Dazed as I was, I could no longer feel my body. But I saw it, I saw every last second of it. She peeled away the skin, catching the dark blood that welled up from twitching muscle in a rusty basin. I heard the wet whining of the electric knife, struggling with my flesh. I could smell my own fat sizzling as she stripped it away and tossed it into the oven.
Worst of all…Danny kept whimpering my name and I was too fascinated by the butchering to care.
At first glance, one can mistake gore for nothing more than shock and revulsion. What purpose could it possibly serve but to upset the senses and the sensible? None.
But, don’t discount the value of upsetting the senses. In this respect, gore can do so much more than shock.
When we come upon a particularly horrifying or gory scene, we are often transfixed and unable to turn away, like witnessing the proverbial train wreck. This is due in part to the way gore jars our minds and tricks us into seeing things anew. When done right, gore can sharply focus the audience’s attention on the details of a situation in a sickeningly captivating way. They become like a baby seeing the world for the first time, and this can tap into primal fears and feelings. Because of this, it can be a useful part of a host’s repertoire.
Gore, however, is not for everyone. Be absolutely sure that you and your players are willing to deal with whatever level of gore you intend to use in your games. It is certainly not the only way to captivate an audience. Don’t use it lightly.
On that same note, this chapter includes some frank discussion on topics that might disturb the reader. Please do not read on if you feel this may be an issue with you.
There are two parts to the gore equation: the vile act and the visceral detail. Both are important, but the key lies in that detail. Gore should force your players to focus on a particular incident of horror. To do this, you need to present them with an image they have never seen before. An image that includes details that intrigue and repulse them simultaneously.
As discussed in the Sensual Details and Playing the Environment sidebars, consider each sense when you describe whatever gory scene you have imagined. Sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations are all more evocative than sights in this situation. Go ahead and describe what the characters see, but be sure to include concrete details from at least one of the other senses. What does tearing flesh sound like? Aside from the pain, what does one feel when the mechanical blade of a jigsaw struggles to cut through your bone? When a body is opened up and strewn about a room, how does the air taste a day or two later?
It is highly recommended that you work with a few strong details and move on. Do not spend too much time describing any particular event or scene. Your pacing should not suffer for the sake of gore.
When creating your story, consider exactly how vile you want your vile acts to be. As they say, the devil is in the details. Slitting one man’s throat is horrific. Slitting another’s scrotum and watching him bleed out is something else entirely. In the end, both men are dead, but, because of many different factors, the latter man’s death immediately hits you in the gut.
When you are faced with a choice of events, go with the one that makes you the most uncomfortable. Your players will most likely agree.
Take the time to envision some of the more gruesome events. Give yourself a chance to prepare ahead of time, so you aren’t grasping for details at the last moment.
Witnessing these things can have a real and uncontrollable impact on the human body and mind. It is far safer for the players, who have the advantage of knowing it isn’t real. But the characters are going to have issues. At least they will if the players don’t help out.
When the characters are exposed to something particularly gory, and their questionnaires don’t indicate they should be able to comfortably handle the experience, it is time to pull to see if they can. This is a great way to make a battle more deadly, or to just increase the tension. Present the players with a horrid scene and then make them pull to keep their characters from vomiting, breaking down into a fit of shakes, or turning away and exposing their backs to a potential danger. Even in fairly non-gory games, such pulls can be asked for when the characters encounter anything unsettling. Be sure to describe the reactions of the characters whose players failed to pull in just as much detail.
The same may hold true for particularly gory acts the characters wish to perpetrate on their foes. In some stories, eviscerating someone with a chainsaw is not the sort of thing one can do casually. In these cases, hosts should feel free to require a pull to go through with the act in addition to any pull needed to physically accomplish the act and any pull needed to stomach the effect of the act.
The overuse of gore leads to desensitization. Once your players are no longer shocked by a particular act or detail, you have lost the captivating power of gore, and you are just going through the motions. To avoid this, only use gore when it seems necessary. For some stories, it will be a staple, but for others, only a few choice moments should be truly gory. Save it for those.
Try not to describe the same thing or use the same details repetitively. This, too, lessens the impact and can lead to desensitization.
“What did you hear the night your father was killed?” “How did it smell when your brother buried you with those rats?” “Why won’t you let any metal utensils near your teeth?”
With a few very specific and leading questions—ones that invoke a sense other than sight and directly refer to a potentially horrific act—you can accomplish several things. It helps the players begin the game in the right mindset for gore. It will also give you fodder for your descriptions later on, allowing you to recall a character’s traumatic experience with a single sensual detail. And it will give you a gauge for just how much gore a player is willing to deal with.
If a player dodges the gory details in the question, glossing it over with less visceral descriptions, then they are probably not interested in a very gory story. However, do not use this as the only test – ask the players directly about their feelings towards the subject matter. But you can use questions to judge which players are more willing to see their characters put in the more intense situations. It will also help you identify those players that might be too gory for the rest, and give you a chance to talk to them in private about keeping the gore at a reasonable level for the others.
Once again, we highly recommend you come to an understanding with your players before using the tricks in this chapter. In particular, there will be acts so vile they will distract from enjoyment of the game. Even worse, they might cause problems between friends playing the game. There are a great number of subjects that never need to be addressed if they might ruin the game—rape and torture are chief among them, especially in the case of children.
Make absolutely sure your players are willing to get as uncomfortable as you are. If they aren’t, your game will not suffer for the lack. Any act of violence is horrific, and even more so when described in excruciating detail. Do not feel you need to use the vilest idea you came up with. When you have such an idea, stop to consider its impact on your players.
If need be, talk to the players before the game, and see if there are any taboo subjects. If in doubt, have each player write at least one taboo topic on a slip of paper and hand it to you. This should make things relatively anonymous and encourage honesty.