I think Horrorgames can only capture the Tenseness (Is that a word?) of a horror story (Can we make it? Or not?), but they fail to be ultimatly scary per se. The problem is that for being scary or (better) shocking there has to be the possibilty that something truly unexpected happening. And since Boardgames have to have every possibilty covered in the rules that is very difficult zo archieve.

I would disagree about Betrayal at House on the Hill...with the revised rules found online, we’ve had fun with it and haven’t had major rules problems. 

And just a crabby note about [1]: in an [2] barely a page long there’s no [3] for making [4] jump around trying to piece together your [5].  Perhaps [6] your thoughts better is a preferable [7].

1-footnotes
2-article
3-excuse
4-readers
5-scattered thoughts
6-organizing
7-option

Is there any comparison that can be made between board game horror and RPG horror?

The investment in character of the latter seems to give it quite an edge. That factor would be hard to replicate in a board game.

But are there other factors that RPG’s handle better.

I agree with the points that both Peer and Frank make.  There are no scary boardgames, because you know ahead of time the kinds of things that can happen.  Unless you want to play the game blindly, that’s almost a prerequisite.  An author can spring surprises in the text and even the threat of such surprises can lead to genuine tension.  But I can’t be truly surprised during a boardgame because all the possibilities are known.  Losing a game may be disappointing, but I can’t classify it as scary.

Now RPGs don’t have this restriction and can certainly be scary, particularly since the character investment is so much greater.  A well run Call of Cthulhu campaign can be genuinely disturbing.  But with a good Game Master, any system can be made to be scary, since what you’re dealing with is essentially interactive story-telling.

Getting back to boardgames, many gamers pull out these horror-themed titles around Halloween, just like many only play election-themed games during Election Day.  My feeling is if you need a special occasion to play a game, it probably isn’t very good to begin with.  I say if it ain’t good enough to play all year round, I’m happy to avoid it.

Finally, Shannon, there are chapters of FA (Footnoters Anonymous), with a complete twelve [12] step program in most major cities of the US.  But the first step has to come from you.  Just say “no” to footnotes!

Nothing in a board game is truly scary, but some mechanisms achieve a certain sense of dread, like the rats in Notre Dame.  They just keep coming…

"Getting back to boardgames, many gamers pull out these horror-themed titles around Halloween, just like many only play election-themed games during Election Day.  My feeling is if you need a special occasion to play a game, it probably isn’t very good to begin with.  I say if it ain’t good enough to play all year round, I’m happy to avoid it.” Larry Levy

So Larry, do you feel the same way about Christmas Carols? Year around or not at all?

There are several (non-Halloween) games that I don’t want to play all the time, but have elements that I can’t find in any games that I do. With one of these games, I find that every year or so (depending on the game) I get the itch to play the game to experience the unique elements. When I play the game, I enjoy it, but I don’t have an urge to play it again soon. An example of such a game is Junta, it’s length, need for 7 players, and fiddly rule means that it’s not a game I want to play often. But it has elements I can’t find elsewhere, so I get the itch to play it every so often. These games might be called occasional games because I only want to occasionally. I find that several Halloween games (Betrayal at the House on the Hill for example) are, for me, occasional games. If I only want to play a particular Halloween game occasionally, why not break it out near the occasion of Halloween?

I feel like holidays are a fine time to remind you of games which you do like, but which just don’t hit the table for some time another.

I regularly put together a set of the (good) pirate games on talk-like-a-pirate-day, for example. Dead Man’s Treasure, the Alea game, etc.

Eric, while Christmas carols certainly have a meaning associated with the season, there are quite a few I like as *songs*.  Consequently, I have no trouble singing or playing these on the piano any time during the year and will do so on occasion.  And carols that I *don’t* like as songs are ones I’ll try to avoid even during the holidays.

I’ll also say that before I got XM Radio and could only listen to FM, I was usually royally sick of Christmas songs by the time December 25 rolled around.

Please don’t get me wrong.  Like you and Shannon, there are games I like that I don’t get to play often enough.  If there was an occasion where I was more likely to get these games onto the table, I’d go for it as well.  But too often, I hear session reports about days *devoted* to horror or election games and the overriding feeling coming from them is “we wouldn’t be playing these games except for what the calendar says”.  THOSE are the games I’d prefer to avoid.

The last time I did something like this, I played Election USA during early November a few years ago.  Oh, my.  We’ll have to be selecting something a LOT more exciting than a president to force me to play that game again!

So Larry:

Could what you are saying be interpreted as:

“You don’t actually need October 31st to celebrate Halloween. If you actually liked Halloween, you’d just celebrate it year around..” ?

I would hold that good horror games are rare, but the standard does seem to be going up. Spiel last week had quite a few horror games, even going as mainstream as Kosmos’ two games. (More if you count the young-adult/modern/fantasy/horror Inkheart games as horror.)

Hmm, I seem to have inadvertently struck a nerve here.  Since I’m being cast as the Grinch where seasonal games are concerned, I think I’ll limit my losses and quietly slink away.

Ouija scares me. Ka-Bala scares me (that eye!). Sticking my hand into those locked vault pits in Green Ghost drops my heart into the sink of fear.

But these are emotional experiences that short-cut through the process-heavy, rational part of the brain that has to be engaged to play a boardgame. And so long as I am in that rational, process-heavy space I am unlikely to be frightened, unless someone suggests we play True Colors.

I can’t say I have ever been scared by a boardgame.  Pandemic has actually come close a couple of times, but that may be more of a “thrill” emotion.

This is where the videogame genre really can shine.  Sitting in a dark room playing Silent Hill or Fatal Frame have been some of my most scary non-movie, non-book experiences.

I can’t say I have ever been scared by a boardgame - even playing the ones you mention.  Pandemic has actually come close a couple of times, but that may be more of a “thrill” emotion.

This is where the videogame medium can really shine.  Sitting in a dark room playing Silent Hill and Fatal Frame have been some of my most scary non-movie, non-book experiences.

Howsabout Last Night on Earth?  That game does an amazing job capturing the feel of the zombie horror film.

On the whole, though, board games are ill-suited for “horror”.  The nature of board games (especially German games, Euro games, these games of ours, etc.) is such that the rules are concise, the players are restricted in their actions, and there are no surprises.  Everyone knows what can possibly happen.  There is no such thing as a jump scare (unless you’re playing Doom with a bunch of first-timers, which can be tremendously fun).  The game is all there on the table, and the players generally don’t develop a deep emotional investment in the game.

As Kyle and Frank mention, RPGs and video games can do a much better job at the whole horror thing. Compared to board games, RPGs and video games generally allow for more flexibility and unpredictability, and bring the players more “into” the game...all of which makes horror more do-able.

Board games can certainly bring uncertainty and worry - but many of the games that are best at doing so aren’t the most replayable games.  City of Chaos (and most of the paragraph-adventure game genre) are relatively successful… once.

So a horror based paragraph game would probably be fairly successful at evoking fear and worry, but then you’ve mixed RPG with your board games - and they say that way lies madness.

ideas:
One of the big no-no’s in current game design is player elimination - but I think that a game that used the threat of player elimination could possibly become scary.

A game that uses mechanical or electronic means to provide shock and surprise could evoke the ‘startle’ aspect of many horror movies… Does shocking roulette count as a horror game?

power to the footnote(1). 

(1) In footnote-related depressing news, We lost one of the masters of the footnote, and all-around brilliant American writers, David Foster Wallace, in september.  If you haven’t read anything by him, seek out his Essays - “A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again” or “Consider the Lobster”.  Both stellar, and much more accessible than his fiction, which is also stellar, but in a James Joyce type way.

By the by, let me defend my use of footnotes, per Erin’s comments.

Most specifically, I don’t think that Erin’s satirical response relates to my use of the same. A footnote is supposed to be an aside that can break the flow of a paragraph, and thus is sectioned out. The user can thus decide to read it or not, meaning that the article can be read entirely without footnote consultation without you losing any of the main point.

I think my article meets that criteria. Of the footnotes only #3 is maybe something that should have gone in the article. The rest were just my head rushing this way and not.

Footnotes can, of course, be used for comedic effect too. Cf. Terry Pratchett. I think Aaron often uses them purposefully in this manner as well, as I attempted to.

Well, let me respond to Shannon’s comments on my poking fun at the footnotes in a more serious way…

What follows is only one man’s opinion (which no author is required to heed): the footnotes seriously break the flow of the article and become annoying when you have to scroll to the bottom to complete the author’s thought.  I love Terry Pratchett, but he writes novels - this is a page-and-a-half article so there’s no reason all of the ideas can’t be contained in the body.  If the idea isn’t important enough to include in the body, it should probably be left out.  To use this article as an example: 1) Is an interesting observation that would fit just fine in the body.  Its relevance to the paragraph we “jumped” from and its length make it puzzling as to why it was split out.  2) We’ll skip, as it addresses the footnotes.  3) Again, would work just fine if it was in the body at the point we jumped from.  4) a joke about footnotes, skipped.  5) and 6) would be just as funny in parentheses in the body.  7) Same response as 1 (now I’m doing it!).

Now, I understand Shannon is half-parodying Aaron’s style and it makes me look silly for for going into such detail, but since you referenced the footnotes, I went ahead.  I think that Aaron, while writing fine articles, does a lot of 1, 5, and 6.  90% of the time the footnote is not worth breaking the flow of the article and the rest of the time, there’s no reason to split it out. Parentheses are at shift-9 and shift-0 (see how that works?).

Now I’ll go back to writing cranky letters to TV Guide and People magazine ("Why aren’t there more stories about Lynda Carter???") [1]

1-See? Parentheses.

"A game that uses mechanical or electronic means to provide shock and surprise could evoke the ‘startle’ aspect of many horror movies… “

This was the first thing that jumped to my mind.  Part of what makes something scary is the unease that comes with the visceral response to a situation. 

I would note that I think horror as a genre can be divided between scare/terror and horror.  A scary book may keep you on the edge of your seat and make you nervous about those shadows in the corner.  However, a horrific book like any of H.P. Lovecraft’s work is more horrific, it fills you with dread and helplessness.  This dichotomy between ramped up visceral response and numb shell-shock is quite interesting.  In games, Arkham Horror fills me with dread, but Age of Steam gets my blood pumping with terror/fear/anticipation.

Wow! I don’t know if you read my piece on Monday - I assume not - but it trod much the same ground and, interestingly, came to much the same conclusions, especially about AH and FoD.

Quick. With our newfound shared insight we need to get together and design the ultimate horror game. What’s the air fare to Australia nowadays?

Z-man just needs to make a Zombie version of Pandemic…

That is actually a very good idea.