Add risk and non-supernatural horror to the game, Diseases and torture Options

[SL James]

... Yet.

[ronin3338]

The hot thing at the Torturer's Ball this year? Vise grips and teeth. Simple, inexpensive, and teeth make a popping sound right before the screaming starts.

Yep, right up there with bamboo slivers and jumper cables. Sometimes old school is the best.
:evil:

[Fresno Bob]

Yeah, I read that spread in Torturer's Quarterly by Rolag the Merciless. Looks like jumper cables are shaping up to be the new rack.

[Wounded Ronin]

Man, this thread makes me think about how cool it would be if there were a Torturer's Ball held in some East Village club with a S&M theme and, like, creepy human rights violators from all over the world went there wearing their general suits.

[John Campbell]

[fistandantilus4....]

[PBTHHHHT]

[fistandantilus4....]

so now you're playing 'pretend' with an S&M theme?

[warrior_allanon]

one thing you also forgot from seige warfare was dumping boiling oil through the murder hole on the enemy, now john ringo came up with a variation in "March to the Stars" in which they dumped unheated fish oil into the causeway and then tossed a couple of WP grenades into the mix.

I've done something similar in which i took and used the mini-splash grenade rules and loaded them with liquid propane. Two of those in an inclosed hallway followed by a white phosforus grenade or even a HE grenade makes a very BIG explosion.

[fistandantilus4....]

just be glad you hadn't been hit with a fireball before you tossed those off!

[PBTHHHHT]

[Crusher Bob]

Getting biologic oil products to burn is pretty hard, they have flash points around 600-700F (315-370C). Making volatile fire weapons without refined petroleum products is quite difficult. This is why Greek Fire was such a big deal.

[Wounded Ronin]

OK, one of my entries for Tisoz's fiction contest actually links to this thread.

[Krashlocke]

I've found that throwing players into horrifying situations is incredibly rewarding for roleplaying and for showing characters that there aren't always black and white answers for every moral question. I believe darkest horror comes from within the metahumans themselves. You don't fear psychopaths in the movies, because they're obviously crazy - it's the ones in real life who appear perfectly normal, with families, friends, jobs, and houses that scare us all so completely.

I love watching players squirm when they find out that the nasty-looking ghoul who they were hired to kill is on the hit list because he stumbled on some video footage of some corp-exec's nice-looking kid lovingly skinning a dog alive just to hear it howl in pain.

It's also excellent when you can delve into the psyche of the players themselves and find out what disturbs them. Common fears such as enclosed spaces, clowns, needles, darkness, heights, blood, bugs, rape, cannibalism, suicide, mutilation, loneliness, or general anxiety are all easy to touch upon. This is a little bit of metagaming but you don't have to make it obvious.

On mutilation or torture: Think of places that are easy to hurt and cause immense pain or discomfort, such as feet, hands, mouths, eyes, &c. Describe what's going on in gory detail. Words like "entrail", "sinew", "tissue", and "seeping" are all good examples of descriptors I use to disturb my PCs. Water torture is boring and overdone - how about suspending the PC in the dark and having their feet sliced at with razorblades until they are oozing blood and then spread honey on them for the pet tiger and his sand-paper-like tongue to lick it off. I've no doubt that some of the distressed and raw flesh will fall of with it. Doesn't that sound more cool than just cutting off toes?

On rape: don't make it the boring cliche "Bubba"-style homosexual prison jump - introduce a psychologically damaging element to it. Use your imagination or even look at actual cases. For instance, it's almost always someone you know and trust. It's generally about power and domination - use that.

Other tricks I use to make things creepy: Make the threat one that is obviously supernatural only to find out that it's either not supernatural at all or that it's not the true motivation behind the threat. Consider the malicious creature rumored to be responsible for murders in a local neighborhood that is actually a Spirit of Man summoned by the husband of a woman who ghouled and lost all of her willpower.

Just a few ideas. I like running horror games and adding elements of horror to complicate things for my PCs.

[emo samurai]

Dude, aren't ghouls blind?

[Krashlocke]

So why does he have the friggin video? Conspiracy... I'll let you be the one to guess...

[hyzmarca]

Ghouls are only blind if they have their original eyes. It is fairly easy to get new eyes.

[fistandantilus4....]

.. hehe .. especially for ghouls

they're called 'left overs'

[PBTHHHHT]

[hyzmarca]

Yes. Yes we do.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Glyph]

It depends on what you consider a "good" roleplaying experience. Some people might go for horror roleplaying, but others might not enjoy it at all, especially in a game like Shadowrun, where the premise is that you are playing a tough professional character. Not everyone wants to be fully immersed in the game, especially if it is dealing with unpleasant situations. Who wants that when they come to the table to have fun and unwind from the stresses of everyday life? I'm not saying horror roleplaying is bad for everyone, but you definitely want to know ahead of time if it is your group's preference.

Even then, you should be very careful bringing up real-life things in the game. For instance, if a woman in the group was raped by a teacher once, she probably won't appreciate it if her character in the game gets coerced into non-consensual sex with a Johnson who could send her parents to prison.


Now, on the subject of horror, with a willing group, I think things that are completely out of the player's control are only terrifying up to a point. Real terror comes when you are still actively participating in the game, trying to escape or survive. When you are frantically trying to convince the cult leader that you aren't a spy, you are involved. Once you fail and they take out the torture implements, it is out of your hands again.

Real terror isn't being chained up in a cell. It's when you desperately try to squirm out of your bonds, and with one sprained wrist and another bleeding one, crawl into the dark air duct that might lead to the only way out - or to another dead end. You hear a snarl ahead of you. A devil rat, or something even worse? Wounded, with one good cyberspur, you frantically attack the thing, then grunt and squeeze past the furry, bloody body of whatever it was. Now you see a faint light ahead of you. You struggle to pry the rusty grate open, as you hear some kind of drone whirring behind you - a cleaning bot, or an exterminator one, or one with tranq darts that they sent out when they saw the empty cell? Just in time, the grate pops off... and falls a long distance. The vent opens on the side of a steep cliff. But there is a narrow ledge below, that you might be able to barely get to. And so on...

[Wounded Ronin]

Indeed. That's why some of the things written up, like being dragged behind a vehicle, are probably escapable by a great many SR characters.

[Wounded Ronin]

So, I actually wrote a story for Tisoz's fiction contest that links to this thread. I think that makes me awesome.

[eralston]

I wouldn't have commented on this; however...

I have Giardia when I was <2 and it put me in a coma for days and I almost died... (for the record I was in the US at the time of infection)

That's about it.

Oh yeah, horror in RPing only works if your players are really attached to their characters. I know one time I ran a spike through a character (attempting much the same as described squirming) and the whole team just left them...it was sad...then the guy just went "yeah, I didn't like him anyway, I understand why you guys left him"