How to I scare my group?

[UD]

On wednesday I am going to attempt to scare my gaming group as much aspossible. I want to make them jummpy, paranoid and trigger happy. I am running a Dragonstar campaign (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com), Dragonstar is DnD with high technology.

The PC's will be stumbleing across a abandoned spacecraft in the middle of the astral plane. (The astral plane servong as a kind of 'hyper-space' in my Dragonstar game). Basicly I'm going to let them find an empty space craft, powered down, wires hanging out of cielings, blaster marks on corridors, disembowled bodies, remainders of corpses, stressed crew diaries, hysterical captains logs. Then when the tension is built up, Im going to have them stalked by a shadow creature, I want them to be on edge, firing wildly into corridors "just because they thought the saw something". Basicly I want to create an alien/System Shock 2 kind of hybrid.

Any ideas on how to best achieve this?

 

[Pielorinho]

On wednesday I am going to attempt to scare my gaming group as much aspossible.

Tell them that you're starting a Spice Girls campaign.

Oh, wait -- maybe I should read the rest of your post.

Okay. This seems like a great time for atmospheric effects. Got some flashlights? Pass a few of them out, and turn out the lights in your gaming room until the PCs manage to restore some power to the ship.

If you have the time, check out a copy of Event Horizon (horrible movie, I think, but that's irrelevant). Cue up some scary sound effects from it, and either play the tape with the video turned off, or record the sounds from it.

Write up some of the logs on your computer in text, and allow the players to read them there. Maybe have them degenerate into random ASCII near the end.

Constant spot checks and listen checks. Weird noises echo through the ship -- even if there's no atmosphere in the ship, things can bang against the hull. You may know that it's bodies or stuff drifting and colliding against the hull, but the PCs will hear the banging coming from some indeterminate location.

Is the shadow creature corporeal? I'm guessing it must be, if the corpses are disemboweled. Have it hide in shadows and send frozen bodies careening toward the PCs. They'll think it's an attack, and they're sort of right.

Tell me more about the shadow creature -- there's great potential for it scaring teh PCs long before they see it, depending on what it can do. Specifically, can it:
-Be corporeal
-Survive outer space
-Cling to the ship's hull (inside or outside)
-Make noise
-Screw around with electronics
-Speak

If the PCs do get the lights turned on at some point, you should turn on the room's lights. They'll be relieved. But the shadow creature may try to turn them off again. When they're not expecting it, reach out and flip the lights back off, and immediately have weird noises begin again.

Daniel

 

[LostSoul]

The computer systems should be damaged to the point that accessing information is difficult. A horror-mystery isn't much fun when you solve everything right away.

Your engineer-type character can work away at the logs, getting one piece of information after another. Give these peices away out of order. This way the PCs will draw incorrect conclusions.

You've also got an engineer working by himself in the poorly-lit computer banks...

 

[UD]

Hey Pielorinho, they are some really cool ideas. The Shadow creature I hadn't really deided on, but I was going to use the tmeplate. The ship is located on the astral plane, so outerspace isnt an issue (as the astral plane is livable on). The characters are 4th/5th level and I was going to use the Shadow template from Manual of the Planes. Possibly something like the Shadow Wight given as an example.

I do want it to be corperal, I was thinking of them finding maybe a remaining crew member, totally mad, gone insane with fear. As for logs and things anyone got any ideas what kind of stuff to put in them?

 

[Pielorinho]

Okay, more ideas: the creature is one that feeds in some sense on fear. In fact, there's something about the heart of a terrified creature which is irresistably delicious to it.

It'll clatter along the outside of the hull, making plenty of noise. And then it'll shift into the shadow plane, go through to the inside, and meld into shadows, and watch the fun.

Do you know what the base creature will be? And how did the ship encounter it? You could consider using a formian as a base creature, or a human, or a girallon, or a howler, or a creature of your own creation. I'd suggest something humanoid or canine as your base -- something too weird, like a gibbering mouther, doesn't seem right for this scenario. And the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a howler or something else canine.

What if you use a howler, but give it one more ability -- the ability to do 1d6 points of electrical damage with each hit, and the ability to communicate telepathically with opponents. This will allow it to short out machinery and freak out players with maximum ability. If you want to make it superscary, give it the major image ability at will.

As for the logs, they should build up from simple, striaghtforward logs until the scary ones -- but it depends on what creature you use. One log should involve a person whose lover is missing; they're going to look for the lover now. Another log should be someone whose clearly gone mad, sending a distress signal that never went through.

How does that sound?

Daniel

 

[Breakstone]

How do I scare my group?

Tell them to roll up something while you go to the bathroom.

Keep the lights dim.

Wait just a bit.

Sneak up behind them.

Slowly, slowly...

reach out...

make sure your hands are cold...

then...

GRASP THEIR NECK AND SHOUT "OOGA BOOGA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That ought to scare them...

 

[Breakstone]

On a more constructive note:

Maybe, just maybe (work with me here), the shadow creatures (or some other curse or creature) turns corporeal creatures into shadow creatures. He did this with a lot of the crew, including some animals that were aboard (animal testing? Maybe you can get some cut-up animals in one of the abandoned rooms).

But when it turns them into shadow creatures, it transforms them a bit.

Thus, the engineer got transformed into a shadow wight.

Fluffy got transformed into a shadow howler.

In fact, they could be reading a log from a madman who is going to look for Fluffy, when they hear a howl in the darkness...

 

[The Oracle]

Turn out lights when not in tactical combat.

Use sound effects as described previously.

Get a metal can and a hammer and strike the can with the hammer under the table to simulate the sounds of metal clanking.

Give the party only six seconds to say what they are going to do or lose initiative (each). This will drive them crazy! They will get more stressed out over this than any other one thing you do.

Make the interior be reflective surfaces, so they are always shooting at things which are actually somewhere down the hall.

Make the shadow strike through walls, then fade behind them. They can't get to it! This drives them crazy too.

Make them separate somehow. Then separate the group. If one half dissappears from communication, the other half will freak out.

and there are other ways...you should use the maps from Space Hulk, they are the perfect shape. If you can find that old game. In my meanest moments, I think I will let my party face a ship full of genestealers...

 

[UD]

Right well it is a group of 7 PCs at level 4-5. I have been given other ideas such as maybe a ghost, possesing people. Hmmm.... But I really do like the Fluffy idea. I think that would really freak my group out.

The backstory: The ship is a science vessel which has been analysing a large structure in the astral plane (it is in fact the body of a 'dead' god. A god of the shadows, a evil god. This shadow creture was one of its last followers who has been set to gaurd the gods dead body.

This I hope will be an intresting discovery for the PC's because in the Dragonstar universe they believe there is just one god with 12 asspects...

Our group meets in our Universitys Student Union building, so for atmosphere candles arnt an option.

As its such a big group it can be quite difficult to control at time, for this session I will be implementing a 'what you say is what you *say*' rule. Enforcing compulsary saves and spot checks, attempting to put meaning into sentences when really they mean nothing. eg "Your not sure but there could have been something at the bottom of the passage when you looked...". Passing notes after spot checks saying things like "The wizard is behaving strangly..."

Any more ideas?

 

[UnDfind]

Idea

Give the party something to make them think they've solved the mystery.

All this stuff is happening and they're trying to figure it out, then they find a man in the engine block. A sabateur who admits to wreaking havoc in the name of whatever cause he serves so the research would be brought to an end. He doesn't explain much, but during the interrogation, the sabateur admits that there's a bomb set to explode near the engines. The party races to stop it from going off, and when they do the adventure's over...right? When they return to the sabteur, they find him dead with bits strewn all over the place.

Give them the chance to think they're dealing with a mortal foe and they'll go for it, preferring that to some unnamed evil. But once they've fallen for that, proving them wrong will make the real problem that much worse.