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Lord Loss
2011-02-07, 07:07 PM
I'm going to be running a Delta Green-esque game for my players in the near future. Now, I've ran horror before and I'm sometimes able to scare my players, but more often then not, my efforts don't work out quite as plan. I suppose my question is, how do you guys truly terrify your players and make memorable horror games? Any/all advice is really appreciated and feel free to ask questions about the game, campaign or setting, if they help.

I'll post more information later, the characters have been used a few times before, this is the continuation of an old campaign we haven't played in a while.

holywhippet
2011-02-07, 07:15 PM
Low light levels in your gaming environment for one thing. Could be tricky since players need to be able to see their books/sheets/dice but do your best.

Background music is a good choice - find something that fits the mood. I've had a DM start specific songs when we reach certain points in the adventure.

Be expressive when describing the situation. A flat delivery won't induce fear.

Hyudra
2011-02-07, 07:41 PM
Scaring players is hard. Unnerving them is a little easier.

To scare your players, you ultimately need to get them to disassociate from safe old reality. If they're comfortable and cozy at the gaming table, they're much harder to spook. If they're totally immersed in your game and their characters, then they'll get scared when stuff starts to go wrong.

So classic immersion methods are paramount. You want to appeal to the senses and to paint the world as swiftly and effectively as possible. Talk about sounds, smells, the weather, textures. This makes it easier to transition when stuff starts to jibe with the way things should be. Some background music works, as well.

From there, it's about inserting the spookiness in there. You want to break convention, defy expectation and ultimately keep the threat unknown. Keep your players off balance. Play games with them, so there's no guarantee in companionship or the shelter of the DM.

Maybe something like giving each of your players an index card at the campaign's outset, and informing them that they are to keep the nature of their card a secret. The cards could range from "secretly harboring feelings for the character of the player 2 seats to your left." to "Murder the character of the player across from you near the story arc's conclusion", simply "It's your fault" or just have each card contain gibberish. See if that doesn't ratchet up the paranoia. If and when they do act on the cards, you can grin and tell them they were under no compulsion to do anything about them.

In terms of game elements, what kind of horror do you want? Squick? Paranoia? 'Oh god what did I do?'?

Lord Loss
2011-02-07, 08:47 PM
It's going to be a full-fledged campaign, so I guess I'll want to switch the mood up every once in a while or change it from scenario to scenario. I usually go for Paranoia when I do attempt horror.

I'll give info on my players later, I have to go at the moment.

Timeless Error
2011-02-07, 09:10 PM
Assuming this is D&D 3.5 (although it might be useful even if it isn't 3.5): you could look into the Heroes of Horror (http://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Fantasy-Roleplaying-Supplement/dp/0786936991) sourcebook. I haven't read it myself, only heard of it, so I don't know how useful it will be, but I'd recommend looking into it.

Triskavanski
2011-02-07, 09:13 PM
Ban all junk food. Serve them only health food.

HunterOfJello
2011-02-07, 09:20 PM
Start off the session by telling them that at least one of their characters will die a permanent death that session.

Set up one room with some sort of trap and use a miniature hourglass or watch to measure the time that they spend in the room. While looking at the watch or hourglass, smile.

Block off the character's entrance. A dungeon is more frightening when you can't run back out of it.

Occasionally roll dice several times for no reason and then ask one of the players what their characters spot or listen check is. When they ask why you want to know, just smile and ask the question again.

Use Mind Flayers. Even if it's just an illusion of a mind flayer, use at least one.

Set up at least one room with absolutely nothing in it. A clean and empty room in the middle of a swamp-like dungeon will make any smart player paranoid.

Check out some of the stuff from Tomb of Horrors.

Barbin
2011-02-07, 09:35 PM
Ban all junk food. Serve them only health food.

You also have to make sure replace the soda with blood V8 and the sour cream dip with vomithummus.:smallwink:

Triskavanski
2011-02-07, 10:12 PM
Actually I'm referring to an old issue of dragon back when they were an actual magazine. It came out about halloween and the dork tower comic basically had that joke.

Shalist
2011-02-08, 03:11 AM
In general, people fear the unknown, so the best way to knock them off their game is to challenge their assumptions about what to expect.

Once you've knocked them out of their comfort zone, they'll pay more attention to any creepy descriptions you throw out at them, since they'll be straining their brains and ears for any clues of what to expect, rather than just glazing over the 'flavor text' while waiting for you to get to the crunchy bits.

Also, ways to to knock them out of their comfort zone:

-No resting

-Time limits (Not just a single 'auto-fail' time limit, but one with varying degrees of failure. Force them to choose the 'lesser evil' of falling behind, or doing something risky/dangerous, like a shortcut or braving a deceptively obvious trap).

-Something they rely on doesn't work (ie, monsters with DR, or regeneration)

-Stuff just not working as expected (zombies piecing themselves back together, etc) (could be purely flavor changes, like a funky visual affect whenever they use magic, their lights giving off a blood-red glow, finding their food all maggot-ridden, etc, vice combat).

-Foreshadowing (hearing scurrying inside the walls, or the sound of dry, scraping steps pursuing them, though the sounds stop whenever they do, and searching might reveal footsteps/etc, but no pursuers...)

Comet
2011-02-08, 04:34 AM
You can't really make them truly afraid, but you can unnerve them.

Two ways to go about doing this, the way I see it:

1) Gore, unpleasantness, graphic molestation of innocence. Does the unnerving very well, might make some players cry. Some players might thank you for the intense experience, but it still pays to be careful with this.

2) The unknown. This is harder to do if you're explicitly playing a horror game and the players know it. But still, you can play with their expectations. Keep them on the edge, not knowing what will happen.
Once we were playing a game of D&D where we were escaping from an underground prison. Basic jailbreak dungeon romping, right? It was, until the very last encounter, where we ran into a ghost wandering around the final level of the place. It would appear, a young woman, pale but healthy, and disappear without saying a word. Over and over again. We had all drawn our weapons and formed a circle for the imminent charge of whatever ghastlies would appear next. Nothing happened. The ghost just wandered around, looking a bit sad. For a moment, though, we were all very nervous indeed and the payoff was excellent. Not everything is as it seems.

J.Gellert
2011-02-08, 04:58 AM
The best way to challenge their fear of the unknown is by using monsters that don't exist in any book. Tentacled horrors work.

And always remember, if you can't scare them, just turn their stomachs. An old saying of mine which is always re-established on horror films, most recently Black Swan (yikes!).

Fitz10019
2011-02-08, 06:00 AM
Ask for a fort save before they go to sleep. Give consequences the next morning.

Options:

Tell someone his [choose a limb] looks a bit grey and feels dull-sensed.
Tell someone he has a patch of flaky itchy skin. Removing the flakes (days later or via a Heal check) reveals new skin that does not match the rest of him.
Tell someone his irises are no longer round. Over several days, they change a bit to a new shape.
Next time they're in darkness, tell them something glows (that limb, that new skin, their eyes).

Tengu_temp
2011-02-08, 06:49 AM
Play the Silent Hill games, take inspiration from them. For example, in the third game:
In an abandoned building, filled with monsters, there is a closed stall in one of the toilets. If you knock on its door, someone (something?) inside knocks back. If you back off then, the door opens. But once you check inside, there's nobody in the stall. Just blood covering the toilet seat.
That was probably the creepiest thing I saw in that game.

Lord Loss
2011-02-08, 07:34 AM
It's not going to be D&D, it's going to be Call of Cthulhu (using a homebrewed system). Still most of the advice applies. I've been rereading Heroes of Horror, one of my favorite D&D supplements, as suggested.

Here's a bit of info on my players:

D. He's a very story oriented player who plays antiheroes who try to do the right thing, often with tragic pasts and dark family secrets. His current character killed his own father when he found him murdering his mother. What he doesn't know (but the agent in charge of them does, he's hinted at knowing something about it) is that his mother was a cultist attempting to summon... something (I haven't decided what just yet). His father was actually one of Shadowfall's top agents, but he knows only that his father served in the army, as did he.

C. Plays agent Brick, a Gun-toting, demon-hunting badass. I would have thought that scaring him would be hard, but I've managed to freak him out on many occasions. Assuming I can keep him serious (which is at times difficult), scaring him isn't all that hard.

R. He only recently started roleplaying and doesn't like it when combat drags on for a long time. He's only ever played D&D.

Other players that I know and will probably invite:

RK. She may be the best roleplayer I've ever met. I ran a horror game quite recently without a sanity mechanic and she still managed to accuratley portray how her Drama-teacher character slowly went more and more deranged and finally snapped. A great player to have for a horror session.

A. He's somewhat combat oriented, WoW and D&D 4e are his kind of game. He tends not to roleplay that much. Before we took a break from the campaign he played a silent, mysterious character who threw knives. I never managed to scare him.

L. He's more of a Lurker-type player. He seems to have fun roleplaying, but I can't seem to pinpoint what part of it he enjoys.

Zen Master
2011-02-08, 10:03 AM
Start off the session by telling them that at least one of their characters will die a permanent death that session.

Dangerous ploy. I'd employ some sort of fortune teller or similar device - actually, bar that, I'd throw in a crazy old man in the street, rambling about how death is imminent, tonight ... then throwing in the name of a specific character. When they try to press him for more information, he will seemingly snap out of it or wake up, and not know where he is or why.

Also, depriving players (and characters of course) of information tends to work. The classic clichee is 'the lights go out!' But anything that is unknown and unpredictable for the players will work - say, shadowy shapes that pass throught the walls, not yet attacking but obviously outflanking the characters.

Dentarthur
2011-02-08, 10:09 AM
I'm not a DM, but Shamus (http://www.shamusyoung.com) is, and his advice on scaring players (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1968) is an interesting read.

Callista
2011-02-08, 10:12 AM
If there's one thing I don't like, it's when people think "disgusting" is the same thing as "horror". Don't wade through the gore--it's not scary, just gross.

On the other hand, if you can make the NPCs come to life as "real" people and then just imply that horrible things have happened to them, you will probably freak the PCs out pretty badly. What you don't see, what you leave up to the imagination, is usually worse than what you can describe.

Oh, and corpse rat swarms. Corpse rat swarms are pretty creepy.

Megaduck
2011-02-08, 10:21 AM
The more the players know, the less scared they will be.

Don't explain anything.
Roll some dice, say 'hum', then make a note on your pad.
Ask them to make spot checks, often at random times.
Ask them to clarify themselves, "So, your putting your back to the door across the hall as you open the door in front of you, right?"
Don't say, 'the room is empty', say, 'you don't see anything.'

Hyudra
2011-02-08, 11:30 AM
If there's one thing I don't like, it's when people think "disgusting" is the same thing as "horror". Don't wade through the gore--it's not scary, just gross.

On the other hand, if you can make the NPCs come to life as "real" people and then just imply that horrible things have happened to them, you will probably freak the PCs out pretty badly. What you don't see, what you leave up to the imagination, is usually worse than what you can describe.

Oh, and corpse rat swarms. Corpse rat swarms are pretty creepy.

Disgusting isn't always the same as horror, but there's room for disgusting that is horror.

Sure, gore on its own isn't horror. But a creature that adheres to any flesh it touches & draws them into the greater mass of its body, still alive, thinking, but with their bodies twisted or melted into a shape that assists the larger creature... that's pretty disgusting, and it's pretty horrible. PCs who see that happen are going to be pretty spooked at the idea of having that happen to them.

Just building around that idea:

The PCs are asked to investigate a compound. They enter, and every alarm is going off, lights are flashing, there's the acrid smell of chemicals everywhere, and the sprinkler system obviously went off, as there's a half-inch of water pooled throughout the building, and water still dripping from the sprinklers.

The place is empty. No staff. Occasionally a dropped weapon, ranging from guns to makeshift tools, not no blood. Never blood. Everything is sterile.

Leading up to the encounter are a few encounters with ghosts. A scientist is seen crawling backwards down a hallway, hyperventilating. He isn't translucent, isn't monochrome, so it isn't immediately clear he's a ghost. Still, his attacker isn't seen as he suddenly screams, and his body starts to branch apart and spread out like roots from the toes up (we're seeing him get absorbed by the monster, without seeing the monster). All essential organs stay intact, and float in midair. He screams, "Kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me" for nearly a minute as the process continues, before a mercy shot shatters his skull. The players watch as the body is cleaned up, as though invisible earthworms (tentacles? tongues?) were crawling through the resulting pools of blood to clean away whatever they touched. Then the scene repeats from the beginning, doomed to play for a long, long time, due to the psychic traumas involved imprinting on the area.

Another scene (on surveillance tape, or another ghost) might show a soldier getting caught, lifted up into the air by one of his arms, legs kicking, and futilely trying to saw off his own arm with his combat knife before it's too late. Maybe he fumbles with his grenade, trying to blow himself up with the creature, but drops it before pulling the pin.

The suspense builds in this manner until the players finally see what they're up against, through a window, as the creature breaks into a lab and absorbs one of the few remaining survivors. Her face drifting up the exterior of the creature's vaguely centauroid form, screaming more and more incomprehensibly with every passing second. The PCs can break the window and shoot, but it's doubtful/impossible that they can break through the underlying wiring and/or damage the creature sufficiently before it leaves the lab.

And from there, you'd have a game where your PCs can decide on options. It should be stressed to them (maybe screamed as dying words by the survivor in the last scene) that their first priority is keeping the creature from getting out into the general population. Their second is stopping it, or failing that, containing it. Tertiary benefits would be finding out the source and getting the research for the bosses.

If you want to ratchet it up, and if your group had a doctor type to figure it out, you could have the creature start shedding excess parts. Having too much mass would be inefficient, so it's only keeping the optimal genetics and materials... which means it's getting stronger, faster, tougher, with every passing kill.

Lord Loss
2011-02-08, 11:44 AM
I quite like all of the ideas presented and will definitley be turning your idea into a scenario, Hyudra.

Here's the current setup for my campaign (I'm going to do a reboot of it) :

Shadowfall is an organization founded by a group of multi-millionaires and billionaires who are aware of the supernatural threats on the world. They are, for the most part dismissed as a bunch of lunatics. However, the government sometimes attempts to have them shut down.

I'd also like to incorporate a few CoC scenarios I've bought over the years, such as a few that deal with the Yellow Sign/King in Yellow. I also have an idea called Ghost Town, incorporating many of the ideas detailed above, I'll offer details as soon as I have more of it worked out.

If anyone's familliar with the scenario Bad Moon, do you think it would be scary/good for a horror scenario? Any ideas on how I could adapt it to be one?

bladesyz
2011-02-08, 11:57 AM
In general, people fear the unknown, so the best way to knock them off their game is to challenge their assumptions about what to expect.


Indeed!

I once ran a session based on the Scream movie, but portrayed it as a social-RP session. I introduced several "interesting" NPCs and had the players socialize with them for a while.

Then I started killing those NPCs. The players of course, had no idea what kind of game I'm running, so they started getting freaked out.

All in all, it was a fun session, and I think the key factor was that the players weren't expecting to be caught in a psycho-killer mansion. They were mentally prepared for some social maneuvering, and weren't at all prepared for the killer lurking amongst them. If they had an inkling of what I was planning, however, I doubt they would've been fazed.

some guy
2011-02-08, 12:56 PM
The more the players know, the less scared they will be.

*snip*
Don't say, 'the room is empty', say, 'you don't see anything.'

Man, I have ruined many a moment by accidently stating too much. Take great effort in knowing what your players know and don't know. Don't forget to make notes and such. There is usually 2-3 weeks between my CoC sessions and I have much more too remember as a Keeper for CoC than as a DM for DnD. This sometimes results in me thinking the players already have some plot relevant information that they actually don't have.



I'd also like to incorporate a few CoC scenarios I've bought over the years, such as a few that deal with the Yellow Sign/King in Yellow. I also have an idea called Ghost Town, incorporating many of the ideas detailed above, I'll offer details as soon as I have more of it worked out.


Man, I just love me some King in Yellow. In my campaign recreational drugs, scented sticks and dream catchers keep popping up:
The drugs and the dream catchers are adorned with the Yellow Sign. They will all at first give the user wonderful calm and invigorating dreams (1d6 nights), followed by 1d4 nights of disturbing and lifelike dreams of Carcossa, followed by 3d10 nights of horrible nightmares that can't be recalled in the morning. The final nightmares can be suppressed by taking another pill/whiff of a scented stick creating dependancy of the drugs and scented sticks.
After a number of pills ingested/ scented sticks smoked/ horrible dreams dreamt the user will die in her/his sleep. The body will animate at increasing intervals during nighttime when Aldebaran is visible at the horizon.

Trekkin
2011-02-08, 12:56 PM
The single scariest thing the players can come up with resides in their own imagination. Leave mysterious footprints, dark shapes skulking in the shadows, and all the rest of the cliche horror material scattered liberally--and then subvert it. Have the footprints disappear when they're not looking; have the shapes explode into butterflies when shouted at. Keep them almost completely unsure of what's actually going on, but leave little hints, little solid pieces of evidence of what could be the real truth.

When they realize that those hints are a lie, they'll very probably be scared.

Kalim
2011-02-08, 01:04 PM
Play a bit of Amnesia: The Dark Descent for inspiration. :smalltongue:

Some of the themes might transfer well, like making lighting in the dungeon a rare and precious thing. As mentioned above, description and ambiance is everything.

Maybe throw in a monster that they can't hurt or kill, and make them run and hide from it until it goes away?

Lord Loss
2011-02-08, 01:11 PM
Play a bit of Amnesia: The Dark Descent for inspiration. :smalltongue:

Some of the themes might transfer well, like making lighting in the dungeon a rare and precious thing. As mentioned above, description and ambiance is everything.

Maybe throw in a monster that they can't hurt or kill, and make them run and hide from it until it goes away?

I've been wanting to play Amnesia for ages, but myPC can't run games very well :smallfrown:.

FoE
2011-02-08, 01:14 PM
I hardly pretend to be an expert at horror games, but here's some thoughts I wrote down in a short essay:

Horror is hard to do in D&D, largely because characters face the stuff of horrors on a regular basis and kick its ass. But it's not impossible. Leon Kennedy beat the crap out of a lot of scary monsters in Resident Evil 4 and I was no less scared by a lot of the stuff I encountered.

It's really about building the right atmosphere.

1) One of the elements of good horror is isolation. Look at Alien, Night of the Living Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead (OK, that's a comedy), The Thing, Resident Evil, etc. A lot of those movies involve isolation in one form or another.

Maybe your heroes are trapped in a particular location and can't escape. Maybe the monsters have found a way to strike at the heroes in such a manner that they can't get help, like in dreams. Or maybe the heroes are alone in a world full of monsters.

The point is, there's no help coming. You're on your own. Better conserve that ammo.

2) Don't turn everything into a trap. At least, not right away. Some things have to be safe for the players, at least so that you can turn it around on them.

I remember one time my players encountered a room with nothing but several corpses in it. One of my players said they were obviously going to raise up as zombies the minute they searched them. They did. That encounter was made of fail.

On the other hand, the same trick gets pulled in the video game Bioshock (dead bodies suddenly spring up and attack the player) and it was incredibly creepy. Why? Because you've spent the entire game rifling through the pockets of corpses without consequences. So when one jumps up at you, it's damn creepy.

3) Remember this old rule: nothing is scarier (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NothingIsScarier). Sometimes all you need to freak the players out is the suggestion that something is going to jump out and tear their heads off. D&D players in particular are paranoid this way: when they find a big spider web, they think they're going to fight a giant spider. So they get themselves worked up to fight a giant spider. But what if you screwed with their heads and had nothing attack them? This can actually be more effective than having a big ol' spider suddenly appear.

I remember one time my friend and I fought and killed some orcs. We left their bodies in a room and then came back to it later. The bodies were gone, the only trace of them a bloody smear indicating some beastie dragged them off. We just about pissed ourselves.

Another guy on this board once mentioned that the scariest adventure he had was the ghost town where they expected some zombies to attack them. But nothing jumped out to attack the party until nightfall. When the zombies actually showed up, it was almost a relief.

But take caution! This trope should be used only in small doses. You don't want adventures filled with the party wandering from empty room to empty room.

4) Play with your group's expectations. A lot of D&D players know the MM inside and out, so they know what to expect when, say, facing off with vampires. Shake things up. Throw things at them that don't really make any sense. (I think this is a suggestion in Heroes of Horror, too.)

5) Remember that there is such a thing as overdoing it. Horror requires a bit of a fine touch. Dead children can be unsettling. Zombie children can be scary. A zombie giant made of dead children is just cheesy, although it might be appropriate for a more light-hearted splatterhouse horror game.

Overall, though, it's easy to go overboard in horror. This was a pretty common complaint with Clive Barker's Jericho, where pretty every enemy is a hellish abomination that will tear you limb from limb, blah blah blah. "OMG, that monster's wearing human flesh like an overcoat. Just like the last dozen or so beasties we faced."

Lord Loss
2011-02-08, 03:14 PM
I hardly pretend to be an expert at horror games, but here's some thoughts I wrote down in a short essay:

Horror is hard to do in D&D, largely because characters face the stuff of horrors on a regular basis and kick its ass. But it's not impossible. Leon Kennedy beat the crap out of a lot of scary monsters in Resident Evil 4 and I was no less scared by a lot of the stuff I encountered.

It's really about building the right atmosphere.

1) One of the elements of good horror is isolation. Look at Alien, Night of the Living Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead (OK, that's a comedy), The Thing, Resident Evil, etc. A lot of those movies involve isolation in one form or another.

Maybe your heroes are trapped in a particular location and can't escape. Maybe the monsters have found a way to strike at the heroes in such a manner that they can't get help, like in dreams. Or maybe the heroes are alone in a world full of monsters.

The point is, there's no help coming. You're on your own. Better conserve that ammo.

2) Don't turn everything into a trap. At least, not right away. Some things have to be safe for the players, at least so that you can turn it around on them.

I remember one time my players encountered a room with nothing but several corpses in it. One of my players said they were obviously going to raise up as zombies the minute they searched them. They did. That encounter was made of fail.

On the other hand, the same trick gets pulled in the video game Bioshock (dead bodies suddenly spring up and attack the player) and it was incredibly creepy. Why? Because you've spent the entire game rifling through the pockets of corpses without consequences. So when one jumps up at you, it's damn creepy.

3) Remember this old rule: nothing is scarier (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NothingIsScarier). Sometimes all you need to freak the players out is the suggestion that something is going to jump out and tear their heads off. D&D players in particular are paranoid this way: when they find a big spider web, they think they're going to fight a giant spider. So they get themselves worked up to fight a giant spider. But what if you screwed with their heads and had nothing attack them? This can actually be more effective than having a big ol' spider suddenly appear.

I remember one time my friend and I fought and killed some orcs. We left their bodies in a room and then came back to it later. The bodies were gone, the only trace of them a bloody smear indicating some beastie dragged them off. We just about pissed ourselves.

Another guy on this board once mentioned that the scariest adventure he had was the ghost town where they expected some zombies to attack them. But nothing jumped out to attack the party until nightfall. When the zombies actually showed up, it was almost a relief.

But take caution! This trope should be used only in small doses. You don't want adventures filled with the party wandering from empty room to empty room.

4) Play with your group's expectations. A lot of D&D players know the MM inside and out, so they know what to expect when, say, facing off with vampires. Shake things up. Throw things at them that don't really make any sense. (I think this is a suggestion in Heroes of Horror, too.)

5) Remember that there is such a thing as overdoing it. Horror requires a bit of a fine touch. Dead children can be unsettling. Zombie children can be scary. A zombie giant made of dead children is just cheesy, although it might be appropriate for a more light-hearted splatterhouse horror game.

Overall, though, it's easy to go overboard in horror. This was a pretty common complaint with Clive Barker's Jericho, where pretty every enemy is a hellish abomination that will tear you limb from limb, blah blah blah. "OMG, that monster's wearing human flesh like an overcoat. Just like the last dozen or so beasties we faced."

That's quite a lot of advice. Thanks, Foe!

Hyudra
2011-02-08, 03:37 PM
4) Play with your group's expectations. A lot of D&D players know the MM inside and out, so they know what to expect when, say, facing off with vampires. Shake things up. Throw things at them that don't really make any sense. (I think this is a suggestion in Heroes of Horror, too.)

I do this often in D&D. I remember one adventure that had a group heading into an abandoned mine to figure out why production had stopped. The dwarves were gone, but what the players did run into were crazed, stocky midgets who had stitched, stapled or welded stretches of colorful cloth, scales, leather and metal to their bodies. Included in their number were a few who could crawl on walls, by virtue of having their lower legs replaced by caterpillar like bodies (these guys had tentacles where they would have had hair & beards, paralyzing at a touch).

Not all of them were unfriendly either. Some offered the players assistance in singsong verse, others offered to help and then tried to betray the PCs. As the PCs descend, there were many mild traps and irritating dungeon features, like pitfalls, netting on the ceiling and piles of crates erected as barricades. There were also a few illusions and hallucinations, just to add edge.

The players managed to figure out that the dwarves dug into an underground lake and found something best left alone. Wounded and not up to taking on a threat that killed the dwarves' five proudest warriors, who themselves defeated an adult dragon (They found this out by way of papers scattered in an office, basically informing the group that it had a CR out of their league), the PCs opted to retreat and rest. Then, finding safety on a path outside the balcony, the group ran across a rival adventuring party, who collapsed a dam, setting the mine to flood... and giving the thing in the lake a way out and up.

Cue the hasty retreat through the parts of the dungeon they had already been, as water fills the corridors. This time around, though, what had been minor inconveniences (a pitfall that could be jumped easily) had become a major threat (a whirlpool dragging a PC into a deeper part of the dungeon). The nets that had been holding up the ceiling became a few dangerous moments of entanglement, boxes erected as barricades forced the PCs to swim under, blind. All the while, there were cues that whatever had been in the lake was swimming up, advancing closer, and collapsing the tunnels behind it. As it got closer, more illusions took place. A corridor appeared to have collapsed, another corridor appeared full of writhing things. Two PCs died (one to the whirlpool, one got paralyzed by a caterpillar-dwarf-thing and drowned), and the others weren't up to going after them.

I don't think the adventure would've sold quite so well if they'd known they were up against refluffed mongrelmen, a trio of refluffed carrion crawlers and an Aboleth.

Lord Loss
2011-02-08, 05:08 PM
I have the advantage of my players not being very bif readers, so exposing them to anything Cthulhuesque beyond ghouls, cthulhu itself and... uh, that's about it really, has them bewildered.

Shademan
2011-02-08, 05:19 PM
weeping angels.
gave one of my players nightmares with that.
MY WORK HERE IS DONE!

Lord Loss
2011-02-08, 05:20 PM
And most of my players have never even heard of Doctor Who (Apart from RK, she's a huge Doctor Who fan, and A).

*Evil Laugh On*

Shademan
2011-02-08, 05:26 PM
also: things are not what they seem.
when a player steps on the carpet he notices that its like walking on hundreds of coiling snakes, looking down , he sees that the ground is literally made of them, looking back up he is now in a foggy forest, all alone, and a high pitched howl of a tune can be heard from far back, turning around, he sees something bright red light coming trough the mist, a long black hand extends out to him... and he attacks, only to snap back to reality, having dealt damage to the player behind him.

This offcourse is just an example, of the player starts running or something, other weird stuff would have happened.

oh and also never repeat these things exactly.

oh and yet a final piece of advice, if youre going for weeping angels, dont give them the monsterface. the less scary the stonework is the more terrified the players will be.

Lord Loss
2011-02-08, 06:32 PM
I think I'll use your hallucination idea, I'm a large fan of Dreamscapes from heroes of horror. Also, for the weeping angel, do you suggest I use the version where pictures and whatnot of the angels come to life, or will they be murderous enough without that detail?

Cogidubnus
2011-02-09, 08:13 AM
Tried to post this last night, accidentally lost the whole post. So annoying, cos writing it up on my phone took ages.

If you're thinking of applying for my survival campaign, look away now.

I dreamt this up for the survival/horror campaign I'm currently recruiting for:


The PCs are walking down a deserted street in the post-apocalyptic city. Suddenly, they hear the sound of a child laughing, and not in a reassuring way, followed by the sound of a hoop being rolled along the ground and a child's footsteps chasing it.

Out of the corners of their eyes, they see shadows flitting around them. As they continue down the street, they hear loud voices coming from a courtyard.

When they investigate, they find a motley group of survivors, with improvised weapons and armour. Strangely, they seem to have put most of their effort into making their helmets, padding them with cloth and leather. One has even wrapped the whole of his head, apart from his face, in bandages.

As soon as they see the PCs, they start shouting and gesturing for them to cover their ears, saying 'it'll get in your head' and 'you have to keep it out' and talking about 'the echoes'. When they get a bit more coherent, it becomes obvious they're referring to the laughter, which is still on the edge of hearing.

After a little bit of conversation with the survivors, the laughter starts to get louder, and the shadow starts to flit around the top of the walls. Everyone backs against the wall of the courtyard, watching the shadow, such as they can see. The shadow reaches the gatepost, then a cloud passes across the sun.

The sun comes out again. Everyone breaths a sigh of relief. Then the laughter bursts suddenly from the shadow of one of the PCs, painfully loud. The survivors start screaming, and attack the PCs, desperate to 'silence the taint'.

The PCs are now scared of the long, silent walk back to base.

Shademan
2011-02-09, 08:33 AM
I think I'll use your hallucination idea, I'm a large fan of Dreamscapes from heroes of horror. Also, for the weeping angel, do you suggest I use the version where pictures and whatnot of the angels come to life, or will they be murderous enough without that detail?

I find that they work best when they look like well made statues and generally look as unthreatening as possible
because players know EVERYTHING can kill you
and when it looks innocent...they trust it even less

Kislath
2011-02-09, 09:44 AM
Scaring players is hard, but doable. It's much easier to just FREAK them out or fill them with revulsion, and if you can do both at once, so much the better.

Aidan305
2011-02-09, 01:04 PM
Here's an idea for you, requiring careful preparation and close co-operation with your players:

The game opens with all the characters present at a funeral of "an old comrade". All but one member of the party (ideally the most fearless) knows who is dead. Start the scenario from there, reference the funeral and the dead person's life, perhaps the goal is to hunt down their killer, but continue to keep the fearless character in the dark about who it was.
The other players will, not so much ignore the final player, but will acknowledge him without acknowledging him, never speaking to him directly while taking note of his contributions (Single player: "Hey, we should go to this place, there might be something there", Others: "We'll go to this place").
If you do it right, the final player will be going mad trying to work out what's going on. It'll immerse him more deeply, and will help in the immersion of the others as well.
In the end, have one of the players mention the name of the deceased in casual conversation (e.g. It's what Single Player would have wanted).

Apophis775
2011-02-09, 01:23 PM
Ban all junk food. Serve them only health food.

This. It'll leave them TERRIFIED

Silus
2011-02-09, 01:48 PM
Probably mentioned before, but try a slow ramp of terror.

Example: Now, assuming this is a modern type game, have a section that's in a ruined hospital (I suppose ruined is optional, but I suppose it helps). They come up to some doors, big'ol double doors. They push them open, and see a long (like improbably long, 90 feet at least) hallway. No doors on either side, no charts or windows or pictures, just bare walls with a second pair of double doors at the end. The hallway is dark, like someone set the dimmer switch to 50%. If they choose to to go down the hallway, have scary stuff start happening. Not like dangerous scary, but just downright unnerving things. Have blood slowly leak from the ceiling and down the walls. Barely heard screams, ect. ect.. As they start getting closer (like 30 ft away) have the effects kick up a notch. The hallway they just walked down gets absurdly long, the previously white walls are drenched in blood, the screams are almost deafening, and the walls seem to shake with the force of the screams. When a player finally reaches the doors, have the screams and the shaking stop immediately. Then the lights go out, and everyone is flung back down the hallway and out the door they came in. When they get up off their butts and try the door again, it leads somewhere else (like an office or something).

zorba1994
2011-02-09, 02:23 PM
I read this in a concept art book for DOOM 3 and have applied it in many a story of mine (not games yet).

Basically the concept is that a dead wolf in the middle of the street is not scary. A dead baby is.

Half-way through the adventure, have the adventurers come up on a way-lower-level-than-them group of enemies that they slaughter with ease (but look for all intents and purposes like normal enemies). After the encounter ends, have the lights go out, and make all the players make fortitude saves vs. dazed. When they manage to provide new lighting, describe the bloody corpses on the ground, which, instead of being the monsters they killed earlier, are now all unarmed teens-younger. If they're clothes are white and ripped (and bloody), even better.

Watch the party flip out.

Unrest
2011-02-09, 02:23 PM
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=173273

Kaww's stories of utter horror and freaking out. Some useful ideas you may find there... and a good read :smallbiggrin:

Lord Loss
2011-02-09, 05:53 PM
I'm starting to write the horror scenario, all the advice has been extremely helpful so far. Thanks for all the advice.

Grelna the Blue
2011-02-09, 06:36 PM
Have a tiny minority of the monsters actually interact with the PCs in a noncombat fashion (not just threats). It doesn't have to be Re: Your Brains (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjMiDZIY1bM) sort of thing, but when the zombie child or shoggoth or whatever actually speaks, it's considerably more unsettling than silence, especially if it knows a PC's name. Don't use a normal voice for this, naturally.

kyoryu
2011-02-09, 06:58 PM
This has been touched on earlier.

Make them question everything. EVERYTHING.

Telegraph nothing. Insinuate everything. Figure out what they'd expect from a situation, and then give them the opposite.

There's two fundamental elements of this: The fake signal, and the missing signal.

The fake signal is something you do that normally indicates something is happening, or important, or a transition - only this time, it doesn't.

The missing signal is when players expect something to happen before something else happens, and that doesn't happen.

The simplest example of this is drawing the map and the ol' standby 'roll for initiative.' Substitute perception checks as appropriate. When players see/hear these things, they know that they're going to be transitioning from the "non-combat" sub-game to the "combat" sub-game.

To do the fake signal, draw a map, roll for initiative. Throw in some monster initiatives as well. Let the players walk through the map, and exit the other side. Then, end "initiative time" and go back to the regular game.

For the missing signal, start combat without rolling initiative or perception checks, or drawing a map. Only do those things once the players have had a chance to be shocked by being attacked by something that's seems like part of the description, and even having the first effective round or two of combat not use a map.

In conjunction, what you've done is make the players paranoid. They'll no longer know when they're about to be in a fight or not. By mixing up the signals, you've removed that information.

A second important thing is to allow tension to build. A ghostly glow followed by an attack of a supernatural creature is not scary. A ghostly glow that doesn't lead to an attack *is*. The players are now looking for something to attack them. Again, mixing it up (sometimes these signs lead to nothing, sometimes they do but not immediately, sometimes it's immediate) will leave your players guessing.

Another thing I just thought of - in the book The Colorado Kid, Stephen King plays around with the idea of what a mystery really is. From the viewpoint of a newspaper article, he posits that every "good" story has a "musta been" point to it. It's not something that's necessarily proven, but the signs kinda point there so people feel good about it. Like crop circles - how did they get made so perfectly (yes, we all know how they were actually done)? "Musta been aliens."

What King does in The Colorado Kid is put together a mystery with a bunch of almost "musta been"s, except he then goes on to put evidence around the mystery that makes no sense with any of them. "Musta been suicide." Nope, too much other stuff. "Must been involvement in the mob." Well, then this piece doesn't make sense.

Those kinds of things aren't as satisfying, because they don't let us wrap up the "mystery" in a neat bow - they keep the tension there. That's good to scare players, as what you want to do is take away the obvious answers.

You do have to be careful with these things, though, as if done poorly they can just seem cheap and contrived. At the end, you want to *suggest* a pattern or solution, without ever actually *giving* them one. But, the players should still believe (subconsciously) that there is a pattern.