Nothing I've ever seen in a ravenloft game has impressed me as anything beyond reskinned basic d20 mechanics. The DM can infuse horror, but the mechanics of the game are working against him.
Eh, to each their own. Have you read the various effects for failed saves, in the Campaign Setting/Ravenloft DMG? I thought they were pretty cool, and added a lot to them game.
When it comes down to it, game mechanics come absolutely secondary in a good horror game; I can make Chutes and Ladders scary if I wanted to. You just have to use what fits your style best. Heck, my first ever horror-themed game was with a ruleset I made up on the fly, and we had a blast. Tons of creepiness and fright all the way, even if the ruleset was bulky and cumbersome as hell.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Even hit points etc cannot stop horror, depending on the tactics.
To use saturday as an example.
"I throw the dagger, does a 29 hit?"
"Yes."
"Ok" *rattle rattle* "9 points of damage."
Which evokes more of a fear reaction?
"She plucks the dagger from her side, the wound already healing. 'Foolish mortal, do you think you can harm the true flame of Saranae?'"
Vs.
"Ok, she as DR 10, it doesn't have an effect."
Likewise, "Fire immunity" isn't as scary as "The flames spash against her alabaster skin, but instead of a scream of pain, you hear laughter (or moans of esctacy for more mature tables)."
Exactly. It's all in the delivery, it's all in how the game is run. Mechanics are just a framework resolution system. The DM is the one dishing out the horror, not the numbers.
3 Words: Investment , Immersion , Consequences
Investment – players must be invested in their characters and the story you are trying to tell on at least some level. The greater the emotional investment, the greater your ability to manipulate the player will be. Player-driven plotlines, storylines, & adventures work very well to help create greater investment as does working with the players out of play to add additional depth to the character and make them feel invested in both the character’s past and their dreams & goals for the future. Some amount of time is generally required as well – few players become instantly invested in their characters ; I normally try to set up some sort of “hero moment” or other manner where the game & consequences for even the other characters will rest on that character at some point to try to assist in this.
Immersion – other posters above have given several good tips on trying to immerse the players in a game and if I missed someone giving the same advise, I apologize. Accents are usually one of the best ways to do this (if you can pull it off). Set up memorable, likeable (& useful) NPCs to kill & victimize later. Tricks with visibility (the Mists of Ravenloft work for more than one reason for this) and perception are very good for this – it’s relatively universally annoying to be mind controlled, but to have minor hallucinations so that the player can’t quite be certain if the perceptions that their character is having are real or not is a nice way to add uncertainty & tension.
One of my “tricks” I call “Repetition, repetition, surprise” - Create small patterns for both the characters and players to follow and then a break so that they can notice the difference and investigate it in game. This will, in turn, cause them to focus more on the other more subtle nuances of the story you are writing so that when things go sideways it will assist you in creating the tension & / or fear you are looking for. Speaking of repetition, again, having the players not only make the decisions, but initiating the actions assists in immersion and will help you sell the final piece:
Consequences – simply put, be willing to be ruthless. If the players know that their actions will effectively have no consequences, it’s almost impossible to generate the tension or fear you would otherwise be able to engender. Don’t start & stop with character death, either. I’ve found the best dramatic tension / emotion comes from players realizing that the consequences of their actions just don’t damn (or kill) them, but will have repercussions beyond just the character. This is where the player-initiated actions really pay off. It’s one thing to be (yet another) victim of the big bad, but if it was the player’s choice and idea to go after the uber demon of the dungeon and you inadvertently freed it – now it’s not just their problem, but their fault. This works especially well if you’ve put in the “likeable” NPCs for them to victimize or torment as mentioned above, but will also work if it negatively impacts other party members or (even worse) their background NPCs / investments (ie monologue: “no, orphaned paladin, you have nothing to fear from me, but your sorcerer ally has an extended family that I will be visiting very shortly, one after the other until they have no family but you…”).
-TimD
Exactly. It's all in the delivery, it's all in how the game is run. Mechanics are just a framework resolution system. The DM is the one dishing out the horror, not the numbers.
I disagree. Mechanics matter. This isn't saying delivery isn't important, but saying mechanics don't matter is like saying you can rebuild a car engine with the wrong tools. Even if you can do it, it's going to take a lot more effort.
Feh. Mechanics don't matter. It's like saying you can't do hack/slash with storyteller or romance with d20.
I'm assuming you're talking about White Wolf's system. If so, in the broad spectrum of RPG's, storyteller and d20 are blood relatives, compared to games like Dread or Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.
In Dread, you don't have a character sheet (maybe an index card or scrap paper to write notes) and the resolution mechanic is a Jenga tower. Please tell me how that produces a feel identical to playing Pathfinder, assuming the GM is saying the same things (excluding mechanical jargon).
Another game I run, Mythender, uses large pools of dice. You roll the dice and earn additional dice for your next action. When you're hurt, you roll the dice and discard failures. If you run out of dice, you die. I don't even have to describe how vicious an attack is, I can see it written on the players face as they count their dice.
Mechanics matter. How those mechanics work, matters too, as in the process by which the player interacts with those mechanics. If I'm describing something meant to horrify you, but in the middle of that description I have to wait for you to do some math to roll a Will save, then decide if you're going to spend a hero point, or use your reroll power, etc... some of the momentum of my description is lost.
As a few people have more or less alluded to, nothing terrifies experienced gamers more than Ravenloft. I was in a campaign once where we knew that the DMs were going to switch in a month or two (or so we thought). The one night, after a brier introductory encounter, the DM got up, moved to a different chair, and another player sat down and explained how we were being absorbed by the mists...
...it was the best kind of chilling experience ever (and the subsequent adventure as, too).
In my own experience DMing, I've only had one or two good shots at this. The first was a pretty classic "haunted house" type of expedition - the players were exploring new territory, when a bad thunderstorm pushed them toward a large structure, which turned out to be an abandoned mansion. As they explored the mansion, they slowly (through ghostly apparitions and silent, undead servants) pieced together the details of the horrific crimes that had been committed there years ago. So in this case, what I learned was:
Let the PCs piece together a horrible, dark past by themselves. Their imaginations will do the heavy lifting for you.
The other incident involved the PCs encountering a band of cannibalistic Duergar. Cannibals ALWAYS unnerve people, but I made a point of making the leader EXTREMELY ordinary-seeming in his social interactions (which somehow made him all the more terrifying). My players managed to capture him, and while they were interrogating him, the following exchange took place:
[PC]"What were you doing here on the surface?"
[Duergar, in a very calm tone]"Learning... and feeding."
[Player turns to me]: "Mother of god, that's messed up, dude!"
Maybe it was just the tone I said it in, I dunno. It's also worth noting that one of the downed PCs in a major fight was maimed (but not in a mechanical way): one of the cannibals hacked off a finger (as a snack). That provoked QUITE an emotional reaction from both the player AND the PC which built up nicely over several levels.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Exactly. It's all in the delivery, it's all in how the game is run. Mechanics are just a framework resolution system. The DM is the one dishing out the horror, not the numbers.I disagree. Mechanics matter. This isn't saying delivery isn't important, but saying mechanics don't matter is like saying you can rebuild a car engine with the wrong tools. Even if you can do it, it's going to take a lot more effort.
Sure, in the most extreme sense of the term. Rebuilding a car engine with the wrong tools is going to result in the car not working. Your game mechanics have to be able to do the whole "game" thing, first and foremost. The mechanics have to be, ya know, functioning.
Game mechanics are just a built-in method of resolving conflicts(combat, skill checks, etc). A good DM can make a good story work with any given set of mechanics.
Hell, I did it with some haphazard slapped together mess of rules I concocted when I was a teenager, because I couldn't afford actual D&D rules back then.
Whatever ruleset you use doesn't matter, as long as it works for YOU as the DM. 3e/3.5 rules worked for me just fine, and I have a list of players who can back this up. I am NOT saying this is the be-all, end-all ruleset, just the one I prefer when running games like this. That's ALL.
It doesn't matter what rules you use(as long as you're using the ruleset you're most comfortable with); achieving tension, fear and horror in a game comes from the DM, not the rules. Crunchy numbers don't make a player scared. Sure, a good set of genre-specific tools in the ruleset can help, but should not be required.
I hear what you're saying, but I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying.
I agree, without a DM who understands the genre they're trying to convey and puts effort into doing it, a game will always fall flat. Rules mechanics will not create a game, a DM creates a game. I agree.
That said, the mechanics that a DM uses to help convey the game are one of their tools for doing so. Just like you wouldn't use scissors to cut your lawn, you wouldn't use your lawnmower to cut your hair.
I'm not saying that a game like Dread is your only choice. I'm saying that if you like horror RPG's, you should play Dread once or twice, because you will learning something valuable that you might be able to apply to other games. Dread is a game designed completely to be a horror game, the kind of horror game where most of the characters die horrific deaths, because that is what happens to most of the people in a horror story (sometimes there are survivors, sometimes there aren't).
Using 3.X core rules, without modification, sure, you can run a horror game. But the rules are working against the mood you are trying to create. The tactical options in combat provide a sense of control to every participant, and horror is definitely not about control. When people are in control, they are not afraid. As a DM, you have to work harder to get that feel of horror back when a player knows his character will survive if he gets hit or fails this next save (even though life might be more perilous after). The mechanics of the game provide a sense of security and safety, because they are knowable and predictable. When you can predict what will happen next, you're less likely to be horrified.
Now a DM, knowing that, can alter the reality so players don't know what's coming next, but that probably means rules modifications and taking out some of that predictability. Just upping the damage, or adding new types of damage isn't enough. The damage must become unknowable.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I hear what you're saying, but I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying.
We hear. We just disagree.
|
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Thank you Orthos.
To say "The rules are working against the mood" is a non-starter for me.
You want to scare characters? That's easy. Roll some dice and say "Your characters are scared." The examples you give (dice pools and jenga) are relying on the mechanics to 'scare' players. That's not fear, that's inevitability. Heck, I'd be laughing and making jokes in both those examples. "Ok, well anyone want to bet how many dice I'll lose out of my pool this time?" "No no not that one! Pull the other jenga stick!" (That's also why I never 'got into' Call of Cthulu. When you can't win you can't break even, I don't get attached to my characters.)
Even lamenting the 'tactical control' of a mapsheet doesn't do any good. When the monster does something unexpected it doesn't matter if there's a mapsheet or not. Heck, my doppleganger example above. It wouldn't have mattered if I had little doppleganger minis or not. It was the description of what was happening that sent the characters running, because the players were unnerved.
I know this will sound insulting, but if you need the mechanics to 'scare' players, you're doing it wrong.
Using 3.X core rules, without modification, sure, you can run a horror game. But the rules are working against the mood you are trying to create. The tactical options in combat provide a sense of control to every participant, and horror is definitely not about control. When people are in control, they are not afraid. As a DM, you have to work harder to get that feel of horror back when a player knows his character will survive if he gets hit or fails this next save (even though life might be more perilous after). The mechanics of the game provide a sense of security and safety, because they are knowable and predictable. When you can predict what will happen next, you're less likely to be horrified.
I have never found this to be the case. The better my players know the rules and what they can do in-game, the smoother the game flows. We must run games differently then. Your players only know what you show them. Like Mathew Morris described upthread, simply adding/removing details from flavor text can paint an entirely different picture.
I don't see how using loads of dice pools is any more efficient than asking a player for a simple saving throw. If anything, I feel like using fewer dice(single save instead of dice pool) is a lot faster and more efficient, less "gamey." My players are fairly capable of simple addition and subtraction on the fly, and forcing a saving throw in the middle of a scene has never cost me the audience's attention. We are playing a game still, even above and beyond the story.
And yes, 3.5 is a very tactical combat-heavy ruleset, but it doesn't have to be. There is a pretty extensive skill list, and lots of out-of-combat options. Every 3.5 game doesn't have to be a tactical war game; running a horror game does mean paying closer attention to things like the availability of magic items(if any), monster's special defenses, etc. Low-magic, gritty gaming makes pulling off horror much easier than high-fantasy, high-magic. It's just all dependent on the style you're going for.
I've done high-magic, high-fantasy horror before, but it's not my cup of tea. Tends to be more epic, and more reliant on gore and shock, gotcha-moments. I prefer gritty, claustrophobic, backwoods slasher-flick backdrops. Places where magic is rare and misunderstood.
For my DM style, low-magic works best. Player's are much more dependent on skills and wit, thinking on their feet, and a lot more likely to come up with creative solutions to encounters, since they can't just rely on a Fireball or big magic weapon to do the job for them. In turn, I have to be more careful about what creatures I pit them against, since they aren't likely to come across an epic/adamantine/lawful-aligned weapon any time soon.
So yes, it does take some adjusting the system and playing with the rules to make it fit, but I've found 3.5 is really good at that, or that I'm good at doing that with 3.5's rules. Either way, it's worked pretty good so far. I'm open to trying new systems, but for the moment I fall back on the system I know and have the most experience using.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Thank you Orthos.
The whole "you don't agree with me so you obviously didn't read/understand my post" bit is a major pet peeve of mine. I've lost count of how many times I've had to use that exact line before.
The more I look at this thread, I think the big difference in mechanics we use coincides with the length of the intended game. I don't want to use a system that relies on "Jenga" style mini-games because most of the time, my horror campaigns are long-term. They are fully fleshed out campaigns, that are (at least intended) to go from level 1 up to the mid-teens, maybe even epic level if we get that far.
In a long-term game, it's not going to be fear, tension, and horror every waking second of every single session; there's going to be entire sessions of "in-between" acts getting the players from one scene to another, re-upping supplies, or just generally interacting with the environment; random encounters, researching spells, etc. For all this downtime/in-between time, D&D rules work really, really well.
If the party simply encounter some Dire Wolves on the road between towns, I'm less concerned about driving horror home, as I am about running a simple encounter. I'm going to flavor it to the setting accordingly, but it's part of the balance of delivering horror; your game can't rely on it 100% of the time, or you're going to burn the players out and they become numb to it. D&D rules help fill in the gaps between tense moments.
I hear what you're saying, but I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying.We hear. We just disagree.
Great, I'm just not seeing that understanding, just disinterest. And that's fine, people are uninterested in what I'm saying, so I'll stop.
The large dice pools reference is not for a horror game. It was specifically referenced to give an example of how mechanics can affect mood. If you disagree, I will offer to run a session of the game for you at GenCon (I'll be running it in the Indie Games Explosion, Games On Demand room). It's completely not the horror genre though, more designed to run a fight like the ending battle of The Avengers.
As I've already said(multiple times), I'm not opposed to using other rulesets or trying to say 3.5 is "the one and only," I've simply been citing examples of what I like about that particular ruleset.
I don't even have a problem with dice pool games. I'm learning WoD at the moment to ST an adult-themed game for some friends. I'm just saying that if we're talking about "breaking the mood," I find the idea of rolling a bunch of dice and separating them out to be a much bigger mood killer than simply rolling one die and adding one number to it.
Well done!
As I've already said(multiple times), I'm not opposed to using other rulesets or trying to say 3.5 is "the one and only," I've simply been citing examples of what I like about that particular ruleset.
I don't even have a problem with dice pool games. I'm learning WoD at the moment to ST an adult-themed game for some friends. I'm just saying that if we're talking about "breaking the mood," I find the idea of rolling a bunch of dice and separating them out to be a much bigger mood killer than simply rolling one die and adding one number to it.
I'll see if I can explain this well. Mythender, the dice pool game, is about killing gods. Since you're playing a god killer, the game doesn't model whether you hit or not when you throw a spear, it assumes that you do because you're a bad ass. What it models is how much that spear hit matters. Did you throw it at Thor, skewer his arm and he just laughed and broke it off? Or did it pin him to the ground, so you can walk up to him and wipe the memory of him from existence?
The dice represent power. The more dice you have, the more potential power you have. When you harm someone, you take away some of their power.
I've also found in the game that the addition/removal of dice creates a physical connection between the player and the character. It taps into something instinctual as well, instead of abstract numbers, your hit points are something you can feel and touch.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
All I'm saying is, that you've said multiple times that "3.5 works against the mood" and I've repeatedly said, from years of experience that that is absolutely not the case, for me at least.
How can you say that those rules work "against the mood," yet you implore me to play a game with a bunch more dice rolling and say it creates a "physical connection"? How does 3.5/PF/etc not do the same thing?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm just saying that if we're talking about "breaking the mood," I find the idea of rolling a bunch of dice and separating them out to be a much bigger mood killer than simply rolling one die and adding one number to it.
Agreed. While it wasn't a horror game, it was the main reason what turned me off from playing Exalted after my single exposure to it.
|
I think the simpler and the more transparent the mechanics you are using are, the better they suit trying to create a mood of tension/horror/fear. It's one of the reasons that I think Call of Cthulhu has been such a big hit over the years...the basic mechanic is percentages, something anyone out of elementary school understands. You can concentrate on the story and the mood rather than the mechanics.
But probably the best thing you can do to establish ANY mood is have at least one player who really wants to help you establish that mood.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Scry sensors.
Nothing like a big floating bloodshot wizard eye to let the players know that they can't rest any time soon.
|
As the DM you control everything the players perceive about the world.
Nothing frightens a person more than not being able to trust what he sees.
The same as the 'Shining effect' mentioned earlier, in my game the party was exploring ancient ruins with clear crystal coffins containing the bodies of the inhabitants.
Periodically I would pass notes to players telling them that they saw a body do something, like silently scream or run its hands along the crystal. And only that character noticed it.
The group wanted out of that section as fast as possible.
All I'm saying is, that you've said multiple times that "3.5 works against the mood" and I've repeatedly said, from years of experience that that is absolutely not the case, for me at least.
How can you say that those rules work "against the mood," yet you implore me to play a game with a bunch more dice rolling and say it creates a "physical connection"? How does 3.5/PF/etc not do the same thing?
What I'm saying is that the process of the rules, and options within those rules, create a mood specific to how those rules work. With enough effort, a GM and group can make any set of rules work for anything. Which is fine if that's what you want to do.
I think 3.X can be modded to work more easily, but without those significant changes, it's less efficient. I'm on a mobile device, so I'll edit later to add a link with a single concept of what I mean.
Instilling tension and fear, is about a LOT more than "doing HP damage." Heck, I've had PC's go insane, have cardiac arrest, and even suicidal thoughts, all without inflicting a single point of HP damage.
I've never advocated HP damage as building tension or horror.
Ok JM; I now have a PDF of the Van Ricten Fey book and it has some interesting stuff. I think I'm going to steal a little for my PF game for elite or BBEG villains.
My question to you or anyone here is - how to build tension in a big megadungeon with a lot going on? Not horror per se; I'm not running a horror-themed game but I would like the players to feel SOME aprehension.
Here's the setup: in the ancient days of my homebrew Karnoss there were several corrupt monarchs until the old uber-kingdom fell. The megadungeon is a series of shrines venerating the old kings. There's several zones to the dungeon: numerous Outer Shrines, a dark bog, evil thickets and underground tunnels.
Now, my game is a sort of dark fairy tale; fey, lycanthropes, evil humanoids. But in a gigantic sprawling ruin overgrown by the local woods how do I add some tension?
Is it ALL just atmosphere? I suppose the fey can play some tricks on their eyes but is that kind of it? If I sound desparate I am; above TimD talked about the 3 elements and I agree w/him but the first one, Investment, is almost nil by my players. I've always been kind of a softie on my gamers as well, so I don't know how confident I am with Consequences.
Any help you can offer me specifically on Immersion I'd be forever in your debt.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've never advocated HP damage as building tension or horror.
I'll advocate it!
Knowing your character might very well die next turn if you or your friends don't do something now does indeed trigger an atavistic response. It is best used occasionally, and most effective when unexpected. Well, it also works when it is entirely expected, see dragons.
Indeed, far from merely tracking wounds (which HP do a terrible job of), HP are more or less entirely a measure of how much suspense the player should feel based on the amount of "fightin' " that's transpired. And it is a good mechanic for that!
Undead and gore-mongering ogres are easy to build suspense for. How then with faeries? The actions of the fey always seem so personal, driven to the individual. How then to get an entire party on edge with, say, a water nymph who goes about stealing beauty because of her own vanity. How do you make a Fairy Tale seem scary? PS: I can't use the undead as my fall back. I've just finished an undead-themed campaign and not only am I a little fried but the players are not built optimally to deal with the Animated.
Ok JM; I now have a PDF of the Van Ricten Fey book and it has some interesting stuff. I think I'm going to steal a little for my PF game for elite or BBEG villains.
My question to you or anyone here is - how to build tension in a big megadungeon with a lot going on? Not horror per se; I'm not running a horror-themed game but I would like the players to feel SOME aprehension.
Here's the setup: in the ancient days of my homebrew Karnoss there were several corrupt monarchs until the old uber-kingdom fell. The megadungeon is a series of shrines venerating the old kings. There's several zones to the dungeon: numerous Outer Shrines, a dark bog, evil thickets and underground tunnels.
Now, my game is a sort of dark fairy tale; fey, lycanthropes, evil humanoids. But in a gigantic sprawling ruin overgrown by the local woods how do I add some tension?
Is it ALL just atmosphere? I suppose the fey can play some tricks on their eyes but is that kind of it? If I sound desparate I am; above TimD talked about the 3 elements and I agree w/him but the first one, Investment, is almost nil by my players. I've always been kind of a softie on my gamers as well, so I don't know how confident I am with Consequences.
Any help you can offer me specifically on Immersion I'd be forever in your debt.
I truthfully haven't run a lot of "megadungeons," but as far as building tension goes, don't give the party much of a chance to catch their breath. Every time they try to stop and recoup, have "something" happen to them that disturbs their rest. Doesn't necessarily need to be an encounter, but things like noises in the halls, shaking walls, enemy scouts peeking around the corner at them, etc. Just enough to keep them busy.
I played in a World's Largest Dungeon campaign for a while, and early on in the dungeon these sorts of things happen, and I recall it keeping everyone at the table on edge.
Undead and gore-mongering ogres are easy to build suspense for. How then with faeries? The actions of the fey always seem so personal, driven to the individual. How then to get an entire party on edge with, say, a water nymph who goes about stealing beauty because of her own vanity. How do you make a Fairy Tale seem scary? PS: I can't use the undead as my fall back. I've just finished an undead-themed campaign and not only am I a little fried but the players are not built optimally to deal with the Animated.
You could try playing up the prankster aspect associated with a lot of Fey. Have little silly things happen, like all the strap on a PC's backpack being undone and their gear spilling out when they stand up.
Have it start out humorous and seemingly innocent, then ratchet up the severity of the pranks. Have the pranks start getting serious, inflicting damage, maybe a scrolls case catches fire in the middle of a battle, maybe a sword is glued into it's hilt, and the melee PC has to battle a monster with his sword sheathed, etc etc.
Fey don't seem to "go for the throat" like other creature types do, at least not right away. Have the Fey manipulate the PC's; pull their hair, alter their reflection in the water, trip them occasionally.
|
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Another aspect of the fae to play up is their inhumanity. Not as in callous, cruel (that's the unseele) but lack of humanity.
To use the shadow fae book, an unseelee would be one who would torment and terrorize a person before stealing his shadow. A seele would steal the shadow, but see it as a kind act, preserving the mortal's creativity forever.
Or to use the TV show Lost Girl, to the light humans are pets and snacks as needed, to the dark they're disposable resources. It's not 'evil' to them anymore than it's evil to ride a horse or eat a hamburger. I guess that makes Bo FETH (Fae for the Ethical Treatment of Humans). :-)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Undead and gore-mongering ogres are easy to build suspense for. How then with faeries? The actions of the fey always seem so personal, driven to the individual. How then to get an entire party on edge with, say, a water nymph who goes about stealing beauty because of her own vanity. How do you make a Fairy Tale seem scary? PS: I can't use the undead as my fall back. I've just finished an undead-themed campaign and not only am I a little fried but the players are not built optimally to deal with the Animated.
Look up the myths.
Faerie Land as a place to which fey creatures can spirit you away should pose a terrifying threat.
The fey realm is a terrifying, bad-acid-trip place. Its denizens are constantly enslaving mortals, be it by leading them astray, preying upon their base desires, or even simply abducting them as infants.
The fey moment is that of being lost in the woods, and the trees begin to look strange. Unless you have recourse to folklore, your soul is in grave danger. Take off your jacket and pants and put them on backwards, that way you'll be able to return in the direction of the mortal world without the fey realizing which way you're facing.
Fey should be scary through game effects that require unconventional solutions, like the one above.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As others have noted, there are lots of stories of fey doing creepy stuff. A gaming source to look at can be WW's Changeling game. In that you play humans stolen by fey who have managed to escape back to the real world, but you've been changed.
Their books have lots of fluff that can be adapted, images, descriptions and characters.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My wife says she has seen too many horror movies to take tension seriously. 'It's just a game. What's the worst that happens, my imaginary character dies? Oh no.'
Oh, she has no idea. Having someone's character outright "die" is just too easy. It's the things worse than death that make it interesting...
All good stuff. I have a fey boogeyman building in another thread called Pogolo Peeps; that was a good start. I also like that idea of little pranks getting worse and unconventional solutions.
When the pranks get to a point where my players actually complain about them, if they haven't already, I'll have them make some Knowledge rolls (nature, arcane, local or history). I know this violates the "knowing it takes away the scary" thing but the rolls will give them info like:
Sleeping in a fey ring in the daylight with a vial of infant's tears will stop the bad dreams
Ward yourself with rosewater soap candles
Brewing wolfsbane tea at midnight then quaffing it at the first ray of dawn will give you terrible breath; breath so bad that pixies will keep their distance the whole day.
All of these are made up but I'll hit the books (google) post-work and look up some real-world ones.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Even then, how much do you really care about imaginary people?
<.<
EDIT: I care enough to help create an interesting story with the players. A story with dynamic range and depth, if possible.
EDIT 2: Seriously, what kind of response is that? Of COURSE they're imaginary. What a joykill.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I knew my character was imaginary, KNEW it mind you; I STILL got freaked when after hours of non-stop attacks by "blue-skinned goblins" and several moments of pure horror my lady was finally able to drift off into fitful dreams only to be awoken by great, hardened hands clutching me as I swayed.
Y'see I was already paranoid and I knew I'd fallen asleep on the ground. I knew 'cause I made a point of saying how I laid out a bed of leaves and then my bedroll. Now add this wakeup to my paranoia? No wonder I stabbed the treant in the eye with the arrow I kept in the small of my back!
Bottom line - you can know something's not real and still get creeped out by it. Was the blair witch project real? No. Did most of it scare me? No. But was it CREEPY seeing the guy in the corner, RIGHT at the end, regardless of everything else I just said? Lets just say I stopped putting my kids in time outs FACING the wall after that...
Can imaginary things creep people out? Ask someone to call Bloody Mary in a mirror, or spend a night in an abandoned asylum, or take a shower with the curtain drawn after watching Psycho. All of these are irrational fears inflicted upon us by stories, nothing more. Yet we are moved to anything from morbid curiosity to absolute terror because of them.
If things that happened to imaginary people held no sway over us as humans, Frankenstein would never have been written and there would be no horror genre. Period.
All of this is my opinion and I apologize for the rant and the inevitible negative feelings it will cause.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Rephrased: How much do I really care about my time investment? :)
|
|
Even then, how much do you really care about imaginary people?<.<
EDIT: I care enough to help create an interesting story with the players. A story with dynamic range and depth, if possible.
EDIT 2: Seriously, what kind of response is that? Of COURSE they're imaginary. What a joykill.
You missed the point. Be it death or 'worse', it's not really happening. So why be tense over it?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You missed the point. Be it death or 'worse', it's not really happening. So whybe tense over it?Even then, how much do you really care about imaginary people?<.<
EDIT: I care enough to help create an interesting story with the players. A story with dynamic range and depth, if possible.
EDIT 2: Seriously, what kind of response is that? Of COURSE they're imaginary. What a joykill.
Because the engagement is part of the enjoyment.
You missed the point. Be it death or 'worse', it's not really happening. So why be tense over it?Even then, how much do you really care about imaginary people?<.<
EDIT: I care enough to help create an interesting story with the players. A story with dynamic range and depth, if possible.
EDIT 2: Seriously, what kind of response is that? Of COURSE they're imaginary. What a joykill.
I'm not even very sure how to respond to this. You're on a role-playing game forum, in a thread about tension, fear, and horror elements in games. Do you just like beer-n-pretzel, hack and slash games? Do your games have absolutely any story element other than "go here do this, roll initiative..."?
Have you ever watched a scary movie and got scared? Ever read a scary book? Sure, those weren't real either. It's part of telling a story for entertainment. Of course it's not real. Nobody ever said it was. If all we had to do was handwave it all away as "it's not real, so it's not scary", there wouldn't even be a horror movie genre, H.P Lovecraft would have written teen-romance novels, and Ravenloft wouldn't exist.
As far as the "worse than death" comment I made earlier, in the settings I usually run, all manner of horrid things can happen to your character that are much worse, at least story-wise than just dropping at negative HP. Your character might become an infected lycanthrope, they might be raised as an Undead, they might go insane and get locked away in a crooked insane asylum, etc etc. Just "dying" is the easy way out in these kinds of games.