D&D 5E Thrills, chills, and amazement.

[Inchoroi]

I've been DMing various games for a long time now, and one thing I've always wanted but never really got in the sense that the players have chills going down their spines when they encounter something, or something happens in the game, or they do something amazing, and the rest of the party feels that same epic chill that you first get upon seeing the orc hordes besieging Helm's Deep in the Lord of the Rings movie. Not talking about specifically mass combat, however, because that never really works, but the same sort of sense of amazement.

I guess I'm looking for advice on how to work towards engendering that sort of feeling. Any thoughts?

I ask my players all the time what it is they'd like to see in the future, what kind of things they didn't like, what kind of things they really liked, etc, but all I really get is, "Oh, yeah, it was fun." I get the impression that, as a DM, I am "technically proficient", rather than good or amazing.

 

[Lancelot]

Hmmm. Difficult question, but I'll give it a stab with three suggestions...

1. Foreshadowing. If you're running a lengthy campaign, establish early in the piece that there's this incredibly powerful organization or entity. For bonus points, don't make it obvious that it's going to be the Big Bad. For example, at 1st level, start the party out in a cathedral dedicated to a good god. They're there to pick up a courier delivery. While they're waiting in the foyer, the high priest is seen kneeling before the alter and a huge angelic creature (solar angel) is speaking in Celestial to him, issuing the edicts of the faith. Choirs of angels wait humbly in the wings, and golden shafts of light stream down through the stained glass windows above. The PCs have no real interaction with this scene, but it establishes the church and the high priest are heavy hitters. At 3rd level, while they're adventuring, one of them receives a dream from that very solar angel - the PC has an important destiny! Wow; they're now being addressed by an insanely powerful creature directly. At 5th level, angelic servants guide them to the location of a powerful artifact of the faith. At 7th level, they start treating with the high priest on an equal basis. At 9th level... SURPRISE! The solar is a fallen angel bent on leading the church on a fanatical crusade to wipe out all heretics (which includes other good-aligned creatures that aren't part of the faith). The heroes are now squaring off against the Legions of Heaven...

Anyway, you get the idea. Find ways to blow up the party's expectations of level-appropriate behavior. Don't start with kobolds and small villages at 1st level. Have them running from Alduin the World-eater Dragon as their introduction to the campaign, or give them the One Ring while they're attending a party in the Shire. Make the party feel like they're part of something way bigger than they are, even if they can only interact with it in limited ways... at first.

2. Props. The obvious one here is mass battles, but this is budget-dependent. If you have a box full of Dwarven Forge 3D dungeons, or some painted Warhammer terrain, and a couple hundred orc minis... then you can do something fairly jaw-dropping. But there are other ways of achieving the same feeling on a budget. Here are some random ideas: background music or sound effects (sounds cheesy, but it actually works - plenty of material available for free on the web), invest in a single 28mm scale ship model and some blue fabric (for a nautical campaign), get a few pouches of old coins and hand them out when PCs find treasure (e.g. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/drawlab/legendary-metal-coins-for-gaming/description), fake up an old treasure map (http://www.hexographer.com/ or http://www.dungeonographer.com/) by applying a filter and ripping/staining the print-out, etc, etc.

3. History. This one takes time (heh), so I don't know if it's suitable for your group. My own campaign world has been running 30 years in real-time (yeah, I'm old). However, that's not a single campaign. That's a bunch of campaigns... and every now and then, we advance the timeline of the world. Nearly 300 years have passed in game-time since the first session, which means you have characters today who are descendents of characters from 10 years back (real-time). Successful previous characters are rulers of nations or other major entities, and the players get a sense of both the passage of time and their impact on the world. You can achieve the same thing in a single campaign by making it clear that time is advancing, especially through the use of Downtime rules.

This is an example from one of my current campaigns. The party did typical adventures until 3rd level, then had 4 months of downtime while their employer didn't have any work for them. There isn't a constant stream of dungeons and perils, after all. At 5th level, they ended up shipwrecked on an island and spent 3 years (!) making their own ship (!!) to get off the island. By the time they got back, one of their romantic interests had moved on to someone else, and one of their business interests had economically collapsed. This created a whole new set of story challenges. At 7th level, they decided to take on some pirates - but I made it clear the pirates couldn't be beaten by simple "adventuring". They needed to gather a fleet, which took gold and time. 5 months later, they're still pulling together the necessary resources.

This is basically a direct answer to the old CRPG problem of going from level 1 to level 50 in about 7 days. In games like Skyrim or World of Warcraft, for example, you can basically become an archmage or noble in about a week of adventuring. But in tabletop RPGs, the DM can control how much time passes. By spreading a character's career over years, and having the background world change at the same time (borders shift, NPCs age and marry and die, faiths arise and fall, etc), you can create a certain sense of scope and grandeur.

Anyway, just my two cents. Good luck.

 

[Celtavian]

I don't know that you can accomplish what you want in this medium as a DM. You could spend time writing an extraordinary descriptive passage that you let the players read prior to a battle. Or perhaps spend time building an extraordinary visual model that gives a true measure of the odds they are against that might thrill, chill, or amaze players. I can't think of too many ways a DM can accomplish "shivers" the common way D&D is played.

The most compelling moments that players seem to enjoy in a game is lucky rolls like critical hit or a missed spell save at a key moment in the game that accomplishes something epic. That is almost impossible to script. You can create the encounter, but you can't script the dice rolls. The best way to make your players feel a sense of awe or "thrills, chills, and amazement" is to put them in as many harrowing situations as possible where they feel like their lives are on the line and hope the dice cooperate. You do enough of them and the dice eventually cooperate. The players have an extremely memorable experience that they often talk about for years and more importantly, they have an extremely memorable character that they might consider their favorite due to the extraordinary accomplishments of the character. That's the best advice I can give. The majority of moments I've created that players remember have come during scripted events of significant importance where the player's character accomplishes something amazing by virtue of lucky rolling.

 

[iserith]

A lot of this comes down to player engagement, the fastest route to which in my experience is working with the players to build a campaign or adventure they really care about and for which they have built characters well-integrated into the premise. Before putting pen to paper, a brainstorm session with the players is in order with the goals of play (in this case, thrills, chills, amazement) clearly defined by the participants.

Further, it helps if the game system itself supports the playing of that particular campaign or adventure. D&D 5e does an okay job of this, but consider a game like the Dread RPG (horror) which uses Jenga blocks for task/conflict resolution: If you want to do a thing, you may have to pull a block and, if the Jenga tower collapses, you're toast. This creates some real tension. Figure out where the tension is in the D&D mechanics and exploit it.

Finally, the DM should have some kind of dramatic flair when presenting the game. Good, pithy descriptions in the style of the game one is shooting for, delivered in an engaging fashion. Compelling situations. Clear stakes. Good pacing. Well-timed reveals.

It's an art, not a science and some natural talent is involved. But anyone can probably learn how to make his or her game more thrilling, chilling, and amazing. And it starts with having a conversation with one's players...

 

[I'm A Banana]

I guess I'm looking for advice on how to work towards engendering that sort of feeling. Any thoughts

One trick that has served me pretty well is to remember to fire on all five senses. Like with a massive army - it's not just "hundreds of thousands of orcs," its "an echo of thunder that grows ever-louder" or "a bone-clattering percussion of orcish voices." It's also not just a number, its "orcs as numerous as blades of grass" or "a moving tide of evil crashing upon your castle's shores."

Smell, sounds, even taste (a swarm of rats gets into all sorts of holes)....it's good for getting more substantial reactions.

 

[JeffB]

I honestly find a game that really promotes fiction first through mechanics, does a better job of this than D&D or many of it's offshoots, where task resolution is often a yes or no (pass/fail?), and it's easy to get lost in the system.

DungeonWorld works really well at making even a basic fight with Goblins exciting and tension filled. BUT, a DM has to be really on top of his game, especially at improvising, and he has to be on top of his/her game at all times/every session. The good thing is that prep work is so minimal for the game, and the DM is not bothering with dice and rules that it's easier to focus on the fiction.

EDIT- In addition, the players are helping create the fiction by nature of the system, and they become more invested in the whole thing.

 

[Riley37]

As said before: props, music, history, multisensory.

One of the basic cues that humans use to recognize a serious threat: whether others around them show fear. So if the PCs have an NPC guide, and that NPC guide starts shivering and stammering whenever the PCs even look towards the North, then the PCs get the idea that there's something scary in the North. If the PCs are on a trail, and the guide rounds the corner then screams, turns, and runs back along the path, then the PCs have a clear hint that something big and bad is just around that corner. (See the intro of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for an example.)

The thing just around the corner should not be a monster, ready to be fought. It could be the monster's most recent victim, freshly killed (blood still dripping). It could be the entrance to the monster's lair. It should be something that the PCs can explore, to learn more about the threat, while they get more and more tense, worrying that the Big Bad might show up right away, or maybe it will attack when they're resting.

The great thing about dopplegangers, warlocks with Mask of Many Faces, possession monsters, etc: WHAT IF IT'S ALREADY ONE OF US.

In short: the time to build terror is BEFORE the combat starts. Once init gets rolled, players tend to fall into well-established mental habits, and think tactically. Which is more or less appropriate - combat is rarely the right time to panic. But if a monster has a Fear-type power, and uses it in combat, after a horror story set-up, then it will be less of "just another status effect". There will be more of a match between the mechanics of the combat, and actual feelings experienced by players.

 

[Inchoroi]

Can't thank you guys enough. I have a huge notepad file with all of your responses and my notes on it now. Keep them coming, if you can!

 

[Unwise]

I don't know about thrills, but I have certainly had my players fly into rage at a betrayal, made all the better by the fact that there were so many clues in hindsight indicating it was coming.

The most perfect of which was the PC spared/saved a little girl after breaking into her fathers castle and slaughtering her whole family (they were very bad). They did not want to leave the sweet little girl there all alone, so they took her in and ended up adopting her. She was understandably a bit creepy, but seemed normal enough. The PC had a pregnant girlfriend who he ended up marrying just after she had the baby. On their wedding night the little girl opened a portal to a hellish dimension to suck the wife and child in (they got saved, I'm not a complete monster), so that he would know what it was like to lose his whole family. She had waited around until he had people he loved to strike.

The little girl was clearly much older than she looked, they knew the 'father' was a creepy golem/doll maker, they knew they had killed all her family, they knew she knew more about magic than she let on, they knew she like to hurt little animals when she thought nobody was watching. She was also so excited about the wedding and being a flower girl it was rather out of keeping with her persona. The fact that they had so much warning left them tearing their hair out.

Come to think of it, most times my players get emotionally involved is from a hideous betrayal, or a clue that they missed that finally clicks to show they have been on the wrong path.

P.S. Strangely the lighting of a room so important for a horror game, I have played in a few that were genuinely scary even with a GM who is not great, and I put it down to the fact that with the lights down low, you know it is not a normal game and it sets a different feel. Sort of a subconscious reminder that this is not a hack and slash.

 

[Iosue]

Lessons learned from B/X:

Players need all necessary information, but they don't need perfect information. In a dungeon, for example, accurately and fully describing everything they can see within their light source. But beyond their light source is completely unknown. This creates a sense of claustrophobia, a sense of fear of what's lurking in the dark. The same principle can be applied to the wilderness.

Create a sense of normalcy, and then judiciously deviate from that. The archetype of this in B/X are undead. In general, one can avoid B/X's lethality by using negotiation and reaction checks to stave off combat. Morale can cut fights short when the enemy flees or surrenders. At last resort, enemies can be put out with Sleep or Charm.

None of that is true with undead. They can't be bargained with, they can't be bribed. They never break, they never surrender. They are immune to charm, immune to sleep. If you have a Cleric, they can be turned, but even then not always effectively. All that makes undead freaking scary.