Need to Play Some Horror RPGs

Hey there, I'm doing my senior thesis for undergraduate on the Philosophy of Horror when applied to tabletop gaming. I'm a massive horror fan. Right now I have a group meeting weekly playing different games so I can get a better feel on rules outside of D&D/Pathfinder. I can GM, we can have different games where other people GM- anything is up in the air. I'm planning a Fear Itself campaign revolving around Duddleytown, CT, and I have a working weeklu d&d group using an Asian horror plot. Looking for players, GMs, game suggestions, anything! Thanks!

Sounds really intriguing! I've played straight D&D and a homebred superhuman society before but would love to try a horror RPG. Did not know Philosophy of Horror was a thing either. Sounds like a great course.

I would love to join as well. I've played D&D 3.5-5e, Mouse guard, and marvel hero system and call of cthulhu. which if you're thinking of a horror RPG you might want to look into Call of Cthulhu.

I'd be down for a D&D 3.5 game, or pretty much any of the nWoD 2e games. Mage is amazing for the sort of "knowing what should not be known" kind of horror that CoC tries to pull off, Changeling is great for all the horror you can pull from abusive relationships, and Vampire is vampires so we all ought know what that entails.

I'm trying to avoid D&D. Call of Cthulhu is on the list, as is Trail. Fear Itself is a gumshoe detective style game, sort of like Trail. I'm open to suggestions too, and would this be something people would be okay with playing in addition to other games? As for my class, sadly there is no "Philosophy of Horror" course I'm taking, this is a 20 page paper I get to choose my thesis on, but have to complete in order to graduate. There is a great text on the philosphy of horror though! (Carroll, 1999)

I would highly recommend Mage: the Awakening 2e. The rules are very good and the themes and moods are fantastic for a number of horror styles. If you want, PM me your skype and we can talk about it some more.

I'd say Beast is also a good look as far as CoD 2e games go.  They are created from the joint fears and nightmares of humanity, and teach 'lessons' based on primal fears.  A lot of these nightmares are based on mythology and history, but the idea is that humanity jointly has fears, and that is for good reason.   It's sort of an inversion of the hero's journey, the beasts potentially subvert the story - monsters can be monsters, but is there a purpose to it?  Maybe they're doing what they are supposed to do, or at worst, what they should do naturally - maybe the 'hero' is the real monster.   I also agree with Yawgmoth tho, Mage 2e in general is a great way to explore philosophy in general as it can really be customized to anything.  

It's interesting you should post this, because I have been personally compiling notes, observations, and techniques on how to make horror films and run effective horror rpg games for over ten years, and have recently been looking for a game to playtest some of my theories. I'd totally be down for joining you, Kiki. :)

Can't disagree more about Beast. It's a completely tone-deaf pile of dreck that is the worst combination of sociopathic power fantasy and obscene abuser justification. It's abysmal writing at every level and even if you take everything in the book purely at barely-skimmed-surface-level, it still does absolutely nothing that other lines can't do infinitely better. The only thread of redeeming value it has is to serve as an object lesson on what not to do as a game developer.

I'm in the process of setting up a Hunter, the Vigil game if that helps any

What about slasher flicks rpg? where you play dumb victims and everyone plays multiple characters?

Hey folks, sorry had a super unexpected dental emergency- slipped on ice and cracked my damn tooth in half. Anyway, here's the need to know: -I want to have a basis of three to four RPGs styles: GURPS, Gumshoe, d20, etc. Right now I am running an apocalypse world hack (Monster of the week, paranormal investigators), d&d campaign (currently falling apart- changing to another open type GURPS like lasers &feelings hack, futuristic), and potentially a GUMSHOE campaign if I have my way with running a Fear Itself campaign.  -I want various themes of horror, such as futuristic, MoW, investigative, lovecraftian, etc -I hope to run the game starting next week and continuing weekly or twice a week, depending on availability and what my courses allow, and finish the game up in April-> if it ends up being tons of fun, I'm a lonely enough person that I would love to continue once I graduate. I already have a job lined up so my schedule is well defined post graduation. So, I have heard some mixed promotion of Magic, have never played that before. I'm not a new RPG player, but I am a fairly new GM. I have experience writing horror for r/nosleep and have taken 3 courses on weird fiction, horror screenplays, film development, and dystopia. I have also studied war history, and I have a double major in political science alongside computers. I just have enough philosophy credits to pull off a philosophy final paper. I can provide samples of my writing for those who are wary of my lack of experience. If anyone has a strong desire to GM I'm more than fine, just tell me the genre you hope, and remember, HORROR CAMPAIGN! I'll be online today for my AW campaign as well as tomorrow, and I'll check back on Tuesday just in case. I'd like to decide on a game by wednesday, work on character creation while i learn the manual, and play by March 1st. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post guys! I'd like to consider recording the play in a podcast fashion, but camera isn't required, and we really don't have to. If somebody has a channel they want to share it to, let me know! I have a twitch but I'm wary of having too much of an online presence. I don't even have a facebook haha -Kiki

Oh yeah! A majority of my thesis is based around elements of Carroll's Philosophy of Horror (1990). If you would like a PDF copy, I can do my best to email you one.

Oh man, okay, final comment- for those of you running campaigns already that would like to offer me a spot, please PM me with the day/time of your campaign and I'll let you know if I can commit to it.

Hey Kiki If you end up creating a game definitely count me in, I've been wanted to play a CoC adventure for a while (I have just not lately) and though I never played "fear it self" I know about the GUMSHOE system. I have the books (fear it self, ToC, esoterrorist ) and even planed to run a fear it self game (invasive procedures) but end up not doing it. You sound like a good storyteller which is the most important thing in a GM so I would really love to help you tell a great story if you like.

Hey there! With regard to Fear Itself, I was hoping to run a campaign based off this urban legend: <a href="http://www.ghostvillage.com/legends/dudleytown.sht" rel="nofollow">http://www.ghostvillage.com/legends/dudleytown.sht</a>... let me know what you guys think! Otherwise, I am still open to suggestion regarding a system, I just also happen to have the rulebook to Fear Itself on my dropbox account.

Okay, so, I have a couple friends interested in playing Mage, so I think Mage 2E is the play decision, and I'm building a campaign surrounding the duddleytown legend I posted above as I read through the rulebook. I don't know what day/time I'll be running it, but (in EST) it'll probably be every other Saturday afternoon, starting anywhere between 1PM and 3-4PM. I play Saturday nights at 8PM EST, so I can play up until then. I'll be sharing a link to this soon. As crazy as it sounds, I'd like to run a Fear Itself campaign, using a similar plot, too. This group would probably be during the day Saturdays (EST) on the alternating weeks. I'm not sure if this will happen or not per se, it'll probably depend on who's interested in that and conflicts with the mage campaign. Thanks!

Only Plus and Pro subscribers can make their games visible to the public ; by default a link such as <a href="https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/1234567/s" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/1234567/s</a> ... is only visible to players already in the game. The best way to handle this situation is to create a Looking for Group listing ; even if you do not enable it for viewing in the LFG Directory you can share the link with others and have a separate Listing Discussion forum just for those potentially interested in your game. As a bonus, anyone who posts to your game's Listing Discussion forum will have a big blue button by their username and all a GM has to is click 'Invite to Game' and an invitation will be sent their way. I hope this helps, happy gaming! :)

Oh wow, my mistake, I had no clue, thanks! Here's my listing: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/70338/horror-the-awakening" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/70338/horror-the-awakening</a>