The most terrifying place to have a battle

[Disciple of Darwin]

Very cool Piratecat. I've already bookmarked the site! My players will hate you for it.

DoD

 

[smilinggm]

How about an Oil Refinery or a chemical plant. Any place where where using firearms against your villian might kill the party from the collateral damage that they could cause!!!

 

[Lofwyr]

Two words:

Renraku Arcology.

or

my lair.

 

[Zhure]

Anyplace, even a familiar place, with both Darkness and Silence and a badguy you can't let escape.

We're in a cliff-hanger ending with that very scenaro. It really brings to life the uncertainty, the fog, of combat.

Greg

 

[Green Knight]

A good place ought to be somewhere isolated. Where the PC's won't have any chance of escaping their hunter.

Abandoned prison (Alcatraz motif).

Was gonna mention that, myself! Alcatraz would be a good place. Old prison on an island, not an easy place to get away from unless you're prepared. If you make the weather outside pretty bad, that'll force the PC's into the prison where the monster can get them. Even if they risk the elements, there's pretty much no chance of them getting off the island, especially with horifically bad weather. And of course, the monster could always pursue them outside the prison.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

I don't know a specific location that has not been already mentioned, but a good *type* of place would be one that is familiar yet unfamiliar at the same type. Familiar in the sense that the location is a type of place you go to often and are familiar with, but twisted to the point that the players feel alienated by it. Somewhere to emphasize the antagonist's inhumanity while also pointing out how he/she/it has some of humanity's worst traits as well. Perhaps instead of the PCs taking the fight to the baddie's lair, he/she/it attacks them in their very own home/base of operations. Nothing scarier to feel that your sense of security has been violated by some unknown enemy in the place where you feel you are the safest.

 

[Sodalis]

the most terrifying place to have a fight

I would guess your own house.

First, you have to worry about your kids being taken hostage
Then there is your wife nagging you about getting blood all over the furniture
Finally there is the big clean up (popcorn, body parts, broken applicances) you have clean up

Oh yeah- you have to replace all the broken furniture and TV/stereo equipment...

I would be willing to fight anywhere but my own house- the cost would be too great...

 

[Ashrum the Black]

I know its been said, but an underwater research lab was the scariest shadow run fight scene I've ever played in. We were so far down there was no way to get back to the surface without a sub or pressurized diving bell. Which we didn't have.

Then there was the fact that everbody there was dead. In a very inhuman fashion. Then we sarted to find all the wierd things they had been studying down here and realized that the villian we were down here after was the least of our worries.

of course the environment itself precluded us from deploying all the grade a bang-bang. Leaving use some melee weapons and some taser style weapons to use. Our friend utalized everything from drones to summoned spirits to take us out. And when all was said and done, after he was conered and beaton the rat @#$@$% started to laugh. Becuase he had just armed a small nuke that would take us all out in about five minutes.

I'll leave it to say that we managed to survive, but it was VERY touch and go after the DM dropped the egg timer on the table with five minutes ticking away on it.

 

[Stormprince]

The cool thing about a place like Alcatraz, or some simliar 'escape proof but now abandoned tourist attraction', is that you have plenty of source material already available

I'm sure, somewhere on the web, you can find maps and details on such locations that you can really use... for example, http://www.nps.gov/alcatraz/ has things like a virtual tour of the island's perimeter, information on its history (such as the Native Americans who once owned the island), its wildlife, famous inmates... all of which can very easily be used to add atmosphere, and provide a wealth of ideas for why the villain selected this place as a lair.

Christopher

 

[Garmorn]

Try a new high rise office building. Lots of places where the floor is not in. You can even have part of the shell incomplte. With no elevator installed and only some of the stairs complteted. Plenty of traps, echoes from different floors and lots of dead ends make it fun.

To keep it isolated you can use only a single constuction elvator to get them up above the lower floors. It could be easly disabled by them or it. Just think of all the places to hide. A different take is one that under going renavation due to fire or some other similar cause. In Seatle that could even mean an minor earth quake. Now you have lots of furniture and other distractions to throw in.