Creepy...

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...

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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...

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Ooooooooh, pretty !

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.

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?

Joshua Dyal said:

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

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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.

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.

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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

BEST. THREAD. EVAR.


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

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

I've got blisters from yoinking so much.

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

sigh...

DungeonmasterCal said:

I've got blisters from yoinking so much.

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

sigh...

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I.....

Uhh....

Err, that is.....

Yeah. Me too.

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.

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