In our most recent episode, we discussed how to ramp up horror, tension and dread in our games. Our kick-off discussion centered around the costume dinner party I threw when the players finally accepted the dinner invitation from the Master of Ravenloft, Count Strahd von Zarovich. With all of the players buying in and coming in costume, the table was set for what is, arguably, THE set piece for the entire adventure. That’s not overselling, as the tagline for the adventure is, “The Master of Ravenloft is having guests for dinner. And you are invited.”
Setting up Strahd’s dining table is easy enough. Add a couple candles, a bottle of wine (preferably red), a simple Barovian-esque menu and the stage is set. As discussed, I did have my younger brother playing the part of Rahadin, and later Escher, and he also bought into the roleplay, to the point of answering the door in character and making the introduction for the Count himself.
We began the game where the players left off and I allowed the first hour of gameplay for the carriage ride, the arrival at the gates of Ravenloft and the lead-in to the Dining Hall. This gave plenty of time to put the dinner in the oven before we sat down in character for the eponymous “Dinner.” What followed was a wonderful session full of tension, dread, laughs and a knock-down, drag-out Round 1 to the epic conclusion of our Curse of Strahd. Here are some points to consider when really playing up the immersion during your horror games.
Why So Serious? Add Some Humor to Your Horror Gaming
Curse of Strahd leads in with this explanation in the introduction:
“There are no stranger bedfellows than horror and humor. Tension can’t be sustained indefinitely, so a dash of humor provides a respite, giving horror a chance to sneak up on us and catch us off guard.”
If you approach horror gaming with the idea that you’re players are going to react like they’re watching The Exorcist for the very first time, you’re going to fail. Plain and simple: All RPGs are a master class in humor improv. That’s one of the main aspects that brings us back to the gaming table again and again.
Knowing this, allow the humor to occur naturally because nothing hits quite so hard as the punch that you weren’t expecting. The inside joke that the players are developing will be the one, in the retelling, that makes them think of the four Nosferatu that broke through the window and vomited blood straight into their faces before proceeding to pick them off one by one. (But, seriously, check out Nosferatu in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft … they NEED to be in your Curse of Strahd campaigns!)
My Curse of Strahd and Rime of the Frostmaiden campaigns are rife with humor, inside jokes and goofiness (like DM Tony’s not-so-veiled impression of Hulk Hogan). But, as the players have attested to multiple times, they are also rife with threat, tension and dread.
So, don’t take everything, especially yourself, so seriously. Lean into the humor to allow for the breaks in tense, dreadful moments. I mean, if your players are willing to show up for an actual dinner party in costume, we can’t take anything we say or do too seriously, am I right?
Turn That Tension Dial Up AND Down
As we pointed out in the episode, the things that create thrills and chills run somewhere between three minutes (rollercoasters) and two hours (horror movies). You can’t keep the adrenaline up any longer before people go deaf to it and check out. Even within a horror movie, there are multiple times where the tension drops and the comic relief comes in, allowing your nervous system a chance to reset.
In a game session, how can you expect to keep that tension going for four hours or more? How about over an entire horror campaign? You just can’t. As DM Thorin pointed out in the episode, players and characters need ups AND downs, they need to have different beats to allow the rest of the story to create the things that they will fear to lose – be that their companions, their lives, their friends or their sanity.
Humor and horror, it turns out, are not such strange bedfellows but rather two sides of the same coin. There are few things that will turn that tension dial down better than laughter and jokes. Don’t shy away from that, use it to your advantage to set the scene for the next dread incident or tension-building encounter that the characters are going to walk into, laughing the whole way.
In our game, the party’s gnome artificer was performing constant costume changes during the entire dinner party and messing around with Strahd and Escher (which is completely in character for her). This provided some comic relief between the tense negotiations with the vampire count, finally leading to the revelation of his nuclear option: Releasing his vampire spawn to surround every village within Barovia and kill every villager on his command (which I pulled straight from Mike Shea at Sly Flourish’s Running Curse of Strahd).
Scared Yet?
Horror gaming is fun for the same reason that horror movies, haunted houses and roller coasters can be: They let us play with our fears and confront them in an environment where the consequences are near zero.
So what makes your players scared? You may or may not know what that is, nor will you necessarily know the how and why of what makes that particular thing scary for them. The one thing that you do know is what makes you scared, and why. I made the comparison to A Nightmare on Elm Street where Wes Craven’s scary childhood moments with a homeless man in a hat and a schoolyard bully named Freddy Krueger (yes, it was a kid he knew in grade school!) turned into one of the most haunting and iconic horror movie antagonists of all time.
You know what makes you scared and what descriptors would set that off. Use that. We’ve seen how filmmakers and authors have used their own fears to bring to life the terror in another’s imagination. In my case, I am creeped out by strange movements and I’m not too fond of bugs, so I used that to set the stage for when the characters first saw Castle Ravenloft up close:
“In the darkness, you could swear that you see the castle walls moving…
As lightning flashes, illuminating the scene, you see that the walls are not moving, but crawling.
What seem like a hundred humanoids crawl along the castle walls.”
Final Thoughts
It doesn’t take long in your DMing career before you want to try your hand at a horror game. Hell, it might be the reason you sat in the big chair in the first place. But, the realization comes quickly that it’s very hard to scare teenagers and adults sitting around the gaming table. It’s possible … just not very probable.
Immersion within the game can be a great help – costuming, music, decorations, etc. – but that’s not something that most DMs can do for every single game. In our “Dinner With the Devil” example, it was a special, one-off that fit the Halloween spirit. However, a DM should not feel that they need to design an entire play with special effects, music, lighting and set design to run their players through a scary story.
So, be easy on yourself. Don’t take yourself too seriously and definitely don’t let the players take themselves too seriously. (Which is generally NEVER a problem!) Play with the tension dial, turn it up randomly throughout the game. As DM Thorin pointed out, the hallmark of good horror is that it is not fair. Put them in a situation where they feel stuck, where there’s not enough time, when their lives and those of their friends and loved ones are threatened. Think about what makes you scared and then invite your players into your mind for a time to play in the darkness.
But, in the end, have fun. Let the story be what it is. As much as I love the original Frankenstein, you can get me to watch Young Frankenstein over it anytime.
Until next time, heroes… LIVE THE ADVENTURE!