Halloween Creepyness....

[Evilhalfling]

Im looking for links/ suggestions to build a sense of fear and creepy strangeness. For a Halloween adventure.

PCs are on a ship, and nearly out of resources. They have fought of pirates, devils, a Slaad infested crew mate. They have also had a dead albatross drop onto the ship, and run-over the dead (but uneaten corpses) of 2 dolphins.

A magical storm will be running them into a barren rocky (haunted) island, and I am prepping for a big fight after they finally get a rest. But I want the night to be creepy, and unsettling, aided by the knowledge that if they are attacked by anything dangerous they are going to get mowed down.

I want to build an atmosphere of wrongness, and phantoms, rather than presenting a threat.

Any suggestions?

 

[MatthewJHanson]

One tactic that I've enjoyed is passing notes. For example, one character might see the spirit of a dead sailor on the haunted island that nobody else does, so you hand him notes about it. That way the players are never really sure if the others are telling the whole story. Is there really spirit, or is their friend going nuts? Does the spirit want to help, or lead them to their doom?

To speed thing's up I typed up and printed notes that I expected to be likely to occur beforehand.

 

[Larrin]

Changing the ambience of the room may help. Dim the lights, light some candles.

In game, its about keeping them off balance and slightly 'scared'. If they can make a skill check and find out everything they need to know, not scary. Making it mechanical isn't scary (ie, you touch the door and it attacks your will, you move your speed away "in terror", try agian next round) If the characters should be afraid give them something real or imagined to be afraid of. And it should only get greater as time goes on, regardless of success. Suceeding should lead to more storyline, ie more scaryness.

Take a scary door. They touch it to open it,and nothing happens except you tell them a story about what sorts of curses and deaths opening this door has brought upon, have them see ghosts rising from the floor pleading with them not to enter. No forced running away, not even a -2 to attacks, just giving them something their characters have to consider. If they make skill checks, reward successes not with knowing its all a hoax or the background of the door and why it might behave this way, but with more information about the dead that are now violently insising they leave. Arcana might recognize a mighty wizard, his eyes melted from his sockets from forbidden knowledge, history might tell you how old some of these ghosts are, and insight might say that they died in states of pure terror. This will reinforce that they should be scared (they succeeded and things got worse!) without actually punishing or hurting them. Opening the door causes the ghosts to shriek and be torn apart by invisible claws as a cold, foul smelling wind blows in. Beyond it may be nothing that has to do with the door, but if a ghost they saw before (now with claw marks) appears randomly and attacks them, or comes fleeing out of a room looking as they did before death, the players imaginations should do the rest.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

This thread might have some useful ideas: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/130133-creepy.html

 

[falcarrion]

play the game in blacklight. run a fog machine. and play creepy music in the back ground.

Good module to run would be "Hangman's Noose" by piazo.

A good encounter could be a room with zombies, but only the upper half and the entrals dragging behind them.
Or a room with corpses hanging by nooses and they have to weave in and out to get through them. You could have one or two animate for added horror.

I once saw in a game a room filled with water with undead piranhas that attacked as a swarm.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I say you go with what you know: evil halflings.



P.S. Elves are delicious--or so the little people tell me.

 

[Redcrow]

Invoking a sense of fear can be difficult in games that are typically super-heroic in scope. If the PCs regularly do battle with various strange and unusual creatures its hard to instill a sense of awe by placing some new creature in their path no matter how fear inducing it should be. Typically the PCs will just look at it as something new to be beaten into submission.

That isn't to say that it can't be done, just that IMO it isn't necessarily easy to do. First I would suggest taking the PCs out of their comfort zone and invoking a sense of isolation (the haunted island is a good step) and then limit their resources and ability to operate as they normally do.

The feeling of isolation should include the knowledge that should they get into trouble, nobody will be coming to their rescue and there is no familiar place to run back to for safety. For the duration of the adventure they are essentially cutoff from the rest of the world outside the island.

Limiting their resources means there should never be a situation with an easy fix. If they respond to every injury by simply casting Cure Light Wounds or chugging a Healing potion, then there isn't going to be much sense of danger or urgency. Perhaps magic works differently and/or in unexpected ways on the island or maybe it simply doesn't work at all. You can also limit their access to weapons... afterall, you don't see too many scary movies where the protagonist(s) are heavily outfitted for battle. This should hopefully make the PCs less willing to charge into battle with everything you throw in their path.

Remember, there are two basic types of horror. There is Horror From Within and Horror From Without. The former one is often overlooked, but can in fact be the more frightening of the two. Horror From Within deals mostly with a person losing control of their mind, body, or both. It includes things like slowly going insane and corruption of the flesh. Essentially it is the loss of "self"; when you are no longer in control of your own mind or body. Possible causes can be things like possession, insanity, disease, or mutation.

The other type of horror, Horror From Without is any external source that invokes fear. Most often a creature or creatures of some sort. The best way IMO to create a sense of fear over a creature is to first build tension by alluding to it before showing it. In other words, the PCs hear a scream and race to investigate only to find what remains of the creatures latest victim. Remember the scene in Predator where they find the remains of the first team hanging upside down and skinned? Much better tension builder than simply plopping the creature into their lap right from the start. Instead it lingers around them. They know something is there, but not who or what it is. Each time one of them tries to confront it, they end up dead. Not until the end do you really get a good look at the creature.

Remember, fear of the unknown is usually worse than fear of the known.

Anyway, this is all just IMO. YMMV.

 

[pukunui]

Anyone got any tips on how to do creepiness Star Wars style?

 

[Remathilis]

Anyone got any tips on how to do creepiness Star Wars style?

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[jaerdaph]

Anyone got any tips on how to do creepiness Star Wars style?

If you are running a d20 version of Star Trek, you could always import from D&D/3.5e and create a Jedi Death Knight as an undead Sith Lord.