How do you prepare a horror game that's actually scary?
Most of us can think of frightening images from TV, movies, books etc but grounding images in the story so that you get a strong foundation of looming terror is the real trick! Everyone needs to be tense so that the big reveal actually HITS.

The Shape of Horror

Jump to the Horror Template

Horror stories aren't just scary stuff, they are stories first and foremost, meaning they need to be about something. It doesn't have to be super deep (but it tends to be, since horror looks at our fears and our fears say a lot about us). What the story is about is its core theme. But don't worry, I'm not throwing you in the deep-end. We're going to work from a formula to get you started:

  1. Image, which helps us find the
  2. Theme, which defines the
  3. Horror, who has left us a trail of
  4. Terror, in the form of
    • Evidence, which is reflected or contrasted by the
    • Setting

Image

Let's start with the image-- a scene, visual, or concept that you find unsettling:

If you're new to prepping horror games, I strongly recommend you start with an image that frightens you. As you gain more experience, you can start from an image that frightens other people or an image that's mundane and then try to make it frightening (as a challenge).

Theme

Once you've got the image, pry it open to see the theme underneath. The easiest way to do this is to repeatedly ask "why is this scary?" and make a list of possible answers, getting as specific as possible. From our previous examples, let's take:

This is scary because:

Look at that, a pile of themes! But we can dial in a bit more, refining those first themes into something broader in term of subject matter, while still keeping the idea specific. ROUND 2!

DING DING DING! I feel like we hit it with the last one. In this image (friend with upside down face), the scary element and the person we're concerned about protecting are the same thing. To me, this is the most interesting theme, and the one we'll focus on. But the other themes (mundane evil, doubting one's sanity, unfathomable challenges) can all be used to flesh out the story and the world.

The Horror

The next step is to actually define the Horror: the monster or villain behind it all. If you are writing a story, this can be a little wibbly wobbly, but if you are running a game, you have to understand this really well. Horror games are largely about discovering the rules of a new reality, and the GM has to have a strong understanding of those rules or the discovery process will feel haphazard and unsatisfying. The Horror should be a manifestation of the theme, and it can be really literal. In literature, being too literal with your monster can feel heavy-handed, but in TTRPG, where most of us aren't showing up to do literary analysis and are just trying to figure out what's going on, it can be exciting and new. Our monster is the physical manifestation of not being able to save those you love from themselves -- this means (to me) that our strange friend can't be a doppleganger or illusion, that has to be our actual friend who has been altered in some way by their own actions

If I'm being honest, at this point, I'd typically skip ahead to the Setting, which is an aspect of the Terror, because genre will do a lot to define what kind or horror we're dealing with and genre and setting go together, but I'm trying to do things in order for this demo so bear with me.
What if the monster is a creature that takes people's humanity in exchange for boons? Or maybe the horror is some sort of parasite that latches on to people when they go to a specific place (ideally one defined by greed, or some other negative behaviour).

The Terror

Ok ok, I can't make a final call on the nature of the Horror without thinking about setting, so let's move to the Terror. The Terror most of a horror story -- it's all the tension leads up to the big reveal, what makes an image read as scary rather than silly. It's the setup, the tone, the atmosphere. It's the anticipation. Without the Terror, the Horror feels slapstick. The right Terror can make any image a Horror. The Terror is also the hardest part to write or prepare, which is why I put it last. I also divided it up into two parts, to simplify things: the Setting and the Evidence.

The Terror: setting

The Setting is the location our story takes place. It should speak DIRECTLY to the Theme, either aligning with it or dramatically contrasting with it. Let's come up with some examples for both.

Aligning (somewhere people often hurt themselves somewhat intentionally, in some way): Contrasting (somewhere we'd expect people to take care of themselves):

Looking at these options, I dislike the ones that get into addiction the way I've seen it tackled too many times, and I'm not really feeling the contrast settings (although typically, I find these end up being more ominous). I'm IMMEDIATELY interested in the academic setting. As a recovering academic myself, who watched my friends to irreparable harm to their bodies in the names of academic acheivement, this feels like a really poignant place for a story about self-destruction. It's a setting I know well, which will make it easier to prepare and improvise in. And while I've heard that story enough times for it to be familiar, I think if we introduce a sci-fi or mythical flavoured Horror, this could still feel fresh. I decided to go fantasy, but for contrast I'll use a modern university of glass and steel, instead of a brick and ivy traditional dark academia setting.

The Horror, again!

With this in mind, we can flesh out the Horror a bit more. They need a physical appearance, a motivation, a method of operating, and a vulnerability. Drawing on our original list of themes, I want this monster to appear mundane, but uncanny. I think they just look like another student, but they have no pores, no flyaways in their hair, never a spot of lint or wrinkle on their clothes. They don't attend classes, but just loiter around the coffee cart, cafeteria, library, and campus pub. Their smile is a little too big. Their teeth a little too white. For their motivation, as a faerie, I think it's mostly mischief, greed, and distain for humans. They see people as foolish, eager to ruin their own lives. The faerie is immortal and bored, and takes these desperate students' humanity to shape themselves into a human and deepen their understanding (and distain) for our species. Their MO is something close to an adderall dealer on a campus. People "know a guy", and this is the guy. But sometimes they'll extend a helping hand to someone who looks desperate (very Ursula). They might literally give the students a pill to take, but it's a placebo. The magic has nothing to do with the pill, it's just something our feeble minds can understand. Their vulnerability is that they can't take your humanity unless you agree to it, and they cannot lie directly, and that people who have never interacted with them can see the effect of their magic. But they can still rip out your throat with their teeth, so don't get too cocky.

The Terror: Evidence

The final piece of the puzzle is the evidence. This monster didn't start at the beginning of the story: they've been at it a while. Let's leave a trail of bread crumbs for our players to discover. Your affected friend just got a big grant they've been dreaming of. There are posters around campus warning students about the dangers of performancing enhancing drugs. And maybe there is a student with his hands on the wrong side who had his throat ripped out by blunt, human teeth, bleeding out in the nearby manicured greenspace.

And there we have it! As a GM, you can prep as much detail as you want for each aspect (Image, Theme, Horror, Terror [setting and evidence]), or you can rely more on improvisation, using the Theme as your touchstone. You need to make a new setting? Pull from ones that mirror or contrast the Theme. Need more Evidence? Maybe your players go to the off-campus pub and see that everyone there is distorted already. Maybe the players stop seeing the distortions after interacting with the Horror, making it much harder to track them. Once you have your North Star, it's much easier to navigate!

Horror Template

Image

something frightening (from real life or imagination)

Theme

What was frightening about it? What are we *actually* scared of? Dial down until you have a few possible themes, then pick your favourites.

The Horror

The villain or monster behind it all that personifies the theme.

The Terror

Everything leading up to the Horror.