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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 4611796" data-attributes="member: 40177">2.  In another 2e game, one of the characters (a ranger named Glamdring) got infected with a poison.  A "Crystal spider" had bit him on his left hand.  He watched as, over the course of a few days, the skin around the bite began to look like a mirror.  It felt like skin, and moved like skin, but was in all other ways a mirror.  And it began to inch up his arm...He had no idea what it was, and sages had no clue either.  He had nightmares of the disease crawling up his chest and piercing his heart, or of making it's way to his eyes.  His hand would animate at times and he'd take swings at his companions.  NPCs responded in fear to the character, and he got chased out of town once or twice.  He took to covering up his disease.  Within a few weeks of game time, the mirror had made it's way up to his elbow.  He spent good money trying to find out how to cure this disease, until an Oracle told him who he had to kill.  (yeah, the player wanted to try out being an assassin, so this was his chance!)The adventure itself was boring, but the disease was a very fun touch.  He would wake up in weird places, and occasionally he would lose control and attack his companions.  At one point, he couldn't speak common - everything his character said came out in the setting version of Latin... a language none of the PCs could normally speak!  It also got weird in that when the disease covered his whole arm, people who looked in did not see their own reflection, but rather a reflection of what they would look like at the time of their death... (one player was very creeped out when I said "your reflection looks much like your normal reflection... only you're missing your eyes and your hair is slightly longer").  3.Another fun story was in a 2e (or maybe early 3e) game I ran where the PCs were trying to rob some location or another famed for wealth.  The funny thing in this adventure was that the location was not haunted in any way, and there were no monstrous guardians.  There were a few minor traps and usual tomb protections, but I had set the area up as what a normal noble's tomb would be like.  Unfortunately, the other grave robbers had gotten there first, and knew they were outmatched by the PCs in a straight fight (they were a halfling rogue and a gnomish illusionist).  So, they did everything in their power to scare the PCs off.I thought it was going to be a simple night's gaming (I had designed the adventure as an easy way to give them treasure, to make up for my recent stinginess, and as a way of throwing an "easy" adventure at them for campaign believability).  Instead, I had that gnome throw everything at the party - crying ghosts, whispers on the wind, distant screams... and the rogue would reset traps the PCs had already disarmed, which made things very scary for the group.  The part I remember most, though, was the actual setting of the game.  It was in my parent's living room, and I had the lights turned low - the dimmer switch on the overhead light even flickered like a candle.  I had a fire going, and it was a dark night outside.  And my parents have one of those houses that is quiet.  I spoke in a slight voice, so they had to lean forward to hear me.  We had a long, oaken table, with high-backed chairs, and I paced around the table, so they would have to follow me with their eyes as I spoke.  The best part?  One of the PCs was making his way down a hallway, when he was hit by a wind on the back of his neck.  That's it.  In real life, when I described this, I was right behind him, so I blew gently onto the back of his neck.  He literally jumped, flailed his hands about, and started hyperventilating.  He had a near anxiety attack (this was before he knew he suffered from an anxiety condition, and before he was taking meds to keep it under control!), though he was laughing at his own response.  Later, he said it was the scariest game he had ever played, and also his favourite.  (P.S.  The party got only half the treasure when they ran screaming out of the tomb... then they luckily bumped into the gnome, knifed him, and returned into the tomb to steal the rest;  "It was only a gnome illusionist all that time!".  And then, when the rogue kept up to his tricks, they really freaked out and ran.  I never did tell them the full story)</blockquote>

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