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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 3889367" data-attributes="member: 704">My question was more in the line of 'avoid dead baby jokes around people that have had a miscarriage'.  I should be able to describe some pretty horrible things while staying within the bounds dictated by Eric's Grandmother.  Since I am at work at the moment, the nastier ideas I have will again need to wait until this evening.  However, I can probably make a few more suggestions here.Pulling off Horror in D&D is not too difficult, relatively speaking.  Gore by its self wont do it, but you can get a visceral reaction with some effort.  Terror is much harder to do.  You can almost never evoke a 'run and hide' sense of peril that goes beyond a tactical desire not to die.  The players first reaction will always be to try to stab it or blast it depending on their character class.  Direct threats almost never work.That is why you need to prey on feelings beyond self preservation.  The best reaction I ever got from any group of players was from a group of goblins.  There were enough goblins to be a tactical threat, but not overwhelming.  But the encounter was set on a family farm with the family tied to posts with flammable wood under their feet.  The mother and 3 children were being forced to watch as the goblin leader gouged out the eyes of the father and ate them.  The players charged in, and the first action of the goblins was to set the oil soaked kindling on fire.  The players were determined to intervene and prevent something horrorific from happening.  This worked because the idea of a family being tortured in this manner touched a nerve (harm of children / family) and it forced a hard decision (try to kill the goblins then free the family, or free the family first allowing the goblins unanswered attacks on them).I will expand on things that might get visceral reactions later.For now, here are some ways to try to inspire terror in your players.About the only thing that works for terror in a D&D game is doing things that do not quite fit within the rules as they know them.  There are a few ways to do this, but it is a very hard line to walk between scaring them witless and an unfair TPK.  The key to such encounters is that you have to make the encounter very dangerous tactically, you have to deny the players the use of their usual means of attacking the opponent, and you must provide a means to survive the encounter that the players can figure out.- Run an encounter with a T-Rex with permanent Improved Invisibility.  All you need to tell them is that something very large is bitting them and doing horrible damage, and that they cannot see it.  Allow Improved Invisibility to see 'something', but do not describe it as a T-Rex.  Add in a template that adds some heavy damage reduction or fast healing or regeneration to amp this up.- An Ethereal opponent with Telekinesis can really get the players on edge by throwing large objects at them while denying them a direct way to counter attack.- Run a few encounters using a possession mechanic based on Magic Jar, accompanied by a disembodied demonic voice.  Let players who fail a saving throw keep their mind in their body, but dictate their actions.  Just roll initiative, and on the 'monsters' turn, roll out the saves / attacks for magic jar as normal as the voice taunts them.  Describe a powerful evil will trying to dominate them as you do the attacks.  If you succeed, hand notes to a player telling them which player they need to try to kill, and ensure that they use their best attacks to do so.  Or just have a character soak himself in oil and set himself on fire.  Have fun with it.  Just make sure that you allow the players a means to defeat the 'force'.  Just make it non obvious, and keep the duration of such attacks low (no more than 4 or 5 rounds).  Let the players win if they can work out a way to keep the possessed player from killing himself or others without resorting to murder.- Have a duplicate of a player show up in camp and start trying to kill everyone.  Attacking it does nothing.  Attacking the original and 'killing it will cause the duplicate to come to his senses while leaving the original dead.  For this to work, you must find a way to clue the players into the idea that killing the original will stop the duplicate, but you must not let them know that killing the original will not result in the death of the player.That is all for now.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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