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Pacing The key to a good horror game/movie is the pacing; if the characters are constantly in peril and exposed to horrific things then it will become bland. From my Cthulhu games I've found keys to this are: Build up Slowly lead the players into somewhere dangerous, use mundane things to build tension like smashed glass, scrawled notes, lightning blasted ...

I hate railroading and GMs breaking immersion to enforce their hackneyed vision of "the plot" so I figured I needed to contribute another perspective in the answers. Try not being completely in love with the specific idea of "there at night" you have. So they can go there during the day, and it's still scary. You can employ fog, rain/snow, and/or thick ...

As usual, there are several grades of response. In order of goodness: Option 1. Talk to him. Discuss this concern with him as a fellow adult, outside of game. Bring to his attention that he's behaving like a homicidal maniac rather than the character he claims he's playing (sounds like a good reason to deny him Willpower restoration in WoD, too). ...

There are several choices. Just make it night. No matter how long it looks like it should take them to get there, they get there just after sunset. Might feel like railroading, but in a horror setting your players shouldn't mind too much. You can even use it to play up the creepiness factor: in the movie Army of Darkness, at one point the sun sets ...

Any sensation, experienced in full without stop will eventually allow or force those who experience it to adjust to or move away from it. For a 'horror' campaign to be effective, memorable, and successful for a good duration of time it is necessary to have a solid understanding of two things, everything else is secondary and dependent on your performance ...

An appeal to role would fit very nicely here. Lawbringer: The bad guys will only operate at night. It is your job to catch them in the act. Msytical Ingredient: The mystical ritual can only be completed under the jet black sky of a new moon. Appeal to masculinity: "I double dog dare you to spend the night at [X]!" Appeal to Curiosity: "You can hear ...

One way to implicate the players is to offer them horrific, impossible choices. (Let me go back a bit to explain this.) Conventionally, in horror games, we present players with horror. We show them something horrific, usually a monster, and expect them to respond. Instead, try giving choices. For example, do you kill the person who's trapped inside the ...

Think about a horror movie for minute. Pacing: most horror movies are pretty fast paced, and move from scene to scene quickly. This can help keep viewers (or players tense). But sometimes they slow dow Mix it up: there isn't something gross in ever scene. Sometimes a chase is a chase and you get away. Sometimes there are moments for character development ...

You cannot sustain a horrific setting all the time. Thus pacing is key. Allow the players some normal and fun times -- both IC and OC. However, there are a few things you can do to always unsettle them. Mostly they boil down to alienation. You want a disconnect between nice comfy reality and the game world. You want to mess with players' minds -- just ...

Building Tension to Build Horror I’ve played RPG’s since I was a kid, but I’ve also written narrative as a hobby for years. RPG’s combine the intellectual stimulation of board games with the deep engagement of storytelling (books and films). When the players calmly intellectualize their attempts to WIN, they’re in board game mode. When players FEEL ...

Oblivious Sage already made a perfect reply, but I just wanted to add that scary places can be just as awfully scary in daylight. Perhaps the players get to the haunted forest and experience all kinds of unsettling stuff as they travel through it by day - something moving beyond a cluster of trees, objects and people appearing and disappearing where they ...

Make it so the PCs have to go there at night. E.g: The door to the temple of Bflaghnrwtw only opens when the unholy plaque of Xloptox is hit by moonlight. The ghosts in the haunted house on the hill are only active at night, so daytime investigations will yield next to nothing except clues that shit is going down nighttime, yo. The PCs' friend gets ...

The book that you describe sounds a lot like "Nightmares of Mine" by Ken Hite (published by Iron Crown in 1999; ISBN: 1-55806-367-6), although that isn't specific to Ravenloft or indeed any RPG or genre. This book explores the ins and outs of what makes a great horror story and what it takes to make a great horror story into one of the most memorable ...

Any intelligent monster with free will and the ability to manipulate its environment is a potentially good PC. It needs free will to be suitable, otherwise it's no fun at all. The ability to manipulate its environment is a prerequisite for effective PC's. It can be by magic, tools, or its own limbs, but it's not fun to play the brain-in-a-box. Intellect ...

My initial suggestion was to be, "treat his actions realistically and enforce appropriate consequences, both social and societal." But the edit you've added shows you've already done that, and it doesn't seem to have had much of an impact. Given that, the step to take next is to ask him directly not to be a goof-ball. Use the example of the last chronicle ...

Besides all the solutions already proposed by others, you may also want to try and consider his character and playing style as a creative challenge. Try to approach this challenge as if you've been asked (by a huge publisher/studio :)) to write a story for, or at least, prominently featuring the Joker (of Batman fame), for example. Or to write a story that ...

I second everything that aramis has said. But, it seems you were looking for more specific examples and I have done some of this in the past. As AceCalhoon pointed out, you should look at White Wolf's full catalog to start with. They have done revenants (a minor expansion to Wraith) and Frankenstein's Monster-types (see Prometheus: The Created). I have ...

If you're tied to it being night per se to make it scary, many of the other suggestions here will serve you in good stead. But if you want to make it scary and creepy, there's a general formula: Make things almost, but not quite, normal. Sure, darkness is scary because you can't see. But what if you suddenly stopped casting a shadow? Or if you stopped ...

Create Contrast (Preventing Desensitization) I have found that the most effective way of showcasing horror is to contrast it with comedy or general happiness. À la Disney's Cars, "Sometimes you have to turn left to go right", the easiest way to set up a horror is with a bright and sunny scene with happiness and joy, then crush it to a pulp in front of ...

If you weren't deliberately stealing ideas from Silent Hill already, I'd recommend you do that; while plagiarizing is a very bad idea when producing content you plan to sell or turn in for a grade, it's a huge time-saver for making home campaigns and settings. I recommend Silent Hill because you've got some major similarities to it already; I'm recommending ...

This is difficult to answer in a system-agnostic way, but you should remember that horror gaming also relies on how you use your 'safe' time too. If you're getting near the big finish of your story, then waning daylight becomes a giant, nagging clock that ticks down to 'What a horrible night to have a curse' time. Give them X number of things to do before ...

Don't know if this is appropriate to a horror setting... but, one of my favorite GM techniques to shake up the players is to humanize the NPCs and extra characters by giving them to an extra player. Example 1: A Lord of the Rings game I played at a convention. The party scout is sneaking around the outskirts of a battle, on an important mission. GM: Up on ...

First thing - min maxing is utilizing the rules to get what appears to some as an unbalanced advantage. As a gamemaster, you should feel free to eliminate rules as you feel fit - but do it prior to starting the game. NOTE: This assumes you aren't having a personality conflict with the player. Regarding his character choice, a few ways of dealing with him, ...

Have a few semi-relevant (part red herring), backup plot events prepared that you can insert into the daylight part of your adventure to delay the PCs. Use these to make the story deeper and even more credible, and to build up / lay the groundwork for the tension - and to give them further reasons to enter the forest at night. (Delay is good for other ...

Well, ages before Shreck and the Orcs trilogies by Stan Nicholls, I had lots and lots of fun playing as an Ogre, or an Orc, or as a Troll, or Kobold, or Goblin and the rest of that stinky villains... thanks to a D&D Gazzetter published by TSR - see a more extended review here. Like most good RPG books, it can be reasonably adapted to whatever RPG game ...

I'd suggest to introduce something that gives the idea of "time running out" or, in general, of their hopes being constantly eroded at every turn. Something akin to a "global faith hit points score" which keeps getting down. Bit like the famous Doomsday Clock. It may be a clock-like device which you will have to manually set at every narrative turn to show ...

Some possible aids: Don't let the room be the familiar room you play in. Even if it's the same actual room, try covering the walls with dark cloth, for an added touch, make the room as small as possible to create a 'trapped' feeling Don't let the lighting be comfortable. Overhead lighting and eye level lighting are comfortable for people, which is why we ...

Ask the players if they are interested in how going in at night adds to the horror sort of theme. If they are interested, ask them why their characters would go in at night - let the players make up the reason! After all, they are interested in the horror. And if they are not interested in horror and simply want to do as they will, don't get too invested in ...

Horror requires preparation and thorough set up: preliminary background and world building and PC-NPC relationship developemnt. Real tough choices (see Graham's answer) work best when they have to be made (with a time constraint) about people or things the PCs really do care about. Relative "facelessness" and "interpersonal distance" all take away their ...