Horror Campaign How To?

[sambouchah]

I want to run a horror campaign for my group but I'm not 100% where to start. If I warn them it's a horror campaign they'll be immune to fear, mind affecting abilities/charm, and know what they need to carry. So I don't think I'll be sharing that with them.

But I need ways to catch my players off guard. They all watch horror movies/play horror games, read books that are horror based, etc. So I'm not really sure how to strike fear into their hearts and keep them on their toes. What are some hooks, monsters, what-have-you I can use to make this work with a group of horror vets?

Thanks so much, Sam

[Red Fel]

I want to run a horror campaign for my group but I'm not 100% where to start. If I warn them it's a horror campaign they'll be immune to fear, mind affecting abilities/charm, and know what they need to carry. So I don't think I'll be sharing that with them.

But I need ways to catch my players off guard. They all watch horror movies/play horror games, read books that are horror based, etc. So I'm not really sure how to strike fear into their hearts and keep them on their toes. What are some hooks, monsters, what-have-you I can use to make this work with a group of horror vets?

Thanks so much, Sam

The first thing you must do before starting a horror campaign is to clear it with the players. A proper horror campaign plays very differently from standard D&D; failing to inform the players means that they will feel a bit betrayed by the switch. Also, some players may not have the stomach for proper horror; be sure they're all on board before you begin.

The first rule of horror campaigns is that the mechanics don't matter. Let the PCs be immune to whatever you please - your goal isn't to frighten them. It's to frighten the players. This requires the right blend of ambiance, narrative, tension and misdirection.

Ambiance: Set the room up properly. Dim the lights a bit. Have creepy music. If the table usually has snacks or distractions around, put them away. Make sure the only place they're looking is at the game; the only sounds they hear are the narrative and the ambient noise (provided, likely, by a computer).

Narrative: The story must be gripping and immersive. You want the players on the edge of their seats, wondering, desperate to know what comes next, what's coming next, tell them! And you don't tell them until you're ready. Mechanics should take a back seat - if this turns into another combat grind, the illusion is ruined.

Tension: A good horror campaign requires a source of tension. Come up with a reason why the players must face this peril, rather than walk away. Why they won't be able to simply blast it like they usually do. In some ways, this is railroading, but it doesn't have to feel it. A recent thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=307779), for example, centered around the idea of a keep under siege by an army. The army, however, wasn't the real threat; it was merely what kept the players in place to face the horror inside the walls with them.

Misdirection: Once the players think they have a bead on everything, they'll try to play the story like an ordinary campaign. You can't give them that comfort. Keep throwing them off, keeping them off their balance. That discomfort becomes fear and paranoia. Make them roll random spot and listen checks, even when there's nothing there. Show them suspicious happenings, and then reveal that what they saw was totally mundane. Or don't explain it at all. The less they trust their senses, the more everything becomes a source of terror.

These are just some basic ideas. There have been several recent posts on this subject, and I advise you to go look them up. You could learn a lot, and if your players are willing, you'll all have a lot of fun scaring the pants off yourselves.

[Crake]

If you want to run a horror campaign but you are afraid of your players getting immunity to fear/mind affecting etc, you might be looking at the wrong players. Take a look in heros or horror, in there there's a dm/player agreement that you should present to your players. One of the player agreements is to build horror-appropriate characters, so paladins that are immune to fear from level 2 onward don't really fit.

As for informing your players that you are running a horror game, I strongly suggest that you do inform them, because some players just aren't interested in playing in a horror game.

The hardest trying about running horror games, at least in my experience, is finding a way for players to emotionally attach themselves to something in the game. It doesn't even have to be their character, just something. Then you need to find a way to either destroy it or twist it, not in such a way that they lose their attachment, but in a way that it tears them up. I know it sounds cruel, but that's what your players are signing up for (this is why informing them is important).

For enemies, a big player is the unknown. You want your players to second guess everything. While this can sometimes be very boring for you as the DM, sitting there knowing that there's nothing, it's your job to make sure that they stay on their toes. But you need to not take it to the point where the players just don't trust anything, because then the suspense is ruined.

Utilise illusions in interesting ways, for early levels make sure you keep heavy track of their food and water, as thirst or starvation can be a big motivator to push the characters to places they don't want to go, and if you can do so without notice/suspicion, try and sneak an enemy Npc into the group, or get one of the players on your side.

Those are a few points I can pull out off the top of my head.

[sambouchah]

Ambiance: Set the room up properly. Dim the lights a bit. Have creepy music. If the table usually has snacks or distractions around, put them away. Make sure the only place they're looking is at the game; the only sounds they hear are the narrative and the ambient noise (provided, likely, by a computer).

Any suggestions for creepy music to play?

So ask players if they are up for it, have them make an agreement to play characters for a horror game, keep track of food/sleep. What about using sanity or similar mechanics as well?

[Ravens_cry]

Here's something to point out that might be worth pointing out because it seems counter-intuitive: Death is not scary.
At least, not in the context of a game.
Death is annoying more than anything.
If your character dies, you are now outside of the game, no longer participating. No longer is your adrenaline pumping as your character struggles to survive; now you can look at it from an outsiders perspective as a narrative construct, dispassionately and apathetically because you have no stake in the happenings.
Worse, if you bring in a new character, they likely aren't really wedded to the world the way the old one was, and they certainly don't have the relationships to the characters, PC and NPC alike, the old one did.
Now, the threat of death, that can be scary, but actual death death?
Not scary.

[ArcturusV]

Well... one thing that jumps to mind? Even if you warn them point blank... even if people claim to know better? They will STILL play into your plot. Because that's how players tend to be.

Not even kidding, I've had people I've say... watched Aliens with, who are pointing out how stupid it is for the Marines to try to "tame" and weaponize the Aliens... and not a week later was trying to stuff uncontrollable scourge monsters that bred insanely rapidly into their bag of holding to use as a weapon...

So... yeah. That happens.

I can warn someone that the world is dangerous and they need to be cautious, as they don't stand a chance against the powerful horrors that lurk in the shadows... and someone goes charging off, alone, at the first sign of something spooky nearby.

Don't let people who claim to be genre savvy scare you off. When it comes to brass tacks they tend to be even more foolish than people who don't claim to know better.

That said? Don't worry about people who have Mind-Blanks, immunity to fear, etc. Doesn't really matter what they have on their sheets. If you're relying on spells that say "You're afraid" you're not really doing Horror.

Also... Horror as a theme works better when you can instill a sense of powerlessness, or at least not powerful enough to fairly handle the situations they are put into. Horror as a theme works better when your players can't just teleport away, or one shot enemies, etc. So I prefer running Horror themes at a lower level. At a higher level it kind of depends on you Op-Fuing out the players (Not a situation I like to be in), and them being willing to just jump head first into the game. If you're at something like level 1-8 however, it's must easier to instill this sense that the adventure you're into is above your pay grade.

Other thing? Kitbash enemies/situations. Don't pull stuff out of Monster Manuals, setting books, etc. Being unfamiliar with what they're doing, being unable to go to the books to find out exactly what an enemy might do, or how to beat it until they find it out, puts them on edge.

[Crake]

Any suggestions for creepy music to play?

So ask players if they are up for it, have them make an agreement to play characters for a horror game, keep track of food/sleep. What about using sanity or similar mechanics as well?

There are some taint mechanics in heros of horror that cover both physical corruption and mental depravity (which sorta acts like sanity). Also have the players read the whole dm/player agreement from heros of horror.


Here's something to point out that might be worth pointing out because it seems counter-intuitive: Death is not scary.
At least, not in the context of a game.
Death is annoying more than anything.
If your character dies, you are now outside of the game, no longer participating. No longer is your adrenaline pumping as your character struggles to survive; now you can look at it from an outsiders perspective as a narrative construct, dispassionately and apathetically because you have no stake in the happenings.
Worse, if you bring in a new character, they likely aren't really wedded to the world the way the old one was, and they certainly don't have the relationships to the characters, PC and NPC alike, the old one did.
Now, the threat of death, that can be scary, but actual death death?
Not scary.

Not necessarily. Having a player die can be a big story mover if the player ends up somewhere horrible, such as in hell or some other horrific place and needs to fight, beg, deal or sneak their way back to life. This is a great opportunity to get an inside man in the party too, and can cause huge amounts of tension as players wonder how he/she managed to come back to life. To screw with players even more have the player come back to life while one of the other players is doing something to the body, like casting gentle repose or the like.

Edit: also yeah, as ArcturusV said, lower level is better for horror games. Perhaps even run an e6 or e8 game. There are ways to transition out of the ruleset if you're clever enough and decide that you don't want to run it at those low levels anymore, but e6 certainly helped in my game when I ran it.

[CombatOwl]

I want to run a horror campaign for my group but I'm not 100% where to start. If I warn them it's a horror campaign they'll be immune to fear, mind affecting abilities/charm, and know what they need to carry. So I don't think I'll be sharing that with them.

d20 does a miserable job of handling horror. It's doable, but you basically need to houserule in super-horror that bypasses immunities to fear and slashes will saves. TBH, I wouldn't even consider running a horror game in d20. Systems where characters are more fragile and less superhuman work better, since people won't feel that they can laugh off whatever stalks their character in the dark.

[Yora]

A quick primer on horror:

Fear is the result of not being in control. When you don't know if an action will help you or make things worse, then you're in a situation that would create fear. When you know what you will have to do to make the threat go away, you don't feel fear.
"If it bleeds, we can kill it." Even such a simple piece of information can give you confidence and reassure you that you are in control of the situation. You know what to do to end the threat.

Resulting from that, it is also important that people do not know what is going on and what they are dealing with. If you know you're facing a vampire, you have a pretty good idea what things will help against it and what things will get you killed. As already said, if you don't know what's going on, you can't react to it in the appropriate way, resulting in fear.
Never tell the players "you see a vampire". If possible, don't even describe it in a way that makes everyone think "oh, this obviously is a vampire". If the players think "Is this a vampire? Or maybe a ghoul? Or demon possession?", then you're in a much better position to create tension.

And if you can go the extra mile, have them face creatures that they don't already know, and which therefore they can not identify.
Also never explain the situation, just describe what the characters hear and see. If the players have no clue what's going on and don't understand what they encounter, do not explain it to them. Only tell them that things might become clearer when they learn more about the situation.
But the important thing is that you stay consistent and don't come up with things randomly. As the players get more information about the nature of the threat and the abilities of the creature, they have to be able to come up with a rough idea of what's going on and create plans that might have a good chance to work. Just setting up strange events with no way to influence them won't be fun for anyone.

And when in doubt, always give hints of what the characters see rather than outright stating a clear description. Not knowing what a creature is is unsettling. Imagining things that the creature could be will always be much more frightening than what it really is. This also includes that at the end, not everything should be clearly explained. There needs to be a resolution at the end, like having the demon banished and the wizard who summoned it killed, but you don't have to explain how the wizard managed to do it and where he came from, or where the creature came from. Not telling is usually more interesting than comming up with something mundane or boring.

[BWR]

Find a copy of the Ravenloft campaign setting. It is excellent and will give you a lot of hints about what to do. Other horror games like Call of Cthulhu and Kult are good too.

A good horror game is really memorable. I've had three girls curled up in the sofa in fear in a Kult game. A friend of mine drove two PCs to panic-suicide rather than face what in mechanical terms was just a normal flesh golem they would likely have finished off easily in a normal D&D game.

To expand on the stuff mentioned here, read the masters of horror. While there may be differences in details, the basics of horror tend to be the same. Read Poe, Lovecraft (and some others of the Circle - R. E. Howard's creepy stories are usually way better than his Conan/Kull/Bran Big Beefy Barbarian stories), M.R. James, Arthur Machen. Even Stephen King can set up a good story fairly often (though he always fails miserably at concluding it). Watch the best horror movies and see why they work. Read Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural horror in literature".

Horror needs immersion and time to build up suspence. Apart from making sure the play environment is void of distractions, make sure the players are in the mood. Discourage OOC and jokes and whatnot, encourage your players to roleplay as a increasingly frightened person would. Some groups will be easy to persuade. Others need a little more work.
Description is even more important in horror games than normal. Players experience the world through you and conveying the correct atmostphere is even more important than in a basically heroic game. Spend time writing descrptions of the landscape, the weather, the sights, the smells, the sounds and how everything seems to get colder and nastier as the PCs draw nearer to the reveal. Work on your acting skills (if they aren't already good) especially your voice. To sell the setting you have to sell the performance. A good piece of writing delivered blandly or badly doesn't work very well. A bad piece of writing delivered well works well.
There are plenty of bad horror movies out there and it's important to watch them and find out what doesn't work. Their basic premise can usually work well, but there is something they do wrong that makes it hard to take seriously.

Horror consists alienness and wrongness. Not just fear for your life but a sense that something is just not the way it should be. There are factors beyond human control and often beyond human understanding that hold sway in the horror story and there is no guarantee that you can fight it and win, or even run away.

[Ravens_cry]

Not necessarily. Having a player die can be a big story mover if the player ends up somewhere horrible, such as in hell or some other horrific place and needs to fight, beg, deal or sneak their way back to life. This is a great opportunity to get an inside man in the party too, and can cause huge amounts of tension as players wonder how he/she managed to come back to life. To screw with players even more have the player come back to life while one of the other players is doing something to the body, like casting gentle repose or the like.

That's not exactly what I meant by 'death'. It could be also be Flesh to Stone in a game with no chance of the players getting access to the required removal spells. Basically, any 'Game Over' effect. What you describe is more a Plane Shift targeting the soul only.

[Red Fel]

Any suggestions for creepy music to play?

So ask players if they are up for it, have them make an agreement to play characters for a horror game, keep track of food/sleep. What about using sanity or similar mechanics as well?

SAN checks are for CoC. You don't have to worry about sanity - at least, not of the PCs. (Having NPCs go nuts is fun stuff, though.) You don't need taint, or sanity, or sickness or any other thing to affect the PCs. Your goal, always, should be to affect the players. The PCs can get sick, can go nuts, or not; or they can have absolutely nothing happen to them. A PC who never gets a single injury or negative impact can still be terrified if the player is.

I want to reaffirm what others have mentioned about a feeling of powerlessness. Your PCs are used to their swords, their fireballs, their skill checks and their encyclopedic knowledge enabling them to solve any problem. Take that away from them.

Yora's vampire illustration is perfect. If you show them a pale humanoid with fangs hunched over a limp, pale corpse, the players know what's up. But if they see what looks like a swirling mass of shadows, with no discernible anatomy or features, while hearing whispers in their ears of random, scary words, ("Pain," "Suffering," "Forever," "Why," etc.) they have no idea what they're facing. Shoot an arrow at it - it does nothing! True Seeing? It's not an illusion!

Seeing things you know that ain't can certainly give you an awful fright.

But then again, you don't have to show them scary stuff. You can show them perfectly ordinary events which, taken in context, become creepy. Every old house has creaky boards and drafty seams. Throw in some flickering candles and howling wind, maybe a rattling shutter or two, and you've got atmosphere. Throw in something completely innocuous, like the sound of children laughing, and it's scary as hell. No monsters required.

[Captnq]

Go to TVtropes. Read Everything.

[Ravens_cry]

Yeah, incongruity is fun, and by fun I mean scary. I think a near thing to do is to involve as many of the senses as possible.
One example I've used before is a busy market. Happy people going back and forth. Then you catch a whiff of rotting flesh.
Or a bannister that shifts under your hand, moving under your hand.
Random checks. They don't even have to be for anything, just give a good knowing smile. If the players start to get complacent, that's when you throw something at them.

[OrlockDelesian]

As a Dm, when I usually play Ravenloft adventure, I tell my players that Immunity to Fear of any Kind does not work there, as do most divinations (most divinations do not work on the plane, the fear effect is my own)
So a player can play a Paladin, but he will never be immune to the effects of the demiplane.
Also I tend to use the 2nd edition rule that said "if your player role plays a failed fear\horror save he does not have to roll a check"
Given the fact that failed fear\horror checks were a huge drawback most players were afraid all the time.

As for music try Nox Arcana.
It has worked for me this far :)

[Ravens_cry]

If you are depending on fear effects, there is so much better you could be doing.
Fear is in the gut. Acting it is possible, but what you want is real fear.
So, basically, you want your players so immersed they are as afraid as their characters.
Easier said than done I admit, but the feeling I get when my character is feared is frustration, not fear. On the other hand, I've faced baddies that I did feel gut clenching fear about, mechanics be damned.

[Red Fel]

As a Dm, when I usually play Ravenloft adventure, I tell my players that Immunity to Fear of any Kind does not work there, as do most divinations (most divinations do not work on the plane, the fear effect is my own)
So a player can play a Paladin, but he will never be immune to the effects of the demiplane.
Also I tend to use the 2nd edition rule that said "if your player role plays a failed fear\horror save he does not have to roll a check"
Given the fact that failed fear\horror checks were a huge drawback most players were afraid all the time.

As for music try Nox Arcana.
It has worked for me this far :)

I have to disagree here. First off, it stinks of DM fiat ("Your fear immunity doesn't help, because I say so,") which tends to immediately put players in an irritable state of mind. Second, fear mechanics aren't horror; they're mechanics. They remove a player from play - that's the exact opposite of what you want to do.

If you are depending on fear effects, there is so much better you could be doing.
Fear is in the gut. Acting it is possible, but what you want is real fear.
So, basically, you want your players so immersed they are as afraid as their characters.
Easier said than done I admit, but the feeling I get when my character is feared is frustration, not fear. On the other hand, I've faced baddies that I did feel gut clenching fear about, mechanics be damned.

This, precisely. My mentality is simple: Keep players in play no matter what. A horror campaign, in my mind, is a brilliant success if absolutely no ill befalls the PCs themselves. No injuries, no saves needed, no nothing. Their actions remain entirely their own, their agency their own, their choices their own. Nothing creates fear like the feeling that, even with all of your options available to you, you simply don't know what to do.

If I have players who have full access to their weapons, their spells, their feats and their tricks, have nothing hindering or coercing their actions, and still can't figure out how to stop the terror happening around them, I consider it a success.

As Raven pointed out, you don't want fear mechanics. Those impact the characters. You want real, genuine, gut-wrenching fear that impacts the players. I cannot stress this enough. Frighten the characters and you have a cute mechanical hurdle around which the players can optimize. Frighten the players and there is nothing they can do. Nothing. The characters have spells, magic items, saves and potions. The players have nothing to protect them from fear.

Target the players.

[Renegade Paladin]

I'm running a horror scenario (not a full campaign) for the local game shop's Halloween party next week. I've tested the scenario, and I've found that:

1.) Immunities and Will saves don't matter. Horror works perfectly fine with a paladin in the group; in fact it can work even better. Fear isn't about the mechanical effects; it's about the emotion. Even in a normal campaign, Aura of Courage means the paladin doesn't suffer mechanical penalties for fear; it doesn't mean he can't be afraid. Just to get that out of the way up top.

2.) Throw something at them they don't expect. For instance, my scenario uses the psychic vampire variant from Libris Mortis (The Book of Bad Latin), and the sudden yet inevitable betrayal by the PCs' hosts involves three of them turning on their AoE Wisdom-draining auras at the same time. :smallamused: Bonus: Death ward doesn't work on ability damage, which the variant template replaces all of the energy drain abilities with, so even if they know or guess they're going up against "vampires," the standard defenses don't work, for reasons that have nothing to do with DM fiat. :smallbiggrin: The short version is that if the villain of your set piece is a commonly known monster type, find a variant that makes it do unexpected things so your players can't just deploy all the normal counters and commence steamrolling.

3.) Atmosphere is key, but don't depend on creepy music. I have a player who can't focus at all if there's any music of any description in the background. I find the best way to do it is to build mystery, introducing little inconsistencies in the "normalcy" that precedes the horror that will get to players who notice. The PCs are attending what seems to be a normal evening dinner party at a local noble's mansion, with a moonlight hunt scheduled for afterward (daylight hunts are far too easy for a woodsman of their host's skill, you see, and no doubt the same applies to stalwart adventurers who have done so much to curb the local monster population!), but why are the hunting hounds acting so strangely, and who are the two men who periodically interrupt the dinner to speak to the host? :smallconfused:

4.) Play your villain as intelligently as his Intelligence score allows. This should go for GMing in general, but for horror doubly so: A villain that assesses the party's capabilities and develops coherent responses rather than mindlessly attacking is far more effective, and far more frightening.

5.) Get character backgrounds from your players for their PCs. This should include loyalties, relationships, family, friends, enemies, and so forth at the very minimum; they needn't write a novel. Use these things, and don't be afraid to kill a favorite NPC at a dramatically appropriate moment.

That's about what I've got. Good luck! :smallsmile:

[OrlockDelesian]

I have to disagree here. First off, it stinks of DM fiat ("Your fear immunity doesn't help, because I say so,") which tends to immediately put players in an irritable state of mind. Second, fear mechanics aren't horror; they're mechanics. They remove a player from play - that's the exact opposite of what you want to do.

You missunderstood -mainly because I did not explained it right.
The paladin gets to keep his fear Immunity on spells or supernatural creatures (such as a ghosts fear aura).
His fear Immunity does not work on demiplane effects only. None of my players were ever frustrated by this, though one of them did propose that when a character has immunity to fear he should save as if one step lower.
Fear Check? Immune
Horror Check? Roll Fear Check
Madness Check? Roll Horror Check.

I admit that DM fiat is not the way to go there, but since I use it mainly on Ravenloft, my players were usually ok.
Usually.
There was that time where my own sister bitch-slapped my for turning her character into a table, but that is another story

[Tim Proctor]

Any suggestions for creepy music to play?
Night Castle by Trans Siberian Orchestra works well for me.

[BWR]

When we played Ravenloft most of us were into black metal. It's a bit cheesy but some of the tracks worked well as background music. Could just be nostalgia. :smallsmile:

Isnegard:
Bergtrollets Gravferd (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg1h_kJpqjk) (the mountain giant's funeral procession)

Dommedagssalme (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvbqVgdOA1o&list=AL94UKMTqg-9CMemczMVb8JhhaNRPTP9vs)(judgement day psalm)

Fanden lokker til stupet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSQSltDDFXw) (the devil is luring to the cliff)

[Toutatis]

To be honest it is hard to run a horror campaign in general, not because the PC's can take power/abilities that make them immune to certain effects but because its hard to translate the fear one should feel into a real-world fear. But at the same time a horror game can be done with ease if the players all are up for it and they play their characters like real people instead of emotionless killbots that just murder-face everything.

Also your fears (oh the irony) about abilities/powers/feats that disable certain powers/elements of a horror campaign can also offer great loopholes as well. For instance a paladin is immune to fear in many games unless they trade it out or are a variant. But just because they are immune to fear effects doesn't make them fearless...

Fear Effect
Any spell or magical effect that causes the victim to become shaken, frightened, or panicked, or to suffer from other fear-based effect defined in the description of the specific spell or item in question.

For instance lets look at a movie for an example; The Mummy (1999). Lets for instance say that Brendan Fraser's character has levels of paladin and is immune to the mummy's/lich's fear abilities. He might not take negatives from said ability but I can almost promise you said character was scared of the creature because it was still dangerous and easily able to kill him. Just because they don't take negatives from the fear effect doesn't mean they don't fear for their lives.cause and effect/other people/etc. A man without fear is an idiot, a man who faces fear is a hero...

Basically its up to the players themselves to handle their characters and how they would face it. If its a brave knight/paladin maybe direct battle won't do but watching what s/he causes from the battle can easily instill a new kind of fear: self-doubt.

Another fun one comes to us from 'Heroes of Horror' and the idea of the taint of evil. For those of you who don't know its basically the stain of evil from either horrific acts that have occurred in the past or from the presence of truly evil beings/creatures existing. There is a feat in which the character become immune to taint and the effects that taint has upon the characters... but imagine that you alone are immune to the evil that is slowly seeping into your shield-brothers and sisters/an entire village/etc. and can do nothing about it... to watch as the taint twists them mentally and physically till they are a shell of their former selves and you alone are immune. And the further you travel to combat the tainted being who caused this to occur you see it everywhere to the point the PC's wonder if they are the cursed ones... I mean yeah. Just because the characters have the ability to do certain things doesn't mean they still can't be affect in other ways.

[Stille_Nacht]

The best advice i can give not already stated is to make your players think.

You can tell them that they are in a dark crypt filled with meat-moss, etc. However, the fact remains they are outside of the game, and they have a reasonable expectation of what is happening. They are impressed, but not that scared.

To truly get some fear in someone, they must be immersed. And the best way to immerse them is to force them to think about what is happening. Example:


-Players take a job that seems to be paying really well for cleaning up (swabbing decks, etc.) during a ship voyage south.
- Players are informed that the captain of the ship bought it a month ago.
- Players learn they are heading north, not south.
- Players know the northern lands practice slavery.
- When players press first mate for questions, he freezes up, then continues along a different course of conversation as if nothing happened
- Players start to freak out.
- After they manage to murder the shapeshifter psion who was the captain, players are understandably more cautious about jobs, etc. etc.

This is a rather broken down and simple version of the actual narrative, but it provides a decent framework to think about. Spring scenarios where not everything is as it seems. If players are constantly paying attention to details, trying to figure out what is going on, they get more into a game.