Hi, just wondering if anybody has ever run any Horror style games in a Star Wars setting...

My PC's have just been hired by Buaku the Hutt to find a route through a nebula to allow his ships to escape from an area of space that has been turned into a secure sector by The Empire. I was thinking of having them find a lost ship whilst plotting their route through and have things get spooky as hell when they board to investigate! At the moment though I've not decided what will make it spooky! All 3 of my players have played a lot of Cthulhu previously so I'd like to really put the frighteners on em! Horror's not really my area of expertise so any tips on creating atmosphere & how to keep them nervous throughout would be great if anybody has them.

No experience in SW roleplay but for creepy nervous in other RP's I always find the GM passing little paper private messages to individual players privately gets the paranoia pumping in the others which encourages nervousness... "whats he telling him I wonder?"

Then if the paper notes have creepy things on, like disembodied quiet far off whispers, this can un-nerve the first player but then after that, if a different player gets a note, the first player wonders if it was similar to his message (recreates the scenario of somebody seeing the facial expression or body language of anothers discomfort at hearing a far off whisper). The more you can occupy the players minds wondering whats going on with the whispers and the other players, the more ditracted they get from noticing other things and its then easier to surprise them with things right under their noses.

can be fun

Yeah, I use horror all the time. In general, our game is very gritty and grindhouse.

I remember the comics in the early 80’s were notably darker than the movies and frequently contained horror elements.

Some of the official adventures are horror-based, there’s one where an entire mining settlement is wiped out by murderous droids and some of the bodies are arranged in dioramas. The droids are just standing around, whistling innocently, as the PCs explore the carnage...

Probably our darkest moment was the F&D adventure in the Beta book, which ended up as a stealth parody of a slasher film, only this time the girls had lightsabers and psionics and hunted the frat boys down.

In general, every element we use is darker and more unknown. The Force is little understood, even by the Jedi, and the supernatural elements are indifferent to sentients at best and sinister at worst. There’s no friendly ‘Force ghosts’ – supernatural elements feel more contemporary like ghosts and demons.

One of the PCs was raised in an Alliance hothouse where Force-sensitives were supposed to be shaped into killing machines. She went crazy, killed everyone and escaped; she now believes her powers are the result of ‘demons’ in her head. Another PC Force-sensitive is possessed by the ghost of another student who died that day.

Oh, and ‘holocrons’ all contain the disembodied spirits of the most ruthless and evil Jedi masters, seeking immortality through possessing unsuspecting Force adepts...

And you can do horror without the supernatural too. Our Droid Tech PC has a droid protector, who she believes isn't really sentient or has human emotions. Unfortunately, he's madly and obsessively in love with her and has started surreptitiously murdering her boyfriends out of jealousy.

In all of the above examples, the horror is personal , and it works better for us that way.

In terms of 'official' stuff, there are novels like Death Troopers and Dark Harvest.

I've used horror a few times in my games - and last October a few community members and myself got together and made this;

The Force Explorer

It's a horror-filled halloween fun ride.

Horror can be used and employed in Star Wars.

The trick however is to not overdo it, as what's meant as a horror-themed session can devolve into a campy comedy session. To quote Alfred Hitchcock, the thrill is not in the bang, but in the anticipation of the bang.

"Debts to Pay" is the adventure that Maelora mentioned with the droids (comes with the EotE GM's Kit), and when I ran it for my group the players were suitably freaked out, most especially by how one of the victims towards the end was discovered. The printed intro for the adventure makes it seem like this will be a simple blue milk run for the PCs, and it's only after they land that they begin to pick up that something is very much wrong here.

Years back in his Star Wars Saga Edition Alt-U campaign, GM Chris of the Order 66 podcast had his PCs trapped on a space station orbiting Taris, one that was infested with rakghouls that had been spawned by scientific research gone bad, and from all told it was quite a popular adventure with the group once they'd managed to escape and put the station behind them. But the reveal of just how many rakghouls on the station wasn't immediate, and not until close to the end did the PCs realize just how overrun the place was with them.

If you look at "Always Two There Are" and "Twilight of the Apprentice" for Star Wars Rebels, you can see a very notable horror theme with those episodes. "Always Two There Are" is a haunted house scenario, with the heroes being stalked by the Inquisitors, and the Seventh Sister herself being rather creepy in conjunction with her spidery probe droids. "Twilight of the Apprentice" takes place on a desolate waste of a world, and while the horror elements are generally downplayed they are still there.

Many thanks for the tips, definitely gives me something to work with! And Kyla... Your adventure is great stuff, really enjoyed reading that!

It's all about them rakghouls. Also suspense. Suspense makes for great horror. Seeing the shark in jaws isn't scary; not seeing it is.

Let the players make perception checks when they want but make them hard, facilities dark for setback, let them hear sounds from different directions to confuse their sense of where things are. Separate the group. Trap them inside a small place to give the sense of claustrophobia. Then let the jump scares happen.

The key element to horror is that you are powerless to overcome the threat. Your actions may lead to you surviving, but in essence your are still powerless. Achmed, the dead terrorist who took out that guy from verizon and a few folks on the gas station does not scare anyone anymore. It is his brother Mehmed, who might be your neighbour, or the friendly guy behind the counter of your local quicky market who scares you and will drive you to do stupid and irrational things out of fear of some attack which might never come and for sure is less deadly than you just driving your car. But when you drive your car fate is up in your hands, well your hands and the hand of your lunatic neighbour driver, but that is another horror story. ;-)

Something which sums a lot of my thoughts on horror and games in general up and annoys me to no end when used improperly in games:

To to follow up on that video and how horror shall not have HP bars: When our group was on Onderon (beginner box), just mentioning that this planet was Onderon made a lot of the players scared about their characters, suggesting then to visit the terror moon or some old sith ruins got a downright "NEVER!" reactions from us players, simply based on the potential horrors that may lay within those regions, it was a lot more scary than the actual encounters, which proofed pretty tame. Still I was so paranoid about Dxun that I insists on flying as cover over our hunting party, just in case something bad happens … the whole horror moon of Dxun converted into a holiday safari once the biggest and meanest Zakkeg went down with a single shot from the Lambda. The horror was gone, what was left was a planet full of dangerous beasts, which are sweet and should be protected from the modern world of blaster-cannons and lightsabers. We decided to use the reputation of the moon to our advantage and build a automatic rebel surveillance station on the moon. No horror left, because the horror got an HP bar, and it got one which was helpless against starships.

Speaking of ships, those are an excellent source of horror and terror. Stranded or attacked by, does not matter, but they for sure can make people feel small and insignificant

Yeah, starships or vehicle against ground targets — the ground targets don’t stand much of a chance.

Even the most lightly armed vehicle or starship will totally and completely outmatch anything a non-vehicle or starship target can handle.

Great little video SEApocalypse!!

If you can, play sounds at 18 Hz. That's the fear frequency. It can induce fear, dread, depression and anxiety. I know YouTube has videos of it as well, but I don't know if they really work. The sound should not be noticeable to anyone, as its below the human threshold in frequency, but it can still be experienced. One theory is that it vibrates our internal organs, and our eyes, leading us to "feel" wierd, and sometimes see things. I have never used this in a game before, but I have been around low frequencies like this, and it can scare the hell out of you for no reason.

Oh I really like that idea R2builder ... Will definitely check that out!!

Keep in mind that to properly play sounds at a certain frequency, you need a speaker that is properly designed and sized to do that. To handle 18Hz, you’ll need a good subwoofer, and even then most subwoofers can’t reach that low.

You may tell the software to play a particular frequency, and you may hear something coming out of the speakers. However, if you don’t provide hardware that can provide the necessary physical structures required, what you’re hearing is going to be harmonics to the frequency you asked for, plus a lot of distortion. You won’t actually get much of anything in the way of the thing you really wanted.

I would definitely recommend you learn more about the science and art of psychoacoustics.

Thanks for the advice bradknowles, I'd love to learn more about psychoacoustics but until just I didn't even know they existed... Think I'm already too far behind to start at my age )

First, read the book Death Troopers. Right up until the author ruined it by introducing main characters, it was a great example of Star Wars horror.

Generally, the same rules apply that would help any horror game. I ran an adventure based off of Alien. I downloaded the movie soundtrack to play in the background. Music can really help set the mood. Since there were only two aliens in my adventure, they couldn't be run like normal combats. Instead, I made them basically unkillable by normal weapons (of course I knew the PCs would try it anyway) so the party had to find creative solutions to end the threat. People fear what they don't understand. Players understand normal combat. When that doesn't work, suddenly everything changes. Plus I think the worst thing you can do in a horror game is reduce the encounter with the big monster into a few rounds of combat.

The aliens stalked the PCs throughout the ship, striking when the party was split. Just that feeling of being hunted affected them. It's easy to play that up by throwing in random noises or making them regularly roll Perception and Vigilance checks (sometimes for no reason other than to make them think something is about to happen). Of course, the players know better than to split the party so it wasn't easy to set them up. I did a couple things. One way was having multiple time-sensitive objectives in different areas of the ship. That alone could have been used to force them to split up but I only wanted to encourage it, not shove it down their throats.

What really helped was offering them bonus XP for taking any action that fit a horror trope. So if a player heard a strange noise and decided to check it out alone, that was extra XP at the end of the session. Next thing you know I had a character crawling in the air ducts, two others following the trail of acid holes, and another in a spacesuit on the outside of the ship. Nothing gives a player a good scare like being ambushed in a vacuum where a single hit could mean that the suit is torn.

Nah. Disney will make you re-shoot your entire campaign, because it doesn't match the tone of the franchise and have 4 quadrant appeal.

Nah. Disney will make you re-shoot your entire campaign, because it doesn't match the tone of the franchise and have 4 quadrant appeal.

Beware the canon police!

Actually, as someone who hasn't liked the official output since the old Knights of the Old Republic games, the RPG is our way of taking it back, of making it ours once again, instead of theirs .

#OccupyStarWars!

Nah. Disney will make you re-shoot your entire campaign, because it doesn't match the tone of the franchise and have 4 quadrant appeal.

If that's a reference to the situation for Rogue One I can understand if they don't like certain things the director has done with it... His direction made for some bad edits and cuts in Godzilla.

Personally I thought the trailer for Rogue One looked awesome... And, I'm excited for some Star Wars that doesn't concentrate on established characters

Personally I thought the trailer for Rogue One looked awesome... And, I'm excited for some Star Wars that doesn't concentrate on established characters

Yeah, me too. I thought the WEG version was a great time to play, they really were breaking new frontiers and shaping the EU.

It's shame that - considering the wide scope of the SW galaxy - that we always come back to the same planets, the same characters with the same surnames, the same plucky rebels and evil empire.

Yes, I know why, nostalgia sells and people want their childhood favourites frozen in time forever.

But as a gamer I want to aspire to something more than karaoke. I don't have to worry about pleasing a fanbase and making $$$, just entertaining my own players.

Spot on maelora... I love the Star Wars universe, for me it's the "feel" of it that makes it so appealing... That's what I like to take into my games. Yeah they'll have run ins with Imperials & with Rebels... But the films are never touched upon. The game is for us to do Star Wars how we like it

Nah. Disney will make you re-shoot your entire campaign, because it doesn't match the tone of the franchise and have 4 quadrant appeal.

If that's a reference to the situation for Rogue One I can understand if they don't like certain things the director has done with it... His direction made for some bad edits and cuts in Godzilla.

Just remember that 4 quadrant appeal and chasing "what the fans want" gave us ewoks, Jar Jar, Jake Lloyd, and midichlorians...

Just sayin'.

Plus Deadpool changed the tone of Marvel movies to the tune of $745 million. I just hope Disney doesn't play it too tight with the SW universe. We could use Edge of the Empire style films, which is what I hope Rogue One, The Solo stand-alone and the Fett stand-alone provide.

To use your terms, I'm pretty sure that Star Wars started out as a 4 quadrant movie back in 1977. All audiences enjoyed it. To continue with that theme is probably more challenging nowadays when everyone has a voice to criticize and opinions are easily swayed.

Re-shoots aren't necessarily a bad thing but they aren't necessarily good either and it's likely we won't know the difference in the scenes until the Blu-Ray release next year anyway. So, whatever stays in the theatrical release will be the canon form of the film.

Deadpool changed some opinions on superhero films (lookin at you, DC executives) but I feel like most people took from it the wrong point. It isn't the R rating and graphic content that made it so successful, it's the fact that it's an incredibly popular and entertaining character that they spent effort to actually capture the likeness of and a plot that was written out pretty darn well when compared to other superhero films (again, lookin at you, DC executives).

I agree that we can use some Edge of the Empire type stories. That's why I've been enjoying Star Wars Rebels as much as I have. It feels like I'm watching the cinematic exploits of a group playing in Edge using EotE/AoR/FaD characters.

The key element to horror is that you are powerless to overcome the threat. Your actions may lead to you surviving, but in essence your are still powerless. Achmed, the dead terrorist who took out that guy from verizon and a few folks on the gas station does not scare anyone anymore. It is his brother Mehmed, who might be your neighbour, or the friendly guy behind the counter of your local quicky market who scares you and will drive you to do stupid and irrational things out of fear of some attack which might never come and for sure is less deadly than you just driving your car. But when you drive your car fate is up in your hands, well your hands and the hand of your lunatic neighbour driver, but that is another horror story. ;-)

(This is not criticism to what you said. I'm just continuing what you said.)

There are many types of horror styles. One is Lovecraftian Cosmic horror, to which everything you said applies directly (Yes, Cthulhu definitely should not have stat block. Also Cthulhu should never be directly threat to PCs. His cultist, who try to wake their master should be, and they can be won this time. But eventually Cthulhu wins.). But there are also many other horror campaign / scenario styles. Kenneth Hite separates following styles in his book Nightmares of mine (It was published by ICE at 1999, for Rolemaster, but it's absolutely system agnostic, unlike other books about horror from Hite. IMO Nightmare of Mine is best book about horror in roleplaying games. Also, I think it's also one of the best system agnostic books about GMing, but YMMV):

• Splatter (Horror style which concentrates on effects of horror (often gore))
• Pulp (Easy and funny style, with only occasional actual horror feelings. TV example: Buffy the vampire Slayer)
• Madness and Dream (What is true? Everything is too weird.)
• Characters as Monsters (Will characters evil instincts control him. Can he stay out of dark side. Example Vampire: the masquarade.)
• Paranoia and secret war (Anyone/everyone could be / are against us)
• Cosmic Horror (Lovecraftian horror which cannot be absolutely defeated, only delayed when successfully encountered)
• Psychological Horror (Will character's psyche break down. Can he retain his sanity.)
• Silly (Easy and lighthearted, even less horror feelings than pulp. TV example: Scooby Doo)

Also, I think bit of horror can be used in any game. But if one is bringing horror elements to game without discussing it with players, one must be careful, because horror can be very oppressive genre to play, especially when amped up to eleven (often required in actual horror games). So without conscious decision with players horror elements are best used as spice (keep it light). And I think there is certainly a place for horror in Star wars. Actually, whole Anakin's journey to dark side is a cool little horror story (with Hites categories it is example of Character as monster styled horror, specially in episode 2 and 3). Also, Luke flirts with dark side (psychological horror / characters as monsters), but manages not to embrace it and saves his humanity and redeems Anakin at the end. Escape from space slugs mouth (ESB) is kind of pulpish terror moment.

Disclaimer: Horror RPGs are very close to my heart and I could write about those until I'd fall from exhaustion (which reminds me, time to go to sleep, it's 1 AM here), and previous few years I have only GM'd horror games. I have read all books and articles about horror gaming, which I have been able, but my words are just one take on horror gaming. I am often wrong, so I reserve the right to change my opinion anytime I get new information, or realize new things.