How disturbing are your games?

[Evilhalfling]

Eating halfling brains is just good use of survival skill, if marooned on a deserted island with your recently deceased halfling friend.

I had an NPC halfling who ate the bodies of friends, before eventually dying anyway. He was trapped in a undead state until he could atone. Eating your friends bodies, while sometimes necessary, is never without consequences.

He was that campaigns iconic evilpsionichaflling.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

Necrokinder

My players did once comment on the fact that I tend to use a lot of undead children in my games.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Ah, I remembered one! I had to look back seven sessions for it, but I found it.

The PCs were looking for a kidnapped woman and an ancient relic that was a skull. They found her strapped to an alter, with cuts that would not heal, the blood dripping down recesses in the alter draining her blood into a pool that the skull was resting in, bathing it. She was concious, but unable to speak or understand much of what was going on around her.

They did save her and the relic, however, because they hurried through the adventure. Had they dallied, it would have been a sad sad sight with dried blood and a dead maiden.

 

[frankthedm]

I tend to run horror as horror.

But after reading Nightmares of Mine, a little guide to horror, I intend to make every game have elements of horror somewhere. It by it's nature means investment in character, which I like.

Good little book, quite the gem.


I tend to be a sick sick sociopath.

Death effects, enegy draining to death and becoming non mindless undead kill the soul of the victim.

Minotaurs birth from female bovine and humanoids. humaniods rarely survive

Gnolls chew victim's "bits" to make them scream really loud.

Corpse explosion is a second level spell used to blow up the dead and dying.

Players found the half eaten remains of a small child in a guard's house in Threshhold.

A PC cleric commited suicide with a +1 mace with an undisclosed propery, and did not wished to be raised [player felt things were hopeless and was tired of being the healer]. The cleric's patron deity, not feeling the cleric's time was up, bound the cleric's spirit to the mace to continue to aid his old companions. Player got a new character, party got a +1 cleric with a nice stack of spells.

A player, wearing the same illusionay item a serpentfolk had previously possesed, was presented a small live child as a meal, presumably by that serpentfolks lacky in a town the party was staying at. .

A dead gold dragon was animated in a desacrated temple to Bahamut.

Some balors were blown to chunks from a sabatoged teleportation stone circle.

The players have recieved more help against lower planar foes from the lower planes, than from the upper planes.

Taking 20 when searching a body is never hand waved. the seacher gets the full juicy details.

 

[WayneLigon]

It depends on the scenario and creatures involved. The more intelligent and evil they are, the more likely the night will take a sharp left turn from 'Wizards and Warriors' into 'House of a 1000 Corpses' territory Undead, Mind Flayers and certain abberations make that a virtual certainty.

 

[Turjan]

Demon-babies are pretty standard fare for our games. We've seen PC's make demonic pacts, commit suicide, kill captives in cold blood, eat halfling brains...and all from good-aligned characters!

We've seen none of the above. The D&D games are more of the standard heroic or a roguish tongue-in-cheek type. Horror is something for the CoC games, but that's a bit different from what you listed.

 

[astralpwka]

We use minor disturbing things, such as:

Harpies choosing one of the male characters as "fine breeding material"

or

Killing a wizard to return a kidnapped child to the mother, just to learn that the wizard was the father and had custody

 

[wingsandsword]

After the game, a couple of players commented on how dark and bizarre that battle was. I was shocked. Demon-babies are pretty standard fare for our games. We've seen PC's make demonic pacts, commit suicide, kill captives in cold blood, eat halfling brains...and all from good-aligned characters!

You mean formerly good-aligned characters. If any PC's in any game I run (or would ever want to play in) ever made demonic pacts, killed captives in cold blood, or ate halfling brains they'd be considered Evil, and no longer be playable PC's. As for suicide, I've seen characters seppuku in an OA/Rokugan game, so I won't complain there (except to say that a honorbound suicide-protest is probably a completely different type of suicide than you were thinking about).

Frankly, if I played in a game at Gen Con that was like that, if it wasn't advertised as a horror game (and a fairly grisly one at that) I'd talk about it for years as one of those "bad con games" you hear about.

Sick & depraved acts are not things I play RPG's to hear about or think about, and certainly not the kind of things that should be rewarded.

Now, I'll certainly depict acts of immorality or questionable judgement. A character being seduced by a succubus in my former campaign was handwaved away to a short description akin to what you might get from a network TV action/drama show, I've had PC's offered drugs (they didn't accept), and seriously offered membership and high rank in dark cults (they declined). I see D&D as a game you play to depict heroes, not anti-heroes, and certainly not villains.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I can do some twisted stuff, but most of it is in the interest of making emotionally compelling villains. I like to play with shades of gray*, so it helps if the PC's have something obvious to set off the villains. It's kind of cheap, but quite effective, usually.

*and yes, I use alignment.

 

[The Grackle]

Pretty disturbing according to my players, but I think they're wimps. Horror elements always seem to leak in around the edges of my fantasy and superhero games- usually involving pigs and the undead and retarded people forced into slavery.

The best player freak-out I ever inspired was describing the crunch of walking over a carpet of slightly decayed cat-food. The player started gagging on his soda.