How do you instill fear into gamers?

[Kyutaru]

We live in a world where gaming has become mainstream. Everyone has access to it through their phones and millions play the same MMO together. People have over time developed habits and skills that carry over from one game to another because of similar genre tropes and AAA games' refusal to do anything risky because of past bombs where they went too far in the cost cutting or rushed development without quality testing... We're left with gamers who have seen it all and default to being murderhobos or at the very least expecting that every confrontation is meant to be "balanced" and winnable.

You see it regularly, complaints about forums about how XXX game is an unbalanced POS. Usually brought up by someone who failed to see the puzzle mechanic, didn't understand how buffing synergy works, or was just really bad at the game. Occasionally it has merit but the mindset still seems to be quite common. People expect a fair encounter 99% of the time, despite some of the most unfair encounters in gaming history still being winnable if you were skilled enough (there's a whole list of overpowered boss fights you were meant to lose that can still be beaten).

The question then becomes: how do you convince the players that this isn't one of those unbalanced moments, that they shouldn't default to trying to beat the encounter by any means necessary, that sticking around for the ultimate attack is probably not a good idea? DMs used to have a word for this -- Tarrasque. Yet even that word is meaningless now when lvl 13 parties are murdering these beasts.

Players are used to beating Vampires, Liches, Beholders, Mind Flayers, and unless it's one of these common tropes that they KNOW they don't have the levels or tools for then it seems quite difficult to convince them to flee without a TPK.

[Frozenstep]

In real life, the unknown is scary. In DnD, though, a lot of players have this trust that even if they have no idea what they're fighting, it'll be challenging but beatable in the worst case scenario. So I feel that flipping the situation around and using what players do know is a good way to make them nervous.

That doesn't mean using only the most common monsters. Instead, introduce a monster and let the party get a feel for it, in a winnable encounter. Later on, use their knowledge of how strong that creature to inform them just how outnumbered/outmanned they are. Party of 5 struggles to take down just 2 of X monster? Later on, reveal 20 of them.

Drain their resources. Even a fight that is fair and beatable normally starts making the party nervous when the spells they had earlier are running dry and they're trying to get a long rest but the situation isn't allowing it or they're being chased and interrupted in their rests. If they know how strong the enemy is, and know what their own resources look like, they'll be able to really make informed choices.

[MrStabby]

Consistency helps.

If you have a session 0 where you tell the players that sometimes they need to run but don't periodically demonstrate that then your session 0 will be forgotten by the time they hit level 13 and face half a dozen beholders.

Make victory less binary. It isn't win or lose, but what impact they had. If the players can retreat but they drained enough resources from the enemy then they bought time. If they can have acted as a diversionary attack success can be elsewhere. If it is a scouting mission and they return with information it is all worth while. Murder stuff that lives in dungeons and steal their life savings is a popular paradigm, and it is fun, but letting the PCs simultaneously retreat and "win" can encourage them to pull out.

[Bigmouth]

That doesn't mean using only the most common monsters. Instead, introduce a monster and let the party get a feel for it, in a winnable encounter. Later on, use their knowledge of how strong that creature to inform them just how outnumbered/outmanned they are. Party of 5 struggles to take down just 2 of X monster? Later on, reveal 20 of them.

Drain their resources. Even a fight that is fair and beatable normally starts making the party nervous when the spells they had earlier are running dry and they're trying to get a long rest but the situation isn't allowing it or they're being chased and interrupted in their rests. If they know how strong the enemy is, and know what their own resources look like, they'll be able to really make informed choices.

I find that even the newest of gamers understand numbers. As Frozenstep suggests, giving them a fight against a few of X monster sets them up for fearing when a bunch of that same monster looms. You can even do it in the same encounter. Fighting 2 or 3 of whatever gets a whole new feeling when you can see or hear the horde of reinforcements in the distance.

From my experience the worst people at not fearing things are people with a ton of game experience who simply 'know' the DM isn't going to throw unwinnable encounters at them. I typically try to counter that confidence by straight up telling the players in session zero that I absolutely will not fudge to save them if they choose to take on things that they darn well know they shouldn't. In game I will give hints and warnings to steer them from stupid encounters, but if they end up doing it anyway, then I let the dice do their job. Sometimes you have to have some character death before the players take things seriously. Generally doesn't take many, and the lesson follows into other campaigns.

If you're talking about fearing your Big Bad, definitely do NOT bring him/her out to talk to the party. It absolutely doesn't matter how tough/overpowered the Big Bad is, if you bring it out to talk smack and inspire fear, all you will generally accomplish is making your group pissed off. Do it often enough or obnoxiously enough and you can easily inspire the players into attacking. Nobody likes being bullied.

[DMThac0]

My Saturday group has run away from combat twice now, and I realized something, after the fact, which really helped me understand why.

The first reason is that, like video games, you, as DM, have complete control over how much, and what, information the players have. This information is extremely important when it comes to D&D, it must be given, and it can't be subtle. You want your players to know that the dungeon they're in is not meant to be explored right now because they're too low level, tell them. You want them to know that the monster they're fighting is almost invincible, tell them. You want them to know that they need a special item to accomplish and otherwise impossible task, tell them. Players cannot see the big picture, they're wearing horse blinders and have tunnel vision. This is, in part, due to how the DM funnels information to them, and in part because the players are focused on their goals and not the bigger issues you've hidden in the story arcs.

Giving this information to your players is not hard, and it's not going to ruin the game, it's also part of setting up for the second reason my players ran. As the players enter the dungeon that they shouldn't, put a gate keeper in front of them. Just like in many MMORPGs, put an obstacle in their path that shows them that they are not ready. If they cannot overcome this obstacle, a beefy creature, a door that needs specific items, an unreachable access point, they will have no choice but to turn around1. If they shouldn't hunt down an invincible monster, have NPCs tell them, have them find books that talk about the beast, show the destruction it has caused, reinforce the idea it's not a good idea. The biggest thing is to start simple, if they continue to work toward a thing they shouldn't, become more firm, if they decide to go ahead with the plan, have them see, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it's a bad idea. In the end, if they decide they still want to do this act, they reap their results, which could include a TPK.

Second reason is because, from the beginning, the idea of loss was real, seen, and felt. Players begin the game thinking they're superheroes who are invulnerable to anything but RNG, they need to see that they are vulnerable. When they start the game give them their tasks, their goals, heck even give them a free ride to level 3, but you need to show that they are vulnerable while you do it. Have them run with an NPC who is utterly destroyed by monsters, have them do a mission that has a timer and risk of failure with consequences2, have them run into a "mini-boss" early which sets them up for the main story arc. Players may hit 0 HP3, players will see that they failed their mission, the NPC can't be revived, all of these are signs of loss and vulnerability. They need to be met with the reality that their characters cannot do anything about the failure, even though they used all of their best ideas.

The players run into a battle feeling they can win every one, that everything is balanced. This is where you can also use the monsters to teach the players a lesson. Have your monsters run when the fight goes poorly, have them beg for mercy, show the players that combat is more than rolling a d20. The more you reinforce the idea that running, negotiating, and using something other than a sword or spell is just as acceptable, the more they'll start to see they can use it too. Have your BBEG look at the players and tell them to run, tell them to surrender, and if they don't, the BBEG may demolish them in the fight. Players need to learn that these are acceptable actions and there is no penalty for it4. This may take some time, it's a hard pill to swallow for many gamers, but once it's understood, you'll see a shift in play styles.

---
1Impossible acts need to be impossible. This means there are no rolls, there are no skill checks, there is no way to accomplish it. You cannot give the players false hope that, if they keep smashing at it with all their tools, they'll eventually overcome the obstacle.
2The consequences should happen even if they're victorious, but only in a minor way. They need to find an herb to stop an illness killing townsfolk. Even if they successfully find it, when they return have a few townsfolk dead. The couple dead NPCs will be a reminder that loss is real.
3Just because they hit 0 HP does not mean you have to TPK them. If they are demolished by the almost invincible monster, rather than TPK have them put in a prison, have wanderers pick them up and nurse them to health, it's a lesson at early levels. In later levels, death is real, you've given them the understanding that there is failure and loss.
4Reward the players for running or negotiating. Give them half xp, give them valuable information, have them find something that will help them the next time they're in that situation. The lack of positive reinforcement from running or surrendering is another reason players don't do it.

[Trickery]

My players had been murdering their way through my campaign, solving every problem by killing it. I scared the pants off my players by throwing an enemy at them that could not be killed. Damage? No effect. Saving throws? No effect. The creature had no type. The creature had no name. When they used a feature to try to determine its power, they got an empty void. It had eaten everything else in that dungeon, including the monsters the players thought they were coming to kill. And it was going to eat them, too.

You scare players by showing them something that doesn't fit. We fear what we don't understand.

Like the Joker said, nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying, nobody panics because it's all according to plan. But if you drop in one little thing that isn't part of the plan and doesn't fit with the rest of the world, everyone loses their minds.

[Zetakya]

I like foreshadowing. Cleric prays for his usual spell loadout? His Deity (metaphorically) taps him on the shoulder and says "Actually my son, you're going to want to have Remove Curse today.".

All of a sudden the party is a little bit less confident that they know what's coming.

[Cygnia]

If you trust them, ask your players to not emotionally no-sell (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoSell) beforehand.

Ended up doing that for a 7th Sea game I ran because I was bloody tired of Captain Wackypants telling inappropriate jokes All The Time while I was trying to set the mood before they delved into a haunted crypt.

[Laserlight]

My players have run from encounters they could have beaten. I show them a picture and don't tell them what the monster is.

Doing 80% of the raging barbarian's HP in one hit (Disintegrate, as I recall) also tends to get their attention. Or having the dragon pop up out of smoke and bam, the PCs are almost all down 50% and the NPCs are charcoal and the dragon drops into the smoke again and they know he's in there...somewhere...

[Mad_Saulot]

You need a few things in order to make horror effective:

Immersion: your players must feel bonded to their characters and have been able to demonstrate that they can act in character by default.

Invested: they must be invested in the story and care about what happens in the world and must have demonstrated compassion for NPCs.

Cohesion: they need to be reliant on each other as a party, and care about what happens to the other party members.

History: previous encounters cant have been horrors, horror as a theme is great but the more horrors you spring on them the less their reaction will be to it. I tend to throw a horror in every so often, rather than making it too regular ad therefor predictable.

As long as you have these things then your imagination is the limit.

[darknite]

The thing I find the most threatening when I know an opponent is powerful but have never encountered it before and have no ideas of what it's weaknesses are and not much time to experiment before I'm dead. Too many players know the MM inside and out, and as we all are aware, knowing is half the battle. Give them something new, unexpected and lethal. That will get their attention.

[deljzc]

It is also important to set up dungeons that sometimes allow them to SEE the encounter before it happens.

If every encounter is "Open a door and there are X monsters there, roll for surprise", then players will concentrate on combat tactics (round by round choices) rather than out of combat tactics (turn by turn choices).

If you are not presenting them with opportunities to learn how to scout and avoid strong monsters, then don't expect them suddenly change their tactics if you present them with a surprise impossible fight.

deljzc

[fbelanger]

Try aim to install fear into the character.

Players are immortal, they can relive through any character.
Hard to feel fear.
They will survive the end of the world!

[Rynjin]

We live in a world where gaming has become mainstream. Everyone has access to it through their phones and millions play the same MMO together. People have over time developed habits and skills that carry over from one game to another because of similar genre tropes and AAA games' refusal to do anything risky because of past bombs where they went too far in the cost cutting or rushed development without quality testing... We're left with gamers who have seen it all and default to being murderhobos or at the very least expecting that every confrontation is meant to be "balanced" and winnable.

Minor nitpick #1: Games do a lot of things because of playing it safe and such, but keeping the controls (in general) and habits (likewise) the same is not one of them. The relatively standardized control schemes of games these days is the equivalent to "cinematic language" in movies. It's the default because A.) it's what the player expects to see because it's so prevalent (so it's accessible) B.) Because there are only so many buttons the human hand can comfortably press, and C.) Because it makes any deviations from the norm more notable and impactful. If you, say, make R1/RT/Left Click your "turn on flashlight" button in what otherwise seems to be a standard FPS with standard FPS controls, it clues the player in that perhaps the shooter elements are not meant to be the primary focus of the game, even if they are present.


People expect a fair encounter 99% of the time, despite some of the most unfair encounters in gaming history still being winnable if you were skilled enough (there's a whole list of overpowered boss fights you were meant to lose that can still be beaten).

Minor nitpick #2: In those games you can respawn or at worst reload an earlier save/continue if you lose. Video games and TRPGs can share a lot, but some things will always be different.

But that also provides you the tool to accomplish your goal. Make sure players know that dying is, at best, a huuuuge pain in the ass. Resurrection magic is pretty hard to get access to, all things considered, and comes with heavy drawbacks. Less drawbacks in some ways than previous editions, but more in other ways.

Dying is going to be an ordeal, so should be avoided. That lesson is step 1.

Step 2, tell your players up front that they're playing a horror campaign, and that in horror, a lot of the drama comes from the protagonists being, at best, plucky underdogs (and at worst cannon fodder).

Step 3 happens on your end. Accept that you're playing D&D, and not Savage Worlds, or the Warhammer 40k Guardsmen RPG, or what have you. Death is a part of the game, but your players' characters are supposed to be larger than life figures and death should be a rare occurrence: which means they should only be afraid of larger than life terrors.

Michael Myers is a fun filler villain for them to take out, who might be scary at first as he picks off random NPCs one by one, but is a surprisingly easy threat to take down if they work together.

What should not be so simple or straightforward are the things you want them to be truly afraid of. Give them strange and otherworldly powers (permanent or semi-permanent status effects, things they can't just fight or save their way out of), and make sure to DESCRIBE THEM WELL ENOUGH TO BE SCARY.

Step 4: the way to make players afraid is to get them to buy in, and then reward that investment. Honestly you should still design your game so that any given challenge is surmountable; the players should never HAVE to run away. But you create the PERCEPTION that these threats are too much to handle, and they might back down. Or maybe they'll bite back their fear and push forward; they are heroes, after all.

One of my favorite campaigns I've run is a run through of Paizo's Carrion Crown AP, for Pathfinder, and all the terror comes froma combination of these factors; those descriptions, the eerie and unsettling appearance and abilities of the Mi-Go and Color Out of Space in book 4, the overwhelming might of the Aberrant Promethean in book 2 (a CR 11[!] creature fighting against an APL 6 party, that yes they ARE meant to overcome, with a lot of help from the allies they made along the way), the sheer physical brutality of the werewolves in book 3, the room full of Mimic Rogues in book 5, and last but CERTAINLY not least, the proliferation of Haunts and spectres in books 1 and 6, that require a whole different level of thinking to neutralize than simply attacking it until it dies.

Variety is the spice of life, and the best way to keep players off their footing as well.

[Maelynn]

Last year I made a special Halloween mini-campaign where the players were all level 1. What I noticed were good ways to get that Fear Factor going:

- unsettling things they encounter. Examples: 1) a ruby the size of a small egg, once one of the players picked it up the colour would drain out of the gem and into the hand (potion of healing, but then much creepier). 2) a little jack-in-the-box that, after playing its tune, would burst open to reveal a spring with at the end... a severed child's hand.

- know they're weak. This is easy to achieve at level 1, but at higher levels you could make this clear through various examples. Like a BBEG who doesn't go down and after fighting for a bit just ups and leaves the fight for whatever reason. Or encounters with NPCs who are obviously powerful, who speak in hushed words about monsters that seemed unharmed by their most powerful attacks and who chomped one of their comrades in half as if it were a hot dog.

- give them all a specific fear and then create situations where this fear would hinder them. This worked well partly because I had come up with a system using Sanity and having to make Fear saving throws, so I'm not sure how well it could work in a setting without it.

Another thing you could do is go the Stephen King direction and let the BBEG do a lot of little creepy things without the party getting to see it, so they're left wondering what the hell it is. This works best if you homebrew a monster that isn't easily looked up in the MM/Volo's/MToF.

[Rixitichil]

Optional: Tell your players in session zero that monsters in your setting will have different countermeasures to the ones they're used to. Troll regeneration won't be countered by fire and acid, but something else. Werewolves need different weapons to kill than silver. The players can find out through Knowledge rolls, consulting sages, chasing down rumours or experimentation.

That should get PCs in a mindset of backing off if they don't know how to hurt a particular foe.

[Zuras]

Optional: Tell your players in session zero that monsters in your setting will have different countermeasures to the ones they're used to. Troll regeneration won't be countered by fire and acid, but something else. Werewolves need different weapons to kill than silver. The players can find out through Knowledge rolls, consulting sages, chasing down rumours or experimentation.

That should get PCs in a mindset of backing off if they don't know how to hurt a particular foe.


The problem with homebrew monsters with different resistances is that they can seem pretty arbitrary and from the player perspective. Nobody wants victory to be contingent on making a single nature check, and taking information away from the players means the decisions they make are less meaningful.

Personally, I enjoy the tactical combat aspect of D&D and wouldn’t be interested in a D&D game where most enemies abilities are inscrutable but for the whims of the DM. If I’m in the mood for that sort of game, I’d prefer Call of Cthulhu.

The primary way I’ve seen of making players concerned for their characters’ mortality is getting them low on resources with legitimate reasons (to the players) they can’t rest. Players who feel they can potentially encounter unlimited groups of enemies, any single group of which they can defeat individually but who seem essentially unlimited, will actually get the players worried.

Once you have gotten the players to start asking the Plate Mail clad Fighter if their AC was worth getting the whole party killed by their clanking, you are on the right track.

[Hail Tempus]

Play Call of Cthulhu 😂

[Yakmala]

Usually I find a way to convey such information to the party, either through an NPC or by other means.

I'll give two examples from the Storm King's Thunder campaign I ran. Spoilers to follow...

...

When in the Temple of the Giants in the North, the party had Harshnag accompanying them. As they exited the Oracle room, Iymirth entered the main Temple room, in Storm Giant form. This was the party's first encounter with her, so they had no idea who she was or that the giant they were seeing was not in her true form. This was an encounter they were not prepared for, and one they were not supposed to attempt. Harshnag, on the other hand, knew immediately who and what they were facing, turned to the party and said one word.. "Run!" As Harshnag himself was a powerful NPC, all but one of the party took the hint immediately and cleared out at the fastest speed possible. One plucky (dumb) fighter insisted upon sticking around. Harshnag warned him again "Get out of here, you're going to die!" the fighter insisted that whatever it was he was worried about, together, they could overcome it. Harshnag warned the fighter a third time and was ignored. Then Iymirth turned into an Ancient Blue Dragon and one-shot the fighter with her lightning breath. The rest of the party refused to attempt to recover his corpse.

While rescuing King Hekaton from the deck of a cultist ship, one of the cultists triggered a device below decks that rhythmically pounded on the hull with a log. It's important to note that at this point, the party did not know who the cultists were associated with. One of the characters in the group was a Great Old One Warlock. I told her that she was getting a funny feeling, as if her Patron was getting apprehensive about the approach of some rival otherworldly power. That was all the hint the party needed to gather around King Hekaton, blow the conch shell, and teleport out before the Kraken arrived to destroy the ship and everyone near it.

[Kyutaru]

I've read through all of these suggestions and appreciate them all. Using a Gandalf, telling them the attacks have no effect, making the monster do creepy stuff, letting them watch it murder everything before they engage it, divine omens, horror descriptions of not found in the monster manual, swarms of elite things, or even just consistency in the need to run from these things especially when more show up.

I'll come up with some ways to implement these ideas.

[Tawmis]

The thing I find the most threatening when I know an opponent is powerful but have never encountered it before and have no ideas of what it's weaknesses are and not much time to experiment before I'm dead. Too many players know the MM inside and out, and as we all are aware, knowing is half the battle. Give them something new, unexpected and lethal. That will get their attention.

And feel free to mix it up.

Throw trolls at them - and the party (and the players, no doubt) throw fire at it. Which does normal damage, but heals. Which is not expected behavior from trolls.
You change the thing that hurts them to something else (silver weapons or lightning damage).
Suddenly they (as players) realize - you're taking the Monster Manual and crafting monsters and reskinning them as something else.
Everything they know is now out the window.

And the next time they encounter trolls, they might use a silver weapon, and find it heals. And then realize, these trolls might need fire to really damage them!
(And what if that doesn't damage them, but it's only lightning damage!)

To me, the Monster Manual is the "foundation" - but just like cats - there's varieties! You have your house cat, you have a bob cat, you have a cheetah, you have a lion, you have a tiger, you have a panther, you have a Displacer Beast... You get where I am going with this.

[FabulousFizban]

water. [:<

[BloodSnake'sCha]

You kidnap their children
Bleeding is bad, you need to install fear into the character not the player.

Give the smart one a chack to see if he know the creature they are facing.
On a success tell him that he want to run away at full speed.

Tell the barbarian his danger sense tells him to run, that this fight is so stupid that he will not get to Valhalla because it is suicide.

Tell the fighter that from the enemy stance and movement he know he can not keep out with it.

Give them an endless swarm of enemies, they will run in the end.

Remember that XP is for solving the encounter(unless I am confusing with 3.5e rules for XP), running is a solution.

[Bjarkmundur]

I'm all for surprises, but I'm strictly against changing monsters JUST to mess with the players. I play with a lot of casual or first time players. This means that it's my job to set the norm, if they get hooked and start playing elsewhere. Teaching my players how trolls work, for example, is important 'common knowledge' to teach a player. I want a player to adventure for 5 levels, and feel like both he and his character have grown as adventurers in that time.

I don't look at it as "installing fear" but more like "immersing the player past the point of no return". If a player is so emotionally invested in the story he starts using "I" instead of "My Character", everything you describe as DM becomes REAL.

The first thing I make absolutely clear is that impossible actions are impossible, and consequences happen based on actions, not dice. A player describes his approach and desired outcome when faced with an obstacle, and has to wait for my response before gameplay continues. This means that no dice are rolled until the narrative has been set. This method of narrative first, rolls second, means the players don't reach for their dice right away, but instead look for narrative solutions first. This means that if a boulder falls ontop of a player and crushes him, and I don't ask for any rolls, that is exactly what happens. If a poison dart hits a player and knocks him out, that's exactly what happens. If a player tries to convince a king to give him money, I decide if it requires a charisma check, if it fails or if it succeeds. Introducing this in the first two sessions, that some things just happen, really hammers it home that consequences come from actions taken, not from dice rolled. I usually introduce this using the "Click Rule", and work my way from there. I've noticed that this approach creates good players with habits that other DMs will enjoy playing with, and really gets people invested.

From there, I start foreshadowing. Players knowing that things can happen without being buffered by luck makes everything matter. A child's laughter coming from the end of a tunnel in a dungeon suddenly becomes scary. A rock falling from a vertical shaft, and the sounds of quick footsteps from an unseen source really gets people on edge, since they know not everything comes down to dex and con saves.

The second and third thing I do are rules variant, so this might not be the post for it. But if you're interested, I'll put it in a spoiler, to try to keep the thread on topic.


Hit Points
Hit points at level 1 are doubled, hit points increased when gaining a level is halved. Explaining this houserule to my players immediately makes them believe that early on they have some freedom to make mistakes, but are more punished for making mistakes later on. This gives them time to settle, and ramps up tension as time goes on. They know that at a certain level (after level 5) they are BEHIND the 'balance curve' of the game. It's a sort of overall timer, that gives a feeling of impending doom. Like, the more you level, the more you fall behind 'expected' hit point values, which means you are less and less likely to survive another level. Sure, you can brute-force your way through the first 5 levels, but after that, you have to start acting tactically. To counteract some of this I always reward bravery and educated leaps of faith. No-one likes to play with a group of timid adventurers.

Dying
The dying condition no longer makes you unconscious. This ups the tension by a ton, since now the player has to ACTIVELY fight for his life. This also gives me more freedom to down players without having to make the goblins 'suddenly stop attacking you' once they are down. Attacking a player who's at 0 but didn't manages to run to cover makes much more sense to the player than a coup de grace from a rust monster. Hits still make you fail death saving throws, so this doesn't really make a character more durable, it just makes the experience of dying more engaging. And boy to players start thinking when they play with only 1 death saving throw left. Like before, I make sure that this applies to combat death only. Narrative deaths don't use combat rules. Oh yeah, and death saving throws reset after a long rest, so no yoyo-ing. You can only be beaten into a pulp so many times within a certain timespan before your body just gives in.

Breathers, Short Rests and Long Rests
- Breather is a 10 minute period that allows player to spend hit dice, but not recover any abilities.
- Short Rests is "meal time", meaning you get 2 (or 3, based on the campaign) per day and each takes an hour.
- Long Rest is a full day's rest from adventuring in a safe environment
I also specify that combat makes noise, so taking a rest where you just had a battle guarantees a random encounter. This means that after a combat, the players have to keep moving. A short rest in a hostile environment might also result in a random encounter. Short rests are a limited resource, and long rests are not accessible unless the story includes downtime. This all helps the story flow and keep players immersed.

[sakuuya]

Also, be sure to let fleeing actually work. Pretty much any monster that a party should run away will be faster than that party, so figure out reasons why the monster will let them escape the fight. Maybe it's guarding its nest, maybe it's magically bound to a certain location, maybe there's a way for the PCs to get out that it can't fit into, maybe it's so much stronger than the PCs that it doesn't register them as a threat worth pursuing, etc.

If escape is a false option, the lesson players will take away is "We're either going to die fighting or fleeing, so we may as well go for a heroic last stand and hope we get lucky."

[Damon_Tor]

I ran a campaign that was meant to model trench warfare with ~5th level casters replacing the artillery. As such I wanted it to be lethal and terrifying. I told my players to bring three first-level characters to the first session, write only a bare minimum backstory for each of them, and to not get too attached.

In the first round of combat three PCs died to fireballs fired into randomly selected locations. There was nothing they could have done differently, they made no mistakes. They just died because their number was up: welcome to the trenches. The fireballs continued for two more rounds then stopped: they stopped because the enemy instead started to launch Skeleton Bombs behind their lines, bags of holding filled with skeletons rigged to forcefully invert on impact.

As the enemy forces advanced on the devastated defenses and skeletons advancing from the rear, the PCs had no good options but to hide until it was over. One of the allied 5th level wizard NPCs (now dead) had dug out a mostly-habitable bunker for himself below his artillery mound: the PCs hid inside and collapsed the entrance, determined to wait until the battle was over and the fighting had passed them by.

This set the tone for the rest of the campaign. After that first battle the game quickly became a more typical dungeon crawler with more standard encounters, but the trauma of that first battle seemed to stay with them.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Fear is simple. Fear comes from the threat of loss. It gets your blood pumping, your mind racing, your heart beating. Players ought to feel it in every game they play, and D&D is weaker when fear is missing. All you have to do is make sure that your challenges have a realistic, presented chance of loss and failure in order to give your players fear. The tighter those odds, the more fear they will feel.

Terror is different. Terror comes from recognizing the unfathomable, either as a vast thing that you can't grasp, or something so horrible that you don't want to. It's anxiety, uncertainty, and unease. Not every game needs terror. But it's a powerful motivator, and can elevate the right sort of game.

You give them terror by giving details that aren't normal, and then not explaining them outright.

You give them terror by letting them discover how small they are in relation to the world.

You give them terror by slowly disassembling everything they ever thought they knew.

The easiest way to do this in a game is to give them incentives to go down a path that is ultimately fraught with horrors, with terrible things happening suddenly, and moments when the fear suddenly gets ratcheted up with more tangible threats. Make it appear, after a point, that remaining on this path will only get worse. And then, when they get off the tracks?

Show them that the wilderness is far worse.

[Tawmis]

I'm all for surprises, but I'm strictly against changing monsters JUST to mess with the players. I play with a lot of casual or first time players. This means that it's my job to set the norm, if they get hooked and start playing elsewhere. Teaching my players how trolls work, for example, is important 'common knowledge' to teach a player. I want a player to adventure for 5 levels, and feel like both he and his character have grown as adventurers in that time.


The way I see it, fantasy has shown us - using my trolls example - that everything varies. Some tales speak of trolls who live under a bridge, Tolkien taught us that trolls turn to stone if exposed to sunlight.

So I must ask, in the case that they've faced Gnolls from the MM, you wouldn't use the Gnoll Flind, Gnoll Flesh Gnawer, or Gnoll Withering later - all of which are found Volo's Guide, and while Gnolls, are quite different in terms of AC and things they can do... Just because they 'learned as common knowledge' what Monster Manual Gnolls are? Or would those be OK, just because they're in Volo's guide and not the DM's own creation? Trying to find the difference. :smallconfused: :smallwink:

[ImperiousLeader]

I giggle and ask the player, "Are you sure?"

[Edwin Briar]

Maybe this is a bit more of an anecdote, it was in a different system than D&D and pretty much only applied to me (as I was the only one who paused to think about it).

The best way to instill fear is by showing them with subtle hints how they are moving towards their own probable demise. The prerequisite for this is that the players don't treat the game like a combat simulator with fluff and are actually engaged in the story.

And now to the anecdote:

Once my adventuring party was hired to accompany a cleric of the god of sleep and death to bless a graveyard in a land that was not too long ago controlled by necromancers.
Before departing we were given some notes of the necromancers detailing the history of the place we were going to. The important part was, that they used the graveyard pretty much as a storage for corpses to grow their armies and that they previously had problems with Ghouls raiding it to feast on the corpses, until they "solved the problem". Important to say here is that Ghouls in this world aren't undead, but simply humanoids suffering from a magical sickness that alters them to become nocturnal corpse feeders.
On the way to the town we stumbled upon a cart loaded with corpses (meant to be delivered to the temple we were coming from to receive their final rest there) that was besieged by a group of ghouls, with the driver hiding underneath the cart. We were in a shadowy forest, but it wasn't night yet, so I was a bit irritated. After a moment the group of Ghouls noticed us and welcomed us with a bloodcurdling scream that could be heard from miles. Afterwards all of them attacked us...except for one. This one was an especially big and fat specimen with a shovel, who simply was picking up corpse parts and stowing them away in a skin pouch on its back. After a fight we were able to slay these creatures and later we arrived at our destination, a small town close to the graveyard the cleric was supposed to bless. The inhabitants looked sickly and slightly malformed, but at first we chalked it up as a cause of the malnourishment pretty much seen in the entire area. An inspection of the graveyard showed, that it was in a surprisingly good state. The cleric would need 3 days to bless it as this place was desecrated by the necromancers, so that he needed to create a connection to his god in this unholy place and so we had time to rest...and think (something only I did as it seemed).

And this is pretty much all you need to give the players to make them paranoid at least...if they put the pieces together.

At first I thought after meeting the ghouls in the forest, that whatever the necromancers did stopped working as they were clearly roaming the land, but after seeing the state of the graveyard I understood that it was still working, whatever it was and that blessing the graveyard would probably cancel it out, as it was based on the powers of the necromancers, which are the complete opposite of the clerics. So the obvious result would be, that after the blessing the Ghouls (which as stated aren't undead and so not affected by it) would all be drawn to the graveyard as the buffet was opened for them and the town would be overrun as well. This is the first stage one might come to, but the forest encounter also revealed together with this something else. The Ghouls digged underground and there are a lot of them....the fat ghoul was carrying a shovel, but a shovel on a raid targeting a cart has limited use compared to a wooden club. Also it was gathering corpses different from the others of its kind, which were feasting on them. This means it was gathering provisions for others. It was also unlikely that the shadowy forest was their territory as their screams would have otherwise lured the rest of them to us. So if the forest wasn't their lair,how did they get there? In the night? Likely, but why? Ghouls aren't as dumb as they might seem, as they are clearly smart enough to forage and use tools, but planning an ambush on a cart they couldn't know was coming is more than unlikely. A more likely scenario is, that they were digging underground and heard the cart passing by above their heads. This might seem like a minor deatail, but actually added a layer of dread, as it added an additional dimension from where they could attack..and that was underneath us, which in fact is worse than from above as we couldn't see them coming no matter how much light we would make.

The best solution probably would have been to kill the cleric in secret (as I could neither convince my party members nor him to abandon the blessing of the graveyard) and leave afterwards, hoping the temple we came from would give up on this task. Of course it did not go this way and we met what was keeping the Ghouls away...the altered skeleton of a lesser dragon kind that had the magical trait of stench....stench that was so strong, that it even kept the corpse feeders (who had actually a very strong sense of smell) away. The alteration to it was vessel inside of it, containing another undead. To be specific an undead dragon tapeworm. These tapeworms feast on magic, usually the one of the dragon carrying it inside, but as it clearly couldn't feast on its host it was feasting on something else. And that was the final piece (I thought)...it was absorbing the magic of its surrounding, keeping the villagers from transforming as most of them were afflicted.

I could say that it did not end in a sieging scenario with us praying for the rays of the sun as the party was clearly smart enough to finally accept the hypothesis of mine as fact and leave right away and not join the celebrations after the slaying of the undead monster and the blessing....
BUT THAT WOULD BE A LIE! ALL BUT ONE NPC DIED AND I HAD NIGHTMARES FOR MONTHS ON END AFTER THE 65 FOOT HIGH PILLAR OF FUSED TOGETHER FLESH SHOT OUT FROM THE GROUND AND DEVOURED IN ONE BITE THE 12 FEET HIGH GHOUL WE WERE STRUGGLING WITH, CAUSING US TO FLEE THROUGH THE ABANDONED NECROPOLIS THAT WAS ACTUALLY THE LAIR OF THE GHOULS AND A LABYRINTH TO BOOT. OUR ONLY LUCK WAS THAT THEY WERE ABOVE THE GROUND FEASTING ON CORPSES AND THE LIVING ALIKE, WHILE WE WERE LOOKING FOR AN EXIT (which we found).

Phew...that was a lot...but if nothing else the length of this should at least show how this adventure burned itself into my memory and be a testament to the fear it made me feel.

[Bjarkmundur]

The way I see it, fantasy has shown us - using my trolls example - that everything varies. Some tales speak of trolls who live under a bridge, Tolkien taught us that trolls turn to stone if exposed to sunlight.

So I must ask, in the case that they've faced Gnolls from the MM, you wouldn't use the Gnoll Flind, Gnoll Flesh Gnawer, or Gnoll Withering later - all of which are found Volo's Guide, and while Gnolls, are quite different in terms of AC and things they can do... Just because they 'learned as common knowledge' what Monster Manual Gnolls are? Or would those be OK, just because they're in Volo's guide and not the DM's own creation? Trying to find the difference. :smallconfused: :smallwink:

Yeah, you got me :S
After some amount of self-reflection, I realized my opinion comes from one bad session involving a "custom dragon" many years ago. I guess I'm just still bitter that for some of the other players that thing we fought was their first exposure to fighting a dragon as the hero of a story. I would've been OK with it if the novice DM at the time had some creative reasons for the changes he made, or a rich backstory or relevance to the plot. But no. It was awful, and it was terrible to see the creature that I usually spend MONTHS creating an aura of terror and mystery around to be introduced and dealt with within an hour. So, guess you can call it an illogical pet peeve?
I now know that it's unresonable and illogical, and I'll try to remember that in the future. More good things come out of creatively changing the norm than bad, and campaigns wouldn't nearly be as enjoyable if there was nothing more to learn, explore or experience.

Just, make sure your player know afterwards if you changed a monster, so he doesn't start assuming things. If your hags are nice, make sure the player knows hags are usually evil, just so he won't make the wrong assumption in another game...

... Scratch that, I'd love to have a player SUPER excited about meeting and conversing with a hag. xD

[Tawmis]

Yeah, you got me :S
After some amount of self-reflection, I realized my opinion comes from one bad session involving a "custom dragon" many years ago. I guess I'm just still bitter that for some of the other players that thing we fought was their first exposure to fighting a dragon as the hero of a story. I would've been OK with it if the novice DM at the time had some creative reasons for the changes he made, or a rich backstory or relevance to the plot. But no. It was awful, and it was terrible to see the creature that I usually spend MONTHS creating an aura of terror and mystery around to be introduced and dealt with within an hour. So, guess you can call it an illogical pet peeve?
I now know that it's unresonable and illogical, and I'll try to remember that in the future. More good things come out of creatively changing the norm than bad, and campaigns wouldn't nearly be as enjoyable if there was nothing more to learn, explore or experience.
Just, make sure your player know afterwards if you changed a monster, so he doesn't start assuming things. If your hags are nice, make sure the player knows hags are usually evil, just so he won't make the wrong assumption in another game...
... Scratch that, I'd love to have a player SUPER excited about meeting and conversing with a hag. xD

To be clear though - I also do understand where you were coming from. After all, if you as a DM throw a troll at them where it's silver weapons that hurt them (through some process of evolution, or maybe because these trolls live in a volcano area, it's natural that they developed an immunity or resistance to fire, but a weakness to something else) - if those players are new to D&D, they may go to another DM's session and be like, "What do you mean fire hurts them? In the campaign I played in, they were even resistant to fire because they lived in a volcano cave!" (But even Morden's Book o' Foes has several versions of trolls - such as Dire Trolls, Rot Troll, Venom Troll, and Spirit Troll)... But yes, I'd say telling them after the game, out of character, that these were custom trolls that took refuge in this cavern long ago, fleeing from some war, and over time, developed a resistance to fire, but the chemicals from the smoke and ash and other elements from the volcano, had over time, made them weak to silver weapons (sticking with my same example).

And it's funny you mention a hag - my group at work I DM'ed for, took down a (Green) Hag way too easily... so now I am working on an idea that the Coven she belonged to is going after the party to seek revenge...

[djreynolds]

The game is all about resources. Make resting tougher.

Leomund's Tiny Hut can be dispelled, by a high enough caster. It can be cheesy, but its an effective way so players cannot just power through everything.

I found in OotA that the presence of the drow hunting party helped to press the party along because they were incapable of defeating drow for some levels. So you can have a hounding adversary after them.

[KorvinStarmast]

How do you instill fear into gamers?


Flood the basement.
Leave some piles of dog poop around and stick polyhedral dice into them so that it looks like the dog at the dice bage.
Close the nearby pizza shop.
Ban sodas and chips from your house.

[Segev]

From the OP, it's less that you wish to instill fear (which is a matter of atmosphere) and more that you wish to instill a sense of caution and threat assessment. Fortunately, 5e provides you with some safety net to give them the information they need: as long as your monster can't do the target character's maximum hp in a single blow, you can have it smack their tank so hard that he KOs early. This amount of damage output will usually signal "you're not ready for this" to the players, and the goal becomes grabbing their ally and getting out of there while he recovers. If they find this thing again, they'll likely withdraw, unless and until they've leveled up a lot.

If you want them to decide to withdraw without so much as engaging, without knowing what the enemy is really capable of, you have to provide evidence of its danger level. This works best with creatures that have weird abilities, particularly save-or-suck types. Yellow Musk Zombies and nearby yellow flowers will usually get PCs edging away. Stone statues haphazardly scattered about, particularly if they look aggressive or afraid, makes them worry about basilisks, medusas, gorgons, or cockatrices. Things that are particularly big or which announce their presence with noise long before they're seen also can cause some players to choose caution over predatory instinct.