Two Dirty Tricks for the Horror GM

So… I've GMed a nice little one-shot today. It was a minimalistic game, with the players playing themselves, as prisoners in a prison. The "door" of their cell was open through most of the game, which meant that they went out of their cell about 5 times in the entire session, only to come back moments afterwards.

The game ran quite smoothly, although the players did most of the work for me. You see, the players came with things that were much more frightening for them than anything I could come with, so I just sparked their imaginations and I let them do the rest. What followed was a game that was mostly made of their theories, spiraling more and more to the extremely scary things.

But I utilized another trick also. I used the infamous theme from Requiem for a Dream. Now, one of the dirtiest ways to create suspense is to slowly turn up the volume. If one does it slowly but steadily, it creates a feeling of a build-up towards something. So I turned the volume up and up, up to the maximum, and then silence and a bad event. The players did the rest for me.

And that's it for today- two dirty tricks for the horror game. Happy gaming to you all…