From investigating ancient terrors to facing the world’s end together, here are our top recommended horror RPG titles, just in time for Halloween.
Telling scary stories has long been a Halloween tradition. If you’re looking for something more in-depth than ghost stories around the fire this year, why not try running through some spooky RPGs instead?
As Halloween approaches, get your gaming group together and give one of these horror-themed TTRPGs a try. With both multi-edition classics of the genre and bold new ways to bring horror to the tabletop, you’re sure to find something that clicks.
Call of Cthulhu
While other horror TTRPGs can be bent towards running almost any kind of spooky story, Call of Cthulhu is much more specific. The Cthulhu Mythos, as first spawned by H.P. Lovecraft, is one of the most enduring horror narratives of all time. Call of Cthulhu gives you the tools to explore the mythos fully, scraping up against the workings of eldritch gods and the madness left in their wake.
Call of Cthulhu’s gameplay is predominantly focused on investigation, delving into mysteries that at first may seem mundane before revealing their true, horrific scope. While there may at times be combat, it is often more desperate scrabbling than a heroic clash.
Unlike more traditional fantasy TTRPGs like D&D, Call of Cthulhu’s characters will not progressively gain strength and grow to greater heights. Their adventures will weigh on and weary them, and it’s only a matter of time until they succumb to one horror or the next. This impermanence gives Call of Cthulhu its high stakes, but also its improbable heart. Your character may be doomed, but they can still go down swinging, casting a small light into the endless dark.
With decades worth of published material, from campaigns to one-shots, Call of Cthulhu should be tried at least once by any TTRPG player. Why not take the chance this Halloween?
Vampire: The Masquerade
There are plenty of spine-chilling horror RPGs that will have you creeping through the shadows, hoping desperately to avoid the gaze of a monster. There are still shadows in Vampire: The Masquerade, but you’re the monster that dwells in them.
Vampire: The Masquerade invites players to create a Vampire character from one of the game’s specific clans. These clans function similarly to character classes in other RPGs, granting personalized abilities, roleplay focuses, and backstory suggestions. Operating in a world of shadowy undead cabals, it’s up to you to decide how your character will survive and thrive in a setting where life is cheap and blood compels like a siren’s song.
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For all its extravagant gothic trappings, this is a comparatively subtle take on horror. VTM’s setting is called the World of Darkness, but there is deeper darkness yet waiting for players willing to commit to this world and its rules fully. The realization of what your character is, what they have done, and what they may yet become.
VTM pushes you to inhabit your Vampire – or Kindred – in all their horror and glory. As much a tragedy as it is a power fantasy, playing Vampire is an engaging experience that few RPGs can match, making it the perfect story to start this Halloween.
Dread
Many horror RPGs can excel at offering an engaging atmosphere but lack the true clammy-handed, twitchy tension of a good horror movie. TTRPGs can often be long-term and languid by design, making it difficult to sustain tension throughout a full scenario.
Dread solves that issue with ease, amping up the tension via its ingenious central mechanic – the tower. A Jenga tower, to be exact. Players aren’t rolling dice to determine their characters’ fates in Dread, but pulling from and re-stacking the tower at crucial moments. If the tower falls, disaster strikes, and more often than not a character is removed from the game permanently.
One of Dread’s best features is that it can be adapted to any horror story you want to tell. While the game comes with example scenarios, the tower is the real star of the show here, adding a tactile element to its RPG trappings.
Dread is a near-perfect system to set a Halloween RPG one-shot around. If you already have a story in mind and want to see your players fully engaged, hardly daring to breathe when pulling from the tower, Dread comes highly recommended. You can pick up Dread from The Impossible Dream right here.
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