The state of Post-OSR content

Beoric said:
But were audiences ever really scared? A century ago, even half a century ago, people in Western culture had much greater exposure to IRL death and suffering. When the first horror movies were coming out, people were still washing their loved ones' bodies when they died, maternal and childhood death rates were still pretty high, medicines was not nearly as effective, not just at saving lives, but of mitigating the long term effects of injury. Most horror movies were pure camp in comparison. I don't think people who go to horror movies ever went to be scared.
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Perhaps it's in the realm of urban legend, but wasn't it said that early moviegoers would faint when the characters die? I think it goes back to what was discussed before. The modern North American has seen thousands of imaginary deaths by age eighteen, so it's lost it's ability to shock.

I think the "but they're campy!" vs "we're just jaded!" is a chicken and the egg comparison. I think the 'we're jaded' came first, and the campiness of modern horror came about because of that.

As for why people watch horror, I think it's for the adrenaline. The feeling of fear, being able to go outside your comfort zone in a safe environment (since what's going on the movie isn't real).


The Heretic
 
The1True said:
With regards to Ravenloft, is it possible that people are looking for the trappings of horror? Like it's not so much scary, but gothic and Hot Topic spoopy?
Like Dark Sun is grimdark, survivalist, but most players will find a way around the serious impediments (lack of water and metal) pretty early on, and then it's just D&D in the wasteland. The flavour remains though. Player as tourist.

Because otherwise, the best way to inspire fear is through powerlessness, and I think folks are feeling that way plenty irl these days.
Also, taking away power reeks of DM fiat, and will lead to an adversarial relationship with your players -your friends- fast.
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It's good that you mentioned Ravenloft, because it demonstrates the issues with horror games, and horror in OSR games, in particular.

The whole thing with the strangling mist was a way to force the players to take on the vampire. If this was a location in a sandbox, the PCs would go nowhere near it until they are high enough level to take on the vampire with limited risk. I6 Ravenloft was for levels 5-7. You definitely would not want to fight a vampire at that level. I read somewhere that the Hickmans got the idea for the mist from X2 Castle Amber, for the same purpose. To force the adventure.

I6 was right at the beginning of trad, if not a precursor. It certainly had classic elements, but story elements were introduced. They intrigued me as a kid. The vampire knows of you and has deceived you into entering his terrain. Oooh, classic.

(As an aside, it's amusing that I6 and the 90's Bram Stoker's Dracula movie both include a female protagonist that is a reincarnation of the vampire's original love interest. That wasn't in Dracula. In fact, there was little background on how the vampire came to be. He simply was. And he wanted to bring his malevolence to London)

In fact wasn't the whole level draining thing a way to inspire fear in the players? You spent all that time getting to level six, those wights are scary! Get them away from me! And vampires? AAAHHHHH. They drain two levels per hit, don't they?

I6 is a very cool module. @The1True it's not quite OSR but you could certainly appreciate the castle/dungeon map, and the ways it provides unstated strategies for Strahd. Another big distinction is that it wasn't a monster zoo/monster lair. Most of the rooms were empty and filled flavor.

So actually, I6 had both: player as tourist AND (mostly) powerlessness via DM fiat.


The Heretic
 
The Heretic said:
Perhaps it's in the realm of urban legend, but wasn't it said that early moviegoers would faint when the characters die? I think it goes back to what was discussed before. The modern North American has seen thousands of imaginary deaths by age eighteen, so it's lost it's ability to shock.
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So, "Ladies fainting because they are so sensitive/emotional/weak" is an old trope which may have originated because of corset use, which compressed their rib cages and squished their internal organs, so they couldn't get enough oxygen. I think it also appealed because sensitive = sheltered = upper class and/or virginal. Early movies wouldn't have been long after dudes thought tuberculosis was hot in a woman. Corsets were phasing out by then, but tropes persist.

So some might have been corsets, but I think what was really going on was studios were spreading these stories for publicity. Also, intentionally or unintentionally, it fed into another trope of girl snuggling up to manly date when she gets a-skeered during the movie. Making it an ideal genre from your average adolescent boy perspective (possibly adolescent girls as well, I suppose).

The Heretic said:
I6 was right at the beginning of trad, if not a precursor. It certainly had classic elements, but story elements were introduced. They intrigued me as a kid. The vampire knows of you and has deceived you into entering his terrain. Oooh, classic.
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It would still be Classic if you ran it in a campaign and the vampire actually deceived the players into entering his domain.

The Heretic said:
(As an aside, it's amusing that I6 and the 90's Bram Stoker's Dracula movie both include a female protagonist that is a reincarnation of the vampire's original love interest. That wasn't in Dracula. In fact, there was little background on how the vampire came to be. He simply was. And he wanted to bring his malevolence to London)
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I've seen this trope a lot, and I'm wondering if it predated I6. The earliest I could find it, other than I6 (1983), was Fright Night (1985), which might have been influenced by I6, but D&D wasn't exactly mainstream back then. But it was well established in my mind by the time the 1992 movie came out.

EDIT: I found a 1966 TV series called Dark Shadows which had the reincarnation storyline. Look at the storylines here, especially storyline 7, "The Kidnapping of Maggie", it's pretty clear. See also Blackula (1972), the familiarly titled Bram Stoker's Dracula (1973), and Love at First Bite (1979).
 
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Until a recent outing with EOTB, I hadn't been a player for decades. Somehow, even after all those years, I still ended up running from the dungeon is a panic after the getting separated from the rest of the (mostly dead) party.

It was great.

Not jaded.
 
The Heretic said:
As for why people watch horror, I think it's for the adrenaline. The feeling of fear, being able to go outside your comfort zone in a safe environment (since what's going on the movie isn't real).
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Yes, that's exactly it. Methinks Beoric is making his point about watching scary movies for spectacle/campiness from a personal point of view, not from a universal (or even common) point of view. Scary movies are called scary movies because they try to scare people. Maybe not all people, maybe not even a lot of people, but to say that nobody sees a scary movie because they want to get scared is just flat-out incorrect. That's like saying that nobody goes to comedy movies because they want to laugh.

Oddly enough, D&D is a better vehicle for comedy than it is for horror; consider how many laughs are had around a table when compared to audible gasps or screams of fear. I think this is because the friendly communal nature of the game promotes bonding, silliness, and in-jokes, as opposed to the discomforting quiet and introspective solitude generally required to build terror (hence D&D being a naturally bad vehicle for delivering scares).
 
DangerousPuhson said:
Yes, that's exactly it. Methinks Beoric is making his point about watching scary movies for spectacle/campiness from a personal point of view, not from a universal (or even common) point of view. Scary movies are called scary movies because they try to scare people.
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They are called horror movies, unless you count Scary Movie, which was not a horror movie, or a scary movie.

I have a couple of friends in TO who have produced/directed some low budget horror, and my kid is a horror movie buff who says she has watched hundreds. I did a straw poll. Verdict, they are not, in fact scared when watching horror movies, and do not watch horror movies to be scared. However, they think some people do watch scary movies to be scared, and those people actually still get scared.

Which makes a certain amount of sense, if you are going to a movie to get scared, and you don't get scared, then there is no point in going to those movies anymore. Obviously, for those for whom getting scared is the point, if they are still going to horror movies, they can't be jaded.

People who go to horror movies even though they are not scared by them might be jaded, or might get something out of them other than being scared.

So about the best I can say is some people aren't jaded, and other people may or may not be jaded. Not exactly QED, but there you go.
 
Beoric said:
They are called horror movies, unless you count Scary Movie, which was not a horror movie, or a scary movie.
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Beoric said:
I have a couple of friends in TO who have produced/directed some low budget horror, and my kid is a horror movie buff who says she has watched hundreds. I did a straw poll.
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You have anecdotes. Got it. Doesn't break reality though. Horror = scary, like by definition:

hor·ror
/ˈhôrər/
noun
  1. 1.
    an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.
  2. a thing causing a feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.
    plural noun: horrors
    "photographs showed the horror of the tragedy"
    3. a literary or film genre concerned with arousing feelings of fear and horror.
    "I always enjoy thrillers and horror"
    4. intense dismay.
    "to her horror she found that a thief had stolen the machine"
Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare an audience.
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit physical or psychological fear in its viewers.

(Sidenote: Am I seriously the only one who ever references a dictionary? I keep having to do this around here; for a bunch of "writers", there's a heck of a lot of confusion about language.)

Why do you refuse to just admit that some people watch horror movies to scare themselves? Why is this point such a concession for you? What is there to gain by standing your ground on this point?
 
I thought it would be clear from anecdotes and my analysis thereof that didn't think I had a good argument, or at least didn't care to come up with one. Citing my friends and family who more or less agreed with you was never intended to be a winning argument. That was pretty much a capitulation for me; I'm not sure you noticed (apparently you have not) but my arguments tend to be footnoted dissertations.

It is possible that the reason you like dictionaries so much and nobody else refers to them is they don't tell you much about connotation, context, or subtext. The utility of dictionaries is pretty limited if what you are trying to do is understand how people actually use language. And I really think you need to work on recognizing connotation, context and subtext.

To be perfectly clear, and hopefully leave no room for doubt or argument: the subject is more complicated than I thought, I don't know who is right or if there really is a clear answer, and I don't really care. I am tired of every discussion being a battle to the death, and I do not want to argue about this any more. Please find something else to be pissed off about. Please don't make the new thing you are pissed off about be this post.
 
Oh I'm not pissed off, no worries here. I just strangely tend to find myself explaining what words mean to people a bit too often around these parts, and it frustrates me that discussions always seem to devolve into semantics. It's like every other discussion I have to bust out Merriam-Webster to explain the meaning of common English words to fluent English speakers; it's just a bit surreal.

Connotation, context, and subtext do not elude me; you've merely failed in communicating whatever you were trying to say. It happens when talking in text, where all the non-verbal cues get lost (which non-coincidentally are the same elements used to drive most of connotation, context, and subtext).

Don't take this the wrong way Beoric, but you are a naturally contradictory guy. You tend to nay-say, and you often fight points that weren't asking to be fought. Someone could say that grass is green and you'll chime in with "actually, where I am it's usually more yellow-ish brown", or they'll say the sky is blue and you'll add "technically the sky is black because of outer space". It's like, ok, we get it, but you ignore what we're putting down in favor of getting some strange point in. It comes off as combative, I don't get why you do it.

I have my failings around here; I become abrasive, I misconstrue, I get points wrong once in a while. But I am also not above acknowledging these things, and course-correcting when required. My life is better when I let go of my mistakes instead of doubling-down and digging in. I simply hope that one day you find the same peace.
 
Ineffective Voulging said:
“I’m not having the same argument!
I’m having the same form of argument!l
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I don't think you understand.

If I go to a different store every day but always end up buying the same things, it doesn't mean that I'm going to the same store over and over again.

See, this is exactly the sort of semantic quagmires I'm talking about.
 
If you go to a different store every day and always end up buying the same things, I posit that the likely explanation is your aberrant procurement proclivities, rather than an epidemic of stock management incompetence afflicting multiple independent enterprises.
 
Ineffective Voulging said:
If you go to a different store every day and always end up buying the same things, I posit that the likely explanation is your aberrant procurement proclivities, rather than an epidemic of stock management incompetence afflicting multiple independent enterprises.
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Ugh, we're doing this now then are we?

Fine - I rent a new car everyday. These cars require me to apply the gas in order to get them moving. Am I renting the same car over and over because they all require me to apply the gas?

I read a new book every day. Reading these books require that I read the words in them. If I read words, am I reading the same book over and over?

I wear new clothing every day. Wearing this clothing requires that I put my arms through sleeves. Am I wearing the same clothes everyday just because what I'm wearing has sleeves?

I hope you get the point by now. I really, sincerely, weeping-for-the-future-of-humanity hope that you get the point by now.
 
A man is driving down the highway when his wife calls him on his cellphone.

"Honey, be careful!" she says. "I just heard on the radio that there's a crazy person driving the wrong way on the highway."

"One person?" the man replies. "There are hundreds of them!"
 
A traveler wandered into a remote village, lost and frustrated. He stormed into the home of a local sage. “My compass is broken!” he shouted. “It keeps pointing north, no matter which way I turn!” The sage blinked. “That’s... exactly what a compass is supposed to do.” The traveler scowled. “Nonsense! I’m trying to go west. But every time I check the compass, it still points north. It’s clearly defective!”

The sage calmly explained, “The compass shows you where north is, so you can orient yourself and find west.” The traveler waved him off. “So it’s just trying to tell me where it wants me to go? Typical. Everyone pushing their own agenda.” The sage handed him a map. The traveler glanced at it and threw it aside. “Great. Now the paper's disagreeing with me too.”
 
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