With Halloween fast approaching it would be remiss of us here at… wait. Did you hear that? Was that a scream, or just the wind? Hmmm… maybe we should split up and investigate to cover more ground, or better yet stick together and try to survive! Join us this week as we get more into the mood for the bestest of best holidays and talk about the joining of two exciting forms of entertainment – Horror and Gaming! We cover it all, with some wackiness in between, so make sure your cardio is up, bring along some competent friends, and be careful of fatal camera angles as we talk Horror in Gaming on this week’s episode of Monkey in the Cage!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:03:32 — 29.1MB)
(02:02) – Robert finishes Ready Player One and get’s his movie watching on! – Butter, Iron Sky, and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Plus, Agent Coulson lives!
(12:00) – Matt is an epically mediocre restaurant reviewer and, time travels, and Jared the Intern becomes Property of Uncle Sam. – Steam Haus Gastropub
(19:20) – We briefly continue our not-discussion on the return of The Walking Dead, the return of The Jersey Shore, and more random news from the internets! – Autonomous Cars, Death by Cockroach, and The Mystery Eye
(26:05) – Karen makes us all insult celebrities, NBC execs are dicks, and remakes are coming! – Badly Drawn Faces, Community, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Pet Sematary. Also, American Horror Story: Asylum premieres this week!
(35:20) – It’s topic time! We lead off the discussion with video games and talk about some of the major franchises in horror. – The Silent Hill Series, The Fatal Frame Series, The Dead Space Series, and the original Resident Evil. Plus, Phantasmagoria and Splatterhouse!
(49:25) – Next up, the challenge of running a tabletop Horror RPG, from ambiance to player cooperation to GMing close to the chest. – Call of Cthulhu, The World of Darkness, and tremulus. Plus, misadventures in Ravenloft!
(58:30) – How successful are board games at creating scares for the players? We weigh in. – Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness, and the infamous Ouija Board
Closing Song – The Munsters’ Theme – written and arranged by Jack Marshall
TT games can easily turn into fart comedies – lots of stupid jokes. Sometimes a guy right for an adventure game will not be right for a horror game, in a horror game he becomes “that guy” when he is not “that guy” at other times.
Just a quick correction because it drove me batty listening back: It’s Jennifer Garner not Gardener. Also, “Phil” from Modern Family is Ty Burrell.
In case anyone was wondering here is a link to Pyramid Head doing his thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtrJTn6hd8c
I would like to add that Gregg Clark aka Clark Gregg really shouldn’t have two first names for his name, oh, and I meant Order 66 not order 54 when we were talking about Autonomous Cars deciding to kill all humans. #StarWarsNerdFail
I used to like a tabletop RPG called Chill. It is out of print but I saw it on DriveThruRPG (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/2888/Chill-Second-Edition?it=1&
. I agree that it is hard to do the Horror tabletop RPG right. But when a GM pull it off the game is awesome. I think Call of Cthulu is the new horror, but I think it is only good horror for a niche. Cthulu doesn’t work with Jack the Ripper stuff or anything that doesn’t deal with insanity and gods from the other worlds! 
Love the podcast!
Awesome episode guys, I’m a huge Horror nerd. Be it movies, games, etc.
I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t mess with Ouija Boards (never touched one) because part of being religious, as you know I am, comes with a belief in at least some of what many may call the Occult and Ouija Boards seem like a direct route to spirits. I mean I’ve never had one iota of a supernatural experience but know trusted people who say they have.
I also want to put some effort into my upcoming Deadlands game to make it creepy and all westerny. We play in the basement and I’m considering using only Lanterns and Candles as lighting.
Very kewl episode guys! I too am a horror nerd. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and if anyone is planning on running a game, hit me up, I have sound effects CDs, and plotlines for CoC, coming out my ears. I must recommend an MP3 file from DriveHtru RPG, The Sound of Fear ( http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/96247/The-Sound-of-Fear ) play it in the background, it really sets the players on edge.
Great podcast (as usual)! I’m not a huge fan of horror, but I fell into a weird period of running horror one-shots for a few conventions. For me, horror is all about the immersion and the mystery. You don’t want to give too much of the story away too quickly. I think horror works better in shorter campaigns or one-shots because of that problem of keeping the players immersed. I agree that it’s not for everyone, but it’s something that everyone should try their hand at in an RPG, especially if your group doesn’t normally play them. It was a challenge as a guy that normally runs fantasy, and it was a refreshing endeavor overall!
Thanks for the positive feedback everyone, glad you enjoyed the episode!
@Tre’ – I see your point about CoC being pretty self-contained, seeing as most PCs finish the run either dead or insane, but I think elements of the Mythos can lend themselves well to any campaign setting. Full disclaimer – My supernatural Victorian steampunk game has a healthy dose of Cthulhu influence without being a CoC game, so I am admittedly biased.
@Temmogen – Aaaaannnnnnnddddd Downloaded. Also, thanks again for the CoC Prop Disc. I will be putting it to good use in the near future.
@Kevin – Great idea to help set the ambiance for the Deadlands game, just don’t burn down the house…
@Andrew – I couldn’t imagine attempting to run a sustained horror campaign (I’ll leave that to Karen because she does a damn fine job at it). I go for the creepy/horror type flashes that add to a particular scene and give a little bit of horrific flavor to a session.
WOW thanks everyone for commenting on the episode. you guys rock so friggin hard!!! YAY for the monkey army we are building!