I Getting Started How to Bring Horror to Heroic Fantasy —Sandy Petersen Three Basic Rules of Horror Mythos is full of entities that players can interact with, but all of them are malign and creepy, even the sometimes-peaceful ones You can learn the language M R James was a writer in the early 20 century who of ghouls, but even when they are friendly, they are specialized in creepy ghost stories One of Lovecraft’s always eyeing your physique with an eye to how tasty favorite authors, James wrote an essay in which he laid you look Even the small and seemingly harmless zoogs out three rules to construct an effective ghost story occasionally trap and eat visitors to their forest th His rules apply to any type of horror, however, and I Fortunately, the Mythos is filled with terrifying consciously apply them to scenario-building and when purpose Sure, the fungi from Yuggoth might only say running horror-themed games they want a quiet mining base, but there must be more The First Rule: Don’t Use Jargon Nothing spoils the sense of fear more than bringing the player out of the game and back into real life Every time you refer specifically to game rules or introduce concepts by means of technical terminology, you lose a bit of potential creepiness Pathfinder is filled with tactical options, all of which use precise terms, which means you, the game master, need to find ways to avoid saying things like, “Let’s see… the Shoggoth has +11 Initiative He rolls and hits with an… er… engulf attack, inflicting 4d6+22 damage, plus 8d6 acid Is there a saving throw vs acid?” to it than that What are they mining? What is their underlying purpose? Are they using the ore to construct some sort of gigantic bio-techno-magical device? If so, what will it do? At first glance, the great race of Yith appears neutral—even benign That is, until you realize that they periodically exterminate entire sentient species by mass mind-swap to continue their existence! (Humanity has only escaped this fate because it is too puny for Yithian ambition Thus far.) The Third Rule: Set the Tale Somewhere Mundane James points out if you set a ghost story in an esoteric Instead, the rolls without overmuch commentary and inaccessible locale, readers can’t easily imagine You still need to inform the players of damage inflicted themselves in that situation As a result, he set all of his and special restrictions, but you can accomplish this stories in the places and locales he knew well: seaside without parroting specific game rules Experienced hotels, old country churches, public libraries, and so game masters may already be doing this—it is one of forth the basics of drawing players into an adventure The Second Rule: The Enemy Must Be Malign Friendly ghosts aren’t scary—it’s a fact of life This applies to monstrous forces too If the players find out that the fungi from Yuggoth are trying to establish a quiet mining base, all terror of them vanishes The You have a major advantage here, since you are running a roleplaying game Your players normally throw themselves into the roles of their characters, empathizing with them and cross-exchanging personality traits As a result, they know and feel their characters, and it’s easy for them to buy into the setting you choose