One Thousand Ways to Freak Out Your Players

[barsoomcore]

110. Have an uber-bad guy, somebody who used to torture babies and devour people's brains, somebody the party have been tryng to kill for ages, have a change of heart. They're sincerely horrified at what they've done and want to try and if not make amends, at least live a good life from now on. It has to be totally sincere and believable (in my campaign she fell in love with a party member and realised she couldn't be loved by the PC unless she made some drastic changes in her lifestyle), but it will truly mess with their heads.

 

[Wyrm Pilot]

Lessee, the score is... there was an unnumbered entry between 50 & 51, 69 twice, a skip from 72 to 77, an extra between 80 & 81, and two 102's, so this is...

111 (gee, the math comes out even!). Have every NPC speak entirely in blank verse. Including the children, drunks, magistrates, kobolds, etc. Every Tuesday and no other time.

112. Have a tribe of orcs all named Bruce, who keep their ale in small, lightweight metal cylinders. *Do not* give them Australian accents.

113. Introduce the Xaositects in your grungy, simulationist, low-fantasy, Hârn-fusion, backwoods D&D campaign. Introduce them slowly, starting with one, then another two a few sessions later, etc. Eventually the PC's find the town where they're coming from (on your world, anyway). This place should have a store selling wax lips.

 

[Oracular Vision]

114. The tripwire room, 40 x 40 ft, filled with garbage, empty boxes, bones, rats, stirges, etc., and also filled with tripwires in every square, hundreds of them like spaghetti in all directions...then make an empty corridor where the real trap is...

115. Fun with teleporters - make an otherwise nondescript hallway a teleporter, put some mist in the whole area, and have the characters continually teleport to two rooms back, see how many times you can get them to walk the same hallway before they figure it out...

116. Fun with time travel - have the party hear movement just ahead (it is themselves about 30 seconds into the future), and let them chase themselves...maybe they will fireball or do some long ranged stuff to themselves! Fun fun fun...

117. Fun with moss - make the entire dungeon tilt down at a 30 degree angle and have the floors all covered with moss, balance check to stand, or fall and slide into walls, etc...

118. Fun with water - Make the entire dungeon filled with water, and make it filthy nasty Star Wars Episode IV trash compactor-type nasty, and let the party hear things splashing, or catch a glimpse of an eye, but nothing ever actually happens - until they get to the way into the bad guy's lair, and its a huge plug in the floor, which of course will flood the bad guy's lair if it is pulled, and if they do it also causes huge quantities of water to rush in and send them tumbling down into the horrors below unprepared...

 

[Lela]

119. Use the MoP Plane of Mirrors. Once inside the party members run into themselves, who pretend to look stunned that they're seeing themselves (a perfect immitation of the party). A Glabuzu then rushes in, slaughtering the opposing party members and turns to them and growls. The Glabuzu is actually a Paladin of Ilmater and was only defending the warriors of good from their evil counterparts.
This works best when you have a low-level party. They DON'T want to attack that thing, so they are more likely to talk then fight--not that they could do any damage anyway.

 

[eXodus]

120.

my party was exploring a underground wererat cult site.

upon getting to a door they heard someone talking. they then heard crunching sounds.

the party kicked open the door and saw a man with a baby by the ankle over a large pen with the largest direrat they had ever seen in it.

the halfling cleric/rogue ran into the room and tried to take the crying baby from the man.

the baby stopped crying.

right after the halfling got smacked with it.

tha party never quite got over that.

 

[Eternalknight]

121. If a party member dies, take that player aside and tell him that, instead of going straight to hell, his soul has been 'rescued' by a demon, and that the demon wants to make a deal with him. The demon will send the charactre back to the mortal world to complete a task. If he slays an important PC or NPC within a year and a day, the demon will restore him to life permanently. Then have the dead PC turn up in the next room the characters enter, apparently alive and well.

I pulled this is in a King Arthur campaign I ran. The character accepted the demon's offer to kill the important NPC. Needless to say, the rest of the PC's were pretty freaked out when the recently resurrected PC murdered King Arthur and Merlin right in front of them!!! The silnce in the room was deafening!!!

 

[The Root Of All Evil]

The ease of freaking newbies.

122) During their first session ever, I had a party of four spot a dead pig during a trek in the woods. It took them five minutes to even approach it at which point they poked it with a five foot stick. Henceforth, it's been a running gag; "Careful! It might be a dead pig!"

 

[Eternalknight]

This one is stolen shamelessly from whoever the editor of Dragon was at the time...

123. Have the PC's meet a witch/seer/mystic/fortune teller who offers to predict their future for a measly sum. She looks shocked, almost speecheless... all she matters to stutter out is "It's... it's.... abominable!!!!" Later on, while the PC's are travelling overland, they find a cow standing in their path. If the PC's approach, allow them to make Listen checks to hear a faint ticking noise. If they come closer to the cow, the cow explodes, doing bucket loads of damage to them. Explain to them the mystic's vision just came true: abominable was really a-bomb-in-a-bull!!!

 

[Altin]

124. This is a good 'on the road' type encounter to really freak players out, one which I've pulled in various guises on unsuspecting parties over the years.

Whilst treking through a fairly uncivilised area, the players come across an Inn (or a Monastry willing to provide shelter) in the middle of nowhere just before sunset. The people there are freindly, the food is cheap, the ale is good and the beds are comfortable. For maximum effect, play up how nice and pleasant everything is. Then, after they've gone to sleep, have one Pc wake up in the middle of the night. The bed he's in is grimy and sticky, he feels a rat scurrying around his feet, the room around him looks like it has aged several hundred years. The former inhabitants have either vanished or are skeletal remains (animated ones, if you are feeling sadistic). As the rest of the party is woken up, quiet, disembodied chanting (growing increasingly louder) can be heard from somewhere close, accompanied by objects moving at their own volition, walls bleeding and so forth. In my experience, most groups run for the hills at this point.

The next morning, the place has completely disappeared, leaving no sign that it ever existed. It has even vanished from their maps and when they try to talk about it, they find themselves unable to do so. Sure to make your players paranoid about freindly NPCs and unwilling to stay at nice taverns.

Yours,

Altin

 

[vraad]

Pit Trap

125. Did this one to my PCs, now they're paranoid about pit traps.. Have a 5' hallway set up with 5 - 5'x5' pit traps. The party can walk across the pits without problem until they get to the last one. When the last trap is trigered, it's a chain reaction with the others. You end up with a person in each pit. Make the walls unbeievably smooth so climbing is a really big issue. Once they start to find their way out of the pits (only let one or two out before you do this), bring in the guards with bows. One more thing, the pits should be at least 10' deep.