On horror and supermen

[Prince Cherico]

The idea of mixing the horror and super
hero genrehs is not a new idea.
But establishing the atmosphere for such
a campain that is the difficult part.

The most important thing you can do is
make power have a cost, a price.
Superpowers are for the most part unatural
make that clear and apparent.
Making superbeings take a random insanity
is a easy way of doing this, making them
take a deformady is another but I find its
best for your superheros to radiate some
quality. Animals advoid them, children
hug their mothers in their presence and
their is the faint feeling of wrongness.
Make power have a price a truly tangable
one and you will have ocomplished your
first step in making a horror HU campain.

[AlanGunhouse]

Something like a horror factor based upon power level perhaps?

[Glistam]

You sound like you're describing the Nightbane game.

[Daniel Stoker]

I don't know if you need some sort of inanity or deformity to make horror work in a superhero game. I'm not going to mention characters specifically, but the old Defenders line had a number of magical/horror stories and while you did have some characters who looked like monsters all the time, that was far from everyone in the series. Same thing with the original Nightstalkers with Doc Strange, Blade, Frank Drake and and Hannibal King. (Though Hannibal did have the issue with being a vamp.)

Heck look at Hellboy and his team... the issue is you just need to make sure to balance your power levels and your threats. The low powered 'The Super Friends Marvin and Wendy' like team that has issues with bank robbers isn't the group you necessarily want to fight off the living fragment of one of the Great Old Ones while at the same time you don't have one newbie vamp facing off against the whole Justice League.


Daniel Stoker

[Overlord Rikonius]

Whether it's horror or not depends more on what they do with the power than what the nature of their power is.

Next on the thriller channel: After a science lab accident, a troubled high school student uses twisted arachnid powers to wreak bloody vengeance on his classmates in the brutal slasher flick, "Curse of the Spider-Man"

Horror can be magic, superscience, demons, mutants, or just a guy with a knife.

[Overlord Rikonius]

I suppose there are many kinds of horror. Even looking at Lovecraft, there was the Reanimator series, which didn't seem to have that much thematically to do with what is stereotypically "Lovecraftian." Darkman is a bit horrific, yet in no way supernatural.
I can see a mix-and-match on this sort of thing. Some superpowers from horrific pasts, some from horrific sources (either technological or mystical), some are just horrific in effect, and some are pretty mundane.
I wonder where martial arts comes into this.

That movie Tiger Claws comes close.

[AlanGunhouse]

I think you are missing the point guys, he was suggesting that all heroes have something akin to a Horror factor just for having powers. The idea possibly being to see if you are still heroic if the world at large considers you a monster.

[Glistam]

I think you are missing the point guys, he was suggesting that all heroes have something akin to a Horror factor just for having powers. The idea possibly being to see if you are still heroic if the world at large considers you a monster.

So basically, mutants from Marvel Comics?

[AlanGunhouse]

Something similar, except that people can tell you are a mutant even when it is not obvious.

[Al Blotto]

The DC/Wildstorm comic "Captain Atom: Armageddon" had something similar to this. Captain Atom ended up leaping into the Wildstorm Universe and was just trying to find some help but everyone he would turn to was afraid of him because of how Supers were viewed in that universe. Maybe something in the past marred the entire world's view of supers? Maybe the President of the USA got killed by one on live TV a la Ultimate X-Men or Superman II (had it gone further). Heroes would have to struggle with doing good even though it always meant being feared. Something Spidey does on a daily basis but if it were everyone, things would definitely be different. Not everyone has his kind of tolerance.

[Stattick]

Well, it sorta depends on what kind of horror you're talking about.

If you're going for the "personal horror" type thing like WoD, then certainly the original poster has some good ideas. I'd add in that each character has to fight to retain his humanity as it slowly starts slipping away from him, and then you're getting somewhere. Perhaps every so often, the characters must make a roll vs insanity, and if they fail, then the loose another notch of humanity (perhaps port over or create some sort of humanity mechanic?).

This creates a world where the average citizen is truly afraid of the supers - afterall, they've seen far too many of them decend into madness or become megalomaniacs concerned only with themselves and their own kind then with humans.


Of course, with the above, it could be that in actuality, that the heroes that have "lost their humanity" have in actually simply had the blinders removed from their eyes. Maybe there's something, some menace that the public simply isn't aware of. Maybe that's why all of the old heroes seem to turn against society and go rogue.

Well, and of course there was that whole ugly incident with Madagascar - every living thing on the whole island annahilated in a flash, and the boom that was heard all the way in London. The island's gone now - sorta. Somehow, it's outta phase with the rest of the world, and it can be seen with the naked eye, but satallites and flyovers do not see it, just ocean. It's said that no human has ever visited the phantom island and returned... and those supers that have aren't saying much, except that it is a sort of sactuary for their own kind. It's certainly the place from where they launched the 2023 attack against New Zealand, exposing to the world that the Kiwis had been quietly exterminating every super on the island in what the supers call "their holocaust".

Here in the US, the government does it's best to contain and control the menace. But it's hard. Five years after the battle between the West Coast Defenders and the thousands of black metallic creatures simply known as The Hoard, downtown Los Angeles still stands in ruins. Savana Georgia is still a lake of glass from when president Whitley had it nuked in '18 to contain the horrors escaping Project Prometheus. Every year it gets harder, worse, on the common man. People are afraid to go out at night, because sometimes they just dissappear.

Some say a war's coming... And most people believe it. What most don't know, what only the oldest and most powerful of the heroes know, is that it's been here for decades. The cost has been high, and it will rise higher yet. But the war goes on, otherwise, humans and supers alike would simply be annilated by the Dark Lords.

[Overlord Rikonius]

Well, let's not forget Dr. Manhatten. He succeeds in being horrific even without a dark past, or some unpleasant source of his power, or even bad mood swings. His problems are more... human in an eccentric way, but his powers allow those problems to become an instrument of godly destruction.
Still, for the most part I would assume the idea is that, while you may do good with your powers, or at least try, you have to be willing to entertain the idea that you don't want to know where they come from. Yes? Among other things.

Getting ripped apart at an atomic level in a lab accident then slowly rebuilding yourself so for several weeks you manifest as a screaming apparition with its guts exposed isn't unpleasant?

[Stattick]

Fine - how's this for an HF system?

Reputation increases by 1 each time the character goes up in level. Each major, documented media storm that the character is involved in increases the character's reputation by 1.

Reputation only effects how well known you are... but it's important later.


All heroes generate a horror factor and awe factor. It depends on who they're interacting with as to whether it's awe or horror though. Also, modifiers may apply. Take that reputation score from above, and apply it as a reaction rating. When the reaction is important, make a contested d20 roll (like rolling to strike while the PC rolls to parry or dodge). The villian adds his reputation to his roll, while the pcs add in theirs. Optionally, the powers that add to HF or Awe can also be added or subtracted as appropriate (Ghost Rider tries to rescue the little girl, but she's scared, screams, and tries to pull away, so a negative because she doesn't know that Ghost Rider's a good guy. Conversely, he tries to rescue the love interest, and she trusts him, despite his frightening appearance).

Those that the media hate may have a reputation that'll get them in trouble at times, while at other times, it may help them (Spiderman) - much of which is the GM deciding whether the NPC in question loves/trusts or hates/fears the hero.

[Zenvis]

I like the idea of an awe factor for the more experienced character. That would be cool and could play a lot of roles in game play.

[Rallan]

If you aren't particularly big on the "oh crap, am I becoming a monster?" personal horror groove, you can always make the horror external instead. What do you do if you're a super-powered cape crusader and it still isn't enough to save the world? How do you handle your friends and loved ones suffering horrible fates because you couldn't save them? Or worse, suffering horrible fates because the baddies attacked them to get at you? How would superheroes cope knowing that the world is doomed and they can only save a small part of it? How would they cope knowing that the world is doomed and they can only delay the inevitable end?

Or basically, what if the PCs in Werewolf: the Apocalypse wore spandex?