Although we are now months past Halloween, it was with that holiday that this idea came to mind. I began to think about the nature of fear. Horror gaming is not one of my major pastimes; but I have been genuinely afraid in a game, and I believe I have inspired similar sensations in others. With a copy of a frightening game sitting on my shelf unused, my mind turns to why we fear, and why we do not fear. I find that understanding this may be the key to doing it well in play.
I once read a book of stories by H. P. Lovecraft. For some, he is the ultimate in horror. I did not find any of his stories at all frightening–save one, one completely uncharacteristic tale about seemingly primitive aliens on their own planet, human invaders trying to claim the territory, and a completely invisible maze. What frightened me is the thing that particularly frightens me about things. I am afraid of things I can’t understand–not of things I don’t understand, in the sense that I do not have an explanation for them, but of things for which my understanding is inadequate.
A better example of this, perhaps, relates to technology. Decades ago I read an article about UIM’s, that is, Ultra Intelligent Machines. Computers and artificial intelligence were even then bounding forward at incredible rates. There was (and as far as I know still is) every reason to expect that eventually a machine would be built that was functionally as intelligent as (even if differently intelligent than) a man. It might be a small step from there (the article seemed to think it was, although on reflection it might be an insurmountable step) to creating a machine that was ever so slightly more intelligent than man. But once that was done, there would be an accelerating effect, as this machine would design a machine more intelligent than itself, which could similarly outstrip its abilities, and so on, until there were machines which were more intelligent than we could imagine being. That didn’t frighten me. I figure that if mankind is foolish enough to surrender its power to its own creation, it deserves whatever it gets. But having just read that article, I walked out of a grocery store the doors of which were opened by those now common detectors which were then new. As I looked at that detector, I had no idea how it worked; but I mused that were someone to explain it to me, I had no doubt that I would understand it. But if the future contained these ultra intelligent machines, one day there would be devices in operation which I could not understand, even if someone explained them to me. That frightened me. That, and the completely invisible walls of Lovecraft’s maze.
As my musings came back to that which frightens us, I realized that the universal factor behind fear is lack of control. Fear exists within us to the degree that we perceive a lack of control. As long as we believe everything is under control, we are calm and unafraid. If we can no longer control what is happening, fear overtakes us.
There is a second aspect to this which I had to recognize before I fully understood it. That second aspect is that there must be something at stake, something which matters or has value to us. There are many things which are completely beyond our control which don’t impact us at all, because we have nothing at stake.
Thus having grasped these essential elements of fear, I was able to recognize very real responses to it which eliminates it. (It was more complex than that; there was a certain interaction between the elements and the responses through which each refined the other. But the elements in general led the responses.) It may be the case that these responses should be included within good role playing; it may be in some cases that the referee needs to consider how to prevent these responses from being options in his scenario if he wishes to maintain any level of fear.
Action is such a response. People who are afraid often attempt to “do something about” whatever it is that causes them fear. It does not even have to be rationally related to the threat. It does not have to offer protection against the danger, nor to counter the attack. All that is required is that some kind of action is taken which we can pretend will matter. The counter to this is to demonstrate that such action is futile; the fear returns as the hope of countering the danger fades.
Resignation is a good name for another response. It may appear that the person has accepted his fate, has determined that there is no reason to fear because the loss is inevitable and they must merely endure it. There is in this an element of surrender. I suspect that a significant part of it involves surrendering the valuation of that which is threatened. My life doesn’t matter, as long as the others get to safety is exactly this sort of resignation response. It’s not worth fighting, because we can’t win means at some level that whatever we’re going to lose no longer has sufficient value to us to make it worth defending. It is a bit more difficult to counter this; once the value has been sacrificed, it cannot easily be revived. But the fear may be returned if the threat is seen to extend to some other valued object. After that, I will go after your family; you don’t really think I would let them get away, did you?
Faith is the term I used to label the third. This is the conviction that things actually are not out of control, but rather controlled by someone or something else. Obviously, the one who believes God is in control of all things will rise above fear by virtue of the belief on the one hand that He would not allow the valued thing to be destroyed or, on the other, that if He would allow it to be destroyed it does not have the value we supposed. But this does not have to mean God. A soldier may well believe that the general knows what he’s doing. A patron on an amusement park ride tacitly accepts the notion that the management has taken all precautions to keep the rides safe. If we believe that the appearance of threat to that which matters is illusory, is based on our perception of things we do not comprehend, we escape fear through that belief. This may be the most difficult to crack; you must find ways to undermine that faith and make it appear ill-founded, and then the fear can start to seep back in through the doubt.
Shortly after outlining these thoughts, I was reading in the book of the Prophet Daniel about three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who were arrested for refusing to worship a statue erected by Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar. The declared penalty for such disobedience was to be thrown into a furnace. As I read their words this time, I saw that they were not afraid; and they expressed two of my three responses. They showed that they had faith, stating that their God was quite able to protect them from the flames if He chose to do so; but they also displayed resignation, declaring that they were not afraid to die if that was what would happen. The king could not scare them.
Lovecraft’s work did not scare me for many reasons. He wrote of horrific beings of great power secretly ruling the universe. Perhaps it was that aspect of faith which dulled that for me. I’m quite confident I know who runs the universe, and even if I accepted all of Lovecraft’s monstrosities as real they would be insignificant beside Him. But perhaps also they did not threaten anything of real value to me; perhaps the very unreality of them prevented me from connecting to the threat.
To scare your players, you must first cause them to care about something in the game; then you must threaten it, and threaten it in a way that is so overwhelming that they cannot ignore the threat. But you must also take from them these three defenses. There must not be any illusion that they can do anything about it (or at the least, they must have grave doubts of the efficacy of their actions). They should not be able to abandon the object threatened, to write it off as just something they had that they lost. And you may not let them suppose that it’s all being controlled to favor them. Accomplish this, and whatever happens they will be scared.
Next week, something different.
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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.
