How do you scare your PCs?

[Dannyalcatraz]

An infamous quote from a player in our group who has DM'ed (quite well, might I add) in the past:

"I didn't know it did THAT!"

in reference to a creature he had just thrown at a party...It was a bit more powerful than he thought when he designed the encounter. Apparently, that party didn't fare too well...

It has since become kind of a code for "You are about to fight for your asses, guys!"

And yes, it does still inspire fear...and chuckles.

 

[EvilGM]

Scare them with realism...

track their encumbrance, including all new treasure hauled around

food/water requirements (anyone that consumes the bare minimum would have to be crazy... you try to do it)

if they fail saves vs. fear they should ..um.. void themselves

where do they go to the bathroom on long dungeon crawls? and why wouldn't the odor attract monsters? they certainly wouldn't want to sleep close by.

the same with blood spilt from battles... it should attract carnivorous monsters with scent at least.

use terrain to force climb, balance, etc. checks. better yet, combine them so they have to make a balance check or fall in some water and then make swim checks (during battle of course). drown armored monkey drown!

 

[Kae'Yoss]

An infamous quote from a player in our group who has DM'ed (quite well, might I add) in the past:

"I didn't know it did THAT!"

Yes, that is always fun. Like the frost worm, which has death throes. DM didn't see that, threw the thing at us. We got its breath weapon in the face, and then, wen we kill it, it explodes, killing two characters. Of course, we didn't get any inkling what the thing does, i.e. explode in our faces when we kill it. The arcanist in our party had absolutely no chance of surviving that.

But that's not being a rat bastard, that's bad preparation.

Scare them with realism...

I agree, except replace "scare" with "annoy", if you want to force them keeping track on encumberance - to the ounce - and food, and so on. I always disliked that. The game is about heroics, not finding the next toilet.

 

[kanithardm]

My absolute favorite thing to do is this: when the PCs are in a dungeon and about to do something ask a question Like "Which hand do you use?" or " Who wants to open the door?". Its also fun when the treasure is on the other side. I lkike the one with the pit fiend mentioned above.

 

[palleomortis]

Yes yes yes, good times. How many of you actually play trick on your pc's from time to time?

 

[sniffles]

One GM I regularly play with constantly scares us - or at least makes us nervous - by asking for skill checks vs. knowledge skills he knows we don't have. I think we've all come to know that stomach-shrinking sensation of realizing that because we don't have that particular knowledge, we're probably going to need it badly in the next few minutes or we'll miss an important clue.

 

[palleomortis]

he he he. "Well, your a half orc, so you cant understand this, but here is what they say "I am going to kick your scrawny little..."

 

[Zad]

The answer to this question is easily found in several of the Story Hours - Piratecat and Sepulchrave and Wizardru leap to mind for starters.

The actual *thing* that scares players will vary but there is one common element - the unknown.

"You look into a cave. You see an orc. He's guarding a pie."

Not scary

"You look into a cave. Shadows play across the walls cast by the flickering, dying torches. It takes a moment for you to make out a shadowy figure lurking against the back wall, protectively hunched over something..."

Better. Sure there's reason to be scared of a big dragon, but better and more sustained fear comes from facing players with things they just don't understand immediately. Then their fears get a chance to come out and whisper in their ears and they're usually worse than the poor orc you have actually there.

Piratecat took his players to the underdark - that very different environment put a tension into things and they were never sure what was going on when they ran into something. It could be a threat; it could be the garbage man. Wizardru just took his players into the Far Realms and the bizzare landscape was enough to make everyone edgy, not to mention any given fight was full of the unknown. Another example comes from a few years ago when they fought a psionic githyanki and it so happened that none of the players were familiar enough with psionics to have a good sense of what they were being hit with. Fireballs are scary if you know nothing about magic because you don't know the limits.

Use the unknown to give the familiar a sense of mystery, and you will make your players very nervous.

 

[KaosKlerik]

I've found that fear = atmosphere/information. You can go through all the trouble you want to set up the atmosphere, but if the players know exactly what it is they're up against all the fear goes out the window.

Make some random dice rolls behind the screen. Then ask for spot and listen checks. Sometimes even going into initiative when there's no real danger can make players really paranoid.

Exactly. Another thing to do is to ask everyone for a Listen check and no matter what is rolled just say "Oh well." and move on.

Or you can have them hear a faint scream, but with the echo effect it seems to come from more than one direction. Do that a once or twice times over 2-3 sessions and they will go nuts.

 

[palleomortis]

Nice, good stuff all. Exept you ZAD, I think that if I walked into a cave and saw an ogre gaurding a pie, I would be a bit freaked out anyways. Naw, JK, but thanx, I am starting to use some of this already. Good stuff.