Scary Stuff Kids! D&D and Horror
Not a day goes by on Twitter that you don’t hear what a terrible game D&D is, and what it can’t do. I understand what motivates a lot of these posts. People who play D&D can frequently get caught up in their enthusiasm. Role playing is awesome fun, and let’s be honest, there aren’t that many media experiences that can hit you the way a good TTRPG can. So they get tired of the "D&D IS AWESOME" posts, and the dominance of D&D in the virtual space.
But this leads people to say wildly inaccurate things. For example, that D&D “can’t do horror”. I can’t speak for 5e, but earlier editions can most certainly “do horror”. There are a few reasons why people don’t see this:
D&D is NOT a fantasy game. Sorry folks, it certainly looks like one, but D&D is a pulp genre emulator, and many of the authors who inspired it wrote pastiche or bricolage fiction, borrowing from everywhere and anywhere. There is a reason the AD&D DMG includes conversion rules for Gamma World/Metamorphosis Alpha (Sci-fi) and Boot Hill (Western), it is not meant to be “pure fantasy”. Gygax was well versed in medievalism, but there are many aspects of the game that are distinctly NOT medieval. It’s pretty obvious to you if you are a medievalist, but otherwise you might see the trappings (knights, clerics) and think it’s pure fantasy. D&D has horror elements in it as well.
Since D&D is a mix-up of genres, aspects of the game are not a good fit for a “horror” game. Bunyips, flail snails and unicorns are not the go to monsters for a horror game. So it’s easy to look at the game on the surface and think, ‘you could never use this for horror’. But the referee has the ability to use whatever aspects of the game they like. You don’t have to use every monster, so anyone pointing to an element of the game and saying, “that’s not horror” is missing the point.
D&D characters are not invincible. I can’t speak for the current edition, but if you run AD&D RAW your characters are very vulnerable for the low levels and into the mid levels depending on circumstances. Yes, high level D&D characters are much harder to kill, but in so many cases people only get to high level because they ran the game significantly deviated from the RAW in order to survive that long. Fudging rolls, buffing HP, that sort of thing. Run without any of that mucking about early edition D&D is a VERY deadly game, not a “game of invincible heroes”.
Resource management has a horror element to it. Not “OMG it's horrible to track encumbrance”, but in the sense that running out of resources can be horrifying. Encumbrance slows you down. When a horde of monsters shows up and the party runs, and your character is the slowest, and is dragged down by the horde, that’s horrifying. When you run out of torches in a subterranean dungeon with no lighting and are plunged into absolute darkness, that’s horrifying. When your rations run out and you are in dark underground caves with no running water around and you have no cleric, that’s horrifying. People don’t think D&D is scary because they ignore many of the aspects of the game that produce fear.
Spells! D&D is jam packed with horrifying spells. Spells that paralyze you so you can’t move, spells that take over your mind so you can’t control your actions. Spells that transform you into a monster and make you lose your mind. Spells that summon a swarm of monsters to tear you to pieces. Spells that drive your spirit from your body and allow it to be taken over against your will. I think a lot of refs don’t bother engaging with this aspect of the game, but many spells have terrifying consequences that are sort of glossed over in the rush to meet “story beats.”
Monsters! D&D has SO MANY HORRIFYING MONSTERS! I happen to have a liking for horror themed monsters so I use them a lot, and my players are terrified on the regular. Shambling mounds can envelop enemies and suffocate them to death. A cifal can swarm over your body and EAT YOU ALIVE. A giant hornet can plant eggs in your body that HATCH AND DEVOUR YOU FROM THE INSIDE. A gibbering mouther can roll over you and CONSUME YOU WITH MULTIPLE TOOTHY MAWS. A son of Kyuss is covered with maggots that bore into your skin as you fight them. A green slime dissolves your flesh within 1-4 rounds. An intellect devourer EATS YOUR BRAIN and occupies the space in your skull. A grell (a giant floating brain with tentacles) can paralyze you then consume you with it’s vicious beak. D&D is ripe for horror, particularly body horror. I find it amazing that people don’t see this. Perhaps they need to buy the Fiend Folio…
A lot of this comes down to flavor, how you choose to present the game, what information you give the players and what tone you want. If you want to, you can run “high fantasy” D&D and stay away from these sorts of monsters and themes. But to suggest that D&D, particularly old school D&D, “can’t do horror” is just wildly mistaken, and even a cursory familiarity with the rules and the content of the game would show that.
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