[RPG]: The Book of Unremitting Horror, reviewed by Moritz (5/4)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12288.phtml

Moritz's Summary:

While an excellent source of horrors for any modern setting, it oversteps the boundaries of what is still a game a bit too often.

Go to the full review for more information.

I honestly don't think a book on horror really can go too far. It's supposed to be horrific, not comical.

[CLAVDIVS]

Originally Posted by RPGnet Reviews

While an excellent source of horrors for any modern setting, it oversteps the boundaries of what is still a game a bit too often.

I do not understand what the underlined portion means, and the review didn't seem to clarify.

I read it as, "Things I find squicky to read about, and that you should, too."

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by tetsujin28

I honestly don't think a book on horror really can go too far. It's supposed to be horrific, not comical.

So, for example, a game that depicted child abuse in lingering detail - while oh-so-carefully saying "this is, of course, horrific" every now and again - would be fine? Or one that depicted torture so effectively that it made a significant proportion of players physically ill and incapable of sleeping properly for a week?

[CLAVDIVS]

Originally Posted by tetsujin28

I read it as, "Things I find squicky to read about, and that you should, too."

If he'd said that, I'd have understood it, but I don't see how squicky material hasd anything to with "what is still a game". Parts of Little Fears disturb the hell out of me, and if I ever run WitchCraft the disciplines of the flesh will not exist; but that doesn't make either of them less of a game.

[Fulsrush]

Off the top of my head, both Unknown Armies and Delta Green both feature child abuse as character notes, plot ideas or adventures. An Unknown Armies adventure had a boxout explaining that the horrific things being perpetrated by one NPC against another (I can't remember the details) might seem extreme, but the author relates an anecdote about a case a social worker friend worked on, in which a ten-year-old girl was repeatedly raped by her father and uncle , both at the same time, as an example of how the adventure's horror wasn't actually that far away from reality.

In the Call of Cthulhu campaign, The Masks of Nyarlathotep, it's possible for PCs to get raped by members of Azathoth's court.

Delta Green: Countdown has NPCs who are paedophiles running a children's home, as well as rituals that involve the mutilation of the caster's own genitalia.

Horror isn't just about gribbly monsters that go RAAARRRRR!!! and bite your fingers off. It's about people as well. (In my opinion, fucked up people are scarier than monsters, because they're us.)

People can be fucking depraved. Worse than anything you've ever seen in a film or even in a book.

[C.W.Richeson]

Originally Posted by tetsujin28

I read it as, "Things I find squicky to read about, and that you should, too."

I read it as a statement that the product tends toward extreme situations that will disturb some people who view roleplaying as an opportunity to play games and have fun without dwelling on horrific events. That doesn't even count the number of family oriented roleplayers that want to have a horror game, as in scary stuff, without child rape and the like.

Such content makes the product less appealing to a broad audience, so the score is docked a point.

Horror is a broad genre to say the least.

[The Last Conformist]

"Family oriented horror" sounds like it'd involve cannibalistic incest or something.

[Moritz]

Originally Posted by C.W.Richeson

I read it as a statement that the product tends toward extreme situations that will disturb some people who view roleplaying as an opportunity to play games and have fun without dwelling on horrific events. That doesn't even count the number of family oriented roleplayers that want to have a horror game, as in scary stuff, without child rape and the like.

Such content makes the product less appealing to a broad audience, so the score is docked a point.

Horror is a broad genre to say the least.

that's 50% of it

the other is... I had the feeling that the authors of the book had a morbid fascination with the topic and I found that icky. I also know a whole lot of people who think that Little Fears was way to much of what can be done.