Help me Terrify my Players

[EvilAnagram]

So, my party is delving into an ancient city that sank beneath a lake thousands of years ago. Since its fall, the now undead inhabitants have been in an unending struggle against blighted nature spirits bent on punishing them for their crimes. (Don't worry about the water, it's kept away a la Wind Wake Hyrule)

It's a decrepit city at the bottom of a lake in which the degradation of the society is shown in the decay of ancient monuments and corrupted heroes, and I want my players unsettled and disturbed the entire time. I already have plenty of homebrewed monsters including skeletal knights, blighted treants, and a truly awesome three-stage final boss that takes advantage of certain features and spells to keep them from nova-blasting him effectively. What I need are encounters that are downright twisted and unsettling. I want them to sense the moral decay of this society through the physical decay of the scenery and the degradation of former heroes.

So what are some spooky ideas you have? What has playing Dark Souls put into your head? What encounters will keep my players up at night? I'd love some extra ideas to work into my current plans, since this dungeon is pretty massive.

For reference, there are three of them, and they're A+ in melee, B- at range, B at healing, and D- at crowd control.

[Alejandro]

How long have these players been playing? How old are they?

[R.Shackleford]

So, my party is delving into an ancient city that sank beneath a lake thousands of years ago. Since its fall, the now undead inhabitants have been in an unending struggle against blighted nature spirits bent on punishing them for their crimes. (Don't worry about the water, it's kept away a la Wind Wake Hyrule)

It's a decrepit city at the bottom of a lake in which the degradation of the society is shown in the decay of ancient monuments and corrupted heroes, and I want my players unsettled and disturbed the entire time. I already have plenty of homebrewed monsters including skeletal knights, blighted treants, and a truly awesome three-stage final boss that takes advantage of certain features and spells to keep them from nova-blasting him effectively. What I need are encounters that are downright twisted and unsettling. I want them to sense the moral decay of this society through the physical decay of the scenery and the degradation of former heroes.

So what are some spooky ideas you have? What has playing Dark Souls put into your head? What encounters will keep my players up at night? I'd love some extra ideas to work into my current plans, since this dungeon is pretty massive.

For reference, there are three of them, and they're A+ in melee, B- at range, B at healing, and D- at crowd control.

Never played dark souls but...

The best was to mess with players to to find out what messes with them in real life and play off that. I'm not saying people can't roleplay well... But most people react better to things that really mess with them.

Got a party member that hates centipedes? Get a picture of a bunch of centipedes (maybe some one covered in them, real picture if Google helps) and show them the picture and say you have fallen into a pool of centipedes, it's hard to swim, as you move you can feel them crawling over your skin and in your ears, your nose, and over your mouth.

Have someone that has a fear of spiders? Have an undead drider be "in love" (obsessed) with that player and have it harass them from time to time. Find a good undead/spider dude or lady picture (be careful, Google is your friend and enemy!) and play up the creepy factor, like, the drider keeps using message, sending, or animal messenger (spider) to talk to just that player. Basically... overly attached GF drider. Don't tell the party what is said, just pass notes to the player.

Also, have monster that has projectile vomit that sprays guts, blood, and organs of the enemies it has slain (it digests the bones). Have your players end up wearing intestines, degloved body parts, and pieces of hair (scalps).

[Alejandro]

Never played dark souls but...

The best was to mess with players to to find out what messes with them in real life and play off that. I'm not saying people can't roleplay well... But most people react better to things that really mess with them.

Got a party member that hates centipedes? Get a picture of a bunch of centipedes (maybe some one covered in them, real picture if Google helps) and show them the picture and say you have fallen into a pool of centipedes, it's hard to swim, as you move you can feel them crawling over your skin and in your ears, your nose, and over your mouth.

Have someone that has a fear of spiders? Have an undead drider be "in love" (obsessed) with that player and have it harass them from time to time. Find a good undead/spider dude or lady picture (be careful, Google is your friend and enemy!) and play up the creepy factor, like, the drider keeps using message, sending, or animal messenger (spider) to talk to just that player. Basically... overly attached GF drider. Don't tell the party what is said, just pass notes to the player.

Also, have monster that has projectile vomit that sprays guts, blood, and organs of the enemies it has slain (it digests the bones). Have your players end up wearing intestines, degloved body parts, and pieces of hair (scalps).

Yes, kind of like that. :)

Why I asked if they are veteran players, to see if this has already been used on them before, and how old they are, as if you are GMing for kids it might not be appropriate to use adult grade horror on them.

[R.Shackleford]

Yes, kind of like that. :)

Why I asked if they are veteran players, to see if this has already been used on them before, and how old they are, as if you are GMing for kids it might not be appropriate to use adult grade horror on them.

Unless people say otherwise I assume 18ish + for anything D&D related.

It's easier that way.

[Alejandro]

Unless people say otherwise I assume 18ish + for anything D&D related.

It's easier that way.

A fair assumption, yes. Though I semi-often help with 5e D&D games involving players as young as 12.

[Temperjoke]

Give them choices between evils, with no "good" solution. For example, use illusion traps to make them decide between saving a baby or a group of children, but if they refuse to play and do nothing, or don't deactivate the trap, a poison gas is sprayed. Keep pressing them too, have hordes of zombies pursue them, but not rapidly, just inexorably so they don't have a lot of time to think about their choices.

A lot of the horror is going to come from the surroundings too. How you describe things, the scenery and buildings, that's probably what contributes the most to the horror of it all.

[R.Shackleford]

A fair assumption, yes. Though I semi-often help with 5e D&D games involving players as young as 12.

I've done my share of kids days at comic/gaming shops as well, but dealing with those are a special case and if I'm asking for advice I would specifically state this as you need specialized help.

I wouldnt go to an apple subreddit and ask for help with my PC now would I? :smalltongue:

[Temperjoke]

I've done my share of kids days at comic/gaming shops as well, but dealing with those are a special case and if I'm asking for advice I would specifically state this as you need specialized help.

I wouldnt go to an apple subreddit and ask for help with my PC now would I? :smalltongue:

I totally would for one of two reasons:

1. Problems with iTunes on my PC (if I had it on there)
2. I felt like watching people act superior

[EvilAnagram]

I like the suggestions! Keep them coming!


How long have these players been playing? How old are they?

All adults who've been playing for a few years.



A lot of the horror is going to come from the surroundings too. How you describe things, the scenery and buildings, that's probably what contributes the most to the horror of it all.

I've got the basics covered. I've been running nail biters for these guys for over a year, and they've already been through creepy fairy tails, gross out horror, and survival horror. Frankly, I can say without ego that I can set a scene with the best of them.

This time around, it's true Gothic horror, where the terror comes from witnessing the corruptibility of man, and the land itself reflects this corruption. I'm just looking for ideas for encounters based in this gothic setting where human corruption led to a complete degeneration of society.

Example: there's a gate puzzle in which the key to unlocking the gate is a javelin you must plunge into a statue of a pure white stag. The statue bleeds, and the face moves to mimic actual pain and suffering. It forces the party to act out a scene of cruelty in order to continue, and while the javelin (now a lightning javelin) is usable, is it tainted by the ritual? Are the players?

The goal isn't to simply creep them out or catch them with a jump scare. The goal is to disturb them. Sure, there are ghouls dangling from hooks on the ceiling and at least one Bone Devil will jump them, but the fact that those ghouls were the king's loyal servants who fell to his madness matters most.

So what are some creepy encounters that tell stories on their own?

[Alejandro]

I've done my share of kids days at comic/gaming shops as well, but dealing with those are a special case and if I'm asking for advice I would specifically state this as you need specialized help.

I wouldnt go to an apple subreddit and ask for help with my PC now would I? :smalltongue:

I'm sorry you felt so strongly. I was just making sure they were adults, since the OP indicates they want to depict a 'complete degredation of society' and you don't want to, say, suggest themes of slavery, rape, etc. with kids around.

Maybe you could have the players find the ruins of a stately old house, with the animated skeletons of small children still waiting to serve their long dead masters, who thought it was amusing to kill street children and animate their corpses as servants?

[Specter]

I don't think 'terrifying' needs gore or anything like that. It just needs constant tension (lighting and soundtrack help), and players not knowing the full extent of monster's powers. Uncanny, in psychology, is the fear of the unknown, and the unknown can do anything. The second players see a stat block or figure out the monster has +X to hit, jig's up.

[Darksidebro]

I like the suggestions! Keep them coming!



All adults who've been playing for a few years.



I've got the basics covered. I've been running nail biters for these guys for over a year, and they've already been through creepy fairy tails, gross out horror, and survival horror. Frankly, I can say without ego that I can set a scene with the best of them.

This time around, it's true Gothic horror, where the terror comes from witnessing the corruptibility of man, and the land itself reflects this corruption. I'm just looking for ideas for encounters based in this gothic setting where human corruption led to a complete degeneration of society.

Example: there's a gate puzzle in which the key to unlocking the gate is a javelin you must plunge into a statue of a pure white stag. The statue bleeds, and the face moves to mimic actual pain and suffering. It forces the party to act out a scene of cruelty in order to continue, and while the javelin (now a lightning javelin) is usable, is it tainted by the ritual? Are the players?

The goal isn't to simply creep them out or catch them with a jump scare. The goal is to disturb them. Sure, there are ghouls dangling from hooks on the ceiling and at least one Bone Devil will jump them, but the fact that those ghouls were the king's loyal servants who fell to his madness matters most.

So what are some creepy encounters that tell stories on their own?

Okay.. I'm going to a truly dark place in my mind just for you.

Say a group of zombies chase them into an ancient dirty house. All the windows are barred and there's only the rickety front door. The furniture inside is dilapidated and rotting, except a fresh needlepoint on the couch that says "bless this house". A closer inspection of the needlepoint shows that it's made of hair and flesh.

A soft "switch switch switch" sound can be heard from the basement. Inspecting it requires finding a trapdoor beneath the kitchen rug, on the inside of the trapdoor you can see claw marks, and "help us" clawed desperately. Sticking out of the "S" in "us" is a small fingernail. Closer inspection reveals it to be a child's fingernail.

Looking into the basement shows a withered middle aged man sitting at an old peddle-powered sowing machine. Hanging upside down along the walls are corpses of children with their faces surgically removed. Standing by the man, next to a pile of loose flesh, is a small boy (zombie or living). The hunched man stops sowing and holds up a sown together mask made of various children's faces. With a smile he forces it onto the boy's head and over his face. Letting out a squeak of glee he reaches up and gently strokes the boy's stitched cheek whispering: "This one.. this is it." With tears in his eyes.
Closer inspection reveals the boy is standing in a pile of discarded children masks.

The man should be easy to kill. Pathetic even, begging for his life while standing in a Pit a filth and despair of his own creation. One or two hits while he tries to scrabble away.
The boy should be beyond repair. Dead eyed, his soul was destroyed by the man long ago. The players will probably decide to end his life, and that should cost them morally.

Anyway hope I helped.

[DMBlackhart]

Best scenerio I ran that fit the "horror" theme was a simple dungeon crawl...

The players were hunting a Marilith that just warped in, took one of their allies, and teleported off again (took some liberties, but the players didn't mind. It was their suggestion that led this route, lol).

Once they chased the beast to it's lair (all of this occured in sigil btw), they found the entire dungeon was simply a game. Rooms twisted and changed orientation, and all the while the marilith had a ritual chamber almost fully sealed off to summon skeletons. (spoopy!)

In the end, the players thought it was boring for about 10-15 rounds, until the undead started flooding through the dungeon and swarming them at EVERY corner.

They didnt relax until two of them were dead and the others managed to slay the marilith (temporarily) and flee.

The tension was thick as fog, really, I could FEEL their stress.

I used minimal horror, difficulty, or challenge. I simply made their options "Hard" or "harder" and they didn't calm the heck down until they were 110% sure NOTHING was within 1000 feet of them.

They refuse to take long rests now. Just in case, ha!

[Sigreid]

two words: Goblin Love

http://orig03.deviantart.net/32f7/f/2013/303/5/9/_124___jynx_by_bbrunomoraes-d6sflcz.png

[JumboWheat01]

I've found out through years of pranking and spooking experience upon my younger family members that the best way to mess with someone is to not really mess with them at all. Imply that you will, and watch as they look everywhere for what they expect you to do.

Paranoia is fun to play with.

[VoxRationis]

Put them into a corridor, bright and light. Fill it with illusions of flowers and meadows. Let the illusion flicker for a bit, showing them a dark, decayed, grim catacomb filled with bodies. Then put it back up for a bit.

I put this into one of my dungeons as a bit of world-building more than anything—it was meant to provide comforting images to the relatives of those interred, but the dungeon was so ancient that even "permanent" duration enchantments were failing—but it freaked my players out to no end. They hated that corridor, and tried to move as quickly through it as possible. They even made very in-character objections to splitting up or being left alone in the hall.

[Safety Sword]

There's nothing scarier than seeing a (perhaps future) undead version of yourself.

Of course you might not realise right away...

[Gastronomie]

The diary of a group of adventurers, strikingly similar to your group, who got lost in the dungeon and started to fall insane one by one. With some creepy twist or another at the end.

Imagine the diay from Resident Evil (http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Keeper's_Diary).

[RakiReborn]

One thing i can think of is making a couple children/women/whatevs with a single string out their neck. They attack, but while doing so they Keep crying and screaming for help (if you roleplay this nicely, it is creepy as hell!). The 'real' badguy is at the other end of the strings, controlling them. It seems he is evil, but he only did it to protect himself from the other evils around (if they kill him immediately, have him kept a journal around). Possibly make the controlled ones his wife and children.
Just my two cents :)

[Sigreid]

So, I had a setup where the party decided to answer a ghost's plea to save his people from the curse he had brought down. They went into the dungeon scenario and found people with their bones having developed long spikes that tore through their skin, small crocodiles eating their way out from underneath their flesh, that sort of thing. When they came up with a plan I didn't think of and instead of fighting them poor damned souls began hitting them with healing spells and remove curses, I let that work because it was cool.

[EvilAnagram]

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Hm... the specifics would need adjusting to fit the setting, but I like the idea of a supposed caregiver desperately attempting to undo his sins against those in his/her care. Very nice.



snip
This is interesting. I toyed with the idea of hordes, but I'll have to take note of this.



Put them into a corridor, bright and light. Fill it with illusions of flowers and meadows. Let the illusion flicker for a bit, showing them a dark, decayed, grim catacomb filled with bodies. Then put it back up for a bit.
I like this. reminding them of what once was is a great way to demonstrate the horror of the present.


snip
Yes! The Keeper's Journal is a perfect idea!


snip
I think the problem with this suggestion is that it relies on two things: the existence of living beings, and the existence of innocent beings. There are neither in the place my PCs will explore. The puppeteer is a fun idea, though.

[Belac93]

This thread should help you a little. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?419451-The-most-paranoia-inducing-dungeon)

I terrified my players with psychology. I gave them clothing and a book. They put the clothing on, but whenever they tried to take it off, they would take damage. The book had illustrations of people with different items of clothing mutilating themselves (chopping off your toes, stabbing your eye, and so on). It had several solutions: Either they could wear the item of clothing until the end of the dungeon (they didn't know about this), they could take damage until they were at 1 hit point (they didn't know this), or they could do what was described in the book. They did what was described in the book, because it never even occurred to them to just not take the items off.

[ruy343]

I don't remember where I read the short story, but this idea is based on something I read long ago:

The characters encounter tales of how this place was idyllic, and the people who lived here need not experience any pain, suffering, or disease. The metropolis was huge, and withstood the tests of time, even including being submerged beneath the ocean due to its mystical powers. Along the adventure, keep dropping hooks about how this place had been magically preserved, and its heroes had inhuman strength and perseverance, but that no one knew how it was done.

Every day the characters spend in this place, their bodies will gradually attune themselves to this enchantment, granting them the following benefits while in the confines of the city (the below effects are suggestions, and are intended to be cumulative):

Day 1: The characters feel less hungry than before, and only need half a day's rations.
Day 2: The characters notice that they no longer feel their wounds as acutely as before. They gain 5 temporary hit points after they finish a long rest.
Day 3: The characters have advantage on all saving throws against poison and disease
Day 4: The characters gain 5 temporary hit points after a short rest.
Day 5: The characters have advantage on death saving throws
Day 6: Whenever the characters gain temporary hit points from rests (as above), they gain an additional 5 hit points.

Etc. The rest is left as an exercise for the DM's creativity.

Eventually, you might consider stuff like an immunity to the pain they feel (though they should still keep track of hit points), immunity to poison and disease, and automatic successes on death saving throws (regaining consciousness after 2d4 rounds automatically - they can still die if they a creature forces death saving throw failures on them, such as through attacking).

The players will LOVE these bonuses... and then they'll find out why they have them. Later in the adventure, they discover the source of power that's keeping the city together and safe from the waters around it: a chamber in the basement of the . As the character's approach, they hear a child, crying for help, punctuated by periodic screams of pain. There is a small window in the door that opens into the chamber, which allows the characters to see a small, cold stone room, which holds nothing save a small boy, whose writhing body and pain-stricken face speak of the countless millennia of tortures inflicted to keep the city intact. Every pain, every sickness, every damaging force that has ever been felt by the people and structures of this land was also felt by this child, who suffered all of it on their behalf. There is no one and nothing else in this room.

The characters cannot enter the chamber by any means because the chamber is guarded against entry by powerful enchantments - nothing short of a dispel magic spell with a successful DC24 Arcana check, an antimagic sphere, or a wish spell will allow the characters to open the door or break the stones. The window is also protected by the [I]Wall of Force spell, preventing anyone from directly harming/killing the child.

[CursedRhubarb]

Have a garden type area so it's a big open area with little to no hiding places available and they can see dismembered remains around the ground. When they enter they hear a gurgling roar as an undead beholder comes at them. Upon defeating it, keep them in combat for 1d4 rounds to let them stew and grow some paranoia on why they are still in initiative if the beholder is dead. Then after the 1d4 rounds, a gaggle of ghouls and ghasts, in various states of being eaten and digested, claw their way out of the beholder and rush the group.

[arrowed]

A corpse that looks exactly like one of the PCs!:smallamused: For setup make the 'victim' spend some time alone, maybe in the room with the corpse, then lure the rest of the party in there. Make sure to take the appropriate player to one side while they're alone. All the paranoia of a doppleganger without having to overpower the PC in question! MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

[EvilAnagram]

Snip

I remember this green text. It's a solid story, but it fundamentally changes the nature of the entire dungeon, and its basic nature is pretty firmly set. I think I might grab a few ideas out of this, though.


snip

That’s a pretty nice little trick for ratcheting tension.

[UberN3wb]

Just my 2cp,

For Gothic horror ideas, look up the game Darkest Dungeon. The atmosphere the monsters generate, especially the bosses, sounds like what you are looking for.

I would recommend homebrewing or reskinning every monster the party faces. In my experience, combat is much more stressful when the party doesn't have any idea of the power level or abilities of the opposition, even OOC. A monstrous fleshy amoeba with three pseudopods covered in human faces that moan in agony is much more terrifying than an otyugh, even though they are the same thing.

For maximum unease, emphasize the corruption of heroes and decay of society by making monsters unnervingly close to something normal or good. For example, a half-decayed zombie paladin equipped with the now-defiled artifacts of a deity of one of your party members (or a generic "good" one, like Bahamut).

Crowd control, DOTs, and diseases are your friends. Make the players' mindsets shift from trying to beat and encounter to trying to survive it.


Going back to the otyugh example,

The party enters the palace/temple. In the grand hall, they see a group of horribly obese, undead nobles stuffing themselves from a long table piled high and overflowing with rotten corpses, human, animal and unidentifiable. The horrendous stench of a hundred decaying carcasses washes over the PCs. The nobles, as one, look up at the PCs, grab their goblets overflowing with blood, and stumble towards the PCs. At the same time, two of the larger piles begin shifting towards the players, revealing themselves to be monstrosities comprised of dozens of rotten corpses melded together (add liberal amounts of heads, eyes, mouths, and whatever will creep your players out).

The flesh-monsters are otyughs and the nobles are intellect devourers that only temporarily drain Int/eat brains via force-feeding the PCs from their goblets.

[Laserlight]

I don't remember where I read the short story, but this idea is based on something I read long ago.

I expect you're thinking of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula LeGuin.

[R.Shackleford]

So, my party is delving into an ancient city that sank beneath a lake thousands of years ago. Since its fall, the now undead inhabitants have been in an unending struggle against blighted nature spirits bent on punishing them for their crimes. (Don't worry about the water, it's kept away a la Wind Wake Hyrule)

It's a decrepit city at the bottom of a lake in which the degradation of the society is shown in the decay of ancient monuments and corrupted heroes, and I want my players unsettled and disturbed the entire time. I already have plenty of homebrewed monsters including skeletal knights, blighted treants, and a truly awesome three-stage final boss that takes advantage of certain features and spells to keep them from nova-blasting him effectively. What I need are encounters that are downright twisted and unsettling. I want them to sense the moral decay of this society through the physical decay of the scenery and the degradation of former heroes.

So what are some spooky ideas you have? What has playing Dark Souls put into your head? What encounters will keep my players up at night? I'd love some extra ideas to work into my current plans, since this dungeon is pretty massive.

For reference, there are three of them, and they're A+ in melee, B- at range, B at healing, and D- at crowd control.


https://i.imgur.com/MBPzDtR.png

[JumboWheat01]

https://i.imgur.com/MBPzDtR.png



I could see an evil party loving something like that, keeping it along for some stress relief.

[ruy343]

I expect you're thinking of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula LeGuin.

I have been looking to re-read that story for the longest time! Thank you so much for helping me to re-discover it!

On a sidenote, I really do want to include something like that in a future campaign. The idea of the players changing may be too much for a campaign, but maybe protecting the city itself wouldn't be too bad (though it would still be horrifying).

Also, owlturd is the best.

[Squiddish]

Take a note from HP Lovecraft!
While his horror mainly centered on vast entities beyond our understanding, his methods work even for this.
Drop hints with flavor text, making it clear that they are but scratching the surface of a horrifying hidden world. Hint that the darkness is ever-present and unstoppable. If you can, break their characters. Force them into insanity.

Mix it with more practical things, as well. Always have something ready to jump out at them. Start combat with blood dripping from the ceiling.

When they are well and truly creeped out, start adding more graphic horror. Get them terrified. Let them know that no matter what they do, they can never destroy the evil, only slow it down.

Bonus points if you have your sessions at night.

[Segev]

Slaymates.

The children of this wretched city have become slaymates. But not all of them. Only those whose deaths were the result of guardians/caregivers who neglected to protect them. Any whose guardians tried...didn't make the transition.

Slaymates are an important resource for the city's necromancers. Their pale auras reduce metamagic costs of necromancy spells. Perhaps slaymates even are used as a sort of currency.

Play up their innocence on the surface; some should reveal corrupted interiors, and others tortured.


Then later, reveal that slaymates are the only denizens who are slowly increasing in number. Where are the new ones coming from?

The fey may be kidnapping surface children and, through lack of understanding of what they need and carelessness, neglecting them to become slaymates. And then blaming the undead for the "sin" of killing them. Not that they haven't committed other, legitimate sins. But this one's on the fey.

Edit: Oops, slaymates are a 3.5 monster. So the metamagic thing doesn't work here. But maybe they instead grant some boost to necromancy spells. Regardless, the fluff of their creation remains the same.

[Reaper34]

I designed a story arc around a cult of pleasure. large building full of food, drugs, men and women, ect. any vice or pleasure one could imigine one could find inside this compound. the priest administered the place and did their best to ensure everyone was having a good time.it was extreamily addictive for the residents of the city. it kinda stayed in the background for the players. just a feature of the city. players sampled the food and found it to be the best they had ever had. same with the wine, ect. They had made it their usual down time hangout... this lasted until the thief decided to pick pocket a gem of true seeing from one of the priests. when he used it he saw that the meals were rotting body parts, the wine sewage, all the men and women for hire were zombies. the place was accually a temple of a evil god. needless to say this info had a effect on the party. i got the idea from a book in incarnations of immortality series. can't remember which one. anyway hope you can use the idea and run with it.

[SLIMEPRIEST]

Limb loss. Start with one finger on one character and watch them freak out at the possibility of losing a whole arm. Make the limb loss possible from a just engaging specific monsters in melee. Once they start to always back from it, have the horrid thing drop down on them from above. Now they always look up. Once they get used to that, one of them gets it in the leg. It can come from a touch, a gas, a gaze, anything you like, just make sure they know that they might loss a limb... They will never feel safe

[dj543210]

Two words. Flying. Tarrasque.

[pwykersotz]

Terror is about powerlessness and the unknown. Look to all the horror videogames out there. Fatal Frame arms you with nothing but a camera against supernatural horrors, for example. You have to make their usual weapons and tactics about as effective as that camera. R.Shackeford's comic has good stuff in it regarding that.

In addition to that, take the familiar and make it into the strange. Turn virtue into vice. And trap the players within that. Imagine a kindly Ranger who finds a lost child. Start small. The child stares eerily at the Ranger, watching him sleep, never seeming to sleep itself. The woods seem more restless as they travel to get the child home. Sometimes strange voices whisper into the Ranger's mind, voices of pure evil (speaking in Abyssal for example). Everything starts to go wrong. A familiar watering hole is full of tar. Bodies of animals bursting with maggots litter trails. The rain comes down, and when you feel where it touches you, your hand comes back red with blood.

Is it the child causing it? Is the child possessed? Is it just a curse on the land unrelated to the child? What do you do? How do you find out? Can you afford to bring back the child to civilization if this curse might follow it? Can you take the child's life without knowing for certain that it is the source? And what happens when you begin to fear for your own life, when you begin to get the shivers and shakes and you begin to cough up black blood? How far can you be pushed?

However, terror has some weaknesses. The foremost is that the players need to be willing to play that sort of game. If they don't take the situation seriously, or can't be convinced to, the situation falls flat. So you've got to either know your party or get buy-in on a horror campaign at the start. Also, some people have hidden squeamishness. If a player tells you that they themselves are getting uncomfortable, listen to them. Sometimes they won't even be aware they don't like something until you begin describing it. Find another way to push the terror if you get that feedback.

[djreynolds]

So it is a town under water, but the structures have air?

And if there was a leak, could get ugly. Do you run away from the undead or the water rushing in? How do you stop the water or seal it off and hold of the undead as you do it? Imagine the riches destroyed.

Skills under pressure. I'd like a copy of this adventure, sounds very cool.

Also, you could have like a dragon turtle trying to dig down on the lake bed.

[JumboWheat01]

Two words. Flying. Tarrasque.

With Godzilla-like Breath Beam with Disintegrate properties that recharges on a 3-6 roll.

...What?

[Segev]

A point to remember about horror is that it isn't about helplessness, nor about being outmatched. It's about being unsafe, and the rules for what makes you safe seeming counter-intuitive.

Perhaps the fey are of an aquatic nature, but moreover can use any exposed water surface to emerge. Obviously, the undead guard the bubble-wall that surrounds the city, keeping the fey out as best they can. But this means, too, that exposed water is dangerous in the city. A puddle has to be dried up quickly. Water is never stored for drinking in any exposed container (or at all; they're undead so they don't need it...which means the living adventurers could endanger them with their reliance on drinking water).

Or perhaps the undead treat anybody who is wet as if they were hostile enemies; it's a trait the fey have the undead mostly do not. Blood on you, sweat...it makes them hostile. Stay. Dry. They'll ignore you or treat you like one of them if you're dry.


The other thing about horror is that you want to build the sense of "wrong" incrementally. And then back off of it for a bit. Then build it some more.

Start with just this exotic, strange, underwater city. Have the undead appear alive. Maybe have the fey interspersed, appearing normal, too. The first layer they've encountered are actually fey jailers tormenting undead prisoners under a guise of a happy, normal life. This layer, nobody acknowledges that they're underwater. That should be the first clue something's "off."

They can then start to catch the fey at their torments. Things which should be happy or innocent have sudden, cruel twists. The urchin is accused of stealing, and has his hand cut off with only enough ceremony to let the brat sense the anticipation...but the heroes SAW the whole thing, and there was no theft. Either the urchin didn't do anything, or the merchant practically bullied him into taking it with the urchin getting more and more nervous. (The urchin WAS a thief in life; now he gets his hand cut off at least daily to punish him for that crime.)

Perhaps they realize or see the fey first, as they realize something's "up."

Later, when they find the "normal" people who aren't so cowed by this menagerie of fey artifice that they play along, they can notice their undead nature...just as those undead look to betray them. Either because they broke an unspoken taboo (got wet or bloody?), or because the nature of the undead is evil and they, too, would rather have victims than allies.

The fey and the undead should both have some rule by which they maintain their "human" guise, and only when that rule is violated do they reveal themselves. There should be behavioral and environmental rules governing this; it will allow the players to have the chance to interact "normally" while staying on edge about their behavior, and it will allow the DM to have the environment be an enemy because threats to shift to the "bad state" can be foreshadowed, and (depending on the nature of the environmental cue) it can be something that builds and then approaches, letting players flee it.

When the fey or undead are revealed is when they act like monsters against the party.

And I would definitely have something about fighting break taboos in ways that draw more down, so that if fighting breaks out, the players' response is encouraged to be "get it done and get away from here fast, before more trouble shows up."

Also, make short rests hazardous. They should have to take great precautions to be able to manage them. Make long rests precious. Perhaps the environmental cues are such that staying in one place that long WILL lead to interruption by violent undead or cruel fey. The dwindling resources will let you have comparatively weak undead or fey present as the main "threats." Things that the PCs can dispatch easily. But there are always more, and the numbers that come if they don't keep violence to a minimum are hazardous...and the slow bleed of resources starts to add up, making each encounter more dangerous, even as the nominal threat level remains constant.

[pwykersotz]

A point to remember about horror is that it isn't about helplessness, nor about being outmatched. It's about being unsafe, and the rules for what makes you safe seeming counter-intuitive.
...
The other thing about horror is that you want to build the sense of "wrong" incrementally. And then back off of it for a bit. Then build it some more.

I entirely disagree with the first part. Maybe I'm missing something.

Being unsafe is far too wide a net. Players are unsafe every day, and regularly do things to dig themselves a deeper hole. It's a staple of the action genre overall, and it often gets laughed about at the table. Can you reference a work of horror where the protagonist(s) were unsafe without being helpless? Maybe we're just crossing definitions a bit. Or maybe I'm mistaken without realizing it. I don't find your example to be particularly horrifying though, just mysterious.

That said, building incrementally is great advice.

[Segev]

I entirely disagree with the first part. Maybe I'm missing something.

Being unsafe is far too wide a net. Players are unsafe every day, and regularly do things to dig themselves a deeper hole. It's a staple of the action genre overall, and it often gets laughed about at the table.

No, I stand by it. PCs aren't generally feeling unsafe. They're feeling like they're in a dangerous profession, but that they can usually handle it. They feel like they're challenged.

The kind of "unsafe" I'm talking about is different.

It isn't helplessness, but it's related. Helplessness is just hopeless, and it doesn't build horror so much as resignation. The kind of sense of unease and lack of safety here comes because what you CAN do is not in your comfort zone.

As adventurers, they're used to violence being their ultimate answer should things turn bad for them. Monster attacks, negotiations with a tribe of cannibals breaking down, even assassins sent by disgruntled nobles who don't like how well you're doing in court...these are things that are handled with violence. Even if you're doing poorly at court, you can resort to violence, yourself, to some degree.

Most "horror" situations put modern people outside our comfort zones because we're not used to violence, and we don't know how to handle something that isn't put down by one good gun shot. Man v. Nature is nearly horror to a lot of modern Western society, if the Man involved is a modern urbanite. That bear is a terrifying, overwhelming foe from which he can only run and hide...and hiding is a temporary solution at best.

Put adventurers in a "horror" situation and they just start planning the dungeon crawl to take out the monster(s).

Horror is about feeling unsafe...but knowing that you CAN make it, if you just find the right solution and do the right, difficult thing that's outside your comfort zone. It's about subverting and perverting expectations to build a sense that you cannot trust what you know. The paradigm of your world doesn't fit the paradigm of the world in which you are now stuck.

This is why the "safety" mechanics have to be something 'anybody' can do, but which are not traditionally going to assuage your animal fears of the situation. "Hold your breath and the zombies can't see you," is a great one: you have to let them walk right up next to you, right past you. You have to sneak by them. And though you "know" they can't see you...you FEEL like they should be able to, so you don't feel safe. And worse...how long CAN you hold your breath? Especially when your fight-or-flight instincts are ramping up your heartbeat and the monster is RIGHT THERE close enough to bite out your throat?

But you're not helpless. There's something you CAN do. But will you succeed? Will you screw it up in a moment of panic? It doesn't make you FEEL safe. The sense of unsafety is there. The anticipation of danger just around the corner. You even know what it is. You know what will trigger it. You just don't know when that trigger will happen. Or if. Because it's in your hand...and you hope you don't twitch and pull it.

[Shining Wrath]

A city of the undead hunted by blighted nature spirits? Some comments on atmosphere.

Fatalism comes to mind. Of course they fight if the opportunity presents itself, and fight well. But a guy whose best friend / wife / child gets torn to shreds just shrugs and goes about his business. "It was their time". They fight because it's their "programming" to fight, not because they actually care about anyone else continuing in undeath or passing on to final reward.

As you've already described, no one cares about the condition of buildings. Extend that to attire and bodies. No one bothers to repair a zombie who drags his intestines behind him as he works. People wear clothes out of habit but don't clean them or patch them, so primary and secondary sexual characteristics are visible through tears; no one cares about modesty, either, as the undead are generally asexual. The smell is not just decaying flesh but dust is everywhere - in fact, you might have blinding duststorms as a combat feature; everything more than 5' away is heavily obscured. The dust, of course, is both decayed stone and decayed people.

As an encounter, a church service presided over by a vampire or death knight with the pews filled with wights and wraiths and other intelligent undead ought to work. Of course, they have a sacrifice - one of the blighted nature spirits taken captive is ritually drained of its life essence which is divided up and passed out to the congregation in the form of tiny wafers and goblets filled with some viscous fluid that obviously isn't blood.

The party may or may not want to interfere with the ceremony, but either way they'll remember it.

[EvilAnagram]

I entirely disagree with the first part. Maybe I'm missing something.

I think he's right. Horror, specifically gothic horror, is not necessarily about helplessness. Sure, slasher films are, but they tend to flip thay script with the final girl as often as not. Cosmic horror, likewise, is about feeling helpless in the face of our own irrelevance, often with much better results. Other horror genres are not necessarily about helplessness.

Gothic horror, specifically, came out of the Romantic movement, which was largely about asserting oneself in the face of adversity. In gothic horror, one grasps with the evils lurking in the heart of humanity, confronting them in some way. Frankenstein pursues his creature to the ends of the Earth. Van Helsing and company carefully research what is happening before identifying Dracula and chasing him back to Transylvania.

In gothic horror, the horror comes not from helplessness, but rather from what the story reveals about human nature. Frankenstein's rejection of his creation led to hardship and pain, and the reader questions what scientific knowledge may bring. The reader sees the elegance and power of Dracula, and so understands the drive to use that power to fulfill base needs. In Fall of the House of Usher we see how madness can reduce the best of us to mere shadows of our former selves. These stories reveal qualities of human beings - anger at rejection, unchecked lust, the capacity to suffer from dementia or madness - and they ask us to reflect on how we think and feel.

Again, the goal of gothic horror is to disturb you, to cause you to reflect your base motivations and human frailties. In a gothic horror game players can and should feel capable of confronting these threats, but what they represent should stick with them.

That's why Strahd is such a solid gothic horror villain: he is trapped in the Dark Realm because he was rejected by the woman he loved. The fact that she had perfectly good reasons for rejecting him doesn't concern hom, and he's constantly trying to find her. When it's done right facing Strahd forces the player to confront the capacity for jealousy, rage, and sexual violence in all of us, and that should disturb us.

Similarly, I want my dungeon to confront the players with their own capacity for greed and corruption. You don't accomplish this by making them helpless.

For a good example of empowered horror in games, look at the old school Resident Evil games, especially the REmake. The player is not helpless. In fact, they end up heavily armed, but they are limited by the resources available to them, and that has a major effect on their capacity to deal with threats. Can you afford to kill thay zombie? Will you be able to remove his corpse before he resurrects as a Crimson Head? Can you even spare the bullets? This tension between the restricted resources and the very real threats, combined with the nature of the threat they face creates very real fear. Similarly, RPGs afford us the opportunity to play with fear without creating helpless players.

[Segev]

Similarly, I want my dungeon to confront the players with their own capacity for greed and corruption. You don't accomplish this by making them helpless.

Nice post on gothic horror, first off. Secondly, and more to the point of this post, this is helpful to giving advice for your game! I had not realized this is what you were going for.

With this perspective, it sounds like what you want is to have the two sides both be in the wrong, but in ways that either reflect or encourage greed and corruption in the PCs. To solve the problem the "easy way," as well as to leave it be, would require giving in to at least one of those sins.

Corruption, in particular, is an interesting one. It isn't a sin that's neatly encapsulated the way most are. There's no specific "sin of corruption." It's...a pattern. Almost a spiritual disease. There's a reason gothic horror is about being corrupted by sin and desire as a general rule. The whole of the wrongdoing involves corruption.

What is corruption, then? It's the willingness to compromise principle, to allow for evil or to perform a little wrong to get what you want. To actively pervert your claimed purpose, your rightful authorities, your freedoms and your choices in ways you know are not what you should be doing, in order to facilitate personal goals.

It can be done for seemingly noble purpose. A judge who allows evidence he knows was obtained unlawfully because it's critical to the conviction of a monster he is positive is guilty is corrupting his office, abusing his power...but he believes it's for the right reasons. A bureaucrat who deliberately misfiles, loses, or denies on her "discretion" a license or application because she believes the people who filed it are immoral and would do things she thinks are horrible (but perfectly allowed by society and the law) is corrupting her office for what she feels is the defense of her society from these reprobates.



One way to try to bring this home to the players would be to create reflections of choices they've made that they, themselves, either do recognize or should recognize as being hypocritical or greedy, and have those be some of the crimes for which the undead are being punished. That can be a bit tawdry, though, and come off ham-fisted.

To be haunted by their own greed and corruption requires them to have some sort of stake in this city. What about their natures do you want them to confront? How have they been greedy? How can you pit their greed against their consciences through the conflict presented here? What would a "solution" to this encounter entail? That's an important point: what are they to accomplish here? What is their win condition? What are their failure conditions? Do they have multiple win conditions which can be achieved for partial credit?

[pwykersotz]

So a subtle but important shift happened in this conversation that I missed until now. Helplessness vs powerlessness. And it's being taken to levels that aren't part of my point but which appear to be being projected onto it.

When I mentioned powerlessness, I was connecting it directly to the unknown and also to the untouchable. I was not saying that the players couldn't take action and find resolution. A game without a resolution is pretty worthless after all. It's about confronting things that have no simple answer. The demons within as well as without.

So Segev, we actually agree more than not. I was just putting a different twist on it. I feel "unsafe" undersells it. Your followup descriptions are solid.

And EvilAnagram, I agree as well, the point you appear to be countering is not mine.

[Hudsonian]

I'm not sure how this would affect the OP, but the discussion gave me the idea of a curse that shows anyone that picks up loot the butterfly effect, but only the bad stuff.

Obviously, this is not something you could do for every coin, but for some of the larger loot items. Or maybe there could be a "see the past of the item" curse in the dungeon. One that reveals parts of the previous owners most treasured memories. Starting with family, then children, then work, then counting money, then counting money, but in the background you see the gaunt bodies of his family bound and gagged in a corner and he is mumbling about how they were finally being quiet for once.

[Aembrosia]

Make shadows follow them always just out of a move range away anywhere they go. Poof if they attack. Follow. Watch. Perpetually ready and waiting for a moment of weakness. See how close you can get to them without taking a hostile action/being attacked.

[Segev]

Hm. Thinking on the subject of greed...

What if the undead stole something - perhaps a lot of something - from the fey in the past, and that hoard is still hidden in the city. The undead also have a more traditional hoard - perhaps both are one hoard, or perhaps there's both the traditional wealth and whatever was stolen - in the city that the party can find.

Maybe look at the Count of Monte Cristo's approach to torturing the banker: wealth couldn't buy him what he needed once the Count got ahold of him, and he used that to destroy him financially. The "what good is wealth if you can't spend it?" approach may be part of the feys' punishment of the undead.

The loot for this dungeon could be off-the-scale massive, if the party is willing to do enough to get ahold of it. Turning it over to specific undead pursuers might mollify them; this could, in turn, give the party reprieve enough for short rests. Maybe make it specific, so some of the best items are needed specifically to get rest at particular points.

Let the party's greed war with their other resource-management. They're not getting the rest they need to recover, so the death of a thousand paper cuts stalks them. But if they gave up the treasure, perhaps they could rest. At least for a little while.

I wouldn't use that as the sole mechanism, but it might work into the "confronted with their greed" concept.

[Hudsonian]

There is also the idea of the failing illusion from earlier, but instead of simply landscape, there is a Snow White/Sleeping Beauty image combined with a charm effect. Trying to awake the woman transfers the magic from a general visual illusion to a individualized hallucination. For the one player that wakes the woman, there seems to be no difference. But the rest of the party is immediately aware that she is actually a mold golem that has begun to corrupt their friend by making mold grow on him, if they don't act quickly to destroy the golem, their friend will be lost. However, their friend is valiantly defending the monster it sees as beautiful.

I was thinking maybe this would play into our false sense of absolute perspective???

[Hudsonian]

This one may be over played, but have you considered the evil guardian that is actually keeping a worse monster at bay from something else? a.k.a. the false BBEG that once removed allows something else to really wreak havoc (Think First Lord from Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy and Ruin who followed)

[Shining Wrath]

If you want to work on the dark side of human nature I'd say using the character's flaws against them. Whatever drives them toward darkness - greed, fear, hatred - is used against them.

Illusions of themselves getting "what they've always wanted" but it goes terribly, terribly wrong can set an atmosphere without actually killing anyone. He's always wanted wealth? The illusion shows him having vast wealth but he can't protect it and shadowy thieves take it all while he flails helplessly. Stuff like that.

[EvilAnagram]

Holy poop, there are some fantastic ideas here! I'd like to address all of them individually, but phones are terrible for that.



And EvilAnagram, I agree as well, the point you appear to be countering is not mine.

Sorry for the miscommunication then. Even if we had disagreed, I'm very happy with the back and forth discussions we have here.

[CursedRhubarb]

Wayward pines style rules for the undead city could be interesting. The undead can be neutral toward the players at first but if the players start breaking the rules...well let's hope they can be sneaky and quick.