I'm thinking of Traveller specifically, but I welcome wider input. I'm persuaded that Traveller originally was meant as a baseline set of rules to adjudicate a GM's individual setting, and that the game rules weren't meant as a limit on the bounds of the world at large.

Then I've been reading the Dumarest books, and some even older pulp sci fi stories. Dumarest as an inspiration for Traveller suggests that every world have something weird going on, some strange custom or environmental challenge to run afoul of. And the pulps give examples of opponents and challenges that are in no way hard science fiction. Energy fields with strange effects, alien monsters that are practically superpowered, that can walk through walls or control machines, and so on.

Which is helpful!  That opens up a lot of possibilities for Traveller adventures that aren't just free trader mercantilism (though I hope to get a game of that someday too).

But it's challenging as well, the pulp element especially, to the extent it shades into horror or supernatural (which, it turns out sci fi does). Not game effects or stats, but it seems it throws the GM entirely on his own in making things truly weird, mysterious or horrific. So my question is, how do you make things weird, mysterious or horrifying using a game engine that only lays out the mundane and rational?

Are there any games with good GM advice chapters I should be looking at? I can imagine almost an element of Unknown Armies style weird going on in the background of a science fiction galaxy with jump space, psionics and unexplained phenomena, just not as the focal point as in UA. But I've never dug into the back chapters of UA, so maybe it's time to do that?

Mechanics only matter if it's a supernatural force the PCs can affect in some way,  in which case you need to determine what will or won't work and what effect an action has. It can be as simple as researching why a building is haunted and then applying that knowledge via a seance or exorcism and making a roll of there is a chance of failure. In the Dumarest series, I recall the planet where the dead haunted the living (or possibly the living hallucinate that) and things like hearing voices on Gath during the winds, neither of which were things anyone could affect. I don't know of any good resources for Traveller for that, but you should be able to work up mechanical affects if you want to. Roll versus this to get such-and-such effect...

If the supernatural or weird thing has a tangible effect on the physical world then it can be expressed with game mechanics. If it has only intangibe effects game mechanics shouldn't be needed, just describe what it does. Even some tangible effects don't really need game mechanics. A monster that can walk through walls walks through walls. Give it a movement speed and note that it can walk through walls.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1011485Even some tangible effects don't really need game mechanics.

If you decide to fly your (average) spaceship into a sun or go for a nude space-walk you don't really need rules to adjudicate the results.

Quote from: Dumarest;1011445Mechanics only matter if it's a supernatural force the PCs can affect in some way,  in which case you need to determine what will or won't work and what effect an action has....

Quote from: DavetheLost;1011485If the supernatural or weird thing has a tangible effect on the physical world then it can be expressed with game mechanics. ...

I have failed to communicate my point and my question in any way.    Mechanics or a writeup is easy, that's exactly the part I can do, and the part I'm not asking about.  I'm asking about evoking mood and feeling when character creation and the player-facing rules don't touch on it at all.  We do character creation, we run a couple of more standard Traveller adventures, and then I try to bring in a more supernatural, occult or horror element.  How do I do that justice, and evoke a feeling of wonder, horror or sense of encountering the supernatural?

Quote from: Dave R;1011552I have failed to communicate my point and my question in any way.    Mechanics or a writeup is easy, that's exactly the part I can do, and the part I'm not asking about.  I'm asking about evoking mood and feeling when character creation and the player-facing rules don't touch on it at all.  We do character creation, we run a couple of more standard Traveller adventures, and then I try to bring in a more supernatural, occult or horror element.  How do I do that justice, and evoke a feeling of wonder, horror or sense of encountering the supernatural?

With words?

I don't really understand - you think player facing mechanics help evoke a feeling of wonder, horror or sense of encountering the supernatural? Like CoC San loss, or Fear/Dread mechanics?

Quote from: S'mon;1011575With words?

I don't really understand - you think player facing mechanics help evoke a feeling of wonder, horror or sense of encountering the supernatural? Like CoC San loss, or Fear/Dread mechanics?

Agreed.

Player facing and chargen have nothing to do with it.

Take a look at say Voyage of the Space Beagle. These are ordinary explorers. None of them have any real leaning to horror and all have to deal with the horrific and weird encounters as best they can. Same with Alien which borrows from one if Voyages chapters. Ordinary workers dealing with something horrible.

In fact its the characters utterly unprepared for the paranormal that make for some of the best horror reactions. (The other is the prepared characters who suddenly realize they are in wayyyyy over their heads.)

Another example are more than a few of the protagonists in various Lovecraft stories. Normal people or bog standard researchers and scientists faces with things utterly alien.

I scared the absolute fuck out of one of my players in a totally straight, mundane Heavy Gear session years and years ago.

The group was sent to explore a Badlands research base that had ceased transmitting. Everyone was missing when they got there. Some of the journals found in the exploration mentioned a young girl that had arrived at the base mysteriously after a major sandstorm, and not too long before the entries ended.

The player had visions of some supernatural terror, appearing as an innocent child, that had killed everyone (or caused them to die). Apparently, after the session, he kept imagining some little girl with macabre intentions watching him from the darkness.

In reality, she was just a kid belonging to some Old Earth Racial Supremacists holed up nearby, who had wandered away from her family and onto the base.

In any event, I didn't use any mechanical tools to create the mood. I hadn't even really contemplated the fact that the situation played on some common horror themes. I just described some shit, and let a couple of players' imaginations run wild, fuelling the fears of one player in particular. If your players are disposed to responding to that sort of thing, they will. And if they're not, it's unlikely any mechanical tool will make it happen.

For myself, I've never felt that a sanity or fear mechanic in any way helps create a sense of horror.

In general, I'd say that the best (non-mechanical) tools for creating suspense or fear are isolation (the inability to just go somewhere else or call in support) and mystery (leaving the explanation for something strange, unusual and/or dangerous unknown, so that players use their own imagination contemplating what it might be, and can't just immediately form a logical plan to combat/overcome/explain it).

I recall a very old sci movie that had me scared and extremely on edge when I was much younger, about some people exploring caves. There was something down there, and for a fair proportion of the movie, you didn't know what it was, just that it was there. Once it was revealed to be some people living down there who were basically human, all my fears disappeared, just because the danger was suddenly known and quantifiable.

Quote from: Dave R;1011552I have failed to communicate my point and my question in any way.    Mechanics or a writeup is easy, that's exactly the part I can do, and the part I'm not asking about.  I'm asking about evoking mood and feeling when character creation and the player-facing rules don't touch on it at all.  We do character creation, we run a couple of more standard Traveller adventures, and then I try to bring in a more supernatural, occult or horror element.  How do I do that justice, and evoke a feeling of wonder, horror or sense of encountering the supernatural?

You just have to ask yourself, who are the Whisperers?

This thread reminds me of Solaris.

It's fun and easy to go meta and urge players to flee by saying things like "This [monster thing] is crazy. There is no way you're going to kill it. You better run." The players are making a diceless morale check at that point and deciding whether or not to ignore the obvious urging to run away in terror.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;1012033It's fun and easy to go meta and urge players to flee by saying things like "This [monster thing] is crazy. There is no way you're going to kill it. You better run." The players are making a diceless morale check at that point and deciding whether or not to ignore the obvious urging to run away in terror.

Better to not even say that, but rather make them  feel that way based on what they are seeing and experiencing.