Hey, I just saw 'The Machinist' this weekend and there is something depicted in the movie that is scary and is role-play-able (at least at lower levels, before Restoration spells are affordable). The loss of an arm would be scary and do-able in game terms. There are even rolemodels to base the new character after, the movies 'The One Armed Swordsman' and 'Romeo is Bleeding' both have characters with that 'flaw' and they still kick a$$.
Along those lines, any sort of major injury would be scary...the loss of one eye (from 'Kill Bill') would also be scary and do-able in the game...throat injury from hanging (from 'Hang Em High') could also be done.
I have to agree that there is a difference between 'shock' kinds of scares and true scaring, anybody can be snuck up on and shook from behind and that is scary for a second or five, but true scaryness either comes from total isolation with little hope for survival (where maybe a blissful acceptance of fate occurs at the end) or being outnumbered in a mob type situation with little hope of sanity...I guess dealing with violently deranged insane people at all would be scary. Looking at Gacy, Bundy, the Russian mass murderer dude, you really cannot tell what they are thinking.
When confronted with the sort of impossibility that D n D takes for granted in its own everyday life, my mind would probably shut down...but first I would really try to unload everything I had access to against the undead or dragon or displacer beast that I accidentally stumbled into.
Here's one that was scary to one of my players...
I've been running a 3.5 conversion of Ravenloft IMC and we've been playing in candlight with a cool sound effect CD on a loop (rain/thunder & lightning, mainly) playing in the background. Very cool ambience.
Anyway, last week one of my players bought a fog machine and thought it would be cool to bring to the game. We put it under our big game table and it was pretty kick ass. During a time of the game when we weren't really using it, my late player showed up and after he got settled in we continued.
During a private conversation with the player running the fog machine I asked him to crank out some fog when we got back to the table.
I sat down and resumed narrating the next encounter area and as the fog came billowing up around the table I turned to the late player (who didn't know about the fog machine) and shouted, "Dude! You're on fire!!!"
The guy looked down and saw "smoke" crawling up from his lap and I swear he nearly jumped out of his skin before he realized what it was.
So I guess add to this list HAVING YOUR CROTCH CATCH ON FIRE. ;)
ROFL
"Anyway, last week one of my players bought a fog machine and thought it would be cool to bring to the game."
Fog machine - that is so very cool mate.
I think "having Steve Greer as DM" should be on the list too.
Rich
It's also very funny that you have friends who just buy fog machines...
Steve---that's funny with the fog machine!!
Every Halloween my ex used to throw hellacious costume parties. We put the beer into an old coffin in the backyard and put dry ice in the middle so the coffin "smoked" for several hours. We then jury rigged a wire so that when people opened the coffin, a plastic skeleton came up out of the fog.
"No dude, you're supposed to piss yourself after you've had all the beer"
The problem that I've faced as a DM is to confront the players with an enemy that truly cannot be defeated. Although this approach may scare the players for a little while, it will eventually become simply frustrating. Lets use a Lovecraftian example: At the Mountains of Madness. The protagonist learns many clues about a race of creatures called Shoggoths that were genetically engineered (basically) by a race of sentient beings that used to live in antarctica but were (mostly) wiped out (possibly by their own creations - lots of undertones here - but I digress). The protagonist slowly realizes through pictographs of the extinct race just how deadly these Shoggoths are, and when one finally comes rumbling up the tunnel toward him, he runs away without hesitation. Just looking at the thing he realized he had no chance against it and feared for his life.
You want the player to fear for his character, and at least to temporarily see the horrifying situation through the characters eyes. You need this as a baseline before you can scare the player. The player must be drawn into the game world through the eyes of the PC.
So,
All descriptions must be conveyed without the game mechanics. As mentioned in a previous post, the player cannot know what is really happening in game terms, only by physical descriptions of feelings. Some players will hate this, and it is more work for the DM.
The party must be isolated. Stuck somewhere genuinely otherworldly. You mentioned the Abyss. Neither the players nor the characters should know that they are IN the Abyss right away. They should be whisked there in some uncomfortable and unexpected way. The plane should be truly alien in all aspects. The laws of physics may or may not apply. Reality may be a flimsy construct that you can move in and out of without knowing. There should be "things" just outside the PCs perceptions. There should be no solace, no friends, no break from the adversity. Understanding of their situation should come upon them slowly. There must be a point where they realize that dying on this particular abyssal plane means losing their soul to the forces of darkness forever.
Split the party up if you can, and run for a while with single PCs. It's easy for me in my PBEM; harder for table games.
There should be at least one encounter where the players simply can't win. It should be difficult enough just to survive. There should be lots of foreshadowing that overwhelmingly convinces them that trying to defeat Force X is impossible. Wise characters will retreat or find a way around. Of course, beating Force X can't be a requirement for a successful outcome of the adventure as a whole. Example: Tomb of Horrors. When the demi-lich skull rose from the ashes of its former body and began to blast PCs into the void, my first reaction was to whack it. It took a while, but I finally realized that there was no physical way that I could damage the thing, and that my party was lost. I ran like a little girl. That was probably the closest I've ever come to actually being scared in a game. My DM played up the whole tomb aspect, the lingering dread, the "unknown" of where my compatriots went when they winked out of existance. Of course there were ways to defeat the demi-lich, WE just had none of these capabilities at hand. The quest was on.
The bleakness of the situation must motivate the characters to redouble their efforts to succeed, not frustrate them to the point of surrender. That's the tricky part.
For me, although I fear pain and suffering of my loved ones, I've never had a PC that "loved" an NPC. You can't frighten a PC by dismembering his mother or bringing her back as a twisted apparition. There's no real connection there, and besides, it's cliche.
I fear genuine hopelessness.
Hey. This thread was referred to in another thread about Ravenloft adventure ideas.
As an aside, to Mr. Greer the OP, I was just curious what aforementioned adventure was involved, and if it saw ink yet?
Heathansson, I was working on a module for 18th-level characters called "True Darkness". It was set in a dismal layer of the Abyss lacking any light whatsoever. A barren craggy, plain of windswept black sand and tall rocky monoliths, the plane was home to the prison of a Dream Larva from the Epic Level Handbook. Over the eons it had gained the ability to project part of its consciousness beyond its prison and had attracted followers that built something called the Well of Darkness with which they kidnapped children from the multiverse from which their master could feed on their fears until they were spent.
The palpable fear had taken physical form their as a writhing tower of rubbery flesh rising hundreds of feet into the pitch black sky.
It was pretty damned horrific and I thought it would be a great horror piece. Unfortunately my timing was bad when I pitched it to Paizo. It just happened to coincide with the final touches of Fiendish Codex: Hordes of the Abyss. My material kind of ran too closely and a bit contrary to much of what James Jacobs had already written for the book. They also didn't like the subject matter that dealt with undead children and stuff like that. So it got canned.
I still plan on finishing the last 1/4 of the manuscript and running it for my home game eventually. Thanks for asking.
So what scares YOU?
I may be new to the messaging board but im a long time Dm sometimes feels like to long and well really for a good horror campaign you have to set the mood from the get go, cellphones off no food or water allow notify before hand so they eat before coming. play by candlelight in the middle of the night no music so just your voice can be heard. once the mood is set get everyone to get into there char, speak only in whispers, and then the fun part most people are scared of spiders and if your running a low level cmpaign they still are a challenge, focus on monsters that limit characters actions, over damage out put ettercaps are good cause they spit webs thus limmiting movement and spiders venom to lower strength this usually instills a sense of fear that there characters are dieing and they are becoming weaker and weaker. dont be afraid to through in a few traps and scarry loacles. in a old adventure of mine i had a fake door trap open into a pit where the party fell and was seperated in a maze full of undead and one big spiders nest. i had 2 PCs land in the spiders nest containing 2 ettercaps a dozen spiders and a harpoon spider, whilst the others fell into a maze, one fell beside an illusionary wall and once he oriented himself was attacked from behind through the illisionary wall by a lone spider, once the spider was killed i had him chased down by a hungry umberhulk into the spiders nest, the other lone mage was attacked by a dozend or so zombies some ogre zombies, whe eventually falls through a secret 1way door into a group of ghouls then runs for the spiders nest. so when the 2 Pc in the spiders nest see there friends come rushing in to save them they are initially relieved up until the monsters chasing them show up. that was a hard fough battle with all the cohorts dieing and the priest stabilizing the wizard and the rogue. but it scared the s~** out of them right up till the last spider dropped. and if you bring along a few cohorts dont be a afriad to kill them or event the party clown if they piss you off. make sure youu bring cohorts in a horror campaign. isolation is a big thing especially in the dark alone. so with those help full tips and a few examples (those where my ideas i made those up) you should be able to make a pretty scary adventure. goodluck and good gaming.
What is scary? do not use many monsters. have plenty of empty rooms with flavor text galore
use all of the senses
-make doorknobs grow hot as the turn
-windows crack as you walk by them
-children
-marionettes
-the smell of your grandmothers cooking
-Hanging or drowning ( as things that happen to you- not as dungeon dressing)
One of the best horror adventures I wrote had a huge mansion that had 2 monsters in it- the first was a werewolf, the second was a deformed human with tentacles and 6 faces who lived in a boarded up attic(it was harmless) there was also a young boy who kept scratching at an infected looking sore on his arm- the werewolf was tough- because there was no magic weapons yet- and a thief had recently taken most of the valuables in the house- the only available silver was a letter opener
What would scare the heck ou of the pcs(or piss them off):
*Fighting monsters that can infect them( Age of Worms, hehe)
*Getting trapped in exotic/creepy location and finding out there's some kind of a predator out there...And of course, the pcs have limited supplies
* Having to find an antidote or the parasite that were implanted in them while they were asleep will kill them(limited time to complete an adventure, I'd say)
That's all I can think of for now...
Personaly the one thing that still scares me are good zombie movies. Now mind you, it's not the zobies themselves that do the trick. It is the overwhelming sense of hopelessness of knowing that you are alone and the rest of the world is #%$@ed. It's knowing that no one is comming to the rescue. And what are you going to do, Kill six billion zombies?
As a Dm one of the best reactions that I've ever had on actually frightening my players was through the act of creating a Monster/ villian that is way beyond them, letting them know that it's way beyond them, telling them that their only way of surviving it is to flee and turn it loose. The plot of the game is survival. The monster that I used has a few special abilities that make the task harder. Teleportation warp that if you teleport, it can control the location, bringing you within range of it's claws. The ability to smash through walls, climb and even fly if need be. Chasing a PC is a pain in the ass given all of the magic that they tend to cary. And last but not lease, spell warp. This means that if you cast a spell at the monster, it can use the magic you cast, twist it into something harmless, or rebound it back on the caster or the group without any effect. The trick to running the game is to not allow the players any time to plot and plan. their reactions must be instant or they are skipped for the round. The first time I ran this type of senario my players were wild eyed and yelling at each other in panniced tones. It is still my greatest moment as a Dm. An instance when the Players have forgotten that if the Pc's die, they aren't going to die too. To generate real fear in the player.