Horror Themed Shadowrun, How feasible Options

[Piersdrach]

My turn for GMing duties is coming up and I was thinking about taking Shadowrun to a 'darker place'.

I personally have never played or run Shadowrun with darker themes, it has always been the atypical Leverage/A-Team/Mission Impossible style of game.

Anyone have any experiences with Shadowrun on the darker side?
How did you do it if you have?

[Doc Chase]

Horror themes are easy in SR.

One of my last arcs took whatever the team did regarding a certain company and added it to the 'final dungeon' of the arc - in this case it was Universal Omnitech and one of their research facilities.

Over the course of the arc the hacker had penetrated the system looking for paydata and I turned it into Arkham Asylum. I kept with dark themes - lights not working properly in the VR, moldy stone, the sounds of screaming in the cells where the test subject files were kept, agents and IC were orderlies and guards. The VR overlay itself had the hacker in a doctor's coat and carried a black leather bag with tools signifying programs.

The hacker was suitably freaked when she went by the cells and something with a tentacle slapped her on the shoulder and begged her for freedom. She decided to open all the cells...

...Suffice it to say, by the time they got the final job of the arc, it was from a Firewatch team that reported that the entire facility was on lockdown and there was no activity from it after the screaming had stopped some time before. I kept with the themes of darkness and ruin. Emphasize the crumbling and decay. Take joy in the detail of the dark experiments the subjects were performing on their tormentors. I had a bodycult spring up after the hacker for letting them all free, and there were dozens of people that looked like her in the operating and recovery rooms, faces in varying degrees of deformity.

This facility had a good ten floors of horrific fun I had planned for the team. They took the charge they were supposed to blast the facility with, booked it straight down the ruined elevator shafts to the bottom, set the charge and ran like hell. They only had to deal with one archvillain - an infested mage with a Spider spirit riding him. They slowed him down long enough to escape the exploding bomb, but they weren't able to check for a body...He came back later. Muhaha.

[Gyro]

There was a post awhile back about "tooth fairies" from hellboy; I'd look at that (sorry on my phone so I'll link it later). A good old ghoul outbreak in some isolated mountain town that the runners have to investigate; low on ammo but there's plenty of ghouls (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Tiny Deev]

I'm pretty sure it can handle anything you can think of. You just need inspiration. Go play F.E.A.R, I loved that game, and it was creepy as hell! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
If you can translate that feel to a shadowrun game, you are the king.

[Piersdrach]

I am toying with the idea of a "ghoul cult" people lopping off their own limbs for their ghoulish masters to eat, before making the ultimate offering...

[Badmoodguy88]

There would have to be some mind control involved.

I think one of the most important themes of true horror is that things are unexplained. There is some element of mystery. In Doc Chase's example mystery held a lot of importance. Just rampaging monsters hold no horror for us in games. The monsters need to be used to good effect.

The sense of wrongness is also a big part of much horror. Some subtle wrongness that you don't spot at first probably sets off our natural danger sense. It says wake up because something is not right here and you may be in trouble. This of course plays into the whole mystery element and it also ties into atmosphear which is probably equally important.

[Dwight]

My turn for GMing duties is coming up and I was thinking about taking Shadowrun to a 'darker place'.

Like where?

Are you at all familiar with Renraku Arcology Shutdown? Very much survival horror, turn up the weird mojo aspect and you have supernatural.

You haven't read Threats II, right? The section describing a shedim is pretty damn grim.

[TommyTwoToes]

There would have to be some mind control involved.

Like a Wendigo leader.....

Alas poor Chip, we knew him well....
before the Wendigo took him over, and forced him to eat a rump roast.
His own rump of course.
Chip is still the only player I know with a cyber-ass.

I ran a Cthulhu influenced mission. A small bio development firm was experimenting with gene splicing to create more seemless integrations between metas and their cyberware. They were focused on overcoming implant rejection, overstress, and infection problems. What they were doing was using fish DNA in some of the test therapies and inadvertantly creating Deep Ones.

The test subjects had persona-fix chips that made them terrified of leaving the facility where they were being held.

To add some creepiness, I gave them company a psycologist to monitor the patients and the data he stored on their patient files strated attracting Dissonence.

[Summerstorm]

Hm hm... i love to have a horror-themed adventure every few sessions (I pretty much go: Filler, Filler, Main Mission, Background, Filler, Detective Noir, Horror, Action, Background, Main Mission etc and mix it up a bit)

Some workings of the sixth world is very viable for Horror. Some Spirits and Critters automtically become survival/cult horror . But i also found that High-Level magicians and some cyberware automatically reduce the dread:

Aura reading in general is hard to block (And giving information is allways bad in horror) Only some things, which are also magicians can mask their aura to hide (Inhabitation free spirits for example)

Other things is a internal radar: The user can see in perfect darkness and through most invisibility effects and walls. Concealment still works though... must be couplled with high stealth.

Mind reading also uncovers the whole plot in seconds too, if the mage can target something which knows what is going on. The only thing preventing people to do so is that it is horrible obvious and VERY impolite *g*. (Also it pretty much destroys every detective story, if the key persons are not mighty enough to punish the mage for violating them)

This are some of the problems i found, which make the runners, well SURE enough, to not be easily frightened. And remember: Just having a mighty monster with a crapload of powers does not make horror.

[Doc Chase]

It's easy to dodge a mind probe - Deep cover the schlub giving the mission so he doesn't realize what's going on, or have the one pulling the strings out of range.

Good suspense and good horror is about uncertainty. A cockroach scuttling across a pipe in a cistern so quiet you could hear a pin drop is going to make an interesting echo.

Get your players jumping at shadows. Heighten their paranoia. Get them to the point where they start thinking the absolute worst of everything you describe - jumping at shadows, flinching at every scrape and noise from the hallway, questioning every flickering lightscreen they see.

Keep ramping up the tension and get them all focused on one point - maybe it's a rattling box, the sound of someone sobbing or rasping under a desk way off in a ruined corner, something that focuses all of their attention on it - and deflate.

It's an emotitoy, or a clock radio. Everyone has a chance to grin and laugh it off, or berate you.

And that's when the motion sensors go insane with rats (regular or otherwise) fleeing something like the depths of Hell were coming straight toward you.

Or the team's electronics black out when a transformer overloads and drops an EMP nearby (two for one, exploshun surprise!)

Or the tainted Guardian spirit manifests, pissed off as all hell because the team has intruded upon its domain.

Or Alma. Just Alma.

[Dwight]

Giving information is NOT always bad in horror. You have to know enough to be scared.

Assensing results are easy enough to deal with. If they see enough it fries the assenser. Blacks them out, damages them, etc. How you handle that coming in, with rolls, etc I can make some suggestions. It depends a lot on player expectations, how long you expect this to run, and just how much 'survival' you want to emphasize.

[Mooncrow]

Giving information is NOT always bad in horror. You have to know enough to be scared.

Assensing results are easy enough to deal with. If they see enough it fries the assenser. Blacks them out, damages them, etc. How you handle that coming in, with rolls, etc I can make some suggestions. It depends a lot on player expectations, how long you expect this to run, and just how much 'survival' you want to emphasize.

There are things not meant to be seen! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[sabs]

Have the Assensing Mage take temporary essense damage (or magic damage) if he scores too many Assensing hits?

[Dwight]

There was a post a long time back (have the archives been made available) that detailed a Halloween oneshot (set in the Arcology Shutdown incidentally) where rolling enough successes killed the Mage straight out. That is tricky to make work, though.

[Mayhem_2006]

The hardest part of running horror in any modern or futuristic setting is the ease of communication - so the first thing I'd do would be to somehow disable (or corrupt) all of the parties means of communicating with the outside world.

A bit hard on the hacker, of course...

[X-Kalibur]

There was a post a long time back (have the archives been made available) that detailed a Halloween oneshot (set in the Arcology Shutdown incidentally) where rolling enough successes killed the Mage straight out. That is tricky to make work, though.

Just have them make a SAN roll...

Call of Cthulu - what do you mean you took 0 spot? - Hell yeah, I don't want to actually SEE those things!

[Dwight]

Just have them make a SAN roll...

"If you set a target they'll hit it."

It doesn't solve the problem of the players getting particular info that reveals too much. Horror depends on proper info management. Too much and you mute the source of the fear, the parts imagined. Not enough and the tension, the suspense isn't there. Incidentally from what I've seen the later is a MORE common problem for GMs. Especially telling things individually to players. Really, if one player knows it then they all can know it and it'll INCREASE the suspense. A character has become possessed? Don't tell anyone else and it is, relatively speaking *snore*.

Anyway, stepping off the soapbox, how I would probably handle it if this was something meant to last longer than a session is after the roll start describing what the character notes with the "safe" stuff, then get to a point where "...you feel your grip on reality slipping, to you press on?" If they press on it's damage and more info. Then let the player know something like "...you realize you've come the the thresh hold, step beyond and you aren't coming back and aren't going to get much info back to everyone else, press on?" If the do character is dead/totally insane. GM might give a bit of a cryptic utterance from them, or maybe they just drop dead, or their eyeballs peal back and they go unrecoverably catatonic.

[Doc Chase]

Meh, I don't like possessing characters. It's their job to play their chars, not mine.

But I have bias. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Dwight]

Possession of a PC is really, really tough. To be effective while not stepping on other people's turf it needs a lighter touch, more urging rather than a puppet show, than anything in the SR books I think.-

Think The Devil's Advocate, only the Milton-Lomax exchanges are inside the person's head. "Free will, it is a bitch."


EDIT: Incidentally I've run a game with a PC that was possessed for several sessions. It wasn't Shadowrun, though.

[Piersdrach]

Good suspense and good horror is about uncertainty. A cockroach scuttling across a pipe in a cistern so quiet you could hear a pin drop is going to make an interesting echo.

Get your players jumping at shadows. Heighten their paranoia. Get them to the point where they start thinking the absolute worst of everything you describe - jumping at shadows, flinching at every scrape and noise from the hallway, questioning every flickering lightscreen they see.

This reminds me of something that happened way back in the early 90s, 1991 I think , when I was in the military and on guard duty way out in the sticks(Kentucky, Ft.Knox). My unit was on a range(tank range) so we had to pull guard duty at night. 3 of us were out there, we kept the ammo for the tanks in the tractor trailer it came in, they just unhooked the truck left the trailer. So there I was like 1-2am and bored out of my mind, we had a folding chair underneath the trailer, sitting where the trailer hooks up to the truck. When out of the corner of my eye and catch a patch of white moving, I glance over and see a skunk waltzing towards me. I freeze. The skunk continues to walk towards, then completely underneath me(I was sitting on the chair), I hadn't moved a muscle, breathed, nor swatted at the numerous mosquitoes. With that experience fresh in my mind I was quite alert for a while...which leads me, yes I know long set up, to what really got to me
As I was sitting there in that uncomfortable metal folding chair I hear this buzzing sound, it's loud, and something I have never heard before. It's loud, didn;t know if I said that, but I will again. It's like a helicopter coming in, and it's behind me then I hear it land and hear it walking on the gravel(golfball sized gravel no less) one leg at a time click, click, click, click, click, click.
I ran like scared little school girl, ran straight to the deuce n'half climbed inside and slammed the door shut.

To this day I have no idea what it was, but if I hear some bug's individual legs walking on stones...I. am. out. of. there.

[Notsoevildm]

Shadowrun is set in the 6th world. Earthdawn was the 4th world. Earthdawn had horrors. Horrors are nasty...

[Doc Byte]

As always when it comes down to horror in SR, there's the option to revert to the SR-ED x-over.

[Laodicea]

You could have a game full of people who want to play toxic mages that get thousands of karma and inhabit great dragons. That sounds horrible to me.

[Doc Chase]

You could have a game full of people who want to play toxic mages that get thousands of karma and inhabit great dragons. That sounds horrible to me.

Honestly, I'd pull the old kobold trick.

[Critias]

One important thing is to actually check with your players and see how receptive they are to the idea. Don't make a big production over it and call some emergency team meeting or anything, but chat with them -- they're your friends, right? -- and just casually bounce the idea around and see how they take it.

If they're playing shadowrun because they want awesome mohawks, electric guitars, katanas, and machineguns all over the place, they might not like it when their GM tries to turn it into Cthulurun. Likewise, if they're into the mirror shades, trenchcoats, and suppressed pistols; no one wants to be a steely-eyed Robert DeNiro knock-off who suddenly finds themselves screwed by dice rolls into SAN checks and wetting himself.

And nothing will ruin an attempt at a horror game like someone that's not "on board." They won't have fun, they'll ruin the atmosphere for everyone else, and the fallout from ensuing arguments can kill a campaign.

So yes, the tools are there in Shadowrun. You can run a Chicago bug hunt, something with Horrors, the Arcology, ghouls, or just a chase through a dark sewer after a Twisted Path physical Adept...there's plenty of horrible stuff in T6W to fuel this sort of game, and keep perfectly within canon.

It's just a matter of not it will work in your game, with your players and their characters.