History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: Random Horror Mash-Up Prompts!

From https://imgur.com/RbTL7Mj

It’s the spooky season, so this week’s Fun for Friday prompts are from the horror genre!

The graphic in this post shows a breakdown of many horror genres and subgenres, along with the films that fall into those subgenres. (If the graphic is blurry, you can click on it to enlarge, or go here to see the original posting.

But because it’s Fun for Friday, we’re turning this into a game. Grab your polyhedral dice, friends! We’re going to first roll a top level genre, then find a subgenre below that. Then we’re going to mash that up with one of the subgenres from the gray section at the bottom. Ready?

Roll 1d10:

  • 1-2: Gore & Disturbing (1d4)
  • 3-4: Psychological (1d4)
  • 5-6: Killer (1d4)
  • 7-8: Monster (see below)
  • 9-10: Paranormal (1d6)

The additional die listed with each of these genres lets you find the subgenre. Just read top to bottom for their numbering. (For Killer, the fourth option is Home Invasion, which can fall under Psychological or Killer.)

For Monster, because there’s a lot here, roll 1d10:

  • 1: Undead zombies
  • 2: Virus zombies
  • 3: Vampire
  • 4: Werewolf
  • 5: Classic & Mythological
  • 6: Giant Monsters
  • 7: Aliens
  • 8: Neo-Monsters
  • 9: Animals & Nature
  • 10: Small Creatures

And then for the secondary subgenre, roll 1d12, and count 1-6 across the top row and 7-12 across the bottom row.

If you get a subgenre you hate or aren’t familiar with, re-roll!

My randomly picked subgenres to mash up are Crime & Giallo with Anthology. I’m not super familiar with the former, but the example of The New York Ripper makes me think I could do a serial killer story with a framing story that pulls it across spans of time.

See what you get and what it leads to!


About The Author

Comments

Leave a Reply