Casting Shadows

#RPGaDAY2025 has reached its twenty-eighth day, and the prompt is suspense. Given the huge number of Journey references made on Day 7, I feel no sense of duty to include the obvious joke in this post, which is nice  – probably for both of us.

Day 28: Suspense

In atmospheric games like certain types of horror, one of the things I really appreciate is the variable rate and intensity of the rise and fall of tension as we play. It’s a fragile thing, prone to fail at the slightest moment of mismatched play, which gives it an additional note of value.

Suspense as a form of tension is perhaps my favorite as it has so much to say about the players, their play, and the idiom we make of our chosen genre. Greater than anticipation, stronger than prediction, in tune with both our analytical skills and our emotional reactions, suspense is that deeply personal moment of awareness of the distance between where you are in time and that of a future event – often a fearful awareness. We are invested enough in that future event to care.

A real sense of suspense as our imagination populates our thoughts with a conflicting swirl of logical predictions of what might happen next contending with a fearful spray of concerns about what might happen instead is a testament to good play and focused attention. I love it when we can get this connected to the world of the characters.

Of course, that is not all that benefits from a good connection within the group!

See you tomorrow for Day 29: Connect