Re: [DL] Horror vs Action

[Jesse Ahrens <sprack@trinitel.com>]

I certainly can't speak for anyone besides myself, but I've had the best 
luck starting with minor paranoia and building on it. Small things start to 
go wrong or disappear, contacts fail to show are delayed or found in some 
state near death. I always used "Something Wicked This Way Comes" as a 
template. The menace is always near, but never really palpable or able to 
be found. I also found the Call of Cthulhu books to be insightful into 
building that feeling. As for the kind of horror that involves dreams I 
found that very hard to impress on the players. I imagine if you and your 
group are into it enough you could always try dimming the lights and 
playing something haunting. Let me know if that works, my group would laugh 
their ass off at that. I'd love to hear other ideas too.

>Deadlands is awesome in that it allows you to run different atmospheres 
>within
>the same gaming world. My question concerns how to effectively portray a
>horror atmosphere when running a game with more than one or two posse members.
>
>My adventures have all been solo adventures. I create a plot for one player
>and then if there becomes a need for additional characters, I simply fill the
>temporary roles with NPCs. Running an adventure for a single player makes it
>very easy to 'scare' the player. It makes the player feel alone (because he
>is) and all the horror scenes are that much more intense.
>
>I'd like to start running adventures for larger groups, like 5+ posse 
>members.
>I wondering how other have dealt with keeping up the horror and fear 
>aspect of
>the game with such a large posse. How did you keep it from becoming an 
>monster
>hunting action adventure?
>
>My only thought is to constantly seperate them and have them go on their own
>'mini plots' meeting up with one another periodically.
>
>Thanks in advance for any help in the matter.

Just think of how stupid the average person is, then realize half the 
people are stupider than that!
                                                                         -George 
Carlin