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[-] Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 122 points 1 year ago

Writing and playing tabletop RPG horror one gets a real sense of what horror is just a little too personal to be fun. There's a whole lot of safety tools the community has developed (actually crossing over a bit with the BDSM community's tools for safe consent when acting out a fiction). It's really common to survey all players with an exhaustive list of all the potential horrors one could potentially bring to a table. The top five that are people's no gos are sexual violence, harm to animals, reproductive horror, harm to children and body horror.

A lot of horror movie fans are not prepared for how you having agency in the situation of tabletop storytelling can make something you can easily handle watching suddenly effect you even when it's just being described and can misjudge their level of chill and need to tap out mid game. Typical advice on reproductive horror a'la Alien is don't even bother writing a reproductive horror that directly effects a player character. Damn near every table taps out for that, if not the player targeted then someone else at the table.

Alien de-gendering that horror was definitely a masterstroke. There's good reason the chestburster reached cultural saturation.

[-] godot@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

I don’t often get a chance to talk about it, but Lover in the Ice is a fascinating, well regarded module that dives directly into the sort of sexual horror you’ve correctly pointed out as way off all but the most extreme table.

I’m certain, to my bones, that I could run a life changing version of Lover in the Ice. It will never happen. Even my few players who have given me the green light on that sort of content would I suspect tap out pretty fast, and I don’t blame them. I don’t think most people who just play realize how far TTRPGs can go.

I’m okay with never running that story. I get a lot reading modules like that for perspective; when GMs recoil at the thought of running that content it shows them how much more vulnerable they, and their players, are to that sort of horror relative to a shoggoth in the basement. That should prompt them toward creativity in looking for or writing other scenarios.

I do wonder what proportion of people who buy modules like that play them.

[-] 0xD@infosec.pub 9 points 1 year ago

Not sure how much it fits online but I've never played a horror TTRPG and I'd love to try it! I like extreme stuff!

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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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