What are the most effective type of horror quests/sessions?

>>54937134
Horror RPGs require that your players be invested in their character. Not every group will get into it because a good horror game demands that players give a shit about what's happening. Breaking immersion will kill a horror game. Anyone running a horror game has an uphill battle to fight because they are dealing with a bunch of people who are probably well versed in the tropes of horror, who are separated from their character's perspective by a greater degree than you might find in a movie.

What works to create fear in literature and movies will not work in tabletop. Describing a bloody body dropping from the floor above doesn't do much to scare players. Instead, take a hint from video games. Make your players helpless against an unknowable and extremely powerful foe. Put them into a situation where they have to make a choice that they know is a bad one, but it's the only way to move forward.

When I run CoC scenarios I always tell my players that the system will be blatantly unfair to them. I tell them that survival is probably the best they can hope for, and I warn them that trying to fight anything would be like trying to barefist fight a grizzly bear IRL.

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>can it even be done.
Yes, yes it can. Exceptionally well.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12130366/

>>54937753
Ah, classic.

>>54937134

Yes it can be done, but you need to have everyone be down for it.

I personally enjoying playing these games in full-skeptic mode. It's a blast playing the character in a Cthulhu game who refuses to believe in all the alien shit.

I've successfully done two horror scenarios in non-horror games. It's not enough to have "spooky" things, there has to also be extreme confusion or powerlessness. The feeling of being trapped is also important.

>>54937134
Almost any genre can be successfully translated to pen and paper rpgs, but you NEED the following:

A group that is into it. You CAN'T have horror if there's one player who's just breaking the fourth wall or intentionally acting against the spirit of the game/setting. The point is to experience the tropes, not to "defeat" them by meta-knowledge and common sense.

A system that allows the players to fear for their characters. This rules out almost every combat-centric rpg since threats aren't scary if the player characters are always equipped to handle them, and to survive them.

Basically don't have a group that tries to play it like they play D&D sessions, and don't use D&D with a fear system tacked on or something stupid like that.

This pretty much rules out running horror one-off sessions in normal dungeoncrawl rpgs, since it won't be scary no matter how much you dim the lights and throw ghosts at the players.

Never make your horror known and defined, subtle wrongness is the way to go.
To be honest I never been affected by horrors of any medium. What would many consider a nightmare is but a fun adventure to me. That said, I find that giving players something to lose makes them much more invested in their characters. Powers, artefacts, a person that cares for them, or merely is hotter than anything they're going to get. It turns a suicidal lunatic into a paranoid wreck. Then subtly put your players against each other.