Shadows over Ebisu (March Madness Day 13)

13 What horror RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

In my limited repertoire of games, it's probably no surprise that the only dedicated horror RPG I've played is Call of Cthulhu (d20 version, this was with the Ebisu group and we were big into the d20 system). Of course, I've worked horror themes into other RPGs I've run, and played in a couple as well, but CoC pretty much rules the roost when it comes to horror RPGs.

Picture by Steve Burg

I'd like to try the original CoC, since d20 is really a system about level advancement, and CoC is not a game about level advancement.  At least, we didn't advance when we played it, and had no hopes that our PCs would survive or remain sane.  That's sort of the whole point of playing CoC, isn't it?  Seeing how your PC goes out of commission.

I remember doing a playtest of my friend Steve's narrative system with a zombie/alien survival setting. I don't really remember much about how it turned out, though. I wrote up a report for Steve, which I still have on my hard drive and just looked over. We had some fun with it, but in the end being new to “narrativist” style Forge-inspired gaming, we didn't make the most of the game. In the end it seemed to be a bit more aggravating than fun. One of the main reasons I tend to avoid “story” games these days.