As the title says, I was wondering what'd make for good horror in the medium, and thought I'd try to ask here!
Resist the urge to run Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons. Those systems empower the PCs to fight evil, and win. That power undermines the horror so completely, it may as well just be a coat of paint. You might think "hey, what if I just make the monster too strong to actually fight?" That's going to lead to a TPK 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, the spellcaster will pull a wild move you didn't anticipate and come out on top anyway.
Nonsense, Pathfinder and D&D (not 5e) do horror fine. I mean, obviously, if you just dump the monster in front of them and tell them it's a scary fight you're not going to get anywhere, but other games don't do that either. The horror comes in the build up, the discoveries they make along the way, and the feelings of helplessness they induce.
You can't fight a small town tradition that's just a little bit off, or a room full of humanoid bones that are unusually small. Combat has already finished when the party realises the monster they just defeated was only a pawn of something even more sinister. There's nothing to roll initiative against when the party is discussing what they've discovered so far and can't quite get the pieces to fit together.Overwhelming personal danger from the monster itself is an incredibly small part of horror, and 5e couldn't balance a fight to save its life, but 4e and PF2e are extremely built for it. From a skill challenge as "combat" against an enemy that can't be beaten, to a PL+3 statblock and some hazards for a challenging fight with a high likelihood of killing players without causing a TPK, you can very much tune the difficulty of combat. Even PF1 and 3.x can do a good job at lower levels.
I'm a big proponent of using the right system for the job, but horror is such a broad, circumstances dependent genre that it's a lot more about using the right horror for the system. There's plenty of classic horror tropes that Ellen Ripley would shrug off, which is why she faces xenomorphs instead. A warhammer space marine wouldn't find a zombie apocalypse particularly inconvenient, but trudging through a chaos and xenos infested hulk is still pretty terrifying for them. All horror has to be customised to fit the context.
Dread is commonly recommended but I haven't tried it myself yet.
Trophy is another one. Listening to their podcast, I found it creepy indeed.
I love a horror game.
First having a system designed for horror will really help you to build tension. As someone else said D&D etc are bad for horror because you're supposed to be powerful, it can work but takes more effort.
Next you need player buy in, everyone needs to want to be a little scared or uncomfortable. You're also very unlikely to get horror movie levels of scared and trigger that fight or flight response as you're all sat round a table playing games together.
Having a good session zero for horror is especially important, to make sure you do it safely, have your lines and veils or your X card available and discuss your boundaries. Some people will be fine with body horror but can't manage anything with children or whatever.
Pacing is key to horror, leave the monster in the dark as long as possible, let the players imagine it and what is going on before you show them with a description. Give them downtime to decompress after a particularly tense moment. Let them make jokes but don't join in during the tense bits, join in during the chill out section.
If your looking for recommendations: Trail of Cthulhu (gumshoe) was great. I ran a SCP style game, just picked a monster and had the PCs try and work out what was happening.
Delta Green is a really easy system to intro new people to, it's d100 roll under and you're playing X-files so people have a strong base to work from. Has some great modules to get you started.
Mothership is wonderful and my current obsession. It's also d100 roll under and it's basically Alien/s in terms of the setting but you could easily fit in whatever you wanted sci-fi wise. The modules that come with the box set are brilliant.
It's easy to inject horror into most settings, my party were really light hearted and jokey in Blades in the dark but I had a few sessions where an automaton was hunting them which they found genuinely scary.
Honourable mention the Fate horror toolkit mostly for the GM advice.
Happy to give thoughts on anything horror related if you've got more questions.
Next you need player buy in
This is huge. I tried to do a horror game once and one of the players just wasn't taking it seriously, and it ruined it completely.
I've run 10 Candles a number of times and had an absolutely fantastic time every single time. It's perfect for a horror one shot and character creation is built right into setting up the game. Definitely talk with the group beforehand whether you all want to play a more light hearted comedic horror or something scarier.
https://youtu.be/GfePLMYmA7k
I want to bring up "Silent Legions". It's an OSR horror game by Kevin Crawford. Softcover is $25 on drive thru rpg. It has tools for setting up Antagonists and world creation. Its simpler to run than Call of Cthulhu and cheaper than Delta Green. Great system and uses the same OSR style system as any of his other stuff so is real easy to learn and run.
