Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands.
H. P. Lovecraft, The Picture in the House
OSR And Horror: An Introduction
“OSR is D&D Survival Horror”.
Like “the answer is not in your character sheet”, “combat as war not sport” and other slogans, this is a recurrent statement in trying to explain how OSR play distinguishes itself from trad gaming, and the difference between emergent gameplay that arrives from rules.
That is a fairly controversial statement in how it pigeonholes the possible gameplay of both genres. Let’s go for a quick checklist:
- OSR lacks Sanity rules and equivalent. This is a flawed counter-argument because of what I’ve already laid down here. The horror gameplay is an ethos and philosophical stance by GM and players, not merely the presence of horror rules.
- OSR Advancement, regardless of continuous danger as you level up, gives a heroic arc that goes against the arc of decay one expects from horror gaming. This is a much stronger argument, and the one that often rewords the “OSR is D&D Survival Horror” to “Low-level OSR is D&D Survival Horror” for clarification (and very low level, considering that by level 3 the motto already seems rather strange). Anyone can argue that the mere presence of expectations of an heroic arc invalidates it; even Pulp Cthulhu has your maximum Sanity inevitably decaying unless you retire early.
- OSR, despite arguments to the contrary, has combat as an expectation. I’ve seen many, especially those who were there at the old school, decry “combat as a fail-state” as an unrealistic depiction of how combat actually figures in gaming, even with the concession that it should be approached with much more caution and tactical framing than trad combat. While the same argument can be raised against Pulp playing in Call of Cthulhu and other traditional horror games, I will argue that the inevitability of decay proposed by the rules leads a different paradigm to action horror in those tables. Yet, it would be pigeonholing to act like simply including combat as expectation invalidates horror gaming. Many horror games have usual combat and presume the takedown of the terrifying monster as a possibility, regardless if you like those games.
- Fantasy Fucking Vietnam and Grimdark are styles/memes, not obligatory. Indeed, old school gaming has benefitted from a wide variety of fantasy approaches, including straightforward heroism and playfulness typical of young adult literature, which in no way contradicts the tenets of OSR play.
- The position of the GM as Referee instead of an active narrator and pacing setter of scenes, and narrative expectations, invalidates it as horror gaming. I’d argue that sandbox gaming like OSR is possible in horror gaming… and that OSR does not necessarily need to exclude this GM stance depending on the table. It needlessly pigeonholes both genres.
- OSR playstyle’s lack of emphasis in personal psychology and embracing death as an objective of play, rather than a threat, disallows its status as horror games. This is a very peculiar argument, but one that I can imagine being made. All that I can answer is that not all horror tables put emphasis in personal psychology nor that players’ priorital stance is playing their characters as victims in a horror narrative with death being their objective and purpose, nor that OSR games are obligatorily divorced from psychological depth from PCs as a purpose of play and others (Gygax mentions that roleplaying a personality is a feature of player skill, despite OSR objections). However, the presence of that possible culture in horror gaming and absence in OSR of embracing death as objective (reflected in its advancement structure) does mark a significant departure on the variety of genre between both.
There’s others, but those cover major beats. Rather than engaging in whether adventure gaming is horror gaming deep down, I think it is much more practical for us to imagine what it can take from horror gaming while keeping its structure.
For my thought experiment, I will give concessions towards combat as an expectation of play and keep advancement in old D&D and derived games as is, since leaning on something like Electric Bastionland’s Scars as a form of horror advancement similar to skill advancement in Delta Green through failure and risk would make it too easy. Indeed, my idea here is that the game can have horror loops in separate parts of the world map, instead of changing the game itself. The major advantage of adventure locations as structure is that they can lean into different genres and expectations of what the fiction is, and instead of us seeing Ravenloft and such as “trying to turn adventure games into horror games” in a negative way, we can see it as a positive. To give players the choice of engaging with different play expectations if they go to this corner of the map, even within the common structure of advancement and combat.
Heroic fiction is a peculiar genre in which I indulged on only one occasion. The story was “Masquerade of a Dead Sword.” Being me, I had the hero triumph over his adversary, which I characterized as something like the life principle, by killing himself in a manner relevant to the story. I believe that the figure of the hero and the outline of his journey belong strictly to mythologies designed to indoctrinate people into a positive vision of life. These journeys are adaptive from an evolutionary perspective. The journeys my characters take are always one of decline and death, which is the journey of average individuals and also, I believe, will be the journey of the human race as a whole.
Thomas Ligotti, Interview with Wonderbook
This quote by a favorite author rather neatly establishes the ideological conflict we have here: does OSR, even at its dirtiest, believe the journey of all of humanity, all of the players around the table, and all that we dream of is one of decline and death? Likely no (and one could argue many horror games don’t as well). This, however, can be embraced as a kind of peculiarity instead of a flaw while using horror gaming tropes in its structure.
However, we may risk treating horror gaming in OSR, since the structure will be fundamentally heroic in expectations, as merely grabbing the aesthetics and atmosphere and that’s it. Which is a very fun way of playing, but it isn’t what I refer to. I’m trying to propose gaming structures inside the OSR ethos that lead to its own horror gaming in different locations, not just dressing up for Halloween.
For that, I recommend the Demesne.
A Quick Note on One Faction Dungeons (OFD)
Before I talk about Demesnes, I want to talk about its conceptual cousin, the One Faction Dungeon. It can be a Lair in the wilderness or a Stronghold, for example. While all dungeons can have horror trappings and atmosphere, that isn’t to say all frameworks are equally conductive. The dungeon with multiple factions can be macabre and threatening, but horror also comes from specificity of motifs and the intellectual impact abstract concepts have on the players. Which is why less monsters who are very specific carry a bigger impact than many monsters, or at least many types of monsters at once. The OFD in particular can use the single faction simplicity to better focus on showing an alien, terrifying internal culture, decor and others that is still coherent and marks its inhabitants as far more than “another type of monster”.
If you know how to build a regular dungeon, you know how to build a OFD. The difference is that now you focus only on one kind of monster/faction and lean more heavily into the motifs, visuals, sounds and such than before.
Running can be the same too, although I’d heavily suggest using a version of Dungeon Alertness (example here), and, even better, not using it in dungeons with multiple factions so the players can definitely experience an expectation shift when they walk into a OFD: we’re not in Kansas anymore. Encounters becoming more and more frequent until the faction just decides to shut everything down by itself creates a different feeling, in the same structure, than the regular dungeon.
Pretty much every piece of dungeon creating advice that doesn’t mention multiple factions works here.
The Demesne
The Demesne is a dungeon where there is only one monster, and no more. No henchmen to it, no creatures of a similar type, nothing. Such a monster, who exists by itself, carries a conceptual density of weirdness a single faction can’t rival. Much like a haunted house who carries within only one decayed pseudo-organism. All the other challenges, like traps, spells and such, don’t feature any combat. They may be the workings of the monster to entrap prey, or created to keep the monster in, or just an unnatural, surreal consequence of its presence. For reference, let’s call this single monster a Dweller.
When thinking about remarkable encounters in fantastic and horrific fiction, we often go to locations and events where the figures were dealing with a single, notorious threat. The only monster of its kind, living in places where only it lingered. There’s many cases of OFDs, too, which is why I argue the simplicity and limited number of motifs that can be built upon gradually are more conductive to a numinous, horrific feeling. One could refer to, of all things, the children’s book series Deltora Quest, which not only has dungeon crawling and wilderness exploration as its main events, but specific macabre monsters attached to locations and great reference on the workings of OFDs and Demesnes (also just a general treatment of direct combat as a bad idea and intelligent problem solving as the protagonists’ only chance, or just running away and let it be).
Also, in more traditional campaigns, a Dweller occupying the exact hex the PCs want for a stronghold is a good hook.
There are many examples of OFDs already, but comparatively very few of Demesnes (the first level of Lair of the Lamb being a shining example). So how do we play a Demesne?
Demesne Rules
First of all, a Demesne must use slightly modified procedures from the regular dungeon to encapsulate the paradoxical claustrophobia of a solitary Dweller hunting you. Dungeon Alertness, much like in an OFD, takes care of that, although a final stage where the Dweller closes all the exits is not strictly necessary. It would be much harder for the Referee to track the verisimilitude of that depending on time passing and how many encounters happened, compared to the OFD just having many monsters that could take care of it.
Alternatively, the Referee chooses a (rather high) percent chance of the Dweller being found at each room, doing different activities that reveal its nature, horror and give information. If a random encounter did happen, the next room the PCs walk in have zero chance of an encounter.
There is the matter of light. Everyone has their own light rules, and tinkering with those for different locations does a lot of work to set a dungeon apart. A Demesne could benefit from light rules such as:
- Advanced Darkness.
- If using an ItO alike, use these resource management rules.
- Arnold K’s Light Dice.
Note that the presence of a single monster makes the rules already in place for light when using Old School Essentials and others, which imply monsters are never surprised by a party with light unless they come in through a door, much easier to track and apply. Also remember how infravision works, and that simply turning off your light does not mean you aren’t still cool, and therefore possibly visible as gray to monsters, so stealth is something the players may figure out with time too. And that light may attract the monster more (B53, Moldvay). Basically, nearly any way you rule Light in your table may do fine.
Pursuit rules will be much more commonly used than they already are, and I’d recommend that a Dweller, instead of having chances of dissuaded by regular food/treasure, desire something specific (and limited) that the party drops for a chance of escaping. You may even say that the Dweller automatically stops for it, if it’s limited enough. You may choose that it stops for regular food/treasure with a lower probability than the standard rules, too.
A Dweller should have all un-spiked doors open for it, as per LBBs.
Creating a Dweller
Creating a Dweller is fairly easy because all you need is to imagine one monster. Since there is only one like them, the Dweller can feature abilities and background that nothing else in the world must have, making Demesnes in general easy to include into a setting without worry of ramifications.
How to express power in adventure systems? In most games, we will have their special abilities as the deciding factor, but adventure games that have combat subsystems forces us to consider how specifically each one will deal with the idea of a Dweller once we look at advancement. What stops high-level PCs from just destroying a Dweller through sheer strength, the same critique raised when gods and such were finally given stats? It’s not as easy as running the scenario in something like Cthulhu Dark or Trophy Gold.
Depending on your campaign, regardless of system, you might have different answers. You may want that the Dweller is only destroyed by a specific thing which is adventure fodder, outside any regular combat rule. Maybe the PCs getting power to vanquish the creature directly is desired: it may be the campaign’s point. Maybe the Dweller isn’t that high in power and what makes it frightening is the environment it lives in.
Presuming you aren’t using the special weakness as an instakill, there’s a few suggestions per system:
OD&D: rule that the Dweller’s HD is equal to the sum of the PCs HDs, hirelings not included. While variable power like that might scoff at OSR materialism, it makes sense from a desired gameplay perspective and of making the Demesne feel different from other dungeons. This mechanic may be the reason why finding its specific weakness is important, or that the Dweller can be destroyed without it if the PCs manage to mobilize a community or army to do it (hirelings/mercenaries won’t up the creature’s power), if they only manage to get a domain or convince the paranoid, warring nobles who don’t want to dedicate resources to that…
Also, rely on morale checks for hirelings. A lot.
Tunnels & Trolls: set a very high Monster Rating. Simple as that, since the group combat nature of the game means if it wins, it can be narrated as having hurt everyone with great power. Of course, you may decide that the Monster Rating depends on the full value of the players’ stats.
Into the Odd: you may:
- Treat it as Detachment.
- Make it immune to Critical Damage.
- Force a Morale Check for any ally the players bring.
Building the Demesne
Monster selection, ecology and narrative are rather breezy affairs. You just have to think about one monster, why and how it’s there, and how it influences the location it inhabits. This is all extremely practical because you just need one idea and then extend it into motifs, connecting all of it.
Stocking it without other monsters means you have to focus more on what kind of traps there are and see them as the major hazard. If you are going by Mythic Underworld concepts, and that the mere presence of the Dweller leads to a corrupt, hostile place that is its conscience warping space, you can have a lot of fun here, although a more naturalistic approach is also possible. The Dweller might as well be just one extremely homicidal individual, like an old adventurer who will not allow anyone to steal the treasure, and may have murdered their companions (yes, this is a reference to The Forests of Silence). The funhouse dungeon approach may be easier to handle with a single monster.
Now let’s go for architecture.
First of all: the Demesne could have a shitton of secret passages. A shitton. If necessary, fully lean into Mythic Underworld rules as to why there’s so many secret passages that no sane individual would build in other circumstances. It triples down on the Demesne as a malevolent extension of a single terrifying force. This is necessary because the players will be hunted by an ineffable monster, and nothing will be as engaging as they managing to lock the Dweller somewhere and finding it again, indicating there’s secret passages they’re not aware (I don’t have to say that if the players manage to lock the Dweller in a way it can’t show up again logically, you let it be trapped. They earned it).
The Dweller using the passages not only makes it more terrifying and dangerous, but also incentivizes the players to search for them, either to lock them or see if there’s maybe some treasure/knowledge they are missing. Making them search more for it, having to manage time more for the possible reward, and generally increasing tension. Secret doors as a mechanic is incredibly enhanced by a single monster stalking the party.
If you use Pursuit rules that take in account corridor corners, focus a lot of those instead of defaulting to making corridors straight.
Certainly make one room where the bulk of the treasure/knowledge the players search for is, like a regular lair, but treasure may be found around, either because the Dweller doesn’t care for it all that much and is messy, or because it is trying to entice adventurers for having lunch with it with them as special course. Make exploration more than just detecting a specific room. Furthermore, if they are searching for special knowledge and lore, different rooms may give breadcrumbs of that knowledge, while allowing you to double down on atmosphere.
The right size for a Demesne is not an exact science of course. It needs to be big enough that time management is a huge issue, that there’s many passages the players need to deal with, and that traps and the like don’t feel repetitive and tiring since you won’t have a variety of monsters to further diversify play. The dungeon would likely be well served by being small-ish (20 rooms is a good theoretical max), although there’s always the great variety of play brought by rival adventurer parties (which may be easier to deal with having a Dweller instead of many factions to keep track of as far as they relate) and, of course, the community that exists near the Demesne.
The Reaction Roll
Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story.
M. R. James, Preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary.
The reaction roll is rightfully celebrated as one of the best rules of old school play. It guarantees not every encounter leads to combat, it allows the Referee to offload responsibility for deciding the personality of every monster, and it injects surprise.
How often do you use reaction rolls? And how do you use it? I observe that many folks go with the philosophy of “I roll unless it’s obvious”, which leads to it being rolled much more than “I roll if X, otherwise Y”. To borrow PbtA terms, those are two different GM Principles that lead to very different games. The bell curve of the reaction roll will lead to another experience if it’s frequent.
In the Little Brown Books, we have:
Monsters will automatically attack and/or pursue any characters they “see”, with the exception of those monsters which are intelligent enough to avoid an obviously superior force.
OD&D Vol-3, p. 12
This presumes “I roll only if the monster is both intelligent and feels overwhelmed, otherwise kill”. The LBBs passage gives us a scenario where monsters immediately attack in 9/10 situations, which leads us to a more consistent use of Pursuit rules and dropping obtained treasure and food for survival. The Referee searching to adapt a campaign to horror gaming may decide the following:
- Use Reaction Rolls as per the LBBs in general.
- Use Reaction Rolls as per later interpretations in common dungeons, and use them per the LBBs in OFDs/Demesnes.
This simple choice/change of procedure for different dungeons helps convey a fundamental wrongness.
Roll to Doubt 