Favorite Horror Games: The Runoff

[fmitchell]

What's running off I'll leave to your imagination ...

Following up on this earlier thread, I'm curious what games people currently play. So pick your favorite.

(I meant this to be a multiple-choice poll, but it's late. If you have multiple favorites, please choose "Other" and describe them below.)

[Olothfaern]

...for old WoD.

[Mulsiphix]

I'm accumulating lots of eBay old WOD content. I'm absolutely taken with the dark storyline and politically action-esk universe. I love reading just about any sourcebook I have come across which is saying a lot. I consider a great deal of the D&D stuff I have bought lately to be full of countless pages of fluff and filler.

[MortonStromgal]

Well I voted for WOD but really my answer is Obsidian or Dark Conspiracy. But I don't enjoy the game mechanics of either and Dark Conspiracy is more than a little silly in parts. Oh and I really really really want my answer to be Call of Cthulhu. I love the books soo much but playing has been hit and miss.

[Mulsiphix]

CoC reminds me, loosely, of Burning Wheel. Has the potential to be amazing but without the right DM and imaginative players, it has the potential to only provide a mediocre experience. I'm absolutely dying to find some quality horror buffs locally. Horror is the mone genre that is still very much shrouded in mystery for me, as far as PnP is concerned anyway. I'm dying to play My Life with Master

[MortonStromgal]

I might have to change my vote to UA pretty soon. I picked it up a couple weeks ago and frankly its awesome! Theres a couple parts of the mechanics I am still not comfortable with (like PCs may have 80 hp) but I think if I play a few mock combats this might go away.

[trechriron]

I love several horror settings;

Cthulu in various forms (Freeport is an awesome derivative), Delta Green rules! Even WFRP (2nd ed) draws from some of the Mythos.
Kult
New World of Darkness
X-Files
AFMBE or any Zombie Horror
40k Universe

However, I still am enamored with Savage Worlds as a system and would convert any setting my group wanted to explore into it. With all my resources, I can use any of the supplements for the games above and have PILES of stuff for EONS.

[Webhead]

This is a really difficult one.

Don't Rest Your Head is my favorite horror game I never played. Want to play it badly, though.

I also really wanna play Monsters and Other Childish Things, which seems like more of a horror-parody than true horror.

I love Call of Cthulhu, but as Mulsiphix mentioned, it really requires the right combination of good players, GM and atmosphere to really get the experience of it.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten is probably "king of the hill" right now as I love zombie survival-horror and I love Unisystem. I have a great time every time I play/run that game.

I liked Mage from the Old WoD a lot, but we never really played up the "horror" aspect of the game. It was more about "reality-bending freedom fighters".

I guess in the end, I'll pick AFMBE. Great game. And my brother loves it as well.

Edit: Ooh! Almost forgot Deadlands! Very cool Western-Horror game. The original system was a pain, but I still love the setting!

[Law Dog]

Old school Chill. Probably because I was playing and running it back in the eighties and it harkens back to a simpler time (both in reality and RPGs). There is something very appealing about being Joe Average out there putting the beatdown on the monsters.

[Mead]

Some of my most memorable moments came from CoC games run in the modern setting at Clemson University (sometimes with "ourselves" as characters, sometimes not), where we all were gaming at the time. Now that was immersive. And creeptastic.

Made it easy to replace fallen characters too. One guy even got killed again before he had a chance to finish chargen on his replacement. Darwin got the Darwin Award that night =)

[agoraderek]

Call of Cthulhu, hands down. my friends and i back in the day (junior high, high school) were HUGE lovecraft fans, and loved that we could game in his story.

never liked WoD, not because of the system, but i didnt care for the setting, and most of the kids playing around here were the pretentious, moody goth stereotype...

[Richard Littles]

This is going to come as a shock, but I love Horror Hero. Shocking I know.

[Max_Writer]

I voted for Call of Cthulhu. Great game with great and simple rules system. It only takes about 10 minutes to make a character and the the 1920s or Victorian setting allow you to meet historical figures. I find the setting realistic - with darkness rearing its ugly head but the daylight world quite normal, though with a hint of what is to come. Great background as well: Mu, Lemuria, Hyperboria, Atlantis, the Dreamlands. It's great. And great fun.

[Masseurhanz]

Favorite horror rgp that I have played is Call of Cthulhu (pre wotc), gotta love a game that can take years of in game time to finish if too many sanity checks are failed. One that I want to play is Army of Darkness.

[Q-man]

I have to vote for Call of Cthulhu as well. I'm not sure why but the idea of normal mundane humans going up against horrors that they have little chance of defeating is just incredibly appealing to me.

Lately I've become keenly interested in the Savage Worlds setting Realms of Cthulhu. Its the same setting, but the Savage Worlds rules are a lot of fun and might take the clunkyness out of the Call of Cthulhu combat.