What Scares You?

[The Grumpy Celt]

What scares me?

Pirate Cat and John Crichton.
I lay awake at night worried they are under my bed and gonna get me if I go to the restroom.

 

[ForceUser]

* Waking up to find a stranger in my home in the middle of the night.

* The Ring. I still get spooked just thinking about it.

* Great White Sharks.

* Swimming in an endless bottomless ocean with no land in sight.

* The Ring. I still get spooked just thinking about it.

* Knowing that all I'd have to do to end my life would be to step in front of the morning commuter train. That's a sobering and terrifying thought.

 

[Gothmog]

For me, its the subtle things that can't be explained. For example:

* a shadow moving when nothing is there to cast the shadow
* leaving a room in a building to come back in and find something substantially different (like curtains taken down and folded), even though you were in there less than a minute ago and no one else is around (yes, that really happened)
* the flame on a candle extinguishing and then re-lighting by itself a few seconds later
* the sense of being watched
* finding things that seem to be coincidences, but have too much similar between them
* isolation- its always used in every good horror movie/book/adventure. If the PCs can go somewhere for help, it ceases to be scary
* deja vu- this once can be very effective if used on PCs several adventures in advance. Give the PC a brief image during an adventure of something totally out of context, then a few adventures later, present that situation to them, only it is relevant now. It really creeps people out.
* losing control of your actions/sanity- somebody else said this too- but I can't stress how terrifying this is to most people. Make one PC see and hear things that are not there, while the others have no idea what is going on. Guaranteed creep-out

 

[Nightstorm]

Go watch the movie "Children of the Corn"

Then have a village where the kids killed all the adults, and worship Demogorgon.

Hey! Thanks! Now I have my next adventure story.

 

[Jeph]

Ask Elph. Jonrog1's player. Man, the sh*t they seem to put her through . . . that marker thing was just mean.

 

[ph34r]

Gnomes

 

[The_Gneech]

Besides gnomes?

Paralysis is a good one ... watching, unable to move, as the carrion crawler starts with your feet...

Mob mentality is another ... the way any out-of-control situation causes some idiot to just go nuts (see the "Pyro at Iceman's house" scene in X2 for an example) ... and if you get fifty idiots, they just go even nutser.

Subtle insanity is a third. Not the Joker cackling at the top of his lungs, but the person sitting across from you who is having a perfectly normal conversation about gardening and then says something like, "...and I've found that my roses bloom better with AB negative. The scars are starting to bother me, though."

-The Gneech

 

[s/LaSH]

I fear loss of control (probably why I don't drink), and the Vast Unknown. I like to know things about my surroundings, and if I don't... well, who knows what might be out there?

Like H. P. Lovecraft and I always say: fear grows from the unknown. Never describe anything as "You see a monster and it's green and has a lizard's head"; instead, start two rooms back with the slow scratch of something on stone barely audible (demanding Listen checks a lot can help here), and build up to something sinuous in the shadows, coiling about itself, with the occasional verdant gleam from its oily hide. That sorta thing. Make the players name it themselves, and don't overdo it with repeat monsters - you want them to be petrified when goblins show up, because they're not sure whether these humanoid figures are goblins or something far worse...

 

[howandwhy99]

Personally, having my fears come true is probably my greatest fear.

Fear of the unknown is another that can be played up well. Imagine an invisible foe who is eating his foes on his way to you. Bodies crunching, horrendous growls and other disturbing details.

Being helpless to save an ally works well, but I wouldn't railroad the situation. If everyone in the party makes it out the proverbial "locked glass door", but one, they all become witnesses to the death of the PC.

I should say, though, that isn't nice to play with fire so often (emotions in rpg's being just as real as in life) and players certainly need to know your playing style beforehand.

 

[Piratecat]

What scares me?

Pirate Cat and John Crichton.
I lay awake at night worried they are under my bed and gonna get me if I go to the restroom.

I am. I will. You need to dust more.

Back in the early 80's, there was a summer when the gypsy moth caterpillars were so bad that if you were quiet, you could HEAR them eating all the trees around you. I'd mow the lawn, and they would drift downwards on their silken strands and land on my body. Trust me, that was a crappy, crappy summer to mow the lawn.

I'm also creeped out by earwigs, but it's only a claustrophobic fear of being trapped that my mind skirts around in "I don't even want to think about it" skittishness.