# Creepy...



## demiurge1138

What creepy things have you either thrown at your players or had thrown at you?

One of my favorites was Annika. Annika was a young girl, about twelve years old, who had been kidnapped amid a rash of deadly nightmares through her town. The PCs determined that she had been kidnapped by a night hag, and went out to the forest where, according to lore, the hag laired. The hag told them that Annika was her daughter, and she was just transforming her in the method traditional of the night hags. The Freelance Police drove away, but didn't kill, the hag, rescued Annika, and used Remove Curse to dispel the unfortunate purple tone her skin had taken.

But, although Annika was still mostly human, she thought a big, well, haggishly. After the intial shock of being rescued, she was very calm, very collected and very intelligent. And one of the players just wanted to kill her, because he was _sure_ that she was going to go for all of their throats. But she never did, which just made her all the creepier in his eyes...

I liked her. I think I'm going to have to bring her back.

Demiurge out.


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## Edgewood

Mine is alot more sudued. The PCs IMC were walking through a large patch of forest between adventures and were just simply looking for a place to rest. They came across an abandoned pet cemetary off the road which was mostly overgrown with brush and foliage. The group went through the cemetary just looking at few wooden headstones that weren't totally rotted away. The Cleric felt the need to cast Hallow on the spot. Finally the group moved away and bedded down for the night.

On the next day the group traveled for some 10 miles (still in the forest) when they came a across a dilapidated abandoned home off the road. They decided to investigate it. They found nothing but rotting furniture, a floor that sagged down into the root cellar beneath and the rafters filled with nesting birds.

The group did happen to find a secret door leading down from the root cellar which led them to a small room filled with odd utensils (like a surgeons) and an old rotted out table. there were also the remains of many animals. The players became somewhat spooked (not sure why but they did) and left. Once outside the house they were confronted by an old crone of a woman who had a raven sitting on her shoulder. She was pleasant to the group and asked why they were at her home. The group was surprised that anyone lived there, and told her they thought it was abandoned. She invited then in for tea but they refused and headed off on their merry way. When they looked back, they watched her enter the house.

Once out of the woods, they came across a merchant riding in the opposite direction (heading for the forest). He asked them if the road ahead was clear. The group said yes except for the strange old lady who lived in the ruined house. The merchant sort of froze and said, "you mean old Sadie? Couldn't be, she's been dead for 20 years now. used to be an old taxidermist for the local folk. Buried many of the townsfolk pets in the cemetery up the road a bit.." He then bid them farewell and rode off.

Now why the players were creeped out by that, I don't know but one of the players said she felt a chill literally run down her spine when the merchant told them about 'old Sadie'.  Just one of those things I suppose.


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## Shemeska

Tellura Ibn Shartalan, one of the Baernaloths in my storyhour. Otherwise known as the Dire Shepherd, she takes the form of a young aasimar or tiefling girl dressed as a shepherd and lame in one leg. Evil wrapped in innocence, with only her shadow reflecting her true nature as it lurks behind her, moving independant of her physical manifestation.

One of the PCs in that game wandered into her in the Outlands, or rather she made him wander across her. He wasn't aware of anything amiss till he started to notice himself unconsciously doing things without thinking about it, ie talking to her and not noticing having walked to within close range etc. Her expression as a perversion of the watchful shepherd / Christ figure motif got to the players, combined with a disturbing level of motherly care for 'her children' the yugoloths who despite being her flock, were still in the end just useful tools.


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## CM

One of my groups is trapped on the plane of shadow, although at the time they believed they were still on the material plane. They were traveling through a forest, and heading toward a spring that was said to be the rendezvous point for elven noncombatants fleeing an invasion. As they neared, they glimpsed spirits of elven children at play in the forest--picking flowers, playing a flute, skipping down a path. The sightings seemed to become more frequent as they neared the spring. No matter what the party did, the ghosts never reacted to their presence. They simply faded from view as party members approached.

At the site of the spring itself, a giant, twisted tree rose from a mound just beyond the pool (a Night Twist from MM3). In its branches were over a dozen elven spirits, seemingly awaiting the party's approach. The paladin went right up to try to bless/lay their spirits to rest. That's when the children took material form and sprung from the trees to attack, eyes blood red, skin pale white, with long, sharp, black teeth and claws.

The kids were evolved undead haunting-presence 8-HD ghasts.   Libris Mortis is my friend.

As the party will discover in the near future, the adults were killed by giants, but most of the children were able to hide in the woods. Then they went all lord-of-the-flies and became ghasts, due to the whole shadow plane entrapment and the weak border with the negative energy plane nearby.


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## Emperor Valerian

Isida Kep'Tukari tossed her Dying Daughter Prestige class at us in one campaign.  Basically a little girl who is left alone or neglected by her family makes a pact with a demon to kill them... she gains spell-like powers, _phantasmal killer_, can simultaneously blind, deafen, and mute people, and all sorts of other nasties.

Our party was in a large town, poking about trying to solve a series of murders in a rich family.  We knew that their 10 year old daughter dabbled in spellcasting; she _prestidigated_ a horse in front of us.  But we were very surprised, disturbed, and caught off guard when she tried to kill us too!


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## Goblyn

Recently my PCs came up against zombies.  Nothing special, just zombies.  The party was spelunking a rivermouth near which something was tainting the water of the river.

Anyway, I don't remember vividly describing them or anything, I just introduced them as dead bodies laying about at first then after a minute or so told the party "the bodies begin to get up."

One of the _players_, my niece, became quite scared and so I let the party quickly finish them off with aminimum of description and didin't put any more undead anywhere.

If it was an all adult game, I might have been less forgiving, but she's only twelve.


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## Evilhalfling

Well my plane of shadow is where souls go who are trapped between states - The recently retired, the empty nesters, the just marrieds, the adolecets, and most disturbing to the players those who died while being born- floating undead taken from a picture in the ELH they suck life energy by attaching thier umblical cord to you. 
Really creeped out my players.  This happened well before two women in my group became pregnent.  I dont think I would use it now.


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## Abraxas

Creepy is subjective but . . .

As a DM
My players faced off against a hive of Insectile Ogres that had attacked a town and carried off most of the bodies.  In the process of fighting these creatures they kept finding these globes filled with a honey like substance that registered as conjuration magic under scrutiny with a detect magic spell.  The globes were similar to the abdomens of honey ants but about the size of a softball.  They had observed the insectile ogres drinking from them after being wounded - and being fairly smart - deduced that they were some sort of healing potion.  As they continued their fight with the bugs they used a number of these to heal their own wounds.  Imagine their surprise when they breach the hive and find a series of chambers with larva that are consuming the remains of the towns people and excreting the honey like substance used to fill these globes.  The globes were referred to as soylent gold after that.

As a Player
We were sent to a defunct prison called the "Pit of the Damned" to recover the maguffin item we needed.  This prison had been used to house very evil spellcasters until such time as their judgement could be carried out - Evil not just in alignment, but in they had used their magical abilities to augment the commision of fairly horrible deeds - so it had been the home to rapists, murderers, cannibals, pedophiles, etc etc.  Something horrible had happened and the place was closed and warded.  We get inside and have to fight the undead remains of a number of these creatures.  In general it was just creepy and then we fight the undead pedophile sadist - who's special attack turns your character into a 7 year old if you fail your saving throw. That made my skin crawl.


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## shilsen

Recently, the PCs in my group were investigating an area in the undercity (Sharn, from Eberron) where they had fought some aberrations. They found a couple of hastily-abandoned rooms which included little besides a mirror on the wall and a crawlspace. Inside the latter, they found a strange-looking bag with splotches on it, which then turned out to be the skin of human-being who'd had all the stuffing sucked out of him (still had dessicated bones & organs inside). One caught a glimpse in the mirror of a grayish humanoid form leaning over those looking at the skin-bag, even though nobody could see it, and caressing the back of one's neck with a tentacle. It disappeared from the mirror as soon as he raised the alarm.

The next few minutes were spent trying to detect whatever might be in there with them, with little success and growing trepidation on the part of the explorers. The artificer tried to examine the mirror, at which point it went dead gray and for an instant showed a small eye in its center, which rapidly expanded to fill the entire mirror, which then exploded. Once the bleeding and dazed artificer was healed, he managed to infuse a _see invisibility_ spell, which revealed the two rooms to be full from roof to ceiling of invisible, intangible webs, which were moving very gently in a non-existent breeze. The party got the hell out of there


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## Hand of Evil

Cannibalistic children, really took a toll on my players.  The game was a take off of the Pied Piper, bard that was seking vengence on his home city, had a flute that would turn kids into animals with a taste for human flesh.


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## Ravellion

shilsen said:
			
		

> Recently, the PCs in my group were investigating an area in the undercity (Sharn, from Eberron) where they had fought some aberrations. They found a couple of hastily-abandoned rooms which included little besides a mirror on the wall and a crawlspace. Inside the latter, they found a strange-looking bag with splotches on it, which then turned out to be the skin of human-being who'd had all the stuffing sucked out of him (still had dessicated bones & organs inside). One caught a glimpse in the mirror of a grayish humanoid form leaning over those looking at the skin-bag, even though nobody could see it, and caressing the back of one's neck with a tentacle. It disappeared from the mirror as soon as he raised the alarm.
> 
> The next few minutes were spent trying to detect whatever might be in there with them, with little success and growing trepidation on the part of the explorers. The artificer tried to examine the mirror, at which point it went dead gray and for an instant showed a small eye in its center, which rapidly expanded to fill the entire mirror, which then exploded. Once the bleeding and dazed artificer was healed, he managed to infuse a _see invisibility_ spell, which revealed the two rooms to be full from roof to ceiling of invisible, intangible webs, which were moving very gently in a non-existent breeze. The party got the hell out of there



Wow...


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## Gez

demiurge1138 said:
			
		

> Annika was a young girl





			
				Shemeska said:
			
		

> takes the form of a young aasimar or tiefling girl





			
				Emperor Valerian said:
			
		

> a little girl who is left alone





			
				Goblyn said:
			
		

> One of the _players_, my niece




What have we learned today? That little girls are eeky!  



(Sorry Goblyn for quoting you in that list, I just thought it would be funny.  )


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## Nebulous

I ran a CoC adventure where the PC's went through an old asylum looking for clues for a mysterious cult known only as Ktulu. They were sort of 1920's paranormal investigators funded by the government (i.e. start of Delta Green). The best part was that the actual pictures I used were from a real asylum: Danvers.

The pics alone were enough to set them on edge. The rotted zombies in the basement were just icing on the cake.


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## Tetsubo

The creepiest thing I've ever done as a GM was a Necromancer that ran a necrophile brothel. 

He had zombie "prostitutes" tied to beds for his customers. 

He had two "special" models as well. These two poor individuals (one male, one female) had been turned into zombies while still alive. They were zombies but still had souls and were quite aware of what was going on. Each client got to use a Control Amulet that let them make these "special" models do anything they wished. Knowing that inside that rotting corpse was a human soul screaming to get out. Once freed the male asked to be killed. The female took the Amulet, placed it around her own neck and it melted into her flesh. She was now free willed undead. She took some money from her former "master", a few weapons, his client list and ripped off his genitals as a parting gesture (he was alive at that point...). Over the next month or so reports started coming in about a string of murders with specific forms of mutilation...

That creeped out my players...

I planned on bringing her back as an NPC at some point but the campaign ended.


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## Tetsubo

Nebulous said:
			
		

> I ran a CoC adventure where the PC's went through an old asylum looking for clues for a mysterious cult known only as Ktulu. They were sort of 1920's paranormal investigators funded by the government (i.e. start of Delta Green). The best part was that the actual pictures I used were from a real asylum: Danvers.
> 
> The pics alone were enough to set them on edge. The rotted zombies in the basement were just icing on the cake.




Nebulous (great nick btw) - have you seen the movie Session 9? It's set in the Danvers Asylum. It's not a bad film.


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## Ralif Redhammer

There are some moments of creep here that I don't think I could ever approach.

My last creepy moment was in the Mhair Jungles, and was done as an homage to Fulci's Zombi. As they entered the forest, they saw one of the natives watching them from the shadows. He just stood there, ignoring their salutations. As they got closer, they noticed that he kept reaching down to about stomach level, raising his hand back to his mouth, and chewing listlessly. Once they got even closer, they saw that he was in fact reaching into his stomach cavity and removing maggots to eat. The zombie moaned and lurched forward, maggots spilling from his mouth.

Session 9 is a interesting film. Didn't realize it was shot in Danvers.


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## Allanon

Ravellion said:
			
		

> Wow...



 Double wow... thanks for the inspiration for my one-shot d20 CoC game Shilsen


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## Desdichado

My new favorite thread!  Let me finish reading it later today, and I'll contribute.  I'm a big fan of creepiness.  I've been accused of turning fantasy games into Cthulhu games before.


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## Belen

d20 Future:  I threw an undead USAF crewman at the players.  He was unique in that he was found in the medical bay crucified by IV tubing.  Later, then he attacked.  He had a ranged attack where he used the tubing almost like chains that did piercing damaged and could wither drain blood or pump preservative fluids into the victim.

It freaked everyone out.


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## carpedavid

The creepiest thing I think I ever threw at my characters was a prison that was a 20-story deep pit where political enemies of the Emperor were sent to die. While exploring it, they found a torture toom, and in the room was a glass vat with a man floating in a reddish-yellow liquid. They realized, upon inspection, that the man was bound in his current position, and had a ring of water breathing on one hand, and a ring of regeneration (acid only) on the other.

After mercifully freeing the man from his torture, they set out to explore the rest of the torture room, and came across a stack of wooden crates (about 3'x3'). One of the characters sat down on one, and heard a moan come from inside. Opening it up revealed a gaunt, nearly dead prisoner. They then looked at the stack of crates and realized that there were at least a hundred of them.

I think that was the creepiest session we've ever had.


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## Nebulous

Tetsubo said:
			
		

> Nebulous (great nick btw) - have you seen the movie Session 9? It's set in the Danvers Asylum. It's not a bad film.




I have seen it, several times. One of my favorite little underrated films. 

There's some really great ideas in this thread. Keep 'em coming! I love the invisible spider threads and the Fulci zombie eating stomach maggots. 

My brother ran an adventure once that he was always proud of. There was a locked door in a dungeon with a little girl's voice behind it begging for help.  It was very well barricaded, and the PC's had trouble getting in. The little girl's voice eventually turned into a demon screaming "RELEASE MEEEEE!" It helped that the sound fx he used were from real people.  He said his players were terrified as they were taken completely off guard.


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## Nebulous

Then there was an old 2nd ed. adventure where the PC's fought an Inquisitor in the bowels of the Rook's Roost. They had previously summoned a bear to scout ahead. It trots down the stairs to the basement, then comes charging up, terrified and singed from flame! 

But what really creeped the players out was the Inquisitor's prisoners. He kept living prisoners trapped in a magical lock in stasis, would pull them out as needed, torture them on a wide variety of racks, pins, iron maidens, etc. heal them in a pool of healing (w/ handcuffs) and put them back into stasis where they could watch others getting tortured until it was their turn again. 

Year after year after year.


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## Aries_Omega

*My 2 coppers*

I had many ideas that worked well. One I love was in a Cyberpunk 2020 game. I set it up by haveing the edgerunners get jumped in a hole in the wall Mexican resturant. Later they had an op that required lots of stealth. THey were doing fine...their guts were killing them from the food. Stomach flu is a bitch. One guy couldn't take it anymore. He picked the lock and disarmed the alarm system to the exec washroom and dropped his pants. Now...toilet seats in a commercial and residential komode are different if you ever noticed. Commercial ones are "U" shaped so that your twigs and berries can pass through. Well...he sat down...his stuff pass through...and a pair of blades popped out. Forgot about the keypad next to the toilet paper. From there on out the PC and the players became almost obsessive about resturant cleanliness. In real life the guys check out public toilets out the rare times they HAD to use one.

The second thing that really messed with my players. A necromancer. He was thwarted by the players and hurled into a portal he opened to some evil plane. He became a "boyfriend" to a fiend and finally escaped but after he had pieces of demon flesh grafted to him and had things "growing" in him from insemination. He was so angry and wanting to get revenge he killed the familys of the characters and used them to make a undead general to lead an army of undead against their nation.

Aries


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## der_kluge

I don't think I've quite gotten to this level. In a HARP game I ran at the MD/VA/DC game day, the PCs are investigating a string of bizarre murders/suicides that they soon learn are the result of magical mind-control. 

One the NPCs describes, in vivid detail to them about how "something entered his mind" and made him stare wide-eyed directly into the sun.  Well, here it is.  



> Next thing I know, I’ve lost control of my body, and before I know, it, I’m staring at the sun, all wide-eyed. At first, it felt like I was just dreaming you know, but the sun was bright out, remember, just a couple of days ago? It came out, and there I was just, staring at it. At first, you know it hurt a little. ‘Cause we’ve all looked at the sun just briefly, and you know, it’s really bright, and it kind of hurts, so we turn away. But, I couldn’t. I just kept looking at it. And after a little while, I could feel my eyes burning, like someone’d taken a hot skewer, you know like you stir coals with, and shoved it slowly into my eyeball, and then twisted it a little bit. It felt like that, ‘cept worse. And I could hear a little sizzle, and I could feel the back of my eye burning, just burning like something horrible. And the tears welt up, and they streamed down my face, and I could feel some snot coming outta my nose, and then everything just kind of slowly went dark. I guess I must have screamed, too, pretty bad, because I could hear some people showing up and talking. After that, I fell to my knees, and my eyes, they was bleeding real bad. I couldn’t see anything, just lots of hazy green that eventually just turned black. I felt my face, and I could feel that it was blood.




Xath was in that game, and she said that she "admired my attention to detail".  ha!


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## Goobermunch

I've had one really creepy moment in my game so far.

Early in the game, the PCs "rescued" a 6 year-old girl from a group of hobgoblins.  She hadn't been harmed, and the managed to negotiate a peaceful resolution.  Then they returned her to her father, a very busy, well-respected member of the Mortician's Guild.  They were a little concerned about her well-being, since her father tended to work extremely long hours, and her mother had passed away about four years earlier.  To assuage their concerns, they hired a member of one of the local churches to provide some tutoring and supervision to the girl.

A few sessions later, they discovered that the girl's home had burned down (while they were away).  There were no bodies in the ruins of the house though, but no one had seen her or her father since the fire.  Eventually, they found out that the father was also a necromancer of some skill.  When they found his new lair, they found Phoebe locked in a closet.  Her father had killed her, raised her body as a zombie, and bound her spirit into the zombie's body.

Phoebe had control of the zombie's voice, but that was it.

Phoebe's dad loved her, but he just couldn't handle his precocious daughter.  So he turned to truly Evil daycare.

It was great fun to watch the players' faces as they fought with the little zombie.  All the while, Phoebe begged them to kill her (and accused the paladin of welching on his promise to protect her).

Eventually, they killed the zombie, and the girl's spirit ended up bound to one of the PCs.

But that wasn't the creepy part.  The creepy part came about four sessions later, when they were talking with the Canon of their church.  They discovered that one of the nearby nations was having a succession crisis because the queen was ill and her daughter had run of with some disreputable mortician about seven years previous.

The realization that they'd a) killed the heir to the throne of the largest military power in the region, and b) bound her spirit to the party's rogue, sent them into hiding for a few weeks until they could figure out how to resolve the issue.

They still haven't decided what to do.

--G


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## Desdichado

My Story Hour

Here's a few highlights...

I started off the campaign by giving the players some pregen PCs who were doing guard duty on a caravan.  After letting them roleplay for a few minutes, they were attacked by a strange-looking woman and her zombies, who promptly murdered the entire group.  Then they got their "real" PCs out and went into the campaign proper.  When they later met this woman several sessions later, they were properly scared.  When she claimed to be nothing more than a tool, and tried to turn them against their patron, they left town to get away from the intrigues that were surrounding them like a net.
After chasing a guy who had been shadowing the group through the city, they came across a bundle of rags on the rooftop.  As they got closer, it stood up; turns out it was a vaguely humanoid mannequin made of stitched together flayed human faces and filled to stuffing with maggots (thank you, _Book of Fiends!_)  If they hit it with a slashing attack, it spewed maggots on them from the wound, which burrowed into their flesh, and it grappled one poor player and vomited maggots in this face and promptly started eating him alive.  Turns out the guy wasn't actually too difficult to defeat, but the encounter made a much greater impression on them than it strictly needed to...
Much later, after fighting off a group of assassins, the world went black for a moment and the PCs saw everyone around them as corpses.  One of the PCs, the only one foolish enough to attempt learning and casting spells (hehe...) had a more extended vision; he saw --as if by his own hands-- an "operation" on a homeless beggar in which his torso was cut open, a live mangy and rapid rat was placed inside and sewn up with ragged leather stitches.  When, later, swarms of rats erupted from the pipes all around them they were suitably freaked out.  When the rats were followed by the attack of a 10-foot rat-featured ogre-like creature, who turned back into the beggar of the vision, with a squirming and writhing rat inside his dying torso, after being defeated, they ran in a hurry.
The PCs were getting their hineys handed to them quite nicely by an undead construct thingy until they dared to use the weapon that could defeat him.  It was a 6 foot or more black sword with leering daemonic faces on it that seemed to shift and mouth obscenities out of the corner of their eyes if they didn't look at it too hard.  The character who picked it up started hearing those obscenities in his mind as blasphemous voices (which did Sanity damage every round he held the sword) and when he attacked he could feel the sword biting his hands, slicking them with blood.  They dispatched their foe and haven't touched the sword since.  That was almost a TPK there.
I don't know if this is creepy or campy, but after leaving town to escape all the folks trying to use them in the city, they ran away to a small town.  I had barely started on the guide telling them about the "queer look" folks from that town all had; like they had been inbred for generations or something, and the PCs were asking if they looked "fishy" at all; they immediately caught the Innesmouth reference.  Of course, I was modeling the little town on Innesmouth (but instead of deep ones, the folks were turning into weirdo multiple eye and tentacle monstrosities.)  Because my PCs were much more direct than the protagonist of _The Shadow Over Innesmouth_ they ended up being chased out of town by a mob, and worse.  Currently the cliffhanger of my last session involves on sorta healthy PC, one PC who's down to 1 STR and 3 WIS, and one PC who stabilized after nearly burning to death.  With no magical healing in this campaign, they're in trouble; they barely escaped out of town running on a cart, and now they're going to have to hide in the countryside will angry mobs look for them and they slowly heal naturally.


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## Templetroll

BelenUmeria said:
			
		

> d20 Future:  I threw an undead USAF crewman at the players.  He was unique in that he was found in the medical bay crucified by IV tubing.  Later, then he attacked.  He had a ranged attack where he used the tubing almost like chains that did piercing damaged and could wither drain blood or pump preservative fluids into the victim.
> 
> It freaked everyone out.




Yup, I was one of them.  We were back on our ship going over what we found out and someone suggested going back.  I shook my head, "no, we found out what we need to know, we don't need to go back in there!'   We agreed that the ship had to be destroyed, even though it had historical interest, yaddayadda.  It went boom, we made the bad 'guys' base go boom (in a most excellent space battle) and we made certain that the only thing we reported back was how essential that anything in that area that showed up needed to go boom.

Yup, I'm still creeped out.  thanks for bringing back those memories, BU!


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## radferth

Once I had a character who touched an evil altar receive visions of death, oblivian, and writhing tentacles, but informed him that his character "kinda liked it.  You feel that you might want to touch the altar again".  They left the room very quickly.


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## Nebulous

What is it that is so despicable about maggots? I can't stand the things, and all the goopiest grossest posts here have spewing wriggling maggots. I'll have to use that, if i can bear to even bring it up in explicit detail.


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## carpedavid

This thread is giving me such wonderful ideas. I fully expect maggots to show up in my next game session.


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## WayneLigon

The group is camped for the night when a voice comes from the road 'Haloo the camp! Travellers! We are knights of the count, and we would share your fire!'. The group looks over the knights, who look to have been in a fight at some point in the day, and bid them welcome. The trio comes over and shares the fire on this bitterly cold night, though they say they are fasting and so partake only of water and a little broth.

The group chats with them for several minutes, with a couple of the more perceptive people just 'getting the willies'. _Something_ is wrong but they can't figure out what. A couple of crows flutter down to peck at the edge of the camp, as they do in this part of the world. The party has seen this many times in the past. Around about the same time, two things happen: the party leader realizes that the knights breath does not plume in the bitter night air, and one of the crows hops over to the youngest knight, who has removed his gauntlets and has his hands on the log the group is sitting on, and casually teases a chunk of flesh from the man's hand without him noticing. 

That, of course, makes the mage sit up and yell, and the knights - who have been ghouls for about a week now -- spring to the attack...

The players later said they got pretty spooked when they realized the knights breath was not warm.  Since they, they ask this about any humanoid encounter: Are they _breathing_?


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## Nebulous

Sounds like a a perfect scenario for a Midnight campaign. The Fell are often still sentient and lay traps for the unwary.


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## Xath

Not too long ago, the DM faced us with a Cadavor Collector.  But this one was different in that it had a little girl's head on one of it's spikes and the room we were in was covered in bodies.  The little girl's head talked about all of its dollies and when we entered the room it talked about how it had new dollies to play with.  Certainly creepy.


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## Shemeska

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> My new favorite thread!  Let me finish reading it later today, and I'll contribute.  I'm a big fan of creepiness.  I've been accused of turning fantasy games into Cthulhu games before.




You're not the only one


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## DungeonmasterCal

I once made my sister run gagging from the room describing larval carrion crawlers emerging from a corpse.

One of my faves was while running a game where only two players (both women, incidentally...though this is not meant to imply women get scared easier) were investigating a cult of pain.  They entered a burned out temple where the nave was hung with dozens of chains softly swaying and chiming in the breeze.  I described the moonlight coming in through the broken windows, the dark stains on the floor beneath the chains, the eerie silence except for the clinking, when the wind through my own window slammed a door shut.  They both screamed and jumped.


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## DMH

This goes back to the 1st ed and my experiments in changing critters.

Just after sunset, the party was travelling through a forest of large trees (200'+) along a dirt road when they noticed a campfire with no one about. Since it was just getting dark, they decide to investigate and find no signs of the person who started the fire. A little foolishly they sit down and use the fire as their own and that is when the blood started dripping on one of them from the branches above. They can't see where it is coming from and use a light spell- that is when the mushy corpse was dropped on the MU and the gliding aboleth landed on the fighter. They had no way of curing the skin effect and were in serious trouble for the next few hours- until they found a stream. The constant nips from the local fish population (which just love mushy skin) didn't help them at all...


----------



## Nebulous

Gliding aboleth? Eww. Now that is a nasty monster. I bet he'd be even worse with Maggot Breath range 30'!


----------



## Drew

Great thread. What IS with all the maggots, though?


----------



## Kemrain

Notes given in character...

"_It was during the war with Malecan, the necromancer, that I ran across something that made my blood run cold.  It wasn't the crates of black bone, pulsating with the scarabs he used to pick his skeletns clean, and it wasn't the skeletal wyverns, who's screech could turn a man's bones to whipped cream.. We had come across a small village, late at night. We were on the run, from one thing or another. The town was deserted, except for the coprses strewn through the fields outside. Thank Alerum *they* didn't move. We searched the town, looking for any signs of life.. A plant that wasn't blackened.. A rodent hiding in the brush.. Even a crow, picking at a corpse.. There was nothing.. But that's when I heard it.. A baby crying.

Folowing my ears I dashed into a building, crashing through a door into the nursery. I quickly hurried over to the crib, thanking the gods for their mercy, that an infant might have survived this devistation... I was too quick with my praise. In the crib, reaching up to me, was an infant, split open down the middle, it's tiny ribs splayed apart and it's chest writhing with the only living thing to be found.. Maggots crawled up inside it, as it reached for me, cooing softly.

Bile in my mouth, I took my mace and... Gods.. I wanted to burn the village to the ground.. To be rid of the taint.. But the others ran into a different sort of trouble. I only hope I gave the babe its afterlife. Such innocence is not meant for this world._"

- Melissa Corinth of Alerum.


----------



## shilsen

Allanon said:
			
		

> Double wow... thanks for the inspiration for my one-shot d20 CoC game Shilsen



 Glad to be of service. I was really happy with how it worked out since I made the entire encounter up on the fly. The players in the group are all experienced gamers, and much more so than me (only started gaming in 1999), so I find that things they can't immediately identify or directly affect tend to have the best results on them. I'm also big on using standard PHB/DMG/MM stuff with very variant descriptions to that end. Preferably icky descriptions, of course


----------



## Nebulous

Kemrain said:
			
		

> Notes given in character...
> 
> "It was during the war with Malecan, the necromancer, that I ran across something that made my blood run cold. It wasn't the crates of black bone, pulsating with the scarabs he used to pick his skeletns clean, and it wasn't the skeletal wyverns, who's screech could turn a man's bones to whipped cream.. We had come across a small village, late at night. We were on the run, from one thing or another. The town was deserted, except for the coprses strewn through the fields outside. Thank Alerum *they* didn't move. We searched the town, looking for any signs of life.. A plant that wasn't blackened.. A rodent hiding in the brush.. Even a crow, picking at a corpse.. There was nothing.. But that's when I heard it.. A baby crying.
> 
> Folowing my ears I dashed into a building, crashing through a door into the nursery. I quickly hurried over to the crib, thanking the gods for their mercy, that an infant might have survived this devistation... I was too quick with my praise. In the crib, reaching up to me, was an infant, split open down the middle, it's tiny ribs splayed apart and it's chest writhing with the only living thing to be found.. Maggots crawled up inside it, as it reached for me, cooing softly.
> 
> Bile in my mouth, I took my mace and... Gods.. I wanted to burn the village to the ground.. To be rid of the taint.. But the others ran into a different sort of trouble. I only hope I gave the babe its afterlife. Such innocence is not meant for this world."
> 
> - Melissa Corinth of Alerum.




Again, another excellent Midnight candidate. Minions of Shadow actually has an undead baby monster. That i think is just the creepiest thing, dead children tricking adults just to get them close enough for the kill.

Night of the Living Dead had the creepiest scene where the daughter kills her mother. And the new Dawn of the Dead's only really creepy scene (IMO) was in the beginning with a zombie girl.


----------



## Desdichado

Drew said:
			
		

> Great thread. What IS with all the maggots, though?



There is something about maggots that just breeds creepiness.  I think it's about time we had another maggot episode in my campaign, come to think of it...

I like the idea of flying aboleth's with a maggoty breath weapon.  That's the stuff GM's dreams are made of...


----------



## monboesen

> I like the idea of flying aboleth's with a maggoty breath weapon. That's the stuff GM's dreams are made of...




And that makes you wonder how sane we DM's really are.....

Love this thread. A veritable field of ideas for reaping.

I'm thinking the most creeped out recently my players have been was when they attacked a couple of evil priest and found one of them harvesting the blood of a continually regenerating succubus. The nacked demon was hanging suspended from chains cruelly inserted into its flesh with hooks and a mechanical blade kept opening up a wound.


----------



## Xath

My first DM gave me some very interesting nightmares when I started playing D&D.  The BBEG had "had his way with" my Cleric's goddesss, and used that as a point of torture when he had captured her.  

He also did some very interesting things with Beholders.  Several offshoots that he made were pretty creepy, like an albino beholder with red eyes and some very different abilities and a beholder with mouths where all of the eyes are supposed to be.  Doesn't sound particularly scary in text, but he had a way with words which made the monsters come alive at the table. (figuratively)


----------



## freebfrost

Nebulous said:
			
		

> I ran a CoC adventure where the PC's went through an old asylum looking for clues for a mysterious cult known only as Ktulu. They were sort of 1920's paranormal investigators funded by the government (i.e. start of Delta Green). The best part was that the actual pictures I used were from a real asylum: Danvers.
> 
> The pics alone were enough to set them on edge. The rotted zombies in the basement were just icing on the cake.




Wasn't this the asylum used in the movie _Session 9_?



			
				Tetsubo said:
			
		

> Nebulous (great nick btw) - have you seen the movie Session 9? It's set in the Danvers Asylum. It's not a bad film.




I should have kept reading before posting...


----------



## freebfrost

As far as the creepiest thing I've thrown at players, hands down it was the *Worm that Walks* from the ELH.

I used it in a high-level one-shot adventure, and the players still have bad memories of that thing.  One Engulf attack and the party was fleeing for their lives...


----------



## fafhrd

In my last campaign, the party sorceress had been possessed by a shadow demon.  It was on an information gathering run for its boss and didn't intefere with the character at all, except to prohibit her from talking about its presence.  It claimed that it would kill anyone who found out.  It would occasionally chat with her in her head(think Harvey from Farscape, or even Dreamcatcher).  It even augmented her casting ability to make the situation more trying.

The party had recently taken over the town of Ossington from the Standing Stone module in WotC's adventure path.  The party cleric had taken over the ministry of the local chapel which had altars to the 12 neutral gods.  The sorceress was bent out of shape over what to do and went to the temple to pray.  I took the player into another room and roleplayed out the encounter.  She knelt down and said a prayer to the 12 gods.  When she looked up there were 12 thrones, each occupied by a shadowy figure wearing the appropriate regalia of that faith.  It responded in a cascade of voices "What troubles you my child?"  It went on to mock her and ask why her faith was so weak.  It was a ton of fun for me, a little traumatic for her.  Unfortunately she's my girlfriend so I get it all back in spades.


----------



## heirodule

I think I got this from CoC Dreamlands. 

to get to the dreamlands, the PCs need to concoct a potion made from a particulalr mushroom. When they go to pick the mushroom, they end up pulling off the heads of a small mandrake like mannikin, who screams bloody terror and then dies.


----------



## Gothmog

Great thread!  I love horror games and creepy adventures, and some great ideas have been posted.  Here are a few I have used over the years.

- D&D adventure: a group of humans who were followers of a prophet that warned of a coming catastrophe had built a large underground complex to weather the coming doom.  Problem was that the badness they were trying to avoid (demonic incursion) found them, and the inhabitants were attacked and butchered by beastmen and demons.  Before they left, the beastmen defiled the whole complex, and draped/hung/positioned bodies in gruesome and blasphemous ways.  The PCs come into this complex 400 years later, and due to the manner of their deaths, many uneasy spirits roam the area.  Not spirits in a game mechanics sense, just the souls of those slain that couldn't move on.  There were occasional sounds of voices, footfalls, drafts, feeling like someone watching you, and light tugs on clothing that no discernable thing had caused.  When the characters got to the main living hub in the subterranean chambers, they split up to search the area, and one lady who gamed with us and played a bard went into what was formerly the school for children.  While in there, she heard a small child's voice which seemed to originate near her but sounded distant say "I'm so cold".  After trying to locate the voice for a couple minutes with it repeating the same sentence, she said "what do you want sweetie?"  The voice said "I'm so cold, I just want to be warm".  The bard knelt down in the floor and opened her arms like she was going to hug someone, and suddenly she felt a press of small cold bodies all around her, enveloping her.  Next thing she knew, she was waking up and the party cleric was casting Restorations on her (she had been Str drained), but the ghostly children followed her around the rest of the time they were in the complex, and warned the bard of danger several times, saving the group from being buried in a cave-in, ambushed by a demonic presence, and even helped them locate the object they went there to find.  This really freaked the rest of the group out, especially since the ghosts didn't manifest visibly.  After they left the area, the ghost of one little girl stayed with the bard, and occasionally would give her advice during an adventure (always in a somewhat disturbing way), and called her "auntie Parthenia".

- D&D adventure: over the course of several adventures, the PCs heard strange noises coming from the ground, walls, floors, etc in areas they were in.  Inspection of the area revealed nothing but weathered and worm-eaten material, but there was a faint magical aura when they finally decided to detect magic.  Later, the group ran into a madman, who claimed that the "worms of the deep" were always listening and watching.  The PCs didn't start to really put things together until later, when they ran across an old enemy that was a priest of the god of decay and death that seemed to know every detail of their plans and secrets.  They later figured out that he was using some kind of small, immature wormlike creatures to spy on them, and he himself was in thrall to some kind of subterranean wormlike beasts that sought to subvert and dominate the surface dwellers (very Lovecraftian type of creature).  The priest was also infecting people he kidnapped with the immature larva, and those infected were controlled by telepathic links with the maters before they were devoured from the inside out, giving rise to strange beasts that caused the environment and reality to warp and change, causing madness.  Once they realized what was going on, be PCs became paranoid about finding areas the worms couldn't get to to overhear them, and were very fearful of the "masters".  They finally managed to kill the priest and his spawning pit, but who or what the "masters" are they have never figured out, and remain fearful that other cells of the "Cult of the Worm" as they termed it, might be out there.

- D&D adventure: This started off as a random encounter, which I elaborated on the fly.  While traveling along an old road near sundown, the party sees a light like a lantern up on a ridge.  The light stays in one place for a few minutes, bobbing and weaving, and occasionally flashing on and off, before moving along the ridge.  The party decides to follow the light and does so for about two miles, back into the foothills of some mountains, eventually arriving at a ruined abbey.  Even before they began exploring, the paladin said "I have a really bad feeling about this place, its unclean."  They explored the abbey for about 20 minutes, until the ranger found the large bell laying in the bottom of the old tower and smacked it with his warhammer.  A few minutes later, crows begin to flock to the abbey by the hundreds, cawing loudly and watching the PCs.  Over all the racket the birds are raising, the rogue in the group think he hears chanting, very faintly and muffled.  The group decides to leave, not even having explored the 1/3 of the abbey left above ground.  They make it to a roadside inn an hour or so after sundown, and after a few drinks the ranger asks the innkeeper if he knows about a ruined abbey nearby.  The innkeep goes pale, and said he did, that an order of monks used to live there about 100 years ago until it was discovered they were demon-worshippers and cannibals, and would lure travelers to their abbey by having one of the monks wait on a ridge near the road and lead them back.  Once the monks finished their feast, they would ring the bell and place the discarded bits of their victims in the courtyard, where flocks of hungry fiendish crows would descend to devour the remains.  The order was censured and destroyed by their parent church as blasphemous, but strage tales still speak of lights on the ridge, and that the ghosts of the former monks still exist there, attempting to lure travelers back to their doom for their infernal masters.  All the players at the table looked at each other with looks of fear and disgust on their faces, and the paladin's player said "I KNEW that place was just wrong."  Oddly enough, he NEVER tried to detect evil there.

I have lots more, and I'll post some more later if there is continued interest in this thread.


----------



## DMH

Another thing I was going to use in a modern setting for Masque of the Red Death (which never got off the ground) was a suburban basement full of human faced grubs that pupate into humans. What was creating them, the player would never known.

Another location was an alchemist shop that used human bits for condements for the local Burger King (special special sauce). But the creepy bit was that the personality was still tied to the parts and anyone consuming any part would gain memory fragments and a competing mental fragment.

Bats twisted by a spellcaster had the ability to transmit a magical disease- one that caused the victim's skin to turn ghastly green and then melt off and leaving a "zombie" that causes fear and horror checks. The magical diseases in the Ravenloft MC III could also be used here. I love most of those, esp the crysallizing one.

I don't like or use undead in MRD- living things are much more creepy IMO. But there are always mimics that can be used in their place- oozes that motivate "zombies" (like those mentioned above).

No one mentioned plants yet. I wrote up the topiary golem for the Book of S (I think the 3rd one) and had some others in mind- shrubs that grapple and squeeze the prey to death, weeds that grow on the corpses of those who inhaled their seeds and a vine that invade the body much like that new aberration in LoM. Remember that plants are everywhere- use them and the PCs will never leave home again.


----------



## shilsen

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> There is something about maggots that just breeds creepiness.  I think it's about time we had another maggot episode in my campaign, come to think of it...




The funny thing I've noticed is that besides maggots (which don't bother me at all, but then nothing does), the one thing that freaks players out is anything to do with children, as many of the stories on this thread indicate.

An example:

About a year ago, the PCs in my game were helping an elven town fight off an undead army, which had supposedly destroyed a couple of elven villages. They were placed in charge of a small detachment of troops and had a lot of fun setting up tactical positions and making plans. As expected, the undead attacked and after firing a couple of volleys into their ranks, the PCs charged into them. 

While cutting through the first ranks of skeletons, they could see the zombies behind them. The first thing they noticed was that some of the zombies were smaller than others. And it's only when they got really close (the battle was in the evening) that they realized that fully a quarter of the zombies were children. Little elven children with dead, staring eyes, marching stolidly into battle in ranks, still wearing the little frocks and pinafores (no sailor suits - even I'm not _that_ evil!) that they wore when they were killed, some clutching the toys that they had with them when they died, reaching for the PCs with little clawed hands. Apparently dragons don't make my PCs turn a hair, but when a dead little elven girl with skin rotting off her face hits them with a doll and pipes, "Where's my mommy?" they have issues with it. Some people are so sensitive  




> I like the idea of flying aboleth's with a maggoty breath weapon.  That's the stuff GM's dreams are made of...




Ooooooooh, pretty !


----------



## Dexterward

*Great Thread*

Wow! This is a great thread. Lots of flesh crawling goodness to resurrect for my games. Thanks all.

My contribution:

This came from a 1st ed CoC game that I was a player in. In fact it was one of the introduction modules in the CoC rule book (heavily modified). This is the first printing of the CoC game, and as a group we knew it has something to do with horror role-playing but we were not very familiar with the rules. 

The group I was in was researching odd behavior in a local house. We entered the home on several occasions, but nothing strange happened. So we figured it was just a run of the mill rumor that was started by local kids for some club initiation. Then my character found "the book." It was tucked away in a closet under some rotting clothes. The cover was a strange leather-like material and it was written by hand in latin. My character was an occult professor at a local college and knew enough latin to realize the book was some kind of weird cult "bible." My character took the book back to his home, and began the slow process of translation. My character also believed that occult oddities were just pranks, uninformed hysterics, or other easily explained things. 

Unknown to me, while I translated the book, my character was reciting the words of a potent spell that would summon an other worldly creature to do the caster's bidding, but if you didn't give the creature a specific goal during the casting of the spell, it would instead turn on the caster. Also, the spell was spread over several "prayers" in the book and could be completed over a period of time. Each "prayer" would come with "signs" to let the caster know the spell was being done correctly. The devious GM played up the "signs" to good effect. Things like the window rattling but by no obvious means, doors slamming shut when opened, strange smells and sounds. The whole party was affected by these "signs", and for protection the other player's characters moved into my PC's home. We figured that a ghost or spirit from the house had followed us home and that the rumors about the house were real after all. So we started our plan of exorcising the house (and us) to put the spirit to rest. 

During a very quiet time in the game the GM decided to spring the surprise on us. My character was in the his room on the second floor when he finished the final phrase of the "spell." Suddenly a violent wind smashed through a window and howled about the room whisking papers and other light things about. This creeped me and the players out, but we still had no clue what was really happening. Since my character didn't include a "task" for the summoned creature, it started to manifest in my home with the intent on slaying my character. During the manifestation, odd smells and sound would randomly appear through out the room. The GM had us on the edge of ours seats. Nothing bad really happened at this point but we knew something was afoot. Then the sounds and smells stopped and the front door started to rattle. All the players looked at each other, and no one wanted to open the door. The door continued to rattle until my character approached the door and the rattle suddenly stopped. My character paused for a second or two then through open the door and seen ..........
....
...
...
..
.
.
.
.

A dog. Just a little loveable pet from the neighbors. I issued a sigh of relief in real life (and as the character) and proceeded to close the door. when I turned around the creature manifested right behind my character. Needles to say much panic ensued. As it turned out by some luck of dice and good role-playing we all survived the encounter, but badly beaten. All in all, that was the most chilling experience I had playing a RPG.


----------



## DMH

One thing I like that RMGRF created over on the WoTC monster board is undead guts- the zomibe might be down, but its organs are still up for duking it out. Nightmares and Dreams from MEG has something similar.

Mechanical Dream has an interesting internal parasite- 30 feet long. The game has 2 sets of organisms and one is much larger than the other. Think of what kinds of monsters dwell within others. Kill the terrasque and face the armored worm things that burst from its shell. Whale carcasses are burned because of the nasty things that emerge when they are beached (and also whales are not hunted because of that). Rot grubs are the most basic parasite, but there can be just about any combination. Doesn't Savage Species have something like this?


----------



## Rafael Ceurdepyr

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I'm a big fan of creepiness.  I've been accused of turning fantasy games into Cthulhu games before.




YES! There are few games that can't be improved with a dash (or a glob) of creepiness.  Somehow all adventures in our gaming circle turn into creepiness at some point.


----------



## kirinke

Kemrain said:
			
		

> Notes given in character...
> 
> "It was during the war with Malecan, the necromancer, that I ran across something that made my blood run cold.  It wasn't the crates of black bone, pulsating with the scarabs he used to pick his skeletns clean, and it wasn't the skeletal wyverns, who's screech could turn a man's bones to whipped cream.. We had come across a small village, late at night. We were on the run, from one thing or another. The town was deserted, except for the coprses strewn through the fields outside. Thank Alerum *they* didn't move. We searched the town, looking for any signs of life.. A plant that wasn't blackened.. A rodent hiding in the brush.. Even a crow, picking at a corpse.. There was nothing.. But that's when I heard it.. A baby crying.
> 
> Folowing my ears I dashed into a building, crashing through a door into the nursery. I quickly hurried over to the crib, thanking the gods for their mercy, that an infant might have survived this devistation... I was too quick with my praise. In the crib, reaching up to me, was an infant, split open down the middle, it's tiny ribs splayed apart and it's chest writhing with the only living thing to be found.. Maggots crawled up inside it, as it reached for me, cooing softly.
> 
> Bile in my mouth, I took my mace and... Gods.. I wanted to burn the village to the ground.. To be rid of the taint.. But the others ran into a different sort of trouble. I only hope I gave the babe its afterlife. Such innocence is not meant for this world."
> 
> - Melissa Corinth of Alerum.




Etch. Read this post right before I went to bed, along with the rest of the stuff from last night. Gave me a few bad dreams. LoL. Especially this one. 

Great job! LoL


----------



## Wraith Form

BEST.  THREAD.  EVAR.


There is a *serious* amount of _yoink_ing going on for me with this thread!

I'll be adding a few...contributions...once I'm off work.


----------



## DungeonmasterCal

I've got blisters from yoinking so much.

Wait...what I meant to say...I didn't...

sigh...


----------



## Wraith Form

DungeonmasterCal said:
			
		

> I've got blisters from yoinking so much.
> 
> Wait...what I meant to say...I didn't...
> 
> sigh...





I.....

Uhh....

Err, that is.....

Yeah.  Me too.


----------



## ham2anv

A D&D session that creeped me out a little bit, and I was running it:

The party was bloodied up after an encounter with bandits on the road. A powerful stom had blown in, and the only shelter they could find was a farm house just off the roadside. They made camp in the house, but shortly after they settled in to sleep, they heard moaning from above. Four ghosts floated down through the ceiling, a mother, father, son and daughter.

The group tried talking to the ghosts first. Then somebody asked for more detailed description. I hadn't really made anything up for what they looked like, as this encounter was somewhat off-the-cuff anyway. I just went for it though.

The father and the son had been killed by deep knife wounds to the throat, which was obvious from the ragged flesh hanging off their necks. The mother appeared to have been slowly strangled, her neck purple and her eyes bulging. But the worst was the little girl, who didn't appear older than 10; her dress had been slit down the middle, there were bruises on her arms, and her stomach had been slit open vertically, spilling her organs.

The party eventually defeated the ghosts (the little girl was the last to go), and when they searched the house, they found the journal of the bandit leader who had raped and killed the girl while the rest of his men had their way with the mother, who just wouldn't stop screaming. The look on my players' faces when they realized they had been attacked by the bandits _fleeing_ this house made me feel kind of dirty.


----------



## Tonguez

Just like you all to know that this thread gave me nightmares last night!


----------



## shilsen

Tonguez said:
			
		

> Just like you all to know that this thread gave me nightmares last night!



 Thanks. We try


----------



## kirinke

gave me a few nightmares to. 

ooie.


----------



## Chimera

Last two sessions of a game in which I am the party Wizard.

Evil dude and his slaver allies attack a farm well known for it's hospitality as a sort of byway Inn.  They kill the parents and one of the three girls.  Slavers take off with the other two girls.  When the party arrives, the farm pigs have been at the corpse of the dead girl.  We capture the evil guy, kill one of his allies.  We kill the pigs after what they've done.

We move on and intercept the slavers at a bridge, killing one, capturing the other and freeing the two girls.  We take them back to the town to their relatives and turn the slaver and the evil guy over to the Wardenry.  Wardenry guy decides to kill the slaver rather than take him back to justice, is half tempted to do the same to evil guy.

My wizard (Lawful Neutral), who pulled a scroll of _Animate Dead_ off the evil guy, quietly suggests that they take the two back to the farm, animate the dead pigs and let them have at the two.  (Of course, the offer was not completely serious, as the party Cleric would never stand for it.)

Shudders around the table.

The image of being eaten alive by Zombie Pigs.


----------



## Tuzenbach

*No maggots or children, just plain 'ole darkness........*

So the party is exploring some old tomb or temple complex deep underground. We're pretty far into the thing. All of a sudden, we realize that we DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TORCHES!!! Further to this, none of us have any light spells or tools to build more torches on the spot. No oil, tinderboxes, clubs, staves......NOTHING. Want to make it worse? None of the characters had either ultra- or infravision. Basically, once the light was gone, the DM's descriptions focused on things we "heard" rather than things we "saw". The only character unaffected by this debacle was my blind Duergar cleric.  

Anyway, the point at which there was no more light found us almost in the _exact middle_ of a room about 200x200, with a cobblestone floor and very high ceiling, I'm thinking 60 feet or so. 

Now, I don't care if you're fighting freakin' Kobolds......fighting in complete darkness is frightening! The last thing I wanted was an encounter in the dark. We were only first level, very weak, you see. All of a sudden.......

"You hear these echoey clicking noises, almost like horse hooves, entering the 200x200 chamber and coming towards you. Whatever it is, it's going to make contact in about 40 seconds. What do you do?"  

Be afraid. Be very very afraid.


----------



## Andrew D. Gable

Some of the stuff on this thread is really sick and twisted.  Sick and twisted in a good way, mind you.  And while we're talking about creepy...

DungeonmasterCal's aye-aye avatar is pretty darn creepy.


----------



## Desdichado

Andrew D. Gable said:
			
		

> DungeonmasterCal's aye-aye avatar is pretty darn creepy.



Yeah, what the hell is that thing, anyway?  A fiendish opossum?  A pseudo-natural sloth?


----------



## demiurge1138

Like he said, it's an aye-aye. They're a type of lemur. Active at night, eat grubs dug out from under bark with their crazy-long finger.

Demiurge out.


----------



## johndaw16

Here's one of the creepiest things I've done as a GM in my Horror game according to one of my players.  

In the game she plays Jessica, a single mother, with a 5 year old girl named Amber.  Now this happened shortly after Jessica and Amber had moved into a rather old and odd mansion that the party had inherited.  The whole party had decided to take up residence in the mansion for one reason or another.  So after maybe a week or two in the house Jessica realizes one night that Amber had disappeared.  After a frantic search of the upstairs she found a fanciful fairytale door in the back of her bedroom closet.  The door had never been there before.  Amber's favorite doll sat just outside the partially open door.  

Being the good mother that she is the player opened the door and went looking for Amber.  The hallway began as a narrow unfinished attic hall, all bare plywood and exposed nails.  Around a few turns though the whole charater of the place changed, tucked away into a small alcove lit under naked lightbulb was a pamphlet for an opera.  She then went through a second door, this one much more elaborate and fanciful than the rest of the hall.  This led her to a hallway that dead-ended with only a small cabinet sized door as an exit.  By this time the player was pretty creeped out and kept figuring that the **** was about to hit the fan.  

Regardless she plowed onward into a pitchblack open space.  After stumbling about a bit she figured out she was backstage in some sort of theater.  Once she got in front of the curtain she saw her daughter perched at the top of a rickety wooden set of bleacher seating playing on a large pile of pillows.  Jessica ran to the top and grabbed her daughter ready to leave immediately.  But that was when the music started.  A simple melodic tune coming from a plain music box perched on top of a pillow.  I pause for a few seconds and then described what the opera performers she saw descend onto the stage from the catwalks.  One lady and a young girl sat a wide swing dressed in garish dresses, with pale white faces and clashing overdone makeup.  An older man was on another swing hanging below the woman and just to the side dressed and made up in a similar manner, he was singing full tilt to the same song the music box was playing.  As the man sang and Jessica watched the women on the swing began to slowly swing in a wide orbit above the man as they took up a harmony with him.  

By the end of it the player was totally creeped out and thought I was insane.  I described everything slightly menacingly but I think part of it was the player just kept expecting something horrible to happen.  And you should have seen the player's face when she realized that the hallways and the forty foot high ceiling of the theater existed inside the halls of a mansion that only stood 2 stories high.


----------



## shilsen

demiurge1138 said:
			
		

> Like he said, it's an aye-aye. They're a type of lemur. Active at night, eat grubs dug out from under bark with their crazy-long finger.
> 
> Demiurge out.



 You know, I just got an idea for a race of little monsters that swarm PCs, run up them and try to dig their eyes out of the sockets with a really long finger  

*runs off to stat them up*


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## Keeper of Secrets

This is a really great thread.  While this post is not directly related (in the sense of sharing stories) I had some thoughts.  

There is some difficulty in doing horror in a fantasy game.  Or at least a fantasy game where the characters are rather powerful.  In some ways, horror is a lot like comedy - its pretty hard to pull off because what is scary to one person is not really scary to another.  Also, like with comedy, a horror scenario has to be met half way by some of the players.  They have to allow themselves to be creeped out.

In reality, if anyone was faced with actual members of the walking dead, we would be scared out of our minds.  Fifth level D&D characters with a cleric may have something of a different view because players (in the back of their minds) often think in terms of 'hit points' and it is kind of hard not to.  

In my experience, if you want to pull off horror correctly you have to establish a few things.  First, you have to be able to establish that horror is 'real' and as a GM you ARE willing to kill characters.  Second, you have to also establish that there is a fate worse than death (torture, maiming, very creepy villains).  Third, and this is one of the most important elements, is the concept of 'what you can't see or what you don't know is terrifying.'

Remember the film _Alien_?  I'm talking about the first one, not the subsequent ones.  The first was actually a horror movie as opposed to the others which were really action films.  The first was was so frightening because you did not see the creature much at all until close to the end.  Also, the characters never knew what was happening once their friends disappeared.  This same concept can be taken to an RPG.  The players conjure up their own images of what it is they are facing (either due to darkness or evidence left behind or shattered sanities of the victims that survived).  Sure, a GM can throw something in that actually scares the players from a mechanics stand point (like level draining) but it is not the same thing.

In short, kudos to everyone who is sharing moments of terror and horror as these are all great snippets of how to do horror in a fantasy setting (which is honestly pretty hard).


----------



## ForceUser

This note, given in-character to the PCs, kinda creeped them out. A young priest who'd been ministering to a local band of gypsies had disappeared, and this was the last letter he sent to his church before vanishing.

_Well

I cannot fathom how it has come to this…a seeming disarray of random instances have flashed across the tableau of my mind…there is a schism here, I sense it now

A thing of foreboding lurks on the horizon, a Dark Presence that these valiant people suppress

Or maybe do not suppress...I cannot say

The gypsies have every right to hate us, living in our comfortable homes, eating dinner from the same table each night…worshipping in the same temples.

Do you know they have no gods? They know it.

I find it difficult to concentrate on this letter while that Presence is with me. He is with me now. He is calling.

I request that you get my affairs in order, notify my wife. I don’t think I shall return.

Your fiend,
Franz_


----------



## Vocenoctum

Mine's a little girl story, but it involves a Kender too!

Basically, the party had been in Ravenloft long enough to always post a guard, even when simply resting in a Kartakan Inn, there was a guard at the door to their rooms.
Of course, the minotaur, the knight, the mage.. they couldn't dissuade the Kender from taking her watch. So she's sitting on her chair, counting out the time, waiting for something to happen. She spies a little girl that looks lost, engages in conversation, finds out the little girl is looking for her doll. Having no sense of Duty, she abandons her post and helps the little girl find her ragged worn doll, returns her to her room in the East wing, tucks her in, returns to her post.

Over breakfast, she asks the innkeeper how long the little girl has been there. Finds out there is no East Wing, it burned down years ago. There was a little girl that died in the fire yes, they were unable to find her during the rescue. The East Wing was never rebuilt.


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## Keeper of Secrets

Hmmm.  The child element returns.  I think that the horror of children must really creep people out in a major way.


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## Ashy

As it has been said many times before - this thread ROX!  Please keep posting!  Gothmog - this means you too!  

Much yoinkage herein....


----------



## DMH

I really don't care for the idea of a maggot BW for the aboleth so I came up with something better- a cone of mucus that causes the reverse of the standard mucus- the skin hardens and eventually shatters.

I was also thinking of similar gooey substances that affect the make up of the person affected and I think the best is the slime that adds weight (5 or 10% per hit) in the form of internal water until the person bursts at a 50% increase.


----------



## Kid Charlemagne

Tonguez said:
			
		

> Just like you all to know that this thread gave me nightmares last night!




I had a dream where I rescued one of my co-workers from a castle ruled by Debbie Boone last night.  Was that because of this thread, I wonder?

I don't even particularly like that co-worker, either.


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## Kemrain

A lot of horrow references to children. Very interesting. I have another.

My GM and I never planed things this way, but they have a way of all coming together at the last moment.  This is less scary and creepy as disturbing, learning what you've done and what you're capable of. Some of the most creepy horror stories I've ever read were ones where the protagonist was the monster, even as he fought against himself.

Notes given in character, please don't mind the lengthy introduction:



"_Malecan had been defeated, returned to his prison. The sorceress that let him out in the first place had herself an army, and had taken over the Necromancer's keep. It had been buried underground, but that didn't stop her from finding a way inside. He had to have a circle or two.

Crystal Rose, the White Queen, the Savior of Voushta... Damn her forever for dying before I could send her to Hell myself.. She was away when we descended into the ruined keep to destroy one of Malecan's most powerful artefacts. The Well of Souls. This story isn't abotuthe Well, though.

Before we destroyed the Well, we came upon a chamber with six.. Incubators.  They stood half my height, a transluscent crystaline womb suspended in their middles, filled with a reddish fluid. One of my companions foolishly tampered with one, and its center burst open, dropping an infant onto the floor. Instead of laying there, injured, it clambered to its knees and scurried under another incubator, screeching. I'd caught a good look at it. It had small horns growing from it's forehead, and a long tail sprouting from the base of it's spine. It had an unnaturally reddish skin color, though that may have been from the sludge it had been suspended in, and stared out at us with slit-pupil eyes.  An infant demon.

Pulling out my wand, I proceeded to shoot at it, but it ducked behind cover and spoke, begging us not to kill it. My companions balked, questioning if a Demon child was wicked, and if it couldn't be turned to good, but I didn't heed their words. Leveling my wand at it, I.. Him. It was definately a him.. I, spoke the command word, and blew the creature to pieces.

The others questioned me, but before they could stop me I turned my wand at the other incubators, reducing them to shards of shattered crystal and burnt red sludge. The room smelled horrible, like you'd somehow set a vat of blood on fire. The others demanded to know why I would slaughter the babies like that, and I formly told them that no Demon was good. No demon could be redeemed. They'd have waited for their moment and slit our throats in the night. I was raised in a temple, and I knew a thing or two about demons. they remained silent, but nodded in defeat.

I forgot all about the demon children. We had other thing on our mind. It wasn't until we were looting the Tomb of a powerful Mage that it came up again. A demon, black as shadow with gleaming red fire for eyes, reached past my companions to envelop me. Once in its grasp, the world melted away, and we were left on a scarred plane with no sun and an ashen sky. It taunted me before it cast a spell, pulling the wool from my eyes, that had been placed there many years ago. To my horror, I felt my body twisting, shifting, growing, and I could feel an inexcapable, undenyable truth forming in my soul, that had been hidden from me since I was a child. I was a demon.

I returned to Alsatia, by the help of Kalron, and after convincing my wife that I was who I said I was, a harrowing task, I held my son in my arms and wept. I could see their faces in his place, hear their words in place of his soft cooing. I had killed them and hadn't given it a second thought. They were like my son, and I'd killed them.._"


- Melissa Corinth, Half-Demon.


----------



## Evilhalfling

the best horror game I ran was out of a book of lairs. They found an empty roadside Inn, and explored it, quickly finding several bodies drained of blood.  There was also rooms hung with garlic and holy symbols. The party staked and beheaded the bodies, and sealed themselves inside a room, with light and guards.  In the morning their groom was found lying beside them, drained of his blood, no one had seen or heard anything.  They got some sleep, in a sunny courtyard, and a player was woken up for a guard shift, and realized he was missing a lot of blood, a sound or motion was seen inside a nearby building but nothing was found.  Eventually the party had a PC pretend to sleep and they finally caught the Slithering Tracker as it tried to feed. 
from HPL - killing some without a sign, while leaving some alone - always terrifying.


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## tombshroud

Alright - this is my first post.  Ever.  So please overlook, but feel free to point at and laugh at, any mistakes I may have made.  I had to reply to this thread because it is simply way too interesting to let pass by.  

I love creepy instances and encounters for my adventures.  Ravenloft is one of my favorite campaign worlds to DM in.  Here are a few of the things I have done in the past to mess with my players.

While exploring the lab of a very powerful, evil nectromancer the party notices a heart lying on a dissection table - after they start to examine it it starts to beat, not a dramatic effect but enough to make several players shiver.  

In the same lab there were all these paintings that just look like black swirls but they bulged like something was trying to break out.  The players were so paranoid that something would bust out they refused to camp anywhere near rooms with the paintings.  They also ran through the rooms, which actually missed some important clues/items because of that.  

I don't want my first post to be too long so I will cut it off here and continue later

Later...


----------



## Shadowdancer

Tuzenbach said:
			
		

> fighting in complete darkness is frightening! The last thing I wanted was an encounter in the dark. We were only first level, very weak, you see. All of a sudden.......
> 
> "You hear these echoey clicking noises, almost like horse hooves, entering the 200x200 chamber and coming towards you. Whatever it is, it's going to make contact in about 40 seconds. What do you do?"




"I cast _Magic Missle_ at the darkness." (Sorry, couldn't resist)

Sometimes reality helps scare the players caught up in the fantasy. Once I ran a campaign in which the PCs were trying to track down the cells of a forbidden murder cult. Most of these cells were hidden out in the wilderness. During one adventure, the PCs were in a forest. This was right after the movie "The Blair Witch Project" had come out, but no one in the group had seen it but me. So I started using some of the stuff from the movie on the players -- the laughing children's voices in the night, the unusual stick figures hanging from the trees, their seeming to walk around in circles, etc. They were getting very frustrated, and creeped out at the same time. Then they found a creepy old ruined house, and inside the bodies of several young children who had been ritually murdered.

Now while we were playing, we were seated at a table in my friends' kitchen. My chair faced the window into the backyard. During one of my descriptions of a room in the in-game house, a small gecko suddenly ran across the screen of the window I was looking at and attacked a moth. This caught my attention; I was fascinated, and stopped talking in mid-description, just looking at the window above and to one side of one of the players. All of the players just sat looking at me in anticipation for a second, then jumped as they suddenly turned to look at the window. The player sitting with her back to the window let out a scream and bolted from the room. She thought something was coming through the window to get her.  

Another time, in a Traveller campaign, I was running a d20 conversion of a classic Traveller adventure set aboard a small research lab in orbit around an isolated planet. In the adventure, the researchers had been testing a new combat drug designed to turn soldiers into killing machines, but so far there had been some troubling side effects. Someone aboard secretly working for a competing drug company had sabotaged one of the labs; the explosion had released the experimental drugs into the life support and everyone had breathed ithe mixture in. The lab animals, too. The combined drugs turned everyone, and the animals, into cannabilistic killers with superhuman STR, DEX and CON part of the time, and into paranoid weaklings with light sensitivity at other times. There were only four people -- out of a crew of about 20 -- left alive when the PCs arrived to check out why radio contact with the lab was lost. Most of the dead bodies were hanging in a meat locker in the galley, with evidence they had been partially eaten.

I made my descriptions of the darkened space station very spooky, like a haunted house in space -- sudden noises and movement, unexplained sounds and happenings, etc. The PCs were attacked several times by freed lab rats and other animals. When the found the bodies in the meat locker, they decided the bite marks on the bodies were from the animals.

The first living person they encountered was in a paranoid phase, and has barracaded himself in one corner of one of the labs. He talked to the PCs; he was obviously very scared of them and the other survivors. He blamed everything on the other survivors. He agreed to leave with the PCs on their ship, but refused to come out until everything was safe. They left with a promise to come back and moved on.

While searching an empty cabin with blood stains on the floor and other signs of a struggle, a dead body falls out of a closet when the door is opened, making the players jump.

They encountered one of the survivors in crazed mode in the engineering compartment. He attacked them when they shined a flashlight on his face, and they were forced to kill him.

They encountered another paranoid survivor, a woman, who was barracaded inside her cabin. She also refused to come out until it was safe, and blamed everthing on one particular survivor, a man named Karl. Said he was the one who had taken to eating the dead bodies. She agrees to come out only when Karl is dealt with; she directs them to Karl's lair, down in the empty fuel tanks.

The PCs go in search of Karl. The fuel tanks are like a dark dungeon. Karl attacks them and they kill him.

They go back to the first paranoid survivor they found. He is gone from his den. One the way to where the paranoid woman survivor was waiting, the pass the galley again. They hear a noise from the meat locker. They investigate, and find the first paranoid survivor -- now in cannabil, superhuman mode -- kneel in the doorway of the locker, eating something. He turns to look at them, his face covered in bloody gore, strips of human flesh dangling from his teeth. Fear and revulsion fight for prominence on the players' faces.

The light of the PCs' flashlights enrages the survivor and he attacks. They kill him with their SMGs, and keep firing into his prone body until they all empty their clips. One even reloads and keeps firing, just to make sure. Then they sit around for quite some time, debating what to do with the female survivor still waiting in her cabin.

They decide what they must do, and return to the cabin. The woman is still in a weakened, paranoid phase. They talk her into coming out, then gun her down before she can turn on them. They then delete all of the research files, corrupt the computer system, and rig up some explosive charges of their own, which they set off from the safety of their own ship.


----------



## TheAuldGrump

The Master of the Shambles

Written after I read about Victorian slaughterhouses... I have used it in several games, and in none of them did the players want to have anything to do with the Master... he crept them out so much. One party just turned and ran when they saw him.

The Auld Grump
*EDIT* Updated link


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## Ashy

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> The Master of the Shambles
> 
> Written after I read about Victorian slaughterhouses... I have used it in several games, and in none of them did the players want to have anything to do with the Master... he crept them out so much. One party just turned and ran when they saw him.
> 
> The Auld Grump




***YOINK***!


----------



## Kanegrundar

Back in the early days of 3E, I wrote a monster called an Abiku.  They were fiends that would convice children to commit unspeakable acts of violence (usually against their parents or siblings).  Well, the party was getting close to discovering what was going on in the campaign, to I sent a bunch of controlled, psychotic children after the party.  They didn't want to attack, but the kids kept attacking.  It wasn't pretty.

Then there was the modern game I played in in which we were a group of mercs sent into the jungles of Vietnam to discover the whereabouts of a pharmacutical research team.  One of the researchers was a sorcerer that found a site that had an inactive gate to a realm of nightmares.  We didn't stop him before he opened the gate, and then ran when he did.  As we ran, we came to an area filled with cobwebs.  One NPC was suddenly pulled up into the canopy.  We heard screams and then silence.  Right as we're about to leave, a cocoon falls to the ground.  One player goes up to it, to see if maybe the NPC was still alive, but right as he was about to cut away the webbing, the body bursts open and hundreds of cat-sized spiders poured out.  Being an arachnaphobe (both in RL and with my character) my action was to run like a bat out of heck!  That session actually gave me nightmares that night.

Kane


----------



## tombshroud

During a trek through the lair of a (believed) destroyed lich I creeped out some of my players by having phantom hands touch them at random times.  Thanks to bardic knowledge they knew that the lich in question used to be a lady's man - even in undeath he would use spells and illusions.  During the adventure all the female PCs would feel a ghostly hand on them, nothing lewd, just something brushing thier hair out of the way or touching them on the back.  That gave some of my players the creeps, they also had to wondered how destroyed this lich was.

Another time was when they found out, after he was already gone, that the kindly old priest that had helped heal them, watch out for them, and even keep an eye on helpless characters while they adventured elsewhere was an undead horror slowly feeding on them and others.  

They never did find out what happened to him...


----------



## Nebulous

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> The Master of the Shambles
> 
> Written after I read about Victorian slaughterhouses... I have used it in several games, and in none of them did the players want to have anything to do with the Master... he crept them out so much. One party just turned and ran when they saw him.
> 
> The Auld Grump




Yeah, awroight, that was pretty good.  Good stuff.


----------



## Kemrain

"Crystal Rose was a very evil woman. Thank the Gods she's dead. Curse her for not letting me end her life. She had made a contract with a demon, Baalrath, for hellish power. I destroyed her contract, nullifying the agreement, but I had to suffer to do it.

Her fortress, buried beneath the sands of the desert, was a terribe place. In one chamber, we came across what looked like larger versions of the incubators we discovered in Malecan's keep. When I waked near to one, its sides twisted and expanded, reaching out for me with grasping limbs. I'm quick, but these were the quicker, and I ws unceremoniously grabbed and pulled forward, through the side of the structure.

The inside was filled with a thick, familiarly scented, reddish fluid that filled my nose and mouth as the arms planted me inside. I had barely enough room to move, but I hadn't dropped my adamanine blades. Punching through the sides, the fluid started the drain, and with my companions' assistance, I cut my way out and slid onto the cold stone floor, gasping for air.

In the process of freeing me, however, Elayne strayed too close to another of the chambers. dark arms reached out, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her into the incubator. Rising to my feet, I cut her out as well. We would have turned around, but our goal was through the room, and there was only seven more chambers. It was going to smell bad, but I'd had worse. When the next chamber reched out for me, I lept forward, slashing with my swords. I wasn't even pulled completely within before the side of the incubator shattered and I was thrown to the floor. 

I got up and was going for the next one, when it split open along its side, and a wet form started to wide up from inside. I caught a look at the creature's face as it turned to look at me and our eyes went wide. I say 'our' because the creature staring back at me was none other than myself!

Reacting before I could, I.. She.. My double reached into her quiver and retrieved a very familiar looking wand. My blood ran cold as she leveled it at me and spoke the word of power... Yet nothing happened. Dropping the wand she drew her.. *My* swords.. And attacked me, this time not catching me off my guard. We battled together, another chamber reaching out for me as I got too close, but I ducked away. Seems my double had nothing to fear from these chambers, as she stepped close to one as she circled around, whipping wet adamantine at my head. It wasn't until Elayne threw a knife at my double, and I buried my sword in it's chest as it deflected it from the air, that I was able to land even a single hit. I.. she.. It looked at me, shock on its face.. Before melting into the same red goo that filled the chambers.

Now I know what I'll look like, the moment I'm slain in battle. It isn't very reassuring knowledge."

- Melissa Corinth, Demonslayer.


----------



## The Shaman

In my now-concluded Modern tabletop game, the adventurers were searching for clues to a missing girl. The search had taken them to her university dorm, a private detective's office, and now a museum. The museum exhibit, curated by her boyfriend, was about Mayan funerary practices and included a mock-up of a gravesite complete with a dead Mayan mannequin.

Or so they believed.

A good Search check allowed one of the players to recognize the 'mannequin' as the private detective, who'd also gone missing while searching for the girl. While one of the characters went to distract the guard, the others closed off the exhibit area and attempted to search the 'mannequin' - when they touched it, it rose up and attacked. I described it as moving in a disjointed, erratic fashion, as if it had little control over its limbs. As soon as one of the players scored a hit on the PI's corpse, it split open and disgorged about a dozen monstrous spiders. (My homebrewed 'vermin husk zombie'...)

When I described what happened, two of the players freaked. One of the players lifted her feat up off the floor while the other shuddered noticeably. Is there any more satisfying moment for a GM than that?


----------



## tombshroud

In one gaming group I ran a long time ago one of the PCs found a sword that had the power to create a ghostly double of the wielder during combat.  This was all well and good until the double started appearing at the oddest times, usually at the edge of everyon'es vision.  Even after the sword was disposed of the double kept coming back, it wasn't until the dead animals  started showing up that they got really freaked.

In the same campaign there was a paladin of an ancient order dedicated to fighting the undead.  In the course of the adventure he found a holy sword that belonged to a member of the order.  Every so often he would get visions of the old paladin's life.  At first it was what you expected - good, wholesome activities.  Then the visions starting getting ....darker.  Gradually the visions showed the paladin twisting into an awful creature of darkness, but not before leaving his (un)holy sword to fool and tempt further paladins...


----------



## Wraith Form

Oh, gee, I was supposed to add to this thread.  I must've lost track of things.  La dee da.....


(* shameless BUMP disguised as casual banter *)


----------



## Kemrain

Wraith Form said:
			
		

> Oh, gee, I was supposed to add to this thread.  I must've lost track of things.  La dee da.....
> 
> 
> (* shameless BUMP disguised as casual banter *)



Hay, if you didn't, I was gonna. I don't have much else to add (my games just aren't creepy enough), but I don't want to see this thread forgotten. So much to steal.

- Kemrain the Creepy.


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## 6pakofdwarves

*Undead Kids!?*

Some of my creepiest DM moments involve undead children. The pc's were investigating a necromancers lair and came upon a "nursery", the wet nurse was a beautiful pale girl tied to a rocking chair with puncture marks all over her breasts, and the "babies" were crawling cooing vampire spawn. The only thing the wet nurse would say was "kill me" over and over. It didn't help that the listen check at the door the party rogue made revealed cooing and suckling noises. I had one baby spiderclimbing across the ceiling too, which for some reason really made my players creeped out.

I also had an undead that was called an asassin child, it was created by a priest that worshiped a god of undeath. The creation process is what creeped out the players, as the priest had to eat a newborn as part of the ritual and would then give "birth" to the asassin child.

The only other one that got a truely noticeable reaction of disgust from my players was this one. They were in the employ of a Burgomaester for a mid size village. People were disapearing and strange birdlike creatures were being seen at night. The players figured out that the Burgomaester was in cahoots with the demon bird priests and when the busted in on him at night they found him naked to the waste, glistening with sweat and sitting indian style on the floor, his head was up and mouth open and he was being "fed" like a baby bird from the beak of a humanoid stork creature. For some reason they all thought that was really disurbing.

And consider many of these ideas YOINKED!


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## LostSoul

For some reason, this creeped my players out:

The  local innkeeper hadn't seen one of his barmaids for a while, and since she lived a little ways out of town, the innkeeper asked the PCs to go and check up on her.  Typical plot hook; I have no idea why they didn't expect something sinister.

They got to her house, a run-down cottage, and knocked.  Nobody's home.  So they walk in, and see a pool of blood on the floor.  It's being fed from somewhere upstairs, and they can see and hear the drip-drip-drip coming down from above.

They rush upstairs and find the barmaid hanging by her feet, half-naked with a deep cut running straight from neck to belly.  Two of the PCs untie her and, finding that she's still faintly alive, they take her downstairs where they hope they can heal her.

The third PC decides to wait upstairs, but he's not really sure why.  Then something small and black rolls out from under a table.  It unfurls its wings and stretches itself out - it's some kind of black demon with long, vicious claws.  It charms the PC and caresses him with its claws.

The PCs downstairs detect for evil, and are led back upstairs.  They get into a massive fight with the thing and it brings both of them to negatives.  The third PC is not sure what to do, being hypnotized and charmed.  Then his familiar attacked the demon, and when it fought back, the enchantment wore off and the third PC blasted the demon with a magic missile.  The demon flew away.

The still-standing PC decided to use his final goodberry on the more wounded of the two, and then tried to stabilize the other.  He couldn't do it, and the PC died.

So, alone with an unconcious and dead friend in this little attic room, he decided to read this blasphemous tome which drove him slightly insane.  Odd choice, really.

When he had finished the opera, he noticed that the dead PC had come back to life - although nobody knew why.  And when they went back downstairs later on, the barmaid (whom they had all forgotten about) was gone.


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## demiurge1138

It was the second session of an Eberron game I had started on campus, and none of the players were that experienced. The two elven rogues in the party were working their way through Sharn, looking for likely targets to rob. They spot a very wealthy looking woman and start to sneak up on her when one of them collides with a small child. The kid is panicking, out of breath, and babbling about the Crazy Thorn Man, which is really tall and has thorns all over its body, and turns little kids into bushes and eats them. Niether of them believe the kid, but they use him as a distraction with the rich woman to pick her purse. Nobody thinks more of it.

Later that session, the same two rogues are trying to sneak onto a hobgoblin ship heading for Darguun. They manage to talk their way past the guards and are slinking around the hold. They've explored all of the rooms except one... and when the door creaks open and the everburning torch gets shined in, all they see is a random pile of debris. They turn around to head back, when they hear the click, click of long claws on wood... and standing in front of them, tasting the air with a long barbed tongue, is a tall humanoid with skin like bark and hair like thorns. "This one... this one is too old, her sap to sour," it hisses. "But this one! She is still ripe. Her sap is sweet..." And the Crazy Thorn Man attacked.

All of the players were completely freaked out. Shudders passed around the game table. One of my players (not one who was actually attacked by it, mind you) had a nightmare that the Crazy Thorn Man was coming to get her.

Demiurge out.


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## TheAuldGrump

Ashy said:
			
		

> ***YOINK***!




Heh! I was hoping for some kind of input/response when I put it up on the Dungeon Crafter website, but never got much. Glad you liked it.

The Auld Grump, yes, this is a thinly disguised *BUMP!*


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## Ashy

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> Heh! I was hoping for some kind of input/response when I put it up on the Dungeon Crafter website, but never got much. Glad you liked it.
> 
> The Auld Grump, yes, this is a thinly disguised *BUMP!*




Very skillfully written - the descriptions made me shiver a bit - and that's hard to do!  

And yes, this is a blatant BUMP!


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## tombshroud

During one Ravenloft campaign I was DMing the PCs had to get through a city that had recently been infested with flesh-eating zombies - ala Dawn of the Dead.  Two things really added to the whole atmosphere of the feeling - a couple of days ago we walked around this town and talked to people and everything was normal.  

-While exploring a school building (never a good idea in Zombietown) the stumbled into one room where zombie children were sitting quietly in thier desks while a zombie teacher scrawled nonsensical symbols with her bloody fingertip.  As they watched the eerie scene as one all the children turned to stare at the PCs.  They never moved but the PCs beat a hasty retreat.

-While in a familiar part of town they came across the zombie who they knew in real life was soon to give birth.  After the destroyed her they noticed the lack of a stomach and that's when they heard the cry of a baby coming from a nearby alley.  After investigation they found a zombie baby in a crib.  The most disturbing part was the various body parts partially eaten that they deduced the "mother" had taken these to her "child"

Now that I think about it- both involve undead children.....and this encounter happened years before Resident Evil 2 and the Dawn of the Dead Remake.


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## Warrior Poet

A long time ago, I was inspred to create a magic item (artifact, really) after reading Stephen King's _The Tommyknockers_.

The party ventured down into an old catacomb in a swamp, and found themselves crunching along a passageway.  When they got a torch lit, they realized they were walking on a carpet of millions of bugs, and the hallway was dripping with insects (thanks, _Temple of Doom_!).  Then they got to the chamber with the disk, sitting on top of a pedestal.  Convex, like a lens, made of some unknown lightweight metal, about 28" in diameter (the disk was easy to carry, could even be thrown somewhat like a frisbee, but never achieved enough speed to do damage, and it didn't feel dense enough to really strike hard).  The metal did not scratch, or tarnish, and seemed mostly inert.  The area in a 10' radius around the disk was clear of bugs, like a line had been drawn that they insects simply would not cross.  As they liberated the disk from the catacomb, it cleared a path of insects around it that would close up behind, as though the bugs were drawn to it, but could not get close.

Later, after a battle, the disk began emitting strange green fog, luminescent, and the party fell unconscious.  When the group woke up, the bodies of their enemies were gone, as was the fog, and the party members were exceedingly hungry.  They ate all the rations they had.  The fog thing would happen everytime the party got in a fight, along with the hunger, and no insect would ever come near the disk.

Circumstances prevented taking the campaign much further, and they never really found out what the disk TRULY did (and, to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure myself, and was dragging out it to buy myself time to develop it's powers and designs), but the effect it had, with the unconsciousness, and the hunger, and the missing bodies, and the bugs, was a nice, creepy element to the game.  It was really the constant unknown that kept the players' guessing, and heightened their paranoia.

Warrior Poet


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## eris404

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> Written after I read about Victorian slaughterhouses... I have used it in several games, and in none of them did the players want to have anything to do with the Master... he crept them out so much. One party just turned and ran when they saw him.




OK, another fawning post - this is really, really good. And considering my next D&D game is set in Victorian England... 



Spoiler



and stars vampires


 I'm going to use this. I'll let you know what my players think.


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## eris404

OK, Auld Grump, I read the other scenario (Aldlyke Cemetery) from Dungeon Crafter and I really like that one, too. It fits perfectly with another part of an adventure I've written and would make an excellent side trek. Thanks for pointing out the site and for writing nightmarish, nasty, creepy things.


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## Swedish Chef

These ideas are all superb. I'm planning on running a one-shot D20 Modern "Dawn of the Dead" adventure, and I'm hoping my players will truly remember this one after I utilize some of these ideas!

 

(and yes, this is a bit of a BUMP! to hopefully get more ideas      )


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## TheAuldGrump

eris404 said:
			
		

> OK, Auld Grump, I read the other scenario (Aldlyke Cemetery) from Dungeon Crafter and I really like that one, too. It fits perfectly with another part of an adventure I've written and would make an excellent side trek. Thanks for pointing out the site and for writing nightmarish, nasty, creepy things.




Thank you!

If I had gotten a greater response I would have posted a few more. Sadly Dungeon Crafter seems to have stalled and died, which is a shame - it is still my most used mapping program for interiors.

I like creeping out the players!   And gaslight London is good for that... 

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Yes, another *BUMP!* This is a nice thread...


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## Drifter Bob

Nebulous said:
			
		

> I ran a CoC adventure where the PC's went through an old asylum looking for clues for a mysterious cult known only as Ktulu. They were sort of 1920's paranormal investigators funded by the government (i.e. start of Delta Green). The best part was that the actual pictures I used were from a real asylum: Danvers.
> 
> The pics alone were enough to set them on edge. The rotted zombies in the basement were just icing on the cake.




Isn't that where they made that very creepy movie 'Session 9'?

Flawed flick in some ways, but i really liked it, one of the few genuine scares I have had in years, and the star was definately the asylum itself.

DB


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## tombshroud

Swedish Chef said:
			
		

> These ideas are all superb. I'm planning on running a one-shot D20 Modern "Dawn of the Dead" adventure, and I'm hoping my players will truly remember this one after I utilize some of these ideas!
> 
> 
> 
> (and yes, this is a bit of a BUMP! to hopefully get more ideas      )





Somehow I always manage to have my players run a Dawn of the Dead type adventure, no matter what type of world we are playing in.......Good luck!


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## DMH

Has anyone used the Insmouth taint in a different manner? Like say that the ancestor was an aranea or even a tendrilicos (sp)?

How about finding out that the planet is a dead, rotting body (of a dragon turtle?)

Or that the gods are puppets in a play for even greater beings?

(To totally rip off a movie I tried watching once)- The world is an illusion that hides a war torn mess where people are dying in droves and no one can remember them.

That plants or dogs or eels are the true masters of the planet and just laugh at the backs of humanoids they could kill without effort.


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## demiurge1138

I actually did use the Innsmouth Look as part of my introduction of the Forgotten Realms to the Mythos. One of the characters, who was fleeing from her mother, a cleric of Umberlee, started having strange problems with dry skin and sore eyes...

Yeah, that disturbed her a bit, especially once they found out what was going on.

Demiurge out.


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## tombshroud

DMH said:
			
		

> Has anyone used the Insmouth taint in a different manner? Like say that the ancestor was an aranea or even a tendrilicos (sp)?
> 
> How about finding out that the planet is a dead, rotting body (of a dragon turtle?)
> 
> Or that the gods are puppets in a play for even greater beings?
> 
> (To totally rip off a movie I tried watching once)- The world is an illusion that hides a war torn mess where people are dying in droves and no one can remember them.
> 
> That plants or dogs or eels are the true masters of the planet and just laugh at the backs of humanoids they could kill without effort.




In the homebrew I'm currently working on there is a heavy Lovecraft influence.  I do have a town modeled after Insmouth.  Outsiders tend to avoid it, the locals are rumored to practice a type of magic unknown anywhere else.  I haven't decided what type of ancestry they will have.  I am thinking about using the pseudo natural creature template for some of the inhabitants.  I also have another continent where all the inhabitants are tieflings or half fiends- basically a couple hundred years ago the rulers tried to bring in a piece of one of the hells into the material plane  -  it worked sort of but another kingdom cast a barrier preventing the fiends from getting  out.  The fiends are working around this by breeding the local populace and creating an army of tieflings and half fiends - which are immune to the barrier. 


The Gods of this world are in a battle against creatures from the "far realms", whose influence seeps into the world from time to time.


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## DMH

Gooey horror is less than mindblowing terror IMO. Having one of the PCs as a monsterous lycanthrope (say a wereogre or weregiant cockroach) that is commiting the unspeakable deaths in the community is much better than a gliding aboleth that spews mucus everywhere. A group of secret eaters (Minions from Bastion) protects the populace from the knowledge that they are farmed as food by ethergaunts or spellweavers (the secret eaters do have the peoples' interests at heart as there is no escape and this illusion is better than dispair) is better than a straight illithid city.


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## Nazerel

I ran a more horror-themed campaign once a few years back. Basically, the PCs were various rag-tag characters in a growing city originally founded by ancient cultists whose memory was lost long ago, and much of the PCs gathering together in the first few sessions involved the local teamsters and shipping company where one of the characters worked as a freight handler (when she wasn't pinching purses on the side as a rogue). There they met a few more notable PCs, like the halfling co-manager of the company.

Another was a young child who was the daughter of a tribal priest who had set up shop near the city walls (the city was a trading center for a more "civilized" people, gypsies, and tribal barbarians). There was also a teenaged messenger boy npc who worked for the manager of the company, but in reality was really a girl disguised as a boy to escape her abusive father. She took a strong liking to the party's paladin, which sort of creeped him out a little in and of itself because he still thought the messenger was a boy at the time.  I remember he said the wrong thing to the kid and she took offense to it, and ran off crying. Giving the paladin an evil look, the party's rogue went off after him(her) to try to console the kid.

As the adventure got rolling, the church bells at the town square rang, signaling the end of the work day but strangely keep on ringing and ringing, causing the PCs' vision to blur and sense of hearing to distort. They eventually blacked out from the vertigo. When they awoke, the company's warehouse where they were operating at the time looked to be abandoned for a good many years. The PCs would hear the sound of a young person crying and sniffling within the dark confines of the warehouse, but could never locate the source of the strange sound. The paladin PC was more than a little disturbed by this, and could detect traces of evil here and there but nothing specific.

When they went outside, it was perpetual night and fog shrouded the city, and it appeared to be snowing. While it was cold, it turned out to be ash, and it covered the entire town, which looked to be deserted as well with not a soul in sight. While trying to figure out what had happened to themselves and the city, the PCs decided it wasn't safe to stay at the warehouse and headed in the direction of the cathedral. To get there, they had to cross the bridge over the river that cut through the center of the city. When they got to the river, the bridge had long since collapsed, but a strange cable car-like system had been rigged in its place with ropes and a mill where they were connected.

Inside the mill, it looked like pack animals were used to pull the wooden wheel (covered with dried blood) to operate the cable-car and a strange buzzing noise like that of flies. A large winged shape amongst the rafters panicked the PCs into shooting blindly with arrows and bolts, and they struck a winged goblin/gargoyle creature based on Gratch from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series (which hunted by using blood-flies to hone in on prey, as I recall). It didn't attack them, just startled them, and as it turns out, the creature was with child, if you can call it that, which made the PCs feel somewhat guilty in the end (the buzzing of the flies did make them nervous for a bit). After healing it, they eventually befriended the beast (although it couldn't speak, it seemed intelligent enough to understand what they wanted) and it even agreed to push the wheel (it being the only thing strong enough to) and let the party cross the river. As they were traveling over it, they saw disturbing faces staring up at them from the swift, foaming waters, beckoning the PCs to join them.

Along the way, they would meet an old crone who had taken up residence in the town square. She was robed and always had her hood up, and her face veiled and well hidden. The only thing showing were her hands, one of which was gnarled and twisted as one would come to expect from old age, but the other was youthful, smooth, and fair. She would speak in a hissing whisper and one couldn't exactly gauge her age from it alone. The PCs found her appearance (or lack thereof) more than a little disconcerting, not to mention her underling, a slavering, nasty bug-eyed creature who shared more than a passing resemblance and demeanor to Gollum (who was in reality once the halfling co-manager of the shipping company, although the PCs never really figured this out). For reasons known only to itself, it kept wanting to murder the party every chance it got, and was trailing after them for a while (always in the shadows and out of sight, none except the party rogue would hear or catch glimpses of it), but the crone restrained it, if barely. The party would find out that she was the shaman's daughter that they had met when she was a child.

Well, that was a bit longer than I thought it would be. There are a few more disturbing events at the cathedral, but I wrote enough as it is.  But basically, I took a few ideas from the Silent Hill series of games, and gave them a D&D twist. No zombies though, but ghosts and not so friendly blood-fly monsters were another matter. A shame the campaign didn't last long enough to get into the real meat and potatoes of the cultists who were behind the strange goings-on in town.


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## eris404

I know this thread is more horror-related, but I was thinking of past creepy NPCs that we've encountered. Sometime just encountering an obvious slimeball is enough to creep me out. A good example was in last night's game. KidCharlemagne has an NPC named Red who we started to refer to as "Ron Howards' Brother." He had horrible mannerisms, was just oily, bootlicking and subtly menancing in a dirty-old-man sort of way. He spoke in this nasally voice that reminded me vaguely of the Pat character from Saturday Night Live. For some reason, this character just made me shudder every time someone had to deal with him.


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## DMH

I like the idea of changing skum so that they are humans that are altered in the adult form (and the offspring of other skum) so that some features remain. To make it even more disturbing, have it so that skum are tiny and each human is broken down into dozens of skum via the creature swarm template in Advanced Bestiary. Think of faces you recognize on little fish people that are trying to gut and eat you. San d3/d10.


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## tombshroud

Nazerel said:
			
		

> Well, that was a bit longer than I thought it would be. There are a few more disturbing events at the cathedral, but I wrote enough as it is.  But basically, I took a few ideas from the Silent Hill series of games, and gave them a D&D twist. No zombies though, but ghosts and not so friendly blood-fly monsters were another matter. A shame the campaign didn't last long enough to get into the real meat and potatoes of the cultists who were behind the strange goings-on in town.





It's a shame you didn't get to finish this off, it sounds like it would be a really cool time.  I've never played any of the silent hill games so it was all new to me.  Don't let the length of the post stop you, if you feel like sharing more creepy ideas, share on...


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## Jürgen Hubert

If you don't want your own posts to be lost to posterity (pardon the pun), then why not enter them in the Horrific Scenes section of the War Stories category?

Future generations of gamers will be grateful - and some of this stuff is simply too good to throw away!


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## Warrior Poet

DMH said:
			
		

> or weregiant cockroach




Gregor Samsa?    

Warrior Poet


----------



## Kid Charlemagne

eris404 said:
			
		

> A good example was in last night's game. KidCharlemagne has an NPC named Red who we started to refer to as "Ron Howards' Brother." He had horrible mannerisms, was just oily, bootlicking and subtly menancing in a dirty-old-man sort of way. He spoke in this nasally voice that reminded me vaguely of the Pat character from Saturday Night Live. For some reason, this character just made me shudder every time someone had to deal with him.




Sheesh!  And that was _after_ you _charmed_ him...


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## tombshroud

I've noticed a great number of undead used in these enounters.  While this makes sense that the creepiest thing would be the mockery of life that is undeath, I was wondering what other creatures have been used to creep players out?  Not just scare them because of possilbe damage or death to thier PC, but really just makes the PCs skin crawl.

Personally, I've always thought a "Jaws" type adventure with a suitable creep shark - 1/2 dragon or 1/2 fiend dire maybe - would be really fun to run.


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## eris404

tombshroud said:
			
		

> I've noticed a great number of undead used in these enounters.  While this makes sense that the creepiest thing would be the mockery of life that is undeath, I was wondering what other creatures have been used to creep players out?  Not just scare them because of possilbe damage or death to thier PC, but really just makes the PCs skin crawl.




Mindflayers absolutely is the hands down winner for pure scariness. Everything about them is scary and nightmarish.


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## DungeonmasterCal

I've talked about this in another thread, but here's what I do.  People like to talk about themselves, and if I can glean during conversation what really creeps them out in real life, I'll eventually incorporate that into a game.  I've made my sister physically ill describing a carrion crawler larva hatching from a corpse, caused my brother to become so upset about spiders in his dwarven PC's beard he had to have a couple tequila shots before coming back to the table, and had a woman so freaked out when her ranger fell into pit of (harmless) snakes she had to take a break and walk around the yard for awhile to get her breath back.


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## Galethorn

DungeonmasterCal said:
			
		

> I've talked about this in another thread, but here's what I do.  People like to talk about themselves, and if I can glean during conversation what really creeps them out in real life, I'll eventually incorporate that into a game.  I've made my sister physically ill describing a carrion crawler larva hatching from a corpse, caused my brother to become so upset about spiders in his dwarven PC's beard he had to have a couple tequila shots before coming back to the table, and had a woman so freaked out when her ranger fell into pit of (harmless) snakes she had to take a break and walk around the yard for awhile to get her breath back.




That's just _mean_!

I think I'll try that.


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## Swedish Chef

The creepiest plot I ever pulled on my players was back in the AD&D 2ed days. I was running the players through my homebrew world, which was new to them.

I had already had them uncomfortable with the twists I had put on the basic races. IE Dwarves and Elves were holding an uneasy truce after years of warfare, halflings were considered barbaric by most other races, and gnomes were evil little creatures that caused all sorts of mayhem.

But, what really got them was the missing child. They were in a town, exploring, looking for adventure, when they met a child/urchin. For whatever reason, one of the players took a liking to this NPC, and helped her out. The child was about 8 years of age, and I believe I named her Emily. She was street smart and not very trusting of kindness, and wouldn't accept anything from the PC except some coin to buy food. The PC kept trying to convince her to stay at the inn with the party, as she wasn't safe on the street.

Now, this was not a planned plot device, but I went with it. I had already had plans involving disappearing townsfolk, and I just modified it to disappearing orphans. When Emily disappeared, the PCs became very upset and began tearing the town apart to find her.

Through investigation, they determined a Cult of some sort was responsible for the kidnappings, and was up to some sort of evil under the city. They even learned who was the local leader of the cult, but couldn't prove it. So, they followed another member and discovered the secret lair. 

Turns out, the Cult was sacrificing the orphans in a sick ritual to bring an evil entity from the Far Realms to the world. The party stumbled into the lair, disguised themselves as cult members, and then attacked the 3 or 4 members currently in the lair, killing them. Just as they did so, the leader showed up, leading the town guard on a "raid" and blaming the PCs for all the disappearances, as well as the "murder" of several of their "fellow cult members", as was evidenced by the bodies around them.

They managed to flee, setting up an ongoing battle, but to this day they continue to look at me funny if I introduce NPC children. And they always shudder when I do.


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## Shadowdancer

DungeonmasterCal said:
			
		

> I've talked about this in another thread, but here's what I do. People like to talk about themselves, and if I can glean during conversation what really creeps them out in real life, I'll eventually incorporate that into a game. I've made my sister physically ill describing a carrion crawler larva hatching from a corpse, caused my brother to become so upset about spiders in his dwarven PC's beard he had to have a couple tequila shots before coming back to the table, and had a woman so freaked out when her ranger fell into pit of (harmless) snakes she had to take a break and walk around the yard for awhile to get her breath back.




Yeah, I like to do this, too. One of the female gamers in our group is very afraid of spiders. So giant spiders are always attacking her characters.


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## tombshroud

I enjoy creeping my players out with little details that have no obvious meaning.   For example, while in a town where a murderer was causing a stir they were asked to help with the investigation.  At each crime scene they examined with a body they noticed a small black beetle scurrying away.  They could never catch the beetle as is always appeared out of the corner of the eye and was gone in a few seconds.

I really got them when they went back to thier room at the in and saw a small black beetle scurrying away from thier room....


----------



## sniffles

Like everybody else, I love to tell game stories.   

Our party was investigating an ancient ruined fortress/temple.  We'd already been creeped out by a mural or relief on the wall depicting the ancient "evil gods" in battle with all sorts of weird creatures.  Then we walked into a room where the floor was covered in blood.  Not "The Shining" tidal waves of blood, but enough that it made sticky squishy noises underfoot.  Mind you, this place had apparently been abandoned for centuries.  There were several torture devices in the room.  In a sort of giant thumbscrew we found an imp-like creature.  It appeared to be gleefully torturing itself.  It gave all the players the heebie-jeebies when the GM told us the imp crawled back into its device and starting turning the screws again after we found it. 

In another campaign the party members had found a "black diamond" that radiated evil.  One of the PCs had gone over to the dark side and inserted a shard of the gem in his body, giving him new powers (the GM was inspired by the Shikon jewel from the anime "Inu-Yasha").  One day as we were traveling along a flying centipede-like monster with a humanoid torso and head swooped down on us and started attacking the guy who had the shard.  She managed to take him down to 0 HP.  An NPC ran up and poured a healing potion on him (in our campaigns you don't have to drink them) while the centipede-monster was still holding him.  Then the monster backed off, taking the PC with her, and started using her dagger-like limbs to literally dissect him while we watched.  I was impressed that the GM was willing to go that far, since he usually doesn't like anything too grim or graphic.

The RuneQuest setting has plenty of creepiness, especially with its chaos gods and disease-spreading broos that will mate with anything.  In one session our RQ party went to an island that was supposedly infected with Chaos.  I don't know why, but I think we all found it intensely creepy when the GM described all the giant insects buzzing around, especially when we saw a huge mosquito go buzzing past with some other giant bug in its clutches.  I guess bugs are just innately creepy to most people.


----------



## DMH

I just bought Occult Lore a few days ago and one of the classes is very creepy- the gleaner. Very similar to the rpg Sorcerer, the gleaner has little magic of his own and must collect the reminants of memories that are left when a soul leaves a body. Using the reminants in 3 forms (spirit stone, reliquary and charm focus), they take these fragments of memories and cause selected ones to grow in power (which is why the chapter is called spirit cultivation) and become something like a spirit which then can evolve beyond that (possibly into demigods with time).

I see orders where they collect the fragments of the best (to cultivate) and worst (to imprison) of society. Society would be lead by the living and spirits of good people long dead. I like the idea a lot more than the orbs in Seven Civilizations as good people can remain good in deed.


----------



## DMH

A varient of the above would have several gleaners work together and kill each other, collect the memories, raise the dead person and allow him to "raise" his spirit clone (or several). How such a unbound spirit would react to their living counterpart could be interesting and very creepy.


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Well, I thought that the Master of the Shambles was lost completely, but Archive.org has a copy on the archived Dungeoncrafter website. 

More importantly I found my notes for an Iron Kingdoms game that I was describing on their forums. I do not remember who I got the address for Archive.org from, but I do recall that it was here on E.N.World. Thank you, whomever you may be!

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Those who think that this is thread necromancy of a topic that I liked, well... maybe.  It also got revived by someone else just before the Great Crash of '06, so....


----------



## paradox42

Ooo- thread necromancy! Creepy!   

Sorry, somebody had to say it.

On topic, a couple of the creepiest games I've ever run involved what my campaign calls "true Dreams" or more commonly just "Dreams" (with the capital D). Now, off and on over the years, it's been the practice of my group to use Dreams as a sort of filler for when half or less of the usual player group actually shows up for a game- to give those who did show up something fun to do. Basically these Dreams work like being in Tel'Aran'Rhiod in the Wheel of Time, or other similar concepts; the idea is, the PCs are in the Region of Dreams and can use the Lucid Dreaming skill to influence things if they have it.

Waaaay back when, several years ago, one of my groups decided to travel with an expedition to an ancient ruin known as the "City of Death," which was expected to take months just to reach the place with all the supplies and people it was bringing along. Now, at one of the caravan's stops along its way, the party was going around town looking for something to do, and chanced upon a local cemetary haunted by a ghost. The ghost was specifically described as an elf with no eyes in his sockets, and he screamed a word at the party before he left. As an amusing side note, the party's Cleric PC (the only one able to Turn Undead) got a natural 1 on her Will save to avoid the ghost's fear, so she ran away screaming while the rest of the party just wondered what this ghost was about.

As it happened, that ghost encounter was at the end of a session, and the very next session several people didn't make it on time. So I ran a Dream. In this Dream, the Cleric and two other PCs found themselves in a cavern of ice, apparently part of an entire dungeon complex carved out of a glacier, or some such. I played up the weirdness and mystery of it all, and the players (appropriately awed and in wonder) set off to explore. But I had an echoing whisper suddenly come from one tunnel, saying the same word the ghost had screamed the night before (unfortunately the PCs all failed their INT checks, so none of them remembered this- and the players had forgotten during the week as well). The PCs decided to follow the voice, down into a strangely darkened tunnel on a lower level.

In that dark tunnel, they found a man, literally frozen in place, and when they went around to see who it was, they saw that it was the ghost- and why he had no eyes. The eyes had been frozen apparently at a different rate from the rest of him, and had burst out of his face creating little trails of (now frozen) goo down his cheeks. And his face was set forever in his dying expression, which I described as a "rictus of horror." That happy image drew some "Ewww"s from the players, as I had hoped.

The next step was to follow the whispering voices still further, into an even deeper and darker tunnel, past a door made of a strange metal that looked more grown or frozen into shape than forged. Beyond it was a long, straight passage that finally ended in a single bare room with three smooth walls (with a hint of something somehow carved into the ice below the actual surface) and one rough one. Since the room, as everything else on its level, was pitch black and the PCs were relying on Darkvision, one of them took out a regular light so they could get a better handle on things. When switched on, the light revealed several things which I rattled off matter-of-factly from a list:

One, the reason things were so dark down here was that the ice itself was somehow colored a thoroughly unnatural black.

Two, the rough wall was NOT black, but a stark pearly white, and yet bitterly cold to the touch- even more so than the other ice around it.

Three, those hinted-at "carvings" in the other three walls were in fact *people*- sacrifice victims literally frozen into the walls in their dying moments. (This caused one player to abruptly turn away in horror, as she'd apparently had a dream similar to this in real life once and it was now seriously freaking her out.)

As the players realized this, they took a few moments to discuss this latest finding and get over their shock. Which was when I dropped the next shock on them. The sacrifice victims started writhing and moving, within their tombs of ice, and it quickly became clear to the PCs that those mysterious voices whispering that mysterious word were in fact these very victims. And as the voices built upon themselves, calling out the word triumphantly over and over, getting louder and louder as they did, the fourth wall began to move of its own accord. After a few seconds of movement, a sudden horizontal gap appeared in the wall, and pulled itself open in both the vertical directions to reveal an enormous red eye staring balefully at the PCs. Who then woke up, as other players had arrived and it was time to start the game proper. 

The last helpful touch, for those players who had been reading their game books? The word the sacrifice victims (and the ghost) were all saying was a name- "Xixecal."

That was the way I set up an Abomination from the ELH as a vaguely Lovecraftian BBEG in my world.  In subsequent Dreams the PCs discovered more about it, but it also drove the same priestess quite insane in its efforts to get an agent to do its work for it (particularly, getting it released). I still haven't released it, and actually it's likely now that it never will be, but ever since that Dream my group's used "Xixecal!" as a catchphrase whenever somebody does something shocking or gets scared.


----------



## Darrell

One of my favorites from years ago (in college):

The party had been after the key to a door they couldn't seem to open, and had found that the key had been placed in a tomb.  I had planned a "Tomb of Horrors"-ish adventure, with death-traps at every turn, but on the night when the adventure was supposed to take place, only two of seven players were able to play.  Rather than put the adventure off for a week, I decided to take a different tack...

When my two players showed up, we started play in the inn where they'd been staying.  They were approached by the man who'd given them the clue to the tomb, who told them he'd seen the minions of the BBEG heading in the direction of the tomb.  The other characters being 'indisposed (read: absent),' the two characters (a human cleric and a half-elf thief), set out for the tomb themselves to try to stop the minions.

They caught up to the minions just as they smashed in the front door of the tomb, and swiftly dispatched them.  The tomb was described as being smaller than they'd expected, and the two decided to have a look inside.  At this point, I stooped play for a break.  When they returned, they were told that the rest of the action would happen in real time, in a LARP-type situation.  

I led them to the main hall of my apartment.  I'd previously set up my bedroom as one of the adventure locales I'd had planned for them to go through (I was a theatre major, and had a good many requisite props).  They made their way down the hall to a locked door, the thief picked the lock (I made them wait a few minutes to simulate the 'real-time' lockpicking while I suited up in the 'tomb.').

When they opened the door, they found a dark room, lit by a single candle (a burning candle in a tomb?).  There was a sealed crypt door (the closet), a sarcophagus (the bed), and, seated in the corner, a robed figure holding a gnarled oak staff (me).  In the figure's left hand was the key, and a golden ring.

Now...all they actually had to do was walk over and take the key from me.  The ring and staff were additional 'treasures' they could acquire.  The real-time atmosphere, however, probably augmented by the thunderstorm outside, made them extremely nervous about everything (though neither, to my knowledge, had ever done any type of LARP-stuff before, they took to it like ducks to water).  As a result, the 'exploration' of the tomb took almost an hour and a half, as they debated (in character...I was proud of 'em) what to do and looked around the room.

During the 'looking,' one of the most 'creepy' moments occurred when the thief was having a look at the crypt door.  A small spider (a real one, apparently with an excellent sense of timing) dropped down from the ceiling and landed on the back of her hand, resulting in a scream that could probably have been heard in the next county.

Eventually, they took the key and the ring from my hand, and left the tomb, deciding that the staff was something better left untouched.  As they left, the rogue decided to blow out the candle.  As it was extinguished, I let out a low moan; and both of them literally RAN out the door.  When the full group met again the next week, the cleric and rogue presented the group with the key and the story of an odd adventure.

A follow-up...

Last year, I ran into the rogue's player at the museum where I was working.  We started talking about our D&D group, and she told me that the 'tomb crawl' had been her favorite gaming experience.  Pretty decent effect for about forty-five minutes planning.   

Regards,
Darrell King


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## evilgamer13

*Fallen gods*

Hi im new to the forum but Iv been reading through the weird/creepy thread and loving it, I also have an idea to contribute, though not something thats actually been used. Before I start I just want to apologies in advance for the spelling mistakes of which I'm sure there will be several, I'm dyslexic and don't have a word processor with a spell check on my computer. The question I ask you is what has happened to deity's when one polytheistic society has conquered another? The answer is twofold one they take a subservient place in the pantheon as as either minor diety (see the plethora of minor Roman gods, as well as Vanir of Norse pantheon, or even many of the demons of the monotheistic religions), or they are killed (either in terms of a mythic battle or just by being forgotten). Now in a fantasy world where the gods intervene on a regular basis the battle would be going on simaltainously between the gods themselves and their followers.

I wish to look at the fate of those vanquished gods and give an example of what they may become. Now the gods COULD battle to the death, but I find it more likely that one would demand the serenader of the other or failing that that the vanquished god would serenader or run away rather then face the end of their immortal excistance. In the first two cases the god would take a subservient role to the conquerer based on their original purpose, though perhaps in a very specific form (again I say look at the plethora of minor deity's in the Roman pantheon), or they could be forced into a very different form (see the demons of the catholic pantheon).
With this in mind I would like to suggest a very creepy goddess and see if anyone has ideas for other such fallen divinities. 

Cor'a'va was a fertility goddess like many others, she tended to the harvest of the fields and she tended to mysteries of motherhood. Cor'a'va had once been much more, she had ruled all of nature... well all of nature in her valley, but a centuries before her people had been conquered and she with them by Nak'thun a grate stag headed god of war and the hunt. When Nak'thun had first taken Cor'a'va as his bride she had wept bitter tears as he forced himself upon her, but she had grown to love him over the last century. Cor'a'va did not understand how she could come to love him but as her worshipers came to see their union as natural and then as blessed she too came to first to tolerate, then to accept, and then even finally to cherish their union. But that was a hundred years ago and now in the spring when her land, her people, and her belly were full of new life her people were also finely conquered after a brutal war. 

As their people were subjugated Cor'a'va could do nothing and she wept bitter tears, as Nak'thun was castrated and then be-headed she could do nothing, and wept bitter tears, then the conquerers came to her as their worshipers chipped away at the inscriptions in her temple and she knew a fear far different then she had on her conquest by Nak'thun for Cor'a'va knew the conquers and knew that among their midsts was another god of fertility. Cor'a'va wondered if she would be spared and if so to what minor function she would have to degrade herself, she had herd of other fertility goddesses who had ended up as no more then patrons of midwives and prostitutes, or they could kill her as they had her love. But Cor'a'va had no idea what was in store for her, for as the conquerers had conquered they gained many patrons for their peoples lively-hoods, and both the god of war and his brother the god of fertility had wives that sated their desires. Rather then kill Cor'a'va right out she was given a choice to go to the underworld, she took if for to a goddess of life it was utter horror to be mired in the souls of the dead but still better then oblivion. As she was led off to her fate the god of fertility held up his hand and she stopped for even being nothing but a field in which he would plant his seed would be better then to be surrounded by death. The god of fertility then said "she plans to take one small life with her into the land of the dead, that can not be allowed and I shall brook no other to to be the sours of life" and with that he pulled forth a dagger and stabbed her in the womb, Cor'a'va was then cast into the underworld.

 her clerics were raped or killed and her temples burned to the ground. But in defeat she changed and began to gather a cult to herself, of mothers like Cor'a'va herself who had lost a child while still in the womb, and as time passed she and her cult were warped beyond all recognition and came to exalt that which they had once taken to be their burden as one. However in the shadow of great city's she regained her strength, a new strength and in the shadows she endured while that civilization was conquered as well and she endured while it's goads were destroyed and their names erased from temple walls and the minds of people. The sisterhood forgot their names to but not the part they played in Cor'a'va 's tale.

The sisterhood of the un-dead womb is a cult comprised exclusively of women, and all of whom are priestesses in training or in actuality. They worship Cor'a'va and preform blasphomus rites to mimic her struggle to birth her dead child in the underworld. The priestess give birth to all manner of monsterositys (for less disturbing they grow them in tanks but for full on ewwww it's live birth).


----------



## Cartigan Mrryl

Goblyn said:
			
		

> If it was an all adult game, I might have been less forgiving, but she's only twelve.



 Awww, Zombies are quite intimidating for a 12 year old...

Anyways... I run Horror games (ala Heroes of Horror) So I've done some freakish things. Ummm... personal favorite... I'd have to say the "Big-Baddy" Called Visigin.

Visigin was an Elven Dread Necromancer(Heroes of Horror) with a few classes in Sorceror and a prestige class of two. What was annoying about him was that his combat strategy was the make you lose your class... in other words become "Ex"-whatever. For instance, he cast a Quickened Dimension Door, a Quickened Silent Image spell and summoned a charmed servant, a helpless woman, in his place, using the dimension door to hide in a nearby area and silent image to make the woman appear to be him. He failed his checks, so it looked like him. Paladin attacks, kills a young innocent woman... what do you think would happen? Ex-Paladin, anyone?

Also managed to get rid of two clerics, a ranger, and a guilt-crazed Fighter(great fun... nice RPing) in the same manner/with little modifications.


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## Agent Oracle

"The Man who wasn't there."

I remember as a child hearing a silly bit of Shel Silverstein poetry...

_Yesterday Upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish I wish he'd go away_

On this poem, I based The Man Who Wasn't There.  BBEG, scared my party witless.

He existed as a negative.  You didn't see him, but could discern exactly where he wasn't.  He spoke in terrible silences and players understood every word that he didn't say.  He forced near-constant SAN checks, as he was a monologue maker, and merely being in the same room as him was a violation of causality.  I think what really set the players minds on edge was how he looked exactly like their uncle... if their uncle wasn't a person, but an uncle-shaped hole in reality.

We had a bard gibbering for three full days.  It was a terrible sight.


----------



## Agent Oracle

> Paladin attacks, kills a young innocent woman... what do you think would happen? Ex-Paladin, anyone?




He forgot to detect evil.  If he had detected evil, and attacked the false-innocent, and she died, he would be at fault, but redeemable.  He didn't detect evil, but saw the enemy and attacked him, accidentally killing the innocent treacherously placed in his way,  He can still be redeemed, he just has to go atone for his sin.

Nasty enemy though.


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## shilsen

Cartigan Mrryl said:
			
		

> Anyways... I run Horror games (ala Heroes of Horror) So I've done some freakish things. Ummm... personal favorite... I'd have to say the "Big-Baddy" Called Visigin.
> 
> Visigin was an Elven Dread Necromancer(Heroes of Horror) with a few classes in Sorceror and a prestige class of two. What was annoying about him was that his combat strategy was the make you lose your class... in other words become "Ex"-whatever. For instance, he cast a Quickened Dimension Door, a Quickened Silent Image spell and summoned a charmed servant, a helpless woman, in his place, using the dimension door to hide in a nearby area and silent image to make the woman appear to be him. He failed his checks, so it looked like him. Paladin attacks, kills a young innocent woman... what do you think would happen? Ex-Paladin, anyone?




Not a chance. The paladin has no way of knowing the truth in this case, so he isn't to blame.


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## SpiderMonkey

shilsen said:
			
		

> Recently, the PCs in my group were investigating an area in the undercity (Sharn, from Eberron) where they had fought some aberrations. They found a couple of hastily-abandoned rooms which included little besides a mirror on the wall and a crawlspace. Inside the latter, they found a strange-looking bag with splotches on it, which then turned out to be the skin of human-being who'd had all the stuffing sucked out of him (still had dessicated bones & organs inside). One caught a glimpse in the mirror of a grayish humanoid form leaning over those looking at the skin-bag, even though nobody could see it, and caressing the back of one's neck with a tentacle. It disappeared from the mirror as soon as he raised the alarm.
> 
> The next few minutes were spent trying to detect whatever might be in there with them, with little success and growing trepidation on the part of the explorers. The artificer tried to examine the mirror, at which point it went dead gray and for an instant showed a small eye in its center, which rapidly expanded to fill the entire mirror, which then exploded. Once the bleeding and dazed artificer was healed, he managed to infuse a _see invisibility_ spell, which revealed the two rooms to be full from roof to ceiling of invisible, intangible webs, which were moving very gently in a non-existent breeze. The party got the hell out of there




Yoink!  For my current D&D meets Call of Cthulu Campaign, I am totally stealing this.  Shilsen, you're my hero.


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## shilsen

SpiderMonkey said:
			
		

> Yoink!  For my current D&D meets Call of Cthulu Campaign, I am totally stealing this.  Shilsen, you're my hero.






Have fun with it.


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## SpiralBound

For *evilgamer13*:  Here is a really good free word processor program that has a spellchecker. http://www.abisource.com/  I have several friends who have dyslexia and they all find using programs like this one quite helpful.  Just write your post in there first, spell check it, and then paste the corrected version into your post.

Also, one other hint: Leave a blank line between paragraphs, _(like I just did!)_, it makes what you write a lot easier to read.  Usually you should switch to a new paragraph whenever you are introducing a new topic, section or idea to a piece of writing.

Lastly, I really enjoyed your post about defeated gods, it gave me many, many ideas... Thank you for posting, please write more!!  I'm glad you're not shy about writing due to your dsylexia. _(One of my dyslexic friends is quite creative and intelligent, but will never write anything for fear that her dyslexia will make her look stupid...)_


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## Wraith Form

Hunh, look at what I found.   -kicks at dirt on ground-

/shameless bumpage


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## Wraith Form

Darrell said:
			
		

> One of my favorites from years ago (in college): * *SNIP * *
> Last year, I ran into the rogue's player at the museum where I was working.  We started talking about our D&D group, and she told me that the 'tomb crawl' had been her favorite gaming experience.  Pretty decent effect for about forty-five minutes planning.



You are now my hero.


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## Wraith Form

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> Well, I thought that the Master of the Shambles was lost completely, but Archive.org has a copy on the archived Dungeoncrafter website.



By the way, that would be at the maps/adventures link on the right, just follow the Adventures pathway.


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## Mr. Draco

The best session I've ever run was for a d20 modern game that was somewhere in between the X-Files and Military Special Forces.

The players were tracking down covert weapons shipments from the Soviet Union (alt history where the Berlin Wall never fell and the USSR gained further power) and they came across very suspicious logs from a shipping company, and in particular a ship about to set sail out of Odesa, in the Ukraine.  They arrive in the city only to find out the ship set sail the day before.

*Fast forward a few days.*

The players are onboard a special ops plane (Think OV-22 Osprey), being battered by a huge storm as they approach the current location of this container ship.  The plane drops them off in a Zodiac, and as they motor towards the giant ship the storm grows worse and the sun begins to set.

For this session, I used a whole list of events I planned out before, but what really made everything work well was integrating reality into the adventure.

Here are some examples for what I mean by that:

*Making sure to start the session later than normal, so that as the sun sets on the PCs at the beginning of the adventure, the sun is actually setting IRL.

*Delaying the session by a day, in order to game during a huge thunderstorm that was (correctly) forcasted to occur.  As we played and I described the side-to-side listing of the ship, and the rain pounding on the exterior walls, they could hear the rain pounding on the roof of the house (we were on the top story of a two story house) and the thunder cracking from outside the windows.

*It was a ghost ship of sorts.  _Something evil_ that they were carrying got out and killed all of the crew, leaving only beheaded heads (that then attacked the PCs) in the rooms of the crew, and the bodies hanging in one of the cargo holds from meathooks (that the PCs found later).  To add to this creepy atmosphere, I made sure that the windows in our game room were slightly open, with the blinds down (to get the effect of the wind coming through and randomly shaking things), and  the door to the room was open, with all of the lights in the rest of the house off (always creepy, and noone would sit with their back to that open door).

*Props.  When they found the captain's log, I handed them a blank and burnt/stained book.  When, as they explored the ship, they discovered that the captain's log was gradually being filled in with entries from the day the ship left port, I handed them "entries" (again, burnt/torn/stained) that I had made beforehand.  And, of course, the entries became gradually more desperate.

*Bringing lots of caffeinated beverages and sugary candy.  Nothing gets imaginations going wild than a combination of caffeine, sugar, and staying up all night (it was an over-nighter session).

*The power went out onboard the ship.  Beforehand, I had talked with one of the players, and arranged for him to sit next to the lamp in the room.  We agreed that when I gave him a sign (held up a yellow marker in my hand) he would pull the plug on the lights.  The power went out onboard the ship (and to all of the lights in the room) at about 11:30pm real time.  At that point, I brought glowsticks, and we played the rest of the session by those slowly dimming chemoilluminescent things.  Purely by accident, I didn't quite bring enough for every player to have one, and the combination of having to pass them around when you wanted to do something/look at your character sheet/etc and not being able to see things clearly really put some players on edge.

*Make them doubt reality.  The creepiest thing is the unknown.  Describe something that only one player sees, but disappears a moment later.  In my game, as they approached the ship, a lightning bolt illuminated a strange bestial figure atop one of the radio masts, the next lightning bolt showed it gone.  Once they were onboard the ship, they split up into two groups to try to reach the command room from either side of the main superstructure.  The corridors they traversed inside the ship were physically impossible: doors appeared and disappeared, the passageways shifted, and they couldn't trust the hallway that they had just been through.  One group, upon entering the right side of the superstructure, closed the exterior door, and noticed that everything went silent.  Absolutely, completely, dead silent.  And the rocking of the ship in the storm disappeared.  When they reopened the same door (that they had just come in from the outside of the ship), it lead to a stairway that was very definitely completely inside.

*A cake is nothing without the frosting.  You have to use decorative little bits that don't necessarily mean anything.  The beetles at crime scenes mentioned earlier is a very good example of this.  In my game, it was dolphins.  The early entries in the captain's log mentioned the good luck of a pod of dolphins swimming with the ship for a few days, and then in later entries the crew was horrified as the dolphins turned up dead in the water around the ship.  As my players were exploring the lower decks of the ship, they found that below a certain point, the ship was full of fog.  The top layer of this fog only extended about a foot and a half above the floor of one of the floors.  As they walked through this floor, exploring, they noticed that the fog seemed to be making shapes.  In fact, the whole layer of fog around their feet seemed to resemble gentle ocean waves, and before long they noticed tiny shapes jumping in and out of the surface of the "water" that looked like dolphins.

*Don't give them answers.  This is the hardest part about horror in DnD.  In a different game (DnD this time), the PCs were hired to protect a gnomish merchant caravan.  They stumbled into a cavern where there were a series of elemental-themed challenges.  In one, the caravan was surrounded by a huge ring of fire that began getting smaller and smaller as they went forward.  This seriously freaked out my players (completely unintentionally, mind you) until I mentioned that the ring of fire (now about 20ft from the caravan, at the closest point) was breaking up into what almost looked like individual figures.  Immediately, one of the players broke out with an OOC "Oh, fire elementals."  And the nervous and tense atmosphere was broken immediately.  Yet, fostering this fear of the unknown is a very difficult thing in DnD because the players are used to strange and magical happenings.  The ghost is ethereal and you need magic weapons to harm it.  The demonic beast ignores your arrows because it has DR against good.  They understand what they're facing, so they don't fear it.  Because of that, I find it's practically essential when running DnD horror sessions to just make up magical effects that they've never seen before, things that really throw the PCs for a loop.  The ability to put a label, a name, on something the PCs are interacting with gives them an element of power over it.  Power is the last thing you want PCs to have when you're working on an atmosphere of powerlessness and dread in the face of the unknown.


----------



## evilgamer13

*Fun with potions*

So there was a very cool encounter in one of my old first or second ed suplements, a tresure hord containded a box of asorted potions in metal vials and a family of rust monsters moved in.  Just as the pc's are at the right spot the rust monsters are feeding on the vials and therefore take the potions, on gets giant sized andother becomes inviable and a whole aray of other efecs i think thre were about six rust monsters in the encounter and each had a differnt efect.  I just remembered this and thought id share it as people on this tread have talked a lot about tweaking thing to up the unknown factor in their games.  I'm sure the same idea could be aplyed to other situations, such as the very common goblins or kobalds in the employ of an evil wizard having acess to potions, or a group of orks that raided a caravan that had a few oneshot magic items imagine running into six or seven orks the size or ogers are they a new breed or ork? a clan of orkish half giants??? nope just downed some potions.


----------



## SorvahrSpahr

Darrell said:
			
		

> During the 'looking,' one of the most 'creepy' moments occurred when the thief was having a look at the crypt door.  A small spider (a real one, apparently with an excellent sense of timing) dropped down from the ceiling and landed on the back of her hand, resulting in a scream that could probably have been heard in the next county.
> 
> Eventually, they took the key and the ring from my hand, and left the tomb, deciding that the staff was something better left untouched.  As they left, the rogue decided to blow out the candle.  As it was extinguished, I let out a low moan; and both of them literally RAN out the door.  When the full group met again the next week, the cleric and rogue presented the group with the key and the story of an odd adventure.
> 
> A follow-up...
> 
> Last year, I ran into the rogue's player at the museum where I was working.  We started talking about our D&D group, and she told me that the 'tomb crawl' had been her favorite gaming experience.  Pretty decent effect for about forty-five minutes planning.
> 
> Regards,
> Darrell King




You sir are my hero. I have to try something like that


----------



## Vorput

Mr. Draco said:
			
		

> The best session I've ever run was for a d20 modern game that was somewhere in between the X-Files and Military Special Forces... Power is the last thing you want PCs to have when you're working on an atmosphere of powerlessness and dread in the face of the unknown.




Very cool stuff, thanks for sharing.


----------



## SorvahrSpahr

this thread must not die!!!

neway. I think the creepiest thing I ever threw at my players was when a Necromancer was trying to create the perfect undead. For that he was stealing corpses from the local graveyard, and living people, in order to "fuse" them. 

 A few days later, after resqueing the daughters of the local bard from 2 flesh golems. They decided to infiltrate the necro's house. As soon as they got in, (ex-cleric/rogue, a favoured soul, the third member wasn't present, the worst ninja ever) they were chased, by the necro's summoned hellhound, into the hot-house. They found a map of the city with the city's guarding routes and schedules, as well as several targets. There were some notes about the creation of the undead, and a ressurecting potion. They escaped back to the inn when more hounds started showing up.

 That night the two girls were kidnapped by a few hummonculus (spelling?), the players managed to follow them, and soon discovered that the local guard was cooperating with the necro (they found out that the BBEG, a dark paladin, had pushed the current captain up in the rankings, in exchange of letting the necro work as he wanted. They pursued a homunculus through the graveyard and into an empty grave that was a secret passage into the necro's mannor. Since they were pretty fast on getting through the labyrinth, they managed to recover the girls alive, if they had taken a little while longer, they would've fought a little cookie I baked for them.


----------



## InVinoVeritas

Deep in the caverns of the PCs' home, a portal to another dimension was opened, and water started to fill in through the portal. Over time, skum started arriving through the portal to explore the area. They brought supplies with them, and started to colonize the cavern. The PCs fought the skum and killed them, but not before one of their number was exposed to aboleth venom. He was worried as his skin changed and began to dry out.

The quick-thinking PCs were able to find a barrel and kept him in the barrel with water, so that they could retreat to figure out what to do next. They grabbed as much of the skum's equipment and left.

So far, the PCs are worried, but still holding it together. They hated that they had to barrel one of their number, but at least they were alive and active.

Then they found the antidote. Among the procured equipment was a bottle, about the size and shape of a large wine bottle. However, the bottle was fleshy, somewhat hairy, and it wasn't stoppered--the neck was held shut with a sphincter. They thought this was odd, but not too worrisome. Then they figured out that by stroking the bottom of the bottle gently, the sphincter opened...

...and the players just howled in revulsion. "It's the PERV'S bottle!!!!" one of them cried out. It was then--not before, not after--that the PCs knew this portal had to be reclosed.

Thank you, David Cronenberg.


----------



## shilsen

InVinoVeritas said:
			
		

> Then they found the antidote. Among the procured equipment was a bottle, about the size and shape of a large wine bottle. However, the bottle was fleshy, somewhat hairy, and it wasn't stoppered--the neck was held shut with a sphincter. They thought this was odd, but not too worrisome. Then they figured out that by stroking the bottom of the bottle gently, the sphincter opened...
> 
> ...and the players just howled in revulsion. "It's the PERV'S bottle!!!!" one of them cried out. It was then--not before, not after--that the PCs knew this portal had to be reclosed.




Damn you - you almost made me spit a mouthful of water on my screen! 

And yes, that story's just beautiful


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## evilgamer13

*Hell fire*

So a friend of mine was mentioning that horror is all in presentation, in that spirt I have an idea for a very frightening necromancer for a lowish level campaign.  The first part of the encounter would have the PC's meet one of the village folk with the curious disfigurement of having some viable part of his body being hairless shinney and looking a bit "melted".  When asked he would tell the party that about six months back a few people had started disappearing from some of the outlying farms.  That this hadn't caused a great stir but some of the locals went out to check the woods for bear spore.  They hadn't found anything at the time but a few more people went missing.  Now about a month ago one of the local kids had seen some strange lights in an old abandoned temple one evening so the town warder and four able bodied men with some mellisha training had gone to check it out later that same night.  The five of use went down into the old ruin and you know what we say?  Some kinda demon it looked like a man but the skin was all discolored and bumpy and the face... the face was like hell its self, a wide maw with huge fangs the skin was all wrinkly but the eyes were on fire.  Now I don't mean to make excuses for what happened but the the eyes were like hollows full of green fire.  But then it said something, no i dint hear what but it said something I could smell brimstone and there was a flash of this black flame... thats right I said black flame and it gave off a kinda sickly purple light i was in the back so it just caught my arm but I could feel it _leaching out my very soul_.  The others fell and I just ran.  I know I should of stayed and fought but I just couldn't I ran... god (insert diety here) help me I turned and ran.

So the next part of the encounter if there brave enough to go on is to go into the temple ruins.  The ruins themselves consist of a coble stone floor with walls no longer any higher then a mans waist and whats left of stone arches sticking up into the air like a rib cage.  The aria is covered with small greenish mushrooms (if it's at night the moon seems to leach all color from the place).  As they enter into the ruins they find a door way a satire way leading down, there is fresh dirt on them that looks as if they have been used recently.  As they descend down they see some kind of slime on the walls, the stair switches back on it's self leading them under the church it's self.  They enter into a large chamber with a vaulted ceiling and a door leading out at the other end, in the middle of the room are four bodes, one of which is wearing chain mail in the middle of a circular scorch mark.  All of the viable flesh has that same melted texture of the mans arm, they have no hair and their eyes look like they exploded, they are also covered in more of that slime.  Then roll a die behind your DM screen, then ask if they want to examine the bodies.  Next roll again and tell them that they hear something that sounds like a wet flopping noise.  Then the bodies get up to their feet.  Combat ensues use standard zombie stats.  After the fight they will enter into the next room.  In that room they will find a "demon" sitting on a backless chair in the middle of the room and three other doors leading out.  The creature stands up, it's face looks like one of those Chinese demon masks with the tusk/fangs on upper and lower lips but it has a small high forehead and flames in the eyes and long back hair, it is dressed in a robe  it's face is dark red but it's hands have a weird splotchy color.  Feel free to give a better description but I want to be accurate for those DM's that use pictures as props.  It stands up as the PC's enter the room.  Hopefully the mage will launch a flight of magic missiles at it if so they simply get sucked out of reality as they near the thing, maybe a foot away from it's chest.  The "demon" waves it's hands and with a smell of brimstone it throws a ball of green flame.

What is really going on is this is just a necromancer who can cast fire ball.  He uses either a meta magic feat or a magic item to change the color of his spells to throw people off.  The face is just a mask, and the fires in the eyes are eternal flames (again color changed), the long hair is horse hair, the small forehead is because he sees out of slits below the eyes which are just small bowled out sections of mask and the splotchy discoloration on the hands are the result of sundry alchemical spills (nothing serious but not what you would call attractive.  As for the disfigurements caused by his fireball; the sort of flash heat produced by a FB does not have time to charr flesh, hair would be incinerated and the scalp might have some secondary burns but there would be little char.  The slime is just mold I only describe it to add color and to make the PC's think it's important.   The mage knew the PC's were coming because under some of the fresh dirt on the stairs was a mystic alarm that notified him and the fight with the zombies gave hem a chance to get suited up cast resist elements (fire) mage armor, and shield on himself.  Of course this would be good as a low level bit of filler to introduce the effects of third level combat magic to the party and show them the slightly more gruesome side of your basic evocations.


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## glass

Cartigan Mrryl said:
			
		

> He failed his checks, so it looked like him. Paladin attacks, kills a young innocent woman... what do you think would happen? Ex-Paladin, anyone?



Not if I was DMing. The paladin had no way of knowing that an inocent woman was in the firing line. Should every paladin take Quicken SLA so they can check for evil every rounf before thay attack?

Besides, if this thread has proved anything, it's that young women in D&D are never innocent! 


glass.


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## Shadowdancer

Whoever resurrected this thread -- thank you! I had subscribed to it before, but the subscription was lost during the DB Crash. I had searched for it afterwards, with no luck.


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## tombshroud

I just thought I would mention that I found a cool place to get some ideas for creepy adventures.  On the website www.horrorchannel.com they have a feature they started called daily scares - apparently a horror author (can't recall the name right now) is submitting one paragraph blurbs for horror story ideas.  Some of them are really good and would work well in a modern setting - for dnd or D20 it might require some tweaking.  Just go to horrorchannel.com and click on the daily scares banner.  NOTE:  You may have to join their forums but it's free.


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## TheAuldGrump

Shadowdancer said:
			
		

> Whoever resurrected this thread -- thank you! I had subscribed to it before, but the subscription was lost during the DB Crash. I had searched for it afterwards, with no luck.




Your welcome. But I did it for my own selfish reasons. (And soon my plans for WORLD DOMINATION will fall into place!)

A minor bit of creepiness I used on the kids game this summer - in a dream one of the characters left the room she was staying in and wandered into the hall. There, on a chair, was a sleeping cat. When she went to pet the cat her hand passed through the cat to touch the cushion beneath. Shortly thereafter she woke up and went out into the hall, there on the chair was a cat that looked like it had been dead for weeks. It had not been there when she went to bed.

In my Spycraft 1887 game one of the characters followed a minor bad guy into a disused area of the London underground, staying well behind. In the darkness both the NPC and the characters suddenly saw hundred of gleaming red eys peering out of the darkness. As the PC watched in horror a horde of what appeared to be small children poured out of the tunnel, surrounding the NPC and slicing him with small, rusty knives, eating the pieces that they had sliced off using their bare hands and sharp, pointed teeth. The PC never saw how the encounter ended, since he turned and ran out of the darkness, convinced that the 'children' were following close behind.

The Auld Grump


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## Bryon_Soulweaver

One thing I've learned from this thread: children are scary.


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## cmajestic

A few years ago I ran a campaign for a few friends of mine.  The campaign was a take-the-barony-back sort of a game, with one player the son of a displaced noble and the other a displaced master-of-the-hunt.

Well, son returns from wizard college to chaos and misrule and rumors of dark doings in his old home.  Strange mercenaries are in town from elsewhere, travel is restricted, and people are disappearing.

The two characters are poking around and the ranger happens to notice several crows circling above the treeline a ways off.  They go and investigate and stumble on a large body of mercenaries executing townsfold that they knew.  There was nothing they could do and they knew it - so they watched as a friend from both of their backgrounds was murdered.  This wasn't terrifically disturbing so much as it angered them.  What disturbed them was when a mercenary finished their friend, knocked his gold teeth out with his mace, and nonchalantly pocketed them.


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## hbarsquared

Shadowdancer said:
			
		

> During one of my descriptions of a room in the in-game house, a small gecko suddenly ran across the screen of the window I was looking at and attacked a moth. This caught my attention; I was fascinated, and stopped talking in mid-description



Excuse me, for a moment, while I _wipe the snot from the screen_.

I laughed out loud on this one.  I love it when real-life circumstances conspire to give players the ultimate D&D experience.

Wish I had some creepy stories, but I at least wanted to point out that this was one of the funniest things ever.


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## evilgamer13

*Zombie goodness*

So I'm playing in a GURPS infinite worlds game and the first world our team went to was turned out to be Gotha-20.  For those who are not familure the Gotha worlds are a supclass of hell worlds that have been overrun by zombies.  So as were looking threw the ruins of what is now the seattle underground in the real world and is what is left of the downtown seattle in gotha-20 we discover at least a dozen zombies locked in a cell in the sherifes office and then we go down to the watterfront and see a zombie climb out of the watter.  So our squad comander shoots it in the chest with a pistol, and not only is the zombie not put down but hundreds of them get out of the watter and start chasing us.  Now when I say hundreds I dont mean two or three, but closser to a thousand zombies!  

Just thought id pass that along, because while one thing can be scary untold hords can be terifying, sort of what willard and the birds were tapping into.


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## tombshroud

*more zombie goodness...*

EvilGamer13 mentioned a world overruled by zombies and a hoard of thousands of zombies.  For some reason this reminded me of an old adventure I read once, I don't remember the module - I know it was 2nd edition and I think it had something to do with Vecna.  It involved a series of portals and one of them led to a world overrun by ghouls.  The area immediately surrounding the gate/portal had a fence around it with a single door out into the ghoul area.  There was a black and white picture of a lightning streaked sky looking out through a fence with a great number of ghoulish shapes.  I've always wanted to run a scenario like this.


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## evilgamer13

*Fallen from Grace*

So who has gotten good use out of supposedly upright individuals who are either corrupt or deluded operating in cahoots with unmentionable beasties?   The two archetypes that spring to my mind are the Zealous priest who has been deluded by demons or other nasties and acts as though they are angelic and has thus been led down the road to unspeakable blasphemy's but is still very self righteous, and the man who cloths himself in riotousness and good works and yet is consciously evil (demon worship, serial killings, or just good old fashioned pedophilia).


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## Sound of Azure

evilgamer13 said:
			
		

> So who has gotten good use out of supposedly upright individuals who are either corrupt or deluded operating in cahoots with unmentionable beasties?   The two archetypes that spring to my mind are the Zealous priest who has been deluded by demons or other nasties and acts as though they are angelic and has thus been led down the road to unspeakable blasphemy's but is still very self righteous, and the man who cloths himself in riotousness and good works and yet is consciously evil (demon worship, serial killings, or just good old fashioned pedophilia).




Pedophilia? Foot fetishists are evil, eh?


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## TableSage

BUMP for Halloween... time to get thinking of scary one-shots?


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## Sanackranib

I ran an old dungeon module about a slithering tracker. the party is on the road in early spring a storm comes up and they need to find shelter very bady. the ranger rolled a natural 20 on his wilderness lore and determined that the way they were dressed/equiped they would all freeze to death or die of exposure unless shelter was found. they came accross a way station, which was boarded up from the inside. there were 3 fresh graves (shallow) outside. once they broke into the building they noticed crude crosses everywhere and lumps of tallow on all the tables (burned out candles) I had them rolling WILL saves every so often just to add to the overall creepyness. they also came accross a body that had been drained of blood but they couldnt find any puncture marks. (they promptly beheaded the body), they then went back out into the storm and dug up the 3 shallow graves and beheaded those bodies as well. they were hearing all kinds of thing that were making them jumpy, mostly the wind but also a large tree branch that was occasionally tapping the upstairs window. so they were sure somthing was tring to get "in". they then decided to stay up all night. I reminded them that they were all cold and tired and had been traveling in progressively worsining weather all day. so . . . I had them roll FORT saves each hour and eventully they all sucumbed to sleep. thats when the slithering tracker attacked. one PC made his hear check with a hefty penalty for being asleep and woke the others. they eventully defeated the tracker and no  one died, though it came close. they all agreed that it was a very exciting encounter, and didnt realize that it was the "day's adventure" until it was over. as they were all level 1 and 2 they were "sure" they were going up aginst a 
"vampire" I even let them roll knowledge and religion checks. of course since the waystations former occupants also thought they were facing a vampire said checks only added to the PC's general unease . . .


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## demiurge1138

It just keeps coming back...

I've got another one, and I've already posted it, even. It got eaten in the Great Server Crash, so I'll tell it again.

My party's exploring this ancient haunted mansion filled with both undead and several competing parties searching for the McGuffin inside it. They battle with some demons in a ballroom filled with dancing phantoms, each still bearing the wounds of its horrible demise. As they toss around area of effect spells, phantoms caught in the area scream and disappear. As the battle is ending, the house buckles and bellows, the floor collapses, sending them hurtling towards the lower layer.

Where they land in a shallow pit. Filled with stuffed animals. Hundreds of them. Dolls, teddy bears. The party starts getting nervous. Spells are cast. Magic is not detected. Evil is. One of the PCs picks up a teddy bear, gives it an experimental squeeze.

And there's the sound of bone breaking. 

And the teddy bears and dolls all stand up, their glass eyes staring blankly directly at him.

And then they pounce.

The phrase "stuffies" engenders terror to this day.

Demiurge out.


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## Nadaka

I ran a game once where the party explored a small abandoned house next to a scene of brutal murder. They entered into the kitchen through a hole in the fireplace to discover a desicated human hand with a bright gold ring, the hand scurried away. In another room they found the cieling rafters had colapsed and punched a hole down into the cellar. Looking through the hole they saw a desicated human body partially crushed beneath the beam. This body clawed at the floor in futility attempting to escape. Its fingers now only nubs and 5 grooves worn deep into the stone floor.


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## tombshroud

ummm.....bump?


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## Vorput

I would love to see some more of these... most of them are just awesome... in a horrifying sort of way.


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## avigor

I've come up with a sadistic idea derived from Swedish Chef's orphan/cult thing:

First, introduce your chars to a street urchin who refuses to go with them to the inn. Then, start having disappearances of street people, adults and children, with the adults reappearing a few days later with their heads opened up and their brains missing (random angles, so one has a hole in the back of his head, another is missing her face, etc). Then, their friend disappears.

They find a cult's lair, but don't encounter anyone, and fail to identify the symbols (at least, right away). Further in, they encounter a heavily locked door, from which their friend's voice is emanating. After they open the door by whatever means (allow explosive opening to not hurt the kid), they find that she seems alright, except for one little thing: she is rubbing her right ear. When someone removes her hand from the ear, you describe that it is red and swollen, somehow irritated, but by what is unknown.

The group then goes to a second door, and begin to open that upon confirming that another child, one that their friend knows and saw put in there (to make sure that they open it), is in there. As they work, the second child starts complaining loudly, "It hurts! Stop the hurting!" At some point, have the PC's friend pull one of them aside and mention that she is getting a headache.

When the door is close to opening (HP is low or the rogue's close to finishing his Take 20), the child screams horribly, and describe a fleshy explosion sound (think a head shot and/or parasite emergence from Resident Evil 4), followed by a harsh growl sound. The door opens of it's own accord, and they see the second child. His original head is in pieces on the floor, everything but the brain has broken off. He has a new head, that is growing from being contained in the brain cavity and is fusing with the damaged (but now healing) neck. This new head lacks hair, is very rubbery, and has four tentacles around the mouth. It attempts to grapple whoever is closest; basically, a child Illithid. Once it is defeated, have their friend complain further about her headache if they didn't get the message already. If they manage to get the child to some appropriate healing on time (Greater Restoration or Heal should definitely work, smaller spells like Remove Disease should at least have a chance of working), then she lives. Otherwise, their friend dies horribly and attacks them.

After that, they still have a cult dwelling of Illithid worshippers and one of those briny pools that Illithid parasites are spawned in before getting a human host to deal with; although they should be able to get the assistance of the city watch if the girl survived and was healed by the local clergy, which will recognize the type of infection she has, although they will be disbelieving that it was from somewhere in the sewers. Throw a few cultists, some more child Illithids, a few of those over-grown larvae, and one of those Elder Brain things at them; say that it was weakened somehow by being locked away for centuries before some random, unlucky guy unearthed it and became the first cultist. Another possibility for that Elder Brain is have it teleport out once damaged to a certain point and become a recurring villain.

If you don't have a copy of Lords of Madness, get one before running this for stats and such (mine's not with me at the moment, hence some sketchy memory). Also, I know that I'm heavily modifying the normal spawning descriptions that LoM specifies for Illithids, but hey, it's more sadistic/creepy this way.




Another idea that I had before this was the idea of a vampire child that doesn't look undead until she hugs a party member and suddenly starts drinking his blood; possibly just modify the above to make her into a vampire and skip the second child part until after she's slain or raised or whatever.

Oh, and thank you Mr. Draco for those tips for horror DMing. I think I be liking those.


Evilgamer13, I like that necromancer idea. One idea that kept popping up in my mind while I was reading some books (Libris Mortis, Heroes of Horror) was a necro with one of those ghost symbionts from one of the monster manuals (or was it the fiend folio?) that can manifest itself as a face completely covering its host's face. Permanent, instantly conjurable/dismissable mask. That symbiont thing is even listed on the Dread Necromancer familiar list. Could make for a very long-lasting necromancer, as the PC's never see his true face, and he always has a getaway planned. Also, the local populace would never suspect him thanks to some crafty usage of enchantment and illusion spells, and the party paladin would find that Detect Evil senses nothing thanks to abjuration spells. Perhaps a Dread Necromancer with specialist wizard (picking Necro as a forbidden school) and some sort of prestige class that allows progression in spellcasting for two arcane classes that contain different spell lists, as well as familiar progression? Hmm . . . I think I like the idea of returning villains, especially if I can make them sufficiently sadistic and have them constantly doing things like killing children to further their goals . . .

So, am I twisted enough to be a DM?


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## shilsen

*More Fun with Kids - Part I*

Here's one I posted earlier but which was lost in a server crash a while ago. The events took place in an Eberron game (not the one in my sig) where the PCs had entered the Mournland. For those not having played/read about Eberron, it's an area that survived a magical cataclysm and has all sorts of weird stuff going on in it. I'll post it in 3 parts, since it's long, for ease of reading. Also, I can't take credit for all of it, since I got a lot of the elements from a great thread on Mournland horrors on the WotC Eberron boards and then wove it all together:


While traveling the group encounters a large, thick copse of vegetation. Made up of apparently healthy trees with lush foliage, surrounded by thick bushes and smaller plants, it seems completely out of place for the Mournland. As they near it, they find  a white shape sticking out of the bushes at the edge of the copse. It turns out to be a statue of a kneeling woman, with arms extended in front of her, evidently made of white marble. Her expression is of mingled fear and loss, and she seems to be reaching for something that she cannot get to. 

As they examine it, they begin to hear soft voices around them. They are the sounds of children, at least three and maybe more, which begin as murmurs, and then slowly turn into weeping voices, a litany of crying and the same phrases, repeated over and over. "Mother ... where are you ... I can't find you ... mother ... don't leave us ... I can't see you ... mother ... it's dark here ... we're cold ... where are you ... mother ..."

Just in case the children are alive, the PCs head into the wood, but the voices fade away. Instead, what they find are some large rags draped over the branches of a tree. Which turn out to be large shreds of skin, streaked with blood. Evidently fresh blood, as large droplets splatter on the PCs' upturned faces.

They gingerly recover the skins, which turn out to be five separate ones. Each is a single piece, as if it was literally peeled off the owner, complete with hair. They clearly belong to children, ranging in age from about four to about ten. The PCs quickly dig a grave and bury the pitiful remains, saying a prayer above them. Only to find the skins hanging from the tree again.

With no real options, the PCs retrace their steps past the statue and head away. As they leave the wooded area, the voices start up again, and though the PCs hurry their steps, the voices continue, increasing in volume and plaintiveness. After a few seconds, the volume begins to drop, though they steadily become more frantic. Finally, they turn into screams of terror and pain, moments before they fade away.


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## shilsen

*More Fun with Kids - Part II*

Continued from the post above...

It takes about ten minutes before one of the PCs notices something unusual about the shadows of his companions. They're now a lot smaller. Once he points it out and everyone stops to check, it takes only a little while to realize what's wrong - everyone's shadow is now the size of a shadow cast by a child. And there's a very soft murmuring coming from them, though somebody will have to crouch down close to a shadow to make it out.

When a PC does so, her questions elicit no immediate response from the shadows, but as seconds pass, the shadows fidget, even though the PCs casting them do not. For a few seconds, all of the PCs hear what seems to be laughter on the edge of their hearing. It is childish, merry laughter, but there is a strange pitch to it, whether it be nervousness, or anger, or a tinge of cruelty. It lasts for only a few seconds and then fades.

The PCs quickly discover that the shadows can move on their own, but also tend to mimic their movements, or try to. One, trying to see if his shadow dances as he does, sees it stumble and fall over, only to arise making motions as if it were crying, and all the PCs hear faint weeping. The PC hurriedly apologizes and makes a hugging motion, and the shadow moves towards him, for a fleeting instant he feels as if he touched something barely palpable, like mist or a cloud, but the sensation is quickly gone. Some of the other PCs do so too, feeling brief sets of sensations - fear, loneliness, hunger - which are quickly replaced by warmth and relief. They gradually fade, leaving only a lingering feeling of relief.

Finally, the PCs move on, the shadows following behind as normal shadows might, except for their size and the way their movements sometimes don't match that of their owners.

The next event with the child-shadows happens when the group starts walking across some rocky ground. The PCs notice that the shadows are getting torn as they pass over the ground, their edges losing little pieces and becoming ragged. They also writhe as if in pain and vainly try to stop the PCs from moving. The alarmed adventurers stop for another discussion and more futile attempts to communicate with the shadows. With no option, they continue reluctantly, seeing the shadows take more damage as they do so.

The fact that these shadows are apparently affected by the physical world to some extent is underlined again some hours later when they are passing near a brackish pool. One of the shadows passes over the edge of the water and convulses as if drowning. The owner quickly moves away and this leads to more discussion, with just as little achieved as before. 

The PCs continue onwards, with the shadows taking more and more damage. They claw vainly at the feet of the people who are dragging them on, and the PCs are soon accompanied constantly by weeping and wailing, that floats at the edges of their hearing but never quite stops.


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## shilsen

*More Fun with Kids - Part III*

And the last bit...

When the PCs make camp they notice that the change in the ambient light hasn't changed the color of their shadows, which remain as dark as if they were under the noonday sun. Two PCs who are best friends, Thaylar (elven) and Amaris (half-elf) take the first watch. Nothing untoward happens and when relieved, Amaris heads to bed and Thaylar slips into an elven trance. Which is when he dreams...

...he's running through knee-high mists with Amaris, sweat pouring down their faces. They've been on the run for the last day, and their companions had fallen behind. They'd cast a glance behind them, every so often, to see if it was still giving chase. It was. Every time he looks behind, it's still there. Always at the same pace, though it shouldn't be able to keep up at this speed. He says, "We have ... have to do something besides run." 

And then Thaylar looks to his side and Amaris isn't there. Nothing but low-lying mist surrounds him. "Amaris!" Thaylar becomes frantic, wondering whether to go into the mists to look for Amaris, or keep moving, in case it catches up with him? 

A scream erupts from behind him. The mist clears for a moment and Thaylar can make out Amaris' form, on the ground, reaching her hand out to him. "Thaylar... hel-" And then the mist washes back and Amaris' form is blotted out. She lets out another scream, this one higher... which trails off into a gurgling, incoherent death rattle. 

Thaylar runs as hard as he can, tears of fear streaming down his face. The mist is getting thicker, becoming as dark as shadow, and he's having trouble navigating over obstacles in his way. He casts another glance behind, though he knows he shouldn't have. He knows it's right behind him. He feels his foot strike something hard, and he knows the sensation of falling. 

Thaylar tumbles down into a ditch, landing on his back. He tries to rise and keep moving, but the pain in his lower leg makes it impossible. He can feel it out there, giggling at him. And then he sees it creeping towards him, finally emerging from the mist. He watches as the little girl pulls herself out of the mist with her arms, stumps where her legs used to be, trailing blood behind her. 

He's so paralyzed with fear that he can't move. She smiles at him and four tentacles slink out of her mouth, giving an anticipatory wiggle. The tentacles slide back into her mouth and she closes it, giving her the appearance of a little girl again. She slowly pulls herself up to Thaylar's legs and then pulls herself up his body. She's cold, cold as ice. 

Thaylar closes his eyes, as she pulls herself up to his chest. And then he can feel her moving higher. He feels his face being stroked and a cold breath on his face. It smells of death and putrefaction. Against his will, he opens his eyes one last time, gazing into those of the creature holding his face. She gives him the grin of an innocent child ... and then holds up a hand. As he watches, the nails expand till they are as big as daggers, cutting his cheek as they do, and he can feel the warm blood on his skin. The child leans forward, the tongues sliding out of her mouth, as she slowly licks her way up his cheek. 

He shudders, too far gone to even scream, and closes his eyes again. The child leans forward, putting her lips to his ear, and as she does, though he cannot see it, he feels her body change. The skin sloughs off it, leaving only slick, blood-covered muscle and flesh, pressed tightly against his. The lips touch his ear softly, and there is one, endless moment of anticipation before she whispers...

"Play with me"

Thaylar wakes up screaming, startling those on watch and awaking the others. He has a second of relief, as he realizes that it was just a dream (along with the split-second thought, "How did I have a dream?"), and then he realizes something. The dream has not completely faded. He can still feel the child's body pressed against his - under his blanket.

Thaylar rises to his feet without any evident physical action, actually rising off the ground for a second, screaming at the top of his lungs and desperately flailing away the blanket. Beneath it, just as he felt, is the skinless child, with its clawed arms and bloody stumps wrapped tightly against him. As he desperately shoves it away, screaming, "Get it off! Get it off! Get it OFFFFF!!!", it smiles, showing long fangs and the split tongue, and then sinks its claws into his side.

Seeing the strange sight, the other PCs are in the process of charging to his aid, when they suddenly find another such child attached to each of them, biting and clawing viciously. The resultant battle is short and bloody. The strange creatures are much stronger than their size would indicate, using claws and teeth with the power of a warrior swinging a sword, and move with surprising speed on their bloody stumps. Their skinless bodies are surprisingly tough and they apparently have a limited form of regeneration, their wounds closing slowly.

When a PC finally manages to kill one of them, its form changes into that of a normal child, perhaps eight years old, except that it is naked and bears all the wounds that have just been inflicted on it. As it hits the ground, it fades away. As do the other 'children' one by one as they are slain, leaving behind only faint sobbing on the breeze.


*  At the end of the session, Thaylar's player said, "You sick bastard - how do you sleep at night?" That's probably the nicest thing a player ever said to me


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## avigor

*starts taking notes*

I think I need to watch the Ring and the Grudge a few more times for inspirations . . .

If my D&D group is ever foolish enough to allow me to DM for them, I'll probably freak them out beyond letting me DM again within one or two sessions because of this thread.

 

Keep them coming.


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## tombshroud

*Upcoming Halloween season got anyone thinking creepy?*

With the upcoming Halloween season and the Halloween movie remake I'm getting in the mood for some creepy adventures.  Anyone come up w/ more ways to creep players out?


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## jdrakeh

My friend Chad ran a _great_ Deadlands: Hell on Earth one-shot where myself and a GMNPC (he played fair) infiltrated an abandoned military bunker to salvage bullets, MREs, etc. Above ground, there was just one small-ish building housing a garage and an office. A non-functioning elevator and a stairwell led to levels below. 

IIRC, there were ten levels in all, with the generator and armory being on the lowest level. The intervening levels housed some useless research labs. . . and a small-scale production facility for those robotic terrors in Hell on Earth (I forget what they're called). Anyhow, the whole place was pretty much empty except for the armory, the few dozen deactivated robots, and the garage. Which presented a problem. . . 

Multiple boxes full of live ammunition are heavy, see? To say nothing of the weapons we found. We decided that powering up the generator to use the elevator would be the prudent course of action, seeing as how we had a limited amount of time to get back to our enclave with the goods due for. . . reasons I forget in my age. So we powered up the generator, got the elevator working, and took several loads up to the garage where we piled them in a jeep. 

On the last trip, we did another sweep of the facility to make certain that we weren't missing anything. . . and noticed that two of the robotic death dealers were missing from the production facility. Right about the time that the generator gave out and the lights went down again. So there we were, trapped some six levels underground, with two Terminator-like nasties on the loose. 

What began as a pretty run-of-the-mill scavenging expedition turned into a full-on gauntlet run, as we tried to make our way to the surface. We had a running battle with the robot-things which took us down to near dead (the GMNPC was hemorraging blood like a water fountain by the time we got to the second level of the facility). Luckily, some quick thinking and the application of a few grenades collapsed the stairwell and trapped the cybernetic killers below us. Or so we thought. 

We had (wrongly) assumed that _both_ robotic sentries were hunting us in the dark. 

We stopped to patch up the best we could, though Johann (the GMNPC) wasn't looking well. So, dragging my wounded mate on a makeshift stretcher, I opened the door to freedom -- only to see the other robotic sentry lurking in the garage. He immediately splattered me on the gargage wall. I wasn't dead, but I could feel the life running out of me. My now nearly dead partner had one last grenade on him. So he did what any man would do. He pulled the pin and. . . 

Took a bullet right in the face. 

Which left a live grenade at my feet. 

And I wasn't in much shape to do anything about it. 

Despite dying a horribly bloody death, I can honestly say that the atmosphere, the pacing, and everything else was carried out expertly. _This was one of my favorite game sessions ever_.


----------



## Keeper of Secrets

tombshroud said:
			
		

> With the upcoming Halloween season and the Halloween movie remake I'm getting in the mood for some creepy adventures.  Anyone come up w/ more ways to creep players out?




You are a total necromancer, yourself, bringing the horror thread back!  Thanks, mang!


----------



## Vorput

shilsen said:
			
		

> When a PC finally manages to kill one of them, its form changes into that of a normal child, perhaps eight years old, except that it is naked and bears all the wounds that have just been inflicted on it. As it hits the ground, it fades away. As do the other 'children' one by one as they are slain, leaving behind only faint sobbing on the breeze.




Dear God Shilsen... _I'm_ going to have nightmares...  ::shudders::


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Another from my Victorian setting:

One of the players had set up a stakeout at the scene of an assassination. Though he was unable to prevent the slaying he was in a position to shadow the assassin, following him to a disused entry into the Underground. The murderer had set up his escape route before hand - leaving a lantern and lucifers (matches) behind the unlocked gate.

Keeping to the edge of the light, and moving silently, the PC was able to tail the killer down two flights of stairs into a former station. Ahead the murderer stopped and called out 'who's there', whispering laughter followed, and a scurrying like rats. Before a minute had passed dozens of yellow, gleaming eyes could be made out at the far edge of the light, and the shadowy figures of children, dressed in cast off clothing, tatters hanging from their small frames. And then the 'children' smiled, long teeth gleaming, and the glitter of sharp knives drawn from tattered rags....

By the time the screams began the PC had turned and fled, as silently as he could, towards the open air, and safety.

The characters never did go to find out what was going on down in the Underground, and at least one never took the subway again.... Though they did manage to finish the matter of the assassin, which had no bearing on what was happening in London Under.

The Auld Grump


----------



## tombshroud

Keeper of Secrets said:
			
		

> You are a total necromancer, yourself, bringing the horror thread back!  Thanks, mang!





Thanks!  I love the horror genre and couldn't let this thread die - I've found so many good ideas on it.

The movie Dead Silence gave me some great ideas for a one (or two) nighter nearer Halloween.  Basically about the ghost of a ventriloquist (sp?) using her dolls to get revenge.  Very creepy atmosphere.


----------



## pallandrome

I always run a halloween game if I can possibly manage it. I'll tell you about the Zombie Attack game...

It's a DND modern game with all of the characters working for a temp agency. The agency sends them all out to meet with a gentleman at a graveyard (he has all the required permits on hand), who leads them to a crypt where he has the players dig up the floor. This takes a few hours, and by the time they are done it's nearly nightfall. Their employer then ushers them out of the crypt and locks himself in with a padlock on the crypt gate.

Soon enough, the players noticed that there were other people (dare I say it) shambling around the graveyard, and they decide that they've most certainly had enough of this nonsense. They ran out of the graveyard to their cars (they all decided to pile into the station wagon togeather) and drove off. After an extended arguement about what, if anything, they actually saw, they stop at a gas station to fill up and grab some food, just in case. Sure enough, the guy behind the counter is watching the news on a little portable TV. Apparently there is a lot of gang related violence breaking out all over the city with people being attacked. The situation is quickly escalating to riot proportions, and the cops are fairly sure that the rioter are hopped up on drugs, which is why they ignore the tear gas and rubber bullets.

The players are getting well on to freaked at this point, and manage to get to a pawn shop before the "Riot" spreads to where they were located, and picked up a shotgun, a hunting rifle, and some ammo, before breaking into an office building and climbing to the top floor to wait things out. They reasoned that the Zombies wouldn't spot them from way up here, and they'd be able to wait things out, or meybe get a ride when rescue choppers started doing fly-bys.

It would have worked too, but one of the players started pot-shotting the zombies down on the street whenever they got close to the entrance to the building. Soon, a giant knot of the creatures were swarming towards the enterance, drawn by the gunfire. The players managed to burn them all down with 5th floor molotov coctails, except for a lone figure that survived the flames and entered the building, moving as if with a purpose.

The players figured that the one remaining zombie would fine his way upstairs eventually, and sure enough none other than their employer strolls in, wearing nothing than burnt rags. One of the players gets the drop on him, puts the shotgun against his temple and pulls the trigger.

Me: You take 2d6 damage as buckshot ricochets off his head and into your face and arms. He's going to use the attack of opportunity to grab you by the throat and walk you over to the nice big picture window, by the way. 

Player: ...What?

The monster that had unleashed the zombie plague picked up the PC with one hand around his throat, pushed him slowly through the laminated glass window, and dropped him five floors to his death.

The rest of the players decided that meybe running was a better idea after all. They made it down to the street and back into the station wagon, and spent the next several hours of game-time trying desperately to shake Papa Shango as he tracked them unerringly across the city. Finally, one of the PCs, who had been bitten by a zombie and was going to turn soon anyway, stole a fuel tanker truck, ran Papa Shango over on the highway, and then set off the tank with a shotgun as Shango started burrowing up through the floorboard.

The two remaining PCs celebrated by pouring cement from a stolen cement mixer onto the wreckage. Then they left to see if they could convince the military from a nearby airbase to bomb that spot for a while.



I've found that making the players stat out THEMSELVES, and then putting them into a familiar situation (your characters are all sitting down to a fun game of DnD), before cranking up the terror adds a nice sense of immediacy to the proceedings.


----------



## Crust

The BBEG of my epic campaign was an atropal.  The PCs first encountered it fidgeting in a massive vat of blood, splashing around like a baby being bathed in the kitchen sink.  It was being "reared" by another BBEG, an epic vampire blood magus.  When the PCs showed up, the vampire attacked, and the atropal began balling and screaming like a frustrated infant, unleashing negative energy beams and horrible magic seemingly without really knowing exactly what it was doing.

That creeped them out.


----------



## Ashy

This thread has been, and still is....simply awesome!


----------



## AnonymousOne

This is bonechillingly delightful!


----------



## jdrakeh

tombshroud said:
			
		

> Thanks!  I love the horror genre and couldn't let this thread die - I've found so many good ideas on it.




I think that you've accidentally resold me on Deadlands: HoE 



> The movie Dead Silence gave me some great ideas for a one (or two) nighter nearer Halloween.  Basically about the ghost of a ventriloquist (sp?) using her dolls to get revenge.  Very creepy atmosphere.




That movie was very good for what it was. It got slammed for not having enough CGI sequences in many circles but it seemed that the folks saying this had never seen an actual _ghost story_ on film before. The traditional ghost story is a pretty unique bit of film when you think about it (there aren't many of them) and, I think, that many people tend to just lump them in with "monster movies" in general, when they're a totally different creature (no pun intended). In fact, the film "Ghost Story" itself is a great example of what I'm talking about.


----------



## Bloosquig

I love the creepiness so far folks.      While I've never had the opportunity to run a similar game so far I'm thinking about trying to get some friends and family together for a little halloween game this year.  Wish me luck.


----------



## tombshroud

JDRAKEH - it was the least I could do 

I liked Dead Silence for the story line (it screams Ravenloft), and I really liked the atmosphere of the movie.  Sometimes CGI can get in the way of a good story but I liked the way this movie handled it.  

Keep up the good ideas everyone - I love all the creepiness = you all need help, but it won't be me giving it  

The story line with the atropal was absolutely great btw.


----------



## AnonymousOne

I must admit that though I've never experienced it in a campaign. The idea behind the movie The Thing (John Carpenter, Antarctica, Alien that can take many shapes, etc)  is a brilliant sideline for a party in a small town.  

People begin to notice small changes in the townsfolk.  The party comes to the town and grabs a room at the inn.  During the night, one of the party hears a scream and moves to investigate.   He finds the Cellar of the inn and the walls, tankards of ale the whole thing spattered in blood and gore ... no signs of a body.  He immediately alerts the others.  Body snatching ensues, and before you know it, the whole village has turned into a den of mutating beings.  Be sure to include the scene where the severed head sprouts legs and walks away.


----------



## tombshroud

AnonymousOne said:
			
		

> I must admit that though I've never experienced it in a campaign. The idea behind the movie The Thing (John Carpenter, Antarctica, Alien that can take many shapes, etc)  is a brilliant sideline for a party in a small town.
> 
> People begin to notice small changes in the townsfolk.  The party comes to the town and grabs a room at the inn.  During the night, one of the party hears a scream and moves to investigate.   He finds the Cellar of the inn and the walls, tankards of ale the whole thing spattered in blood and gore ... no signs of a body.  He immediately alerts the others.  Body snatching ensues, and before you know it, the whole village has turned into a den of mutating beings.  Be sure to include the scene where the severed head sprouts legs and walks away.





I've always wanted to do that!  That's a great movie.  I've always wanted to do an adventure based on "The Fog".  Vengeful ghosts playing havoc on a small town.  I've tried on several occasions to run a "Dawn of the Dead" adventure w/ mixed results.


----------



## TheAuldGrump

jdrakeh said:
			
		

> I think that you've accidentally resold me on Deadlands: HoE
> 
> 
> 
> That movie was very good for what it was. It got slammed for not having enough CGI sequences in many circles but it seemed that the folks saying this had never seen an actual _ghost story_ on film before. The traditional ghost story is a pretty unique bit of film when you think about it (there aren't many of them) and, I think, that many people tend to just lump them in with "monster movies" in general, when they're a totally different creature (no pun intended). In fact, the film "Ghost Story" itself is a great example of what I'm talking about.



The best is Haunting of Hill House. Very creepy.

The remake was just godsawful. 

The Auld Grump


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## jdrakeh

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> The best is Haunting of Hill House.




Agreed! Super creepy! 



> The remake was just godsawful.




Most remakes of classic horror are terribly bad, I've found (e.g., the new Black Christmas, the new TCM franchise, the new The Hills Have Eyes, etc).


----------



## jdrakeh

tombshroud said:
			
		

> I've always wanted to do an adventure based on "The Fog".




That seems like a very workable idea. Re: The Thing, I've actually done that in AD&D2e with dopplegangers, though it _requires_ players who are willing to sacrifice their PCs _and_ play the role of a doppleganger once they have been assimilated. That being the case, it's really best left for one-shots.


----------



## CruelSummerLord

I've never actually run this scenario, but this is how it plays out in my head.  Inspiration is derived from a fusion of the movies Eyes Wide Shut and Cube, as well as some of the more Cthulu-like moments from the classic G3 Module "Hall of the Fire Giant King."  

As the party is passing through town, halfling thief stops to see some of her beggar friends-she helped them out back in the day, and they've helped her out a few times as well, being eyes and ears on the streets.  She hears that some of her friends have gone missing.  In fact, a number of people hae been mysteriously disappearing.  Young and old, poor and even in one or two odd cases wealthy.  

Halfling does some recon and detective work (attending wealthy parties using her hat of disguise), and finally puts together some clues that lead to a supposedly respectable noble family and their manor-it seems a lot of people go there for parties, but when she in disguise tried to attend, she was rebuffed.  That and some other types of people have been seen by the beggars, but they've been too scared to say anything until they spoke to the halfling, who they know they can trust.  These other people have been going to the house as well...and some of the nobles, when they get tipsy, have made some strange suggestions.  

Halfling gets the rest of her friends, and they prepare to sneak onto the manor grounds to investigate...ready for any kind of trouble, just in case.  Haflling briefly contemplated trying to infiltrate her way into the party herself, but then she realized that the nobles might get wise to that, as they're very selective about who comes to these things.  Besides, halfling needs to be ready for trouble.  

Sneaking into the manor, the halfling is shocked at what she finds-the nobles are involved in a twisted, hedonistic cult similar to _Eyes Wide Shut_ with a lot of the freaky, Cthulu-like eddying lights, colors, and twisted wall scenery that Gygax first wrote about in the Temple of the Elder Elemental God in module G3.  Look at EGG's descriptions there, and you'll get a good image of what it is.  

The debauchery by itself is somewhat sickening, but it would be harmless.  

That is...

...until the halfling sees what the nobles do to the people they kidnap.  Suffice it to say that it doesn't bear describing.  

And then comes the _Cube_ inspiration.  The kidnap victims are dumped into a dungeon maze riddled with traps and monsters that stalk the hapless prisoners, who are usually unable to fight back in any way.  The hedonistic nobles watch the prisoners run around like rats in a maze, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, especially given the demons they've summoned to make the hunt all the more "fun."  The prisoners are left to die like rats in a maze, while the nobles watch.  Some of the prisoners are poor, given the aristocratic contempt for their weakness, others are nobles (not involved with the cult) that had previously insulted, snubbed, or otherwise offended the hedonists.  

The halfling and her friends now have a choice to make-attack the hedonists, or try to rescue the prisoners, and risk letting the villains escape?  

Well, it's not much of a choice, really.  

The party ends up in a hellacious running fight through the maze, rescuing prisoners, avoiding traps, and fighting the monsters the nobles have rounded up, even as they deal with the cultists of Vecna, who in some aspects is a god of secret hedonism and decadence, who minister to the sick freaks that run the whole shebang.  They confront the cultists, and capture some of them as the cultists try to escape.  

The testimony from the victims, noble and poor alike, along with the evidence of the adventurers, is going to be enough to get the cultists impaled.  

The intent here would be not so much to creep the players out, but to shock and horrify them.  

I admit, I'm not so much a horror fan.  To me, a lot of these monsters are bullies-but let's see how they fare against people who can actually fight back!  

What if the ghosts of _The Ring_ suddenly ended up with an angry Ghost Rider on their hands?  

What if Michael Meyers suddenly realized he was dealing with Batman?  

What if Leatherface and his clan suddenly realized they were dealing with an enraged Rambo, and the hunters had become the hunted?  

I personally think you could make an awesome horror film where the roles are reversed-the Freddy Krueger/Jason Voorhees character is stalked, hunted and chased by something *he* can't fight back against, before he's driven crazy.  

Not so tough now, are you?


----------



## Whizbang Dustyboots

If I may immodestly point to my Story Hour, the current adventure, the Abbey in the Woods, is all about creeping people out. It includes a defaced church (in both subtle and over the top ways), corrupted birds, black ivy choking the building, a crucifix missing its normal inhabitant, a very debased paladin, damned ghosts and more. My goal, throughout, was to make it more about horror than D&D, even though there are D&Disms throughout.


----------



## shilsen

jdrakeh said:
			
		

> That seems like a very workable idea. Re: The Thing, I've actually done that in AD&D2e with dopplegangers, though it _requires_ players who are willing to sacrifice their PCs _and_ play the role of a doppleganger once they have been assimilated. That being the case, it's really best left for one-shots.




That's something which I always keep in mind when it comes to horror in D&D. I prefer to run long-term campaigns with the same cast of characters, so permanently taking out PCs is a big no-no for me. That means there are certain horror scenarios which I just won't run in my regular campaign(s), but would be happy to use in a one-shot.



			
				Vorput said:
			
		

> Dear God Shilsen... I'm going to have nightmares... ::shudders::




And this is the kind of thing that lets me sleep soundly at night


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Sometimes it is fun to have something creepy and disturbing turn out to be not much at all.

In a recent Spycraft/Steampunk game I had the town awaken after a horrific thunderstorm to find a line of bones, skulls, long bones, ribs, all disjointed and strewn down the major road....

The graveyard for the church on the hill above the town had washed away, the stream carrying the bones and bits of coffin wood down the road that leads straight to the church. In _this_ game it actually means something, but that does not have to be the case. (The next step will be the kirk itself falling into its own, much older, foundations....)

The Auld Grump, a polite *Bump* with content.


----------



## tombshroud

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> Sometimes it is fun to have something creepy and disturbing turn out to be not much at all.




It's the little touches that can really add to the atmosphere.  I once played a fighter-paladin type character whose family passed on a curse each generation.  Negative energy, shadows, undead etc. tended to linger around him.  If he was in an area where negative energy was used recently some 'flickers' of the effects could happen, i.e. getting sick if energy drain was used, his shadow would sometimes not being in sync w/ his movements.  One of the weirder effects was any torch, flame, candle, fire's shadows always showed to be blowing away from him-no matter which way the wind was blowing (if any).  

Anyone have any experiences with using small in-game happenings they used or had used against them?


----------



## Wraith Form

Seriously, Grump, I'd love to listen in on one of your games (I don't even have to play).  Just to witness the Master at work would be satisfying enough.  

You always have great little tidbits to add to this thread.  (As do many others!) 

What part of the world are you in, Auldie?


----------



## tadk

Demiurge I really like Annika, can I get a writeup of her


----------



## demiurge1138

tadk said:
			
		

> Demiurge I really like Annika, can I get a writeup of her



I never statted Annika, because a) her stats never came up in the original game and b) I was waiting to play her as a PC, but I never got a chance. 

I'd always thought that PC Annika would have been a straight up human warlock - the haggishness in her veins giving her the primal power necessary for warlock. Alternatively, she could have been changed by the ordeal into a teifling, or if you don't use the warlock, she'd make a fine sorceress (especially with fiendish heritage feats from either Dragon Compendium or PHB 2).

Demiurge out.


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Wraith Form said:
			
		

> Seriously, Grump, I'd love to listen in on one of your games (I don't even have to play).  Just to witness the Master at work would be satisfying enough.
> 
> You always have great little tidbits to add to this thread.  (As do many others!)
> 
> What part of the world are you in, Auldie?



Portland, Maine U.S.A.

The game is set in the British Isles during the year 1888 at the moment, though I have a plot that I have been waiting to run (with no success yet  ) that begins in Sarajevo during the year 1914.... Something very bad is going to begin there, with an assassin's bullet. (And did in the real world as well, possible the greatest nightmare of a war ever fought.) For some reason my players get a tad leery as I near The Great War... I somehow doubt that having Steampunk style technology will make the war any less brutal.

Currently the team is in Scotland, following a trail that began in Ireland. Mostly a red herring I am afraid, what they think is a minor plot (involving the deaths of three ribbonmen in an explosion) is the major theme. The 'Major plot' - an investigation of a haunted manor, is actually fairly static. The place is haunted, they can lay the spirit to rest, but it is not going anywhere. In time one of the other 'minor' themes may lead to some unpleasantness with the fey. (Look up the word Ouphe or Oaf....)

The Auld Grump


----------



## Rechan

I haven't run a Serious horror adventure yet (But I will). I have touched on it a few times however.

In my Inizii campaign, the PCs are traveling in the frozen north. Two go hunting for food, and on a lark, I say they find the opening of a mine shaft. They find a collapsed mine entrance, and sticking out of the pile of rocks is a red gem. The rogue grabs the gem and yanks. And out comes a jagged stick with the gem on the end- a broken axe haft. They uncover the pile and find a dwarven skeleton, and the other piece of the axe. They pocket the axe and gem and leave.

They tell the party about this about two days later in game, and the wizard gets huge eyes. They go back after the adventure... and find the mine shaft empty, and a drained corpse of a local barbarian buried in the snow. 

That dwarven vampire hunted and hounded them down something awful. Just because they took his axe, which was a sentimental thing.

The two PCs found a woman long the road who was near death, shot full of arrows. The cleric healed her... and noticed the arrows were silver. They travel with her into town, where a traveling carnival has stopped. The cleric and wizard have a pow-wow in their room, and the cleric detects evil. They check her room; she's gone. They look out side - and see evil out there. They investigate. There's an ogre in a tent who is the strong man act. Then something in black armor attacks the carnival. 

They attack, it disappears. They follow it to the "Scare House" and objects start flinging at them, mannequins come alive, the whole shebang. Finally they're attacked by the black armored fellow - and find a mannequin shaped like a Drow. The wizard gets an idea, cuts the wax on the mannequin - and finds bones. The cleric casts "SPeak with Dead". The mannequin was an elven drow hunter, and he was killed by his quarry, dipped in wax, and his soul bound to the mannequin - until the seal was broken while he was being moved. (The woman turned out to be a werewolf - but a True lycanthrope, and joined the party as their tank).

Later they found an inn with an old married couple. It was your standard Inn. They go to bed. And wake up, and the place is abandoned, molded, and shows signs of a severe fire. They find bones in the bed, and outside beneath the upper story window. 

Later they faced a Blight Mage (Mage that sucks the life around him to empower his spells) and his insane druid "girlfriend". They found his journal, and I had taken the time to go into depth about his entries, show his slow descent into madness.


----------



## Rechan

One BBEG I wanted to use for a campaign that never took off was an interesting guy. He would become the PCs enemy when alive, and then be cursed. He was to become an intelligent skeleton with a unique ability - he could liquefy bones (using it to heal him) and crawl into the skin of his victim. So he was going to pop up periodically wearing someone else's skin, attack them with his signature weapon, and then "play dead" when he had a few hit points left, only to come back again. 

In the Eberron campaign I'm running, I plan on employing some serious horror elements. The PCs are going to an abandoned colony like Roanoke, where everyone disappeared. It's in a demon-infested desert. They're going to find a Lot of Creepy Stuff (like things from this thread). Mwhaha.


----------



## Rechan

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> The Master of the Shambles
> 
> Written after I read about Victorian slaughterhouses... I have used it in several games, and in none of them did the players want to have anything to do with the Master... he crept them out so much. One party just turned and ran when they saw him.
> 
> The Auld Grump



I know you reposted a link to Archives.org for this, but the Archives.org link just doesn't seem to work either.  Do you have this anywhere else? I really want to read it.


----------



## Blackrat

A little girl fishing by the riverbank. Not so creepy in itself but the adventurers were in the middle of a jungle. They had been fighting their way through the jungle for last month and suddenly there's a little girl sitting there, in the middle of a jungle, surrounded by wilderness filled with dinosaurs, owlbears and whatnot. So one of the PC:s quickly withdraws back to the bushes, other readies a dimension door and one gets his bow ready and approaches the girl. The girl freaks out seeing a big ugly man pointing her with a bow and runs of. The PC:s follow her trail and find out that less than 1000 feet away there is small village, hidden by the thick jungle.

I was a bit unfair that day and deliberatily scared the players.


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Rechan said:
			
		

> I know you reposted a link to Archives.org for this, but the Archives.org link just doesn't seem to work either.  Do you have this anywhere else? I really want to read it.



Well, now that DungeonCrafter has a website again you can find it Here. 

I have not played around much with DC3, but have used the older two versions of the program a lot.

The Auld Grump


----------



## Rechan

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> Well, now that DungeonCrafter has a website again you can find it Here.



Took me forever to find the damn thing. 

Interesting! Though I am curious - what did you use to BRING the PCs into the Shambles in the first place? If the Master has not left his slaughterhouse, what would draw their attention?


----------



## TheAuldGrump

While the PCs were hesitant to make use of his services others are not. In one of the games he appeared in he ran a city-wide informant ring. One of their contacts put them in touch with the Master, but then they were too nervous to actually find anything else. His contacts include rats, beggars, and a neutrally aligned nest of were rats. Sometimes he kills and feeds from one of the rats, burrowing into its soft belly with his ragged teeth.

He is dangerous, and scary, but not exactly evil. (Those who use Detect Evil pick him up as 'flickering' evil and not evil, if they make a rather high Listen (or Notice, depending on the game) they will realize that the flicker is in time with their own heart beats.... Those with Detect Good would notice the exact same thing.

The Auld Grump


----------



## Simm

So usually I play a pretty hack and slash fantasy adventure but I've always tried to acurately describe things, surroundings, monsters, the effects of attacks. I'm putting the party through an updated keep on the borderlands and the party, level 3 by this point, just discovered the hidden chamber between the orc lairs. They searched the room and found the treasure pulling the sack out of its alcove. I must have hit just the right tone discribing the results because the next thing I knew the party was seriously creeped out and considering retreating from a pair oof monstrous centipedes. Apparantly several of my players are creeped out by them.


----------



## tombshroud

*Stephen King's Silver Bullet*

This week I managed to snag 'Stephen King's Silver Bullet' DVD in the $5 bin at a local Wal-mart.  When I was watching it this weekend I came to the part where the kid gets stuck in an old covered bridge and the bad guy is approaching but gets scared away by the presence of a by-stander.  Great tense moment, brush w/ the bad guy when the character knows they stand no chance.  

Foreshadowing can be tough to pull off right, some glimpses of the BBEG before the big show down.  In horror campaigns where many of the monsters wear a human form, werewolf, vampire, etc.  this can be fun by giving them hints w/ some of the common folklore attributed to such creatures, hairy palms, uni-brow, pale, etc.

Anyone have any particularly spectactular ways of creeping out PCs w/ some foreshadowing?


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## Brazeku

One way to be effectively creepy is to use inversion.  That's why little girls are creepy - you're taking something that is otherwise cute and associated with purity, and turning it on its head.

Another method you can use is to take a commonplace event or item, and attach a strange event to it.  Use this to make players search for meaning.  Say the party finds an old maypole, streaked with corrosion.  As they approach it, the sky grows darker and the wind catches in the tattered banners.

Another method is reversion.  Use this to erode feelings of control.  This is basically undoing what the players have done.  An example: say the party has found an old dagger on an altar, and pick it up.  The next time they look back at the altar, the dagger is still there, the altar undisturbed.

There is progression.  Progression is used to build a sense of forboding.  An example would be an old, faded tapestry hanging on a wall.  In the torchlight, it appears normal, but when viewed from shadowy illumination, faint traces of silver can be seen.  By dimming the lights, the players can see these silver lines growing brighter and sharper.  The process is reversed once light is applied, but starts up again when darkness falls.  If they watch it in the darkness, the lines shift and flow, forming an archway - and a figure seems to loom within, head bowed in shadow.  The figure slowly looks up.

Messages work very well, especially connected with the unknown.  An old favorite involves a locked door in the back wall of an old, abandoned cellar.  The door is warped wood, and covered with flaking paint.  As the party works to open it, the pain slowly flakes away, revealing a scrawled word: "No".  Will the party still try to open the door?

Use all their senses.  Half heard voices, fleeting images, the smell of flowers wafting, the smell of deep earth and rain on stone.  A wall slick with fat.  Use their associations, and turn those assocations around.

You get the picture.


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## Rechan

Running horror scenarios came up on the Wizards boards, and there were some useful suggestions. This is my favorite:


			
				Mandarbgrim said:
			
		

> From my horror game last year, the only method that worked in provoking horror in characters was introducing "Unknown" elements. I consistently had things occur that I myself didn't even have an explanation for and where outside of the rules. The players couldn't get a clear grasp of what was actually occuring to ever gauge the difficulty of a situation.
> 
> I used a "Black Mist" to have a variety of effects occur that had little connection to each other & no real connection to their immediate enemies. Divination spells gave off odd readings from it. Sometimes magical, sometimes not. Random will saves with fear & fatique effects that didn't mean anything and never had a bearing on combat. Animals where periodically turned undead by it <But didn't attack, just continued to go through their normal motions.>. An Enemy NPC ran into it and started screaming...found later with all his flesh removed. Another began stabbing himself rather than be consumed by it. Staying in a mist infested keep resulted in the players making continual will saves & nightmares. I alluded to their pre-selected phobias becoming relevant throughout their guard duty. Anytime they were in a tavern I had made up a list of different rumors that made the players paranoid about who was the actual "Bad Guy", such as their own lord.
> 
> Uncertainty, confusion, misdirection, & paranoi seem to be the most important elements. Heroes of Horror is a pretty solid book, but doesn't contain that much new information.
> 
> Edit: Also, status effects and ability score damage create far more actual concern over a character than HP damage. Any method of degrading a characters abilities that can't be cured with resting for 8 hours and they start worrying about their competency to deal with future threats. Methods that are in flavor and within the rules are a bit vague on this... Sundering is the only other thing that I can think of.
> 
> Another method, make the person themselves confused and not just through their characters. Take a player on guard duty to another room to roleplay out Guard duty or when seperated from the group.




Another:


			
				Goon_for_Hire said:
			
		

> In fantasy, encounters are best when there is some complication, a dangerous location, for example, difficult weather, precarious ledges, rough terrain, bottlenecks, traps, weird devices PCs can take advantage of, etc.
> 
> In Horror, on the other hand, the best encounters are the ones where one or more of the abilities that the character have come to rely on are rendered useless. Fear, entanglement, being disarmed, dealing with incorporeal creatures, mind control, anti-magic (or better yet wild magic) zones.
> 
> Don't do this every encounter, of course, and certainly don;t target a single PC more than once, the trick is not so much that you are trying to 'beat' the PCs by taking their power away, as putting them on unpredictable, confusing, or uncertain ground in a battle. When they are stuck in an alien environment or where the 'rules' (rules of reality, not the rules of the game) seem to have changed.
> 
> Also, make sure to destroy any sense of security they might have: the safe sealable rooms in the dungeon they might arcane lock to get some sleep should be the ones with secret doors in the back of them. They should have 'presents' or messages delivered to them by unseen hands despite all attempts at security.



There are other good tips in there (Robbypants, Colmarr).


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## Rechan

tombshroud said:
			
		

> Anyone have any particularly spectactular ways of creeping out PCs w/ some foreshadowing?



I know it's obvious, but let the PCs find the aftermath of something they will face, but don't immediately follow up on it.

For instance, the PCs find the corpse of something really big (a bullete, whale washed ashore, dragon), and the body shows signs of something having burst _outside of it from within_. And they'll face the monster that burst out, but maybe after they've all ready taken the next adventure hook, or when they _return_ back after their last adventure.


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## Rechan

Here's my question: How do you know when you've done Too Much? Is there a rule of thumb that "Okay, I've done x creepy events, if I keep doing this, it's going to break the suspension of belief because Too Much has happened".

I plan on sending my PCs into an abandoned city much like Roanoke, which is going to have a lot of twisted things in there. And thus I don't want to overdo it, but I want the place filled to the brim.


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## Brazeku

Rechan said:
			
		

> Here's my question: How do you know when you've done Too Much? Is there a rule of thumb that "Okay, I've done x creepy events, if I keep doing this, it's going to break the suspension of belief because Too Much has happened".




I think that this is part of what separates a decent DM from a good one.  Knowing when to avoid oversaturating with any game element is the mark of experience and skill.  I don't believe there is a rule of thumb for it, but if players seem to be getting a bit listless and fear shifts over towards helplessness (and then, inevitably, boredom) then you've gone too far.

Maintaining balance is individual and based around watching for feedback.


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## Drakmor

Breaking my lurking for once:

The PCs enter into a room/cavern/etc. and find a fountain feed by a waterfall or something similar, or even just a stream that they are heading up, the water has a slightly red tinge, yet does not register as anything if they choose to detect (evil/magic/etc.) Hopefully one of the PCs drinks from it, because it makes the revelation that much better.

The PCs continue on in whatever area they are moving through, using the waterfall feed fountain and placing it in a recently destroyed temple for this example, they continue through it. Eventually they come out to the top of the waterfall with pathways on either side of the stream heading deeper into the temple. (They may notice that the waterline used to be higher than it is now.)

As they follow that they see uphead something in the middle of the hall, where the stream is. Getting closer they see what it is and why the water had that tinge, it is a pile of about five cut-down priests, bloating in the water.


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## tombshroud

Rechan said:
			
		

> I know it's obvious, but let the PCs find the aftermath of something they will face, but don't immediately follow up on it.




There was a book for modern roleplaying, I think it was called "The Book of Unremitting Horror?"  Part of each creature's descriptions contained a section called autopsy/coroner's report that described what a victim killed by said creature would look like.  This is one of the absolute best gaming books I've ever read (and I don't even play D20 Modern!)  I've tried to think of creatures that PCs usually don't think much of and find a way to explain how the victim looks.  Basically looking at special attacks of creatures and finding a better way to describe what their victims would look like.  For example:  Mind-flayers, the books say it extracts the brains using four tentacles but there can be different ways this can be done.  I've had corpses with missing eyes and hollow skulls where the mind flayer went in through the eyes to get the brains, it could also work w/ stretched nostrils, gaping mouths w/ holes in the roof of the mouth.  

Anyone have any ideas for what kind of damage other creatures could do and how the woulds look, creepier ways to describe it?


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## Kmart Kommando

Our group found a gnome.  In a cell.

The rogue picked the lock while the gnome jumped for joy at being rescued.

The LG gnome cleric in the party opened the gate.  Down came the ceiling on the gnome in the cell.  Everyone is sprayed with gnome bits.      It was just a regular gnome.

The way it happened was creepy, sort of.  But, man, was it funny..


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## evilgamer13

*It's always scarier when you don't see the monster?*

So there are a lot of old sayings about things always being scarier when left unseen, I'm wondering if you guys think that is true or just the product of bad special FX?  Do you like to show the creature or just hint, do you describe it in gruesome detail or try to leave it up to the players imaginations?


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## InVinoVeritas

evilgamer13 said:
			
		

> So there are a lot of old sayings about things always being scarier when left unseen, I'm wondering if you guys think that is true or just the product of bad special FX?  Do you like to show the creature or just hint, do you describe it in gruesome detail or try to leave it up to the players imaginations?




"A closed door is better than an open door, because behind a closed door can be anything."

Leaving some things ambiguous or hidden about a monster or enemy is better, because what remains hidden can be anything. Perhaps it's innocuous, perhaps it's a death trap. However, if you don't know its limits or capabilities, there is no way to prepare adequately for it--you can only do what you can, guess, second-guess, and eventually worry that your preparations will only make the final encounter worse...

It's like how a test in school is far worse because you don't know what questions are going to be asked in advance. Same principle.


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## The Green Adam

St. Abigail's Griffon was said to haunt a hospice runs by nuns in the Northern most part of Wales during the late 13th Century. St. Abigail was not actually sainted but was a young woman of a most saintly manner who could heal the sick and injured by taking the ailments upon yourself. A young, wandering swordsman with a griffon on his shield had fallen in love with her but lost his life protecting the hospice from the foulest of brigands. Anyone attempting to harm the place or its inhabitants thereafter was found torn to shreds by the claw marks of a great bird and the teeth of some massive predatory cat. The PCs arrived to escort the son of a local noble home after the young lord had spent time there. When enemies of the noble arrived to slay the boy the PCs dispatched them all save one who was found peck and scratched and bitten to death. As one of the PCs grew found of Sister Abigail, he found his room ransacked as if by a beast and the smell of an animal followed him. Once Abigail told the PCs the tale of the Griffon the PCs tried to capture it to a most unfortunate end for two of them. 

At no point did I ever completely describe the Griffon or have it appear in full view. In fact, one player believed there never was a Griffon and that Abigail was actually the culprit in some way. Nothing was proven one way or the other.

AD


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## TheAuldGrump

evilgamer13 said:
			
		

> So there are a lot of old sayings about things always being scarier when left unseen, I'm wondering if you guys think that is true or just the product of bad special FX?  Do you like to show the creature or just hint, do you describe it in gruesome detail or try to leave it up to the players imaginations?



Corpses and a call sign can work wonders....

A scrawled message on the wall 'mantichora' - (translation 'manslayer'). An NPC left on watch is never seen again, but a drying puddle of blood is found.... That night a gentle sobbing can be heard, and will be heard in the ruins each night.

An riding animal is found gutted, a guard dog is found hanging by the hind legs, its throat slit, but little blood found.

Save the PCs for last.... The thing only attacks animals or creatures on their own, waiting, invisible. If one of the PCs is all alone then call him or her aside, describe in in sparse (but accurate) detail. If the PC loses then let him be found by the others, blood eagled....

The thing dogs the party while they are at the ruins, and for three nights thereafter, then returns to the ruins and its lone brooding.

Creatures that work well for this include hags, rakshasha (or other evil outsider), ogre magi, and some of the nastier fey you can come up with.  Try to set it up so that whatever critter you choose can almost take the party, all by its lonesome, between 2 and 3 CR higher than the norm. Whatever the creature it is enjoying the groups fear.

The inexplicable can also be creepy, finding a large number of skeletal undead tilling a field or harvesting the grain. A zombie church procession, carrying an altar for a lawful good deity. Undead carrying a closed casket from which can be heard curses and a pounding as someone, or something, tries to get out....

And believe it or not I have on more than one occasion scared a party by having a giant muttering 'fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a Christian man. Be he live, or be he _dead_' (smacks the wall with his club) I'll grind his bones to make my bread...' Mind you, the lair that they had found was a veritable abattoir. Having the slovenly, blood caked monster quoting Shakespeare was just the last bit.

The Auld Grump


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## evilgamer13

How well do you guys think non-standard monsters can do to help spice things up and keep monsters scary?


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## Rechan

evilgamer13 said:
			
		

> How well do you guys think non-standard monsters can do to help spice things up and keep monsters scary?



It keeps monsters surprising. That's a good step in the right direction.

Of course, you need to make sure the PCs don't just punch right through the monster and splatter it in round 2.

This can be handled by handing the monster abilities that effect adjacent foes, if they have DR/material the PCs do not have, or interesting abilities.

I slapped the Mimic's "Adhesive" ability on a dire ape for this reason. PC hits it with his weapon, he now must make a reflex save or he loses his melee weapon in the monster's hide.


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## InVinoVeritas

evilgamer13 said:
			
		

> How well do you guys think non-standard monsters can do to help spice things up and keep monsters scary?




If something is predictable, it is conquerable. If you don't know what it's capable of, or have reason to doubt your preconceptions, then it's scary, no matter what it is.

So, yes, non-standard monsters are important. I would even go so far as to say that they are key to keeping things scary. Any NPC is a non-standard monster, really. 

It is important, however, not to just slap together powers and capabilities willy-nilly. The monster must have motivation, rules, and must ultimately have a method of dealing with it. It may not be easy, it may cost lives, etc. Yet the rules, strengths, weaknesses, personality, etc. must all be there, because only if the players can feel convinced that there is a solution that fear will not turn to despair. Neverending fear requires hope. Fear without hope is no longer fear, and more importantly, no longer fun.


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## Creamsteak

I was playing in a game once were a nymph was really a polymorphed purple worm... that was pretty creepy.


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## Lord Zardoz

These are ideas I originally posted in this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=211943

Rechan suggested I duplicate them here.

If you want to build a sense of Horror, you need to establish early on how things on the island are often just wrong in some way. The easiest way to do that is to describe things that simply 'should not be'.

Encounter 1, a battle site.

For starters, the players ought to come upon the site of a battle of some sort. There should be a couple of bodies of the losers, and they should be in very bad shape. Large gaping wounds, bits of people strewn about that require some sorting out. There ought to be signs that there was something large and powerful near the fight. Broken trees, deep foot prints, and weapons and armour that are twisted into unusable shapes. The prints should be unidentifiable. And the bodies after some examination should be your players.

To make this work, describe the bodies of the players in increasing detail as they make skill and search checks. The gear that is found should be broken and unusable, but recognizable as the same kind of gear that the players have. When the players bust out the divinations, note the following:

- Detect Evil should be off the scale
- Divinations will indicate that these are the bodies of the players
- Speak with Dead should result in nothing but screaming from the deceased
- The wounds on the players should be described in graphic detail. Crawling with maggots, covered in strange ooze, and smell like diseased filth
- Inflicting damage on the body parts should cause harm to the corresponding player.

Encounter 2: The settlement

The players should find a medium sized town, and they should find it around mid day. Everything should be in perfectly working order, and in good repair. It should be very clean, and well maintained. Be sure to mention the lovely flower garden and marvelous fountains. There should be white picket fences, hedge sculptures, reasonably fresh paint, and a generally cheerful atmosphere. There should also, under no circumstances be any living thing in the town. Also no undead or monsters. The town is just completely empty. If they search, let them find all sorts of valuables. Be sure to put in a modest magic shop with some decent goodies. Any given shop ought to have plenty of gold. In the homes and in the market place, and food items to be found should be ripe, wholesome, and nourishing. Any meat should be fresh. There will be garbage, but it will be in the expected places and not particularly noxious or suspcious. Under no circumstances should they find any sign that there is anything wrong with the town other than it being completely empty.

If your players are at all sane, the fact that they can loot the town of useful items and money with impunity should make them extraordinarily suspicious. If someone casts a detect evil, it should be blinding.

If they spend the night in the town, feel free to mess with them. I suggest that sometime late in the evening the players end up hearing the sound of every person in the town screaming in pain, agony, and horror until sunrise. The screaming ought to be audible even in a silence spell, making it impossible to sleep. If they stay a 2nd night, just run with it, amping it up.

I also suggest that once the screaming starts, that they find themselves unable to leave the town. Travel in any direction just lets them see more and more of an unending town.

3) NPC Night Terrors
If the players have any henchmen with them, after the first night, the henchmen should be found to have clawed their own eyes out in their sleep, and bitten off and swallowed their own tongue. Do not under any circumstances explain why this happened.

4) Tension builders
Toss in any of these one off elements to help build tension.
- When a player asks to make a listen check, perform the check as normal, but also tell him that he notices his ears are bleeding. No damage, no explanation.
- At some random point, tell the players that something nearby smells like many recently dead but 'ripe' corpses. Let them search, and find nothing. The smell never goes away
- When the players bed down for the night, tell some of them that they wake up in water. Let them spend a few rounds making Fort saves, and look up the drowning rules. Let them make swim checks and tell them there is no land in sight for a while. After either 1 person fails and drowns, or 1 hour worth of checks, or someone disbelieves and makes a DC XX will save (pick the number to be difficult, but allow infinite retries) they wake up in their bed rolls. They are also wet, and have perhaps taken some ability damage. No restful sleep that night.
- If protection from Evil is ever cast, have the protected character illuminated in a dazzling spray of sparks for the duration.
-- If you go with a Cthulhu-esque cosmic horror theme, consider having protection from evil do nothing, and have protection from Chaos be required instead. Allow a Spellcraft or Knowledge(Religion) or Knowledge(Arcana) to have the players discover this after Protection from Evil fails the first time. The first failure should be dramatic.

5) Bizzarre combat
- Upon any suitable gruesome sight or stench, have them roll DC XX fortitude Saves. Just pick a number that the best fort save only succeeds on an 18 or better. Those who fail start to vomit. What they vomit up are either Insect swarms or oozes. They start the combat Nauseated until they succeed a DC YY Fort save (give the worst save a chance to succeed on a 14 or 16 or so).

- Have a half mad 'survivor' run up to the players and beg to be killed. Go for a lvl 2 commoner of middle age, or even a small child. The opponent cannot be subdued by sleep or held or subdual damage. Make it an obvious non threat, and try to force the players to kill it. If they do not kill the opponent, at the first meal opportunity, have him commit suicide in some gruesome fashion, like cutting out his own small intestine and strangling himself. The next day, have them fight the dead persons ghost, still insisting on being killed.

- If a cleric tries to use a Turn undead, have him suffer the effects of his own turning as he is enveloped in a powerful wave of negative energy. If he would destroy himself on his own turning attempt, just drop him to as many low hit points as you care to.

- Run an encounter with a T-Rex with permanent Improved Invisibility. All you need to tell them is that something very large is bitting them and doing horrible damage, and that they cannot see it. Allow Improved Invisibility to see 'something', but do not describe it as a T-Rex. Add in a template that adds some heavy damage reduction or fast healing or regeneration to amp this up.

- An Ethereal opponent with Telekinesis can really get the players on edge by throwing large objects at them while denying them a direct way to counter attack.

- Run a few encounters using a possession mechanic based on Magic Jar, accompanied by a disembodied demonic voice. Let players who fail a saving throw keep their mind in their body, but dictate their actions. Just roll initiative, and on the 'monsters' turn, roll out the saves / attacks for magic jar as normal as the voice taunts them. Describe a powerful evil will trying to dominate them as you do the attacks. If you succeed, hand notes to a player telling them which player they need to try to kill, and ensure that they use their best attacks to do so. Or just have a character soak himself in oil and set himself on fire. Have fun with it. Just make sure that you allow the players a means to defeat the 'force'. Just make it non obvious, and keep the duration of such attacks low (no more than 4 or 5 rounds). Let the players win if they can work out a way to keep the possessed player from killing himself or others without resorting to murder.

- Have a duplicate of a player show up in camp and start trying to kill everyone. Attacking it does nothing. Attacking the original and 'killing it will cause the duplicate to come to his senses while leaving the original dead. For this to work, you must find a way to clue the players into the idea that killing the original will stop the duplicate, but you must not let them know that killing the original will not result in the death of the player.

- The players encounter a young pregnant woman in distress. She looks to be in rough shape, filthy and very shaky, and very terrified. When asked what is wrong, she will scream "that thing wont stop talking. It wants to kill me. I can't give birth to it. It is not my baby!". She will reach for the nearest sharp object and try to cut out her own fetus, or at least stab the crap out of herself trying to kill it.

- Have the players find A child between the ages of 8 and 12 years old. This child will be undernourished and alone. He will have a very nasty rash on him, and he will be scratching, trying to relieve the itch. The itch will not go away however, and he will have scraped the outer layers of his own flesh off, exposing bone. A remove curse can remove the itching, but it will require a caster check of DC 19.

- The players hear an toddler (2 or 3 years old) crying. If the search for it, they will indeed find the child. The child will be normal in all respects, except very hungry. If the players try to care for it, then later that night, the infant will attempt a Coup-De-Grace with a dagger on someone (at Str 1, it is 1d4-5 dmg). Regardless of what measures the players take to keep watch on the infant, every night it will get loose and try to kill someone. She will escape from any bonds and always obtain some suitably lethal object. This child is not evil (some other force is controling / aiding it), so it will never detect as evil. The force will be under a Caster level 15 non detection spell (so caster check DC 26 to detect the force). The force will only be present when the infant is trying to kill someone.

This will force the players to either abandon the child, murder the child, or have someone stay awake with it all night to make sure it does not try to kill someone. Remember to apply fatigue penalties.

- As they travel on the island, the players discover the bodies of young children and small animals nailed to trees with what ought to be fatal wounds, but the creatures are not dead. They do not die until they are taken down. At some later point in the adventure, they find a man walking down the path with a large sack, which is squirming. He will ignore the players, walk to the nearest wooden wall or tree, and then start to secure the sack to that surface. he will then unlimber a large spike and a hammer, and start to drive a nail through it, at which point the child inside starts to scream. I am sure your players will stop him. The man requires 1d4 rounds to nail the child up. If he is stopped, he begs the players to let him do it, but will not explain. If the man is obstructed for more than 2 rounds, the child escapes. At which point the equivalent of an 8th level sorcerer with 5 Strenght (and thus a crappy grapple score) and lots of blasting spells (or spells from the book of vile darkness) starts attacking them. It should have Regeneration(Law), and be a pain to kill. (Regeneration with a weakness vs Holy is too obvious). Once they do drop it or otherwise render it immobile, the child becomes normal and starts screaming and crying, asking "Why did you hurt me?".

- Let the players find a young teen in the process of extreme self mutilation, but screaming in pain and giving every indication that they do not want to be doing what they are doing. The person should have already cut out one or both ears, one eye, most of one foot, a few fingers, some severe genital mutilation, and be in the process of knocking their own teeth out with a hammer. Between each wet and meaty thwack, they should beg the players to 'please stop me'.

- Why not have some sort of infectious disease that causes the players to grow nasty, large-ish, black and oozing tumors that have faces, and which try to force the players to fight for control of their own bodies? They should first encounter the disease on others. Curing the disease should require a difficult Remove Curse type spell as well as a remove disease, and maybe some sort of McGuffin item. Once the tumor becomes inteligent, it should inflict some sort of opposed rolls to gain control of the players at an inconvenient time

- The sight of a starving person who is eating their own limb while it is still attached never gets old.

- The players hear the sound of an animal yelping and screaming. when they investigate, they find a few 8 year old children around a fire, holding a small dog in the fire. The hands of the children are also being burned. Around them are the charred, smoking, and half eaten remains of several other small animals. They periodically take the animal out of the fire and gnaw on the parts that are burned, and comment on how tasty it is. They see the players and offer to share.

And that is all of them.

END COMMUNICATION


----------



## pawsplay

My players were a little squeaked fighting a battle on a platform surrounded by a trench full of dretches, writhing and biting each other. 

Two of my players are afraid of spiders. It's so easy...


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## evilgamer13

*How do you scare the crap out of your players*

What do people think are the top ten technique's are for scaring players?  I remember being in a CoC game once where the DM lit a couple of the small candles in the tin cups by us (I think one candle per two players) and then on a table at the other end of the room lit a bunch of big candles for himself.  Then he turned off the lights and informed us that if the candles went out they would stay out.  It made it hard to read our sheets and then he kept walking around behind the ring of players as he DM'ed and only went over to his table to look things up, having done a through job of prepping that wasn't very frequent.


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## TheAuldGrump

One that I have used to good effect several times is to let the PCs find out that something that they knew was something else all along -

The party is going from point A to point C, stopping at point B along the way. Point B is a friendly little town, folks willing to talk to adventurers, though not about anything in the way of current events, little details about what has gone on in the last few years never get touched on, and if the PCs ask questions about them then the townsfolk claim to have not heard about it, and begin asking questions about the events. Again, in a friendly, happy to be talking to folks from away manner.

On the way back from point C to point A they pass through the same location, where the overgrown ruins of the town reveal a place that was destroyed years or decades ago....

A Detect Undead spell (if it exists in your games) will go off like crazy the first time through, if anyone thinks to cast it, but Detect Evil does not. On the second time through Detect Undead reveals nothing, but Detect Magic or Detect Evil reveal that something very big, and very bad happened here, long ago....

The Auld Grump, Brigadoon gone bad....


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Making the undead pitiful rather than menacing can also have a satisfactory creep factor - recently I had the undead remains of children weeping and trying to hide away from the PCs, still bound in spectral chains to the walls of the basement that they were starved to death in, so very long ago.

Undead repeating what they had done in life also works - a ghostly miser still counting his coins, a lost woodsman still wandering the woods in which he died. A road warden still riding his bounds, rusting armor and decaying bone seated upon a skeletal horse. Townsfolk more than willing to speak of this ghost, and children daring each other to hide by the road at night to watch him ride by... and all attributing odd effects to the light of his still burning lantern.

The Auld Grump


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## tombshroud

Rise up thread!  I command you to rise from the grave!



_-This thread necromancy brought to you by Tombshroud-_


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## scrumpyj

Okay, I’ll add to this newly resurrected thread. One Halloween, I ran a horror session as part of an ongoing 3e campaign. We played at night, with the session lit mostly by candlelight. The heroes were investigating a haunted house, where two children had died gruesome deaths. One clue to the nature of the ghosts was a painting of creepy children, hanging over the fireplace. For this, I used the famous Haunted Ebay Painting (which had its own supposed real-life curse), seen here:
Haunted Painting

I printed out an 8x10 glossy of the painting, and just propped it up on the table for the entire session, which was unnerving to some of the players. As they investigated the house, the children kept calling to them, “Help me! Make the screaming stop…” Over and over again, they heard “Help me! Make the screaming stop…”

Then, at a preappointed time, my wife, otherwise completely uninvolved with gaming, phoned the player at whose home we were playing. When the player answered, my wife, in a little kid’s voice, just said “Help me! Make the screaming stop…” and then stayed silent until the player hung up.

The following Halloween, I ran another horror session, with spirits whispering to each of the characters, playing on their individual weaknesses. This culminated in the party’s paladin deciding he had been possessed (he wasn’t), and killing himself by throwing himself on his own sword rather than endangering the party. I’d been trying to creep him out, but I’d never anticipated that outcome. Good times…


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## radferth

Thread necromancy can be creepy.  But this one seems appropriate.


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## ProfessorCirno

Don't have time to read through the whole thread, so I dunno if this idea has been mentioned yet, but:

The players decided to go through some heavily magic infested cursed areas (Har har har, I warned them!  Subtly, of course) and each got their own unique "curse," meant to freak them out a bit without mechanically harming them.

I gave one of the characters a little spider friend.  He didn't actually ask for it, mind you.  But from that point on, there was a little immortal spider that constantly followed his character around and would always seem to appear near him no matter what he tried to do to get rid of it.  He'd wake up with webbing all around him and tiny dead bugs decorated to his body.  Not just outside, you know, but if they slept at an inn, too.  If he wasn't paying attention, he'd find it slowly making it's way up his body to ride on his face.  And if he killed it, it would always come back anyways.  But each time he killed it, the spider (who was bright green) would grow a little bit darker.  When I had one of the team mates who DIDN'T have a negative number for a spot check notice it, his creep factor sky rocketed, and went way out of his way to avoid touching it.

But it wanted to touch him _so badly_


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## Iron Sky

I think I confined almost all my creepy moments to my CoC-like d20 modern game.

The PCs all started as normal people: A motorcycle stuntman, a British rugby player, a asian/latino auto-mechanic who patched up cars for the Triads at night, and a high-class image consultant.  I told them I was going to run a modern game and to make whoever they wanted, without telling them what the game was going to be about.

The stuntman and the rugby player were in a small Minnesota town as extras in a movie, when a big blizzard blew in.  They holed up in a diner with the owner to try to wait it out.  Then the power went out.  The owner asked them to turn on the generator he had in the basement while he scrounged around for flashlights.

I played up how creepy the basement was and they kept expecting something to jump out at them as they explored it with a keychain flashlight.  Nothing did and they turned on the generator to find there was a dead rotting dog in there.  Headed out quick, to find the blizzard was over as if it had never been and the owner was gone without a trace - along with everyone else in town.  They found people's coffee still steaming, cars idling, but people just gone.  Oh, and everything in town with liquid in it was half-empty for some unexplicable reason.  And anything with a mechanical lock came unlocked when they touched it.

They stole a truck, grabbed some weapons from the sheriff's station, and drove away as fast as possible, the blizzard starting up again as soon as they left town.  In the midst of the blizzard, their truck was attacked by a pack of _things_ that they couldn't make out in the blizzard.  The stuntman drove like mad through the blizzard while the rugby player tried to fight _them_ off with his shotgun.  Then they were out of the blizzard and the things were gone...

Meanwhile, in California, the image consultant - actually more of a psychologist for the very wealthy - got a call in the middle of the night, $5000 for a two hour session if he would get in the limo outside right away.  He did, was driven to a skyscraper he didn't recognize, and taken to the top floor.  He essentially did a long interview with what he considered a madman calmly talking about the darkness of the time and coming end of the world.

More disturbing was the strange iron taste of the wine he was offerred.  More disturbing still was, on a short break while his "client" took a business call, he looked out the window at the fog and the three blinking lights of a nearby skyscraper, at least he thought that's what they were until the lights blinked and started drifting closer to the window, a vague, ominous form growing in the fog.

He turned away from the window when his client came back in, then looked back at the window to point out the thing, only to see that the "skyscraper" lights were back to where they had been...

Meanwhile, the mechanic was working late at his boss's shop when the Triads pulled up with two damaged cars, slipping him an envelope full of cash to make the two into one undamaged car by morning.  The Triads left and he checked out the cars.

One was shot up on one side, like it had been used for cover - the usual stuff he did for the Triads - while the other looked almost intact from the outside, but the seats were shredded and soaked with blood.  There was a strange, unsettling smell that he couldn't place that was even stronger than the smell of blood.  The car had bullet holes in it too, but they seemed to have been fired at something _inside_ the car not at the car from the outside.

He tried not to think about it and worked hard to get the cars done.  It was almost dawn when he glanced out the window of the shop's office - and saw right on the other side of the glass what looked like almost like a hyena, but _wrong_, standing on its rear legs, it's jaw distended and filled with too many teeth, looking back in the window at him, eyes glowing.

He freaked the hell out and barricaded himself in the shop area as _something_ prowled around outside... until after a couple hours someone honked outside.  He opened up warily to find the Triads there.  There was no sign of the _thing_.  The Traids took the cars and as they were about to leave, the mechanic asked "what happened to that second car anyway?"

The Triads looked scared - something he'd never seen before - and got angry, telling him to mind his own business, something about a curse, and driving off like mad...

That was how the game started.  The mood wasn't consistant throughout, but it did achieve some similar levels of creepiness at times...

Maybe I should make it into a story hour.  I'd forgotten how cool that game was...


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## Mustrum_Ridcully

An idea I head this morning, after remembering a Doctor Who episode:

How about a mysterious person (maybe a child) appearing in mirrors and mirroring surfaces? Always behind the character(s). Possibly only one of them can see it, or all of them. Anyway, it appears only in the mirror. It starts in a "Haunted House", but later, the character will find it everywhere.

Admittedly, this is harder to do in a Fantasy setting where mirrors (or mirroring surfaces) might not be as common as in the modern world. 

And of course, the kid in the mirror needs to be resolved eventually as some kind of mystery... Or has it? What if the PCs _solve_ the mystery, and the kid is free - of a kind. It can now leave the haunted house, but where should it go? Best thing to do is following the PCs that rescued it.


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## Jürgen Hubert

Not exactly something out of a game, but my small but growing list of Nightmare Fuel on the Arcana Wiki might help.

Feel free to tell me of any other real life material you found disturbing.


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## CleverNickName

Once, I ran a spider-themed adventure (don't laugh, every DM has done this at least once.)  Anyhoo, the BBEG was a modified black dragon: instead of breating acid, it vomited swarms of living, crawling, poisonous spiders.

That was at least six years ago, and my players still twitch involuntarily whenever I mention it.


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## evilgamer13

OK I'm going to have to keep the tong eating bug from nightmare fuel in mind for next time I want to scare the pants off my PC's... you cant quite understand what he's saying... no he just mumbling.


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## Lord Xtheth

From the campaign I'm trying to write/publish:

Children who had hung themselves desending from the ceiling into a group of their own (animated) toys and attacking the PCs with the ropes they had hung themselves with.

.....

A door leading to the "Last room" of the necromancer's house is composed of a living human turned inside out and kept alive through magic, whose own unprotected and still beating heart is the doorknob.


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## evilgamer13

I like the door idea Lord Xtheth, so how about fighting Zombies that are a skeleton encased in a mass of multicolored worms with some kind of large trilobite for the heart (removing or destroying it puts the things down).


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## ProfessorCirno

...Man, people here really hate kids.


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## Rechan

ProfessorCirno said:


> ...Man, people here really hate kids.



Not really. It's just that children are an easy thing to make "creepy" because it effects most people on an emotional, if not primitive level. 

This is why a lot of horror movies in the past few years (especially ghost movies) have creepy kids in them.


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## evilgamer13

Rechan said:


> Not really. It's just that children are an easy thing to make "creepy" because it effects most people on an emotional, if not primitive level.
> 
> This is why a lot of horror movies in the past few years (especially ghost movies) have creepy kids in them.





I think that's because we (as reasonably well adjusted adult humans) are programed to care for and protect young children, thus turning them into an object of fear or an enemy to be destroyed causes an inherent conflict.


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## Whitemouse

I ran a horror game using the BRP system last year.

The players were trying to survive a night of the living dead kind of game. They eventually came upon a half ruined house and made their way inside. They barricaded it shut. In a closet was a weeping girl. They let her out. The girl then sprang out and ran out the front door without _opening_ it. The players then used scrap bits of wood to fix up the little girl shape in the door.

As if that wasn't bad enough there was a small underground passage that linked the house to an excavated subterranean basement that they didn't know about.. The players then kept their eyes out on the undead and found their numbers dwindling. Overly perplexed by this they still kept watch. Eventually there was only one zombie left wandering around outside that they could see. The rest had dug into the earth and found the 'basement'.

The zombies burst through the floorboards and completely took the players by surprise. They fought it out and eventually only one character was left standing. He had failed his sanity check at went berserk, fleeing the house and climbed up a tree and fell asleep there. He woke up two hours later to find the remaining zombie from outside starting to feast on him. 

All the players told me that I gave them nightmares for a couple of days afterwards with that one.


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## Ravilah

My players tell me that the creepiest session I ever presented was the one when they had to travel to the prison plane of Carceri, and we're looking for a Mcguffin in the Bastion of Last Hope.
They went into an inn called The Homely Hostel and were certain that the pleasant-looking gnome couple who ran the place just had to be demons in disguise.  Several bedraggled, pitiful people were staying at the inn because they had nowhere else to go in this hellish nightmare of a city.  Two of them were beggars in once-regal rags, one was a harsh cold elf woman, and one of them was a little boy who had been accidentally abandoned there by his magician master.  The party was sure that they needed to rescue these people from this inn.

I'm sure you all see what's coming, but they didn't.

So while gathered at the dinner table, the wizard casts True Seeing so that she can see what the gnomes actually are. She looks at them and sees...gnomes.  She turns to the Fighter to whisper this news, and sees that the "little boy" seated next to him is actually a leering bone devil.  She manages a bluff check to keep herself composed, and they all managed to sneak out that night.  They had been planning to go to the boy's room that night to rescue him. Narrow escape for them.

There were lots of other things like that in the Bastion of Last Hope, and the creepiness was enhanced by the fact that I had the whole room lit with nothing but red light bulbs.  I dunno. I didn't think it would be that creepy, but it gave everyone the willies.


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## Lord Xtheth

ProfessorCirno said:


> ...Man, people here really hate kids.



 Yes, I realy, realy do.


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## Jürgen Hubert

evilgamer13 said:


> OK I'm going to have to keep the tong eating bug from nightmare fuel in mind for next time I want to scare the pants off my PC's... you cant quite understand what he's saying... no he just mumbling.




Yes, that was one of the weirder entries...

(In case you are wondering, he was referring to this entry).


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## evilgamer13

There is a species of fish I remember hearing about in college that is all female and parasites the DNA of males of other species; what happens is that they reproduce in a normal sexual manner, but at the next generation none of the fathers DNA makes it into the offspring (only the grandmothers)... this might have been one of my bio prof's yanking my chain but if they are real does anyone know the name (and if there not real they can still be used as a bit of inspiration).


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## The_Warlock

Something I wanted to use, but came up with long after my campaign had proceeded past overland travel:

On a lonely backwoods or frontier trade path, the group notices several sets of wagon tracks that dig up the dirt and damp earth and go off the road. If they follow them, the find themselves in a small dell not easily visible from the road, made of three or four low hills. The earth is churned and trampled by feet, hooves and wheels. One merchant's wagon is smashed and overturned at the base of the far hill. There are no horses, though the wagon's cinches are covered in blood. 

About two dozen naked human/humanoid bodies lay scattered across the dell. While most are covered in mud, they don't appear to have any obvious wounds from a distance. 

The first one the group approaches is contorted, face down in the mud, but it's nails are broken and it's hands covered in blood as if it was attempting to scratch it's attacker.

When they roll the body over, the body has no face, from forehead to chin, is solid flesh, ripped and torn by fingernails to reveal muscle and smooth bone beneath, with nary a socket or orifice.  As if the poor soul, suddenly bereft of sight and breath was desperately clawing at their own head to make a way to breathe.

All the bodies share this faceless death.

Several sets of hoofprints and wagon wheel tracks leave the dell more sedately and return to the road, heading in the same direction the group was heading, and eventually lose distinction from the common ruts in the road about a mile on.


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## evilgamer13

So I was talking with some friends of mine who are going to the upcoming Lovecraft film festival, now they always make a joke about were there going and last year it was the st Hastors day celebration.  This year they decided on the jubilee of the black pharaoh.  This gave me a neat idea for a CoC adventure, the PC's would go out and come across an odd Egyptian street fair and the celabrants (men with eye makeup) would invite them to come in and celabrate this most momentus of days... as things went along things would get more and more sereal untell everyone was holding up masks on sticks and speaking with odd lisps (as if they had a deformity of the mouth) and perhaps they would be given masks of thier own (that looked like monsters rather then the normal human faced masks of the other celabrents), that is of course when they would be given an audiance with the pharoah a seven foot pluss tall man whose skin is dark and shiney like obsidian with the chin pice and headress whose voice seems to echo oddly in the small tent.   Afterwards you can have any standard good guys transformed into monsters bit espeshaly if they are hunting themselves.


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## megamania

Back in the 90's I created a complex time shifting story in Darksun.

I took Ravenloft's Forlorn Castle and placed it on the edge of the Deadlands.  I then placed a powerful curse on the place that allowed time to twist.  The times shown were- Green age, Cleansing War, Creation of the Deadlands and "current".  

What brought the "heroes" here was the attack of a powerful psionic undead spirit that lived here whom had attacked a noble they were paid to protect.  While exploring the place they didcovered a twisted and unsettling series of events that forever shaped the woman that would become the nasty hatful undead spirit.  The house was full of murder, incest, plots and twisted use of the "new" power- magic.

The group wasn't sure how to deal with it on many levels.


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## Wik

_Hope no one minds a little bit of thread necromancy..._

I love running horror games - I find that I can improv better when I'm running a horror game, because not everything has to make sense (in fact, it's better that way!).  A few of my favourite horror moments:

1)  2e D&D.  This happened 15 or so years ago, so I'm foggy on the details, but... The PCs break into the cellar of a ruined castle that is now the home of a cult hoping to summon some monstrous _thing_.  Things are fairly normal at first, with some rather normal scenes.  The PCs find a room filled with gunpowder, and a bunch of dead rats.  They figure that the rats died eating the gunpowder... odd, but plausible. 

They then make their way down a long hallway, filled with gothic imagery that seems to smell of... wax?  It's a narrow hallway, and one of the PCs feels very claustrophobic.  And everyone seems to hear a slight whispering babble of voices.  

Things get haunted from there.  They find a room with an empty fountain w/ a cherub, and then explore some jail cells.  In the jail cells they find a corpse that ate his cellmate, and then animated to feast on the PCs (kind of creepy, but it was more of a "release" at this point).  

They find a mortuary where the bodies are dipped in wax foto make death masks (and find a few death masks!).  One of them remembers something about the smell of the hallway coming into the place, and shudders.

They also find the writings of a cellmate on a wall - they wouldn't get near his body, terrified it'd animate.  They make their way back to the fountain room, and now the fountain is working... only instead of water, it's blood.

Then there was the encounter with the "Cult" (who had been dead for a very long time, and only brought to life because of the life force of the adventurers who had come to visit - it's nice knowing that you're responsible for bringing evil back into the world!).  I don't really recall this encounter, but I remember the fight against the big bad evil thing was a tough one, and the PCs weren't able to stop it.  So they ran.

When they got to the main hallway, it had animated into a Living Wall (a nice 2e monster that would pull people in to join it).  The group knows they are in a tight spot, as they have to squeeze past this narrow hallway to escape the THING closing in on them.  They make a mad run, and one PC gets pulled in - the rest of the group stops to free him, and bloodied, they make their way through the hall while skeletal hands pull and skeletal voices cry out "join us.....".  

One PC gets pulled in, and they can't rescue him.  The thing is too close.  They can hear it in the fountain room (now flooded with blood that is beginning to flow down the wax hallway).  

As the remnants of the group make their way out, one of the PCs (A ninja, though we westernized him) knew that this thing had to be stopped.  "Go on without me.  I can't let [PC caught by the living wall] go like that."  He grabs a few kegs of gunpowder, pushes them down the hallway, and then throws one on his back.  He lights a wick, and charges the thing, screaming the whole time.

Great finale.


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## Wik

2.  In another 2e game, one of the characters (a ranger named Glamdring) got infected with a poison.  A "Crystal spider" had bit him on his left hand.  He watched as, over the course of a few days, the skin around the bite began to look like a mirror.  It felt like skin, and moved like skin, but was in all other ways a mirror.  And it began to inch up his arm...

He had no idea what it was, and sages had no clue either.  He had nightmares of the disease crawling up his chest and piercing his heart, or of making it's way to his eyes.  His hand would animate at times and he'd take swings at his companions.  NPCs responded in fear to the character, and he got chased out of town once or twice.  He took to covering up his disease.  Within a few weeks of game time, the mirror had made it's way up to his elbow.  He spent good money trying to find out how to cure this disease, until an Oracle told him who he had to kill.  

(yeah, the player wanted to try out being an assassin, so this was his chance!)

The adventure itself was boring, but the disease was a very fun touch.  He would wake up in weird places, and occasionally he would lose control and attack his companions.  At one point, he couldn't speak common - everything his character said came out in the setting version of Latin... a language none of the PCs could normally speak!  It also got weird in that when the disease covered his whole arm, people who looked in did not see their own reflection, but rather a reflection of what they would look like at the time of their death... (one player was very creeped out when I said "your reflection looks much like your normal reflection... only you're missing your eyes and your hair is slightly longer").  



3.

Another fun story was in a 2e (or maybe early 3e) game I ran where the PCs were trying to rob some location or another famed for wealth.  The funny thing in this adventure was that the location was not haunted in any way, and there were no monstrous guardians.  There were a few minor traps and usual tomb protections, but I had set the area up as what a normal noble's tomb would be like.  

Unfortunately, the other grave robbers had gotten there first, and knew they were outmatched by the PCs in a straight fight (they were a halfling rogue and a gnomish illusionist).  So, they did everything in their power to scare the PCs off.

I thought it was going to be a simple night's gaming (I had designed the adventure as an easy way to give them treasure, to make up for my recent stinginess, and as a way of throwing an "easy" adventure at them for campaign believability).  Instead, I had that gnome throw everything at the party - crying ghosts, whispers on the wind, distant screams... and the rogue would reset traps the PCs had already disarmed, which made things very scary for the group.  

The part I remember most, though, was the actual setting of the game.  It was in my parent's living room, and I had the lights turned low - the dimmer switch on the overhead light even flickered like a candle.  I had a fire going, and it was a dark night outside.  And my parents have one of those houses that is _quiet_.  I spoke in a slight voice, so they had to lean forward to hear me.  We had a long, oaken table, with high-backed chairs, and I paced around the table, so they would have to follow me with their eyes as I spoke.  

The best part?  One of the PCs was making his way down a hallway, when he was hit by a wind on the back of his neck.  That's it.  In real life, when I described this, I was right behind him, so I blew gently onto the back of his neck.  

He literally jumped, flailed his hands about, and started hyperventilating.  He had a near anxiety attack (this was before he knew he suffered from an anxiety condition, and before he was taking meds to keep it under control!), though he was laughing at his own response.  Later, he said it was the scariest game he had ever played, and also his favourite.  

(P.S.  The party got only half the treasure when they ran screaming out of the tomb... then they luckily bumped into the gnome, knifed him, and returned into the tomb to steal the rest;  "It was only a gnome illusionist all that time!".  And then, when the rogue kept up to his tricks, they _really_ freaked out and ran.  I never did tell them the full story)


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## evilgamer13

*They did dig too deep*

So one of the things that has always creeped me out the most in the lord of the rings trilogy is the origin... or lack there of of the watcher in Moria.  The simple explanation of they dug to deep for the origin of this unique and horrible (though mostly unseen beast) was always so powerful to me because it implyed that there were other such preadimit horrors lying entomed within the land perhaps primordial forces or simply the enhabitants of a preavious epoch.


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## timbannock

Two instances:

1. First session of what would end up being a planescape campaign, but the Players didn't know that.  They were in a haunted mansion type scenario, when they finally hit the basement (filled with catacombs and crypts, obviously undisturbed for many years), and they noticed weird rats watching them from just outside torchlight.  Eventually, they noticed the rats were becoming more and more numerous the deeper into the crypts they got, and it was as if they were only moving in certain directions...effectively herding the PCs.  When they finally realized this, one player said "Wait a sec...they are herding us..." and at the moment was a chain lightning from the army of hundreds and hundreds of Cranium Rats.  Scared the piss out of 'em.

2. Ran the Meenlock Prison adventure from Dungeon Mag (not sure which # off hand).  I recorded the whispered phrase that the Meenlocks psionically issue to their quarry, something like "We were once like you; soon you will be one of us" or something like that.  I played it back on a tape recorder at slow speeds and high speeds, and because I'd whispered the phrase (but turned up the volume), it was very oddly distorted.  I would play it only when they were getting close to the Meenlocks in an underground prison block, and it made for some really creepy atmospherics!


One thing I wanted to do but never got around to was this:

I was running a 4e playtest in which the PCs were accompanied by the disembodied voice of a young girl.  They were tasked with fighting several "guardians" (i.e. boss monsters, usually Solos straight out of the MM1) to escape a strange land they were in (actually the Underworld: they were dead).  Each time they defeated one of the bosses, the girl's voice would "grow up" slightly: get deeper, more confident, and more powerful.  Eventually, a male voice would join as well, at first as a whisper, but then -- as more bosses were killed -- growing deeper and soon overpowering the girl's voice (now a woman's voice, by that point).  The whole plot was that this girl's voice was the voice of a Goddess that had been slain, and the PCs were her former servants, questing through the Underworld to resurrect her.  As they defeated the guardians, she got closer and closer to life; but, her terrible brother (and killer) was tied to her fate, and so he was effectively being resurrected as well.  Eventually, the PCs would have to face the male God in combat, hopefully with some help from the Goddess.

I would have had my girlfriend record the female voice from "youth" to "powerful womanly voice" while I would have joined in as the male voice, all in a few preplanned speeches I would make after the death of each boss/guardian.  It was an awesome idea, but the group folded before I could bring it about.


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## Damester

My first real campaign started this august so here is my creepy bit hope its cool enough.
 The PCs find a village lacking in the children department. A visit to the pub clears things up the kids have been going missing and so has the PC doppleganger (dropped from campaign) but they meet a goliath warlord pc who over hears all this. The guy they need to talk to is at the local church as the new party begins to leave a bard performer proposes an escort mission for them in the morning. The PCs head off to the church and talk more to the man in charge about the kids and pick up a cleric PC. So now the party knows where the kids were taken. The dwarf checks for clues and so does the sorcerrer they determine the offenders are giant ants the dwarf digs a trench in an attempt to find them and fails.... of course they do find more clues and head off to the anthill. When they get there the first area the search is filled with what seems to be giant ant larva upon closer inspection it is the swollen pulsating bodies of children with shrivled limbs and ant like eyes begging to be killed.  The party freaks out and lights fire to the larva kids instantly using dailies and all. and thats where we left off.


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## Quasireal

*Newbie bump*

All right, I just spent about 3 hours catching up on this thread.

Now for my 2 cents.

The first story I have was from a CoC game I played about 5 years ago.

I was playing as a new prof at the venerable Miskitonic University and I was tapped buy one of the local paranormal investigation societies to help check out a "haunted" theater.

the place was fairly normal looking until we reached the cellar, one of the rooms was set up as a sensory saturation chamber ((If anyone has seen the remake of The House on Haunted Hill, it's the room that Geoffrey Rush is trapped in) This one was a zoetrope of a man picking up and putting down a hat) As we all entered the room the machine came to life, and as we watched the man pick up and put down the hat, a shadow started to creep in from the side of the frame, slowly consuming the man, then the rest of the scene, ending in a series of occult characters, all the while the most recognizable part of Carmina Burana was playing in the background.

The GM had made a recording of the song, and with his laptop had altered the track to speed up and slow down randomly, resolving itself into a prolonged scream at the end.


After a thurough examination of the theater, we found a book which my character began to translate (mistake number one in any CoC game)

The GM had a handout of the translated text, as I was reading it over I did not notice him hovering nearby.  I was reading the text to the rest of the party when suddenly drops of red liquid began to splatter upon the page.

The GM had quietly moved closer to me with a dropper full of stage blood, and dripped it on the page, as I jumped back he calmly explained to me that my character had begun bleeding from the nose.

The rest of that game is kind of a blur, but that is one of the creepiest moments I have ever had in gaming.


My second story is a literal example of a PC being the monster.

I was running a game of Deadlands d20 where one of my players was a blessed who was convinced that he took his orders from on high.  As the players were exploring a town he began to see visions of a civil war battlefield, explosions and screaming soldiers all around, in the midst of all this chaos was a man dressed as a doctor, mutilating and fouling bodies, wounded soldiers, etc.

It turns out that this town had a doctor that fit the visions, but he had left for parts unknown a few years ago.  The party began to hunt down this "butcher of the battlefield" and eventually tracked him to Atlanta.  As the rest of the party was gathering information on the man, the blessed was making his way directly to the doctor's office, guided by his visions and the voice of an "angel".  Upon arriving, the blessed ambushed the doctor and set upon him with great vengence.  eventually killing him.

While this was going on, the rest of the party had discovered that the doctor was greatly loved by the townsfolk and had been seen performing 
"miricles" of medicine.  Everything they found out just cast the doctor in a better light.  Realizing that they had been hunting an innocent man, they ran to the office to prevent the blessed from doing something horrible.


Meanwhile as the blessed was cleaning himself up after beating the doctor to death with an iron-bound bible, he began to hear the voice of the angel again, the voice convinced him that his friends had been corrupted by agents of evil and were coming to kill him.  He fled the town as fast as possible and began planning his counter-attack.

The rest of the party arrived at the doctor's office and found the scene of the attack, they began to search for the blessed character, planning to turn him over to the authorities.

Outside of town the blessed once again heard the angel's voice, it told him that he had been chosen to be the embodiment of holy vengence upon the wicked.  The angel then said to him "Do you wish to have the power to destroy those who hunt you and all other enemies of our master?"  (exact quote)  Without blinking he said yes.  I asked the player to turn over his character sheet and start rolling a new PC.  This one was now a servitor and an NPC.  This character, Preacher Z, became the nemisis of the party, going so far as to crucify an entire town just to set a trap for the party.

This is a pretty long post for my first one so I will save the story of Preacher Z's end for another time.



Thanks for reading

-Quasi


----------



## Rechan

In the spirit of the holiday, I thought I'd bump.


----------



## Vorput

Oh good.  I love this thread...

Anyone have any fun Halloween games planned for this weekend?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I love this thread...and I'm surprised I haven't posted in it.

Unfortunately, I'm also experiencing a little mental block about whatever creepiness I've thrown around in RPGs.  I know I've done some...I _must_ have.

(Damn brainworms.)

At any rate, as a PSA, I thought I'd also point out that some of the links no longer work, so if you did post something here with a link, you might want to check it out.


----------



## cssmythe3

Here is your next creepy little girl:

Characters: Barber's Daughter

Sweeny Todd, eat your heart out.

Sorry, that pun WAS intended.

-Chuck


----------



## Nebulous

Ravilah said:


> and the creepiness was enhanced by the fact that I had the whole room lit with nothing but red light bulbs.  I dunno. I didn't think it would be that creepy, but it gave everyone the willies.




Wow, i had posted in this thread 5 years ago! As for the quote above, that's a great idea to set the mood.  I'm gonna steal that red bulbs idea. I have an upcoming scenario where the PCs will descend into a haunted mine ruled by a glabrezu overlord. Hell-red lights should work quite nicely


----------



## snarez

Bump, sort of rezzurect, +100 respect for thread and my first post, all in one XD

Just to throw in a few ideas I used as a way of saying thank you all for great inspiration.

First of all, I don't run a horror campaign; it is a "regular" campaign, set in my world. I draw inspiration from lot of sources, then change it a bit (or a lot); but the best moments were improvised, hope you'll like 'em as much as my players did 

Generally, I like to keep players uncertain most of the time - sometimes sinister and creepy stuff is just a decoration, sometimes it's really evil. Here are more or less random bits of creepy / weird stuff:

There are 2 statues in the dungeon. The first one is of a young man, a little bit bent, as if pressing something down with full force and weight of his body. It is situated in furthermost corner of the room. There are scratches on the floor as if the statue was dragged into the room, but it's impossible to figure out exactly from where (marks fade around middle of the room). The party quickly deducted that statue looks as if it was running somebody through with a sword, so one of them decides to put her own bastard sword in place. I gave her a look that questions her sanity, and everybody expects the statue to come alive or something. Nothing happens.

Some time later, they get to another statue. This one is of a royal looking elderly person, laying on the back with a beautifully crafted bastard sword pierced through his chest. 3 of them decide it would be great idea to put the obviously moved statue in its original position, while the cleric frantically protests, detects evil (nothing there really) and whatnot. First statue is heavy, but 2 people (STR 17) can carry/push it across half the dungeon without too much difficulty.

When they put it next to fallen king, so that the young man is running the king through, i tell them to roll. This is my favourite way of keeping the tension up - they never know what they are rolling for, and a lot of times it is just for the sake of tension. I even sometimes pretend I'm trying to roll in secret while they're not paying attention, just to make them wander what will happen. Most evil thing you can do to players 

So, the statues are in position, but still nothing happens. They figure out these are just statues, and the afore-mentioned fighter decides to take the nice looking bastard sword (ooo, shiny) from the statue. A few seconds later, it starts to rust very quickly, turning into rust, and lights from all sources start to dim. Behind her, a gost appears, and it bears quite a resemblance to the statue. It points in her general direction, more like THROUGH her, and says "You! BETRAYER! Your destiny forsaken, for what? For THIS?".

Any attempt to communicate with the ghost is in vain; it will follow the person who took the sword out, but will not attempt to interact with party in any way. It won't answer any questions, and neither will I as DM. They get back to exploring the dungeon, ocasionally asking wether the ghost is still following. It is.

Now, here comes a bit of cheating. They get to an archway with some kind of symbol inscribed above it. Trying to dechiper it, curious as they are, they trigger Symbol Of Sleep. The cheat is that the DC was not fixed in any way; I decided that the DC would be 1 + whatever ghost-following person rolled. She was the only one who failed. They decide to rest (had quite a bit of fighting earlier). It was great, because nobody actually looked her way, so when she woke up, she was the first one to notice the ghost is now gone... Wanna gues if they'll encounter it again? 


During the break, I got a moment of inspiration, the fighter affected with Sleep had a dream, it went something like this:

*You're running through the night, the grass oddly warm on your bare feet. The sky is clear, but there are no stars or moons*. Still, you can see clearly enough to avoid the trees that are made of glass. You're getting closer... Suddenly you can feel him BEHIND you. You turn around, reaching for your weapon, but you realize you have no arms. It is getting colder as the laughter in your head grows louder. You try to scream, but only centipedes exit your mouth and start crawling across your face made of stone towards your eye sockets...*

* this is not a typo, there are 3 moons present in the world


Another one, thought up ad-hoc:

They were teleported to a forest in an unknown part of the world. As the night falls, they choose not to light a fire as it might attract a GKW (GodKnowsWhat). During the dinner, they notice that shadows (cast by a moon) are behaving strangely, although it is impossible to define exactly what is amiss. I roll a d4 (as there are 4 of them), and whoever is chosen, starts feeling cold. After 3 stacks of debuff (yes, I play WoW sometimes ), the person falls unconcious, visibly shaking. Just as second person was about to fall, he fired an arrow with Lght cast on it towards nearby tree. As the arrow flew, their shadows grew longer and thicker, and then second person falls (cleric, to make things worse). As the flickering shadows cross, a screaming whisper is heard, and a new shadow arises and starts attacking remaining 2 members. Now, they had only 1 stack of "shadow cold" on them, so when they're touched by shadow they begin to feel VERY cold. I doubt I'd let them fall too, but they surely didn't feel that way. After a pair of swings went sthraight through the shadow, duskblade finally gets the idea and casts Dancing Light into the shadow, which dissapears with earpiercing hiss.

They attempt to wake up 2 sleepers, which are cold to touch, but to no avail. So they set up a fire and put them near to keep them warm. A few minutes later, there is a crashing sound, and out of the darkness the GKW appears. It has a spider-like lower part of body. The upper part is vaguely humanoid; he's got huge mouth across his whole face and one eye on a tentacle sprouted from his chin. In one of his 3 arms he is wielding a whole young tree, complete with roots, and is kicking with his legs which have bull-like hooves at the end. They managed to survive the encounter, and with first rays of sun, other 2 woke up...



A few details found in dungeons, which haven't (yet) tried to harm players:

* A huge pile of teeth in a corner
* A casket hanging from the ceiling, 4 ropes are holding it by the corners. When opened, inside is a beautiful young woman with pearls in place of here eyes
* A room completely burnt (scorches on walls, floor and ceiling). Only thing found in this room is a picture frame, completely intact, but without a picture (looks like it has burned down). It doesn't look like the frame was brought here, it seems it somehow survived the flames completely intact.
* Albino beholder who is blind; it doesn't attack the players, but just mumbles some crazy stuff about future and past.



That's all for now...


----------



## Stormonu

I tend to do a lot of Ravenloft-related stuff, so I've done all sorts of creepy things to players over the years.

This one is the description for the main portion of a church-turned-sanatarium-overrun-by-evil that I used in my last campaign.

"      This huge, two storied chamber was obviously once the main cathedral.  Towering columns, eight in all, hold up the massive ceiling.  The second-story glass windows have been bricked over, but the glass is intact, and hellish light shines down from them.  The glass images are twisted into acts of cruelty, as demon-faced angels behead, torture and otherwise ravage supplicant figures in each of the images.  



  The framework of a torn-down second-story balcony can still be seen, as several ropes hang down from the rafters – some of the ropes still wrapped around the flayed bodies of humans whose gore drips onto the floor beneath you.  There are a myriad of wooden doors leading off from the main cathedral to your right and left, and behind each you can hear the moans of agony of whatever lies beyond.  Four cages have been arrayed around the room, with fresh straw laid within.  Slithering about the room are nine slug-like, fur-covered maggots the size of a small pony, who do not seem interested in your presence.


  At the far end of the room, there are four stout, stone doors.  One stands at each side of the cathedral, while the last two stand near the corners on the opposite wall. Nestled between the stone doors on the far side of the room is a dias.  Where once an altar likely stood, a throne made of bones draped with flesh now sits.  Seated in the seat is a demonic-looking humanoid, covered in hideous warts and boils.  Its arms hang nearly down to its ankles, and end in black, sharp claws.  Its eyes are hollow holes, its teeth needle-like and black, and a gruesome crown of flame rings its forehead."


The "maggots" were abyssal larva from Tome of Horrors 3, made from the former inmates, and the thing in the throne was a fiendish troll.  However, the party was so mortified by the scene that were prepared to leave the place and never come back (though the party's cleric couldn't stand the scene and eventually attacked; the rest aided once combat broke out, though it was a near thing)


----------



## Rechan

Stormonu, I'm really curious if you actually read that full description aloud, or how you presented that to your players. Going in such detail about a room, I would think some players might stop paying attention.


----------



## Desdichado

A few things I've done or seen since posting in this thread originally:

*Anthropomancy:* In a lawless pirate city dedicated to an evil god, the PCs needed some clues on where to find evidence of a mounting army of undead.  Locals recommended going to a diviner for help in finding stuff.  The diviner was a little girl who lived on the edge of town.  She was cute: blond pigtails, pink dress, cherubic smile... and solid black, "shark eyes."  Also: turns out she'd been divining for this town for more than fifty years.

She told them that her divination method required a dying man's entrails; did they have anyone in their group they were willing to sacrifice?  No... but one character snuck out at night, went to the slave market, bought the weediest, sickest, (and cheapest) little gnome or halfling he could find, and took him to the little girl.  With her arms elbow deep in the gnome's innards as he croaked out his death rattle, she gave that character a number of actually quite useful tips.

This all happened between sessions.  When it became obvious to the other players that what he had done... priceless.

*The Eye Thief*.  I had a weird little fey creature that was invisible most of the time, but who could be seen in mirrors.  He turned up one night while the PCs were sleeping in an inn... he had attacked a young NPC woman in her room and scooped out her eyes with a spoon.  Of course; they couldn't see him, and couldn't figure out what had happened exactly, so they went uneasily back to bed.  Then, it tried to attack one of the PCs in her room.

It actually was pretty easy to defeat, as it turned out, due to some really good luck, but they were pretty seriously creeped out by that little blighter.

To top it all off, one of the PCs made some kind of Knowledge roll, and figured that if the eyes were recovered from the little fey (who popped stolen eyes into his own sockets) and if a remove blindness spell were cast with the eyes back again, you'd actually have _improved_ vision and the ability to see invisibility sometimes.  One character volunteered to take the poor young woman out to get healed.  When he comes back, his formerly brown eyes are now green...

*Accidentally sold your soul.*  After defeating a few really creepy demon-dogs (no Thundarr jokes, please) who had a breath weapon of... yep, you guessed it... maggots, the bodies melted and coalesced into a demonic princess.  She was trying to assume a humanoid form, but it had been so long since she'd seen one that she didn't quite get it right.  Too many eyes... too many breasts... her... nether regions had long needle-like teeth and a long, barbed, slurping tongue that hung to her knees.  She took one look at the female PCs and adjusted her form, becoming the most painfully beautiful woman imaginable.  Then she healed the party for them, including the womanizing swashbuckler who was in negative hit points and thus had missed her introduction.  He immediately leapt into action, promising to be at her service.  She accepted their offer to become her emmissaries and disappeared.

I guess that's really more great roleplaying than creepiness, but the aghast looks and "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" dialogue was truly priceless.


----------



## Spareknikov

*Skeleton behind the stone.*



Nebulous said:


> My brother ran an adventure once that he was always proud of. There was a locked door in a dungeon with a little girl's voice behind it begging for help.  It was very well barricaded, and the PC's had trouble getting in. The little girl's voice eventually turned into a demon screaming "RELEASE MEEEEE!" It helped that the sound fx he used were from real people.  He said his players were terrified as they were taken completely off guard.




It's funny you should say that, Nebulous, because I've done something similar as a DM.

The adventurers I was playing with in our last dungeon were venturing down a long, twisting corridor to find it was a dead end. The Dwarf player noticed the unusual brickwork of the wall there. It was as if someone had bricked up the rest of the corridor for some reason, and had left one brick out at about the height where an average human's face would be. One of the characters reluctantly put their hand in the hole (after an argument and rock scissors paper!).

I described the feeling to him of something toothed, like a saw and he correctly worked out that it was teeth. When he worked this out, something brushed his hand and I told him it felt like anothers hand and he quickly pulled his hand out.

All the characters at this point could hear a young lady (no more than 14) weakly ask 'help me?' At this point all the characters rushed to open up the corridor again and free her, only to find a lever and long dead skeleton with another tiny skeleton cradled in the skeletons abdomen remains.

There was no other clue and the adventurers were creeped out enough to tell me to go and see a doctor.

Great thread guys! Keep them coming, I love the ideas!


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## malcolypse

*wow*

this thread has kept me entertained for hours now. 

you are all evil.

hobo. you are the most prolifically cruel, twisted, and ingenious monstrosity to walk the internet, and i supplicate myself before your terrible creativity with equal parts fervor and trepidation.


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## Dannyalcatraz

_Sounds like someone, for one, would welcome his new Hobo overlord!_


----------



## malcolypse

indeed.

also, i meant to post this up earlier, but was distracted by shiny baubles.

in a science fiction setting i intend to run someday: i plan to steal a bit of tech from william gibson. it's essentially an off switch for your consciousness. you take a little nap, and the programed personality takes over for a specific amount of time.

after many adventures, they would run into their employer's resident doctor out on the town, who will have doubtlessly patched them up many times, maybe gone on a date with a pc, and be well liked by all. except she wouldn't recognize them.

when they start explaining that they know her and how, she would explain to them that she always wanted to be a doctor, but couldn't stand the sight of blood, so they must be thinking of someone else. knowing my players, they will prove they know her by revealing intimate details about her life, likes, and dislikes, which will creep her out to the point that she refuses to talk to them any more.

come the next session, another of their bosses employees will flip out at the office and go missing. after they track him down, he will (now drunkenly) tell them that he just came too in a building filled with strangers who knew his name and kept acting like they new him until he managed to get out of there and made his way to the bar they found him in.

a few sessions after that, they are talking to the boss when someone bursts into his office and starts shooting up the place, screaming "what have you done to my mind, you butcher?" the boss is injured before they can take out the attacker, and is rushed to the hospital wing of his builing. 

they get the call that he's awake and asking to talk to his rescuers a few hours later. when they arrive, he asks if they're the ones who saved his life. when they confirm it, he thanks them and introduces himself.

as some point later, one of the characters will have some traumatic event set off some kind of repressed memory of someone saying to them that after today, the nightmares will to away. (my fiance has terrible nightmares with fair regularity, so i'll probably target her with this one so that she'll be likely to think that maybe this was something beneficial that her character volunteered for, and may not tell the other players about it for a while.)

don't know what the ultimate payoff of this will be, it's still just an idea that pops in occasionally to say hi and ask when i'm running a science fiction game at this point. i just know the goal, and that's to make the pcs crazy trying to decide what's going on.


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## Sirarbee

*Resurrecting hor Halloween 2010!*

The thread that never dies....

A few years ago, I merged a couple of stories I found off the internet for an adventure. Basically, the party was at camp in the woods on a dark and stormy night. During a lightning flash, they see a tiny rag doll standing at the edge of their camp, staring at them with litttle dead black eyes. As they approached it, it turned and walked slowly further into the woods, turning to see if the party was following. 

The party eventually came upon an old abandoned manor house, complete with evil treant guards they had to defeat as the storm raged. They then saw the doll walk into the house and followed it. I can't recall what all was inside the home, except that there was a possesed painting that had to be destroyed. I believe there were ghosts in the house of the family that had lived there that were murdered somehow by the painting's influence. Once the painting was exorcised, it exploded, taking out half the house. Finally, the party saw the doll, singed and tattered, go into a ruined bedroom, lay down on an old bed next to the remains of a long-dead, small female child, and go forever still.

They were veerrrryyy creeped out by the tiny, silent rag doll.

edit: If anyone recalls either the doll or the painting storyline and can provide a link to the originals, it's be much appreciated. I believe one or the other had one some online contest, but cannot find them (this was going on 8+ years ago tho.)


----------



## TheAuldGrump

The village is silent, not even birds sing in the trees. A white X has been crudely painted on the the marker at the road.

Within all the people, men, women, and children, have been turned to stone, dust gathering on their limbs. Some few have their books of common prayer open upon their laps, the page turned to prayers against diseases and against that which walks in darkness. An old woman faces a mirror, her stony hair combed and brushed, a faint smile on her lips, yet the brush and comb are on a table by the door, well away from the grasp of her hand. A mother cradles her infant, both now cold stone.

And each petrified villager bears the buboes and lesions of plague....

This one was fun in play - the petrification of the town was a redemptive act of sorts by a lich not far away. Too paranoid to leave his phylactery unguarded, but unwilling to let the people of 'his' town die the lich had no access to magics that would remove the disease, but he could turn them to stone until a cleric arrives in town.

The plague itself is magical - treat Remove Disease as Dispel Magic against a spell of Caster Level 18....

The Auld Grump


----------



## Jon_Dahl

Once my DM had an adventure where we had to free some slaves. We defeated the baddies and then he started to describe the slave pen's inhabitants:
"There are lot of women there, some of them are underage girls..."
At this point he drooled on his shirt. It was considerable amount of saliva right there.

He's about thirty and weights more than 150 kg.


----------



## TheAuldGrump

Jon_Dahl said:


> Once my DM had an adventure where we had to free some slaves. We defeated the baddies and then he started to describe the slave pen's inhabitants:
> "There are lot of women there, some of them are underage girls..."
> At this point he drooled on his shirt. It was considerable amount of saliva right there.
> 
> He's about thirty and weights more than 150 kg.



Creepy players is a different thread. This thread is for scary/ creepy scenarios, not things that make you throw up in your mouth.

The Auld Grump


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## tombshroud

*I can't complete with the last couple of posts but...*

...creepy players aside...

Hopefully this will be a litte palate cleanser: 

I recently had the pleasure of honeymooning in Vegas and visiting the marina at The Mandalay Bay with the Octopus and jellyfish displays.  Watching these creatures that so many "monsters" have been based off of really gave me a sense of how these creatures move - slowly, languidly,  dreamlike until a single strike then nothing but swirling debris and remnants of whatever was there.  Octopi is the slow, languid, creeper only striking when all conditions are in it's favor.  The jellyfish is the uncaring, drifting, unthinking danger drifting along with no set course. (ghost jelly fish anyone?) 

Just something about the slow, languid way these creatures moved and their utterly alien appearance can put off almost any player.  

I'm definitely planning a future trip to a large abandoned museum of sea life, possibly with a few ghosts/ghouls/various undead sea version present.


----------



## TheAuldGrump

tombshroud said:


> ...creepy players aside...
> 
> Hopefully this will be a litte palate cleanser:
> 
> I recently had the pleasure of honeymooning in Vegas and visiting the marina at The Mandalay Bay with the Octopus and jellyfish displays.  Watching these creatures that so many "monsters" have been based off of really gave me a sense of how these creatures move - slowly, languidly,  dreamlike until a single strike then nothing but swirling debris and remnants of whatever was there.  Octopi is the slow, languid, creeper only striking when all conditions are in it's favor.  The jellyfish is the uncaring, drifting, unthinking danger drifting along with no set course. (ghost jelly fish anyone?)
> 
> Just something about the slow, languid way these creatures moved and their utterly alien appearance can put off almost any player.
> 
> I'm definitely planning a future trip to a large abandoned museum of sea life, possibly with a few ghosts/ghouls/various undead sea version present.



 One thing that I have discovered is that actually meeting octopi kind of killed the 'creepy' factor for me.

Friendlier than you might expect, the small ones very shy, the larger ones not above hitching a ride on a passing scuba diver.... Enormous Grapple bonus, but no damage, just hangin' on for the ride....

Also creepy, has anyone ever read the short story Deadmen on Parade?  A deep sea diver opens the hatch on a ship full of deadmen, and their bodies begin drifting towards him, carried by a current through the open hatch....  Add some luminescence and you can have a ghostly parade with no ghosts....

The Auld Grump


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## Dannyalcatraz

> Friendlier than you might expect, the small ones very shy, the larger ones not above hitching a ride on a passing scuba diver.... Enormous Grapple bonus, but no damage, just hangin' on for the ride....




OTOH, I know of a young female (and smallish) aquarium intern who got too close to a quarantine tank and the octopus inside nearly dragged her in...


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## Memnoch3434

Man O man now this is some necromancy here. I am truly sorry but I just read through all these forums and I had to share my favorite horror moments.

My first CoC game took place in 1920's Detroit. In that game I was a cop and I ended up at the police station alone. Out of the corner of my eye an 8 year old girl stabs me in the gut with a hook knife. I pulled my gun and blew her head off (without even thinking for a second). Suddenly little Tina's mommy comes around the corner.

Mom: "OH TINA!" *glares at me, holding her daughter's lifeless body* "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?"
ME: *looking for hook knife that is nowhere to be seen* "She came at me with uh...." *begins explaining the story so far*
Mom: *not paying attention still holding the lifeless daughters body in shock, and her even younger son enters the room*

we go to another group and my DM asked me what i was going to do. I told him i had no idea what to do now. Just then little billy pulls out his hook knife and sticks me in the leg. The mom disappears and now its just me, the first girls corpse and the little boy. I blew his head off too. The cop that finds me (another PC) and i run for the hospitial after we hear more laughter from down the hallway.

Of course at the hospitial we got attacked by some slug creatures in our beds  after surgery. Of course I did the only logical thing finding a hook knife as the only weapon around, I beat my slugs to death with a bedpan. 

Since My DM was a nurse he always talked about getting me a +3 bedpan of bravery (a bedpan with the words +3 bedpan of bravery engraved on it). Still hasn't tho.

I am sorry for the shameless necromancy but this was the coolest thread I have seen in a while


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## tombshroud

Memnoch3434 said:


> I am sorry for the shameless necromancy but this was the coolest thread I have seen in a while




Oh...don't be sorry for thread necromancy....these things happen...

Been a while but does anyone have special plans for the upcoming Halloween season gaming-wise?


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## RobShanti

For my FATE of the Rings game (set in Tolkien's 2nd Age), I have lately been using TSR's old "Keep on the Borderlands" module, with the kingdom of Carn Dum (what Angmar was called before it was Angmar) and the Witch-King (still a Man at this point) in place of the eponymous keep and its Castellan.  I've been waiting for my players to figure it out...they haven't yet.

Anyway, they recently visited the Caves of Chaos (I called them the Caverns of Darkness...a thin veil, but the players still didn't figure it out) and they fought the goblins and hobgoblins, etc.  Anyway, the floor of one goblin lair collapsed, and the party fell into the depths of Angband, or at least what's left of the easternmost tunnels that didn't fall into the sea when Beleriand sank.

And just like in Caves of Chaos, the big bad in Angband (for now) is an evil priest and his three acolytes, rendered in my game as an Easterling necromancer who gets his powers from worshiping Sauron.  His three acolytes are his three sons.  

The PCs got embroiled in the conflict among the Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins and other denizens of the caverns of Angband (as in the Keep on the Borderlands module), and eventually subdued the big dog, the Orc king Boldog.  But he was treacherous...they asked him where they could get some water, and he led them to a pool in which lived a Watcher in the Water that dragged them down a submerged tunnel into a vast underground saltwater sea (an extension of the Belegaer).  They managed to slay the Watcher, but almost drowned.

That's when the game became more influenced by the short story "Necromancy in Naat" by Clark Ashton Smith.  This is where it got "really creepy" as the players described it.  One of the PCs, an Elf who was drowning, got rescued by her son...who had died a thousand years ago in the fall of Gondolin.  He was a wight, and he dragged her to shore and led them into a dark castle in which resided many wights, ghosts and, finally, the necromancer and his three sons.

The necromancer invited them to dine, and the PCs sat around the table with the necromancer and his three sons, served by wights.  One of the sons was a mummy who just sat there, almost immobile.  He just turned his head every once in a while, but otherwise, never spoke or did anything.

The necromancer's wight servants escorted a savage cannibal to the table, and he sat and dined and drank with everyone...until the necromancer summoned a 4' long black mink that came out of a hole in the floor and killed the cannibal and drank his blood.  The necromancer seemed to be in a state of euphoria as the mink did this.  (The mink is the necromancer's familiar, so he was essentially vicariously feeding on the cannibal's blood.)  

The PCs were treated as guests, but I kept describing the dark castle and the dark shore it was on as being really oppressively silent and isolated.  Since they were underground, there were no stars, and the air was fetid and steaming.  They languished there as guests for days, with the necromancers cloistered away doing their respective studies.  The PCs felt like they were prisoners there even though they were permitted to freely roam.  There was just nowhere for them to go.

I think what they found particularly creepy was the constant description of the castle and shoreline, and my impersonation of the mummy son.


----------



## Grumpy RPG Reviews

A single use of those spider monsters from Ravenloft that looked like human heads. Think the severed head "thing" in Carpenter's _The Thing_. The Ravenloft take on them was just larger spiders that decapitated people, inserted themselves into the neck, transformed their abdomens to look like the severed head and then animated the body. At the most disturbing moment possible the spider with drew its body from the corpse and attacks other people, while its abdomen still looked like a head.

Good times, good times...


----------



## RobShanti

WHEW.  Read through this entire thread.  And aside from anything involving children, here is what I found interesting in the thread, for those who don't want to spend the time reading it from beginning to end:

*HOW TO BE CREEPY:*

*Inversion*:  take something that is otherwise cute and associated with purity, and turn it on its head.

*Mystification of the Mundane*:  take a commonplace event or item, and attach a strange event to it to make players search for meaning (e.g.: the party finds an old maypole, streaked with corrosion. As they approach it, the sky grows darker and the wind catches in the tattered banners.)

*Reversion*:  erode feelings of control by undoing what the players have done (e.g.: the party has found an old dagger on an altar, and pick it up. The next time they look back at the altar, the dagger is still there, the altar undisturbed).

*Progression*:  build a sense of foreboding (e.g.: an old, faded tapestry hangs on a wall. In the torchlight, it appears normal, but when viewed from shadowy illumination, faint traces of silver can be seen. By dimming the lights, the players can see these silver lines growing brighter and sharper. The process is reversed once light is applied, but starts up again when darkness falls. If they watch it in the darkness, the lines shift and flow, forming an archway - and a figure seems to loom within, head bowed in shadow. The figure slowly looks up).

*Communication*: cryptic messages, especially connected with the unknown (e.g.: a locked door in the back wall of an old, abandoned cellar is made of warped wood, and covered with flaking paint. As the party works to open it, the pain slowly flakes away, revealing a scrawled word: "No". Will the party still try to open the door?)

*Omni-sensory Perception*:  Use all the senses, half heard voices, fleeting images, the smell of flowers wafting, the smell of deep earth and rain on stone. A wall slick with fat. Use their associations, and turn those associations around.


*Some very creepy elements to add into your games:*
*(or "The Random Creep Table")*

 1.  spewing, wriggling maggots (or giant, hairy maggots, the size of small ponies, indifferent to the PCs)
 2.  strange, ubiquitous buzzing of flies
 3.  strange-looking bag with splotches on it, the skin of human-being with all the stuffing sucked out except for desiccated bones & organs
 4.  glimpse in the mirror of a grayish humanoid form leaning over PCs even though nobody could see it, and caressing the back of one PC's neck with a tentacle.  It disappears from the mirror as soon as PC raises the alarm
 5.  invisible, intangible webs, which were moving very gently in a non-existent breeze
 6.  victims turned into wights while still alive (still had a soul and still aware of what's going on)
 7.  a vaguely humanoid mannequin made of stitched together flayed human faces and filled to stuffing with maggots; if hit with a slashing attack, it spews maggots on PCs from the wound, which burrow into their flesh; it can also grapple one target and vomit maggots in this face and eating him alive
 8.  tower bell starts ringing, causing the PCs' vision to blur and sense of hearing to distort; they eventually black out for a moment from the vertigo and see everyone around them as corpses
 9.  vision/dream of an "operation" on a homeless beggar in which his torso was cut open; a live, mangy, squirming rat was placed inside and sewn up with ragged leather stitches.  Later, swarms of rats erupt from the pipes all around them
10.  a black longsword with leering daemonic faces on it that seem to shift and mouth obscenities out of the corner of the PCs eyes (anyone who picks it up hears those obscenities in his mind as blasphemous voices that attack Resolve at +3 every round he holds the sword, and feels the sword biting his hands, slicking them with blood
11.  touch an evil altar & receive visions of death, oblivion, and writhing tentacles, but the PC kinda likes it and feels that he might want to touch the altar again
12.  dozens of chains hanging from the ceiling and softly swaying and chiming in the breeze, moonlight coming in through the broken windows, dark stains on the floor beneath the chains, an eerie silence except for the clinking
13.  crates of black bone, pulsating with scarabs picking them clean
14.  harvesting mushrooms that bleed
15.  occasional sounds of voices, footfalls, drafts, feeling like someone watching you, and light tugs on clothing that no discernible thing had caused
16.  worm spies
17.  human-faced grubs
18.  the ceiling writhes: bats! (or fledgling vampires?)
19.  disembodied heart on an operating table...it starts to beat!
20.  paintings that look like black swirls that bulge like something is trying to break out
21.  phantom hands reach out and touch the PCs at random intervals as they walk down a hall
22.  every time PCs encounter a dead body, a small black beetle appears out of the corner of the eye and scurries away in a few seconds, so they can't catch it (then have it appear when they go to a place of safety)
23.  fog that seems to make "shapes" that only one PC sees before it disappears
24.  A fleshy bottle, somewhat hairy, and no stopper – the neck is held shut with a sphincter and by stroking the bottom of the bottle gently, the sphincter opens
25.   decapitated head sprouts legs and walks away
26.  shadows not in synch with the movements of their caster
27. any torch, flame, candle, fire's shadows always showed to be blowing away from a character no matter which way the wind was blowing (if any)
28. Those who use Detect Evil pick the target up as 'flickering' evil and not evil, if they make a rather high Listen (or Notice, depending on the game) they will realize that the flicker is in time with their own heart beats.... Those with Detect Good would notice the exact same thing
29.  a mirror that shows what the viewer will look like at the time of death (e.g.: "your reflection looks much like your normal reflection... only you're missing your eyes and your hair is slightly longer")
30.  a tiny, animated rag doll stands staring at you with little dead black eyes (the PCs follow it into a ruined bedroom, where it lays down on an old bed next to the remains of a long-dead child, and go forever still
31.  a town full of petrified (literally) people, or a town so recently deserted that cups of coffee are still steaming
32.  anything with an alien look that moves slowly and languidly, an uncaring, drifting, unthinking danger drifting along with no set course (think ghost jellyfish)


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## RobShanti

WOW!  This thread really works!  I ran a FATE game set in Tolkien's Second Age, where the PCs found themselves in the halls of a necromancer in the remains of Angband.  I used as many of these suggestions as possible, and they said (their words), that "This was the creepiest session you've ever run."  NICE.

The elements I used are boldfaced below:



RobShanti said:


> 1. * spewing, wriggling maggots* (or giant, hairy maggots, the size of small ponies, indifferent to the PCs)
> 2.  strange, ubiquitous buzzing of flies
> 3.  *strange-looking bag with splotches on it, the skin of human-being with all the stuffing sucked out except for desiccated bones & organs*
> 4.  *glimpse in the mirror of a grayish humanoid form leaning over PCs even though nobody could see it, and caressing the back of one PC's neck with a tentacle.  It disappears from the mirror as soon as PC raises the alarm*
> 5.  invisible, intangible webs, which were moving very gently in a non-existent breeze
> 6.  victims turned into wights while still alive (still had a soul and still aware of what's going on)
> 7.  a vaguely humanoid mannequin made of stitched together flayed human faces and filled to stuffing with maggots; if hit with a slashing attack, it spews maggots on PCs from the wound, which burrow into their flesh; it can also grapple one target and vomit maggots in this face and eating him alive
> 8.  tower bell starts ringing, causing the PCs' vision to blur and sense of hearing to distort; they eventually black out for a moment from the vertigo and see everyone around them as corpses
> 9.  *vision/dream of an "operation" on a homeless beggar in which his torso was cut open; a live, mangy, squirming rat was placed inside and sewn up with ragged leather stitches.  Later, swarms of rats erupt from the pipes all around them*
> 10.  a black longsword with leering daemonic faces on it that seem to shift and mouth obscenities out of the corner of the PCs eyes (anyone who picks it up hears those obscenities in his mind as blasphemous voices that attack Resolve at +3 every round he holds the sword, and feels the sword biting his hands, slicking them with blood
> 11.  touch an evil altar & receive visions of death, oblivion, and writhing tentacles, but the PC kinda likes it and feels that he might want to touch the altar again
> 12.  dozens of chains hanging from the ceiling and softly swaying and chiming in the breeze, moonlight coming in through the broken windows, dark stains on the floor beneath the chains, an eerie silence except for the clinking
> 13.  crates of black bone, pulsating with scarabs picking them clean
> 14.  harvesting mushrooms that bleed
> 15.  *occasional sounds of voices, footfalls, drafts, feeling like someone watching you, and light tugs on clothing that no discernible thing had caused*
> 16.  *worm spies*
> 17.  *human-faced grubs*
> 18.  *the ceiling writhes: bats! (or fledgling vampires?)*
> 19.  disembodied heart on an operating table...it starts to beat!
> 20.  *paintings that look like black swirls that bulge like something is trying to break out*
> 21.  phantom hands reach out and touch the PCs at random intervals as they walk down a hall
> 22.  *every time PCs encounter a dead body, a small black beetle appears out of the corner of the eye and scurries away in a few seconds, so they can't catch it (then have it appear when they go to a place of safety)*
> 23.  *fog that seems to make "shapes" that only one PC sees before it disappears*
> 24.  A fleshy bottle, somewhat hairy, and no stopper – the neck is held shut with a sphincter and by stroking the bottom of the bottle gently, the sphincter opens
> 25.   decapitated head sprouts legs and walks away
> 26.  *shadows not in synch with the movements of their caster*...


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## tombshroud

Any chance of getting this thread up and active again???


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## Dioltach

Sure, I'll add mine. I once had my characters enter a dungeon with red walls. I kept stressing the red, in every scene. "The walls are still red. The corridor stretches for about 15 feet. The walls are red. Like blood. Red. Dead. There's a door at the end of the corridor. It isn't red. Red. Red." Occasionally I'd interrupt one of the players to say, "The whole place is still red." It drove them absolutely crazy.


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## tombshroud

I like that - just keep mentioning little details over and over again would drive my player's crazy!  
Something I did recently - in the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure I made the gnoll vampire Tekeli-li a major adversary to the party.  It would stalk them and occasionally attack - I actually downloaded some hyena sound bites with their creepy laugh/cry sounds and would play them randomly at times just to unnerve my players - very effective.


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## Swedish Chef

I was running Descent to Avernus on Roll20. I found some free audio clips. One was just a sort of soft susurrous of whispering noises that I had playing when they first loaded the city map in Avernus. Freaked a couple of the players out, as they could _just_ hear it coming out of their speakers/headphones.

Then, when they were exploring some caverns and expecting ambushes, I played random animal noises. If you've never heard a live hyena, silverback gorilla or camel making noises, they are freaky! 

My players loved it!


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## Dioltach

Hmm, if you're online, you could just play a constant track of brown noise ...


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