Why hasn't there ever been a good horror rpg?
There are very popular horror tabletop rpgs out there...
Why hasn't there ever been a good horror rpg? There are very popular horror tabletop rpgs out there...
Why hasn't there ever been a good horror rpg?
There are very popular horror tabletop rpgs out there...
I always ask myself this question.
System Shock 2 was close but its not really a RPG.
They made a game called Call of Cthulu based on its tabletop, but it didn't do well.
Do you think a competent developer can adapt it better? or its doomed?
I heard some RPGmaker games and JRPGs are horror RPGs but some i played like Parasite Eve and Shadowhearts but i didn't feel they were fitting to be horror RPGs, they treated horror just as a flavor and not an actual tone and atmosphere part of the game.
Someone told me to try Fear and Hunger but im not sure about it. Game looks boring.
Japanese RPG Maker horror games are often misery porn.
It's not meant to make you scared, it's meant to make you feel depressed.
>Japanese RPG Maker horror games are often misery porn.
That can be horror since horror would be:
>an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust
Gore everywhere would count as disgust and shock, unending scenes of misery can be shocking. Horror doesn't always mean being a scary thing.
Just take your favourite horror games and imagine how well they'd do with rpg mechanics. It clashes, but can be done IMHO.
That Call of Cthulhu game was pretty good, honestly.
>Sweet Home
True horror is directly incompatible with power fantasy is the main reason.
Lovecraft is about being small and inconsequential in a mind numbingly vast universe. Also the exact opposite of what people want from RPGs, which is to influence a story and world on top of the power fantasy.
It's difficult to construct a setting that induces real fear when the player is powerful enough to influence the setting.
You can point to halloween window dressing like blood and gore and call it horror but it's not going to work well.
Go back and look up the original Ravenloft setting and it is full of things like:
>paladins are a beacon to the undead and will spend most of their time being hunted down and killed
>elves must wrap their ears in order to not fall under the suspicions of the peasants who live in terror of the unknown every night or they will be mobbed with pitchforks
As you can see, completely incompatible with modern lbgtq "muh rights" and reddit and marvel quip bullshit on top of the other intrinsic faults I listed. The entire genre has moved to taking fantasy less seriously every year, and horror fantasy has to take itself seriously at a thousand times the level of standard fantasy to work.
probably not considered good by /vrpg/'s standard but there's a lot of them, most of them indie, however
a famous example would be fear and hunger
World of Horror was pretty good. At least the EA version, haven't played the full game yet.
VTMB and Black Souls 2 both feature full-on horror segments.
i heard its very repetitive, which sucks because im long time fan of Ito
Is Zelle considered horror, or just surreal?
https://itch.io/games/genre-rpg/tag-horror
Number heavy character autism is completely thematically and tonally inconsistent with horror.
RPG mechanics mean that your character MUST get more powerful and more capable over time, otherwise they feel like a shitty treadmill. Going from being afraid of the monster to it being a walking bag of XP is bad for obvious reasons.
I disagree, I believe facing the unknown and learning how to tame fear makes for a better theme than just running away from the jumpscare badman. Most horror games nowadays consist of killing the source of fear at some point anyways. It's just a matter of balancing the introduction of the scary stuff, for the players to find a way to circumvent engagement with it early on, gathering info on how to defeat it, get strong, get tools and then face it.
Maybe a Ghostbusters rpg would be cool.
Just make he monsters limited and all challenging
Make it so the player can only increase non combat related stats like lockpicking or healing
Short games can get away with no power uppa without it feeling like it's missing ng or depressing
Linda Cubed Again
which game?
good vidya horror needs to come with real fear of loss and most video games would rather be movies without meaningful fail states
People have this misconception that horror is about more than just theming, it isn't. There aren't gameplay mechanics that incite "horror", at most survival mechanics can incite anxiety, but that's a different thing. Horror survival has been a popular combination, but horror exists outside of survival mechanics and can perfectly accomodate any other kind of mechanic.
Horror isn't about being "scary" either, it's about unease, disgust, tragedy, and a generally pessimistic outlook on things. All these things have been done in rpgs, from sweet home to fear & hunger, parasite eve, pathologic, etc. Even diablo 1 would qualify, having a strong gothic horror theming.
The main problem is that genuine horror is less popular to normies than epic power fantasies because it's, by definition, uncomfortable and mentally challenging. You're not going to feel good by the end, and that's the point. Majority of people expect games to be uplifting toys, so they don't seek out these experiences.
The second problem is that the industry is mainly american and to americans hororr means "WOW SPOOKY GHOST" or "WOW SERIAL KILLER" and literally nothing else. So that kind of trite shit dominates the indie scene, and nobody (rightfully) cares about it.
The final problem is that self-proclaimed "horror" fans are braindead morons that don't know shit about dick, permanently dickwaving about the fact that "this game wasn't even scary lol" when there's any amount of combat, pretending that fighting back in any way shape or form automatically disqualifies the game regardless of narrative context. They are morons that killed the genre they pretend to like by asking for stupid things, and they deserve every second of it.
>pretending that fighting back in any way shape or form automatically disqualifies the game regardless of narrative context. They are morons that killed the genre they pretend to like by asking for stupid things, and they deserve every second of it.
Very good post. Horror games can absolutely have actual gameplay mechanics, especially combat.
wtf is that image
the loathsome dung eater
there hasn't even ever been a good horror rpg thread. give up.
Shadow Hearts 1 was pretty good horror. The other two toned it down, though.
Pathologic 1 and 2.
Also making good horror games is hard and requires a strong creative focus, meanwhile the industry is all about picking the path of least resistance and trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible.