Reply To: Could A Tabletop Game be genuinely scary?

[greyhunter88 1654xp 1]

I’d argue that an RPG certainly can, it just entirely depends on context.

A video game or movie is more thrilling or exhilarating, no doubt. There’s live feedback and response, there is sound design, jumpy visuals, etc. It doesn’t require much engagement from you, because you are kind of ‘trapped’ by the medium itself. You’re staring at a screen, wearing headphones.
You don’t have to give the game or movie permission to scare you, because you can’t help it. If it blasts some loud scream through your headset, it’s going to startle you.

A role-playing game is more collaborative. You have to go into it willing to suspend your own disbelief. If you aren’t willing to co-operate, there’s no way it can be scary. No more than a movie can be scary if you don’t look at the screen.
Things suggested here like music, low lights, and the sort, are all aids to immersion, because they help remove real world distractions and let you put more focus into the game itself, which in turn makes it easier for you to ‘turn your mind off’.

Horror entirely depends on this engagement. This ‘contract’ between viewer and source. RPG’s by nature tend to be more loose in this regard, because you are sitting around a table, eating snacks, with your best friends, etc. The most emotional scene can be interrupted in an instant by someone getting up to grab a drink or making an off-colour joke. If you view other products in the same environment, they’re equally unintimidating.

I produce, distribute, and license genre (mainly horror) movies for a living. I promise you, that of the hundreds I watch every year, not a single one of them is even remotely scary when we’re sitting around in the office playing it on the TV. At BEST you’ll get the collective “Ooooooh” when something gross happens, but that’s it. Sitting around the office table, eating lunch and riffing about the movie is the same kind of environment most people are in when playing RPG’s.

That being said, I’d say my RPGs are about 75% ‘horror’ themed. Have I ever genuinely scared my players? No. Of course not. None of them actually feared for their lives or anything, just like nobody in a theatre is actually really ‘scared’.
Have we gotten goosebumps, or the chills, or jumped at noises? Hell yea. I’ve played World of Darkness around the campfire in the woods, far from civilization, and I promise you that once players really get hooked, and allow themselves to feed off of the environment and the other players, it can be close to what you’d call “scary”.

Is that partly because being out in the woods at night is eerie? Of course. So is being in a dark room. So is facing a bright screen in a dark room, wearing noise-cancelling headphones and wondering if something is moving around behind you right that very second.
Having played in the woods, in old trailers, in abandoned apartments, and in other strange places, I can tell you that playing RPGs there is certainly a lot scarier than hanging out there and talking, so in my books I’d say that counts.

Your mileage may vary, as with everything, and of course some people will genuinely lack the ability to engage with their imagination in a way that would allow them to feel real emotions in something like a game, but they can definitely be just as scary as any other form of entertainment in certain conditions.