Horror D&D help

[Famine]

I need help with a horror campaign i'm developing , It starts off really nicely with the Pc's helping this girl who was tortured find rest, but i don't know where to go from there.
They were supposed to be going to this big city for a festival but I don't know how to make it creepy, or what to do after the festival, DM writers block if you will, i've been using heroes of horror, it has good ideas but nothing that adds actual story elements

TL;DR I want the entire campagin to be creepy as F but i'm having trouble with ideas after the 1st adventure

i'm looking for creepy stuff to do that leads to other creepy stuff help please god help

[Ridureyu]

*lights flashlight under chin*

Let me tell you the story... OF THE D20 THAT NEVER ROLLED ABOVE A 5!


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Maerok]

Details, details, details when describing a situation.

Pick and choose only a very small handful of things and invert their most intrinsic property. The more specific and otherwise unsuspected change, the better.

I think that strange items are perhaps one of the most forceful sources of ambiance. You take it everywhere you go, but you're not always aware of what it does exactly. Instead of wielding normal items, have their gear warped in the festival to do strange things. Things get personal when you taint the fighter's favorite sword to morph it into a flesh-like weapon (either in description or by giving it weird abilities property-wise).

[Jayngfet]

Ghosts of the dead, flying high above the city. If you're quiet enough you can hear them moaning or whispering to each other.

[RTGoodman]

As Maerok said, description is your friend. But don't just tell your PCs what they SEE - tell them what the dank corridor SMELLS like, what the floor of living flesh FEELS like as they walk across it, and such.

[SilentNight]

Festival=evil clowns. Nothing in the world is more scary.

[Maerok]

Screw with space and time.

Surround them. Isolate them.

Replace them with impostors until only one PC remains in the 'party' and even the other players, as doppelgangers, don't know it. Or, make them all impostors and see how long it lasts before they notice. Then the real 'party' kills them off and the adventure continues.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Everything is in details that evoke the atmosphere you want. Rules should only peripherally come into it. Carnival in a strange city is a perfect setting. Make sure the celebration starts at night, with bonfires and torches throwing a weak, flickering glow over throngs of masked revelers. Be sure to note that the masks are invariably grotesque, with lewd grins, bulging faces and whatever else you can think of. Mention that people are packing into a plaza to perform a bizarre, bachanalian dance that looks utterly out of control. Weird smells drift out of alleyways and people hoot and caw from behind their masks in a weird language. If the PCs have a guide, have him assure them that the celebration is perfectly normal, but keep dropping ominous hints that the revelers are out of control/senseless and liable to do anything.

Never call a monster by name. Even if it's a low-level mob like Ghouls, just describe it--"an emaciated, beastially hunched figure with fishbelly pale skin, the stink of mud and death surrounding it as it flexes blood-encrusted jaws and lunges at you with catlike speed," and so-on. Don't tell the PCs like "this monster is just about dead," and even when its attacks miss don't tell them by how much, but say things like "its yellow, dirt-spotted claws rake the air just past your face, forcing you back as it presses closer and closer."

That said, don't do the above every single round of combat, or it will just get annoying. Save it for early on in the encounter and give disquieting details like "the thing doesn't seem to notice the deep dash cut in its side" every so often.

Hope that helps.

[An Enemy Spy]

Describe in painstaking detail how the girl was tortured. Make it so horrible that death would be a welcome repreive

[Maerok]

Yeah, the carnival should start out normal and slowly people start to go mad, believing that they are the creatures that their masks represent and then actually gaining the powers of those creatures. They awaken the avatar of a dark god who can only be slain by the powers of the mask of the White Knight, for instance. Hell, I could write an adventure off that now.

Additionally, have a sound effect that reoccurs whenever the party is about to get screwed over. The dry laughter of the cloaked villain, the sound of a wand of demonic might charging up, the unique shuffling footsteps of the overly powerful lackey sent out to strangle the party members on several occasions and was thought dead after falling out of a building.

ALSO: Knee-deep water in the sewer, creatures in the water. Uggh, hate water-based levels.

[Jayngfet]

Or make it a perfectly normal fair, except monsters are also there, wearing masks of themselves. They're powerful enough to not take the PC's seriously, barely noticing them.

[Blue Warlock]

To scare my PCs I find out what terrifies them in real life, and find a way to insert it into my games. I found one of my players blogs, and she was talking about what happened in her dreams and nightmares and stuff in it, and I totally used the material in the zombie apocalypse game I'm running.
One of my other players is afraid of albino twins, particularly children. I made them do horrible things with a fun naivety that made the guy tell me to stop the session cause it was freaking him out to much.
Yeah, find out what terrifies your players, once you get inside their heads its all as good as gold. I still cackle when I remember how my players freaked out. Learn their secrets. SMELL THEIR FEAR.

[The Glyphstone]

Do a search on this forum for Silverclawshift (I think I spelled it right)'s campaign diary. That man's DM knew how to run a horror game...

[Maerok]

To scare my PCs I find out what terrifies them in real life, and find a way to insert it into my games. I found one of my players blogs, and she was talking about what happened in her dreams and nightmares and stuff in it, and I totally used the material in the zombie apocalypse game I'm running.
One of my other players is afraid of albino twins, particularly children. I made them do horrible things with a fun naivety that made the guy tell me to stop the session cause it was freaking him out to much.
Yeah, find out what terrifies your players, once you get inside their heads its all as good as gold. I still cackle when I remember how my players freaked out. Learn their secrets. SMELL THEIR FEAR.

Consult significant others. Might trade information for videotape of responses.

[Brewdude]

Proper horror requires that the festival is being used to perform a ritual that, if successful, will summon something the players can't handle.
Have the NPC's who know what's going on and want to stop it invariably go insane after they a)give the information they know and b)tell them they are going to do one last bit of investigation and get back to them.

Oh wait, that's lovecraft.

[Kris Strife]

Screw with space and time.

Surround them. Isolate them.

Replace them with impostors until only one PC remains in the 'party' and even the other players, as doppelgangers, don't know it. Or, make them all impostors and see how long it lasts before they notice. Then the real 'party' kills them off and the adventure continues.

Have them fight themselves and then find out that they're the doppelgangers when they don't bleed or change back when dead.

[Maerok]

Oooh, oohh. Summon Hastur! Summon Hastur! Yeah, do it! Summon Hast- GLORTCH!

[Raging Gene Ray]

Festival=evil clowns. Nothing in the world is more scary.

Make them Pseudonatural clowns, too...Killer Klowns from Outer Space!!!

Never call a monster by name. Even if it's a low-level mob like Ghouls, just describe it--"an emaciated, beastially hunched figure with fishbelly pale skin, the stink of mud and death surrounding it as it flexes blood-encrusted jaws and lunges at you with catlike speed," and so-on. Don't tell the PCs like "this monster is just about dead," and even when its attacks miss don't tell them by how much, but say things like "its yellow, dirt-spotted claws rake the air just past your face, forcing you back as it presses closer and closer."

Yeah, go for this. Being without metagaming powers can make them nervous. My DM does the exact same thing. It might not hurt to give your monsters a few homebrew abilities...nothing gamebreaking, but just enough to make the party doubt everything they thought they knew about the Monster Manuals (or Fiend Folios or wherever your monsters normally come from).

[Kris Strife]

Any corpses dissapear as soon as the PCs turn around.

[mabriss lethe]

I'd second the carnival of monsters idea, instead of monsters wearing masks of themselves, try this.

have them first appear to be normal revellers, but there's just something "not right" about the way they move and dance, as if they're fighting against the confines of their own skin, then at the stroke of midnight, the pop of some macguffin, or what-have-you... They suddenly transform. The illusion shatters and you realize that you're looking at a horde of fiends wearing extremely lifelike human masks. If they get a chance at a closer examination of one of the masks, they realize that it's someone's still living face, and the unattended mask might twitch of it's own accord, cringe and wail or might just be able to drop some garbled clue to the PCs.

For extended creepy value, have the mask be the face of someone they know. And the mask, in turn, recognizes them.

[SurlySeraph]

If you need an inexhaustible supply of scary things that can happen, use this thread.

[Thurbane]

There are at least two flavours of scary clowns in 3.5:

Grey Jester (Heroes of Horror)



Taunting Haunt (Monster Manual V)

[Yukitsu]

Am I the only one that finds them adorable?

[Kris Strife]

Am I the only one that finds them adorable?

Yes you are. And Surley, I hate you for posting that link in the middle of the night.

[VerdugoExplode]

There are a few suggestions I can give.

First off, play some silent hill 2. It stands as a landmark of horror game play and excellent storytelling which should give you at least a few points of inspiration.

The second, based off the first, is to engineer the game so that the pc's often feel lonely and out of their depth. The problems I've heard about in other games tend to revolve around the "it has stats so we can kill it" mentality that tends to permeate the usual D&D session. In my group I could probably plop down the terrasque and all I would hear from the pc's would be "Think about how much xp we would get if we kill it." If you only give vague descriptions of a creature based on fleeting glimpses the characters get you can let their own imaginations begin to fill in the details. You could be describing something as humanoid, covered in blood, standing like a feral animal and exuding an aura of oppressive malice and hatred and be describing a normal human, a human off his meds but an average human nonetheless.

In regards to helplessness fighting against something so massively powerful and sinister that the PC's can only try to stop it's agents would be a workable scenario. Something along the lines of your average Call of Cthulhu game where their lives are threatened on a regular basis. If you decide to go with this route I advise a bit of caution as constantly losing fights, or even just barely winning them can wear thin after awhile if this isn't the type of game your players are used to.

Also fog. Fog makes everything scarier.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

This is aimed at computer games, but the conceptual stuff is still meaningful, even if the mechanics don't always work. I highly recommend it.

[Gerion]

This works more with a dungeon/old house/ruin or something indoor.

Don't give them a map. Never (for combat eventually), but never never get them a hint where they are or how they get out again. only what they remember...
and shifting corridors are great when they shift as you don't notice.

Oh and the players have pen and paper, but which of their charakters? No map drawing on their own.
Than you can add some scarry monster using the hints in the other posts and finish.

On my account I really really hate orphanages or madhouses. Abbandoned, but just not so abbandoned as it seems..........
If you ever played Thief 3 you know wich level i'm reffering to....

[Neithan]

Everyone hates and loves it.

Hi Gerion, "Jora" here. ;)

[AslanCross]

As has been mentioned, Horror is about the details. You don't have to make the PCs fight everything they find. Some of them could simply be fleeting things that the PCs catch out of the corner of their eyes. An example could be the ghost babies in Silent Hill's elementary school. You just hear a baby crying and see a little shadow crawling by on the floor and just vanishing. Things like that.

Festivals have much potential to be creepy. Maybe all of them build effigies that the children set on fire outside their homes, or the festival involves dousing all the lights and everybody marching slowly around the city in grotesque masks with torches without doing anything else, or music that sounds like it's playing backward. Basically, take something normal, and make it wrong.

[Bryn]

Do not show the details too early. A monster you can see is much less scary than a monster you cannot. Play up the fear of the unknown. Make things difficult to see - there are shadows everywhere, and the players cannot see the monster. Do it well, and their imagination will create things that are significantly scarier than anything you describe outright.

Gore is not the same as horror! A few, well-placed details can be a lot more terrifying than a long description of blood and guts. A single, severed hand in an otherwise empty room could be a lot more terrifying than the same room being full of big piles of blood and guts.

Build up tension slowly. Don't allow the players to see the monsters until they're thorughly terrified already. A good build-up is key. Drop hints that something isn't right but don't start with combat or with the players being chased by the monsters.

Make the encounters unwinnable and lethal, but make it clear that the players aren't expected to win and give them a few chances to get away. However, don't set up an encounter to make it look winnable and then kill off the players, because this will make them angry rather than scared. Make it clear in advance that you're planning to run a lethal game.

Try to avoid over-familiar horror tropes. Zombies and vampires, for example are too familiar with people now to be effective without changing some things. You don't want the monster to be really identifiable. If you know much about what your players are scared of, use those to inspire your descriptions.

Atmosphere is everything. Avoid jokes at the table if you want it to be scary - the game won't work without the cooperation of the players, with horror more than anything. Avoid distractions - try to play in a place without them. Avoid interruptions.

I've never actually run a successful horror game - it wouldn't really work with my group, to be honest. This is just what I get from various articles around the internet. I hope it helps!

(Also, watch Alien for an excellent example of horror done right. You'll see that it spends a long time build up tension and keeps sightings of the xenomorph to glimpses of just small parts of it. It's also a really good movie.)