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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pickin_grinnin" data-source="post: 6297420" data-attributes="member: 6697674">Now THAT'S the way to do it!"Disturbing" is much more effective than "scary."  You can make something scary just with the tone of your voice, music in the background, lighting, etc., but all that goes away when the lights come on.  A really disturbing scene will stick with your players and continue to bother them over time.To use an example from another medium, one reason the Hellraiser films went off track was due to the directors/writers losing sight of what was most effective about them.  The key point was that the Cenobites weren't horribly tortured beings - they did those things to themselves, and found pleasure in doing so.  Their "victims" were people who had actually gone out of their way to attract the Cenobites and ask for assistance in doing the same thing.  The novella made this point well.  The first movie watered it down a bit.  The second movie kept the aspect of desire leading to that state of being, but completely threw out the idea of Cenobites creating their wounds themselves.  Subsequent films lost the basic point altogether, because the writers assumed that it was scary to have an unstoppable torturing monster pursuing you.  That's true, but it's much more effective to dwell on the disturbing fact that the monsters and the victims are no different than each other, and actually sought out their fates.</blockquote>