I'm working on a horror-themed module and mentioned it on another thread. James Jacobs pointed out how hard it is to write a good horror adventure, which got me thinking, "What scares most D&D gamers?" I mean the whole concept of fighting horrible monsters that want to eat you (or worse!) should be frightening in itself, but most of us gamers are hardened to that by now.
I'll admit that I get freaked out in the dark. I wake up at least 2 - 3 times each night with the feeling that someone is in my bedroom. I guess I read too many horror novels and watch too many scary movies. Other themes that give me the creeps include complete isolation and incomprehensible alien beings.
So what scares YOU?
Level draining used to do it, but now the odds that a character loses a level and can't get it back are a lot less.
From my experience, Gorillians with their four attacks and multiple possible rend attacks always have my players pacing around the table. Anything that can take a character belor -10 in a single hit, or that continues to hurt a PC once they are unconscious will have the players fearing for their characters.
I think that there are no monsters that are scary, it is all about what the monsters do. I think there used to be a horror score in the Ravenloft campaign that allowed monsters to be scary, but now it all comes down to making a fear Wil Save or running away.
But whan players think that if they make the wrong choice, or that if their dice fail on "This one roll" that their character is going below -10. That is when they are scared.
I don't think standard movie type horror works well in D&D. I've seen Frankenstein, The Thing, Dracula, and various others done as adventures, but they just don't really capture the horror feel since players can get up and go for a soda at a climatic action they aren't really scary
I think it is real hard to make the players feel the character's fear.
ASEO out
So what scares YOU?
My mother-in-law! :D
But that probably doesn't help you any. ;)
There is only one thought that actually scares me. The horrific and sudden death of someone I love.
Smiling at each other only moments before and then (SHICK) decapitation. Brutal swiftness... the screaming... winning that cosmic horror lottery.
Spiders, snakes, darkness... nothing but a distant tickle.
If a PC has died in a horror adventure, there is always the option of really blooming with gory descriptions. A ghast that had been a sculptor before the chilled rapture of undeath might eviscerate a character and form a spider web of entrails hanging from a branch, denoting a territorial border and a penchant for being despicably tasteless.
Any description which mentions a former party member being devoured piece by stretchy piece is sure to let the survivors know they'd better dig in deep lest they each want to wind up 100+ lb bags of purina cannibal chow.
I'm afraid Wil Save will be back for another installment.
Other than that, there isn't much that can scare me in regards to D&D. A really solid set of descriptions of an unknown area can do it, but it has to really capture that sense of unknown.
This is exactly why it's hard to write a horror adventure. A great description can be horribly conveyed by a lousy DM. But, then a mediocre description can be conveyed with true horror by an awesome DM.
Joshua, thanks for all your ideas. Helpful, indeed. You've confirmed what I felt were elements to be exploited in a good horror adventure.
|
I think Lovecraft did the right thing. He described things without giving you too much detail. In this way there is always enough room for the reader to put his own fears into the thing. If you manage to make your descriptions vague but with enough details that yor players have "room" to substitute things with their own real fears, than you've done it!
However, I FEAR the following:
Being arrested and thrown into psychiatry when you're absolutely SANE, but you start screaming that you are NOT INSANE and nobody is believing you... Of course, while screaming more and more people have a reason to think you're, well...whatever ;)
Ever read the novel "EX" from (I think it was) David Ambrose? Man, just the idea to make things real with just thinking and believing in them...
Villains who are absolutely unscrupulous. When you KNOW reasoning will not do and they just have FUN torturing you...
Vile children! I always hate it when a little child is the villain in a movie!
And when it comes to movies: THE RING and SIGNS scared me to dead. When you're not knowing what you are fighting against, that's horror... foreshadowing is great here! Always let your players wondering about what they are actually fighting against!
Oh yes...and Spriggans of course ;)
Danse Macabre, a nonfiction book by Stephen King, describes the nature of what scares people. I don't know if that would be of any help to you.
What if the PCs wound up in a hamlet within a forest--when they attempt to leave their own ghosts materialize, soundlessly screaming a plea for the PCs to stay. Describe the PCs' ghosts as appearing drastically mutilated.
Vile children! I always had it when a little child is the villain in a movie!
Oh yes, or the small child as cipher, possessing no personality but having a preternatural sense of a coming doom.
Quite creepy indeed!
So what scares YOU?
My mother-in-law! :D
But that probably doesn't help you any. ;)
Heh. Maybe I can write her into the adventure!
I spooked my players pretty good when I had a monster say, "I am going to eat your soul." The players instantly paled. They knew I was telling them, No resurrection is possible if a PC dies.
Usually, death is only an embarrassing interlude in any character's pulse-pounding life of adventure. But when death truly means DEATH, players freak-out.
Also consider weird, magical diseases.
:)
Tony M
I'm afraid Wil Save will be back for another installment.
The tyranny of a vocal minority scares me!
But, back to the question about your game, I believe that there are a few key ways to scare players. Many of these suggestions are not of my own less-than-clever mind, however, and I am merely summarizing them from numerous Call of Cthulhu and even certain published D&D horror campaigns.
First, as many above have mentioned, you the DM you must be ready and willing to kill your player characters, sometimes coldly and harshly. You want your players to be scared and one of the most frightening things in a D&D game is the complete destruction of a player character.
Second, you must develop an atmosphere of suspense and tension in your game. Think of the best horror movies that you've seen and script your encounters to develop that nervewracking sense of dread. You must work carefully to build that suspenseful atmosphere, providing clues of the horror to come. To make your players sweat, you must let them know thay are in danger before anything actually happens.
Plan your encounters well in advance to use your range of dramatic techniques for storytelling, using vivid descriptions, pacing, misdirection and foreshadowing when it makes sense. The descriptions that you use are key to setting up the suspense, and should be similar to the descriptions used by great horror authors such as Lovecraft or Poe.
Instead of the players simply happening upon the creatures, describe events or surroundings that alert them that the creature is out there, possibly stalking them for some period of time. Perhaps they hear the unearthly howling of a fiendish werecreature from far off, seeing the bloody and broken remains of other adventurers as they move further into the lair. And that howling gets closer and closer...
Hope that helps.
Hurm.
Now that I've given the smartass answer, let me try and at least be a little bit helpful.
There's plenty of little things in real life that I'm afraid of. Snakes bother me; heights bother me a little; probably a dozen other little things. But there's two things that terrify me: harm coming to my kids, and the dentist. No, really. Work with me here a little bit.
About two months ago, I woke from a nightmare. I rarely remember my dreams, and when I do it's most of the time vague. But not this time. I was standing with my kids (I have two) at my son's bedroom window. I was holding my daughter, and my son was standing on his tip toes peering out the window - with his fingers on the open window frame. The dream was pleasant - we were looking at birds and squirrels, watching the neighbors, talking about stuff and so on. Unexpectedly, my daughter reached out and slammed the window shut - while my son's fingers were still there. I'll skip the rest of the details. I didn't sleep the rest of the night, though. And it wasn't the blood or gore of the scene. It was pain and suffering being caused to somebody I love dearly - even if it was only a dream. Using dreams can scare the bejesus out of people - because they have absolutely no control over events.
So that leaves the dentist for my only other real fear. My fear of the dentist is so deep, I went about 10 years between visits - even though I knew I had a tooth that was really in bad shape. I finally made an appointment when it got so bad I couldn't eat any more. I had to wait a day to get in; so combine my deep fear of going with the dentist with the build up of knowing I have to go - but being unable to do anything to get it over with. When I finally got there, I was quite literally trembling in fear. Dread is a wonderful motivator of fear, or so I've found.
So now the question becomes how do you work those real life things into an adventure. I'm not so sure you could put a dentist in ;) , but you can work with the concept around that fear of mine. The key is to find something most people dislike, then let them know it's going to happen. Build on, expound, go into detail about how this event will happen, and nothing they do can prevent it from happening. Take their dread and turn it into fear.
The other thing you can take from this is the use of dreams to take away their control - even if only for a little while. The dream, though, should reveal something should the characters wish to ponder for that meaning.
All my character have different fears depending on their personalities. I think horror adventures are hard to write because an excellent horror session rests more in the hands of the players than it does the DM.
-Amber S.
P.S. Personally, I'm scared of moths.
So what scares YOU?Bugs. Lots of bugs. Multiple bug swarms with a template or three. Bugs that crawl under your skin and lay eggs that turn your insides to goo before eating your brain and crawling out your ear. Bugs spawned in the deepest corners of the Abyss. Bugs with iridescent carapaces that reflect spells. Bugs with iridescent carapaces that reflect light and make them appear as tiny rainbows when directly observed, whose true blasphemous form is only revealed for a fleeting moment when seen from the very corner of your eye. Bugs in the walls, heard but not seen. Bugs in the walls whose mad skittering grows louder and louder when a blast of cold wind blows out all torchlight. Great black bugs whose anesthetizing bite lets them drain blood from their sleeping victims. Great black bugs that swarm together when attacked, coalescing into a vampire. Bugs with transparent carapaces that allow the luckless observer to view the bugs last meal. Bugs with transparent carapaces that allow their paralyzed last meal to watch its would-be rescuers flee in terror as weak acids slowly dissolve its flesh. Bugs capable of conscious thought when in groups of at least 6 individuals, whose single consciousness often manifests itself in the form of sorcerous or psionic abilities and telepathy. Bugs with too many legs and eyes and mouths. Bugs capable of taking the form of things they eat. Intelligent bugs that wear Edgar suits. The Dread Swarm that legend says will be formed at the end of time when all bugs in the Abyss erupt as one to consume the sun and all stars from the heavens.
Yeah, mostly bugs.
And chaos beasts.
And insane psionic dragons.
And undead trolls.
And being referred to a dentist by the temple of Pelor.
But mostly bugs.
Dude! Awesome! I mean, not that you're afraid of bugs, but your plethora of bug ideas. The thought of such vermin completely eluded me. And considering that I'm using a a layer of the Abyss for what I'm writing I'll help myself to those horrible, creepy suggestions ;) Thanks.
Bats. I'm terrified of bats. So much so that the new batman movie somewhat creeped me out. I've been known to go into fetal position and freeze when faced with an actual bat.
- Ashavan
|
|
Bugs. Lots of bugs. Multiple bug swarms with a template or three. Bugs that crawl under your skin and lay eggs that turn your insides to goo before...
Wow, great stuff!!! Ever thought of writing an ECOLOGY or something like "Lords of Madness" about the bugs?
I will borrow some of your ideas ;)Very cool!
Today I saw Land of the Dead.
Next time you run a horror module, and your players are going to act nonchalant about the undead, go watch that movie before hand. They won't be so nonchalant afterwards.
|
Lots of really, really good stuff here!
One thing I like to do occasionally (very occasionally, so it doesn't get hackneyed) is the use of dreams where characters don't have complete power. They can influence their dreams, but not control them. Will Saves, Skill checks, etc in the dreamscape can incur whatever penalties or bonuses you see fit (but like Shawn said, it has to be organic, not railroading into a path to really be effective). For extra enjoyment, allow effects from the dreamscape to carry over into the waking world...minor injuries, damage to gear, fatigue...but don't apply them evenly to all players, or even to the same player... Many of the others have been absolutely spot-on in saying that the unknown quantities are what bring in the real sense of danger. You just have to be sure not to abuse your players trust.
I have used variations of two of my favorite X-Men villains, Proteus, Legion, and Jamie Braddock, to really shake up player’s mental states in the past. Proteus was able to alter reality, causing the X-Men to feel they were melting, drowning in air, breaking apart, falling into the earth, etc. Legion had several different powers (telepathy, pyrokinetics, telekinesis, etc.) but each one was linked to a different, distinct personality…some of which were very, very evil. Jamie Braddock is the brother of Brian Braddock (Captain Britain) and has powers similar to Proteus… he views reality and people as bundles of strings that he can reach out and pull, tie, tear, etc, causing pain and manipulating the physical world. Now imagine some chaos creepies coming in from Limbo working their psionic nastiness on the PCs while a slaad with a few levels of rogue mills around the side-lines quietly looking for the chance to ram his ovipositor (an excellent phrase to instill a bit of horror and disgust, btw) into an off-guard character. Maybe even throw in a pet rust monster to cause a little discord amongst the fighters. Good times, good times.
Personally, I’m a little bit phobic of water. Well, particularly I’m phobic of drowning. I love swimming, tubing, boating, etc, but being in the water always holds a bit of discomfort for me. One of my favorite characters is a plains druid who has a deep-set phobia of open water. He’s fine with ponds, small lakes, rivers, and all that, but move him out of sight of shore and he’s heaving-ho (and whatever he’s eaten for the past week) over the side of the ship. Most of the time he’ll just wild shape into a bird and perch in the rigging for the duration of the voyage.
This is exactly why it's hard to write a horror adventure. A great description can be horribly conveyed by a lousy DM. But, then a mediocre description can be conveyed with true horror by an awesome DM.
Joshua, thanks for all your ideas. Helpful, indeed. You've confirmed what I felt were elements to be exploited in a good horror adventure.
I've run a few "horror" style sessions, and learned a few elements that contributed to the enjoyment of these games:
1) Mood: Most important is mood, which you've already pointed out. A few years ago, the Friday night before halloween, I ran a session to the tunes of my old halloween special effects CD. [I already know you would have little difficulty with this...]2) Personability: What I mean by this is it seems easier to communicate more information to fewer players than to more players. Players get more screen time, and can react to perceived threats, real and imagined. [Based on your gaming group, this may be uncontrollable.]
3) Vulnerability: The same game I alluded to featuered two 1st level characters, with nothing more than a shirt on their back. They found an abandoned cabin near Crytal Lake near night fall and needed a place to hole up. Enter Jason. The rest was magic. I couldn't have done this with the same characer years (and 17 levels) later; their confidence in winning combat borders arrogance. [However, if you can write a horror adventure for high level characters, I'd LOVE to see it!]
I'm working on a horror-themed module and mentioned it on another thread. James Jacobs pointed out how hard it is to write a good horror adventure, which got me thinking, "What scares most D&D gamers?" I mean the whole concept of fighting horrible monsters that want to eat you (or worse!) should be frightening in itself, but most of us gamers are hardened to that by now.
I'll admit that I get freaked out in the dark. I wake up at least 2 - 3 times each night with the feeling that someone is in my bedroom. I guess I read too many horror novels and watch too many scary movies. Other themes that give me the creeps include complete isolation and incomprehensible alien beings.
So what scares YOU?
1) Corruption. Maybe take aside one <I>really</I> good role-player in the group, and describe to him the slow and inevitable corruption that has begun in his soul, complete with physical rot, the attraction of maggots and bugs (especially those transparent beetles mentioned earlier). Undead things start to bow to him, etc etc. (S)He, of course, doesn't see anything wrong with this, is enjoying the power, and will happily stalk and attempt to "convert" the other players. Trap them somewhere nasty, preferably dark, dank, and with lots of little tunnels and holes for the aforementioned transparent beetles (did I mention how cool an idea that is?).
Convince the other players, with the help of said evil fella, that really, they can attempt to destroy him/her, or they can die. Then watch the fun as the destroying of him/her seems to be an impossible task...
2) Blackouts. Waking up with a dead body. Wondering if you did it, or if you were possessed, or..? Going to others for help, and then blacking out again, and waking up with more blood and bits of said person and nothing else and not being hungry at all. Wondering if you actually just ate someone. Running away, and then blacking out and waking up somewhere populated - and very hungry. Then blacking out again...
You get the idea.
3) Dry/Dessicated/Bug-infested innards. From a series of just-about-vile nightmares I once suffered, the image of a small wound. Seeing a tiny bit of flesh loose from said wound. Tugging it to tear it off (after all, you don't want that sore little flap of skin). Watching it rip all the way down the arm, revealing cobweb like dry strands of muscle and sinew that are holding the skin in the correct shape with the bones, and long pulsing veins full of black ichor from which many leeches seem to be feeding.
That was a bad image.
Great stuff, everyone. Keep the creepy stuff coming, keeping in mind I want to know what scares YOU. Afterall, I'm working on a module that may eventually be in the pages of Dungeon for YOU to run in YOUR campaigns. So with that in mind, you all have a vested interest in it.
I know that the Dungeon staff read these posts, so if they know what's in my module is what gives you all the creeps, your more likely to see the finished product with a few tweaks by Erik, James, and the rest of the experts :)
Fear is difficult to pull off in a D&D game because fear is such a deeply personal thing. We fear things like sharks and swarms of bees because we know that they are dangerous. Our "survival instinct" to run or seek cover kicks in, and the fear we feel is largely instinctual (but can be overcome). fearing relatively harmless creatures and objects like moths is more about the human imagination, and what scares one person does not necessarily scare another. Some people think moths are pretty!
A few people have come up with grotesque imagery that they believe to be frightening. A giant undead lamprey that sucks out your soul with its sphincter-like mouth while telepathically transmitting your screams of agony to your comrades is horrific, but not necessarily frightening. No more so than an obese acid-scarred blackguard troll who carries a saw-toothed greatsword and wears the tongues of his victims around his corpulent neck. Some players will be terrified by one, but not the other.
The fear of death is a strong motivational force for some players, but not for all. Some will become really spooked when you start saying energy drain or soul eating, while others will simply shrug their shoulders and start rolling up a new character!
Creating fear is hard!
Fear is difficult to pull off in a D&D game because fear is such a deeply personal thing. We fear things like sharks and swarms of bees because we know that they are dangerous. Our "survival instinct" to run or seek cover kicks in, and the fear we feel is largely instinctual (but can be overcome). fearing relatively harmless creatures and objects like moths is more about the human imagination, and what scares one person does not necessarily scare another. Some people think moths are pretty!
A few people have come up with grotesque imagery that they believe to be frightening. A giant undead lamprey that sucks out your soul with its sphincter-like mouth while telepathically transmitting your screams of agony to your comrades is horrific, but not necessarily frightening. No more so than an obese acid-scarred blackguard troll who carries a saw-toothed greatsword and wears the tongues of his victims around his corpulent neck. Some players will be terrified by one, but not the other.
The fear of death is a strong motivational force for some players, but not for all. Some will become really spooked when you start saying energy drain or soul eating, while others will simply shrug their shoulders and start rolling up a new character!
Creating fear is hard!
Well, Phil, you have quite a knack for stating the obvious. Sorry, I just had to be a smartass ;) Please don't be offended. However, I definitely would rather get some helpful tips rather than being told what I already know and which prompted this thread in the first place - "creating a good horror adventure is hard."
Thanks for chiming in, though.
My comments are not specifically for you Steve, but for anyone else who might think that its simply a matter of adding in a couple of hideous images into their adventures and expecting to frighten their PCs. And you know that those people are out there. They see someone write something about horrible bugs and think that its scary. Then they introduce the bugs into their adventure and wonder why they get blank stares.
By the way, I'm not taking a crack at anyone who reads these message boards. Most people who post here have very insightful things to say. I felt I had to state the obvious because no one else had said it yet. Monte cook did it with the BoVD so I did it with this thread.
Plus, I like smartasses!
Plus, I like smartasses!
Heh. Well, there's plenty of us so that's a good thing. True enough about the rest of your comments. John Fourr has an e-zine called "Role-playing Tips Weekly" with a lot of useful stuff for DMs similar to some of the suggestions here. I really like Joshua's comments about taking the players out of their element and throwing weird stuff at them that don't do things that make any sense to the players.
Plus, I like smartasses!
Better than being a dumbass, I always say.
You know, I totally missed the whole point on the thread and went off on a tangent. Let me take a second shot at this thread:
What scares me? Water (i.e. the lack of oxygen). It makes the encounter in the AoW part I with the Water Elemental all the more dreary.
Fear Factor has stunts placing contestants underwater every-other episode.
I'm surprised that everyone says that horror is so difficult... I've been creeping out my players for a while, and it all seems rather formulaic to me.
Nobody really said that running a horror adventure is difficult. A good DM knows a variety of techniques to use and because he/she knows the players, it is easier to do.
It's writing a good horror adventure that is difficult. What works well in your group, and those were good tips by the way, doesn't necessarily work well in another. For new players and DMs, the suggestions offered on this thread are great for using elements of horror and terror in their games. But for us writers, we have to go at it a little differently and try to capture something that can inspire fear in a large number of groups. Especially if you're aiming at getting your module published in Dungeon.
That's funny that you mention isolation since it's one of my own fears.
Fear is difficult to pull off in a D&D game because fear is such a deeply personal thing. We fear things like sharks and swarms of bees because we know that they are dangerous. Our "survival instinct" to run or seek cover kicks in, and the fear we feel is largely instinctual (but can be overcome). fearing relatively harmless creatures and objects like moths is more about the human imagination, and what scares one person does not necessarily scare another. Some people think moths are pretty!
Creating fear is hard!
I think that's why the question was "What scares YOU?" and not "What scares EVERYONE?" A random sampling might provide the more common themes.
I don't believe I've ever been quoted so much. Perhaps I should be preachy like that more often!
On a different track I thought I'd list down a few things that I'm scared of and how they might be incorporated into a game. I'll list three so I don't get carried away.
1. Being paralyzed by a lich and buried by my comrades because they thought I was dead. I would be completely aware of what was happening around me, but unable to do anything. This is my buried alive fear. To quote Harlan Ellison "I have no mouth and I must scream."
2. Being possessed by a demon or infested by some organism (such as the tsochar from Lords of Madness). This would be particularly horrible if I was conscious of my actions, but unable to stop myself. This is my fear of not having control over my own destiny.
3. Having a body part amputated by a horrible ghoul (with a rusty butcher's blade) and then being forced to watch it being slowly devoured, or being hung over a pit and having my feet, legs, etc dissolved by the small ochre jelly (think "The Blob") lurking within. This is my fear of being eaten alive!
I think a number of authours are moving in this direction especially concerning comments about creating the mood and the correct type of theme which is very, very, important but well covered above. My comment concerns the main protagonist of a horror adventure.
Fighting a monster is never scary for PC types. Fighting one they don't have a clue about might be disconcerting but its not scary.
The only thing thats really scary is the unknown. To scare PCs you have to have things that indicate that 'something' is out there and its not a nice something. Hence the adventure has to be designed to constantly play up the fact that there is something unknown but definitly horrible thats always just around the corner or behind them etc. but never let the PCs come to grips with the 'something' until the final scene. Do have jars that get knocked down and smash on the floor of the room they just explored (so they all go running back to find that something knocked the jar down...but it appears to not be hear anymore) etc. to insure that they are constantly reminded that 'something' is out there. In the final scene you'll probably want a dramatic entrance of the horror but you'll not have scary any more. That said it will still have been a good horror adventure if the mood leading up to the encounter was tense.
I think your challange for creating a good scary dungeon submission is to help the DM explain the mood and the theme - you've got to have something appropreate that can do things like knock jars off a table and still manage to exit the scene before the players can manage to spot it. You also have to make sure that none of the encounters are fluff. Fluff is terrible for horror - every room and encounter should help build the mood. Don't have rooms that don't add to the tension because they will automatically detract from it. Nothing can be 'just a room' in a horror adventure. Its got to have a purpose and its god to add to the mystery and suspence. I'd cut back on the number of encounters as well - once the dice are slinging its hard to maintain the suspence. Make sure that what encounters there are have impact. Launch them at players with vulnerbilities and make sure they all come out of nowhere.
Also usually its bad form to split a party up but here you might consider it - get them out of their element and they will be that much more scared of everything going on around them. Its easy to supress fear when your part of a well oiled fighting team. Not so easy to shrug off being stalked when your lost, trapped, and the rest of the party is not around while 'something' is out there. In fact I'd split them up and then go after their weakness.
A further thought on the above. While I don't think that going after the PCs weakness will really scare them - not once the dice are being rolled - it does serve an overall purpose. If you do things like split them up and show a penchant to go after there vulnerbilities you can probably make them jumpy. Once you have them in a jumpy and feeling endangered my bet is its a whole lot easier to play with their heads and scare the daylights out of them.
I guess you might want to consider what kind of an emotional state of mind you want your players in and then consider what plot elements will help get your player to the desired emotional state of mind.
Thinking back to my psych courses i'm reminded of the fact that fear is a primary emotion as opposed to a secondary one like love. In other words its universal in all human cultures. I can show you a picture of someone who is terrified in any culture in the world and you will recognize the expression of terror. I can't do that with love. So maybe researching the emotional state of fear itself might help with ideas.
4 steps to horror:
1) IsolatationPlayers who can just go to the local authorities ruin horror campaigns. Make sure there are no local authorities, or that those authorities are not on your player's side.
Example: The townfolk are charmed minions of the villain.
The players don't find this out until they run seeking help.2) Foreshadowing
Draw it out. The only thing tough about horror is making a single encounter horrifying. Use minions. Have the players find spies. An unsolved mystery. An impending doom.
Example: Walking creatures of nightmare pace the local inn. Swelling the door of the PCs room shut with their cold aura as they slaughter another resident.
3) The conundrum
Good horror enemies need a weakness. Without exploiting this weakness, defeating them should be next to impossible. Players may encounter the villain once without knowledge of how to deat him/her/it.
Example: Silver weapons, the phylactery, sunlight, a true name.
4) The confrontation
The weakness is found (or not), and the battle proceeds in a climactic way. Hopefully the villain has a trick or two up it's sleeve.
Simplicity makes some very good and valid points, all of which I agree with.
Lovecraftian horror as stated above also uses revulsion and alieness. There are some things that we as species find so utterly beyond what we think of as normal that it pretty shocking regardless of who you are. By mixing these 'primal fears' (stuff that normally involves the lower more instinctual portion of the human mind) with what is considered normal, good or rational you can unsettle most anyone. Most cultures would find cannibalism disconcerting. How much more disconcerting is it when it's done by the neighborhood elementary school kids? Or the board members of a Fortune 500 company. The juxtaposition of the monstrous and the mundane can be truly terrifying. Hitchcock's "The Birds", and "Psycho" both do this well.
It is tough to role-play alien creatures. Their minds often don't work the same as ours. Their goals are often inscrutable. So when I run Call of Cthulhu I often let the dice decide what the monsters are doing. Once this ended in one of the investigators being captured by the fungi of Yuggoth. When his friend returned a few days later with reinforcements he found a strange cylindrical radio device with knobs and speaker built into it. On activating the knobs the hollow voice of his lost friend reverberated from the speaker. The voice was lost, cold and immobile in the dark, but he could hear his ally over the strange radio. When the would-be rescuer turned different knobs his friend remarked about the changes in his unseen environment until at last the rescuer undid the top of the cylinder to find his friend's still living brain inside. He reassured his friend that it would be all right and then smashed the brain with a table leg.
Randomness is a great way to simulate alien thought and it takes the control away from everyone, and that I guess is probably my greatest fear - a lack of control in my life. At any moment the (or any one person's) world could be plunged into utter chaos, how a person reacts in such a time is often how they are remembered by history. I am thankful that I, a white, heterosexual, male living in North America have certain advantages over other portions of the world population. I don't have to worry about being killed in car bombing, an epidemic, or a campaign of ethnic cleansing. I need not worry about food or shelter. I do fear that someday my rights, and the freedom that we American's call the 1st Amendment will (and are) being infringed upon by a religious fundamentalist movement not to far off from what our leaders say we say we are fighting to abolish in the Middle East. A fundamentalist movement spawned by fear. It's the fear, the fear that we, the mighty homo sapien are in reality no more relevant to the workings of the universe than a mote of dust on the dungeon floor, which is truly scary.
GGG
Randomness is a great way to simulate alien thought and it takes the control away from everyone, and that I guess is probably my greatest fear - a lack of control in my life. At any moment the (or any one person's) world could be plunged into utter chaos, how a person reacts in such a time is often how they are remembered by history. I am thankful that I, a white, heterosexual, male living in North America have certain advantages over other portions of the world population. I don't have to worry about being killed in car bombing, an epidemic, or a campaign of ethnic cleansing. I need not worry about food or shelter. I do fear that someday my rights, and the freedom that we American's call the 1st Amendment will (and are) being infringed upon by a religious fundamentalist movement not to far off from what our leaders say we say we are fighting to abolish in the Middle East. A fundamentalist movement spawned by fear. It's the fear, the fear that we, the mighty homo sapien are in reality no more relevant to the workings of the universe than a mote of dust on the dungeon floor, which is truly scary.
Very deep, Matt. And political heebie geebies, too!
I'm getting tons of stuff from this thread. This is great!
I concur. This is a great thread simply because its generating such interesting responses! Losing control over my life is one of my biggest fears. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who gets frightened by something more nebulous than spiders and rabid man-eating bears.
Steve,
I don't know if this was mentioned before, but when I played in the original "Against the Slave Lords" series, being imprisoned in module A4 (the last one where you're on the island of the slave lords), stuck in a dungeon ruled by fungus and having to try to find a stick so you can "try" to defend yourself with it was pretty scary.
Maybe....having no equipment and being stuck in a spider and vermin infested dungeon---NAKED---and having to improvise like a SOB to survive...that was pretty scary.
From a personal view---I keep having this recurring nightmare about the trigger safety of my Glock being stuck and pulling on the trigger with all my might....just when I really need it to work...maybe it's related??
Work-related nightmares. Yeah, I bet you have a few!
I just recently chased my group around a dungeon with a cildibrin from Lords of Madness and it really freaked them out. It was hard as hell to get in there in the first place and then they had this thing like a big scorpion/spider using darkness and spike stones on them and moving really, really fast. Because they couldn't simply exit the dungeon without a lot of physical effort (and time!), they had to run from the creature and hide in a secret room they found until they could figure out the ONE perfect strategy to defeat it and escape.
These guys were really nervous, especially when they first encountered it looking like a wave of darkness rushing toward them.
Darkness... Fear of the unknown... It definitely made my players nervous, if not scared.
1. Loss of control: We all know that DMs fudge rolls, change plot points, etc to fit players. Its when you know the DM isn't doing that.....thats scary. If the plot requires you to hurry through a trap-infested dungon to save a little girl thats going to be sacrificed at midnight, you start to get scared. If you know a monster can kill you on a crit, but you have to hold it one more turn and your DM will just take the die roll...thats frightening.
When the powerful NPC Paladin suddenly goes Blackguard, and you know that he'll murder you if you try to fight him, but you are the only thing between him and the evacuation of the temple's priests....
2. Losing something that can't come back: Valuable equipment, opportunities for PrCs, chances to impress the king, etc. Failure in DnD can come with an XP reward, but it doesn't have to come with the kidnapped little girl coming back alive.
3. The familiar becomes unknown: The "manticore" you are fighting suddenly has a paralyzing bit and an ominous voice; the home town suddenly become a den of depravity as the villagers fall under the swat of an evil succubus, causing them to murder any who enter; the magic sword that the player has had for years begins whispering dire prophecies.
Hmm, interesting things folks have mentioned so far.
Now, to my particular fears: (1) First and foremost, dying lone (seems like a popular fear to me, if my friends are any indicator); (2) the loss of anyone dear to me; (3) the harming of any dog or cat by people (I like pets and it is inhumane to mistreat a pet, in my honest opinion); (4) spiders and snakes.
I will not run away from a spider as if it were crawling in my mouth but I will maim/kill it repeatedly with a heavy object. But snakes? Run away, I say!
However, the other fears I have are more like worries or concerns than actual fears. I mean, I worry about my god-daughter but I am not in actual fear every day that something bad is going to happen to her. So, such "fears" really don't count.
Now, as to presenting a "horror" story in D&D, first and foremost, like any story, you need mood and atmosphere. Dim the lights a bit...play some disturbing music (none of that crappy halloween stuff, I'm talking about music that is sad and depressing or deeply intense...like opera music, but that's another story altogether). No need to dress up to play the part but if you want the pcs to feel the despair of, say, the townsfolk, you have to act the part. Just don't expect an Oscar Award afterwards, ;)
And finally, the pcs have to hate the villians with a deep loathing. For example, when my DM was running his campaign, the party got defeated by pirates on the open sea and were captured. Then, the pirates decided to sell our pcs into slavery. It gets worse. Pirates aren't a kind bunch, being the lonely, oh so very lonely men that they are. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what the pirates intend to do prior to selling our pcs on the slave market so we were dreading the entire thing and did everything we could to escape.
See, we were truly afraid of our pcs being violated (I think that is probably an universal fear everyone has, the fear of having something done to you against your will, whether it be a physical act or mental act) that we were nervous throughout the whole adventure because we wanted to merely escape the situation our pcs were in.
However, such extreme circumstances should be rare (unless you want to run a campaign based on fear and overcoming that fear).
Besides, the DM was playing the evil pirates exactly the way they should have been played (logically speaking) so that added a level of realism to the whole adventure.
So, I guess I should add in pirates as another fear of mine, ;)
I am a generally stoic person, and although I can be startled, I am rarely 'scared'. I make a distinction, startled is a surprized reaction that lasts 2 seconds at most. Fear is something worse, it stays with you, irrationally in a prolonged manner. Fear isn't something you just shake off. This is a story of a time I was scared.
I've come across plenty of wild animals, bears, coyotes, boar, and there was one incident with a lion, but none of those really scared me. I've been in some dangerous places I really shouldn't have been, but I was too cocky to be scared. I've even worked in a place (usually with the lights off) that has a 80 year history of being haunted. Still I wasn't scared. So when I tell you that the events I'm about to tell you about scared me, I mean it. Terrified to my very center.
This is a story of how I died.
That might sound odd, but stick with me. It was a dream, a nightmare. Now they say you can't die in a dream, if you do you snap awake, it is literally impossible to die in a dream. That's a lie. I have, and it was one of the most terrifying expiriences of my life.
The dream started something like this, the world was going to end, for whatever reason WW3 started and the nukes were flying, we knew this, and we knew there was nothing we could do. So my friends and I were playing poker waiting to die... seemed like the thing to do. Well another friend of mine called me who wasn't there freaked out, crying... so I agreed to go get them, so they didn't have to be alone at the end.
As I walked outside to get to my truck a flash came from the west. I know this because I was in my childhood neighborhood for some reason. I looked and saw the mushroom cloud, then I was hit with the impact, and tossed across the yard like a rag doll. From that point on I was blind, see I've watched the movie "Fat Man and Little Boy", it goes into great detail radiation poisoning. So I was blind, and I was vomiting up parts of myself. I was in a horrendous amount of pain. But I wasn't afraid, I remember thinking to myself "I'm going to die, there's nothing I can do about it, it shouldn't take too long, I'm going to die. I'll see what comes next."
The pain stopped. I was in darkness, a void. I didn't feel anything, I didn't see anything, I couldn't hear anything. I could think. I waited, "Dead, I must be dead." I thought to myself, and I waited. Nothing happened, I called out for someone, no one came. I called out to god and got no answer. I tried to justify it... end of the world, there must be a line or something... but I waited, and still nothing happened. I started calling out to god again, please let something anything happen. I called out for my mother, my father, dead relitives, nothing. I called out for something to happen. Nothing, I started to panic then. Something had to happen didn't it? Some sort of afterlife? Couldn't just be this void, nonexistance would be better than a eternity trapped with nothing but your own thoughts. I called out to every god of every religion and every demon or devil I could think of begging for something to happen. I don't know how long this lasted, seemed like a long time to me. I was screaming in my head, trying to move, trying to do anything other than think. But nothing I did mattered.
Nothing did. I was alone, abandoned, forever.
I woke up, covered in sweat, shaking. It seems cliche, the sitting bolt upright shot from hundreds of movies... but that's how it was. I was crying, not sobbing, I'm just telling you tears were coming down my face. I sat there, on my bed shaking, I never felt so alone in my entire life.
Now you can annalyze that dream 6 ways till Sunday, most agree that it has something to do with deep down me not believing in a God even though the thought of one not existing scares me. Still, for me, that was terror.
This is a story of how I died...
Wow! Pretty intense. I had a really f'd up nightmare about being possessed once and I knew it was a dream while I was having it, but as hard as I tried to wake up, I just couldn't seem to get out of it. Finally, I woke up, but I was seriously freaked out. That whole helpless and losing control thing...