General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
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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.
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.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
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.
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!*
__________________ Oh, I am a cook, and a captain bold, and the mate of the Nancy brig,
The midship mite,
And the Bo'sun tight,
And the crew of the captain's gig...
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.
__________________ Ninety percent of the time I'm a nice guy......
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.
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... and stars vampires I'm going to use this. I'll let you know what my players think.
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.
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 )
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...
__________________ Oh, I am a cook, and a captain bold, and the mate of the Nancy brig,
The midship mite,
And the Bo'sun tight,
And the crew of the captain's gig...
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
__________________ "As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs."
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!
__________________ Ninety percent of the time I'm a nice guy......
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.
__________________ Lifetime member of the Xerces Society
[Invertebrate Conservation]
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.
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