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View Full Version : Horror game brainstorming - How do you scare your players?



Silus
2012-03-27, 02:13 PM
So, I personally love running horror games (Mostly of the D&D and Pathfinder type), but my material is getting a bit stale (Genius Loci, reality warping house filled to the brim with soul sucking shadows and eldritch nasties). So here's a fun little exercise:

How do you scare your players?
Any juicy examples?
How about things that you've always wanted to try but never got the chance to?
And have you ever scared your players enough that they hesitated to continue playing?

Man on Fire
2012-03-27, 03:31 PM
Tell them about Slender Man then drop him into your game - if thinking about him is supposed to attract him, this should make him come out at one point and say hello.

Okay, seriously - the music. The scaries horror games I was in earned a lot to the music. Try hunting down OST from Higurashi games, they have some really scary bits that allows you bilding nice atmosphere. AVP games soundtrack is nice too, for what I remmember of it.

Also, never call by name what attacks them. Don't say "you see a troll", say "you see terribly ugly yellow monstrority of unnaturally long limbs feeding on the corpse."

Try not to go overboard with violence - the worst thing you can do is when graphic deaths stops being scary and becomes something more akin to Willy E. Coyote's average friday.

Try taking something innocent and turn it into something creepy and dangerous. Juni Ito did it with spirals ("Uzumaki"), Steven Moffat with statues and shadows (Doctor Who episodes Blink, Flesh and Stone/the Time of Angels and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Death), movie Mirrors did it with, well, mirrors. Try envoking paranoia to make your players be afraid of normal things long after the game is over.

it works at scaring me at least, even Slender.

Silus
2012-03-27, 03:50 PM
Tell them about Slender Man then drop him into your game - if thinking about him is supposed to attract him, this should make him come out at one point and say hello.

Okay, seriously - the music. The scaries horror games I was in earned a lot to the music. Try hunting down OST from Higurashi games, they have some really scary bits that allows you bilding nice atmosphere. AVP games soundtrack is nice too, for what I remmember of it.

Also, never call by name what attacks them. Don't say "you see a troll", say "you see terribly ugly yellow monstrority of unnaturally long limbs feeding on the corpse."

Try not to go overboard with violence - the worst thing you can do is when graphic deaths stops being scary and becomes something more akin to Willy E. Coyote's average friday.

Try taking something innocent and turn it into something creepy and dangerous. Juni Ito did it with spirals ("Uzumaki"), Steven Moffat with statues and shadows (Doctor Who episodes Blink, Flesh and Stone/the Time of Angels and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Death), movie Mirrors did it with, well, mirrors. Try envoking paranoia to make your players be afraid of normal things long after the game is over.

it works at scaring me at least, even Slender.

In my previous attempts, I had opted for a "You are not in control" vibe. Making the players feel like they're little more than playthings for some...thing with an alien intelligence.

Something I wanna try out is messing with dreams and waking nightmares. In an insane asylum. Like blending F.E.A.R., the Asylum bit from Alice: Madness Returns and the movie Grave Encounters with a dash of Nightmare on Elm Street.

Man on Fire
2012-03-27, 04:05 PM
I remembered famous method from 4chan - pointless dice.

Basically, in the middle of a scene where nothing happens you roll a dice and ask a player about some of their stats/skills/whatever, then continue like if nothing happened. Everybody quickly starts getting worried that something may attack them at any point.

Silus
2012-03-27, 05:36 PM
I remembered famous method from 4chan - pointless dice.

Basically, in the middle of a scene where nothing happens you roll a dice and ask a player about some of their stats/skills/whatever, then continue like if nothing happened. Everybody quickly starts getting worried that something may attack them at any point.

Ah, good'ol paranoia.

Thinking of adapting my previous idea into a whole city of nightmares. Most of the citizens have escaped, the city's been cordoned off by the military or something, and waking nightmares stalk the streets. And the PCs' task is to go in and figure out how to stop it all.

Swarms of hundred-legged spiders, huge faceless pale white giants, living dolls and mannequins, ect.

Techsmart
2012-03-27, 06:01 PM
To build on the pointless dice thing, make the dice mean something, that won't show up at the moment. Maybe an hour or two later, a player collapses to the ground. If you make at least some dice mean something later, then it will really make them keep on their toes.

Another thing that helps, have some effect that makes the party begin to question each other. Some of those dicerolls like i talked about above could be effects that cause a party member to attack another party member, or makes the party member a habitual thief who steals other party members' equiment. This could mean more dicerolls, which all have their own meaning. One problem about scaring a team is the idea of safety in numbers. If the only person a play can trust is themselves, and not always even then, this is gonna add tension, feeding the fear.

Limiting party resources can also help. I had a campaign where the party met a nightmare beast. Several times. In their sleep. Not once did they go into combat with it, but that nightmare ability made resting for some characters unproductive at best. If they know that going all out on the first fight is not gonna end well, it will make them think more.

As stated before, don't let them know what they are fighting. if you have experienced players who know the monster manuals, start mixing things up. Monsters are scariest when you can't predict what they can do.

Even more important to a horror game than all of these, however, is the detail. In a regular game, I would say "you arrive in a dark forest where all the trees are stripped bare." in a horror game, I would say something more akin to "You arrive in a forest where you can barely see your hands in front of you. In the distance you see the silhouettes of trees. Their branches more resemble bony fingers outstretched, as though they could grab you at any moment. There is a chattering noise somewhere in the distance.[spot check of whatever the highest score was] In one of the trees you notice a pair of gleaming red eyes. As soon as they meet, however, they disappear. " This helps bring the environment to life, and make the players feel like nowhere is safe, even the trees that the druid/elf may be so fond of.

Dragonfire
2012-03-27, 06:08 PM
Ah horror games, quite entertaining when done correctly and one of the worst games to be in if done poorly.

The way I do horror is through dread. Simple dread. A good example is droping the pcs into a dark cavern filled with waist deep murky water. You can very quickly get an encounter simler to the trash compacter scene in A New Hope.

This link (http://www.mindspring.com/~ernestm/horror/horror.html) offers some good advice for a horror game.

RandomNPC
2012-03-27, 06:21 PM
It's not yell out in fear scary, more of a broken brain scary.

One of my gamers has a back story about being taken under wing by a human who taught him the ways of the unarmed sword sage, they traveled for 40 years before parting ways and beginning the adventure I wrote. So they run into this Ogre Bard, who calls himself "The Bard" who tells a tale about how he and "The Warrior" overthrew an overly lawful and quite evil dictatorship. They also run into the Sword Sages master a few times. Later on the Sword sage gets blinded in a fight, and manages to kill two fighters and the caster that blinded him. Upon finding a town that had a temple he could get his blindness removed at, the Bard showed up, offering to pay for the remove blindness if he'll take some extra money and offer to pay for his masters remove curse, for some reason his master doesn't want to owe the Bard.

So remove blindness happens, the first thing the character sees is the remove curse getting cast on his master, who promptly turns into a woman and throws the belt of gender change into the fire. The second thing that he sees is the Bard, who yells "Welcome back Warrior!" and slaps her on the behind. Third thing he sees? His former master, the now female Warrior, throwing the ogre in the fireplace right after the belt. (party rogue got the belt out quickly and unseen)

After walking out of the temple and "leaving" the player just sat there for half an hour, staring at me.


TL;DR: Toss a belt of gender change into a characters background and make it matter.

Dr Bwaa
2012-03-27, 06:25 PM
The trick, of course, is (as you put it) scaring your players. You can scare their characters by telling them they're scared, but players are tougher. The best example of good player-centric fear comes straight from the G-Man himself:

(ToH spoilers!!)
In the Tomb of Horror, there is a moment at which, though it doesn't come outright and say it, you as the DM are supposed to force your players to roll a meta-check vs fear. There's an illusory cave collapse, and the module very specifically says something like "Don't give your players time to think. If they begin stalling, start counting down from ten. Slowly increase your volume; describe near misses from boulders if they continue to stay where they are." The characters themselves don't even get a save IIRC; they just find out it's not a real cave-in if the players don't panic and run.

Basically, an effective way to scare your players is to play off the fact that, as the DM, they trust you to tell them the truth about their surroundings. If you start to abuse that trust, just slightly, or use it to put ideas into their heads, that can tick the fear up a notch or two. Mostly-chaotic, mid-to-high-level D&D party? Start using the word "Dictum" in your descriptions. Guaranteed edginess from the players without you having to do a thing.

Another fun things to do is, if one person in your group has had experience with something particularly nasty/deadly in past campaigns (but not the rest of them), drop hints that that player will understand, suggesting that such a thing might reappear here. With a little luck, he'll make mention of it (such as going "oh $#!&" out loud), and then you just let him frighten the other players for you.

Silus
2012-03-27, 06:38 PM
Ah horror games, quite entertaining when done correctly and one of the worst games to be in if done poorly.

The way I do horror is through dread. Simple dread. A good example is droping the pcs into a dark cavern filled with waist deep murky water. You can very quickly get an encounter simler to the trash compacter scene in A New Hope.

This link (http://www.mindspring.com/~ernestm/horror/horror.html) offers some good advice for a horror game.

How about the "Things keep getting worse" bit?

Bits from my first horror game:

Players go upstairs and hear a noise downstairs. The front door they came through has slammed shut and locked. A brick wall can be seen just outside the windows, blocking any escape. Attempts to break through the wall create a Portal like effect where they break through to another window on the opposite side of the house.

In the basement the players find a large autopsy room/morgue. The darkness is downright oppressive and there are gurneys with covered bodies littered throughout the room. Looking under the sheets is ill advised as each body is horribly mangled yet somehow still alive.

Upon a second visit to the basement, the room has been warped into a 360-corkscrew with everything adhering to the floor (The room's floor which is corkscrewed). The room is, if possible, even darker. At about the halfway point, liquid shadows start oozing from the ceiling (In relation to the players who do not adhere to the directional gravity of the room). Any organic matter touching said shadows gets devoured.

And the finale takes place on a huge platform amidst a sea of liquid shadow, being besieged by swarms of Shadows and Nightwings while a Nightwave prowls in the inky black sea.

Edit: Oh, and this all takes place in a malevolent Genius Loci in the form of a New England style house the players found on Carceri (A Prison Plane composed of jagged mountains and dead swamps).

Edit 2: Also, this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC2T6Uydfz0) was playing in the background pretty much constantly.

Edit 3: In the dark. While I've got a slight Slasher Smile going on and chuckling to myself about what I'm going to do next (Like 90% of the campaign was made up on the fly).

Dragonfire
2012-03-27, 08:28 PM
Well I would argue that "the bits getting worse" is a part of dread.

My first horror game ever was in d20 Modern. It was heavily based off of Dead Space. Needless to say the party found them selves in a quickly deteriorating situation as lots of NPC's died horribly. That session had my biggest body count as a DM as well, one killed, one insane and one tramatised. I had done the game on a whim from one of my friends (The survivor's player...) and had frankly thought I had done a decent job at best, turns out that most of the players had loved the ramping feelings of dread. I kinda fell in love with the horror game concept after that and have been trying to hone my skills as a DM in a horror campagin.

I'm jumping onto the bandwagon as well for creepy ambient music in the background. It really helps set the mood/tone for the game it's one of the things I wish I had includd in the first horror game I ran.

LoneStarNorth
2012-03-27, 09:16 PM
1. Isolation and solitude. When you're trying to scare your players, don't give them any friendly NPCs to converse with. Don't give them any MONSTERS either. Give them nothing to interact with but the environment. If there ARE NPCs or monsters, have them show up infrequently and disappear quickly. Monsters should never stick around long enough to be fought and overcome until the end of the adventure (if even then).

2. In a game like D&D where the players have all sorts of cool powers, create a situation where the powers can't help them. This doesn't necessarily mean that their powers just up and stop working, just that they can't use them to solve their problems. You can tie this in to #1 by simply not giving them anything to use their powers ON.

3. Let them know that something is wrong, then have NOTHING be wrong. There are definitely ghosts, yet there are no ghosts to be found. They'll scare themselves and you won't have to do a thing.

inexorabletruth
2012-03-28, 11:32 AM
I'm adding my bid to creepy ambient music, but I would rule out sound effects either.

For The Last Night on Earth, a zombie board game my wife and I frequently play, we found and downloaded some free monster sound effects (when we were hosting a pre-halloween party) of bones crunching, women screaming, flesh ripping, wolves howling, etc. dropped them into iTunes and played it on infinite loop while we turned the lights low and played creepy music in the background. We also played a series of old B horror movies (muted of course) on our tv as background ambience. We also had the house decked out for Halloween and were serving strong alcoholic beverages which, of course, helped. But the experience was overall quite creepy and everyone had a great time. :smallsmile:

Zale
2012-03-28, 08:33 PM
Don't let them see the monster. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NothingIsScarier)

The suspense of wondering if there's something watching you that you can't see can be pretty intense. Especially if you find that your personal items have seem to have been.. moved. No one fesses up on it, but something is creeping around. There's no where it can't be, where it can't see you. Nothing, no matter where it is is safe...

Kuma Kode
2012-03-30, 05:42 PM
One fun thing I've done is take advantage of pre-rolling initiative, spot checks, and other things that you know the players will be making. Then, at the beginning of the session, hand them an evelope with the result of the die roll, a harmful spell, something the character sees through a window, whatever. Then, when the appropriate point comes up, tell them to read the note you gave them.

It takes a lot of planning and some understanding of your players to pre-empt what they do, but that envelope will create a ridiculous amount of tension as they wonder what it is, and then they finally get it revealed at some significant moment.

Occasionally, however, I will also hand out ones that say "Do not react to this text. This is a red herring." So everyone else ends up wondering what the party's medic just discovered, when in fact it was nothing.

Rankar
2012-03-30, 06:38 PM
I use "cute into creepy." Fairies scare the crap out of my players and I've only used them once.

*The sun's light seems to dim as you walk further into the woods*
*you hear strange sort of noise that sounds like laughter*
*dancing lights flicker in and out of view between the trees. They seem to be the sources of the laughter*
*one of them approaches you*
"Hello," the fairy says. "Have you come to play with us?" *creepy laugh* "You must play with us or we'll be upset." *creepy laugh* "What game do we want you to play with us? How about run and hide. You run and hide and we chase and find. Its so much fun." *creepy laugh* *you feel a stinging pain and feel a tugging at your mind, as if you want to go to sleep* "You must run faster than that or the game isn't any fun. Run or we'll get bored and need to find new toys."

Sir_Mopalot
2012-03-30, 07:29 PM
Dread. The game Dread is amazing for this. Whenever a player attempts something they could fail at, they have to pull from a jenga tower. If the tower falls, the character is killed or otherwise removed from play. As the game moves on it gets more and more tense as the tower gets more and more rickety. Amazing game.

Surfing HalfOrc
2012-03-30, 07:40 PM
Isolation from outside help is a big one. In a cave, hip deep in water. On a boat with a malfunctioning engine. In the woods, with no clear idea how to get home.

Purely innocent things can become extremely creepy. The PCs find a book of fairy tales in an otherwise emply room. A teddy bear with one eye gone sits on a bed. Canned food ripped open instead of opened with a can opener. Cars parked in a row, all with barbed wire wrapped around the front axle.

Some items are actually just Red Herrings, while others are clues.

SilverClawShift
2012-03-30, 08:12 PM
My DM and horror games go hand in hand. With a passion. Horror is the story to him, even if it's a drama comedy. Horror is the enemy, bravery is the victory.

I asked him once how he pulled off a horror atmosphere so well with us. His reply actually kinda shaped how I go through life in general. Mainly because he was always so great with people and I'm a neurotic freak. He said

"I've never once scared all of you the same way".

He put it another way as "know thy players"

With me, when he got to me, it was always helplessness and loneliness. When things went sour for my character, it was always a result of no one there to help me, and me just simply not being able to get out of the jam myself. He knew what scared me more than I did. He knew that to tear me down was as simple as leaving me alone. And that to finish me off meant making sure my power was useless.

With another player, it was raw numbers. One of our friends views life as a giant equation. Scaring him was as simple as putting seven zombies in a room with 5 bullets in his weapon. Putting a "Subtract <Player X>" in the game unless he ran away ruined his psyche. It made him panic and find escapes.

Another player was the opposite of me. He needed to be able to help others. Putting us in a burning building while he watched from outside would be enough to mentally cripple his ability to plan. He'd sacrifice everything to run in and try to save us, even if he knew it was a suicide mission.

Horror? Horror is a very intimate thing. Maybe the most intimate thing. We all ENJOY the same stuff, with few exceptions. We all love good food, good company, good love. But what scares us? What ruins our minds for days afterwards? That's a personal thing.
So you really want to scare your players? Isolate them. Not in the game. The game ultimately only has as much power over them as they give it. Isolate them in YOUR mind. Split them up. Then dissect them. Figure out what makes them tick, then remove a gear, or toss a stick in the right spot.
Players all want to be batman.

Your job is to be their Joker.

Solaris
2012-03-31, 09:53 AM
My DM and horror games go hand in hand. With a passion. Horror is the story to him, even if it's a drama comedy. Horror is the enemy, bravery is the victory.

I asked him once how he pulled off a horror atmosphere so well with us. His reply actually kinda shaped how I go through life in general. Mainly because he was always so great with people and I'm a neurotic freak. He said

"I've never once scared all of you the same way".

He put it another way as "know thy players"

With me, when he got to me, it was always helplessness and loneliness. When things went sour for my character, it was always a result of no one there to help me, and me just simply not being able to get out of the jam myself. He knew what scared me more than I did. He knew that to tear me down was as simple as leaving me alone. And that to finish me off meant making sure my power was useless.

With another player, it was raw numbers. One of our friends views life as a giant equation. Scaring him was as simple as putting seven zombies in a room with 5 bullets in his weapon. Putting a "Subtract <Player X>" in the game unless he ran away ruined his psyche. It made him panic and find escapes.

Another player was the opposite of me. He needed to be able to help others. Putting us in a burning building while he watched from outside would be enough to mentally cripple his ability to plan. He'd sacrifice everything to run in and try to save us, even if he knew it was a suicide mission.

Horror? Horror is a very intimate thing. Maybe the most intimate thing. We all ENJOY the same stuff, with few exceptions. We all love good food, good company, good love. But what scares us? What ruins our minds for days afterwards? That's a personal thing.
So you really want to scare your players? Isolate them. Not in the game. The game ultimately only has as much power over them as they give it. Isolate them in YOUR mind. Split them up. Then dissect them. Figure out what makes them tick, then remove a gear, or toss a stick in the right spot.
Players all want to be batman.

Your job is to be their Joker.

This. Absolutely, completely, this. I've startled players with how very well I knew them because I'll throw things at them that they don't even know they're afraid of.
Then, I suppose it helps I have this aura of menace and hatred that makes people quite certain that I'll murder them - it's not a question of 'if' so much as 'when'... that's something helpful to cultivate in a horror game. Just, y'know, don't actually murder your player. There's a lot of paperwork involved.

Lord Tyger
2012-03-31, 01:10 PM
A couple of touches I've found effective-

Shouting isn't particularly scary, unless it comes suddenly and unexpectedly. Speaking softly can disconcert people a lot more, especially if it's something almost (but not quite) innocuous. "Ah, an elf. I do so love playing with elves... so delicate, like pulling the petals off of a flower." If you want to go for a sudden shock moment, as opposed to just slowly building tension (really a matter of personal taste), you can go from this to a shout or scream. If you do this, or for Jump Out at You horror in general, I recommend committing fully. As far as the startle reflex goes, you have to startle the players, not just the characters. Suddenly lean forward, slam your fist on the table, grab the nearest player by the shoulders- don't do the same thing too many times though, or it will lose the effect.

Also, yeah, know your players. Some you can hit with fairly straightforward stuff (snakes, spiders) some require a more subtle touch.

Back to speech- another option is to mess up your tone and pitch. Keep yourself understandable, but removed from the way anyone would reasonably speak. Think Moriarty here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeEVuPiqE24) (warning, spoilers for Sherlock's first season).

ChimingCopper
2012-03-31, 07:21 PM
Any 'not quite right' physical action can be very effectively creepy. For instance, instead of talking directly to someone's face, keep your eyes on their forehead. It's unnerving, and they will unconsciously keep trying to meet your eyes. A smile that is slightly too wide and fake can also do it, especially if the NPC that is supposed to be creepy is trying to come off as pleasant and normal. Distorted body language FTW.

And also, yeah, know your players. The above doesn't work if they don't notice it to start with!

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2012-03-31, 08:29 PM
My DM and horror games go hand in hand. With a passion. Horror is the story to him, even if it's a drama comedy. Horror is the enemy, bravery is the victory.

I asked him once how he pulled off a horror atmosphere so well with us. His reply actually kinda shaped how I go through life in general. Mainly because he was always so great with people and I'm a neurotic freak. He said

"I've never once scared all of you the same way".

He put it another way as "know thy players"

With me, when he got to me, it was always helplessness and loneliness. When things went sour for my character, it was always a result of no one there to help me, and me just simply not being able to get out of the jam myself. He knew what scared me more than I did. He knew that to tear me down was as simple as leaving me alone. And that to finish me off meant making sure my power was useless.

With another player, it was raw numbers. One of our friends views life as a giant equation. Scaring him was as simple as putting seven zombies in a room with 5 bullets in his weapon. Putting a "Subtract <Player X>" in the game unless he ran away ruined his psyche. It made him panic and find escapes.

Another player was the opposite of me. He needed to be able to help others. Putting us in a burning building while he watched from outside would be enough to mentally cripple his ability to plan. He'd sacrifice everything to run in and try to save us, even if he knew it was a suicide mission.

Horror? Horror is a very intimate thing. Maybe the most intimate thing. We all ENJOY the same stuff, with few exceptions. We all love good food, good company, good love. But what scares us? What ruins our minds for days afterwards? That's a personal thing.
So you really want to scare your players? Isolate them. Not in the game. The game ultimately only has as much power over them as they give it. Isolate them in YOUR mind. Split them up. Then dissect them. Figure out what makes them tick, then remove a gear, or toss a stick in the right spot.
Players all want to be batman.

Your job is to be their Joker.

Find SCS's campaign journal, especially her first one, waaay back, to get an idea of just how great her DM REALLY is!