This week I was in an interesting conversation with some friends regarding movies and television shows. During the conversation, someone asked me why I watch terrible horror movies. Now, for the record, I don't just watch bad horror. Really, I watch (almost) any horror (excluding the subgenre of horror nicknamed "torture porn"). I personally love horror that leans towards the supernatural, whether that takes the form of haunted houses, strange monsters, mythical creatures, or demonic possessions. In truth, though, as long as the movie doesn't focus on just random torture for the sake of extreme discomfort, I am in. And yes, that includes horror that many may deem "dab" or "trash" (note that I don't just say movies: if it is horror, I will consume it with gusto). The question stands: why would I bother with something reviews might sum up as "...I wish I had that two hours of my life back"? For me, the answer is simple: I am always on the lookout for role-playing (RPG) game fodder.
I am an RPG enthusiast. I collect systems like others collect baseball cards or comics. I love new worlds and new possibilities for stories. I love the big budget RPG releases, and I love the tiny indie RPGs that someone hacks together in their free time and releases free into the wilds of the internet for intrepid explorers to discover. I love running and playing games and I love having a large toolkit for telling the stories that get created when you play. To me, the world is filled with tools for that toolkit, and most of them are not found in official manuals or books only dedicated to RPGs. The world is filled with these tools, and horror is just one of the many places that I go to root for something new and interesting to use to tell stories.
Ok, you say, but why bother with bad horror? Because even in bad horror I can find something useful. Maybe that terrible movie had an interesting location that would be a good start to an adventure. Maybe the characters were terrible, but that one was just quirky enough to be an non-player character (NPC). Perhaps the effects for the monster looked like they were put together by a band of intoxicated toddlers, but the idea, the lore behind it, well that might make for a potentially awesome monster, or even the Big Bad of a whole campaign (kudos to you if you get the Big Bad reference). In every movie, there may be some RPG gold. But you can't find riches if you are afraid of getting dirty every now and again.
I like horror, even bad horror, so I can put up with quite a lot of bad out of love for the genre. But more than that, I go into each and every experience looking for some choice bits to add to my RPG toolbox. I don't always find something, and then I am just left with a bad movie. But more often than not I can salvage something, so the experience, to me, is very much worth the time. So my short answer to why bad horror is " I am mining for ideas". And you would be amazed at the gold a band of drunken toddlers can spin sometimes.
The best part is that this idea of mining sources for RPG ideas can be extended to pretty much any experience you may have. Books, movies, television, comics, and really any experience in life are potential gold mines just waiting to be discovered. Go into each experience not only for the experience itself, but also to discover something that will help you create an groovy story down the road. That way, even in experiences that may end in disappointment or disgust, you can still pull out something positive.
Look for posts in the near future where we dive into different experiences like movies, books, and games, and pull out the pieces we see as potential game ideas. We will subject ourselves to the best and the worst in our quest to bring you the pearls that you can use in your games, and describe not only where they come from in the movie, but also how we might use them in a game. That way, you can mine our potentially painful blog for ideas of your own.
Stay tuned. In the meantime, dig into something on your own and see what you can find. You might be surprised at how something that should be bad can be fun and entertaining.
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