What’s the creepiest moment you’ve experienced in a game?

[DRD1812]

What’s the creepiest moment you’ve experienced in a game? How did the GM achieve the effect, and how did your fellow players react to the horror?

Mine lives below the comic over here (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/creepy-ghost).

[Concrete]

Realized halfway through writing it out that describing it in detail could probably violate forum rules, but the short of it is, that if you're playing shadowrun with a GM who's fascinated by serial killer lore, has read more horror than you have read anything in your life, and has just finished a thesis paper on Human Trafficking, you should probably just leave the table the second they bring up the term "Bunraku Parlour".
It was an experience, for sure, but most of us were deeply uncomfortable when it was over, and even she agreed that this wasn't really fun at all.

[Uncle Pine]

I don't want to violate ToS so I'm definitely not going into detail on this, but my creepiest moment involved an evil homebrewed tauric monstrous spider/nymph hybrid with warlock invocations in place of druid spellcasting as the main opponent and among other things featured some rules about tortures and vile rituals from BoVD. The point is, even though that was the exact kind of villain I needed at that point of the campaign in that specific region of the world and my players brilliantly got out of her grasps with only one casualty, at the end of the session everyone was both freaked and grossed out by Ezra. Myself included.

EDIT: Since the thread seems to be degenerating into "what's a moment that destroyed a group/made someone leave a table/etc." I want to specify everyone at the table enjoyed wrapping up Ezra's chapter and we moved on with the campaign, which ended about 8-12 months later iirc.

[FelineArchmage]

It wasn't the in-game part of it that was creepy (as it made sense from an in-character perspective) - it was the out of game context that was.

Hearing your DM call your husband "Daddy~" is creepy as heck.

[lylsyly]

Naw ... Those aren't creepy. Imagine the dm announcing that he is running a one shot the following week because some new players want to sit in. Well ... 7 days go by and my girlfriend and I show up and who is sitting in my usual chair?
MY EX-WIFE ..........

[FelineArchmage]

Naw ... Those aren't creepy. Imagine the dm announcing that he is running a one shot the following week because some new players want to sit in. Well ... 7 days go by and my girlfriend and I show up and who is sitting in my usual chair?
MY EX-WIFE ..........

Ouch. That's rough.

[Concrete]

Naw ... Those aren't creepy. Imagine the dm announcing that he is running a one shot the following week because some new players want to sit in. Well ... 7 days go by and my girlfriend and I show up and who is sitting in my usual chair?
MY EX-WIFE ..........

That reminds me... We had a sit-in for a session. And then they ended up playing an NPC. And then making a character. And then ending up in two other games in the group. Most of us were at least annoyed with this person. Some of us straight up loathed them. They were just so loud and self absorbed.
We all just assumed someone else had invited them back, and for weeks we were too awkward to ask the right questions to find out who'd put this curse upon us.

Turns out no one had invited them back after the first sit-in. They had just turned up, and we had all assumed the rest of the group wanted them there.
It's... well, troublesome.

[Deophaun]

DM introduced a horse that liked my female PC.

Really, really liked my female PC.

I don't play with that DM no more.

[InterstellarPro]

My friend told me a story of a DM who was running a session where the party met up with a demon or devil who used Dominate Person on the party's paladin. The paladin was played by a fairly religious individual. If it wasn't bad enough that the DM had the character do some pretty horrific things, he then used the Domination effect to force the paladin to enjoy it. That was pretty awful and creepy just hearing about it. The player gave up DnD permanently, and never spoke to the DM again. The DM claimed it was just a game and the player was too sensitive, but there are some lines you just shouldn't cross.

[16bearswutIdo]

Yikes, you guys have some tame games. In my game last night, the PCs unleashed a Wendigo on a peaceful mountainous tribe, then got hunted down by the Wendigo and fought it on top of a mountain next to a statue whose head had been replaced with the decapitated head of one of their traveling companions. The head had been affixed with two antlers as an offering to the Wendigo. The PCs "killed" the Wendigo, but two of them had gotten bit and failed their saves. They fled back to their home town, filled with the desire to consume.

One ate an old man, then kept failing his saves and eventually ate a literal baby. He failed his saves until he reached 0 Wis, thereby transforming into a Wendigo.

The other one fled back to their tribe (Goliath), ate one of her admirers, successfully passed saves until she fought off the Wendigo madness.

The one surviving, unbitten member fled back to town through the mountain and forest. When she went to finally leave the forest, she could swear she saw a faint swirling mist following her movement. The Wendigo, in Wind Walk form.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

My friend told me a story of a DM who was running a session where the party met up with a demon or devil who used Dominate Person on the party's paladin. The paladin was played by a fairly religious individual. If it wasn't bad enough that the DM had the character do some pretty horrific things, he then used the Domination effect to force the paladin to enjoy it. That was pretty awful and creepy just hearing about it. The player gave up DnD permanently, and never spoke to the DM again. The DM claimed it was just a game and the player was too sensitive, but there are some lines you just shouldn't cross.

On the one hand I do want to remember that use for Dominate, but on the other hand, yikes. What a colossal jerkwad.

I'd like to say my creepiest moment was one of my character's entanglements with wendigos, but it was screwed up by my annoyance at the GM for being obstinate about a few minor events and living up to the stereotype that if you give your character a family they exist only for the GM to use them to inflict pain on your PC. My character was previously offered a chance to give in to an evil manifestation of hunger, and of course refused, and was left with a vague threat against the PC's siblings. Earliest chance we checked in on them when we got back to our city we were based out of; the brother, a rocker skald, was caught in the middle of devouring one of his groupies. He was knocked out and cured before his madness got any worse. The character's sister, a paladin, was in a northern city, but we were high enough level that Teleport was abusable. She had tried to take a bite out of a superior officer, and escaped into the wilderness; my character managed to track her down and bring her back (with some trouble with the guard order she was with, I managed to negotiate it down to "She is very sick and will probably die, she can face a trial when she gets back", and the officer implying my PC was getting a favor by letting him get away). And since our PCs were rich as hell, since 13th level and overgeared, we rezzed the devoured groupie. And family was traumatized into wall-staring wrecks, regardless of what they had experienced previously

No, I'd have to say my creepiest moment was in a World of Darkness game where I was playing a Demon. My Demon had come into the possession of a sentient laptop another PC had inadvertently created (a huge success, followed by a 10 on something that Storyteller used called the 'Chaos Die') that was beginning to adapt and repurpose Infrastructure. Naturally, my Demon wanted it. We ended up working out a deal, and my character signed his name. After a second that sunk in and I realized my Demon had made a contract with something.

[Helluin]

Yikes, you guys have some tame games. In my game last night, the PCs unleashed a Wendigo on a peaceful mountainous tribe, then got hunted down by the Wendigo and fought it on top of a mountain next to a statue whose head had been replaced with the decapitated head of one of their traveling companions. The head had been affixed with two antlers as an offering to the Wendigo. The PCs "killed" the Wendigo, but two of them had gotten bit and failed their saves. They fled back to their home town, filled with the desire to consume.

One ate an old man, then kept failing his saves and eventually ate a literal baby. He failed his saves until he reached 0 Wis, thereby transforming into a Wendigo.

The other one fled back to their tribe (Goliath), ate one of her admirers, successfully passed saves until she fought off the Wendigo madness.

The one surviving, unbitten member fled back to town through the mountain and forest. When she went to finally leave the forest, she could swear she saw a faint swirling mist following her movement. The Wendigo, in Wind Walk form.

:smalleek:the last part legit freaked me out. I’m more stories like this, pleeeeaaase????

[malloc]

Last session my DM went through the whole hiring process of becoming a prostitute with one of the players, who had decided that stable work was what she needed in her life.

Another time, I played 4e.

[Dawgmoah]

When one of the players decides he wants to make money pouches out of his fallen foes privates. And then goes into detail about how it is done... The player who collected the teeth of her fallen foes paled in comparison.

[nintendoh]

The dm started crying.

[DRD1812]

When one of the players decides he wants to make money pouches out of his fallen foes privates. And then goes into detail about how it is done... The player who collected the teeth of her fallen foes paled in comparison.

I bet he also paled in fact.

I've got a dude in my games who likes to collect faces. Like... For serious peals them off of the corpses of his enemies and keeps them in his pack. He insists that he's chaotic neutral.

[Sian]

Probably one of my friends that really dialed up the time you visit Malcanthet‘s palace in Savage Tide

[Jay R]

Last session my DM went through the whole hiring process of becoming a prostitute with one of the players, who had decided that stable work was what she needed in her life.

She planned to do that work in a stable?

[Zanos]

She planned to do that work in a stable?
Must be related to the horse DM.

If we're including unintentionally creepy, I once played with a guy who, among other things, tried to get every single other party member regardless of species or gender to have sex with his character, and just tried to push them to drink more booze if they refused, even multiple times.

He did a lot of other stupid stuff too, but that was probably the creepiest.

Played PFS with a guy who insisted his catfolk character was in heat. Between that and the kitsune enchanters, I don't play PFS anymore.

Had a 50 something year old man who was very insistent about playing extremely poorly clothed and extremely young women. That didn't last long.

I've run into worse kinds playing World of Darkness. Let's just sat it's hard to put together a game of randos for any WoD where everyone's got their head on right.

Please stop using tabletop as a sexual outlet. At least not when I'm in the room.

[Afgncaap5]

I can't think of any particularly creepy games I've been in, but I've tried running some. Most of them weren't successfully scary, though, but there was one time that I apparently super-scared a lot of players with something that I thought was pretty tame.

My players were going into the Deep Below (basically the Underdark, but since this wasn't a regular D&D setting and I was trying to make more of a fairy-tale game I didn't want to use any too-familiar terms that players could compartmentalize away.) Before going into the Deep Below, they were told that while it was "underground", it was, in many ways, truly another world, and to be careful, and to not trust anything at face value.

They had a "tent" that was more like a collapsible fortified shack since they thought that'd be safer than just getting campfires in the middle of the caverns and such. But during the middle of the night, something started knocking on the door of their tent and saying variations on "Hello?", "Can I come in?", and "Please, let me in." The voice was not-quite like a kid's voice, and when they woke up the spellcaster to scry on the outside of the tent, they couldn't see anything.

It really had nothing to do with the plot (and if they'd really pressed it, it would've been a kind of vampire-thing with invisibility) but they rushed through the underdark as fast as they could, and then didn't want to go back down anymore.

[sabernoir]

In the campaign I've been participating in, the Big Bad is a necromancer who is collecting an undead army through the distribution of "red gold" coins, which teleport him to them whenever someone dies near one, he then recruits the deceased person into his horde. He then rewards whoever was responsible for the death with more coins, continuing the cycle. My cleric of Pelor, while trying to figure out how to destroy these coins, smashed one with a mace, and it screamed. Eventually, I cast Dispel Magic on the coin, which returned it to its original form, a tiny human head, caked with dried blood.

[martixy]

Naw ... Those aren't creepy. Imagine the dm announcing that he is running a one shot the following week because some new players want to sit in. Well ... 7 days go by and my girlfriend and I show up and who is sitting in my usual chair?
MY EX-WIFE ..........

What coincidence.
I've invited my roommate's ex-wife to play an NPC in the game I DM for him and his girlfriend and she's agreed. Just gotta see when she has some free time.

Which, admittedly, does sound weird, but is not really(in our case). Said ex-wife is my sister, and we're all part of the same circle of friends(yes, including said ex-spouse duo). There is no bad blood whatsoever. Point is, context is everything.

Edit:

In the campaign I've been participating in, the Big Bad is a necromancer who is collecting an undead army through the distribution of "red gold" coins, which teleport him to them whenever someone dies near one, he then recruits the deceased person into his horde. He then rewards whoever was responsible for the death with more coins, continuing the cycle. My cleric of Pelor, while trying to figure out how to destroy these coins, smashed one with a mace, and it screamed. Eventually, I cast Dispel Magic on the coin, which returned it to its original form, a tiny human head, caked with dried blood.

Wait... that's the plot of one of Matt Colville's campaigns(youtuber/game designer/writer with a video series on running D&D campaigns). Or at least where I saw it first. It may very well have been inspired by something else of course, but the only explicit part he owned up to was nicking certain NPCs from random settings. Except the creepy part. That one's a new addition.