It’s spooky season! I’ve got my costume ready, I’ve started preparing the treat bags for the neighborhood kids, and my house is covered in skeletons. The little gothic bat inside my soul has been stirring, getting ready for the most wonderful time of the year. This time of year increases my draw to all things horror. If you’re looking for something fun to do in the spirit of the season, look no further.
I’ve already shared Ten Candles with you, but there are many other games that are especially suited to helping you tell the scary stories scratching around inside your mind. I’ve collected some of my other favorites for you here.
Call of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu is a tabletop horror role playing game based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The game has systems to measure health and sanity as you tell the story of a group’s encounter with otherworldly beings and forces beyond their comprehension and their subsequent descent into madness. Playing within Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos is not necessary, but the game is set up for it.
What it’s good at:
- Call of Cthulhu is perfect for telling American Gothic and folk horror stories.
- The sanity system captures a slow descent into madness and helps you illustrate the incremental nature of that kind of character arc.
- There is an element of luck to the game that encourages you to explore themes like resilience, hope, luck, miracles, and courage.
- Your characters are fragile so stakes remain extremely high throughout the game.
- The game is meant to explore corruption in many forms, and its system aids you in creating a consistent mood and maintaining a consistent tone.
What to look out for:
- The sanity system isn’t for everyone. Some players may not like the idea of sanity being quantified and lost the way the game requires. Always ask players about their level of comfort with the systems and themes you’re going to introduce.
Bluebeard’s Bride
Bluebeard’s Bride by Magpie Games is a tabletop investigatory horror game that uses the Powered by the Apocalypse system. It takes place in the French fairytale about a young bride and one forbidden room. The players take on the roles of Sisters. Sisters are the different parts of the Bride’s psyche. Each Sister has their own goals and desires, but all are united in their desire for survival. The object of the game is to tell your own version of the fairytale together.
What it’s good at:
- This system is set up to explore inner turmoil. Each player plays a different aspect of the same character and sometimes those aspects war against each other because their goals are at odds.
- This is a perfect game to help you tell a story about the will to survive. Even though the Sisters have their own goals, they are all united in their will to survive together.
- The setting of this game helps put you in the horror fairytale frame of mind, and the game offers many tips for setting the scene, and maintaining the tone throughout your dark fairytale.
- It’s the perfect game to help you dig deeper into curiosity. The Bride is driven to unlock the door. The familiar story breeds dread because you know the potential consequences of opening the forbidden door, but you always open it.
What to watch out for:
- This is a game that gets very intimate because of how alone and vulnerable the Bride is, how close the players are to each other being aspects of the same person, and the nature of the Bride’s relationship to Bluebeard.
- Always check with your players about lines of horror that they do not want to cross. If you feel it’s necessary to the story you want to tell, add it afterwards in your writing.
The World of Darkness (WoD)/The Chronicles of Darkness (CofD)
This series of games by White Wolf Game Studio and Onyx Path Publishing are great for crafting all types of horror stories, spooky stories, and paranormal adventure stories. The games offer a rich setting, multiple magic systems, and deep wells of lore.
Creature Feature
Both WoD and CofD offer games that focus on many classic horror creatures. These games can be played together, balancing all different types of supernatural beings, or separately, where all players play the same type of being within the world. Some examples of potential creature-focused games are Vampire: the Masquerade, Changeling: the Dreaming, and Werewolf: the Apocalypse.
What they’re good at:
- Providing inspiration for your own stories with their rich systems of lore.
- Their magic systems can act as models for the creation of your own. The different games have different systems of power and magic.
- When you combine these creature-based games, they flow together well and can show you how to balance multiple types of magic and the supernatural in the world of your story.
- The games fuel your creativity to tell stories about the supernatural from a creature’s perspective.
- The setting of the games also offers the chance to examine cultural institutions, which is one of the things horror stories do best.
What to watch out for:
- The lore and the world building in these games is so extensive that you can feel the need to constrain your story to fit the world. Remember that rule number one of any collective storytelling game is that the story is more important than the rules.
Encountering the Supernatural
WoD and CofD also offer options to play human characters in a supernatural world. The World of Darkness corebook for CofD offers an opportunity to play a regular person who is affected by the supernatural world while not being supernatural themselves. Hunter: the Reckoning and Hunter: the Vigil offer the chance to play characters who hunt the supernatural. The Slasher sourcebook for Hunter: the Vigil turns the game on its head and provides ways for your group to play through your own slasher movie, or to play player characters.
What they’re good at:
- These games are perfect for facilitating storytelling about underdog characters in a supernatural setting.
- They focus on teamwork, information, organization, and tactics. Playing the game can help you employ similar themes in your writing.
- They expand the type of story you can tell to the less overtly supernatural types of horror stories.
What to watch out for:
- The characters in these games get hurt more often than characters in any other game in WoD or CofD. It can be difficult to play through.
- Slasher can get very visceral and difficult to play through. Make sure that everyone at the table is comfortable.
Innocents
Innocents is a CofD corebook that offers you a chance to play children in a supernatural story. Think Stranger Things, The Girl with All the Gifts, or much of the work of Stephen King.
What it’s good at:
- Provides a way to tell stories about kids in a horror story, or scary stories about kids encountering the supernatural.
- This is the perfect way to develop spooky stories. The game provides tips on how to run the game for children. These tips are perfect for writers of spooky kid lit.
- Provides inspiration for the unique challenges your child protagonists can face.
What to watch out for:
- Children in danger is a heavy subject. Play with caution and always check on your players.
I hope that I’ve piqued your interest in one of these games, and I wish you the best possible spooky season. Go forth and tell your creepy tales, and Happy Hallowe’en!
Tell us in the comments: Which of these spooky games intrigue you?
Kris Hill is working on several genre fiction novels because she has difficulty sticking to writing one project at a time. In her daily life, she attempts to navigate the corporate world as the Senior Marketing Manager for an editing company. When Kris is not working, she can be found sprawled on a couch reading, or running tabletop adventures for her friends. She lives in Canada’s capital city with her husband, her best friend, and three cats.
