn't have 150 HP to fall back on. One roll of a lethal wound (not counting fate points) and they're gone. Other than that, I can't think of a mechanic that would help.

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

I had hoped to see a few more responses on this, but given that it's slipping inexorably towards page two I'll come back to it. The first couple of posts indicate that part of achieving fear is about how empowered the characters are relative to the conflicts. I'm wondering if that's really a requirement. First though let me give me preferences dump to get it out of the way. I'm an easy mark for creepy, you really don't have to do much to get my mind working on something that leaves me wanting to hide under the covers later that night. That said, without some sort of payoff in terms of horror as Ron defines it in the little fears review, or desperation as M.J. terms it, I find myself left pretty solidly unsatisfied. Startle horror strikes me mostly as mood setting, it sets the groundwork for both of the others. In stepping into film momentarily, Seven does the whole package well, and Grudge (as I understand it, I've seen the Japanese version but not the American one) does creepy pretty well, and lays the groundwork with startle, but fails on a payoff. So, how are we able to accomplish that sort of experience for us as audience/players while still maintaining protagonism?

Social Contract
Obviously, getting the group on board and setting the social contract is paramount. My first impression is using something like Ron's one-sheets for Sorcerer, they've worked well for me in defining a mood and prompting a useful group consensus on setting. Beyond that I'm somewhat stumped. Beyond hoping preferences like the above come out in the ensuing discussion, how can you codify something to ensure these things are talked about? Or is it perfectly acceptable to let these sorts of things work themselves out in play? Are there folks with enough consistent fear play to speak to that issue?

Mechanics and empowerment
I'm intrigued by lumpley's generalized Ortherkind mechanics that he discusses on his blog here and it strikes me that this sort of thing could be very useful in the sort of game we're discussing, especially if the guidelines of how a character is hosed or inconvenienced fall into well established expectations. In reference to other games, MlwM seems to do a good job of setting up this sort of consensus exactly, and I think a lot of it has to do with Paul's text and layout choices that put a fine point on mood even before play. In my one experience though I didn't find myself particularly scared by MlwM play, though I could see the potential for it over time. Is that something to be expected? A sort of up front time before being able to gel enough to produce real fear play?

I'm interested to hear other comments, and other experiences if people can put an eye towards analysis of why what you did worked, and how.

-Tim

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tim,

I suggest running a Forge search on "fear" or "horror" specifying hardcoremoose as author - you'll find at least four or five really good discussions. Also, this very old Scariness discussion from the '98-99 Sorcerer mailing list might be fun.

Best,
Ron

[Uccisore]

So overall, the one mechanic that maybe helped was that in KULT, players can die from a single hit. They didn't have 150 HP to fall back on. One roll of a lethal wound (not counting fate points) and they're gone. Other than that, I can't think of a mechanic that would help.

  Mechanics are useful for horror because they can define unavoidable consequences for actions- the specific kinds of actions you want to be scary in your game.  The one I have the most experience with is Call of Cthulhu, and I know that player fear is enchanced in my game when the characters get down around 18 sanity points or so.  They know that each fresh encounter with the supernatural could make them lose control of their characters for good. The only thing left is to set up the story such that the players have to keep taking those risks, and the elements of fear are there.  Of course, this all plays into social contract too- things like this can only work to the extent that the players give a crap about their characters.

[hardcoremoose]

You know, I'm going to (once again) pull the carpet out from under poor ol' Call of Cthulhu, and hopefully I'll say something pertinent in the process.  Know that I do it with love.

Let's see if I can suss out some things about Desperate Fear (to use MJ's terms) first.  The idea behind Desperate Fear is that something the players (not the characters) care about is being threatened.  The trick here, of course, is knowing what the players care about, what they're invested in.  There are no guarantees, but generally a player cares most about something he's had a hand in authoring.  In most games the one thing a player reliably gets to author is his own character, so no surprise that that's what gets targeted most often by GMs.

But there's a whole second half to this Desperate Fear thing, and that's how the threat is realized towards whatever it is that's being threatened.  As far as I can tell, this takes two forms - Violation and Elimination.  Violation changes whatever is being threatened, Elimination removes it completely from the player's control.  Violation is, to my way of thinking, way more interesting.  I don't have to tell you which is most common.

Of course there are other things that can come in to play here too, like disbursement of power among players (who decides what's being threatened?  who decides whether it's being Violated or Eliminated?  what does all that look like in game terms?).  And also MJ's other types of Fear, which I think are necessary in some combination with Desperate Fear to achieve anything close to "horror".  By mixing and matching these variables, you should be able to come up with some pretty potent stuff.

So now back to CoC and its much vaunted Sanity mechanic.  Sanity is the least imaginative implementation of Desperate Fear possible: The threat is to Character, the consequence is Elimination, and the power arrangement is the typical Player/GM split.  Where CoC does score high is in the Creepy Fear category: the Setting and Color are so strong (but unsupported in any useful way by System) as to make most people overlook the fact that it's primary mechanical innovation - Sanity Points - are really just a second set of Hit Points.

Later supplements for CoC introduce the concept of Violation as a result of Sanity loss; characters could now suffer from actual psychological disorders, representing a Violation of the character concept away from the player's original vision.  This is good stuff, but tacked on as it was to the main rules, it was the equivalent of a "psychological" critical hit chart, which is neither worthy of the source material, nor a particularly good way to guarantee horrific results (more often than not it yielded bouts of unintentional humor).

Now, all of this isn't to stomp all over CoC and bag on it for what a bad game it is.  Really, it doesn't do anything wrong, it just does what it does in the most obvious of ways.  Other games have built on that groundwork (perhaps successfully - I've never played Unknown Armies, but it seems like a possible successor).  And finally we're starting to see games that experiment with the form, like My Life with Master, which oozes Despearate Fear without ever placing the characters in mortal jeopardy (because it allows them to author things other than just their characters), and provides an actual mechanic for player-introduced Creepy Fear (The Horror Revealed).

Enough from me.  Please, tell me how I'm wrong.

Best,
Scott

[beingfrank]

Coincidentally, I had a big discussion about different types of fear in games with my gaming group and I'm still digesting the ideas raised.

Basically we concluded that startle fear is least effective for developing an ongoing atmosphere of fear, because it loses its power with repetition, and because it's in contrast to the normal way of things within the game (it has to be, otherwise it isn't startling).

Our group's preference is for games with a slow building general level of fear and paranoia, where there are things to be afraid of, and you can't identify those threats.  Kind of like desperation fear, in that you can't find an eliminate the threat, but unlike it in that you can stop some of the bad consequences.  So in a way it becomes desperation fear of fear.  In that there's no way to avoid being afraid, but the fear itself represents the loss you don't want to happen.  Startle fear tends to weaken this effect.

Another thing we discussed is MLWM, and the notion that the scariest thing in the game is not anything the Master might do, but the moment of the Masters death and the Minions breaking free.  In a way, what the game does is turn the classic notions of fear on their heads, and thus creates a game that is even scarier.

The whole discussion started because I was complaining about a discussion on another board where some people were talking about their ideal 'scary' game and how they'd make it the scariest thing ever, and to me it all seemd a bit uninspired and superficial.  They were discussing the surface manifestations of fear, things that jump out at you, obviously squicky stuff, but it seemed just window dressing on a fairly normal game.  Like painting on a lot of gore.

I think that in terms of facilitating a fear response in players, you need to decide are you going for fear of easily perceivable things, or discovered fear, because they're likely to involve very different techniques.

I've just spent the last hour trying to find a webpage I once read that tried to develop a descriptive tool for games that went beyond the normal 'this game is going to be dark, so be prepared,' which seems to be the limit of SC consideration in most cases.  It broke down different facets that could make a game dark and then provided a scale with descriptors on each.  It could be useful to this discussion, but I simply can't find it.  If anyone else has seen it, please let me know.

I'm rambling a bit, partly because I'm not quite sure of the scope of this discussion at the moment, and partly because my head is full of a whole heap of new ideas that have been in residence less than 24 hours.