Silent Hill

As a short arc or single session in the midst of an ongoing campaign. Having spent time with the PCs you'll have been able to pick up on their deep personal flaws and then you extrapolate on that.

>>55162510
Poorly

Trail of Cthulhu or Dark Heresy

>>55163263
Pretty much this. Pulling off real and effective psychological horror is not easy. And even if you are an amazing DM if your players make one joke during the session the atmosphere will be annihilated.

>>55162510
Screaming in terror

File: sh_downpour_art_110225_01.jpg (167KB, 1280x723px) Image search: [Google]

167KB, 1280x723px

>>55162510
I would play the Silent Hill RPG (sorry it's in French):

Game: http://www.misterfrankenstein.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/silenthill.pdf
Character Screen: http://www.misterfrankenstein.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sh_ecran.pdf

>>55162510
The trick is to make them physically uncomfortable. I've done this sort of game before. Depending on the theme of the game you're running you can do any of these:

- Put caps on the rear legs of your chairs so they imperceptibly lean forward
- Leave an almost inaudible high pitched noise running in the other room.
- Lights off.
- Turn the heat up, or turn the air conditioning off.
- My players had to delve into the sewers underneath the town, which were filled with poisonous gas. I bought four army surplus gas masks and earmuffs, which they had to wear the entire section.
- Ambient noise, if you can swing it.
- Learn some mild hypnosis. You're not actually hypnotizing your players-- this is more about learning the verbal tricks to get people's brains to over-focus on what you're saying. Good for any campaign, really!
- Don't underestimate how uncomfortable a deliberate silence can be, especially in conjunction with any of the above.

>>55167359
How to gaslight your players

>>55167359
This anon knows what's up. For any horror game to work, you gotta set that mood just right.

>>55167382
In a psychological horror game? Yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

File: Silent Hill.pdf (6MB, 1x1px) Image search: [Google]

6MB, 1x1px

>>55162510
I would run it on Unknown Armies. No adepts allowed except may be some schools. Avatars are allowed. Ritual magic inspired by the setting. Would convert this actually, while ommitting some stupid CoC inclusions like Pyramidhead and Valtiel being gods, etc.

>>55167393
Except he's setting that mood a bit too much.

bumping for interest
i want to know what kind of enemies would fit into such a setting

Probably as 1 on 1, maybe 1 on 2 sessions. You need to capture the psychological trauma that drove the characters to Silent Hill as well (or pull a shattered memories, that's good too).

>>55167887
In a true Silent Hill inspired TTRPG, you'd need to custom make all your monsters. Each one should either be a twisted concept, memory, or feeling connected to one of your players, or connected to the larger story the players have found themselves part of.

File: embrace pain.png (360KB, 500x322px) Image search: [Google]

360KB, 500x322px

>>55162510
Horror is really hard. It's hard to make your players feel afraid. It's hard to build a sense of tension without a long running campaign. It's hard to maintain that tension if the campaign goes more than a couple hours. As soon as one person's phone goes off, any sense of horror is gone. As soon as one person laughs, or opens a can of soda, or makes a joke, or mentions something outside the realm of the game, you're pretty much done. It's just really, really difficult to pull that off. Even if you're a good GM and all your players are really dedicated to the game and really into atmosphere, it's still gonna be pretty much impossible.

For me, I found the only way to do it halfway well was not to try and run a "horror" game. One shots will not work because no one has any true investment. They weren't playing this character last week, and they know they won't be playing next week, so even if they really try, on a subconscious level, they are not committed to it. There's no story to be invested in. Run a campaign that has a chance to build and flow, give them time to develop characters and relationships with each other and NPCs, to build things for themselves and move toward goals. Works well in urban fantasy, can work in sci fi or regular fantasy as well.

Then occasionally run short adventures which are more purely horror themed. Focus on horrific imagery, things they don't fully understand, and creating an actual sense of danger by taking things away from them, like allies, money, possessions, body parts. Hit points are meaningless. Insanity is, for most players, more a reward than a punishment. Take things off their sheet they bought, earned and want. Cut off their arms and kill their sidekicks. Burn down their houses.

In the game, take away things they value. In real life, put images in their heads they will be thinking about later that night while trying to sleep. Run a few more normal adventures, and then do it again.

>>55167919
This!

File: 20c4b195873e75bae57c8496ed1678f6[1].jpg (160KB, 1129x1200px) Image search: [Google]

160KB, 1129x1200px

>>55162510
>So /Tg/ how would you run a Silent hill game

ERP survival horror.

Topic is vaguely related, so how does everybody feel about Don't Rest Your Head? It's one of the few games I actually seem to grasp, because of its narrow focus and my adherence to horror genre. I don't think complete atmosphere of horror will be necessary though? Just players feeling sorry for their poor failing characters while occasionally doing cool shit to make it all worthwhile.