Scare Me

I've often found when I'm faced with combat in DW, I'm a little scared. It's hard to judge how hard the threats are going to be and I'm never sure if a particular combat could be our last... and it's awesome. As a player, I probably run from more fights than I've won - not because I'm particularly hurt, but because the tension is so high, I can't see my character sticking around. This is something I don't get from other systems that I've played. Even as DM, I'm sometimes frightened for the PCs like that guy in the movie theater that's shouting out, "No, no, don't go into that room!" I love it. It really makes the game engaging.

So I was curious if anyone has written and/or played in any horror-themed DW adventures? Certainly, most adventures will have some horror elements in it. I was wondering if anyone has gone full-horror on a game or two, what it looked like, and how great the tension was.

In my experience, as much as the mechanics representing danger (hp vs danger, etc) help, a big component of making a Dungeon World game "scary" is how the GM handles things like Discern Reality and Spout Lore.  Information is the currency of fear.

Can you please expand on that thought a little? How does a DM handle those moves differently? I mean I thought there was only one right way, full truth and disclosure. Are you suggesting changing this to add tension and fear of the unknown?

After all, we all know true horror revolves around not knowing what is waiting for you in your closet or under your bed...

Full truth is the scariest thing in a forsaken ruin of a dungeon. That truth is often some version of "you are all fucked."

Some specific advice:

Make "reveal an unwelcome truth" your go-to move, especially for Spout and Discern. Fear is based on knowing you could die at any moment, which is a pretty unwelcome truth.

Tell them what's under the bed, and tell them in detail. Gruesome, spine-shivering, detail.

You're of course giving full information when it follows from a move or the fiction, but there's a slight shift in what full information is. In straight-up DW full information on a monster they haven't seen yet often goes somewhere along the lines of a bestiary or encyclopedia entry on that beast: a clear description. If you're leaning towards horror, give them all the same information but phrase it through stories told to young children and grim mangled corpses found in the beast's wake. You're stil giving them full information but the context of that information changes.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as "true horror," but I find knowing that the thing under my bed can kill me with it's acid-drenched jaws and then lay eggs in my chest far scarier than not knowing if its there at all. Think of the aliens from Alien: we get a fair amount of useful information about them, we know what they can do to you and so on, but they're still scary.

Neat. I feel I underuse Reveal an Unwelcome Truth. It just doesn't seem to come up that much in my experience. Or maybe I'm doing it and not giving it a name.