Reply To: Could A Tabletop Game be genuinely scary?

[kiranamida 5791xp 1]

I think that most games would struggle to be truly frightening experiences because of the amount of control that they give players.

I would posit that most horror is predicated on a lack of control. Whether it’s creatures from beyond or a mad killer, most horror works as the protagonist has a lack of control over what is happening in the world around them and has limited agency against it. This anything-could-happen situation is what drives most scary situation and the question of what-if.

By design, a lot of games don’t have this as they have a codified set of elements and rules on how to use those elements, meaning the scope of what can happen is typically a finite thing. I agree that role playing games can get away from this with a good GM as that anything-could-happen vibe exists but with your typical board/card/war-game you have a known set of pieces and a known set of rules over what they can do. It’s hard to be scared of something if you know the limits of what it can do.

Addendum: and I don’t mean scared in the “that thing is scary because it could wipe out an entire squad sense”, I mean in the “oh god, oh god, what is going on, why is this happening, where did it go” sense.