the Jester
Legend
When the pcs went into a kaorti cyst, I looped the sounds that scientists managed to get from Saturn's magnetic fields. Very alien, very creepy, and they replaced our normal music for a couple of sessions.
Non Conventional Ways to Get your Players into the Mood...
- Thread starter dmccoy1693
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dmccoy1693
Adventurer
Ohhhhh, I like!!!
Switchblade
First Post
For the last session of our heroic tier game I had the music from the Conan films and Krull playing in the background.
In one session the players were on the clock, they had ten minutes to do what they needed to do. Unusually for me I decided to track it round by round. I had a stack of 100 different coloured poker chips in front of me to represent the time passing.
The players knew that things would get progressively worse for them as they hit different colours of chips.
I gave the session a sense of urgency and desperation which was rather satisfying.
In one session the players were on the clock, they had ten minutes to do what they needed to do. Unusually for me I decided to track it round by round. I had a stack of 100 different coloured poker chips in front of me to represent the time passing.
The players knew that things would get progressively worse for them as they hit different colours of chips.
I gave the session a sense of urgency and desperation which was rather satisfying.
roguerouge
First Post
I usually say, "Who can tell me what happened last time on the chronicles of ..." That gets the back story to the front of the mind, starts us thinking narratively, and tells me what they remembered well and what they didn't, which usually correlates with what works and what didn't.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
dmmccoy1693 said:
Candles. Soft music. A little wine. Some rope.
Gets everyone I'd ever "play" with in the mood pretty nicely.
Fabio Andrea Rossi
First Post
Great post.
My little tricks:
1) when you want to put pressure on characters, for instance if a ritual of dark magic is being cast while they fight or if you want to make a character think that something really bad is going to happen, just put a die in the table, turning numbers down each roun by one.
Use a 6 or 4 sided die (not too many not too few sides) and go downward, used sparingly it works wonder to let their hidden metagamist soul know that something terrible is going on.
2) Once I did take over one player actions during its turn with no explanation.
It wasn't that I made his character do something harmful, on the contrary I moved the mini and used the powers at the party's advantage, I just told the players that there was a reason I was in charge, but I can't even begin to explain the terror this gave to the player's all (there should be an explanation in game. Mine was a kind of houseruled mindflayer control done for terror purposes mainly).
3) Lastly, this works to set up in no time an horror , ravenloftish atmosphere, if you start a light conversation in character by some beloved png, and slowly but unmistakebly make him/her speak as if it were normal matters of hideous matters like having hunger but no, not hunger for food, while you grab a player arm tighly. For succubus or special undeads it works wonders.
My little tricks:
1) when you want to put pressure on characters, for instance if a ritual of dark magic is being cast while they fight or if you want to make a character think that something really bad is going to happen, just put a die in the table, turning numbers down each roun by one.
Use a 6 or 4 sided die (not too many not too few sides) and go downward, used sparingly it works wonder to let their hidden metagamist soul know that something terrible is going on.
2) Once I did take over one player actions during its turn with no explanation.
It wasn't that I made his character do something harmful, on the contrary I moved the mini and used the powers at the party's advantage, I just told the players that there was a reason I was in charge, but I can't even begin to explain the terror this gave to the player's all (there should be an explanation in game. Mine was a kind of houseruled mindflayer control done for terror purposes mainly).
3) Lastly, this works to set up in no time an horror , ravenloftish atmosphere, if you start a light conversation in character by some beloved png, and slowly but unmistakebly make him/her speak as if it were normal matters of hideous matters like having hunger but no, not hunger for food, while you grab a player arm tighly. For succubus or special undeads it works wonders.
roguerouge
First Post
A DM recently had an NPC flick some dirt off my PC's shoulder. It immediately sent alarm klaxons off for me as a player. NPCs never, ever touch PCs except in combat or in romance scenes.
Eccles
Ragged idiot in a trilby.
I've done a few in various systems -
Star Wars. Playing the Imperial March. It's a classic, as everyone immediately hits 'scramble for action' mode...
Standing up, stomping around and yelling a lot for the angry God. Managed to get one player to back up (we were playing on the floor that week), shuffling on his backside into the corner of the room
A warhammer game - would work well in a minion battlemap game. One guy leapt into a town *filled* with zombies. Everyone else stood around the city walls watching their colleague. When this player left the room for a call of nature, I turned every *single* zombie miniature to face his mini. About 80+ of them. The look on his face was priceless when he sat down and realised.
A Spycraft game - lots of props, but the main 'bad guy' was a swarm of locusts, and I'd created a looping chittering and fluttering soundtrack. I started it soft and turned it up as we went along, which left people squirming and crawling as it got worse...
Star Wars. Playing the Imperial March. It's a classic, as everyone immediately hits 'scramble for action' mode...
Standing up, stomping around and yelling a lot for the angry God. Managed to get one player to back up (we were playing on the floor that week), shuffling on his backside into the corner of the room
A warhammer game - would work well in a minion battlemap game. One guy leapt into a town *filled* with zombies. Everyone else stood around the city walls watching their colleague. When this player left the room for a call of nature, I turned every *single* zombie miniature to face his mini. About 80+ of them. The look on his face was priceless when he sat down and realised.
A Spycraft game - lots of props, but the main 'bad guy' was a swarm of locusts, and I'd created a looping chittering and fluttering soundtrack. I started it soft and turned it up as we went along, which left people squirming and crawling as it got worse...
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