What Makes A Horror Campaign Scary?

[Tsillanabor]

In my zombie apocalypse adventure the PCs were VERY scared of the zombies for quite a while even after they could kill dozens without breaking a sweat. This was achieved by the simple tactic of a fight attracting more zombies. Nearly every round more would show up. Throughout the entire adventurers tried to never stop moving.

 

[Aris Dragonborn]

Every so often, take a player off to another room where the others can't see or hear. You don't really have to RP with him. The other players will go nuts with suspense. Secret notes like, "Read this, then look at Brian with a big smile" are fun too.

I can personally attest to this advice, having used the former to great effect, and having the latter used on me. By the end of the night, I was paranoid as hell.

 

[Jolly Giant]

There was another thread recently... it seemed, from that, that all the creepiest game experiences involved babies or maggots.

Zombie babies, ghost babies, babies with glowing eyes, talking babies...

Writhing maggots, maggots in food, maggots in bodies, giant maggots, slimy maggots, people eating maggots...

-Hyp.

Yup. Check it out, it has some good stuff in it. You can find it here.

You might also want to check out Heroes of Horror (WotC). I've only browsed through it, but it looked cool; made me want to run a horror campaign. WHich is why I checked out both this thread and the one I linked to. Maybe someone who has actually used the book would care to say something about how it worked out?

 

[Lord Ipplepop]

I want to thank all of you (albeit years later) for the GREAT ideas....
I have a new table with the most experienced player being a master of the game at a whole 1 1/2 years worth of experience, and another with about 6 months, and 3 with NO experience....
I was watching The Walking Dead one night and figured I could do that with 5ed just to have some fun....
I have a couple of ideas for actual adventures, but I figure most of it is going to be just having stuff ready at locations they are traveling in.
The ideas in this thread are going to make the game a blast for me, and complete hell (in a good way) for the players....

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Creepy stuff with no explanation. Just really weird, weird stuff that happens, but doesn't have any effect other than to creep out players works well.

Excellent recommendation. In the first Call of Cthulhu game I played in we were investigating an abandoned haunted house. Throughout the session my GM would throw in descriptions of "encounters" with a big, fat black housefly. It seemed like everywhere we went in the house, that fly would show up, buzzing about, repeatedly banging against a window pane. With all of the other supernatural stuff happening in the house we became on edge and suspicious about that damned fly. After the session wrapped I asked my GM how the fly fit into plot and he revealed it was an element he added to make the mood more tense and creepy. It worked perfectly!

 

[gamerprinter]

I've been using mood music to enhance the horror in my games, mostly relying on the free ambiance/music site Tabletop Audio that has over 50 pieces many specifically for horror, though most could be used for that purpose. Each piece is 10 minutes long - and I think is pretty awesome site.