The Role Playing Public Radio Forums
General Category => RPGs => : Arvandus April 01, 2011, 02:15:41 PM
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The title says it all. I’ve noticed that the demonic no longer has the fear that it usually has in Rpg’s, at least to me. When I want to introduce horror into a game, I have to put in something otherworldy. For example, I recently GM’ed a game called fortunes fool and some of the main antagonists you can put in front of the players are demons. Now this game is set during the Italian renaissance so these are the traditional horns, red skin, wings type of demons. I was considering putting something like that in the game but I realized that a more lovecraftian type horror might lead to a different play from the characters. I won’t ruin what happens because I plan to podcast it at some point, but I know that if I had simply put a BIG red Demon at the end of the battle, it would be a simple, lets kill it and gets its XP. On the other hand, a monster from the depths of time and space leads to a more “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT” type of reaction.
Even the war-hammer 40k games, which I also GM, deal with more Lovecraft horrors. Although the monsters are called Daemons, the way their corruption can mutate bodies and minds just by looking at them makes them less Dante and more Cthulu.
So, the question I have for all you jaded Role players is this, have we evolved past the point where a traditional demon can be scary to the player. Are we so smart that only things beyond human sight truly scare us. Will our games become truly so evolved that eventual we will fight existential threats, like the nature of Existence. Will you have to roll to understand your place in the universe. Will your Stats be based on the works of Descartes and your powers be based on your understanding of timecube......actually that sounds of kinda cool.
What do you guys think?
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Demons can be pretty cool depending on how you portray them. They are some of the most versatile type of monsters to use. You can make them resemble Lovecraftian monsters like the abominations shown in Dante's Inferno - The Videogame. You can desing them to have human bodies and make deals with mortals, such as Mephistopheles in Faust. They can even be used as incorporeal entities similar to ghosts like they are portrayed in movies like Paranormal Activity or the Exorcism of Emily Rose.
Some other references that you could use, out the top of my head, when designing demons:
- Real real demonic lore and mythology. For example, check out Celtic mythology, especially Druids and their rituals.
- Comics and TV series. Berserk, both the anime and the manga.
- Other RPGs based on demons. World of Darkness and Demon: The Fallen can be mined for ideas.
- Literature has lots of demons. One of my favorites is Lord of the Flies (the pig head on a stick, plus the constant imagery between good and evil.)
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it's more about execution than the type of monster. In my experience, spooky children are far scarier than any lovecraftian monster for example.
I could sell an authentic demon as described in Renaissance era lore if I put a lot of effort into it and set the game up right. Remember, horror is more about loss of control, uncertainty and tension than gore or viscera.
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Demons presented as red, muscular, claw-and-horn are only scarry as powerful fighter with some level of magical abilities. And if it can bleed, I can kill it.
If you decribe a demon as tall (2.5m - 8 feet), hunchback, slender, his body covered with a robe made of loosely sew human skin, with a aura of decrepitude, rotting everything around it, it becomes scarier.
Plan a first encounter where PCs are in contact with it, fight him, and after a few round, the demon turns into liquid and ooze into the ground, out of reach of the PCs (or it turns into a cloud of yellowish disgusting miasma).
The next day, PCs discovered that people who entered in contact with him suffer from a plague/leper which will take a quarter of their life points (or whatever equivalent) every day and cannot be cured.
It can only be stopped and reversed by killing the demon.
Now it is a race to find where is the demon, how they can kill it and how they can prevent it from turning into ooze/mist before they killed him.
Having PCs fighting a almost incurable deadly disease is a very, very effective way to scare them. I used a similar scheme with my players and they told me it was the most stressful scenario I run, where they were considering giving up and running away (as in this case, the disease was link to the proximity of an artefact), which would have sentenced to death hundred of thousands of people...
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Taking the idea of a incurable disease and going further with it, the reason that demon's aren't scary in games such as D&D is that death is only a momentary hold-up, and normaly th worst thing an enemy can do is kill you. Being dead is just a small inconvenience if you can resurrect a dead person. This plays well for heroic campaigns where the heroes are supposed to be people with the favour of powerful gods and doing deeds that the average peasant could never dream of attempting. In this sort of campaign, a demon will never have impact since it will seem like "just another monster to fight and get XP from."
If your campaign has a darker tone, then you need to have a method where death is effectively a stop. Of course, killing as many players as you can is the staple of a bad DM, so don't kill them outright. Instead, give them permanent injuries, diseases that are not easily cured, and even a sort of mental health with which people can go insane. If this sounds like Call of Cthulhu, well, it should, since CoC does many things right to make monsters scarier than D&D monsters. However, you can take many of those concepts and apply them to a fantasy world too.
Imagine if a PC gouges out an eye, or lose a thumb, or carry a disease so deadly that they will eventually die from it. All of these things have a huge impact on the game, much more than "Oh, I'm dead. Time to make a new character." Demons can fit very well in this context since in mythology and literature, demons have tried to steer people to the wrong path. Let's take the example of a demon that makes a pact with a mortal, in which the mortal's soul is forfeit in exchange for tremendous power. In a heroic campaign, a hero might find someway to break the pact or outsmart the demon later on. (Hence the whole idea behind Warlocks in D&D 4th ed.) In a dark campaign, it needs to be something permanent. You can even take things a bit more seriously, for example, if the demon gets tired of waiting until the player dies amd starts siphoning the soul little by little. Maybe the character loses his sense of taste or smell, or his eyes turn gray, or his hair turns white. That is likely to be scarier than simply dying outright. And in the end, even if the player wants to give back his power, it will be too late because of the contract.
Of course, the players must be willing to have such a dark fate for their character. If you give the chance of signing a contract with a demon to a PC, if they immediately say "Yes" then you need to stop them before they do something stupid. Explain the heavy consequences this will have, how this is not a matter to take lightly. Know your players, and if you know that something like this might upset a player that is too fond of a character, then don't offer it to them unless you want to deal with drama later on.
Sorry if I went off-topic, but that could be a way for a demon to have more impact on a game.
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I'd stop playing if my DM handed out permanent injuries and disfigurments like that. Same reason why I refuse to play 1st and 2nd edition D&D. "You die/areinjured/automaticallygetwreckedhahahanothingyoucandowillhelp" just is not my idea of fun. Bv
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It depends on the type of campaign, all of this would never work in a heroic campaign, but it certainly could work in a darker campaign. Again, it's up to an agreement between both the players and the DM and not just the DM being an asshat. It also has to do with knowing your players, and if they are willing to let their characters be injured in these ways for the sake of a more interesting plot.
As a player, I would gladly let my PC get injured if it gave an opportunity to enhance my character, give him a flaw that I would like to roleplay, or make the plot more interesting.
A good example for this was Cody's PC in the New World Campaign. He agreed that he would give up all the pleasure of life in exchange for removing a curse, but Ross never forced that outcome. And in my opinion that was one of the more interesting choices saw in the New World, since Cody knew that this would have a permanent effect on Locke yet did it for the sake of developing his character.
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It depends on the type of campaign, all of this would never work in a heroic campaign, but it certainly could work in a darker campaign. Again, it's up to an agreement between both the players and the DM and not just the DM being an asshat. It also has to do with knowing your players, and if they are willing to let their characters be injured in these ways for the sake of a more interesting plot.
As a player, I would gladly let my PC get injured if it gave an opportunity to enhance my character, give him a flaw that I would like to roleplay, or make the plot more interesting.
A good example for this was Cody's PC in the New World Campaign. He agreed that he would give up all the pleasure of life in exchange for removing a curse, but Ross never forced that outcome. And in my opinion that was one of the more interesting choices saw in the New World, since Cody knew that this would have a permanent effect on Locke yet did it for the sake of developing his character.
I thought this was really cool because it had no real mechanical effect (i.e. powers, +/-, etc.) but it was still quite significant and an allowed "price" because both Ross and Cody could trust each other to carry it through and actually have an impact on the actions. In other words, he didn't just give up his pleasure then go back to drinking, partying, and whatever else (but without pleasure)...
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the old world of darkness game Demon the Fallen is a goldmine for this kinda thing too btw
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As for physical injuries, they can also lead to character development.
(http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/5494/berserkmanga.jpg)
Right eye gouged out, cut his left arm off. Still a bad-ass.
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As for physical injuries, they can also lead to character development.
(http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/5494/berserkmanga.jpg)
Right eye gouged out, cut his left arm off. Still a bad-ass.
While Berserk is easily the best thing to come out of Japan, his injuries don't actually develop his character - they're just side-effects of the nothing but the worst things ever that happen to Gutts. :p
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I would consider them to be a reminder of the "event" that caused them, as he carries both physical scars as well as mental scars that will be with him for the rest of his life. As a symbolic form to show the change of the character, it does the job quite well.
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That's one way of looking at them, sure. But aside from their use/disability in combat (particularly the metal hand+forearm which he uses to deflect blades) they never really come up. Unlike say, Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3, Gutts never really suffers from any reduced accuracy due to depth perception, so that injury is just cosmetic.
In fact, he completely forgets he lost his arm.
[spoiler]At least until Caska ends up falling off a cliff and he reaches out to catch her with the metal hand, which of course, can't close.) [/spoiler]
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The injury doesn't need to have a in-game bonus or penalty in terms of game mechanics, though if the player wants to have that disability in exchange for a bonus then that's fine as long as both the DM and the player agree. What I mean is more in terms of character development and making the game more interesting.
The way I see it, the injuries may have not changed Guts that much at first glance. But I think it acts as a constant reminder of what happened to him and how much he has changed when compared to how he was at the beginning of the series.
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The injury doesn't need to have a in-game bonus or penalty in terms of game mechanics, though if the player wants to have that disability in exchange for a bonus then that's fine as long as both the DM and the player agree. What I mean is more in terms of character development and making the game more interesting.
The way I see it, the injuries may have not changed Guts that much at first glance. But I think it acts as a constant reminder of what happened to him and how much he has changed when compared to how he was at the beginning of the series.
A fair point.
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oh man I can't believe I hadn't thought of this until now - the Hellblazer comics are full of traditional demons and they can be scary as fuck.
Look at the Exorcist too. Pazuzu is a motherfucker.
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The point of making something scary, is that it should have some degree of "inevitability": too strong to be fought, too weird to remain sane, incurable.
The point is not to cripple permanently the PCs to the point players don't have fun anymore in playing them, but to bring back a sense of danger.
In D&D, fights are normal events, so is getting wounded and healed, or possibly ressurected. If death is not permanent and any injury can be healed easily, no fight, no opponent is ever going to be scary unless there is something else at stake that cannot be undone.
Destruction of a friend/family/city/nation/continent/world
Loss of something dear: family items, rare artefact
Loss or damage of something personal: sanity, hands, foot, eye... which could be restore, but in a form that will be a constant reminder of the encounter.
I personally love sanity loss: developping a phobia or other mental troubles is usually never enough to make a PC unplayable, but it has a "weight", and players know/feel that the more of these phobia they have, the closer to permanent retirement their character is.
To make something scary, you need to instill a sense of doom, a threat of something which cannot easily be undone.
In my modern fantasy game, there is no ressurection possible, hence any fight is carefully weighted before being started - and I roll all my dice in front of the players, so there is no fudging of dice. They know I won't try to kill them, but I won't save them neither of a awful roll, even less from their own bad decision.
Also, rarity of a threat makes it scarier. If demons pops out every adventures, PCs & players will become seasoned demon fighters and it is normal that they won't be as scared or impressed by Belzeball III jr after a while. They might even look for a worthy opponent to enhance their demon hunter status.
On the other hand, if suddenly you toss in front of them a powerful undead, with ability that they are not used to counter, spells that they have never seen, they will wonder "how can I protect myself from that ?" "Can i dodge it ? Survive it ? Cure it ?". Or maybe they discover that it comes back each time more powerful, with a better knolwedge of the PCs' weakness. It can be even better if the undead (or whatever suitable monster) looks like a demon, or is mistaken for a demon and suddenly proven techniques against demon do not work - maybe kicking once the whole party ass.
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Guys, this has been a gold mine of ideas for me. Not just for Fortunes fool but other games as well. Im already thinking of how to mess with one of my characters who made a deal with a demon in my Dark heresy game. He has been a bit of a bastard but hell, he's a demon. He could do so much worse ;D .
And ya, Gutts from Berserk is the most badass thing to come out of japan. Just thought Id say that. The theme of a normal but strong willed human (well before he got that berserker armor in the manga anyway) fighting agaisnt impossible odds and forces beyond humanity was a concept I always found fascinating. Its one of the themes that attracted me to warhammer 40k. Most likely, you and everything around you is doomed, but you fight anyway and either live for one more day or just fall into death or corruption. Its a theme I try to stick too in Dark Heresy.