When it comes to GM-ing a Horror or really any adventure based TTRPG, maybe even a table top minis game, a lesson can be taken from TV and Movies, one driven home to me recently.
“Show, don’t tell” is an axiom from the film and stage industry meaning basically “don’t treat your audience like schmucks, let them work it out” and in murder mysteries, it is the core of it.
As an example, I watched the first series of Penny Dreadful and was impressed by the acting, attention to detail and depth of story. It made sense, it was restrained and the characters driving it were excellent, the whole thing hinging on existing legends re-visualised, but also reinvented.
The thing that made it compelling to me was the very real mystery and fear the series generated by keeping the “big bad” just out of reach, always a threat, hinted at, not exposed, never predictable or even quantifiable, letting the viewers imagination fill in the spaces as each of them wants. It was a perfect balancing act of pre-formed expectations meeting the unknown.
When and how would it strike the protagonists, what did it want, was it even what they supposed, is anyone ever safe?
In series two, the evil is front and centre from moment one, the machinations of its plot also laid bare for us to digest and peripheral stories branching off to distract. This is disappointing because the big bad is bigger and badder, but feels cliched and its delivery through mundane types with their own issues is dare I say, disappointing, maybe even boring.
A totally unsatisfying experience by direct comparison.
Series three started better, some semblance of mystery reintroduced, then second episode we are back to full exposition, mystery gone. Worse than that, they are revisiting Vampires, but differently to series 1.
No amount of special effects, cool makeup, evil deeds done or ominous plot delivery can recover the loss of a simple “fear of the unknown” dynamic that does so much with so little.
When Spielberg made Jaws, the shark refused to cooperate with the script. It rolled, sank, or did nothing at the worst times, or did it.
Spielberg revealed afterwards that he learned the lesson of “less is more”, taught to him by a crude and malfunctioning mechanic carnivore. Some scenes were even made by working with what they had, like the boy to shark “eyeball” scene in the Pond, cut from some versions for being too scary.
The lesson is, don’t underestimate the power of mystery or your players ability to fill in the gaps. You do not need exposition to fill in gaps, to reveal secrets or even answer questions that characters would not know with straight or unambiguous answers. Some very successful mysteries are tackled in literature and on screen, but never fully answered.
For Call of Cthulhu games, retaining mystery can be hard. The Franchise is so often explored, even people who have only played the odd themed board game or read one story can often guess the protagonist simply by location or first clues (or from the name of the game!), but can or even should they expect to?
Why not throw something at them they have no idea about, even something mundane (after all Man is often the worst monster), something that may act like “X”, but turns out to be “Y” and even when escaped from or vanquished, “Y” may still remain a mystery?