Scariness

What's the single, scariest moment you ever experienced in a roleplaying game? When you (the player) were honestly creeped out by what was going on, and you felt uncomfortable being alone afterwards?

Or if you managed to induce this in your players as a GM, tell about that too.

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KEITH/GRIMTOOTH:

I never experienced or induced such.... I can tell you what the scariest thing that ever happened to me, and something that freaks me out, is, though.....

Ever since my dad told me this, I think about it..... He said that he scared himself once because he thought he saw his mirror image do something he didn't.... Ie, he move left, and the mirror image moved too slowly. I always think now when I see my reflection "What if that were another person, and sometimes they slack off?" What if sometimes they misjudge what you did, and don't do it right, or even get a little too excited and wave? That would freak me out. :P My two cents. Keith, who just now, about 3 minutes ago, joined the list.

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GRAVEYARD GREG:

>What's the single, scariest moment you ever experienced in a roleplaying >game? When you (the player) were honestly creeped out by what was going on, >and you felt uncomfortable being alone afterwards?

Well, this didn't happen in a game, but it happened as a result of writing fiction for a game, so here goes:

I just sent a story I wrote a while back called "The Devil". I then attached it to my email, and noticed the file size...

6.66 KB

I'm creeped out, and will sleep poorly I think... :)

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GARETH:

> I was just jotting down some notes to prepare for the Sorcerer game I'm > hoping to run this summer, and an idea struck me that you folks might help > me with. >

> What's the single, scariest moment you ever experienced in a roleplaying > game? When you (the player) were honestly creeped out by what was going on, > and you felt uncomfortable being alone afterwards?

Once, a friend of mine ran a very strange session, where we were playing ourselves in 20 years. It was designed to play on our real-life worries and fears. He ran it late (as in, 2 am) in an old and creepy house. At one point, the gm and one of the players went off for an in-character talk - for a long time. The rest of us waited. They didn't come back. We got more and more nervous, the wind rattled at the window, the house creaked and shifted...

we eventually went looking fr the gma dn player, to make sure they were still alive...

In a game I ran recently, I freaked the players out with classic illuminati stuff - the law of fives, 23s and 666s. They started seeing those numbers everywhere in the game..and pretty soon, they started noticing them everywhere out of game too....

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RON EDWARDS:

Thanks to Gareth, Keith, and Greg for comments...

The reason I asked is that I've never been happy with the most common advice for running scary stories - you know, music, props, that kind of thing. There was some discussion of this on the Gaming Outpost last month, but I always found such things to be too much work.

At John Tynes' site (the guy who does Puppetland, linked off the Sorc site), he has a whole essay about scaring players, especially if they're getting goofy and undermining the scariness with jokes. I can't say I was too happy about his suggested tactics, which included grabbing players by the lapels and slamming them against the walls.

I've had more success with the way I pace information in describing a scene or event, not only what the players are being told but also in what order and how fast. I also like to give pieces and clues to an NPC's totally insane point of view, just details and the way they react to things, that result in the players' figuring out how loony the guy is, on their own. There's kind of a horror generated in a person when they realize, not only is Jeb (the NPC) a child molester, but that they (the player) had enough empathy or knowledge of the issue to come to that conclusion by themselves .... well, maybe I'm not describing it right, but it's a LOT more scary than if I just had them happen upon an instance of molestation.

Part of this whole topic, too, is that I realized a while ago that NOTHING was scaring me - not in the sense that I was physically reckless, but that no movie, no book, no myth was creeping me out. I read all the stuff that scared me as a kid - no dice. I hunted down all the scary movies - nothing. Then ... among the movies ... I finally saw The Exorcist and The Omen.

Those are freakin' scary movies. Ah, I said. I'm going to GM like THAT. I'm still working on all the techniques, so all suggestions are welcome.

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RAN:

This is an easy one... back in the 80's, I was involved in an ongoing story in a home-brewed system some friends of mine concocted... a dimension-hopping game featuring PCs ranging from a large batlike creature with a passion for writing to a mechanical lifeform that curiously resembled a bowling ball (sounds dumb, but the *personality* of the thing was outstanding), to a Southern-fried swamp wizard with a penchant for trapping evil spirits for his own personal use (me). Anyway, we were in the process of helping out someone with a large haunting problem that proved very difficult to solve. Eventually, we narrowed the source of the haunting to a 6-month old baby who had been thrown into a fire by its mother and burned to death. Imagine the chaotic horrors spawned by an enraged infant ghost... anyway, I deduced that what had to be done was to find and *comfort* the infant before laying it to rest, meaning we had to track down the burned, blackened, decaying body (hidden under a jumble of child's blocks in a toy chest), and *cuddle* it, whispering soothing words, etc., while unpredictable and unpleasant supernatural phenomena continued to occur around us.

It wasn't really a question of the gross-out factor, which really didn't enter into things... it was the very evocative image of picking up this charred thing, wrapping it in a blanket, and singing "Rockabye Baby" to it while the equivalent of a combination of Poltergeist, the White Album, and a Dali painting exploded in the room around us... the GM did a wonderful job of portraying the "sendings" of the ghost as sensations of fear and anger as filtered through the "undeveloped" senses of an infant.

And then the corpse *moved*, just a little bit, as it finally snuggled into sleep, after which everything quieted down and we were able to see it given the proper burial rites. Chilling.

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RAVEN:

>goofy and undermining the scariness with jokes. I can't say I was too happy >about his suggested tactics, which included grabbing players by the lapels >and slamming them against the walls.

While the way to scare the characters is to scare the players, that is clearly stepping across the boundaries of game reality. Getting physically or verbally violent/abusive with a *player in an attempt to induce an emotional response in the character is a huge no-no. Frankly, if someone ever grabbed me, the player, by the lapels and threw me against a wall to scare my character, game or not, they'd have my fist on their jaw and be less by one player.

I say verbal above as well, since the non-physical equivalent would be turning on the player and verbally attacking or abusing them personally, instead of describing the scene their character is involved in (ie: instead of "Drak Morn reaches towards you and hisses, 'I will tear your bloody, beating heart from you chest, Korfanu.'" the DM gets up real close to the player and hisses out, 'I'm going to tear your beating heart out of your chest, Bob.'" or insulting Bob about that disability of his in an attempt to make Korfanu mad).

That's a line between fantasy and reality I just won't cross. Mood lighting, pacing around, talking in a whispery voice or shouting (or whatever is called for), being creatively descriptive (describing things in an ethereal, roundabout fashion) and so on, I will do. Engaging the players instead of the characters, no way.

>Those are freakin' scary movies. Ah, I said. I'm going to GM like THAT. I'm >still working on all the techniques, so all suggestions are welcome.

Personally, I've always found the suggestions in the old Ravenloft boxed set helpful (there's an entire chapter devoted to it, so I'll just briefly outline the suggestions here).

"The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloddy bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and inexplicable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint...of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the demons of unplumbed space." -- H.P. Lovecraft "Supernatural Horror in Literature"

Belivability

Details: clolor, mass, texture, taste, temperature, odor, sound, sensation...not gruesome, ordinary.

Well Developed Characters: personality, background, unique motivations (opinions, mannerisms, habits, obsessions (strengths/weaknesses))

Familiar: everything you expect in the real world, but within it hides something that you don't. Trees, grass, stars, wind, the lights of a window (don't hide something evil in everything ordinary...when it is ordinary, it should be all the time (how many people expect the phone to bite them when they pick it up?) avoid cliches of terror ("Oh no, the lights went out.")...make them comfortable)

Isolation

physical or social, the character is alone or help is just inches beyond his grasp, the character is surrounded by others but a stranger or with those who cannot or will not help him

Control

the character believes they have control but the villain has control; the character's well-laid plans are thwarted, part of the villian's own plots, the outcome is unexpected and not the one hoped for; little successes at first, then larger as the character believes they are succeeding and in control...at the end, they are not (avoid constantly frustrating the character)

Circumstance

the character is unlucky, what can go wrong, will in regards to circumstances "beyond their control" (a candle is blown out, their watch breaks); always minor hinderances, nothing that takes complete control away from the character

Entrapment

traps, confinement, situations where the character cannot move; social situations the character cannot escape from or alter; anything that slowly reduces and limits the character's options

Handicaps

natural and unnatural; a sprained ankle, confinement to a wheelchair, wounds that suddenly appear when the character is alone, growing fangs and claws; mutation, mutilation, invasion

Mental Handicaps: thought reading, subtle mental control, imaginary voices, disappearing people, vision

Subtlety

the sensation of horror is that dread builds slowly until an acute, dramatic tension is reached; avoid gore and blood; give descriptions that evoke images of what you are trying to describe, they point to it, allowing the listener to make their own conclusions (the red lips of a vampire, red flecks on a stairway, a distant sound that might be a scream or a birdcall); they do not clinically describe the thing itself

Uncertainity: provide a hook, but only unveil everything at the climax to the story (if even then); mystery, suspense, dread; the unknown, never knowing what to expect, but expecting something

The key to all the above is not overdoing it. Don't use every technique available, just enough to build a little apprehension and tension, don't swamp them with it.

Save the big, bad, nasty techniques for last. Wait until the characters are overconfident, when they are more than just pests to the controlling villain.

Avoid frustrating players and making yourself (instead of the NPC) into the villain. Control the results of character actions, not the actions themselves. Let them get overconfident, let their plans and plots works, then hit them hard when the time is right...be sporadic, not heavy-handed. Never punish the PCs, let them make their own mistakes. Use natural troubles to plague the PCs (wind, rain, fog). Use the *occasional gimmick to keep the players guessing (roll some dice, borrow their character sheets for a moment, pass notes (even blank ones)), use simple sound effects (rapping on the table, heavy footsteps and such).

(There, hope that helps )

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GRIMTOOTH:

> Personally, I've always found the suggestions in the old Ravenloft boxed > set helpful (there's an entire chapter devoted to it, so I'll just briefly > outline the suggestions here).

Yep, Ravenloft has a whole lot on it, using old gothic horror. Sorta like the poem "The Raven," instead of Scream. The difference is of course that gothic horror stories like Frankenstein and Dracula are subtle and dark, and Scream is bloody and most of it can be guessed before it happens (He's gonna die. She's gonna die. They're gonna die.).

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RAVEN:

>Yep, Ravenloft has a whole lot on it, using old gothic horror. Sorta like >the poem "The Raven," instead of Scream. The difference is of course that >gothic horror stories like Frankenstein and Dracula are subtle and dark, and >Scream is bloody and most of it can be guessed before it happens (He's gonna >die. She's gonna die. They're gonna die.).

Well, sure, but did you really know who was doing the killing before it was revealed?

Actually, I thought Scream was one of the best done horror/scare movies I've seen done in a long time. I personally don't watch gore-flicks because they are just that. Lots of blood doesn't make me scared, it makes me sick. Scream, OTOH, wasn't so much a gore-flick as an actual, honest "scary movie." I rank it up near Alien/Aliens (forgetting completely about the pathetic jokes that Alien3 and 4 were).

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RAN:

Hmmm... I was going to write a little aside about what I consider to be the HUGE difference between Scream and Alien/Aliens, but in the interest of curbing digression, I'll ask this instead:

What does everyone consider the difference between "horror" and "suspense," in terms of GMing a game?

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RON EDWARDS:

Ah, blessings upon thee Ran, for not turning the list into "what I thought of this movie." I am all too vulnerable to such digressions.

>What does everyone consider the difference between "horror" and "suspense," >in terms of GMing a game?

My take is that Horror is a realization - something must become known. Suspense is unease about the opposite, the Unknown. Suspense builds during a story; horror resolves the suspense but now you're sorry (in a good way, narratively speaking) that it did. Suspense is a mood, horror is an event.

Good suspense, lame horror: the "guy in a rubber suit" effect. Aw, we got all worried over THAT? Lame suspense, good horror: not sure if this is possible. Might be. Lame suspense, lame horror: has to turn into humor or everyone just leaves. Good suspense, good horror: (story starts) oh god, what is going ON around here? (story happens) Oh no! That's what's going on? AAAAAHH!

I was going to give movie examples for each but restrained myself. About GMing this stuff ... I've found that suspense is largely a matter of timing the flow of information. They steadily find stuff out, but aren't sure just what it adds up to. Something really awful happens at the outset, but they don't know why, and the more they find out, the more disjointed everything seems. Weird (possibly guilty) people act normal, normal people start acting weird.

Horror, on the other hand, in my opinion demands recognition (some degree of self-identification) from the players - I talked about this in a recent post, and I also wrote about it in an essay for Serendipity's Circle a couple issues ago. The nastiness is not ONLY what the guy is doing, but ALSO the fact that you, the players, had enough insight into such activity that you were able to deduce it. You sickos!

Let's keep talking about this in terms of RPG technique - it's really interesting.

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GRIMTOOTH:

> Well, sure, but did you really know who was doing the killing before it was > revealed? >

> Actually, I thought Scream was one of the best done horror/scare movies > I've seen done in a long time. I personally don't watch gore-flicks > because they are just that. Lots of blood doesn't make me scared, it makes > me sick. Scream, OTOH, wasn't so much a gore-flick as an actual, honest > "scary movie." I rank it up near Alien/Aliens (forgetting completely about > the pathetic jokes that Alien3 and 4 were). > > -Raven

Well, that is more of a mystery then anything. When the killer was revealed, I said "Oooooh...." not "AHHHHH!" On the other hand, when something is revealed ina gothic horror, it adds to the terror. Also, if you saw Scream 2, it wasn't even possible to guess the killer. Give me a break; "It was the guy at the gas station from another movie." It might as well had been that, because both the killer and this guy were mentioned about the same in the movie. Heh.

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GRIMTOOTH: > Lame suspense, good horror: not sure if this is possible. Might be.

It's possible in real life, though I don't think you can scare anyone this way in a game. In real life, if someone has a gun up to your head, you're scared, but not in suspense. Heh. And if we lived in a place with demons, if a demon popped up and threatened you, the same thing. But in a game, I don't think a player can feel scared that their character has just been confronted by a demon.

> Lame suspense, lame horror: has to turn into humor or everyone just leaves. Evil Dead? :P

> Good suspense, good horror: (story starts) oh god, what is going ON around > here? (story happens) Oh no! That's what's going on? AAAAAHH! Strip Tease? ::Grins::

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RAVEN:

>Ah, blessings upon thee Ran, for not turning the list into "what I thought >of this movie." I am all too vulnerable to such digressions.

As am I

>I was going to give movie examples for each but restrained myself. About >GMing this stuff ... I've found that suspense is largely a matter of timing >the flow of information. They steadily find stuff out, but aren't sure just >what it adds up to. Something really awful happens at the outset, but they >don't know why, and the more they find out, the more disjointed everything >seems. Weird (possibly guilty) people act normal, normal people start acting >weird.

I would say not only the flow of information, but the flow of disinformation (wrong word?) as well. For suspense, one needs to know that something is obviously going to happen. However, to make suspense work, that individual can't know WHEN that something is going to happen. Prickles on the back of the neck, something moving around in the woods, a distant light that vanishes (perhaps around a bend or behind a hill...), harmless moss draped from trees...even if it means nothing and leads nowhere, all of it leads to good suspense.

Raven's Patented Suspense Technique #1

Dropping their Guard:

A good way to achieve both suspense and terror (not horror) is to build up the suspense as normal, letting them know/realize/guess that something is about to happen, that something HAS to happen, then just when they are absolutely sure that something is happening NOW, something does... But wait, it isn't what they suspected, all the clues were wrong, it is something harmless and ordinary and completely non-threatening, like a cat leaping out from hiding and running (In the movies, this is the old "walking up behind the character and grabbing their shoulder" technique). The suspense vanishes with a "pop" and relief flows in. THEN it happens. Right after they are comfortable and secure...now comes terror (if ONLY they hadn't let their guard down; if only they had kept it up, they might have been able to plan for this).

Normally you do not build any suspension again before "it" happens (that would ruin the effect). However, building suspension again before releasing the real punch is also an effective way to throw the individual off-balance, as they will not know if "this time" their hunches are right, if they should be frightened or worried.

Another variation on this theme is to build the suspension, let it drop as usual using the mundane or non-threatening situation (ie -- "Oh, those noises were just old Yohan, the boatman"), then hit them with "it"...except the "it" is suddenly the situation they thought mundane/non-threatening (ie -- "Oh my Gods, the demon possessed the cat!! Get it off meeee..!")

>Horror, on the other hand, in my opinion demands recognition (some degree of >self-identification) from the players - I talked about this in a recent >post, and I also wrote about it in an essay for Serendipity's Circle a >couple issues ago. The nastiness is not ONLY what the guy is doing, but ALSO >the fact that you, the players, had enough insight into such activity that >you were able to deduce it. You sickos!

I don't think horror is something you can really plan "into" a scenario, it really is dependent on the players and the situation surrounding them. In the weekly AD&D game I play in our DM ran a special Halloween adventure this past (duh) Halloween. Now, it was one heck of a game, but the ending was chilling, horrifying even. We were in a strange, unknown land where the dead walked and we had yet to encounter another living soul, we had just defeated a nest of a dozen vampires, some of them former party members, and every character (except mine) had been either killed, or were dying and/or seriously injured.

Due to the nature of their injuries, we were half certain that they would become vampires soon or fairly soon, but we didn't know. I devised a simple plan involving a silver coin kept under the tongue that I hoped would tip me off to their change, should there be one.

The horrifying part should be easy to spot: If my companions began to turn, I would be forced to destroy them...some of them had even asked that I do so to them immediately (which I just couldn't do). Even worse, some of them might just be destroyed upon the rising of the morning sun. In any case, I would be left utterly alone in an unknown land that appeared to be populated only by the dead and the living dead.

So we sat in a dark hallway in the inn where the vampire lord had made his lair, most of us slowly dying or turning, and waited quietly for morning.

I still get chills thinking about the ending of that session.