The Different Types of Horror Genres for Your D&D Game

How to Run a Horror Setting in D&D 5e

In our previous article on How to Make D&D Scary, we talked about the fundamental rules for horror and how to weave those into your D&D session.

Now that you’re titillated by the thought of terrorizing your players, it’s time to get into the meat of how to run a horror setting. Below, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step guide to get your players scared beyond their wildest dreams.

The Session 0

Session 0’s are important for every campaign, but they’re especially important for horror campaigns. Horror is meant to make people feel scared, but you have to remember that you can create tension and dread without crossing players’ personal boundaries.

When preparing for a horror adventure, make sure you talk through the following with your table:

• Create expectations. It should never be sprung upon a player that they are playing in a horror campaign. 
• What things are off-limits? This could include certain types of horror (i.e body horror, gore, etc.) or it could be certain acts that can occur during a horror story (possession, nightmares, etc.)
• Establish communications guidelines. Tell players how to let you know to ease off the gas. This could be a safe word, an easily identifiable sign, or it could be an invitation to message you privately if they are feeling uncomfortable. This goes for the DM as well. Sometimes the DM doesn’t have full control of the events occurring in the story. If, as a DM, things are going in a direction that is making you feel uncomfortable, it’s always okay to call for a break and discuss things with your players.
• Discuss homebrewed and table rules. Horror games can run drastically differently than a typical D&D adventure. You may want to include rules for madness, or restrict classes, races, spells, and feats. This is a great time to provide these guidelines to your players. 
• Humor. Because joking around is a typical response to feelings of uneasiness, how will your table deal with goofing off? Because the players are the characters in the story, if they aren’t taking the story seriously it can be difficult to create tension and build suspense.

Psychological Horror 

Psychological horror is a slow-burn genre that focuses more on the characters’ states of mind than violence or monsters. It is heavily metaphorical and uses symbolism to convey meaning. Most of the time, these symbols are left open for interpretation, and the derived meaning of these symbols drives the story forward.

Because this genre focuses on how the characters react to their circumstances, and because players control the characters, it can be difficult to get players to follow the effects of the psychological stress being put upon the characters. 

Before playing this genre with a table, make sure to run through the mechanic that will be used to display the psychological damage characters endure. Some effects could be:

• Reduced movement, HP, or ability to save from certain effects (similar to how Exhaustion works).
• Tables that are rolled upon whenever the stress gets too much (such as the Madness table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide). These effects can be permanent, based on a time limit, or have a specific cure.
• A separate pool of “psychological hit points” that can run out and cause characters to die or permanently lose their minds.

Inspiration

• The Shining
• The Silence of the Lambs
• Psycho

Slasher 

The slasher genre has a lot of things in common with monster horror and the gore genre, since each contains a fearsome foe and lots of death and destruction. What makes the slasher genre different is the formula it typically follows:

1. A wrongful action causes the death or traumatization of the killer.
2. An anniversary of the date of the wrongful act, or some other similarity inspires the killer.
3. The killer comes across the protagonists, who reflect some similarities to the event that traumatized the killer.
4. The killer stalks and murders the protagonists in a series of ironic or symbolic manners that represent the wrongful acts that were originally committed.

The antagonist of these films is usually an indestructible force that can’t be stopped until the very end of the movie. Some slasher antagonists have certain weaknesses, while others just simply outclass the power level of the protagonists.

When converting this genre to D&D, some things to think about are:

• How can the killer stalk and kill the protagonists without killing the player characters too early? This could be done by killing NPCs or having encounters with the killer be close calls (though the latter can get tiresome and destroy the suspense).
• Does the killer have a weakness that the party has to discover in order to destroy them? Or is the killer simply stronger than the party, so they will have to get their wits about them and set a trap?

Inspiration

• Halloween
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Gore 

Two great examples of gore genre movies are Saw and The Evil Dead. These movies are very different but have a heavy emphasis on the bloodiness of the visuals. Playing a game that follows the story beats of Saw can be quite horrifying, so it’s extra important to confirm with your players that they are comfortable with the events that may occur.

This subgenre will rely heavily on DM narration. You can also think up a system that will account for the injuries the characters will eventually occur.

Inspiration

• The Evil Dead
• Saw

Body Horror

This subgenre focuses on alterations to the human body. A great plot point to follow would be a mad scientist that has captured the party and experimented on their bodies, altering them in a way that changes their base racial traits. The party would then have to escape the scientist’s lair while fighting all sorts of abominations on the way out.

Inspiration

• The Fly
• John Carpenter’s The Thing
• The Exorcist

Monster Horror 

Monster horror is to the horror subgenres as fantasy is to fiction. This is what most “classic” horror follows. This genre focuses on the fear of the unknown and the monsters that lurk there. Werewolves, vampires, witches, and zombies are the main forces that the party will face when playing in this subgenre.

This is likely the most comfortable genre to play in if your players are somewhat hesitant to play a horror adventure.

Inspiration

• Night of the Living Dead
• Resident Evil
• Dawn of the Dead
• Frankenstein
• Dracula

Paranormal Horror 

Paranormal horror is essentially a subgenre of monster horror. These stories will focus on the undead and incorporeal, spirits, ghosts, banshees, and demons are the classic antagonists.

The other easy identifier for the paranormal horror genre is the setting. Typically, paranormal stories will involve the haunting of a building of some sort. Whether that’s a prison, hospital, or most commonly, a house.

Inspiration

• The Exorcist
• Paranormal Activity
• The Conjuring
• Poltergeist

Comedy Horror

Comedy horror is an interesting concept that was created by people’s tendency to joke around when they are scared. When trying to run a horror game in D&D, you will most likely experience this when players try to laugh off your attempts to build suspense. See the Session 0 notes about how to handle this when setting expectations for your game.

If you want to lean into the genre of comedy horror, I can almost guarantee you will have a fun time. The presence of tension makes the release of comedy that much more effective. When planning the story, create unease and build suspense just like any other horror game, but make sure to also provide ample opportunity to release that tension. This release can come in the form of irony, predictable tropes, or by the monster doing something unexpected and against their typical goals.

Inspiration

• Scream
• The Cabin in the Woods
• Shaun of the Dead
• Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
• Zombieland

Choose Your Own Horror Adventure

Horror is a deeply varied genre, and the way you approach horror in your D&D games will depend on what type you’re looking to portray. Will the party be chased by an unstoppable killer? Or are their minds their own worst enemy?