While creating characters with a sense of powerlessness is important in every story, it is especially essential with horror stories. Look at some of the classic horror movies out there. For example, Halloween. Jamie Lee Curtis in the original Halloween is nothing more than the good girl. She isn’t a trained marksmen. She isn’t a helicopter pilot. She isn’t a super genius. She is just the girl next door. And yet, throughout the movie, she becomes more than that. She becomes a fighter, a survivor, and an asskicker. She’s powerless but with her back against the wall, she becomes powerful.

Just because it’s a horror game, doesn’t mean it has to be doom and gloom all the time. From a break in the tension to outright comedy relief, Billy explains how to best make use of different tones in your horror RPG.

In the third part of his series on creating horror stories in RPGs, Billy advises GMs to set aside their ego and letting the characters take center stage.

Great monsters are key to any successful horror game. Great characters are equally important. But so are setting, theme, and style. Each one must blend into the other in order to keep your game tense, without it falling to overly obtuse and cliche. It isn’t like I haven’t fallen into these traps before when running earlier games and I’ll probably fall into more later on in life, but, there are a few things that people can do to keep from failing when running or creating a horror story. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be sharing some of my tips and tricks for crafting the psychological horror New World of Darkness games featured on the Fandible podcast.