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Sploosh
2010-09-30, 06:59 PM
Hi there,

A friend is working on a horror game and wants to know what would scare me. I then realized that I haven't really ever been afraid at the table as a player.

I was hoping you guys might chime in with some elements, stories, or anything else that could add to a Dark Fantasy Ravenlofty game to actually get the players into the halloween mood.

Seffbasilisk
2010-09-30, 07:02 PM
Not making knowledge checks, and encountering high DR or energy resistance.

Something lurking in the shadows, with spring attack, that you can't seem to hurt....

Zaydos
2010-09-30, 07:02 PM
Well I've had one game where my players said they were legitimately scared. They were dealing with 1 to 5 dimensional, Cthulian entities; it was night, they were in an elven house built into a tree and fog came in from the sea. The creatures attacked, and the party ran (with the owners of the house) and hid in the basement. Then the warlock and the DMPC went to explore the house, leaving the meatshield and ninja-shaman to guard the inhabitants. The warlock didn't even encounter the monsters again (this would have been the 3rd time they'd encountered these) and just heard them coming when he got scared and dimension doored back down stairs.

The knight and shaman had to fight one that broke into the basement during this.

They complemented me on making a good, scary adventure. I wasn't trying for horror.

The other thing has been beholders, my PCs have a phobia of beholders.

The Glyphstone
2010-09-30, 07:04 PM
Atmosphere. Play in a room with dim lights if you can. Have some creepy music playing faintly in the background.

In-game...hints of things that might be there, or might not be. Notes handed to players, telling them of horrors that they can see but their loyal friends are oblivious to. Sometimes those are real. Breed paranoia and uncertainty.

Kaun
2010-09-30, 07:26 PM
it all so helps to wear your players down,

find interesting ways to burn of their hp and chew through their prepared spells.

Then make sure to interupt any chance they have at resting.

When your players are facing an unknown element with minimal fire power left it will get them worried.

chaser
2010-09-30, 07:48 PM
Spiders's and heights i have arachnophobia and Fear Of Heights
:smalleek:

Tyndmyr
2010-09-30, 07:50 PM
Folded paper notes, handed out to the players. Especially if that player either looks at it in horror, or begins laughing manically.

The Big Dice
2010-09-30, 07:54 PM
Not knowing what you're dealing with until it's too late to run away. And then knowing exactly what you're dealing with and what it's capable of. Aka, fear of the known vs fear of the unknown.

Not being able to leave the location the Horribe Stuff is taking place in, despite not minding being there until right before the horrible stuff started happening. Aka, put them in a place they don't mind being, then make it so they can't leave and then start killing people off one by one.

Big stat blocks aren't scary. Not until your character is alone with something that's got one but doesn't yet realise your character knows what it is.

boomwolf
2010-09-30, 08:17 PM
Anything that is immune to their auto-go-to methods, is capable to avoid them, or simply to clever to fall for them will cause them to work a bit.

Anything that is immune/too clever/able to avoid pretty much EVERYTHING they do, even if quite harmless otherwise, is a thing to fear of. just make sure there is SOME logical way to beat the damn thing, so they will feel clever when they finally find it.

hiryuu
2010-09-30, 08:27 PM
It takes a certain amount of metagaming to put fear into folks. Break patterns, force the PCs into things the players know or think is dangerous. Give them enough information through metahints that there is an illithid behind that door, but that their PCs can't possibly know, and then show there isn't one. Do it one more time, then spring the monster on them in the third or fourth time.

Give hints in enemy conversation that PCs might be working for one or other. Don't use notes for it, either. Try to couch your words and terms so one or more players understand but another doesn't.

Running a good horror campaign requires a lot more cooperation around the table than usual.

Katana_Geldar
2010-09-30, 08:30 PM
Give the impression that you're not giving them all the information all the time, that there MAY be something there to kill them but it may just be a cat.

Make sure you have false alarms as real threats and scares.

Passing fake notes works well too. Such as "When you get this note, nod and smile at Such-and-such and say 'I'll do that'."

Doomboy911
2010-09-30, 09:04 PM
Here go to google and type in Zero Punctuation and watch Yahtzee's latest video it better explains what I'm going to say.

Pacing things out can make it terrifying the party goes walking down a hallway and they hear something go rushing through one door and out the other when they turn they just see a tail sliding in and the door slam shuts. They go to investigate and try opening the door they hear growl and black smoke slides out through the opening and the door is slammed shut. A laughter is heard they look around but see no one. Go walking down the hallway where one of them begins to sink through the floor they pull him out as the carpet lining the hallway begins to be sucked in. The door opens again they look back to see a fat shadowy object go skittering into the next room.

They don't know what is going on and that should scare the people.

Draz74
2010-09-30, 09:11 PM
Re: What scares you in tabletops?

Hmmm, that's a tough one. They're normally pretty innocuous. Dire Termites, maybe?

Fax Celestis
2010-09-30, 09:15 PM
I'm terrified of creatures with fast burrow speeds, spring attack, and swallow whole.

Noedig
2010-09-30, 09:16 PM
Have a totally innocuous object or creature be present when something horrible happens, then make sure it is present almost all the time.

Shadowleaf
2010-09-30, 09:21 PM
Water.

Because there is something beneath the surface.

The Grue
2010-09-30, 09:21 PM
While I think the intent of the OP was to ask what elements players found made for a creepy or full-blown horror kind of atmosphere, I notice a lot of responses are to the effect of "here are some gameplay elements that I or my players find difficult to bypass".

I think that's pretty telling of the kind of gaming that goes on here at GitP. :/

Zaydos
2010-09-30, 09:23 PM
A bunch of crows sitting in a tree.

One week I had that and the PCs freaked out.*

A few weeks later they kicked down a secret door in the building a PC grew up in; found a room full of lemures, killed them without flinching, and then fought an ice devil without batting an eye.

*Later on in that adventure I also had one character start feeling things moving under his skin. He freaked out and shot himself with a magic missile.

Zaydos
2010-09-30, 09:25 PM
While I think the intent of the OP was to ask what elements players found made for a creepy or full-blown horror kind of atmosphere, I notice a lot of responses are to the effect of "here are some gameplay elements that I or my players find difficult to bypass".

I think that's pretty telling of the kind of gaming that goes on here at GitP. :/

I have to disagree a bit; one of the classical elements of horror fiction is that the monster can't be beaten by whatever weapons the heroes are used to using. That's what has been suggested.

Grommen
2010-09-30, 09:29 PM
Players. You just never know what they will do next. :smalleek:

Fax Celestis
2010-09-30, 09:35 PM
While I think the intent of the OP was to ask what elements players found made for a creepy or full-blown horror kind of atmosphere, I notice a lot of responses are to the effect of "here are some gameplay elements that I or my players find difficult to bypass".

I think that's pretty telling of the kind of gaming that goes on here at GitP. :/

The question was "what scares you in tabletops", not "what kind of tabletop game scares you", so I answered the question that was asked.

Ertwin
2010-09-30, 09:46 PM
One thing I'm planning on; Pick a DC that is sufficiently high that it is fairly difficult to attain for the characters with the best senses.

In any spot/listen/perception check, if that DC is hit, tell that character that they sense something watching them. If a natural 20 occurs they either sense it (if they can't normally beat the DC) or get a vague direction (if they can normally make the DC)

Keep in mind only the characters that make the DC can sense something watching them.

This is particularly effective in 4th edition as the perception scores keep getting higher as the characters level, so the sense that something is watching them will only become more prevailent to more of the character.

Kudos to Billy from Predator for the idea.

Draz74
2010-09-30, 09:46 PM
The question was "what scares you in tabletops", not "what kind of tabletop game scares you", so I answered the question that was asked.

Beat you to it, by one post ...

Crossblade
2010-09-30, 09:54 PM
Count down times. There's something unnerving about having to think on your feet in a turn based game.

WinWin
2010-09-30, 10:13 PM
Foreshadowing and portents can help set the mood. Can test your abilities as a storyteller though.

Setting and scenery can help a little. Abandoned houses and desolate terrain are good, hinting at the absence or loss of life. I think another poster mentioned carrion-birds watching the characters from a tree, another good image.

Slasher horror tends to lose it's impact if used all of the time, so try and keep it to a minimum, though YMMV.

The descriptions and actions of monsters you give can alter how players react. Don't just call a Zombie a Zombie for example. Describe the corpse, give little hints as to describe the person it once was. It could even appear to be a living person, horribly wounded, moaning in pain and reaching plaintitively out to the characters for assistance...Only once it gets close to them do they realise what it is.

I hope these suggestions help. Once you have developed a storytelling style you are comfortable with, don't be afraid to change the pace and experiment occasionally. Your players will appreciate the effort and with any luck, contribute to make a memorable game.

FreshlyMinted
2010-10-01, 12:09 AM
Honestly, I just ran a session that was all about horror. There was not a single combat encounter in the lot, but the players ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT.

Tell your friend to check out http://www.creepypasta.com. I stole about 10 stories from that, made them fit the theme and set the players in the story and it was a huge success

[edit]: also I set the mood with a candlelit session and some really scary music. Tell your DM to try the ALIENS soundtrack Atmosphere Station and some others have that nice wreeeeaaaak (reeak... reeak...) sound to 'em

Thajocoth
2010-10-01, 03:24 AM
That would scare me as a player?

If someone was swinging a knife around for some reason... If another player was trying to stab me... If someone brought in a wild carnivore, like a crocodile, to watch us play...

I guess my answer is "actual danger".

Also, thinking one of my friends is seriously hurt. Like, if they were having a heart attack or spraying blood everywhere... I'd be scared that my friend was gonna die.

Roc Ness
2010-10-01, 05:54 AM
Making them roll Initiative, and roll Spot/Listen checks. Then have nothing happen. Once the players have freaked out a bit, and wasted some time/resources buffing and stuff, move on.
Rinse and repeat a few times.
Once the players start getting wary about this trick, hit them with something freaky but innoculous, just to keep them on their toes...


Oh yes! Obvious enemies that just don't fight back. Like those tallhat british palace guards, only evil, grinning and motionless to the death. Position a few of them in hard-to-reach places, or hiding in corners. Make those players paranoid...

LordShotGun
2010-10-01, 06:25 AM
Whenever the DM say to roll ANY kinda of check and does not tell you if you passed or even what it is for. Works best on people with an attachment to thier characters.

Caliphbubba
2010-10-01, 07:18 AM
In the groups that I play with there is an notorious amount of out of character chatter at the table some times. Disallowing or discouraging any out of character comments that arn't directly related to playing the game can go a long way to keeping the atmoshpere suitably horrific.

There is nothing worse than describing a crazy/horric sceen rife with paranoid and uncertainty only to have one of your players make an off color remark and have everyone burst out laughing lol

BobVosh
2010-10-01, 07:52 AM
Anytime the DM pulls out a copy of FATAL.

Yora
2010-10-01, 08:15 AM
Lots of players know all the creatures from the Monster Manuals and require only a three sentence description to know exactly what they are up against, how to defeat it, and probably what the creature is doing here and what its intentions will be like.

So using custom created creatures is a very important element. You don't even need to write up new stats, just take the numbers from any creature and make up a new appearance and bahviour pattern: Bam, new monster the players have never heard of and they don't know what to do and how to react.
You can't create fear when people know what to expect and how to deal with it. A big aspect of fear is not knowing if something you do makes the situation better or worse, but when you know you have sufficient protection and the ability to defeat it, there's nothing to fear at all.

Accersitus
2010-10-01, 08:44 AM
There is nothing scarier than the really unexpected if you have already set the mood.
Two of us actually fell off our chairs in a game.
Our characters were exploring a huge haunted mansion (not specifically a horror campaign, but the session was close enough :D), where characters who noticed certain details had to take a will save (they noticed places people had committed suicide), and if they failed, they tried to kill themselves the same way unless stopped by the rest of the party.
The plot included that characters who died like this became a sort of home brewed ghost that could interact with certain items in the mansion (each player could interact with one kind of item), and when they died, they were greeted by the ghost of the person that had killed himself/herself the same place, who told the character how they recalled the events before they killed themselves.
The puzzle was to realise what had happened at the mansion for everyone to commit suicide, by combining the stories the different players were told.
In general we had a great mood going (was really late at night when we started, and only used candle light for illumination), but the scariest thing was towards the end, just before we (all ghosts by now) were approaching the room where we thought everything had started, and we suddenly (in real life) heard someone outside. It was the newspaper being delivered at the door, and we hadn't noticed it was 07.00 AM.

Nero24200
2010-10-01, 08:47 AM
A good idea might be to put the PC's in a position where the options are limited. I mean that literially I.E if searching a mansion have them go through the flooded basement, since it is always harder/slower to move whilst swimming rather than walking, or walking along narrow edges around a cliff face.

The point of this particular route would be to make the PC's think of alternatives to being attacked - After all, if a bandit with a bow starts shooting at you whilst you are on a narrow cliff face then being shot at won't be your only worry.

The Big Dice
2010-10-01, 11:15 AM
Lots of players know all the creatures from the Monster Manuals and require only a three sentence description to know exactly what they are up against, how to defeat it, and probably what the creature is doing here and what its intentions will be like.
That's what I mean with fear of the known vs fear of the unknown.

Conventional wisdom has it that what you don't know is scarier than what you do know But as a GM, you can mess with that. After all, the player doesn't know that the Big Bad Devil (tm) has got hold of some means of disguising it's appearance. Until he's alone with the rather cute girl and gets a hint of her true form. And then he realises he's all alone with a Glabrezu that's got hold of a means of casting Alter Self. And she's talking about inviting her friends over for dinner.

Christopher K.
2010-10-01, 11:18 AM
I love making my suckers players make knowledge checks, and if they roll high, I describe details that they normally wouldn't care about and when they fail, I just sigh a little and say "oh well." It really drives up their paranoia. :smalltongue:

Yora
2010-10-01, 11:59 AM
A little trick that also works very well is to have a situation in which a frightening creature is very close to the characters, but does not attack. When the players notice it, it should be obvious that it had been there with them for quite a long time without doing anything. Like sitting in a partially closed closet or under a bed, while the characters inspect something interesting in the center of the room.
For one thing, it will make them a bit paranoid in the future, but it also creates an uneasy feeling how often they were in similar situations before without realizing it.

jguy
2010-10-01, 12:13 PM
Pit traps. It makes me so damn paranoid, especially at low levels. I don't know why, but every game in my group I am the only dang one that ever falls for them, each time ends in very near death. It has gotten so bad that now, I always try to have some form of feather-fall effect on my characters.

Psyx
2010-10-01, 12:55 PM
Stress loading works.

Lots of little things.

Room atmospherics, music, passed notes... it all adds up.

Even if one thing on it's own would never scare you, twenty such things will.

Playing on phobias is a little unfair but works. Find out what your players hate IRL!

And... maybe playing duelling banjos and putting a stick of butter on the table...

Yora
2010-10-01, 01:16 PM
Stress loading works.
Now this is a good example that english grammar is really very basic:
Should loading works be stressed or does it work when you use stress loading? Or is a stress loading work a kind of device that should be used? :smallbiggrin:
Either way, what do you mean by that?

Ravens_cry
2010-10-01, 01:17 PM
Anytime the DM pulls out a copy of FATAL.
Ew. That game is like mirror handed molecules. Not only is it the suck, but it turns other things into the suck by it's presence. Does your DM actually own a copy of that monstrosity?

randomhero00
2010-10-01, 01:21 PM
You've got to make an atmosphere. Literally dim the lights and play either some creepy music or some appropriate environmental sounds (like dripping if you're underground.) Then you've got to force everyone to stay in character. No metagaming at all. No out of character jokes. Try not to have any breaks. Hand out plenty of notes. Make them paranoid. Their characters need to be fully flushed out (i.e. have their own feelings, fears, etc.)

The more you pretend/roleplay to be scared, the easier it is to actually become. Once your players are in the mood you might try things like ever so slowly bringing down the volume of your voice, then when the monster appears raise it and slam a book down on the table.*

*that actually works, a teacher did that to my class in high school and scared the sh!t out of all of us.

Tyndmyr
2010-10-01, 01:31 PM
Now this is a good example that english grammar is really very basic:
Should loading works be stressed or does it work when you use stress loading? Or is a stress loading work a kind of device that should be used? :smallbiggrin:
Either way, what do you mean by that?

Pretty easy to decompose.

Stress, in the context of invoking scaring, is the concept of emotional stress.

By loading, clearly, the concept of using lots of it. So, lots o' stress.

Then, he claims it works. It's the only possible interpretation given the context. English is a contextual language, not a simple one. Those two things are very different.

shadow_archmagi
2010-10-01, 01:35 PM
When the DM tells stories about himself. General rule of thumb:

1. Never tell a story about your own achievements as a player.
2. NEVER EVER tell a story about campaigns you've DM'd.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: Unless the story isn't actually about you. Like the time you tried to DM a dungeon crawl, but your players kept setting everything on fire.



People who break this rule tend to be bad DMs. It probably has something to do with an inflated sense of how good their ideas are.

Valameer
2010-10-01, 01:41 PM
A few things are necessary to make a game truly creepy.

1. Realise the difference between players being Scared, and players being Nervous. Scared is what your going for here, a genuine feeling of dread and fear. Nervous is more common in games, but less fun. You're basically waiting for the DM to throw you a bone so that you can finally do something.

Spring attacking enemies, monsters using concealment, and being brought to low health all make me nervous, but not scared. Creepy makes scared. Once you start combat, you get more into nervous - so keep them creeped out as long as you can.

2. Players must develop an attachment to their characters. They've gotta be in their characters shoes, empathizing with with them, and wanting them to live. Otherwise they might just go suicidal berserk.

3. Characters must be relatively powerless (at least compared to the standard 3.5 game). They can't be combat monsters, or else they won't get scared, they'll get nervous. And itchy for a fight.

4. Contrast spookiness with an equal amount of non-spooky time so that players don't get numb. Play while the sun is up and keep it lighthearted. Once the sun goes down, have the spooky start.

5. Unexplainable things are creepy. Things I've seen in the DMG or MM aren't. Make encounters that are wrong. Generally things that don't attack are spookier than things that do. A painting who's eyes always point to the next murder weapon is creepy. A painting that cackles and attacks with a knife is fun, not creepy.

6. Never name critters. Let the players do that. Never say "zombie" or "vampire" or "ghost". Be careful to never quanitfy your monsters, since it turns them from supernatural horrors into monsters with stats in the players minds. Describe them, but let the players try to label them. This also works better if you don't use monsters right out of the box.

7. Encourage running. If characters are going to be able to succeed against these supernatural horrors, they usually have to go in and do recon first. Recon means they have absolutely no means of defeating the enemy - yet. They get clues based on it's behaviour - but for the most part they are just focused on escape!

8. Creepy music always helps. Horror movies rely more on their music and visuals than their fairly-cheesy plots. You don't get the fall back of creepy visuals, unfortunately, but be sure to use the music. There's an internet radio station at SomaFM (http://somafm.com) called "Doomed" that I use.

9. Be unrelenting. They may beg you to ease up. Be prepared to hide a grin and continue mercilessly.

subject42
2010-10-01, 01:50 PM
As a DM, I've been labeled by my players as being a "nightmare factory" and have even had my (20 to 30-something) players sleep at my place to avoid having to go home in the dark.

Most of what Lyceios said is pretty spot-on, but I'm going to add a few things.

1. Don't use a map for most encounters. Players are more at ease if they can reduce your big scary monster to an inch-wide plastic mini.

2. Act. Use strong dialog. Work your facial expressions. Change your body language. This works best in cases of things like possession.

3. Figure out what scares your players in real life. Don't push those buttons to hard, but lightly touch at them. For example, if you have a player that's an arachnophobe, don't have them fight monster spiders, but rather have tavern patrons swap horror stories and legends about Driders. It will set them on edge and build up a reservoir of latent terror that you can tap.

valadil
2010-10-01, 01:52 PM
The unknown. Never attack your PCs with a troll. Have some dark skinned, 8 foot tall beast leap out of the swamp. You can't let them know that that thing has a name.

Other than that, close encounters usually work well. What I mean by that is you need to put things in the game that seem harmless, but later on turn out to have been deadly.

For instance, my players got attacked late at night. The enemies set their inn on fire and the players had a skill challenge to get out. They were fine. Later that evening, the owner of the inn showed up at the new place they were staying and tried to foist his daughters on them, as a way to make amends. They thought the situation seemed a little off so they threatened the man and barred the door. The next day they found out that the original innkeeper had been brutally murdered and never had any daughters. Did I mention that they pissed off a family of doppelganger assassins? Realizing how close they came to getting stabbed in the night was far scarier than the actual fight would have been.

Tyndmyr
2010-10-01, 01:52 PM
6. Never name critters. Let the players do that. Never say "zombie" or "vampire" or "ghost". Be careful to never quanitfy your monsters, since it turns them from supernatural horrors into monsters with stats in the players minds. Describe them, but let the players try to label them. This also works better if you don't use monsters right out of the box.

This is a fun one. Especially when players try to guess what the monsters are. ESPECIALLY when they get it wrong. Nothing is more fun than them getting a false sense of confidence, then suddenly having it shattered.

Yora
2010-10-01, 02:16 PM
Not using names works very well. If it has a name, it means it's nature is clearly defined and it has an established place in the ecology, even if you don't know it. But if it has a name, it's already established that its something that is reasonably common and had been dealt with by other people on a fairly regular basis. Now that's not that scary anymore, isn't it.

Snake-Aes
2010-10-01, 02:50 PM
Spiders's and heights i have arachnophobia and Fear Of Heights
:smalleek:

My experience tells very bad things of messing with the player's traumas.

Creating atmospheres, dealing with uncertainty and good descriptions are key. "The husk of rotting flesh lunging at you bites with unnatural strength" has much more impact than "The zombie attacks". Once you learn the pace of the players, doing accurate creepy descriptions becomes easier.
Also, power. The more powerless the character feels, the better. This might be harder to pull off but as long as most of the powerlessness comes without making the character optionless, it should be good.

Fuzzie Fuzz
2010-10-01, 08:03 PM
This thread. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9464039#post9464039)

More seriously though, it's all in the atmosphere, as others have said. Keep the lights low, play background music, keep everything in-character. Pacing is important. Drag out the scene right before they find the monster for as long as possible. That's what makes Jaws, Alien, and all of Hitchcock's films so scary. The monster? Probably not actually that scary, no matter how creepy the idea might be. It'll never be as scary as whatever the players can come up with in their own mind. Even if they know what they're looking for, finding it will always be a letdown. Suspense? Suspense is the key. Keep them waiting. Make them want to find the monster just to end the waiting, but at the same time let them conjure up such terrifying images of the monster in their mind that all they want to do is run away as fast as they can. Then reveal their apparent doom.

Dimers
2010-10-01, 08:13 PM
Omnipresence is usually scary. A person or object that shows up at every important scene can get creepy fast.

Surprise attacks from things or types of people that are usually either innocent or helpful ... that combines fear of the unknown (why does this creature want to hurt us and how does it think it can?) with the shock of inverted expectations.

If you already have the players kinda scared and you know it, build up to acting on-the-edge (angry? frightened? insane? all of the above?) yourself. Act like everything is stressful IRL, get snappish and don't apologize (until after the game), act like you're freaked out about what the characters do. It'd be harder to pull off, but man, would it get the players freaked out.

Snake-Aes
2010-10-01, 08:20 PM
Again on the line of mystery, heroes of horror has a few suggestions that I find incredibly nice. My favorite is the one where when the heroes enter a settlement, everyone within view stop, stare at the heroes with a sudden twisting of their facial expressions, making a hiss with too-toothed mouthes, empty eyesockets and broken, strained skin. Then the heroes blink, everyone is back to normal activity as if that never happened.

FreshlyMinted
2010-10-02, 12:34 PM
Again on the line of mystery, heroes of horror has a few suggestions that I find incredibly nice. My favorite is the one where when the heroes enter a settlement, everyone within view stop, stare at the heroes with a sudden twisting of their facial expressions, making a hiss with too-toothed mouthes, empty eyesockets and broken, strained skin. Then the heroes blink, everyone is back to normal activity as if that never happened.

Oh wow, so stealing that

Dairun Cates
2010-10-02, 12:44 PM
Read up on the more "Straight" style Paranoia XP modules. WMD has one that's HORRIFYING because you essentially give your players no choice, but to ultimately resort to the most horrific solution possible to survive.

That's right. Your players cause a massive sector wide food shortage (of their own accord) that results in a military state emergency, and in order to get things going again, the only real solution is to use human corpses as a substitute.

Straight Style Paranoia campaigns roll like that. Even the more humorous ones can be horrifying at times. It may seem like a system where people die so often they get 6 clones can't be scary, but if you time it right, you can catch your players off guard and make them throw themselves into bad scenario after bad scenario with no chance of escape save permanent death.

Ranger Mattos
2010-10-02, 12:55 PM
Role dice randomly and jot down notes. When the players ask what you're doing, just grin evilly.

arjinn the fox
2010-10-03, 06:16 AM
tactics i've used, or seen used, in past games, which were fairly successful:

1) wear them down, make them use up their spells, healing, potions, and then divide them. i've had the fighters rush some undead that entered a room, which triggered a trap door, dropping the fighters and the zombies into a sub-basement, leaving the rogue and the depleted casters to face the bigger threats.

2)an earlier poster mentioned that most players worth their salt will instantly recognize any monster you throw at them by description. everyone knows that kobolds are weak creatures that even a caster can beat to death in combat if it comes down to it. but give those kobolds levels in ranger and give them dire bats as mounts, attacking the party in an open field...

3) use the environment as an obstacle. rough terrain, dark corridors, blind spots in rooms, even fairly deep water. having characters crossing a river through waist deep water with undead partially buried beneath the river bottom, just waiting to grab ahold of food that wanders by.

4) I played in a Midnight campaign, where the GM used a creepy as hell soundtrack from a movie playing softly in the background as Izrador's minions chased the party through some dwarven caverns. dodging arrows and spells while trying to get away heightened the threat of death.

Kulture
2010-10-07, 09:07 AM
Make friends with the music of Lustmord and Aphex twin.
Cater to the fears of your players, for instance: one of the players in my campaign is a massive ff7 fan, so I'll be playing one winged angel prior to a boss fight to make him freak out (which the song always does).
Meta horror is somewhat useful too: Obtain a copy of the immortals handbook bestiary and leave it bookmarked at the stats for Alabaster, the Amidah (the ultimate one, paragon of paragons.)
Try and make a comfort zone NPC for them, such as a contact or cohort.
My personal favourite variation of this is the alchemist from pathfinder with unrevealed levels of master Chymnist and delayed infusions of amorphous form and form of the dragon.
Have them get attatched and relate to him, then have him turn heel at the right moment, knock back his perfect mutagen and activate the infusions.
Now they're in a fight with what is essentially the arch demon mixed with arakune.
You may wish to throw in the half farspawn template.
If you're really mean you'll make him decently high level and have the suicide bomb feat so he can detonate every unused bomb at once, turning him into a walking thermobaric disaster.
Nothing like a well liked NPC becoming an abomination and trying to take you with him after you're forced to fight him.

LibraryOgre
2010-10-07, 10:41 AM
Old School players only fear 2 things: Level drain and things that turn you to stone.

Psyx
2010-10-07, 10:55 AM
You mean System Shock rolls?

KiltedGrappler
2010-10-07, 11:11 AM
Whenever the DM say to roll ANY kinda of check and does not tell you if you passed or even what it is for. Works best on people with an attachment to thier characters.

This. I use it in conjunction with sometimes-meaningless-sometimes-not flavor text and isolation of the players.

Me: Player 1, roll initiative.
Player 1: Ok, I rolled X
Player 2: What about the rest of us? Where all in the dark room together.
Me: No, just Player 1. Player 1, you feel a cool breeze, like a hand, brush past your face.

Then continue on with the game. Did the breeze mean something? Maybe, maybe not. But the only one who knows for sure is the DM.

AugustNights
2010-10-07, 11:17 AM
Spiders's and heights i have arachnophobia and Fear Of Heights

IRL I have like a reverse fear of heights... a fear of reverse heights. If something is really high up, and I look up at it I get a little sick... sometimes the sky does this to me.

In game?
~ Southern Gentlemen Accents, slow, calm, and always up to no good. (Whether it be womanizing or consuming the dreams of small children, you can never trust a Stateside Southern Gentleman. Never.)

~ Answers that don't work, or only work at an abstract random. [Diseases that don't respond to magic. Anti-Divine spell Fields, Random chance that Cure spells cause gruesome damage.]

~ Monsters that carve off a piece of their own body and consume it for three full round actions.

~ Evil 'Artists.'

~ Being given a very shiny, very illegal toy in a city filled with very angry and very strong guards. (I don't know if you are familiar with Shadow Run at all, but my character was once delivered an Ares Vigorous Assault Cannon in broad daylight. That was a fun run back to the base...)

~ Knowing that someone in the party has switched sides, but also knowing that every party member is vital, and not knowing who has switched sides.

~ Creatures that look dead. Should be dead. And yet they keep fighting. (Only when they were healthy before.) Especially after 2 rounds of 'being dead.'

~ Being told by an Immortal that he will let the party live/leave the maze/ect if we kill one of our members...

~ Spells I have never heard of. And do things... that spells can't do. (Simple Details here are you friend.)

~Angels and Archons turning a blind eye. To anything.

~Ghost Casters.

~ The Corpse of a God.

~ Fighting really hard big bads. A lot of them. Not knowing what they are. Finally starting to be able to take one down without losing a party member. Then Witnessing 3 get taken down by 'Even Bigger Bad.' Which has scent. Or Blindsight. Or Maybe it just wants to eat the wizard. (I'm usually the wizard.)

~ Humorous moments. Then they aren't humorous any more...

~The Rogue (who is immune to poison at this point, of course) getting poisoned.

~ The Cleric being possessed... only most of the time.

~ The Barbarian.

~ When DM's say 'Good' after a victory.

~The DM's respective other. (Boyfriend, Girlfriend, Androgynous-friend, ect.)

~ Sanity Loss. Saint Buddha preserve us, I fear sanity loss. [Best if you lose sanity for things that don't seem like they should drain sanity.]

~Food. Especially well detailed, food. Never trust food. [Great thing to hide antidote in, so when the room fills with poison, the big bad is grinning.]

Snake-Aes
2010-10-07, 11:33 AM
~Food. Especially well detailed, food. Never trust food. [Great thing to hide antidote in, so when the room fills with poison, the big bad is grinning.]

:D My group experimented the Fish with Feydust Spice. Funniest failed fort save in months. And the hydra wine. Turns our hydra blood is extremely alcoholic, and the number of heads and time of fermenting greatly affects the product's quality.

amaranth69
2010-10-07, 11:36 AM
The scariest thing ever= cats with opposable thumbs. For if cats had opposable thumbs, humaniods would not be necessary.

Zaydos
2010-10-07, 11:38 AM
:D My group experimented the Fish with Feydust Spice. Funniest failed fort save in months. And the hydra wine. Turns our hydra blood is extremely alcoholic, and the number of heads and time of fermenting greatly affects the product's quality.

My party tried Fermented Abyss. They spent about an hour of real life time trying to figure out how to get anyone in the group's Fort save high enough to drink it without almost dying from the ability damage it dealt on a failed save.

They finally convinced the NPC arcane hierophant to turn into a bear and drink a shot of it.

This is what I get for introducing magical alcohol.

Also the cute little girl who is drinking the beer that knocks out the fighter/dwarf/bear. That would be someone I wouldn't want to mess with.

Snake-Aes
2010-10-07, 11:43 AM
The scariest thing ever= cats with opposable thumbs. For if cats had opposable thumbs, humaniods would not be necessary.

it's a relatively common occurrence. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyl_cat)




Also the cute little girl who is drinking the beer that knocks out the fighter/dwarf/bear. That would be someone I wouldn't want to mess with.

My half dragon was the party member that made the save (<3 you, Pathfinder half dragon with +6 con)

Thajocoth
2010-10-07, 05:12 PM
it's a relatively common occurrence. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyl_cat)

It's not opposable YET. When they can touch their thumb and pinky together, it will be. It'll be a few generations...

My cat is polydactyl, but he's also got ADHD, so we have no reason to worry. I remember, one time, he was begging for food, and I showed him a string, and he went to chase it, and then stopped himself, looked away from it and put his paw up to block it... I could tell that it was taking all his willpower not to chase the string... And he meowed for food again. (Yes, of course I gave him food.)

Zaydos
2010-10-07, 05:18 PM
What's scary about cats with opposable thumbs? Cats would never betray us!

Polydactyl cats are fun; I've had ones with five toes on each foot, 5 toes and a "thumb" on each forefoot, 5 toes and 2 thumbs on each forefoot, 5 toes on each foot and a thumb on one forefoot and 2 on the other. Yeah 23 toes was the most any of them got to.

flabort
2010-10-07, 05:49 PM
What's scariest?

You (the player) come up with an idea even you know is harebrained and would probably be disallowed. You tell it to the DM anyways.
Then, his soft smile... s-l-o-w-l-y... widens into a grin, his eyes... s-l-o-w-l-y... increase in width, and his eyebrows... s-l-o-w-l-y... lift higher than they've been yet that night, and.... s-l-o-w-l-y... curve inwards.
He reaches for a pencil and a few post-its, scribbles something down on each of them, and hands one to each player but you. Then he starts to talk. :smalleek: Especially scary if he's been using local online chat to tell all of you the details and he hasn't spoken a word yet tonight.

More seriously, if there's no enemy in sight, and he utters the words, "Make a will save. Mmm-hmm. How many hp you got left? right... I'd like to see your character sheet. Just for a moment. Thanks. Ah, yes. Here you go, a brand 'new' character sheet. Yes, I've filled it all out. Don't worry, it's the same character. Just don't let anyone else see the sheet."

doc*sk
2010-10-07, 06:15 PM
~ Evil 'Artists.'

I number of campaigns ago, I created an evil artist who used people in his artwork. I tried to add a couple of details.

1. He was blind, but still created paintings and sculptures of remarkable quality.

2. He kept a flock of sick looking chickens in his yard.

The players later learned that the chickens were domesticated cockatrices, who actually did the work of creating the sculptures. As for the paintings, the artist possessed an artifact that stole souls and put them on the canvas. The bodies of the stolen souls died, but their spirits lived on in the paintings.

Chrono22
2010-10-07, 06:19 PM
Sharp edges :smalleek:

Dsurion
2010-10-07, 10:39 PM
Ever hear of Shalebridge Cradle? We played a tabletop version of something like it when my DM bought Heroes of Horror. Needless to say, pants were crapped.

Kulture
2010-10-10, 03:26 PM
If you don't mind a 'flee or die' encounter, try actually dropping Alabaster on the party.
Particularly if you take the party to a divine court or pantheon meeting to judge them for screwing with the fabric of reality e.g. wish abuse.
Angry gods are scary, but the medium sized vampire that can gleefully butcher all present gods single handedly, probably in just a few turns, then calmly ask the PCs to follow him is even scarier.

Worlok
2010-10-10, 04:07 PM
Also the cute little girl who is drinking the beer that knocks out the fighter/dwarf/bear. That would be someone I wouldn't want to mess with.
Dude, not funny. The one game I've played in had one in that vein. The innkeeper's eight-year-old daughter, unassumingly named 'Marilith', who had both a sadistic streak and some talent in trapmaking. By means of lucky rolls with higher constitution and intelligence scores than any of the characters (don't ask).
OOC, the players feared her, because we all thought she'd actually be a high-ranking demon in disguise. That beer thing? Happened. Twice. Also, she kept getting involved in whatever attempts at information gathering, bluffing, disguising, breaking and entering, shoplifting, buying equipment, working with artifacts and basic bodily hygiene the characters got up to while in the general vicinity of her hometown.
IC, the characters feared her, because she kept compromising the religious ranger/fighter's authority and good standing by means of blatant lies and the idea that little children do not lie out of pure malignance. She also set up various machinations to off the rogue/sorcerer, who would 'oddly' keep falling down stairs, tripping over poorly-fixed rugs, being almost beheaded by a frozen pig on a rope, getting attacked by local stray dogs or locked up in the washroom. And she had gotten it into her head to marry the barking mad barbarian/cleric, who was afraid of girls. Also, her overprotective father was a veteran soldier and national heavyweight boxing champion who bred and trained fighting dogs.
The party played a game of thrones against epic-level cleric liches who ran a nation of cannibalistic necromancy afficionados, a sect of facist vampiric dragon disciples, their undead Great Wyrm black dragon overlord, the royalty of a psionics-based theocracy, a conspiracy of plane-shifting wizard lords, a sociopathic god of war and a throng of hobgoblin khans. They had managed to weaponize a library shelf which ended up offing one of the Big Bads, they had tamed an owlbear, fought in and practically decided two setting-wide wars, stop an army of devils from conquering the world, fly a sunken steamboat into a building in the middle of a desert and been to outer space on medieval-tech equipment. They had gotten through no less than eight dungeon crawls almost on par with the Tomb of Horrors and generally kept surviving all sorts of murderous madness. And the one thing that managed to have us all in a shivering heap of helpless nervosity over and over again... was an eight-year-old girl.

What I'm trying to say: NPCs and local flavor can be scary for the players and the characters. Have a single character who is not actually the driving force behind anything suspiciously be around locations, characters or events that have some sort of major dramatic impact on the story. And set up a lot of misleading clues as to what exactly is the deal with that character. Have the character be an antagonist, a nuisance or a minor danger in his or her own right. Bonus points when the players are good RPers and of Good alignment and the character is sort of 'untouchable' for them (Such as, say, an eight-year-old child everyone but them likes). The PCs will begin to draw all the wrong connections and fly into full-blown paranoia whenever they are around that character. It's fun. In hindsight, at the very least. :smallbiggrin:

Sorry if this piece of advice has essentially been posted before.

ShellBullet
2010-10-10, 04:09 PM
There are two kind of things that I fear in games; Zombies and unknown creatures. By zombie i don't mean the slow limbing one, nooooooooooooooooo but those that are super powerful yet manages to give that primitive savage athomsphere that comes from eating sickening crunching sound as one bites a piece from human.
As for unknown monster? It plays fear of unknown, either pick a monster from books that they don't know or make your own. I would advice against picking undead monster (unless it's a zombie), because people expect them. Instead pick abberion, A mindfliyer, hook horror or even combination of both!!!