Summary
Tabletop role-playing games have long been a playground for storytellers to plunge their friends into fantastical worlds of magic and mayhem. Whether in very familiar systems likeDungeons & Dragons,or stranger tabletop experiments, the games are often a chance for mutual storytelling.
However, these games often tend towards power fantasy, and some players might seek out games where they feel more tense or helpless. Horror RPGs have been around since the genre’s inception, and provide a unique opportunity for hands-on scares. Here are the best horror RPGs that are intense, brutal, and immersive.
9Call Of Cthulhu
The Original Horror Experience
One of the earliest examples of a tabletop role-playing game that appeals to a horror audience,Call of Cthulhusees players taking on the role of investigators facing off againstthe monsters of the famous author H.P. Lovecraft. Usually set against the backdrop of the massive changes in 1920s America, players do not level up like they would in a standard TTRPG. Instead, each encounter with the supernatural leaves scars both physical and mental that push players closer to death or insanity.
The goal of an investigating party mainly becomes defending the world from cosmic threats. The dice system gives a percentage chance of success, but there’s always an opportunity for failure, adding tension and drama to every encounter.
8Delta Green
Protecting And Serving, And Possibly Screaming
Riffing on a campaign book fromCall of Cthulhu, Arc Dream Publishing released their own take on the Lovecraftian horrors inDelta Green. Here, players take on the dark nightmares that creep in the corners of our world, playingas government agents working for a covert and cruel task force.
More often than not, the mission will ask characters to cleanse the corruption of the creeping cults entirely, even any innocents that have been caught up in the ordeal. Interestingly, though,Delta Greenputs a big focus on downtime. A player might go home, and while they are unable to tell their family what they have seen, the horrors that they have faced do permanent damage to their relationships as well as their concepts of reality.
7Mothership
Sci-Fi Claustrophobia
Handing a player a simple flowchart to help with character creation seems friendly enough, but for an experienced TTRPG player, some may question why it needs to be so quick and efficient. In some games ofMothership, players will go through a few characters as they uncoverthe dangers and disasters that befall people in space.
Players' stats are based on random rolls at the beginning and a choice of class that determines what a character can do, which makes them useful. Resistances, which can be the difference between life and death, are also decided on dice rolls. Each class responds differently to fear, insanity, and wounds, but when the chaos starts to press against the hull of a party’s spaceship, each character will be tested, and survival will become the only mission.
6Dread
Building A Killer One-Shot
Perhaps the strangest system on this list but a system full of tension and terror,Dreadsees the GM starting the game by building a Jenga tower in view of all players. This system is best suited to one-shots that see a party being slowly picked off one by one. Players will pull a block from the tower each time a standard RPG would call for a roll.
Of course, this starts as quite an easy test to see if players can make it out of danger or defeat any foes. But as the game progresses and the tower becomes more unsteady, the stakes should rise accordingly. If any player demolishes the tower, their character dies at the next available moment.Perfect for short sessions that feel like slasher movies, the game quickly becomes darker as players realize that most are unlikely to escape before the end of the story.
5Kult
The Philosophy And Divinity Of Horror
In the streets of today, peculiar people poke around in the dark corners to find their way through the veil that has been cast over humanity. An ultimate power is keeping humanity from the divinity that they used to have control over. Everything that we know about reality is a lie.
Quite a thoughtful RPG that has seen various releasesbut is still touted as one of the most unsettling horror RPGs of all time,Kultsees players focusing on how losing their minds brings them closer to god in a nihilistic and terrifying way. As they start to become paranoid and see monsters in every corner, are they seeing the truth beneath the lie? Magic and combat are visceral and complex, and lead to almost unwinnable scenarios that focus on characters and how they face off against the unraveling universe.
4Alien: The Roleplaying Game
In Space, No One Can Hear You Roll
Encapsulating the stifling terror of the classic 1979 film,Alien: The Roleplaying Gamehas players choose characters that fit into classes that line up beautifully with the character archetypes that show up in the series. Whether a space trucker, a Colonial Marine, or a Company Representative, players will customize their character and bring theminto the world of the Xenomorph.
With two different gameplay modes, the system can support play of any kind: either a one-shot style where most players will die, or a longer campaign that explores the setting of the horror masterpiece. Skills determine how many D6 are rolled, and any 6s mean success. Panic and stress will start to eat away at characters, but combat is almost always a losing battle, seeing the titular aliens shredding through soldiers and firearms glancing from their scales.
3Vaesen
Big Game Hunting Creepy Cryptids
Gathering a party of detectives, artists, killers, cultists and priests,Vaesenhas players unleashed upon the mythic Norselands, where they will use their ability to see the spirits and mystical creatures to help, heal and hunt down anything that is troubling the common folk.
Using the same base system as theAlienTTRPG, players will build their characters to bring something unique to the party and will be tasked with investigating. While some of the creatures are subtle or sly, others are brutal and can make short work of the party. The end result feels like a haunted version ofThe Witcher, where players will have to prep to face off against villainous monsters or die trying, all while learning about the cursed creatures of Nordic folklore.
2Heart: The City Beneath
Dungeon Delving In The Crack In the Universe
A very different approach to horror comes with Rowan, Rook, and Decard’sHeart. Players take on strange and shifting classes that can only exist in the eponymous Heart: a hole in reality that seems to never end and grow ever deeper and more horrific. Characters must work together to beat the challenges that stop them from getting to any new areas in thedungeon-crawling segment of the game. Paths can be opened or lost as the landscape of the subterranean merges and molds itself into new shapes.
Each class comes with its fair share of horror. Rather than unlocking new moves that make players more survivable, players learn how to unleash abilities that destroy themselves but leave a lasting impact or protect their party by giving in to the transformation that is caused. With a collection of places and monsters that goes beyond the imagination,Heartis a hard game for GMs to run, but a game that will not leave players' minds once they have been lost in it.
1Ten Candles
Atmosphere, Apprehension, and Apocalypse
Another strange game that uses physicality as a part of the tension,Ten Candlessees the group lighting candles at the beginning of the game, all safe in the knowledge that when the last candle is snuffed out, every character will be dead. The game is focused, therefore, on telling a beautiful story as the characters embark on the last part of their journey. The world has already ended, all lights have gone out, and going into the dark is a guaranteed death sentence.
The game becomes a tragic and terrifying work of collaborative storytelling. Players will work hard to push every single aspect of their character to the forefront in the brief time that they are in the spotlight. The destructive act of burning pieces of paper that make up your character is symbolic and makes the death of a character, or an important person giving up on something to increase their odds of success, that much more haunting.There are few pieces of media in any genre that match the simple effectiveness ofTen Candles.
