Crafting Doom – Making Normal Horrible

A big part of horror adventure writing is designing a doom that is both horrific and sourced from the mundane. A cuckoo clock that Grandma used to wind, but the clock stopped when she died; so the victim winds it to find that they must do so forever, or some unfathomable doom comes for them. Sometimes the clock brings Grandma back, and the family is held hostage by the creature masquerading as Grandma. These are good examples, but they miss the mark. No, the clock must actively work against your trying to wind it by disappearing or by forcing you into semi-realities based upon moving iconography, then kill you if you don’t wind it. Or…Grandma does not just come back as a rotting aberration, but she treats your 40-year-old self and a small child, and the real monster begins to show when you don’t play along. These are closer, but again don’t convey true horror to the player. Better the clock saps your capabilities based upon the time of day or night when it begins to slow, so that failures in tests begin to accrue, or your character’s ability to sing along with grandma’s gurgling voice determines the fate of another party member who is to be dinner if you fail to distract her congealed mind. In any of the cases, or all together, everything should be knowable and relatable, until it’s not.

 

I am currently working on the narrative of the adventure, Tears in the Snow, and it is always a challenge to pace these events and deviations from the normal. Too slow, and you have an adventure about a pissed off yeti that does crappy things to people. Too fast, and you are in danger of qualifying for a “_______ (fill in the blank) Apocalypse” story with nonstop killing and little left to scare anyone other than getting callouses from dice rolls or running out of cheesy corn snacks. You also cannot have a consistent build with every adventure, but rather stutter back and forth, so that the players never know that they are in the final scene, until it’s over.

 

Tonight, Sven and his family are having an especially bad time. The snow is piling up, and the unforgiving cold has come to remind everyone that there are things that are even more merciless than a monster. So then, I will turn the most basic things about Sven’s little life into horror fuel, and I will share with you an art concept picture for Tears in the Snow…no, the clock does not factor into the story…or does it?