Graham Walmsley is a London-based author known for Cthulhu Dark and the forthcoming Cosmic Dark, both of which leverage minimalist mechanics for horror gameplay.
The Kickstarter Cosmic Dark alert page is open, and the crowdfunding campaign for the weird space horror is due to launch soon. The game sends characters in the employ of a mining and resources consortium to the far reaches of the galaxy, and a strange, wound-like object known as The Glitch has been found. Once there, they’ll stay until they die or lose their mind.
Graham has kindly agreed to write a guest post for Geek Native on a subject that experienced GMs will know can be frightfully tricky.
Seven ways to make space scary
By Graham Walmsley
Make it hostile
Travelling through space is like travelling through a desert. If anything goes wrong and you’re left exposed, you’ll die quickly.
Keep reminding your players of this. They’re in a thin tin can, with certain death outside. Make airlocks go wrong, make spacesuits leak and invent reasons for then to go outside their craft into space.
What’s it like to die in space, anyway? Do you suddenly realise you can’t move, because your limbs are frozen? Is it agonisingly slow, dying while you think of those you love?
You don’t need to answer these questions. But try asking them to your players.
Break their minds
What does it do to the human mind, when you’re always thinking about survival?
Maybe you can’t sleep. Maybe you take it out on those around you. Or maybe you stay icily calm, until something makes you snap.
If your mind breaks further, maybe you stay hallucinating. Maybe you get paranoid. Maybe you barricade yourself in your quarters.
And what does it do to human relationships? Remind everyone that the player characters have been together for weeks, months or years, with no relief, and death has always been close. That makes it hard to trust each other, right?
Go for the people closest to them
In Stanislaw Lem’s book Solaris, the horror is deeply psychological. You arrive on a space station, only to find a twisted version of a previous lover there. She doesn’t attack: instead, she wants to live with you, in the way you lived before.
How can you do something similar in your games? Start by asking the players questions about their characters: who are they closest too? What are their memories of their family?
Then bring those things back. Let them hear voices of long-dead lovers on alien planets. Or show their family secrets are part of something much bigger.
Use the system
Whichever game system you’re using, use the tools it gives you to make space horrific.
In Cthulhu Dark or Cosmic Dark, the horror happens any time you roll a 6. That means it’s sudden and unexpected. Use this to make reality suddenly warp or airlocks suddenly leak.
If you’re playing Alien, the stress dice do something similar, making the horror burst out when the players least expect it.
Similarly, if you’re playing Mothership or Call of Cthulhu, Sanity rolls reflect the impact of horrors on the human mind. Whatever tools your game system gives you, use them.
Use history
Science fiction isn’t really about the future. It’s a way to tell stories about the present and the past.
Try writing a scenario about an aging emperor presiding over a rapidly modernising city, based on the history of Vienna. Or write a scenario about the dangers of space travel, inspired by the early days of British railways.
You can use this to explore dark areas of history. Try exploring what it’s like to live through conflict, using stories of soldiers who fought in the Second World War or those who lived through the London Blitz. Or write about queer people finding forbidden love in dark corners of the galaxy, using histories of gay men in interwar London.
If you do this, try taking themes from history, rather than retelling the story exactly. You probably don’t want to retell the story of the East India Company in space, but you can learn from the theme of rapacious profiteering.
Explore unhuman lifeforms
Make your aliens seem alien. They shouldn’t be like humans. They should seem unfathomably weird and incomprehensible.
Try looking at plants, animals and other lifeforms for inspiration, the weirder the better. Invent an alien lifeform based on an insect colony, a deep-sea creature or a parasite.
This is a trick that Arkady Martine uses in A Desolation Called Peace, with a fungus that infects humans and seems to possess them. Think of other weird lifeforms you can learn from.
Don’t explain everything
Space is vast, strange and incomprehensible. You can introduce weird things without explaining why they are weird.
Perhaps there are orchids that chime discordantly. Perhaps an asteroid is translucent and glowing. Or perhaps an alien plant smells of honey and cardamom.
By inserting unexplained details like these, you make space even weirder and scarier.
Editor’s note: Yikes! Good tips.
Creative Commons credit: Mrainbowwj.
Quick Links
- Kickstarter: Cosmic Dark.
