Creepy Game... [Archive] - Wizards Community

Creepy Game... [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Cpt. Reed
08-16-07, 11:17 PM Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, but I need some help for an upcoming game that’s next week. I need some help adding a creepy edge to the game. It’s going to be a one shot 5lv. game. I want it to be creepy but not to much. I'm not wanting it to be like the Book of Vile Darkness or anything. I was thinking about having it take place in a dark graveyard after one of the townsfolk asks them to go rescue one of his children. I think the dungeon should be down in a tomb, you could get their by a hole in the graveyard. Yeah I know this is kind of a Dnd staple. I think the villain would be a vampire spawn and a necromancer, just a thought though. Input would be nice. I know there's a creepy monster thread going on in the monster thread, and that will be of some help. Thanks for any advice. :D
evilthorne
08-17-07, 09:30 AM Have them come into an abandoned town. and have them solve the mystery of where everybody was. You could have them go to the graveyard and find out that a huge ghoul colony has captured and killed the entire town. Then have the PC's fight the ghouls. Which is more EPL then a vampire spawn.

I ran a game where the PC's showed up into a town that was not on the map. The Paladin was immediatly showing strange phenominon such as smoke pouring off of him and his nose bleeding. The town was mostly deserted save for a few townsfolk who would not talk to the PC's. They met the mayor and his band of cronys who summed up the party and sent them off to the cemetary where they fought the gravekeeper, a strange man with a very large axe that when he delivered a special attack and missed he would hit the ground and blood would spray out. (this really scared the PC's) They ended off trying to leave town but getting lost and finding an old run down church. Several non threating spectral encounters later they stumble upon 100 townsfolk dead on the floor of the church. In really bad decay perhaps a year or more old. They then started to have strange dreams and yada yada yada. It was a big adventure and kept the party scared...really scared. When they came back to town everybody was dead and houses were burning. They dragged all the corpses togethere in several piles and started burning them. But it was close to six pm so the party went into hiding except the paladin who wanted to scout out the area. I told him at exatly six pm all of the funeral pyres immediatly go out.:evillaugh you should have seen him high tail it out of there. the party was so afraid to go out at night that they always hid in an old building. Not for fear of big baddies but for fear of the unknown. Don't let them know anything is the key to being scary.
Malraux
08-17-07, 05:50 PM Let's see, Heroes of Horror has a monster called a Gray Jester. It's a CR 4 monster itself, but its big deal is that it sucks the joy out of creatures which then become minions to the Jester.

So one of the encounters could be a child (perhaps even the one that they are searching for) attacks the party just outside the tomb of the Jester, but attacks while sobbing uncontrollably.
Cpt. Reed
08-18-07, 07:22 PM Might be interesting. I think I might use both ideas. He might be the mini boss though, the plot to pull them in... :evillaugh... ummm... :D
omnicrondelicious
08-19-07, 08:02 PM Hey hey. Creepiness is one of my favorite things to inject in my games. I find the best ways to make my players unnerved are:

1. sounds/music: if you own Neverwinter Nights, copy the music files and especially the ambient sound files. They are excellent and you can make a genuinely spooky sound effects playlist to loop in the background as needed.

2. harmless but flavorful modifications to RAW: axes spraying blood when they strike the ground, funeral pyres going out at 6pm sharp - those are two really good examples (nice work evilthorne!) of something which mechanically does not exist in the game, but adds a lot of flavor and their introduction doesn't do any harm.

Similarly, I've had talking corpses dangling from ropes off a tree, asking to be properly buried (and the undead residents of the nearby graveyard not being happy about sharing their resting place with criminals - an idea cribbed from a Hellboy comic). Then there was the blind hag who could at will create a third eye on her ogre minions' forehead from which she could see, but was excruciatingly painful for the ogre.

3. insanity: nothing creeps out players more than really disturbed people. And necromancers are generally disturbing. Play up the fetish with death, or be obsessive compulsive, or utterly emotionally detached, or whatnot. I had a little boy who was possessed (voluntarily, he was a mean little p****) keep the corpse of his 10yr old "girlfriend" magically preserved in his lair, sitting at a table in a pretty dress. In a matter-of-fact offhand way, the boy told the party that "they say when I'm stronger she'll play with me again".

4. timing: dramatic timing. the girl's back was to the door and wasn't until the party walked around and saw her from the front did they realize she was dead. right then, the possessed boy spoke. very creepy.

However, resist the temptation to force dramatic timing - players don't like feeling railroaded. The boy succeeded his Hide check fair-and-square. Just try and make many opportunities for dramatic moments - some of them will succeed.

cheers,
.o.
rizzom
08-19-07, 10:20 PM Nice stuff in this thread -- I'll have to use it next time I run a "creepy" module.

To echo some of the other folks, the fear of the unknown is just great for getting people into the "creepy" mood.

One suggestion is to have the party find evidence of a struggle -- broken furniture, bloody handprints, drag marks but no bodies.

Then feed them some knowledge rolls (From the drag marks whatever it was must have been very strong, etc...) which helps to enhance the effect.

Things that make most people uncomfortable (i.e. children being used as puppets/hurt/undead, desecrated holy symbols, etc...) very much help with the effect.

Music and/or visual cues can really enhance this -- sometimes even a simple "Google" image search can get you just the right image to show at the right time.

Lighting can also help -- tough in a convention but much easier at home. Start with full lighting or daylight and then move into either candlelight or dimmer lighting. That has freaked out many a gaming group....

I had one game where we played by flashlight -- a little "light" on the rolling/looking up rules but very creepy.

Good luck and let us all know how it works out.

Mike
Cpt. Reed
08-20-07, 12:18 PM Thanks for all the input, it really helps. Right now I am mapping out the main lair in the graveyard where they must go. That seems to be the tough part, coming up with everything to put into it. :D Thanks.
Ascordigan
08-20-07, 01:28 PM A thing you could do, which could make everything really creepy is to wait until the party rests, then take them out one by one and tell them about the nightmare they're having. It's a nice trick of making things unknown even among the players themselves, and can really spook everyone out, especially if you combine it with some of evilthornes suggestions :)
evilthorne
08-21-07, 01:39 AM In that same adventure I used a lot of visions and dreams to help move the story along. They had visions of someone riding into town on a stormy night. From their perspective they were looking out of the 1st person view. But when the person finally made it to town center, the view goes into the local tavern where you can see it order something from the barkeep. But then the view changes to someone adding poision to the drink and serving it to them. The first person view drinks but then everything gets blurry. The view changes to a third person This way they could see and relate to the person who was actually a female paladin. In the vision she seems to be alert and looking around in different directions. She draws her sword but the PC's can't see why. Then 9 claoked forms come into the perspective. A fight starts but they are just too many for her she stumbles and her reactions are slurred. Even though she seems to be quite the proficent warrior. The claoked figures take her down but do not kill her. The vision ends with them dragging the body off somewhere into the town.

I also had them go to a burned down house where the sounds of children could be heard playing during the day but at night all was silent until they went onto the property:OMG!
Cpt. Reed
08-21-07, 01:51 PM I'm trying to get it all together now. I know of some encounters I want to throw in but I am having one heck of a time mapping it all out.
So far the encounter list includes-
A couple major encounters with ghouls
An undead Minotaur (Either Skeleton or Zombie, yet to decide)
The Vampire Spawn who is the evil master mind
The Grey Jester and his minions
A ton of Bloodbloaters and Spider Swarms
And a modified Carrion Crawler (from Dungeonscape)
(Also, I think I might throw in the graveyard guy with the axe, I like the idea.)
I'm probably going to add more to this

As far as rooms/traps go, all I have now is a room with three shadow doors (from Dungeonscape) and some sort of water puzzle portcullis (kind of reminiscent of the legend of Zelda water temple). One of the three shadow doors lead off to a pit trap, another to a room full of ghouls waiting on whoever happens to walk in... and then theirs the correct path...

As far as what you were talking about having bloody hand prints and signs of struggles, I'm going to throw those in. Also, I plan on making use of the some of the death scenes from Dungeon issue #137. :)

Well how does it all sound, have I said too much? :confused:
evilthorne
08-22-07, 11:53 AM For a truly scary game you need more encounters with freaky non combat stuff happening then combat encounters with freaky stuff.

I had my party rest in a house waiting for one of the party members to heal up the PC on watch duty noticed a form hiding out in the woods just 40 feet form the house. It was hard to make out the form but it seemed to glow slightly. When they went out to investigate it was gone. Next day they see the form again but this time it's closer and they can make out that it is ghostly and disturbed. and evil and malicious gleam in it's eyes. It seems to watch the PC's in it's one hand it holds a spectral knife. When they go out it's gone again. They never stayed there again.

But if they had, everynight that they stayed there it would get closer until it tried to sneak into the house and kill someone. I also had the effect that it was very hard to stay awake at night. Totally freaked them out.

There was also a room found in an old warehouse with boxes and boxes of the villagers belongings. When they sorted through it they found a stuffed bear. It than began walking around and interacting with the PC's it led them to a house with a hidden basement. I then used the taroka cards from the forbidden lore box set and laid out a "reading" That had been done years and years before. Really creeped the PC's out.
Jeweler
08-22-07, 03:34 PM I very much like the idea of a non-combat encounter that can still harm you in a very serious way. At some point I want to run a horror campaign, a fantasy zombie apocalypse game : ). It would be humorous metagame wise but should be absolutely scary ingame wise. Thats the way I want it to be, my group will remember humor over horror but I prefer both.

Do you have any suggestion Evilthorne for a game like that? You seem to be an expert on what to do with horror : )
evilthorne
08-23-07, 01:35 PM I am no expert at all. I have ran games that I thought would be scary as hell and they flopped.

Biggest tip is keep the party low level. They will be more apt to have a survival insticint instead of just blasting the problem.

Also as I said before do things that the party is powerless against. Like smoking holy characters. Druids who feel like they are walking on hot ashes when they enter a section of desecrated forest. Holy symbols that bleed or melt. You want to describe every gorey detail. So that the PC's can imagine it. If the game is too funny it brakes down right away and the creep factor is gone. I suggest starting a party out at 1st level and taking it from there. Avoid lots of combat encounters, instead allow the PCs to try and escape the fight with the mob of Zombies to just end up in a worse place. Some what like the resident evil games.

The "gothika" walk is always a nice touch as well. The disjointed walk of a corpse that seems to speed up then slow down.
Cpt. Reed
08-24-07, 05:17 PM Today is the day, I will let you guys know how it went on Saturday... wish me luck...
evilthorne
08-25-07, 11:41 AM Good luck, take a brief description than add on to it with lots of hand movements and more details that you think up on the spot. Hand movement equates to the PC's listening...which as you know does not happen very often.:D
Cpt. Reed
08-26-07, 12:07 PM Sorry, I didn't get around to posting sooner, sleeping the game off. I was kind of disappointed with the game session. We were going to do another DM's game first and then do mine, but by the time I would have had my turn, we were all acting silly and slap-happy, and we were running out of time. I didn't get to do it though, I guess that will give me some time to look over it and refine it... oh well, thanks everyone who helped, sorry if you wanted a better answer though. :weep:
Malraux
08-26-07, 01:20 PM The most important lesson of DMing (especially 3.5). Things will always take longer than you expect.
Arriurra
08-27-07, 09:38 PM wow there are alot of great Ideas round this one. Now I want to run a creepy game.

Ive done it before and my players said it was a fun and very creepy game. one thing ive found is that if it involves children it not only triggers the heroes but it also digs down mentally for the players bringing back childhood fears. The Dark, The Unknown, and Lonliness is always a good factor. Split up the party have them all in diffrent parts dealing with their own fear. I shall quote "UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL"
Good Luck on your next session. I think ill be working on my own too.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Cpt. Reed 08-16-07, 11:17 PM	Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, but I need some help for an upcoming game that’s next week. I need some help adding a creepy edge to the game. It’s going to be a one shot 5lv. game. I want it to be creepy but not to much. I'm not wanting it to be like the Book of Vile Darkness or anything. I was thinking about having it take place in a dark graveyard after one of the townsfolk asks them to go rescue one of his children. I think the dungeon should be down in a tomb, you could get their by a hole in the graveyard. Yeah I know this is kind of a Dnd staple. I think the villain would be a vampire spawn and a necromancer, just a thought though. Input would be nice. I know there's a creepy monster thread going on in the monster thread, and that will be of some help. Thanks for any advice. :D
evilthorne 08-17-07, 09:30 AM	Have them come into an abandoned town. and have them solve the mystery of where everybody was. You could have them go to the graveyard and find out that a huge ghoul colony has captured and killed the entire town. Then have the PC's fight the ghouls. Which is more EPL then a vampire spawn. I ran a game where the PC's showed up into a town that was not on the map. The Paladin was immediatly showing strange phenominon such as smoke pouring off of him and his nose bleeding. The town was mostly deserted save for a few townsfolk who would not talk to the PC's. They met the mayor and his band of cronys who summed up the party and sent them off to the cemetary where they fought the gravekeeper, a strange man with a very large axe that when he delivered a special attack and missed he would hit the ground and blood would spray out. (this really scared the PC's) They ended off trying to leave town but getting lost and finding an old run down church. Several non threating spectral encounters later they stumble upon 100 townsfolk dead on the floor of the church. In really bad decay perhaps a year or more old. They then started to have strange dreams and yada yada yada. It was a big adventure and kept the party scared...really scared. When they came back to town everybody was dead and houses were burning. They dragged all the corpses togethere in several piles and started burning them. But it was close to six pm so the party went into hiding except the paladin who wanted to scout out the area. I told him at exatly six pm all of the funeral pyres immediatly go out.:evillaugh you should have seen him high tail it out of there. the party was so afraid to go out at night that they always hid in an old building. Not for fear of big baddies but for fear of the unknown. Don't let them know anything is the key to being scary.
Malraux 08-17-07, 05:50 PM	Let's see, Heroes of Horror has a monster called a Gray Jester. It's a CR 4 monster itself, but its big deal is that it sucks the joy out of creatures which then become minions to the Jester. So one of the encounters could be a child (perhaps even the one that they are searching for) attacks the party just outside the tomb of the Jester, but attacks while sobbing uncontrollably.
Cpt. Reed 08-18-07, 07:22 PM	Might be interesting. I think I might use both ideas. He might be the mini boss though, the plot to pull them in... :evillaugh... ummm... :D
omnicrondelicious 08-19-07, 08:02 PM	Hey hey. Creepiness is one of my favorite things to inject in my games. I find the best ways to make my players unnerved are: 1. sounds/music: if you own Neverwinter Nights, copy the music files and especially the ambient sound files. They are excellent and you can make a genuinely spooky sound effects playlist to loop in the background as needed. 2. harmless but flavorful modifications to RAW: axes spraying blood when they strike the ground, funeral pyres going out at 6pm sharp - those are two really good examples (nice work evilthorne!) of something which mechanically does not exist in the game, but adds a lot of flavor and their introduction doesn't do any harm. Similarly, I've had talking corpses dangling from ropes off a tree, asking to be properly buried (and the undead residents of the nearby graveyard not being happy about sharing their resting place with criminals - an idea cribbed from a Hellboy comic). Then there was the blind hag who could at will create a third eye on her ogre minions' forehead from which she could see, but was excruciatingly painful for the ogre. 3. insanity: nothing creeps out players more than really disturbed people. And necromancers are generally disturbing. Play up the fetish with death, or be obsessive compulsive, or utterly emotionally detached, or whatnot. I had a little boy who was possessed (voluntarily, he was a mean little p****) keep the corpse of his 10yr old "girlfriend" magically preserved in his lair, sitting at a table in a pretty dress. In a matter-of-fact offhand way, the boy told the party that "they say when I'm stronger she'll play with me again". 4. timing: dramatic timing. the girl's back was to the door and wasn't until the party walked around and saw her from the front did they realize she was dead. right then, the possessed boy spoke. very creepy. However, resist the temptation to force dramatic timing - players don't like feeling railroaded. The boy succeeded his Hide check fair-and-square. Just try and make many opportunities for dramatic moments - some of them will succeed. cheers, .o.
rizzom 08-19-07, 10:20 PM	Nice stuff in this thread -- I'll have to use it next time I run a "creepy" module. To echo some of the other folks, the fear of the unknown is just great for getting people into the "creepy" mood. One suggestion is to have the party find evidence of a struggle -- broken furniture, bloody handprints, drag marks but no bodies. Then feed them some knowledge rolls (From the drag marks whatever it was must have been very strong, etc...) which helps to enhance the effect. Things that make most people uncomfortable (i.e. children being used as puppets/hurt/undead, desecrated holy symbols, etc...) very much help with the effect. Music and/or visual cues can really enhance this -- sometimes even a simple "Google" image search can get you just the right image to show at the right time. Lighting can also help -- tough in a convention but much easier at home. Start with full lighting or daylight and then move into either candlelight or dimmer lighting. That has freaked out many a gaming group.... I had one game where we played by flashlight -- a little "light" on the rolling/looking up rules but very creepy. Good luck and let us all know how it works out. Mike
Cpt. Reed 08-20-07, 12:18 PM	Thanks for all the input, it really helps. Right now I am mapping out the main lair in the graveyard where they must go. That seems to be the tough part, coming up with everything to put into it. :D Thanks.
Ascordigan 08-20-07, 01:28 PM	A thing you could do, which could make everything really creepy is to wait until the party rests, then take them out one by one and tell them about the nightmare they're having. It's a nice trick of making things unknown even among the players themselves, and can really spook everyone out, especially if you combine it with some of evilthornes suggestions :)
evilthorne 08-21-07, 01:39 AM	In that same adventure I used a lot of visions and dreams to help move the story along. They had visions of someone riding into town on a stormy night. From their perspective they were looking out of the 1st person view. But when the person finally made it to town center, the view goes into the local tavern where you can see it order something from the barkeep. But then the view changes to someone adding poision to the drink and serving it to them. The first person view drinks but then everything gets blurry. The view changes to a third person This way they could see and relate to the person who was actually a female paladin. In the vision she seems to be alert and looking around in different directions. She draws her sword but the PC's can't see why. Then 9 claoked forms come into the perspective. A fight starts but they are just too many for her she stumbles and her reactions are slurred. Even though she seems to be quite the proficent warrior. The claoked figures take her down but do not kill her. The vision ends with them dragging the body off somewhere into the town. I also had them go to a burned down house where the sounds of children could be heard playing during the day but at night all was silent until they went onto the property:OMG!
Cpt. Reed 08-21-07, 01:51 PM	I'm trying to get it all together now. I know of some encounters I want to throw in but I am having one heck of a time mapping it all out. So far the encounter list includes- A couple major encounters with ghouls An undead Minotaur (Either Skeleton or Zombie, yet to decide) The Vampire Spawn who is the evil master mind The Grey Jester and his minions A ton of Bloodbloaters and Spider Swarms And a modified Carrion Crawler (from Dungeonscape) (Also, I think I might throw in the graveyard guy with the axe, I like the idea.) I'm probably going to add more to this As far as rooms/traps go, all I have now is a room with three shadow doors (from Dungeonscape) and some sort of water puzzle portcullis (kind of reminiscent of the legend of Zelda water temple). One of the three shadow doors lead off to a pit trap, another to a room full of ghouls waiting on whoever happens to walk in... and then theirs the correct path... As far as what you were talking about having bloody hand prints and signs of struggles, I'm going to throw those in. Also, I plan on making use of the some of the death scenes from Dungeon issue #137. :) Well how does it all sound, have I said too much? :confused:
evilthorne 08-22-07, 11:53 AM	For a truly scary game you need more encounters with freaky non combat stuff happening then combat encounters with freaky stuff. I had my party rest in a house waiting for one of the party members to heal up the PC on watch duty noticed a form hiding out in the woods just 40 feet form the house. It was hard to make out the form but it seemed to glow slightly. When they went out to investigate it was gone. Next day they see the form again but this time it's closer and they can make out that it is ghostly and disturbed. and evil and malicious gleam in it's eyes. It seems to watch the PC's in it's one hand it holds a spectral knife. When they go out it's gone again. They never stayed there again. But if they had, everynight that they stayed there it would get closer until it tried to sneak into the house and kill someone. I also had the effect that it was very hard to stay awake at night. Totally freaked them out. There was also a room found in an old warehouse with boxes and boxes of the villagers belongings. When they sorted through it they found a stuffed bear. It than began walking around and interacting with the PC's it led them to a house with a hidden basement. I then used the taroka cards from the forbidden lore box set and laid out a "reading" That had been done years and years before. Really creeped the PC's out.
Jeweler 08-22-07, 03:34 PM	I very much like the idea of a non-combat encounter that can still harm you in a very serious way. At some point I want to run a horror campaign, a fantasy zombie apocalypse game : ). It would be humorous metagame wise but should be absolutely scary ingame wise. Thats the way I want it to be, my group will remember humor over horror but I prefer both. Do you have any suggestion Evilthorne for a game like that? You seem to be an expert on what to do with horror : )
evilthorne 08-23-07, 01:35 PM	I am no expert at all. I have ran games that I thought would be scary as hell and they flopped. Biggest tip is keep the party low level. They will be more apt to have a survival insticint instead of just blasting the problem. Also as I said before do things that the party is powerless against. Like smoking holy characters. Druids who feel like they are walking on hot ashes when they enter a section of desecrated forest. Holy symbols that bleed or melt. You want to describe every gorey detail. So that the PC's can imagine it. If the game is too funny it brakes down right away and the creep factor is gone. I suggest starting a party out at 1st level and taking it from there. Avoid lots of combat encounters, instead allow the PCs to try and escape the fight with the mob of Zombies to just end up in a worse place. Some what like the resident evil games. The "gothika" walk is always a nice touch as well. The disjointed walk of a corpse that seems to speed up then slow down.
Cpt. Reed 08-24-07, 05:17 PM	Today is the day, I will let you guys know how it went on Saturday... wish me luck...
evilthorne 08-25-07, 11:41 AM	Good luck, take a brief description than add on to it with lots of hand movements and more details that you think up on the spot. Hand movement equates to the PC's listening...which as you know does not happen very often.:D
Cpt. Reed 08-26-07, 12:07 PM	Sorry, I didn't get around to posting sooner, sleeping the game off. I was kind of disappointed with the game session. We were going to do another DM's game first and then do mine, but by the time I would have had my turn, we were all acting silly and slap-happy, and we were running out of time. I didn't get to do it though, I guess that will give me some time to look over it and refine it... oh well, thanks everyone who helped, sorry if you wanted a better answer though. :weep:
Malraux 08-26-07, 01:20 PM	The most important lesson of DMing (especially 3.5). Things will always take longer than you expect.
Arriurra 08-27-07, 09:38 PM	wow there are alot of great Ideas round this one. Now I want to run a creepy game. Ive done it before and my players said it was a fun and very creepy game. one thing ive found is that if it involves children it not only triggers the heroes but it also digs down mentally for the players bringing back childhood fears. The Dark, The Unknown, and Lonliness is always a good factor. Split up the party have them all in diffrent parts dealing with their own fear. I shall quote "UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL" Good Luck on your next session. I think ill be working on my own too.