D&D General Why fear is good for PCs

[Velocitree]

I went through my DM thought process this week and asked myself: why do I think keeping my PCs afraid is so important?

Here’s what I came up with:

Landscapes of Fear; or, How to keep PCs afraid: Part 2

This is part 2 of a series on landscapes of fear ( Part 1 , Part 3): today I am going to talk about why it’s important to build a landscape ...

dreamshrike.blogspot.com

Hope this is valuable to a new DM: I ran a pretty flat campaign my first time out the gate, and it’s been a learning process ever since.

If you have any tips on how you scare your 5e PCs, pass them along please, I love hearing good tricks.

Right now mine are in a hostile ancient city with defenders of an equal CR, and there’s a mythos that hits the casters with Faerie Fire and wild magic every time they attack the guards with magic. And fifty foot walking statues with laser eyes that just dropped a building on them. But the tables will turn…

 

[bloodtide]

My best tip for Real Fear is run an Old School Style Hard Fun Unfair Unbalanced Game.

Just Random Meaningless Character Death at any time fills many players with fear. They worry the whole game that the DM might say something like "well, that is 11 damage, your character is dead".

 

[sevenbastard]

Just Random Meaningless Character Death at any time fills many players with fear.

Dont forget Level Drain!!!

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

Great blogpost.

There’s two ways I’ve baked fear into my 5E game.

1. Roll initiative every round: A D6 gets rolled by one of the players, and they have to meet or beat my D6 roll if they want to go before the monsters. If I went last in the previous round and then win initiative the next, that means the monsters get back to back turns. You can see how this could become dangerous. My players fear losing initiative and will use up precious resources to win it (Segway to my 2nd point).

2. The Cup of Chance (Doom): I have a skull chalice filled with 10D6. The players can roll these dice and add it to any other roll. They have to take at least two at a time and a result of 1 doesn’t count. When the cup is emptied, something bad happens. It’s usually tied into the reason the dice were used. A fighter drains the cup to pass an athletics check to push a monster over the edge of a cliff into a dark pool filled with piranhas below. The Doom Dice make the athletics check successful, but now the fighter is going over with the monster. My players use this mostly to compete with me for initiative. I’ve since added another skull chalice that lets me use a dice pool. But once I’ve used all the dice something good happens.

I don’t necessarily use fear in the sense of spooking my players, but I will lean heavily on Risk vs Reward. That being said I did run them through an abandoned Dwarven mining city that was overtaken by Necromorphs from Dead Space, and spooked em real good with weird skittering noises and things seen at the edge of their vision in the dark. When the Necromorphs were finally revealed I went pretty hard in describing how grotesque they were and they hit like a dump truck. This combo made them scary for the players.

I plan on running a Witches Coven in the near future, and would love to make that spooktacular.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Just Random Meaningless Character Death at any time fills many players with fear. They worry the whole game that the DM might say something like "well, that is 11 damage, your character is dead".

I don't do that but I have had a dragon take the mule of a 2nd level party as they made camp. They didn't lose any important gear as it was unloaded and they had consumed enough supplies they didn't need the mule.

But they did need to know that there were REASONS this area was not inhabited and it made the point. They went from "bold adventurers" to "tricksy little hobbitses" tout de suite. "Hide" and "run away" are valid tactics IMC. They found some stuff, stole some stuff, hid from a lot and fled when they felt they'd pressed their luck as far as they could.

They returned to that area a half dozen times over the campaign, eventually reaching the point they teamed up with the dragon. But "the cautionary tale of the mule" was always in the back of their heads, that sometimes the great and powerful threat may be too great and too powerful for them anytime soon.

"Don't be a cautionary tale" became the in-party mantra.

 

[Distracted DM]

My best tip for Real Fear is run an Old School Style Hard Fun Unfair Unbalanced Game.

Just Random Meaningless Character Death at any time fills many players with fear. They worry the whole game that the DM might say something like "well, that is 11 damage, your character is dead".

I actually think not-dead-at-0 is something that takes some fear away from the game- but I wonder if it'd be tough to acclimate to for players. I feel like it'd result in a lot of character deaths before people got used to it, if they ever did. After all that was how it worked in the early editions, but there were quickly alternative rules to introduce not-dead-at-0.

 

[Tigris]

Its always funny when GMs decide that negative things is good for Players...

 

[Koloth]

Fear can be instilled without death.
The above tale of the disappearing mule. Perhaps happening a few days earlier with loss of vital supplies. Suddenly the brave adventurers are in a survival situation.
A barmaid that wipes the floor with any character that acts inappropriately toward her. (She is a retired adventurer Monk of <avg party level + 5>). The mild looking general store clerk is similar. Nothing like some embarrassment to make the party a bit more respectful toward average looking town folk.
Town guards that are NOT pushovers.
Change near death to something that takes several days for recovery to ready for adventure status. While healing can quickly restore lost HP, the mind takes longer to recover from seeing the Elysian Fields before it is ready to deal with mortal life again.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I love the Cup of Doom. Genius.