I want Scary Monsters!

[Raven Crowking]

"I championed the use of anything as a PC, and now my players go treat monsters like they do members of the PC races!"

It should be obvious that the more monsters are treated like just another option, the less players will treat them as anything else.


RC

 

[Desdichado]

Actually, the more human-like a monster is, in some ways the more terrifying it can be. That's the same principle behind the uncanny valley, to a certain extent.

 

[Dausuul]

"By the book," D&D vampires seem to be along the general lines of Dracula as described in the quotes above. They aren't twisted monstrosities, but if you look at the illustrations, they're certainly not sparkly pretty-boys either. They're white-skinned and red-eyed and predatory-looking.

There are several good ways to scare PCs listed in this thread. I'll add another, purely game-mechanical, method: Front-load your monsters with a vicious first-round attack that recharges slowly. This rocks the PCs back on their heels; they don't know how often the monster can use this attack, and they'll pull out all the stops to deal with it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Actually, the more human-like a monster is, in some ways the more terrifying it can be. That's the same principle behind the uncanny valley, to a certain extent.

Actually, I agree.

A monster that seems human, but turns out to be very different, can be terrifying. However, once a creature becomes a PC option, the odds that the players will see it as very different from a human (apart from ability-wise) dwindle rapidly.

Turning the unknown in to the known (quantifying it to make it a PC option) also produces a far less scary result than, say, simply reskinning something and not telling the players what it is mechanically.

The greater the divide between a creature and player knowledge/player agency over its actions (both of which happen as a result of PC-ing a creature), the greater its potential to really seem scary.


RC

 

[Umbran]

Dracula was all three of those... pretty much all the time. The fact that he could put on a slightly presentable face to the skeptics only made him more horrible and hideous, frankly.

The quote is directly from the text, and I think it speaks for itself.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The quote is directly from the text, and I think it speaks for itself.

Have you ever read Fred Saberhagen's version of Dracula (The Dracula Tape)?

 

[Desdichado]

The quote is directly from the text, and I think it speaks for itself.

I'm familiar with the text; I've read Dracula three or four times. I think the takeaway I get from it is that Dracula does not look like any old eastern European aristocrat. There's always weird quirks about him; a pervading and ubiquitous sense of wrongness, that Harker is always trying to discount and blow off, because he's a skeptic. But, keep in mind that Harker is a skeptic, and the narration (of the first half of the book, anyway) is in his words. You do have to read between the lines a little bit.

Certainly his first description of the count includes a number of really bizarre physical features that might not necessarily be monstrous, but they were certainly unnerving, and became moreso as the narrative progressed.

Dracula's not overtly monstrous, he's subtley twisted, wrong and hideous.

EDIT: In fact, that's part of Stoker's literary toolkit, to have Harker be a skeptic who discounts the strangeness of Dracula himself. It's obvious to the reader that something about Dracula is immediately wrong, and every single time he's on "screen" that impression is strengthened. But by having it be obvious to the reader, but not the narrative voice, Harker in other words, he increases the tension. It's the same principle as in a modern slasher flick when the kids decide to go searching through the old house shouting someone else's name, and the camera flashes to Michael Myers hiding in the shadowy corner or whatever. The fact that audience can sense the obvious threat but that the character can't is what creates the tension.

To me, Dracula was always obviously terrifying, hideous and twisted, and it's clear that he's meant to be. Harker clearly didn't think so, or he minimized the extent to which he thought so in his letters and diary. But that's not to suggest that taking a few of Harker's descriptions out of context are a slam-dunk case for Dracula not being monstrous. I think it's pretty obvious that he's meant to be.

 

[Raven Crowking]

When he is seen climbing lizard-like down the wall, for instance!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape purports that Van Helsing is actually the villian of the novel, and he makes a pretty good argument IMO.

He also wrote The Holmes/Dracula File in which the descriptions of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula are demonstrated to be very, very similar, suggesting (within the novel) that Holmes is a relation of Dracula's.

Fun stuff, and a very light read.


RC

 

[Umbran]

Dracula's not overtly monstrous, he's subtley twisted, wrong and hideous.

Perhaps we have different ideas of the term, but I'd stop short of "hideous", as to me that's pretty darned close to "overtly monstrous".

The character is terrifying, yes. But that's in part because he can rather easily pass for human, where most of your other monsters cannot, even on a good day, be mistaken for human.