Post ideas for horror gaming
Or how to scare your players
>>47479193
>>47479193
>>47479193
Horror, you say?
>>47479193
>>47479426
I ways ask the party how they sleep at night, is anyone lock out, ect ect.
Didn't do anything with it for 4 years and one night I asked for a listen roll from everyone. Didn't tell them what it was for. Their characters were fine, their shit was alright. But every now and then I'll ask for the roll.
It really creeps them out and i m barely doing anything.
>>47479193
SHITLOADS of zombies.
Only about one in six will actually bother with attacking players.
Most zombies are perfectly content to ignore players, reenacting things from their life.Every so often a zombie will beg the players for death.
>>47480094
>>47479548
You monsters
with grotesque purpose
the Orge of the Blackwood,
kills and consumes them
a brood of blackwood,
murdered by local hunters,
mother's fury roused
>>47481675
missing picture is here
came across a fae
warned me of the coming storm
blackwood is angry
>>47481799
That looks like some form of moose, brutally and cruelly ripped apart by that monstrosity
Motherfucking bump
Obligatory post for any horror thread: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12130366/
>>47479193 (OP)
For one quest in a Call of Cthulhu campaign (was Delta Green), I had the investigators trying to track down an investigator that had gone missing on an assignment. They cornered his position to an old farm-house isolated from a small town, and approached it during the night time. They decided to take a closer look after realizing things didn't seem right. They found the husband babbling in the kitchen, who was of no help, and searched the house up and down until finding out about the cellar entrance. They opened it up and heard the investigator (he worked in the same sector as the players in their backgrounds, so he would've been one of the people they met on a day-to-day basis) dryly calling for help deeper down. They head down deep into the basement and find that there's a tunnel that was carved out that lead much further down, which they cautiously followed with the "help me"'s getting louder until they found a glowing room where they found the investigator, flayed alive and aligned on the wall with all his separate body-parts nailed to it as if he was being dissected, with a strange alien machine powering his head and causing him to repeat the line over and over again.
Needless to say they were creeped out and wanted to leave ASAP
>>47483411
More
>>47484296
Afterwards, when they decided to retreat, they heard a loud, quaking, moan shake the foundation of the farm house, and decided it was the best time to GTFO.
They looked for the husband, grabbed him, and tried to take him out, making it out about 20 feet from the house until they saw that wife of the farmer ontop of the house, crawling on it like a spider who then twisted her head around to get a view at the party and leapt maybe 30 feet right into the fray.
One player tried to fight her and used a machete to attack her, and split her down the middle from the head to about the mid-chest and thought he had killed her, until he saw teeth grow out from the split and then slashed him, grabbed him, and dragged him back into the house.
They zip-tied the husband and left him in their car outside and went back in to get their partner. They heard jumbling up stairs so they went up after him. They searched carefully, finding an empty guest room, an empty kids room, and then opened the door to the parents room, seeing the blackened, rotted, bald head of a young child atop a bloated mound of flesh, under which seemed to be leaking tentacle growth that was covering the room. They saw the "thing" turn its head and eye the investigators with the only eye it had, watching them carefully as they slowly backed out of the room, noticing the investigator wrapped in the tentacle mess and the "wife" walking over to and fondling the mass that was her "child". They went outside to the car to see what they had and realized they had about 2 lb's of thermite and a couple explosive charges, and decided that it would be best to topple the farmhouse ontop of the creature, but also needed to free their investigator partner, so they came up with a plan that one would distract the creature in the room, while the other prepared the explosives. Charges at the base and they would use the thermite to burn a hole from the attic down ontop of the creature.
(PART1)
>>47479193
When I pitch this campaign, it's sure to scare the hell out of SOMEONE.No magic, and no magic items.
Mundane only/
>>47484444
What basically ensued afterward was a cat and mouse game in the attic where the one investigator was being stalked by the wife because the "child", as the investigator tasked with distracting it, soon found out that it was telepathic, and had discovered part of their plan and sent the wife to go nab the investigator setting up the explosives. In the mean time the investigator distracting the monster was assaulted with tons of ability checks, which he passed with flying colors and in the end, the wife was melted after the one investigator desperately used a UV light to try and blind her, which had a critical effect (weak against ultra-violet rays), and was able to set off the thermite before the explosives went off, freed their partner, and then spent 2 months in quarantine after they got back.
The analysis on the husband revealed that there was a crashed object that landed in his farm field which turned out to be a malfunctioned space craft that the husbands child had discovered and interacted with, causing lesions to grow, the child to become bed-ridden, and then infecting the wife.
The investigator sent out was part of recon to try and find out what had crashed and if there had been a contagion released, and when he discovered the fate of the child, he was going to call it in, but, well, they found out why he never returned.
>>47483411
>>47484444
>>47484484
This is a fucking cool idea, holy shit
Do you have more material
>>47484469
What are you going to do when they fall asleep at the table?
Whack them over the back of the head with a paper fan?
>>47485491
Yes, this is the best idea
>>47485491
Well, everyone's going to die super quickly so they may as get brained
>if you die in the game, you die in real life
>>47488189
I love it.
>Bust out (and kidnap) a handful of death row inmates
>take them to secluded place, drugged
>secure to chairs around gaming table with chains, chairs bolted to ground
>pick rules light system, explain to them how it will be played
>break character? break fingers. run out of fingers? break toes.
>die in the game, die for real. Last survivor gets set free
>proceed to have the most epic and twisted horror game
>the moment a character dies, shoot the player, leave them at the table with the others and continue
>when the last one is left, release him and let him go
>as soon as he steps out the door and gets his first breath of freedom in what was probably a very long time, shoot him in the back of the head too
>good ending, play again
>>47484542
I've got a few more, but it's been a long time since I've played COC (like, 2 or 3 years).
I remember a few things, like this one time the investigators took their friend to a hospital after surviving an attack from a shadow, so to make things more exciting, I had them all "accidentally" fall asleep while they were keeping their friend company. One of them woke up and looked around, everything seemed a bit normal, but he said he couldn't help but have an eerie feeling so he went to check the door, which was locked.
He woke the others and he then crawled into one of the vents to try get into the halls or whatever, and found a little girl who was a patient hiding in the vents. He asked her what she was doing and she told him to be really quiet, and he was like "what? why?" and she says "the monsters will hear us!"
He initially thought it was just her being a scared kid at night, that sort of thing, and made a listen check, only to hear very slight guttural sniffs coming from the hallway, where there was a vent cover that showed a decent view of the hallway. He peeked out but it was too dark, until I made a flash of lightning illuminate the hallway, which for a moment revealed hunched over figures with leathery skin, wearing scraps of clothing and had pointed ears. He was pretty freaked out and decided it would be best to be loud as hell and shout to his party from within the vents (he forgot to crawl back and just said "I tell them what I see") which drew their attention, and made him even more panicked.
After he got out of the vents, the other team members were already in the process of making a rope-lader out of the bed sheets and heard the ghouls getting closer and closer so they searched the room, found rubbing alchohol, and used it as a Molotov cocktail to try and hold them off, not realizing this is the 1920's and proceeded to set the entire hospital ablaze.
(PART 1)
>>47488928
>not having someone dress up at the monster to scare the last player
>>47489480
They got their wounded friend out of the hospital, but not before dropping him on his head and sending him into a coma, meanwhile the one investigator felt compelled to rescue the little girl he had found in the vents, even though he had absolutely no reason to, and got her to safety, losing his gun in the process after shooting one ghoul point blank in the face and killing it, and proceeding to have it swiped from his hand by another.
Overall, I had planned to make them be a "one time incident" which they could come back to, only to discover that it was the doctors who were feeding dead patients to ghouls which they kept in the basement, but, well, things quickly escalated.
(PART 2)
Yea, I need to do some more Call of Cthulhu some time.
Bring a gun to the table.
>>47489497
Even better!and THEN shoot them, right?
>Use the familiar, and then tweak it in an extremely unpleasant direction
>Set rules, especially about safety, and then break them, once, suddenly. Allow them to return to normal afterwards. Never ever break the same rule twice.
>Use darkness to your advantage. Not just OOO IT'S A DARKENED HALLOWAY WHATEVER WILL YOU DO MY PLAYERS but, for instance, have lights shut off suddenly when it's important for them to be on. Have you played VtM: Bloodlines? Have you played the hotel level? If not, get that game, get the patches, and then play that part in particular. Take notes on whats and hows.
>Try to use unusual horror items. A horror item is a scary mask, or a doll, or a torture device.
>Have your players care about the situation they're in
>>47479426
While you may have supreme taste and be my nigga, Hetza's soldier girls are not horrific. Something more in the vein of his Nechronica work like so is probably closer.
>>47489480
Since it looks like you are a good GM I got a question. How do you handle investigation part? I always struggle with that.
>>47491294
To start things out, just think of what traces are left behind by whatever it is they're searching for. If they're investigating a house, give small details, and never explain it, just say, you found "x" and they can roll further to investigate the item in particular, the higher they roll the more specific they get, while they can use occult skills/lore knowledge etc to determine if its paranormal or not etc.
Can you give me an example?
>>47489497
Oh shit
>>47482000
>>47481824
>>47481799
>>47481675
I liked these.
I'd like to write some kind of short stories, or make the players be investigators but not in a modern setting. An ancient or medieval one would be best I think
>>47491294
>>47493136
More advice needed
>>47494933
Why's that?
>>47479193
What the fuck is that
>>47495468
Maybe because we're pretty fucking used to what's creepy for us right now. Lately it's all about cosmic horrors and Cthulhu imitations. Poor ones also. And madness and all that.
I just want an ogre that lives in the wood and fucking eats people. A cave with primitive cannibals that kidnap merchants on different roads and eat them alive.
Stuff like that.
>>47496201
You can still use something like that in the modern day though, the modem woods are still primeval and fucking terrifying
Best horror-fantasy adventure module ever.
>>47497441
How's that?
>>47497441
When modules say to count time, for instance at the bottom of page 25 on this one, do they mean in-universe time or real life time?
>>47497706
>125x74
>>47498665
If you're running a proper horror game, they should be quite close.
>>47479193
I managed to spook the fuck out of my players in one very memorable session.
One of my players has a history filled with unintended calamities due to experiments. One torched an entire town. However in this particular village, he had a moment of humanity and saved the life of a wretched little homeless girl with a cleft lip. Never saw her again.
Until we started the second campaign, almost ten years later. The same girl turned out to be a member of an antediluvian sect of primitive barbarians, and had fixated on her savior as a de facto father. She hunted down every PC and extracted as much info as she could. I always made sure to keep her physical description hobo-ey, but I also always made sure to describe her as smelling like a butcher shop, or a charnel house, or a sun-baked battlefield. Some of the PCs caught on that she had insane, cannibalistic/collectivist intentions, so some fought her. She was extremely high leveled, a runescarred barbarian as well. She nearly killed one of the PCs and maimed several others before disappearing.
For almost a year, she did not return.
>>47500311
The party ended up being captured by the elvish mob and held up in a warehouse outside of town while transport showed up to ship them for ransom. Throughout this opening, I private messaged those who had suffered wounds from her, telling them that the wounds were starting to ache and throb painfully, and mentioned the smells once more. The PC who had saved the girl wasn't sure what the hell was going on, but the rest of the party was slowly losing their shit as they heard, from the lower floors, mobsters being offed by weird noises.
And then I had the entire gang of what basically amounts to barbarian hill people of various powerful prestige classes explode into the room from all angles (out of the floorboards, through the windows, busting down doors) and start brutally slaughtering the mobsters who were threatening her "father."
Even then, i barely described what they looked like, instead describing their powers. For example, one was basically a burning corpse who pulled mobsters through the floorboards like that crab went through the pipe crack. Because the party had antimagic manacles on, they were helpless to fight. So they spent the rest of the session desperately evading the predators that were coming for them in a dark warehouse filled with horrificly dying elves.
Youtube was a big help, particularly when i used one of the hunting barbarians who was a
Siren/Wild Runner. Blast this clip on full volume... your players will feel it in their bones if you've set it up right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gL4XqkQOFU
>>47500223
What the goddamn fuck?
>>47497441
What makes is it about it that makes it good or scary?
>>47479193
Learn from Japanese horror (not anime) and don't be afraid of trying new things.
>>47484444
Fkin awesome dude. Also nice quads
>>47497706
>>47479193
scare players by bringing them into contact with actual women.
>>47506212
>Second crossguard is bigger than the first
>No place to put fingers inbetween them
>Character is right handed, yet depicted as gripping the sword with his left on top
Woah there
>>47501752
What's got you worried?
>>47488928
>>as soon as he steps out the door and gets his first breath of freedom in what was probably a very long time, shoot him in the back of the head too
You had me until that part.
>>47489497
Better.
>>47497441
Do you have any of the other LotFP modules? Is there a Mega folder somewhere?
