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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oni" data-source="post: 4868938" data-attributes="member: 380">I don't know, I've found that whacking players over the heads with mechanical clubs like level drain and save or die to be an inelegant solution and tend to result in frustration, anger, or annoyance over fear.  Personally I've had better luck with controlling information.  Don't give out more information than is necessary, and when you give out information presentation is important.  This is one of the problems with D&D (some editions more than others) is that there are so many ways to gain information.  A technique I like is the slow build.  This can take some planning some times, but I find bad things happening slowly over time to be more horrifying than coming out of the blue with something.  Maybe you mention a character as a tremor in his hand, but then move on as though it were a casual unimportant detail, drop it in every now and again, slowly focusing more on it.  You can space this over a session or multiple sessions or whatever.  The idea is to instill a sense of encroaching loss of control and wrongness.  Think of decent into horror that is the period of transformation you see in so many man becomes monster movies.  Play with expectations.  Keep your players a little off balance.  Don't be afraid to break the rules.  I think this especially important for horror, because the unknown is such a powerful thing.  To get the above results sometimes you have to break the rules a little bit.  Horror isn't fair.  Of course this must be done with moderation.  The rules are you friend because they provide empowerment to the players and guide the expectations, so knowing how and where to break them for a desired effect is a powerful tool IMHO.</blockquote>

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