PDA

View Full Version : Help me scare the pants off my feeble little group!



Bearpunch
2012-09-13, 12:33 AM
So I recently started a rather pulpy Savage Worlds campaign (posted in general because the ruleset doesn't really matter) that takes place in the 20s. The players are paranormal investigators sanctioned by The Archangels (think The Foundation (http://www.scp-wiki.net/), but more focused on killing the critters) to track down and contain/keep a lid on paranormal entities in Chicago. Vampires, werewolves, spooky ghosties, eldritch abominations, everything is fair game.

Now, recently, the players are investigating the disappearance of a client and an investigator (two separate people) and have tracked them down to a vampire mafia family. Eventually, they will find this seemingly normal house that is on what I call The Precipice, an area which bleeds over into a branching reality dubbed "The Dark", where all paranormal beings originate. Once they arrive, the campaign is going to make a very serious shift to the "nope" variety, as all sorts of terrible things will happen to them while they are in it.

What I have planned is pretty standard, the never-ending hallway, mirror-suicide (it was mentioned in a scary stories thread a while back if you haven't heard of it, great idea, wish I knew the original poster), and dancing shadows and such. As you can tell, my ideas are fairly generic. I am good at horror, but it is more of the slow-build "What was that?" variety, and I am looking for a funhouse gone wrong approach for this specific adventure. I have turned to my fellow playgrounders to help me with making my players wee themselves a bit.

Seriously, anything, no matter how ridiculous, will be considered. If it is too ridiculous can be adapted if I think it fits, so please, spitball with me here!

Kol Korran
2012-09-13, 01:48 AM
I'm mostly a D&D player and not that knowledgeable about horror themes, but i'll try and give it a shot:

1) First of all I highly suggest you add some music. It might add a lot of atmosphere. Seek horror/ disturbing themes, or a-tonal music. will work perfectly. Here is a small (2 songs) list (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWEiqR19jq8&list=PL59847276F28E533C&feature=plcp) that i found very disturbing.

2) The whispering/ Gibbering (Inspired by My rendition of the Gibbering mouther (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13411526&postcount=68): The halls of the space their travel through have all kind of holes in them, some might be oozing puss or the like. But there is also a sound... a gibbering coming from the walls, in different sounds and voices. As they progress a voice here or there becomes clearer for this or that investigator (and them alone). They whisper things no one should know- hidden secrets of the characters, fears, desires, either of themselves, or of their party members? I'd suggest to mix these as a heavy dose of (perhaps twisted) truth, and a bit of a lie... but a crucial bit.

I suggest to do by giving the investigators slips of paper with the whispers on them, and ask them to roleplay accordingly. pepper them with quite a few of these. some are just mad ramblings, but some should shock the characters, perhaps the players.

If you're really nasty, start giving clues to things that haven't happened yet to the characters, which then happen in game... and then give creepeier clues as to their imminent deaths (a scare tactics)

3) if you want bring the gibbering mouther itslef, adjusted to your setting... a definitely horrific encounter.

good luck!

Doxkid
2012-09-13, 08:49 AM
Kidnap a PC then return them with little difficulty. Have the PC make a certain type of save before you return them, but don't let them in on what is happening. Then you especially focus strange events on them.

Examples:
*They NEVER have a shadow and when someone else's shadow falls on them, that person feels extremely cold.

*They hiss suddenly when brought into contact with silver or some other specific material, but don't suffer any consequences

*Certain monsters completely ignore them or try to get away from them

*They have to make a will save VS eating a specific non-food thing: chalk, for example.

and my personal favorite
*When they do certain things, you roll a die and consult a chart. Meta-game knowledge that something should have happened or might happen when that person does this specific thing will really make people antsy.

^This REALLY works well if you have NPC acting in similar ways and those NPC then do absolutely terrible things. Or you can have the NPC clearly die in front of the PCs, then walk into the room as if nothing had happened. The corpse vanishes and the NPC follows his old actions completely until it's time for them to die, at which point they suddenly do something different

Driderman
2012-09-13, 09:12 AM
As far as I see it, there are two primary ways of setting the mood for horror:

1) Inexplicable happenings
Voices, hallucinations, mindbending displays of impossible physics and all such things, that only have a very limited ingame explanation (ie: The walls are bleeding and the house is extradimensional because it's haunted, but no specific explanation as to how and why). This is usually the easiest one to do because you can do pretty much whatever you want and handwave as an unexplainable effect of the supernatural phenomenon.

2) Happenings that are explained by the circumstances of the supernatural phenomenon
This horror style works with similiar effects of all sorts, but with enough research the players might be able to deduce why the phenomenons are occuring and why specifically those sort of phenomenons occur.
Boiled down, it's the "But if you're here, who was the voice on the phone/you realise it's your dead grandmother who was tried to call just as she got murdered" type of scenarie, where the revelation should be even more shocking than the phenomenon.

Socratov
2012-09-13, 09:15 AM
I read this in a thread once on this very forum, but I'd scare the bajeebus out of me if my DM told me I'd found slashfiction of my character and the rest of the party... that would be... terrifying... ...

Jay R
2012-09-13, 10:17 AM
Out of the darkness comes an older, white-haired person covered in scars, clearly mad - gibbering, shaking, etc. He is only occasionally lucid.

At one point he looks around and says, "Am I back home, or is this only another trap?"

He identifies the party members by name, instantly. He starts yelling warnings:
"Don't go to that house. Don't step inside. Save yourselves! There's no way out!"

When he sees one PC, he stares in fascination and horror: "Was I ever that young?" They suddenly realize that he is the same person, aged, scarred, and beaten down by horror.

Eventually he looks around, and sees that he is in the house, and screams. "No! I'm too late! It's all going to happen again. I can't watch you enter that world... I just can't."

He collapses into unintelligible crying and moaning. Finally, he looks up and says, "I can't take it any more. Please ... please kill me now."

The DM looks at the players cheerfully. "So, what do you do next?"

(If they ever ask him how long he's been in there, he says, "Six months. Six horrible months. Don't send me back. Please ... kill me now.")

Reltzik
2012-09-13, 02:23 PM
I've said it before and I'll say it again. True horror lies at the intersection of A) knowing that you are in danger from SOMETHING, but B) not knowing what it is, or how to fight it or escape it.

First thing's first, then. Eliminate obvious paths of escape. Don't be OBVIOUS about this, but have the barriers in place long before the party decides it wants out. They try the front door, and instead of opening out onto the street it opens onto a hellscape, or a black void, or so forth. Or maybe it opens into a mirror version of the house. Windows stick, slam shut, reform in a cloud of dangerous flying glass if broken, et cetera.

Start giving them prophetic visions. With the window example above, the player smashes the window with a paperweight. The glass flies through the air, sparkling, and then suddenly reverses course. It returns to the frame, but it's now a swirling mass of glittering shards. The player now has a choice. Either admit they can't get out this way, or try to brave the shards. Suppose they try to reach through the shards. Their hand is instantly ripped to shreds, blood everywhere. They fall back to the floor, screaming... and suddenly they're back in time, with the paperweight, just about to smash the window. Give them these "takebacks" in the right manner, and you can surround them with danger without giving them the false "multiple lives" sense of security, but also without worrying about destroying the game by killing them off too quickly.

Splitting up is difficult. It's a staple of horror, but it's difficult to run and most players are too genre-savvy to fall for it. But there's something EXTRA-scary about realizing you're all, all on your own. Slamming doors, trap chutes, etc can help you separate the party for just a bit, even if they don't want to. 20s is a bit early for walky talkies, but if it's a mansion you can have speaking tubes serving the function of intercoms. This can make the game a little easier to run by letting the players talk to each other, and lull them into a false sense of security because they're not out of contact after all. ... and there's all sorts of crap you can have the speaking tubes do.

Bottom line, draw out the state of them not knowing what the hell's going on, but deliver on it in the end. Don't put a bunch of random spooky crap together. It needs a narrative cause to hang it on, one which suggests a solution or escape... ideally something horrific. But the longer it takes for them to pin that down, the longer you're in Rule B's sweet spot, so milk it for all it's worth.

Driderman
2012-09-13, 02:48 PM
Personally, I think that "less is more" and that good horror is a bit like Hemingway; You let the reader (players) fill in the blanks. Most of times, anything you can describe to the players that should scare and horrify them, they can imagine better themselves if you just provide the means.

Of course, another good way to induce real horror, and not just Hollywood movie "horror", is to do like games like Silent Hill and movies like The Orphanage: Make sure the stories are relevant to the characters backstories and emotions and deal with Heavy **** from their pasts, or some such.

Bearpunch
2012-09-13, 08:30 PM
*snip*

This is a great idea. I won't use the gibbering mouther, at least not in this house, because I don't want any combat, and my players reaction to things they don't like too look at is "set it on fire, mix the ashes with concrete, and make a childrens hospital."


*snip*

I'm using this, or at least a variation. Luckily I have a player that is currently captured and in The Dark, along with an important npc. Perfect set-up for some sort of Dark curse/virus. Thanks for the idea!


*snip snip snippity snip*

I know just the character to torment with this, too. Thanks so much. What I think it going to happen is he will either disappear or turn to dust, to set the precedent that it may be a hallucination for being on The Precipice for so long. Whether or not it is a hallucination, will never be revealed to him, just to freak him out all the more.

I love all of these ideas and will be implementing them in some way, even if I didn't directly quote you (I don't want this post to be miles long). Thanks very much everyone, and please, if you have any more ideas, keep them coming.

I have an idea for a library/study type room. They enter the room and there is an unearthly quiet about it. They will soon find out, when they make noise, it is amplified, and the "keeper" as I will dub him makes his first appearance to whatever character made noise.

The noise-maker is the only one that can see the keeper, who says "It asks you and your compatriots to be quiet. Please do as it asks, it is not patient, nor is it forgiving. This is your one and only warning." Only the noise-maker can hear the voice. From there it is a sort of puzzle to figure out how to inform everyone to not make noise without saying anything. If anyone else makes noise, they immediately disappear and reappear, with their shirt open and "I will obey its rules" scrawled on their chest several times, even overlapping. The characters perception of time froze to a crawl and they feel like they have spent years in the place, which can only be described as "excruciating nothingness."

What's more, once they enter, the door is bound with chains that erupt from the wall. Once they fulfill their objective, the keeper will appear and screech, forcing them all to fall unconscious (and probably make a vigor test or suffer a wound) and wake up in the entry room of the house. The door leading to the study is now gone, and in its place is a portrait of the dimly lit study, with a face in the darkness holding a finger to its lips.

Slipperychicken
2012-09-13, 08:44 PM
(If they ever ask him how long he's been in there, he says, "Six months. Six horrible months. Don't send me back. Please ... kill me now.")

I think "I don't know" is the better answer here. Someone driven crazy in another dimension simply will have no idea how much time passed.



This is a great idea. I won't use the gibbering mouther, at least not in this house, because I don't want any combat, and my players reaction to things they don't like too look at is "set it on fire, mix the ashes with concrete, and make a childrens hospital."


Oh my god. There is so much you could do with this.

They seriously take the ashes of supernatural horrors, then bake them into buildings where countless children die every day. That's just begging for horror. It's like a haunted orphanage on crack.

Next adventure: strange happenings reported a children's hospital. Maybe the Mouther(s) corrupted the hospital and turned it all into one giant horror-factory. The very walls ooze blood and consume the living, laughing, crying, shouting... sometimes in children's voices. These manifestations don't appear on camera, of course. Also, the building is probably a link to the Horror Zone now. If they go through building records, they can track the concrete back to the vats they mixed the ashes with.

Yukitsu
2012-09-13, 09:26 PM
One example from a campaign I ran, one character heard scuffling in a wide chimney, so he went in with a lamp to investigate. I had the scuffling noise get louder and louder as he got closer to the chimney, but it stopped when he looked up it. As he was looking up the chimney, he felt a cold breath on the back of his neck, and a soft voice coming from inches behind him that whispered "don't look back."

Thematic to that campaign were eyes. Wherever one of them looked, he could make out for example an eye, peering at him through a keyhole, or through a bullet hole in the wall. When a player shot the eye, he heard a terrible high pitched scream, and there was a burst of black, acidic blood. Ever after, there was a black trail burned into the ground behind him. Eventually, the estate they were in sprouted eyes along the walls that watched them, like they were waiting for them to put their guard down.

navar100
2012-09-13, 10:55 PM
Kender Paladin

DaragosKitsune
2012-09-13, 11:10 PM
If you don't want to outright use music to create atmosphere there are a couple of other options. One is to find a track of just white noise, and play it at a barely audible volume. It's shockingly disconcerting. Failing that, try to play on a windy or rainy day, if at all possible. Both can cause "poltergeists", random creaks and groans made because of the effect of weather on the materials of the house.

5a Violista
2012-09-14, 12:54 AM
As far as I see it, there are two primary ways of setting the mood for horror:

1) Inexplicable happenings
Voices, hallucinations, mindbending displays of impossible physics and all such things, that only have a very limited ingame explanation (ie: The walls are bleeding and the house is extradimensional because it's haunted, but no specific explanation as to how and why). This is usually the easiest one to do because you can do pretty much whatever you want and handwave as an unexplainable effect of the supernatural phenomenon.
[...]

A fun idea to follow up on this one is suddenly having these inexplicable happenings stop. Using the example given here, the walls are bleeding, or maybe there's strange moaning and groaning coming from somewhere out of view, or whatever.
Then, in one specific place (or room), all of this stops - they're in a perfectly clean room, without any moaning or creaking or bleeding, with nothing odd or out of the ordinary, except maybe an empty baby's crib in the middle of the floor.

Driderman
2012-09-14, 05:00 AM
A fun idea to follow up on this one is suddenly having these inexplicable happenings stop. Using the example given here, the walls are bleeding, or maybe there's strange moaning and groaning coming from somewhere out of view, or whatever.
Then, in one specific place (or room), all of this stops - they're in a perfectly clean room, without any moaning or creaking or bleeding, with nothing odd or out of the ordinary, except maybe an empty baby's crib in the middle of the floor.

Good point. Making it so that normality becomes even more eerie that the horror-phenomenons is a powerful tool.

yougi
2012-09-14, 06:10 AM
Out of the darkness comes an older, white-haired person covered in scars, clearly mad - gibbering, shaking, etc. He is only occasionally lucid.

At one point he looks around and says, "Am I back home, or is this only another trap?"

He identifies the party members by name, instantly. He starts yelling warnings:
"Don't go to that house. Don't step inside. Save yourselves! There's no way out!"

When he sees one PC, he stares in fascination and horror: "Was I ever that young?" They suddenly realize that he is the same person, aged, scarred, and beaten down by horror.

Eventually he looks around, and sees that he is in the house, and screams. "No! I'm too late! It's all going to happen again. I can't watch you enter that world... I just can't."

He collapses into unintelligible crying and moaning. Finally, he looks up and says, "I can't take it any more. Please ... please kill me now."

The DM looks at the players cheerfully. "So, what do you do next?"

(If they ever ask him how long he's been in there, he says, "Six months. Six horrible months. Don't send me back. Please ... kill me now.")

Jay, will you marry me? Everywhere I look on these forums, all I see is your posts being awesome.


I've said it before and I'll say it again. True horror lies at the intersection of A) knowing that you are in danger from SOMETHING, but B) not knowing what it is, or how to fight it or escape it.

The one thing that is hard with this is that you cannot make your players feel like they are in danger, only their characters. To scare your players, the second point is more helpful: drop them in something they don't know anything about.

My two cents:
- Because you can't threaten them directly, you can only scare them if they are open to being scared. Make that clear with them before you spend a week planning something that just won't work. I've once told a player "you start throwing up fingers", to which he answered "sweet".

- As DM, we often try to do what makes sense. In horror, don't even try for an explanation. If there is an explanation, your players will eventually find it. If there isn't one, it's scary.

Personally, the only way I've scared my players was when fighting a hexblade: -2 to EVERYTHING for a WHOLE HOUR. That's where my "they need to be open to being scared" comment comes from.

Hopeless
2012-09-14, 06:38 AM
Have you seen the Jonny Depp version of Dark Shadows?

Now imagine thats his home and he's the good guy, the bad ones are the ones who sent you to his home with the intention of burning it down, what nobody in your party realises is that he is a vampire and is only interesting in living quietly... PCs and living quietly do not mix!

Throw in the rest of the family but they're perfectly human and even weirder than he is and he's polite and perfectly harmless unless they attack him, his descendants or his home in any order...

The people who sent them however... are waiting for them to complete their job and won't let them leave before they do so...

Radar
2012-09-14, 07:38 AM
First thing's first, then. Eliminate obvious paths of escape. Don't be OBVIOUS about this, but have the barriers in place long before the party decides it wants out. They try the front door, and instead of opening out onto the street it opens onto a hellscape, or a black void, or so forth. Or maybe it opens into a mirror version of the house. Windows stick, slam shut, reform in a cloud of dangerous flying glass if broken, et cetera.
I'd propose a slight variation of this. Let them run out of the house whenever they like. Just make it so, that the world itself is more and more warped the longer they stay in the house (cumulative). Subtle changes first: slight variations in human behaviour, unusual clothing details etc. Then goes the street layout and architecture (important buildings gone with no space empty left behind, new avenues, where there shouldn't be enough room for them), whithering plants, animals going wild and then you can slowly go into typical horror stuff.

Play up the aspect of uncertanity: is it a halucination, is the world really going insane or are the PCs draged further and further into another realm of existance? Or maybe the PCs are the only ones being unwittingly warped by the house?
If you want to be really nasty, make it the last one and make them think, they are transported into "The Dark". Those are PCs - they are bound to go on a rampage sooner or later. :smallamused:

In essence: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

GolemsVoice
2012-09-14, 08:17 AM
I very much like Radar's idea.
Another suggestion into that direction: they can leave, but one player (or more) gets an addiction to the mystery and the house, it calls him. Take the other players with you and explain them: your partner starts acting strange. He shouts constantly even when talking normally, he shivers uncontrollably, he wanders off mid-sentence, and in general behaves like a drug-addict. Tell them to react accordingly. The afflicted player can just be told that he has a small (at the beginning) malus to some rolls, and only when the symptoms have worsened, he suddenly realizes: he has to get back. He either finishes the mystery and is free, or he forever returns to The Dark.