I heard many children during my childhood say " I would have just [socially brave thing]" and usually I didn't believe them. On the one hand, RPGs are about escapism and what you would do if you were not limited by the confines of being you, but on the other hand, we are trying to tell stories about believable characters. I find little ruins the atmosphere of a game more than characters effortlessly being stupendously brave. The bravery comes in part from the belief that if a challenge is presented in the game, then it must be within the capabilities of the PCs and that they are supposed to meet it. Particularly irksome is the player who smirks and is cheeky to the king to his face in public. In reality. that level of social bravery is beyond almost everyone. If the solution to a problem is to do X, then real people still may have a tough time doing X. He has his back turned. This is your one opportunity to grab the knife and stab your brutal captor in the back. If you miss it, he'll lock the door and you'll be trapped forever. Real people hesitate and miss the moment. That they might hesitate makes the moment significant. That a PC can automatically over-ride that hesitance and do what is needed robs the moment of its drama.
I confess guilty as charged. The higher on the social hierarchy the figure with whom our party communicated, the more derisive and sarcastic we treated them. Our out was often that a suspicious number of aristocrats appeared to be afflicted with high-born hard of hearing: King: Oh thank you, humble wanderers! Player: ‘Oh thank you’ says the great queen like a la-di-da #!@?#! King: I beg your pardon? Player: Thats alright, sir, call again.
OMG I can't believe Lindy Effing Beige commented! I've seen many of your videos because as a gamer they are relevant to me. But somehow it never occurred to me that , ya know, you were an ACTUAL gamer that is still deeply involved. lol Makes sense to me that you would be into OSR kind of stuff. I can totally see that! 😄
I try to let my players know that the world and it's characters are dangerous. If not treated with proper respect a price will be paid. If you don't pay proper respects to the king, you'll be warned once. Maybe twice if he's feeling generous. After that it's game on. The player either quits or respects the world after that.
You can learn a lot from scary movies. Isolation is scary; fall in a pit that leads somewhere where you no longer have your party to back you up. The unknown is scary; telegraph your monster with the carnage they wrought on previous challengers. Permanent losses are scary; meet a guy at the tavern who is blind and missing an arm from having gone into the dungeon before you. An old ally can turn on you. Things you were previously sure of can suddenly be unsure. Hacked up those zombies, but wait! Are they ... regenerating?! There's lots of ways to create anxiety and fear in players.
Awesome! Here's my tip for creating scary and it's a simple three-step formula: 1) foreshadow - there is something perceivable, ominous, that is not right be it scratching noises in the distance, bloody prints, maybe a fresh almond-scent in the air AND it doesn't immediately ring of something fatal (it's just some prints, not a wellspring's worth of blood); 2) horror - which is the immediate recognition that the stakes are deadly so this is where you find the severed head, the pile of bones, a death wail, etc and it's very clear death is on the line from here on out; 3) terror - this is when mortality is at the precipice for our heroes where they see the monster and are told a natural 20 kills them, or encounter the ghost where if you roll a 1 on a save the result will be you are a withered husk. So when writing your narrative just give thoughts to the 1, 2, 3 and ensure they're discretely events the PCs can interact with, and as it is a game it never hurts the moment they hit #3 to tell them exactly how they may just randomly die very soon. Hope that helps!
With your great sword in front of you, you stride down the temple, surrounded by shadows in odd corners of the columns, in spite of every few meters, a lit torch. You can make out... corpses in the darkness along the walls. Their eyes stare back at you in horror. Their stomaches are gouged out, limbs missing, faces contorted in agony. Blood smears the walls continuously. At the end of the hallway is a very tall man... not a human, a hobgoblin? An ogre? You aren't sure. His sword is massive, and on the end of it, is another soldier, impaled straight through the poor man's armor, and held aloft. Quiet croaking indicates that he is near death, and the point is esclamated when the man-thing, with a flick of the wrist, hurls the soldier into a wall. The newly deceased's body makes a sickening crunch. The big man turns his head to stare at you, and his eyes come into focus. The eyes of an animal. Is this thing a creature of this world? The man-shape, possibly 8 feet of muscular mass with jaundice skin, bare chested, turns around to face you. You detect immense calm and focus within it, wielding a colossal sword in one hand. A sword that is incredibly wide and curved, the sheer size of it affording length, and blood drips quietly from the gore covered metal of the blade. Aside from that, you can hear your heart beating, and the immense breathing of the foe. What do you do? "I roll initiative!" The beast booms with laughter, "Finally! A fitting challenger." He waits for you to strike first. "... okay. I charge! +9 to attack... 25! That hits right?" No, it misses. You parry at each other for a time, your own immense strength is barely a match for his. He knocks you into the wall for 14 damage. "Crap! I rage. Okay? I rage! I scream a battlecry and... +11 to attack. Oh man! Yes! Does 30 hit?" You scream the scream of someone who is cornered, heroically summoning the will to... stab him in his right pectoral. "Yeah baby!" Blood spurts as your wide and long blade digs one third of its length in. You 25 damage. The man grabs your blade, an iron grip that halts it from burrowing further, and he laughs. "Wtf?" "Never has anyone wounded me thus!" He laughs lustfully, as his body grows ever larger, fur sprouting out of his skin like that of a werewolf. His clothes tear apart, revealing hooves, and thick fur. Wings sprout from his back, large bull horns shooting out of his forehead, as his face widens and grows. He continues to laugh with mad excitement. "Never has anyone wounded me thus in 300 years!!!" He appears to be some great minotaur-like creature with wings and a great tail, grown to nearly double his prior height and width, with eyes red of pure undiluted focus and rage. His hands have become twice as massive, covered in fur as of a beast, one of which still grips your blade. Roll a will save. "Um... I failed?" You are paralyzed with fear. You think you're facing some sort of monster. "Guess I'll just die?" He knocks you against the wall, then picks you up and tears at your limbs. You can do nothing but scream in agony. Then your friend Griffith arrives with a squad of crossbowmen to save you! "Oh uh... Yay!"
@@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin Ah the Nosferatu Zodd encounter I ran that module. It was fantastic! However the follow-up published adventure was even better; eclipsed that one, I'd say.
You touched on the truth of making D&D scary when you talked about the "Baldur's Gate 2"-era vampires. The players of superhero 5E characters don't fear losing hit points, they fear losing their power. Losing items, ability scores, levels, experience, or suffering exhaustion -- that's what they truly fear.
Levels of Exhaustion is what I intend on using in upcoming games. It is a good mechanic which is often ignored. ADDITIONALLY I am considering making a mental exhaustion table very similar to the physical one presented. That was something I found great in WARHAMMER 3rd ED by Fantasy Flight.
@@CharlesClemens I give characters a level of exhaustion whenever they are reduced to 0 hit points. It changes their outlook on getting dropped in a fight completely.
I recently used "Nat20 instakills" in an encounter with the BloodLake Beast (a monster I created.) It was really interesting to watch the Characters run when they realized how they weren't going to overpower the beast on its own terms.
I find horror and fear is about atmosphere. Get good at descriptions, and engage at least three of the character's five senses. Fear saves are more something you want to pull out for magical effects or players that simply *refuse* to feel fear in character. Describe the slithering groans of the character's ramshackle bunker as the beast slithers overhead. The weighty thump of it's massive body coming down off the shed, low hiss of something enormous breathing out, filling the wooden tomb with the scent of fetid meat and a light, almost imperceptible increase in humidty. Followed by a calm, polite knock at the door. Pause to let them sweat or answer quickly. If they do not, then that polite knock gets firmer. Then turns into banging, slamming, walls heaving from the force being so casually applied to the front of their shelter. Yet the do not break. Not by some miracle of woodwork, but because they know *it* does not want them to break. Not yet, anyway. Makes door to door saleswyrms much more imposing than they sound.
I introduced it by having a random encounter that rolled really unfavorably go ahead as planned. I knew that the PCs couldn't harm the creature, but after looking at it's intelligence and desires, decided that it was just passing through... Every blow and arrow just bounced off of it, as it "strolled" on by them, completely ignoring their presence as it went about it's business! The PCs didn't see it that way when it blew through their campsite, but who was I to tell them what it was doing??! 🤣👍
I once had a margarine tub with mud behind my DM screen and splattered players with it suddenly at a climatic moment. People were horrified and I got actual screams out of my players. Best shock and horror thing I ever did. Players weren't just surprised they were in fear. Of course it takes the right build up of tension but you can actually scare people with these games if you work at it.
In a recent adventure in my Pathfinder campaign, the party watched from a distance as a creature tore into a heard of stags taking them down easily. One of the NPC's told the story of when he was a child, his village had one of these creatures sneak into the town and slaughter people. It took his village several weeks of this to track it down and kill it, but not before it took out some of the villages best hunters. One NPC' shearing how this thing could track, started to try and camouflage her scent with pine and other natural things and the party scurted the creature. But then they stumbled upon a hill giant who was out hunting. They feared the giant and hide themselves only to watch this animal take down the giant. They Bolted in fear with it chasing after them. They managed to escape (all in the DM's plan) My players were generally fearful they were all going to die and a TPK would happen. But they all enjoyed it. Not once did they have to roll a dice for fear!
The easiest way for the players to feel fear is to have meaningful stakes. My players are in Rapan Athuk using 5E rules and Tasha’s Cauldron. They have felt fear because I play the monsters smart and they realize the combats are dangerous
Rappan Athuk is awesome for generating fear... unbalanced encounters... Of course I DM swords & wizardry (complete & whitebox), so fear is implemented in the lethality of the game.
@@smugzoid5156 Rapan Athuk is a great mega dungeon & my players are enjoying it immensely. Been playing for six months and they hit level 7. I have the huge Orcus mini and I hope they make it to him so I can finally use it
@@solowolf7418 i had 3 different adventuring parties going through at the same time. I even had one view the remnants of the others destructive wake. One party tpk in the purple worm chamber with the hidden chamber and the fired trap (level 3: beware of the purple worms - room 3)
@@smugzoid5156 Interesting that you mentioned that as we just finished that chamber. The purple worms are deadly but everyone survived. The part then fought the were-rats. Thank Paladin for fireball!
Counterpoint : Taking away the player's agency is, in itself, upsetting. Horror often thrives on moments when we are disappointed, upset, or distraught over what's happening in the narrative to the main characters when they react poorly to the situation they have been placed in. I'm reminded of Pet Sematary, where the father keeps relenting to the force of the Wendigo's "sour land" and it's alluring ability to bring the dead "back to life" despite knowing the consequences will be bad. Had he had full agency, he would never have succumbed to the temptation, or the unnatural forces that overpowered his better reasoning. Instead of obeying his rational mind, he all but abused his wife by not allowing her to grieve the loss of their own child, sending her away instead of letting her come to terms with the death, despite knowing this would prolong her suffering. It doesn't just move the plot forward toward unhappy endings, it irritates the observer while informing them that this threat is not as tangible as a typical danger we might encounter. It demonstrates our smallness, and fallibilities, and that by itself is horrific.
@@oz_jonesIt is, but I get his point. I mean, there are , spells, effects, powers, etc. that can actually take that player agency away. I just think it takes both good referees AND good players to make those scenes (which should be rare) memorable and exciting.
'take player agency away'- so does DEATH and we play with it- and while some hate it so much as to avoid it altogether its pretty much consensus that games feel and play very diferently with or without its possibility, and how no stakes takes some of the fun. I think its more about how, when -and giving alternatives. Idk how it could be hacked into dnd or particular systems (i run my own ruleset), but from stats to what they player can do/try to avoid it all could factor in (example: mental health/hp in games with that, taking damage in it instead of losing control)... anything that ties loosing control/getting scared to an outcome players couldve avoided if they played diferently Its a lot on perception really, and how its usually made feels cheap- the gm pulls a roll on you 'out of nowhere', no reward but to avoid being nerfed or loosing control, this is where most of the backlash comes from
Yeah honestly old school undead were terrifying. A pack of ghouls was even scary at any level as ghoul paralysis could be a TPK even for mid-level adventuring groups if they rolled poorly.
The worst thing about how level drain used to be was that it could really screw up your group’s level spread and make the player affected feel like a pariah. People would just consider their character ruined and want to roll up another one. OTOH, I always thought it’d be cool to partly drain down a group that was getting too high level to be fun any more.
I ran a Call Of Cthulhu one-shot once for my regular gaming group. During the course of the investigation, one player failed a check that resulted in them fainting for a hour in-game time and the rest of the investigators had to continue on without them for the session. They wound up being the only player to not go insane or die.
Awesome video. I'm currently running a 5E game, players are level 1. Low level D&D instils fear. Had the first encounter escalate as they were sent to find someone that was lost in the woods. They find an area covered in webs. So they didn't want to just light the webs on fire as the person they are looking for might be cocooned in the web. Cutting there way to the whining cries of a young woman normal spiders started crawling out all over. As they get to the girl they find her webbed and had cuts to the back of her knees making it hard for her to move. It was then that an Ettercap came out from behind the group, hiding like a trap door spider and caught one player and start to drag him off. The other players managed to damage the Ettercap who ran off without his prize, survival is more important. Fear in that game came from, fear of getting killed. Fear for the players and NPC's. But accomplishing that in a meaningful way is best done when you can lure the players into false sense of security. Normal spiders was the lure and attacking the most injured from behind was the trap that drove the fear for the party.
Check out Greg Stolze's Madness Meters, they offer a flexible way to handle sanity. It can be seen in the Nemesis rules (free ORE horror rules) and in a modified form in the Delta Green RPG. I run OSR games and my players are usually cautious and often afraid of encounters, largely because they know that any encounter could be overpowered for their level. They've learned to look for clues, spy, observe, use diplomacy, and other tactics before getting into a fight. They've also learned to avoid or run away from encounters if there's nothing to gain and they have a goal.
We always hated the level drain rules, right from 1st ed. Like a fail of a fear save it could instantly or quickly end the participation of a player in a fight. This applied especially to martial characters but could effect casters as well. One of the DMs in the campaign came up with a house rule that involved tracking hit point advancement at ever level, what you rolled, and when you regained a level, either by magic or XP, you would get to roll a new HP die and either take the new result or the result you had originally had as a reward for putting up with the much hated rule. I adopted that rule too until 4e did away with level drain. Today, however, I mostly play with new players, low RP players and high ego players (we've always had those though), so a mechanic that simulates fear comes in handy. It gives the new and low RP players prompts to help them play out characterization (So what does your character do, you're afraid and desperately need to run away?) and it helps when the high ego player just believes "My character would never do that!" Each method solves a problem but creates its own problems. It seems the solution depends on the DM and the players they work with.
I played 3E on a server running Neverwinter Nights that was set up for Epic play (up to level 40). Everyone quickly leveled up to 40 and ran around. Nothing could cause fear in the party so much as a few randomly encountered 19-hit point Rust Monsters. I've seen 40th level characters run in a panic at the alert of a Rusty Sighting. As a ranged character (Arcane Archer) I could clear all of them with the loss of a few arrows. I was very popular in those moments.
NWN rust monsters particularly suck though. By table-top rules you were quite safe if you went after them in leather armor with clubs or staves, as overall they're not extremely dangerous monsters. So say, a monk with leather gloves & in their usual bathrobe should have been fairly safe too. NWN Rust Monsters are scripted to just delete whatever they find in an equipped slot on a hit. Because it doesn't have information for the material of individual pieces of equipment, and I don't think I've seen anywhere that went through the insane work to make sure any piece of equipable gear had a defined material that the script could check and ignore if non-metallic.
The problem with rules like the level drain thing is that it's difficult to think of anything that would entice me to continue into the vampire's home with that on the line. "It's ok; I'll meet another fiance."
Good video. Fear has to be the hardest emotion to get across to players. Especially when they think they are unstoppable. One thing could be failing your saving throw and for 1 round your immobile. Basically, your brain is trying to figure out fight or flight which is very real, even for trained professionals. They are adventures and seen a lot so I believe they would work through the fear, but it takes your brain about 6 to 10 seconds to process the information. At least that could work on some situations I believe.
Even harder than fear is seduction. I've got friends who are complete dogs, in real life and in character, but the second they realize they are being seduced to a "nefarious" end, their characters become Sir William the Chaste. "Dead" is the easiest emotion or status to convey in an RPG because even the most stubborn player can't just say "it doesn't bother me" when they get dismembered or set on fire, like they can do in so many other circumstances.
I would agree with this 100%. Disadvantage isn't forcing them to act in any particular way but it's DEFINITELY not causing them fear or causing them to pause to rethink their life choices. As always, great tips and insight! You always deliver and I'm happy to be here listening.
This one is a tough subject for me as a GM. I think the first thing is group buy-in. Explaining the setting out of game and providing excellent description in game help to encourage the right atmosphere and mood, but it really depends on what the players do (as it often does). In a weird way, our 1980s and 1990s D&D group was almost ruined to horror campaigns because we wanted to see the monster and the gruesome way that we died, and there was almost an eagerness rather than a fear. One great specific suggestion I grabbed from a random D&D supplement: Place something powerful in the beginning. Throw off the players by having a significant encounter right up front--rather than building up as the adventure goes. Then mix it up after that, not necessarily providing a rhythm the players can get used to. I stuck with that one and describe everything in a gothic way, like I've read too much Edgar Allan Poe.
My players and I have always had an issue with the fear rules in DnD. Different people act differently when they are scared, not everyone will run away or cower in terror. Sometimes people run, sometimes people cower, sometimes people attack the source of the fear until it isn't moving any more. I thought the mists of Ravenloft nerfed your equipment, did they change the rules? That's how it was in the first boxed set, I remember that distinctly.
I play online, and my favorite way to make players scared is to separate them, but still let them see the other rolls. I played a scenario in a fey forest where their sense of reality was slipping. I didn't tell them that, but I changed the narration in a sort of gaslighting way ("You want to head back to the road? You never came here by a road, in fact, you're pretty sure you've been wandering this forest for years, trying to get out."). Then, I had them roll saves, and anyone who failed a save would be taken to a one on one chatroom. It's my equivalent of passing a note. Players absolutely loved that adventure, and they were all gushing about how terrified they all were, especially the ones who *made* their saves.
The mechanic is in place for rule guidelines and those players that wouldn’t abide by the social aspect and theme. You know there are a ton of players that would just ignore fear and it would be a meaningless ability.
5e DM here, and you're exactly right. I've had players get hit with a Frightened condition and go, "I'm so scared of it, I'm just gonna keep using [INSERT SPELL HERE] until it dies!" They don't wanna act scared because "we're the heroes," completely ignoring that heroes are still human(oid) and can (and *should*) get scared in crazy situations. Every game should have meaningful FEAR rules, or else a decent amount of players will just ignore the concept altogether.
If your'e not convinced by the mechanic, then you can create a house rule that says something like "anyone who fails a saving throw against fear has advantage in anything that will get him away from the object of fear and disadvantage in anything else". That way they still have their autonomy and can chose to ignore the fear, but will pay a price for doing so. If they chose to roleplay the situation, the get a bonus. I didn't get why PDM likes the substraction of two levels by vampires but not the disadvantage mechanic for dragons.
To be fair to the new Curse of Strahd, it's written to be run with characters starting between levels 1-3, so chances of them having *any* magic equipment on entering Barovia are pretty slim.
One of the revised versions of Vampire had a system for flaws and social powers where any time you chose as a player to take an additional downside or have your character work significantly against their own interests, then they got to record a mark in a box, and once you got a certain number of those, you got additional XP. This is a solid “opt in” systems where players will choose to take worse effects, roleplay being under a negative emotional influence and so on because their characters learn and grow faster from the harsher experiences.
Other things players fear, loss of character control, imprisonment... mainly loss of player agency. Something that 5e seems to frown upon. Which is really sad, some of the most interesting games I played in my youth were about a player being possessed by a sword or turning into a werewolf and the rest of the party having to capture and cleanse them of the affliction. Most of the time the DM let the player still play their character (just as the werewolf etc.) It made for great fun and great stories "Hey remember the time you met that barmaid and we had to chase your hairy*** around the town for three sessions until we could cure you..."
I have been thinking about this since I played Alien, the stress die mechanic is brilliant and is not because you may panic because that is more of the same about loosing agency, but because the chances of botching go up, but on the flip side the stress dice can also help you succeed. So I think this could be tested on CoC by increasing the % of critic/botch maybe by using the same amount of sanity loss.
in 5e my players weren't afraid of anything. in OSE the same group of players planned a several-day detour around a ruin due to the very rumor of a wraith that locals told them haunts the location. A local farmer went there on a dare and came back raving, his hair drained of colour, and died of fright that very evening.
BECMI D&D provides plenty of tension. No death saving throws, no short rests. I use Willpower checks to overcome extreme new scenarios coupled with horror checks from Ravenloft. Failure means they suffer from an acute mental instability, which they can potentially recover from after a significant rest. It works wonderfully.
Thanks Professor. That was some good advice. I tend to keep things more secretive than I should, and just coming right out and saying that the 20 results in you losing your head, or the 1 leads to death by lava, is simple but brilliant.
Professor, this topic is extraordinarily timely. I was just chatting with my players about this. We’ve got a BBEG that’s a greater mummy (think Mumra from Thundercats with less warmth) that’s the last high priest to a Lovecraftian outer god. One of its nastier supernatural powers is Horrific Presence. I’ve made this a Charisma based save vs Spells (I’m using 1e saves). It can “exert” this ability when it so desires and anyone who can see or feel it’s presence is subject. Players will suffer penalties to combat modifiers and spell failure can occur. There is also Awesome Presence which is similar but is the purview of powerful good / celestial beings and dragons. Based on the comments I’ve seen in here I think you could get a good deal more mileage out of this topic - Fear as an effect / spell / power vs fear via atmosphere and story setup. As always excellent work, sir.
One other example of miss direction. The players come across a small ball shaped thing rolling around bumping into things and cooing plaintively, calming and purring as the player approaches. Once he's touched the warm cuddly ball, small feet/tentacles are shown to be mostly how it moves. The player now sees dimly a plush, ripped (cloak) velvet nest, inside are several snuggling, snoring balls. All the descriptions I use are oriented towards Tribble like things, except one of the biggest furry balls, probably the oldest. It can open its one, big eye now, starts to hover a teeny bit, just as someone else sees Mom hovering down a corridor...
I ran a one-shot monster hunt. No one had ever seen it, yet it was huge. Footprints the size of a couch but hardly any tracks through the jungle. They found out more and more. They stumbled into a Hobgoblin party including a mage and a couple ninjas who were camped in a stockade, paralyzed by fear and indecision because of this monster. When I cued some.music from Predator and described it slamming into the ground amid the party, they were good and scared. When it grabbed a PC and loped off with him into the canopy where there was total obscurement instead of fighting the party, then they really got scared. And when the druid summoned apes into the trees to chase it down and finish the monster off, and it fell from the trees with a thud....and I didn't end initiative. Well then they were truly scared. Of course it regenerated. Only got half of one more extra round, but boy it got them going.
I don't really do fear mechanics but I enjoy permanent insanity for characters. I just keep a note on my DM screen on who has what and then I alter the reality I share with that character/player. Works real well for 1:1 sessions and campaigns.
Some games have made sanity/fright systems more interesting. Personally I like systems that have an immediate effect that is triggered by the players actions, and that don't take them out of the game for a prolonged period of time. The Alien RPG does a good job at this with its stress mechanic, where unless stress gets really high most of the effects are on top of what the player is trying to do. As its often triggered by the player's rolls this also makes them more directly involved in causing the negative outcome, and most of the results make sense. It also results in some really memorable scenes.
I do agree that vampires used to be the scariest monsters in the game-all level drainers were. Up until Pathfinder I think, then they became only scary to low to mid- level characters. There was jewelry that could protect you somewhat, previously. In my last fight against level drainers [in Pathfinder] they were not even a minor nuisance, I just kept up the spells that give total protection against energy drain {[Death Ward I believe]. And there were dozens of undead energy drainers we had to fight [even incorporeal ones]. No fear at all, just a job.
I remember interactions with the unkown in combination with potentially overwhelming odds were the most scary parts of our games. Infiltrating an unfinished gulag to free an inmate or exploring a merchant's home during the night to find incriminating evidence. I once had my group hunt a dragon. On their way they encountered an elf (kinda) kid at a magical pond, who hung out with a troll family that had lost their home to the dragon. The trolls didn't speak the common tounge, the elf kid wouldn't talk at all, but they knew where the dragon lived and were generally very friendly. Later my players told me they were scared shitless of these guys, while the dragon was just a simple task for our group of murder hobos. Playing as ordinary people, half lights and outcasts helps. 5e and other superhero games really aren't build for scary encounters, unless you find something wild to throw at them. The idea of Challange Rating and the heavy combat focus also discourage DMs from challanging the players with anything other than a perfectly balanced encounter. Also, cheat spells like Comprehend Language and Darkvision really spoil the tension in these situations.
The best part about those 1 hit kill monsters or stone bridges across the lava that might kill you outright? It forces the players to get creative. "Ok everyone we can't melee with this guy. How do we work together to hit from afar?" Or "So there's a chance I just fall and die?! What equipment do we have to make sure we get across safely..." In our Delta Green game we made temp insanity "Fight, Flight, Freeze". You don't have total control but roll a d6. On a 1-2 you can still fight for your life. Freezing in place on a 5-6 however is terrifying!
My table uses old-school rules for level drain, petrification, and poison. Some dangers result in level loss, and others in instant death. it really amps up the tension in the game and it works well for us.
I like the Fear mechanic in WFRP 4e - if you fail, you don't want to go near the source of your fear - you can engage with other things in the area, but you give that thing a wide berth. However, you CAN overcome your Fear by making a subsequent roll and passing; so it doesn't shut you out of an encounter (unless you're REALLY unlucky with your rolls!)
A great tactic I have is a villain who just doesn't care about the players. Attacks seem ineffective; maybe he's an illusion, maybe the armor he wears prevents magic from affecting him. But the real fear is the unknown. I have insect people that cannot speak because they don't have to; they communicate instantly through pheromones and can unanimously do something with seemingly no coordination (I have rules for them, like it requires a turn to "talk" or if a player uses a wind spell they get disrupted) but so far they are scared whenever they see them
Again I love those games that encourage role play by rewarding those who willing take disadvantage on things. FATE & DEADLANDS (OG) do this splendidly. In Fate you can assign a player an aspect that they feel afraid and as the DM you can compel them to be afraid. (Aspects are by a far the most powerful tool in the game and should be used in all games.) However when compelled or better still when the PLAYER says, "well I have this aspect which is bad so I am going to do such and such," you get a fate point. For FATE this is powerful since its the currency you use to do everything in the game. DEADLANDS has disadvantages. When your player actively uses his disadvantage to do something that could be detrimental to the mission/character/etc etc than you can award the player poker chips which you can use as rerolls or save for character advancement. I ran Deadlands for a number of years and would give players temp DISADS to be the ZOINKS in their Western Flavored Scooby Doo adventure. At the end of the game we would review the DISADS and how they impacted things and I would award the bonus chips in sort of a group consensus. Players were always free to ignore these and not collect the chips but it was always more immersive to do the thing so it was rare to have anyone refuse to follow them. ~Chuck
Fria Ligan’s Alien RPG has a great Stress mechanic that works wonders. You gain an extra dice for each point of Stress gained. More chance of succeeding (by rolling ‘6’ on any dice) but a chance of Panicking when you roll a ‘1’ on any Stress Dice.
What I use to adapt into a variety of systems when I need a fear check apart from the natural effects of narration, is using the check result to inform a false reality to the player, making the character act odd because corrupt information.
Loss of agency IS Horror! Lol. But depends on the feel of the game? A few tips (simplified) 1) More horrific descriptions (use creepy and human body related adjectives) Also use more senses. More brutal and atmospheric. ex: The zombie slowly crawls its way out of the nearby grave in the cemetery and attacks the helpless mayor you were hired to protect, roll initative. vs; the misty gravestones are hard to decipher in the moonless night. The mayor holds the ghostly blue everburning torch high to see the area clearer. The hair raises on the back of your neck as you feel a creeping sense of impending doom. Nearby The ground shifts as if a badger would emerge but it is too large to be a badger, as the greenish grey hand bursts out of the loose soil of a nearby grave. The rotting corpse of a man with white undead eyes and tattered clothing it lurches the grave dirt sloughing off as it stands and lunges towards your employer. Maggots squirm on the ground where they fall from the zombie, roll initiative. Read good descriptions form books to help here. Study and take notes. Remind yourself to include visual, sound, scent, temperature, time, taste, touch and even other senses. 2) give more powers and special abilities to monsters/ make custom monsters have things do/have unexpected abilities. 3) Have more surprise rounds and give extra and more horrific/scary actions to monsters 4) run games at lower levels (tier 1) for D&D 5e lv0-4 only. OR use much higer CR monsters more often 5) play monsters at max tactics for who/what they are. 6) use special terrain/terrain based tactics/Traps/ group tactics/gear/ magic items/ magic and weird area effects. Ex: Don't just use 1d6 kobolds. "Tuckers 1d6 kobolds" in a tunnel system who pop up to shoot then duck back under total cover, and use traps and poison and use different 'types' Kobold trapmaster/fighter/druid/etc. I bet I could max tactics 1d6 kobolds and defeat a low tactics party of 4 5th level characters If I tried.... Especially if you add good gear/traps and tactical tunnels, etc. What if the kobolds have a cheap way of making alchemists fire? What if they use oil and fire traps? Collapsing ceilings? Poison? Pits? etc. 7) Sudden unexpected things. Jump scares. A ghostly face or woman standing behind their reflection in a mirror, turn to look. Nothing it there... 8) Twist/betrayal. ex: Friendly NPC they like replaced by imposter such as a doppelganger assassin. 9) Use scary monsters and describe how scary they are. This also includes foreshadowing/lore/clues and NPCs being afraid and urging the PCs to 'be careful' or 'run away from here and never come back if you know whats good for you", etc. 10) Dangerous loss or rule/game element that is harder to recover from/spirals. Ex: For D&D 5e: Exhaustion, Ability drain/Hp drain, Confusion, instant death, immunities, Legendary resistance, Legendary Actions, etc. 11) Always get consent and be careful about players triggers. always get players buy in/permission for adding madness/level drain/ memory loss/loss of class abilities/ loss of spells/magic/ permanent injury and other 'brutal effects' into games especially more 'superhero' style games like D&D 5e. Having said that adding those things is great for horror! 12) Loss of gear/items ESPECIALLY items that increase AC/ offer protections/ any magic item or valued heirloom 13) Target loved ones/beloved NPCS. Have evil/horrific villains or enemies that use characters loved ones against them. BUT in a heroic fantasy game typically the players SHOULD be able to 'win' and save those people BUT the worst and most horrific version has it happen 'off screen' and be too late... ex: PCs ignore the growing rumors of a necromancer near their home base town to go on a very high paying quest instead despite clues it could get really bad for the town? They return to the town only for it to be under the necromancers control they realize this when the lights are not lit and there is no smoke from the chimneys. Its oddly silent but the highest perception PC can smell the decay. They see a guard walking oddly. Its a guard they recognize and like have had conversations with but never can again as his undead zombie eyes and broken jaw denote a lack of personality, etc. (phrase more horrifically with much better adjectives) You get the idea however! 14) Huge twists in 'fundamental' world lore/reality previously established and existential apocalyptic threats. Best when foreshadowed/prophecy. Doomsday clock and time based count down to a dangerous date/event. Be creepy when pointing out an event that matches a dangerous prophecy. Really emphasize the description and remind the player that their PC makes the horrific gut dropping connection to the prophecy. Remind them they are 'running out of time' And likewise time sensitive missions/events in general. 15) Stakes in general and missions to succeed at that put other things/people at risk besides just the PCs and their personal wealth. Such as pets/children/ townsfolk/etc. 16) Take inspiration from your own nightmares/fears! 17) use horrific events from your own life and the real world and fiction as inspiration. As always discuss lines/veils and what players are ok with and make players comfortable with having a method to stop play if at ANY point they are triggered or things become 'too much'. It should be fun for everyone. 18) Discuss allowing horrific elements typically banned in most TTRPG tables/campaigns/groups. True horror for your group could include such taboos BUT ONLY if EVERYONE is actually comfortable and ok. Check in after intense sections and after sessions. AS GM also be honest with what YOU want and are actually ok with YOU are a player too! Be careful even broaching this make sure you trust the group AND consider not risking it as well because people have been kicked from groups/caused harm to friendships/ been misunderstood or otherwise harmed for even asking the wrong group; to say include very graphic violence, racism, sexual assault, torture, etc. As these things are offensive/triggering and potentially harmful if done incorrectly so be warned. Its very valid for people to not want such elements focused on, described or more than lightly implied in a game even if its 'realistic' to include such elements logically in a dark horrific world. Respect everyone involved BUT be aware that some people may be so sensitive/triggered or sometimes frankly close-minded and sanctimonious its dangerous to even ask to include such things. Again horror is tricky. 19) Mind control/fear/loss of agency. oddly this stuff IS baseline but MORE horrific (when you think about it) than most taboos in TTRPG! The balance here is to use them FOR horror but not to frustrate/annoy the player into being 'too helpless' and a total loss of agency. Its truly horrific but also 'not fun' so tread carefully here as well. 20) Always adjust to YOUR themes/group/world/campaign/power level/story/and most of all Players. More intelligent and tactically skilled players require a greater tactical challenge to reach the same level of horror. Walk a fine line of using players fears vs triggering them by crossing a line. Always backtrack and apologize immediately if you do cross a line. Like wise (again) also recognize your own. I hope this helps. I'm sure there's more but this comment is long enough LOL.
I've found that when investigating, if you occasionally have the PCs make a d20 roll and don't tell them what its for, this helps build tension and concern... especially when nothing seems to happen. Using this is a metagaming way to help inspire concern in the characters. Obviously, you shouldn't overuse this practice, but used occasionally in moments that are perhaps less tense, it can yield good results. Beyond that, good description, by which I mean using all the five senses of your PCs in description, is an excellent way to help build the tension as well, though I suspect I'm not revealing any amazing secret there. I will certainly agree with professor DM that withholding the monster, or at least the main monster, long enough, merely providing hints about its presence through various strange sensory descriptions provided to the PCs, that this helps. They never quite see what's moving in the distance, or flashes by out of the corner of their eye. Or everywhere they have encountered a grisly and terrible death, they always smell something like a combination of roses and sulfur so that when next they are heading down a passage and they begin to smell roses and sulfur, they start to get concerned! Just some thoughts.
I always enjoyed the WFRP various systems for handling damage, insanity, consequences of magical abuse etc. Highlighting how grim the world is and the rigours that the worlds residents have to go through daily. Showing off a character’s ever more likely downward progression as they strive to make a difference in the world. Seeing how you can hold out just one more adventure before fully succumbing to madness or the like. A few characters leave and become NPC minions or the like. Who better to try to stop the adventures then some one who knows their darkest moments.
I love the examples at the end. Such a good explanation of level drain. I want to give another creature a similar power where they drain max HP instead.
6:20 "I have a 15 appearance I'll find a new fiance". That made me laugh far harder than it should have. 7:27 Biggest problem with level drain was having to rework the character sheet multiple times during a combat encounter, rally sucks if you are doing everything on paper.
Fear... this is an interesting topic for me in D&D. I felt fear all the time in the 70s & 80s with B/X and Red Box. Why? It goes back to my disdain for backstories with modern gaming - never write a BG! Writing a three page BG is a sign that the Player does not expect or fear losing this PC. I feel that BGs are made to be... well made or lived in game / in character. Meaning, I lost a ton of 1st level characters until I got one to 5th-6th level. A ton! Natural fear kicked in when supplies dwindled and when I got back down to 1st level equivalent HPs from encounters. That is when fear of losing that "Character", that BG, and all the work put into them happened. You couldn't wait until you hit 7 HPs either before you said, "Nope, I'm done. Heading back to the Inn!" You had supply issues and random encounters to worry about. Prolonged worry led to suspense, prolonged suspense led to fear. All those 'trivial' ignored 'dumb' rules; encumbrance, supplies, mapping... all caused the Player to worry, "Will I lose this investment!?" Torches burned out, weighted down with treasure slowed you down causing more random encounters, if your map was wrong it added time to surface, etc. This, to me, is what defines OS play - the ingrained Fear.
To inspire fear in players, I recommend working on your poker face and your DM smirk. Well timed use of that information to players even if there is no threat can induce paranoia and fear. The other thing is the use of NPCs to sell a grisly demise at an environmental hazard. In addition, any creatures that use exceptionally brutal or deadly tactics can create fear - kamikaze or assassination tactics
Super video Professor DM! I think you can play fear when your players are really tense and it is typically when they first enter an area, don't know what could happen next, etc. Once they see a monster and you throw a mini on the table, it's much harder to play. Your player is not scared so it's a bit sticky to get the player to believe their character is scared. I think you can DM your way around such things to some extent. Cause effects on the players before they can either see what did it and/or before they really know what's going on.
It made me so happy when you said "anything but a 1" - I use that too! When my players are facing a really difficult situation I sometimes ask them to roll a d20 and say "roll well! Don't roll a 1!" It puts so much tension on that moment and the sigh of relief or the scream of failure depending on the outcome is worth so much! Recently one of my players was trying to stabilize a dying player and this came up - I said "don't roll a 1!" They promptly did and killed their friend right then and there!
I can remember being so afraid of a 1e vampire's energy drain that I immediately went nuclear with several single use magic items that maybe the DM shouldn't have allowed me to acquire, let alone to use all at once. It was quite memorable, and I definitely was afraid I could lose a character that I built to level 5-ish over the course of a year. In a 5e Curse of Strahd game, my fellow players wanted to be scared. The DM told us in session zero about various game mechanics designed to instill fear. He didn't have to utilize them. Just letting us know that we were supposed to be scared, and perhaps that there were looming mechanical threats to reinforce that feeling, was all we needed. We ate it up. While I can't deny that the mechanics helped, the players were into the idea of being frightened. Having players willing to immerse in the DM's game is what you need most to create a mood at the table. I realized this when I watched your video about MacDeath. If you have players who want to be immersed in a fantastic dark Shakespearean tragedy, that game is going to make for a memorable evening. (I definitely would love that evening).
The example with the dragons frightful presence isn't rly about player autonomy, since when you compare it to the vampire's drain level the disadvantage is not nearly enough of a deterent. Vampire drain level = players are encouraged to avoid fighting it all together. While with dragon's frightful presence = players can still fight it, but it's just harder. Autonomy is just not the best word there.
The first time you actually use the stealth stats on goblins, you’ll scare the living crap out of your players. They’ll try to avoid resting anywhere other than behind locked door after that. I knew a DM years ago who would never tell you if you succeeded or failed trap checks. He’d just say, “safe as nails” after you told him what you rolled. Only when you actually opened whatever it was would you learn if you succeeded or not. That was terrifying.
Dear Prof DM...ABSOLUTELY!!! I feel kind of sorry for 5e players who have never experienced this feeling. So when I was a noob back in early 1982 after I got Basic D&D Box for Christmas in 1981 and read it cover to cover, somehow I got into an AD&D group and, after my first-level magic user died in Hommlet after casting my one spell, I played a Paladin who managed to survive! WOOOH!!! Well we were playing with some older guys who had high-level characters and were kinda mean to us "little kids" (8th graders). And the next dungeon my Paladin was in was the Tomb of Horrors!!! AHHHHH!!! Talk about scary!!!1 The big players bullied us and made us be the guinea pigs and sent us through that misty archway, so now we are naked in a place we don't know where. Quite a shock!!!! So we found our clothes and gear nearby, and we wind up inadvertently get into Acererak's house and we see the skull on the pile of dust. We don't know what to do, so one of the other noobs goes, "I tap the skull with my sword." The DM tells us that the skull slowly rises up in a some swirling dust and the eyes light up red. When it got as high as it would go, it said "I'm going to drain one of your souls, who will it be?" Talk about being scared! I just went through this with the magic user and finally had some success, all to be ruined!!! We were all like "Why did you do that!!!??" to the guy who tapped the skull. We wanted his character to be the one that dies...Fast forward to 2016 when I was in a 5e group and offered to DM Tomb for them, using Perkins's conversion. I had no idea what level 5e character to use because Perkins didn't specify, so I just followed the guidelines on the original (level 10-14). Well that was a mistake!!! They had characters that could fly and monks who could walk on walls, so all the traps were a big joke!!!! I did all this work to make a beautiful set with props and stuff, and they just walked right through it with the superheroes. I called the 5e version Perkins put in Dragon Magazine the "Tomb of Borers" and really lowered my opinion of him as a DM...Moral of the story, you need to make the players afraid by threatening the lives of their characters. It's one of many ways to prevent murder hoboism so common in 5e. (We never did that back in the day!!!) You are 100% correct Prof. DM....Your friend, Dr. Violet Deliriums.
I once played in a Weird War II game where our platoon dropped into France and were separated from the rest of the company. While picking our way through a bombed out occupied village, we had to whisper at the table as to not alert the zombie Naz troops of our presence. This went on for about twenty minutes and it had an amazing effect of heightening the tension. When at last we were attacked the game master broke into a loud voice and slammed his hand on the table describing the werewolves who assaulted us. We all jumped out of our seats! We sounded like the marines from Aliens when they were ambushed under the reactor as we shouted at one another what to do as we only had 30 seconds per player to take a turn. it was the most horror feel I've had in a RPG.
I'm glad you released this video. The campaign I'm running is... Shall we say, "Horror-esque." I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from "Darkest Dungeon" and "Bloodborne" for inspiration on setting and themes. I was going to run it like Darkest Dungeon, where the characters lose sanity and act contrary to how the player would want them to act. However, after watching this video and reading some of the comments, I'm going to run it more like Bloodborne. I'm reminded of a let's play of Bloodborne, where the person watching the game says, "This would be a terrifying game to play at night." The person playing the game says, "Well, it's more terrifying because it's hard." The imagery may be a bit viscerally disturbing in that game; but the real fear comes in knowing that, at any point, any of the enemies - even the weaker ones - could catch you in a combo or gang up on you, and there's nothing you could do about it. The real kicker is that the PCs in Bloodborne are supposed to be nigh super heroes, but it still instills a sense of fear in the Players because of the mechanics. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Bloodborne is a better game to try and emulate if you're looking for fear in your campaign than Darkest Dungeon.
For those familiar with the Hero System, there's Fear-Based Presence Attacks. If you want the fear to cause insanity, an option would be a Mental Transform that must follow a Fear-Based Presence Attack.
Was watching your replace session zero video (love the channel by the way, recently bought your death bringer supplement and trying to convince my players to give it a go) and had a question maybe you could answer, or possibly make into a new video if there’s enough interest. You discuss the campaign you were running and how you were trying to make everyone’s rogue character unique; one is a tracker, one is a thief etc. This got me wondering if you do anything in regards to subclasses in your games. Example, did the tracking rogue have different abilities vs the thief rogue?
I remember how scared my players were when I was running the Age of Worms adventure path. They were at a colosseum, fighting a party of dwarves. They were pretty confident because they had some distance. The dwarves had drunk a potion of fly and immediately opened the combat by flying towards them and targeting their weapons with sunder attacks with their adamantine great axes. The risk of losing their precious magic weapons is what triggered the fear response better than any dragon, dracolich or incarnation of the Worm God could.
The temporal insanity could be interesting if it was inverted, like stress mechanic in Blades in the Dark. PC would have an abillity to gain additional dice or other siginificant bonus to their actions by voluntarly spending their sanity points.
Thanks for more great ideas! I like the clear communication on the consequences of rolling a nat-20 or a nat-1. My players have become a little too comfortable with 5e mechanics that keep them alive to easily. I don't want to take away player agency or take punitive actions. I like your ideas for increasing the tension while allowing them to take the risk.
Best success with fear - introduced Skaven from Warhammer to my 5e gane. First encounter there is almost a TPK in the sewers, second encounter they barely save an ally who is about to be mutated by said Skaven. Now, whenever they see the sigil of the Horned Rat or see even 1 Skaven they freak out. We left last session with them in the sewers again...and they THINK there is only 1 Skaven down there...
I think a good way to create fear that is perfectly in line with the modern 5e near invincibility is simply having the dearest NPCs be put in danger. The animal mascot, the infantalized goblin/kobold prisoner, the support NPC that brings healing. There's always something.
Great advice! I always thought that Level Drain was like the Morgul knife that stabbed Frodo... you can recover from it, but you're never quite the same as you were, or could have been. Some things just leave an indelible mark. One alternative that actually is less merciful but might make some players happier is that you permanently lose a Hit Die. So you still keep your spells, your To Hit bonus, whatever, but you'll always be down that Hit Die (or two, if it's a big hitter like a vampire). Since wizards have cruddy Hit Dice anyway, you can also let them sacrifice HD for "dark pacts". They might actually be tempted to do it!
I tend to belong to the school of tension by diversion. One game I had the players so frazed by beamer turret traps, changing gravity and escher stairs that... "You come upon two door like panels at the end of the corridor, two buttons by each." The players cautiously approach.. "As you get closer, you see a box between the two. It has a fan shaped metal turret with a quarter inch hole. It's pointed at you. There is a switch right next to it..." So the players decide who is going to crawl close and slow to avoid motion detectors, see if the button switches it off. The tension builds as he shakingly moves his pike to the switch... Then a stream of water goes from the hole in the 'fan' into a basin at the top of the box. The thing makes a hum shortly after... The players wouldn't have reacted that way unless they'd experienced the tension of similar traps zapping coins tossed to see where the gravity was going.
omg I needed this video! I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden as my first game as a DM and I wanted to use the Dread mechanic from Sandy Peterson's Cthulhu Mythos for 5E. I'm partial to CoC's sanity mechanics but I really like your ideas! thanks!
I agree. I run a Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign, and I had players that passed their Sanity rolls but still chose to role play being afraid of the situation. They felt that’s what their character would do. I also ran a game recently where a player went temporarily insane and ran to hide during the monster encounter, completely missing the end of the scenario. I’ve decided to remove that mechanic from future games and allow my players to role play their characters’ actions. Another suggestion for instilling fear is to set the mood with creepy descriptions. I find lots of subtle hints work best
Old School Vampires. Back in the 1980's we did the permanent level drain for Vampires. After it happened once the players refused to play any module with level draining in it (including refusing to finish that particular adventure it 1st happened in). After all, although death is permanent (they way we play it) you at least get a fighting chance. SOooo, what I do now is that they get a save and if they fail they are drained for the duration of the adventure but after 1 month of downtime between adventures, they regain their level. It doesn't happen very often but it is now understood that the encounter is bad but not permanent. It is a game intended to be fun after all. I try to run P2e with hardcore variant house rules but I guess the level drain is too much for some.
Alternative fear system: L5R 4e gives a numeric penalty by how much you fail. Different numeric system, but you can get as high as a -60 or as low as a -1 to a roll to act against the source of fear. Does not last longer than this encounter, so you can conquer your fear or try to power through it.
I actually ran a one-shot experiment based on the Dead by Daylight game. From this I learned that players immediately start to sweat when they realize the most straight-forward tactics do not work. The main key to making encounters scary is to give your players reasons to not want to fight your monster. Their objective is finding an enemy in the monster's lair, the monster is immune to damage and can only be hindered by certain status conditions. And most importantly: D&D 5e players don't fear losing hit points. So instead, you threaten them with Exhaustion levels. Your monsters manages to hit one of your players, they take 0 damage, but take a level of exhaustion. And with that level of exhaustion, have the monster try to grab the player and drag them away. Now the frantic search for a way to slow this menace and escape from it really begins. The key to fear in D&D 5e is making the players feel powerless without being useless.
Playing a certain old school Mesoanerican quest utilizing roll20, and there is an encroaching shimmering graphic of a wall of green gas. They have no idea what it does and they are significantly terrified!
There is a lot of optional rules for temporary insanity in 7th edition CoC I have had one player run so far because he got claustrophobic in a sewer another got enraged. Had her psychic powers increased during the insanity ... I really have had fun playing with insanity
I believe it was the Ravenloft box set that had a few red herring suggestions that I found useful. If a monster does one point of damage, as the GM take a long time describing the scratch and then say "one point of damage." The players will spend a long time figuring out what might have happened to the character. Or write down a note saying something like "lycanthropy" after a player took damage. Later get up to use the restroom, and leave that paper in view. It's extremely difficult to make a player actually afraid. My all-time favorite was when I was describing a fear effect that hit some characters "you remember when you were a child in bed in the dark? You try to open your mouth and call out for your mom and nothing happened, that's how your character feels right now." Also in the Ravenloft rules 2e there were many spells that just did not work. No teleportation, no Resurrection, etc. In my current game I have a group of characters stuck in the "well of hell' and they just realized they couldn't teleport back to town to rest up and recuperate after a fight. At that moment they realize how dire the situation is
I like this. I've played in systems where failing a horror roll either makes the character lose initiative, run or are paralyzed with fear but I don't usually use initiative (what if it is a social interaction?) and either running or freezing means they do nothing during the encounter which makes it very boring.
9:05 that is a great idea!!! I will stat asking for Very Easy [+60] checks where its instadeath on failure on my WFRP4 games. maybe a Difficult [-10] test with intadeath on -6SL works better for some situaitons. The players will probably just spend fortune to reroll, but if they don't have fortune they will probably have to make a deal with the dark gods to survive.
I hear you. I see both sides (as I often do - it's an irritating habit of mine). I approach RPG as an acting role. Yes, I am playing a game, but that game (to me) is portraying the character on my sheet as best as I possibly can. If the character on my sheet would run from the monster, then I should act that out. My autonomy is how I choose to make that happen. So, if I fail the save or however the mechanics are set up, then I need to think of exactly how that character would act that out. There are many times when I am in the middle of a session and I see my character doing one thing that I absolutely know (as a player) is a huge mistake, but I know the character would do it, and so I let him make that mistake - and for me those are great moments in roleplaying. I look forward to that stuff.
First COC scenario I ran was the Dead Boarder. In this short scenario, there is only one chance of Temporary Insanity. Now my player was new and I didn’t want it anticlimactic with his character being turn apart during a bout of madness. Planning ahead, I kept it simple, scared stiff until surprised by a loud noise. Naturally, my player failed his saving thrown and I had the horror let out a blood curdling scream right before he and a friendly NPC enter combat. Now what made my player, not his PC but the player terrified were my description of the monster itself and not knowing exactly how to kill it. Fear and insanity are great mechanics if used wisely. They’re tools to help drive the story forward and should never be used to punish your players.
The best answer... is a good DM and good players. I love my players who buy in to the world and don't approach the game like their character is an 80s action hero. I'm not trying to be a dick... nor am I bragging. But I run 5e mostly as written and I don't have any difficulty making the game feel dangerous. The truth is my players look at each other at least once a session and say, "This is it... someone's gonna die here." I'm not some extra special DM. I don't give awe inspiring Matt Mercer style descriptions. I don't have elaborate Deborah Ann Woll style puzzles and plot twists. I just work really hard to make the world feel lived in. The peasants complain about the aristocracy. The merchants don't like adventurers messing up their towns. The characters see the consequences of the villain's behavior. So, when the farmer says, "Something evil lurks in the woods," my players believe it's scary. As a DM verisimilitude is the most important component. But you can't do that alone. Your players need to engage with the world and roleplay their reactions to those emotionally charged moments. A good player empathizes with the downtrodden peasant and resents the aristocracy. They act defensive when merchants assume they're ill-intentioned. Good players give into the fear and all the other available emotions.
Honestly a lot is about past history too. The first time PCs enter the cave of no return, they may not know when to expect, but after returning successfully from 4 other "dangerous" places and living to tell the tale, they're going to be skeptical when farmer Bill tells them about the next set of spooky woods/caves/etc.
@@taragnor that's why there are always more NPCs. And you can also kill off NPCs the players like and respect. It makes the threat real when the rival adventurers who stole their treasure 3 weeks ago are found mutilated by something huge.
Dungeon Crawl Classics has a fantastic mechanism for instilling fear: the monster critical hit tables, especially at higher levels. There’s no way to cancel or avoid a critical hit in DCC, and getting critically hit by some monsters has a decent likelihood of outright destroying, much less killing, anyone or anything in a single attack. When I first looked at those tables, I immediately realized why even a level 10 character would balk or even laugh at a group of townsfolk or a lower-level party approaching them for help facing a dragon. You really do have to be desperate or foolhardy to dare enter the same room as one. No amount of min-maxing can guarantee there will even be enough left of its opponents to bury.
Great food for thought as always, but how about effects other than fear that temporarily remove player autonomy such as charm person, confusion, dominate person, hypnotic pattern, etc? In 5e these often have many opportunities to reverse the condition through several additional saving throws and the results can be less permanent than other DnD hazards like petrification or disintegration.
"Fear means nothing when you have nothing to lose." THIS is the entire problem with horror in games.. completely does not matter the level of experience, the quality of writing, the player investment nor the talent of the DM)GM. "Fear is merely a mechanic." Doesn't matter the system. You can only find balance within said system
Great video Professor. I was surprised though that you didn't mention anything about switching from chance (i.e., dice) to a skill based outcome. I mean the players should have autonomy, but the DM really determines a lot of things. I think you can easily add a skill mechanic. The game Dread uses a Jenga tower and I think there's so much that can be done with that. Saving throw? Pull a block Roll a crit? Pull a block The enemy surprises you? Pull a block Finding the nerve to attack a vampire? Pull a block What's nice about this idea is that it puts the player in a tactile situation and every players pull affects everyone elses next pull. Plus the crash really brings a nice jump scare.
instead of temp insanity why not inflict a particular penalty. stuff that a character wouldnt control, like shaking hands for reduced dex or equivelent, or stress for reduced int, etc.
Love these old rules - I miss level drain I really do. One thing I do want to point out to newer DM's is the idea that making a player feel fear for their character does require the player to have more invested interest in their character than their need to "win" the game so in your time at the table you will have players that you wish to put in a fear mindset because it is theme and table appropriate, but it doesn't work solely because when you say "I roll a 20 and you lose your head" they're going to think "that's not fair" and they'll let you know (hopefully before it happens). This is generally what we would refer to in the old school as a power-gamer who will manipulate your ability to arbitrate the rules fairly; I don't know if I have a solution human interaction is complex but if you are at least aware that it could happen then you'll be better ready to handle it when it inevitably does (but hopefully doesn't).
Hello Proffesor dungeon master, great video, what dp you think about the fear effect in path 2e(it decreases the stats and roll in 1 point per level of fear) i think that it worked pretty well from in the system and even others, god bless you pardon for my english
Eldritch tales is a whitebox version of lovecraftian horror. Insanity is a great way to have characters scared to even look in a desk drawer, because they may cause them to gain insanity. However, since they must look into the drawer to get the clues.... the group rolls dice, to see who gets to be the unlucky observer.. Funny thing it is an amazing caveat, the viewer gets to know what is inside, and everyone else gets their verbal description.
Urban myth, no one Knows what the Necronomicon is called, only what it is. If you see a book with a leather cover that looks like a human face was stretch across it. Leave the room and never talk about it, ... If you don't leave the room, do not look/stare at the cover, .. Do not even Touch it. Whatever you do, never ever read it. G*D help you if you ever speak any of its words outload. If you stare at The Book, you have to make a saving roll to keep from receives Bestow Curse. Anytime the Player's PC is alone at night The Book will Teleport to a table in the same room with the PC in it. The PC has to make nightly Willpower/wisdom saving throws to keep from reading The Book. Reading the book Calls/Summons an 8hd fiendish outsider from a story within the book to hunt people within the local village/city the PC is in. We had a whole list of rules as to what happens when things go wrong.
@@smugzoid5156 Thank you, storyteller campaign metaplot, .. telling too many ghost stories involving The Book invokes saving throws to Teleport the Book to the PC. Or leads the PC into encounters that are Lovecraft in nature. Makes Wisdom/Spot checks DC:15 to 20 to notice Strange Things and roll Will save or suffer 1d2 or 1d4 temporary Wisdom damage. See something that makes the PC .. Jump .. out right from a failed Fear check. Go with low level wizard spell Scare or 4th-level Fear spell. Follow with a Dexterity/Reflex check to maintain balance or fall down hard enough to twist your ankle and walk with a limp for 1d6 hours resulting in movement penalty. Best plots involve at least two or six games till the true horror sets in. Don't do a one-shot horror game, let it build up after a couple of game plays. Are they being stalked or are they getting fore warnings of a future event ? Player one, " What the hell did I just see ?! " Taking Wisdom damage. Player two, " I have been seeing that type of thing for the pass month, this is kind of normal to me now." Player one, " Why didn't you say anything ?" Player two, " No one would believe me." 2.) With 3.5e, the DM would just hand out N/PC expert class levels as skill boosts and Will saving bonus for plot. Such as the player running a fight PC getting a couple of levels of N/PC warrior for Fort save bonus and a few skill points/ranks. Along with D&D Ravenloft campaign source book my gaming shop played Whitewolf/World of Darkness: Vampire so playing fear, frenzy, and sanity derangements are a normal thing for me. b.) With 3rdE one Player multiclass a PC with high Fort saves to recover temporary energy drains faster which metaplot his PC was being hunted and feed off of by succubus. Another player went with high Will saves and their PC was being stalked by illithid mind flayers and other mental draining outsider fiends as an oddity to study and dream stalkers to feed off of. Players with PC of high social skill rankings and saving throws become campaign plot devices. For my last gaming shop, we ran part time adventures with day jobs. The fighter/rogue is part of the village militia doing road patrols and cave clearing of goblins and earns an income as a carpenter. Or a rogue/bard is a trade merchant politicking lesser nobles or so sociable everyone wants them at their parties and to refuse means your wagon train will get raided. c.) The PC school teacher/baby sister that taught some of them wizardry is a mind flayer in hiding that alter their minds to have pisonic wild talents to be used as pawns. The plot catch the mind flayer regards the PC as Her grandchildren and is one of the secret lord protectors of the seaport village. Most players run their PCs after finding out about the mind flayer, " She bake me cookies my whole life and taught me to read, write, and do math .. she is my granny." d.) Young adult green dragon pushed over trees and claw/rake out a wagon road short cut through a group of foothills for faster trade cause the green dragon was bored. The dragon is not much of a bully and loves many of the local farming hamlet/villages' old people for the storytelling of the young children. Lets human children play on it and snuggles and listen to a good story. The areas local noble lords and bandits are jockeying the green dragon for road tax protection and political leverage against each other. The green dragon bridge and road was created by the dragon so it could flex its muscle stating " .. look at what I drag and build .." for its own prestige amongst other dragons, and the green dragon just likes the river view. Now the humans are trying to bribe and hustle it. The dragon will politely not pay attention to anyone who doesn't pay the bridge toll. But will laugh and watch any challengers twitch to death after the dragon rip their leg off. Pin with claw then bite grapple the leg and make strength checks till the leg is pulled off. PC hp don't matter with such action. Roll hp dmg only for prolong torture action. Green dragon favorite meals are sheep brush with chicken grease season with garlic, goats brushed with bacon grease with onions juice. Pigs rub down with goat butter and a few other meals. Green is more than happy with gold and silver from the farmers, but large amounts of coin from others the dragon is warry of bribes and social contracts since green dragons are naturally Lawful evil, there is always a catch. Green flex its muscle for the farmers by pull cut timber, tree stumps, and claw ranking/plowing fields and digging shallow ponds to catch rainwater runoff. Resulting in Green have larger than normal muscle mass for the average green dragon. Along with farmers and merchants .. gifting .. green with cattle/herds for food. Since Green has such a nice domain other dragons are coming a courting or challenge for territory. Local human adventure PCs have to deal with the other dragons, nobles, and dragon slayers working for other nobles to take over the green dragon bridge road. Of note, the dragon's cattle and other livestock are taken care of by the local farmers and groom for the hair /wool for cloth/tent production making a tidy profit. Which other nobles want that cloth and cattle to field their soldiers with. Each game play have the players random draw an index or play card to get the chance to Role play the dragon. So when the dragon is killed they will Feel it.
@@smugzoid5156 The mind flayer regards the PCs as Her grandchildren, but I know what it is like to have a highly educated grandmother and what her high standers are like. Both the mind flayer and green dragon are Lawful evil, and Lawful beings follow their own form of strict code of conduct which you can use against them. As for dealing with .. humans .. well that is a different matter all together. One feudal petty lord trying to hustle their neighbor's land for taxes and troops to take someone else's land and there is that green dragon's hoard to make use of. Other than granny is always or nearly always right, a young adult green dragon is a bickering insulting creature being regarded as a sport jock hustling to being the team leader. Other than being happy to listen to old people tell stories and passing on knowledge to the younger generation and cuddling with children. Once you become a teenager or young adults your elders hold you to high standers you are not experience enough to understand. A young adult green dragon maybe warry of middle-aged humans for their skills but consider any human in their twenties to be .. rivals .. the same way you competed against your siblings, cousins, and friends in a given sport. Mind flayers and dragons may live by their word, humans had to come up with multiple oaths, vows, curses for breaking oaths & vows, and written contracts enforce by courts to make sure two parties work together. " Turn on a whim," is a very human thing to do. I still won't trust the dragon too much, maybe the mind flay granny after years of mental/emotional conditioning cause there is no choice in that matter, but you don't full trust a dragon. Evil only .. respects .. strength, and only offer mercy to those it doesn't deem a threat and have a use in a short or long term goals. Bridge and road tolls were heavy enforce, hell even in modern USA there are highway toll booths to charge road tax to pay for road maintenace which is skim/pocketed by state officials. But toll tax is chump change to this given dragon. Why be concern over a chicken wing drop in the dirt, now a whole bake chicken that is a different matter all together. Single wheel cart or back packers is something to sleep through, a wagon train is another matter. The dragon keeps a human around at all times to function as a bookkeeper and to rake scratch and broom brush him/her behind her ears and tell stories and sing songs with. The humans tend to come out just as bickering underhanded as the dragon they socialize with. But a decent bag of coins, magic items, and live snacks greased and butter makes a happy dragon. 2.) Humans show up at a village, town, city for a joust, follow with dragons showing up just outside of spell/ missile fire range to kick up dirty and wrestle each other for regional picking order and to find mates. And to show the humans how big and powerful they are. Red dragons are mostly loners, but greens are family units of extended members. An elder female green dragon in AD&D lair with a few of her daughters and could have three or five clutches of wrymlings ( around 16 babies ) and close to a dozen teenagers hanging around helping with looking after the younger ones. Even the young adult males lair within a half a day's flight from their parents and sibling if able for Protection. Keep your friends close and your family/enemies closer to keep a better eye on. In AD&D the green dragon greatest enemy and killer were red dragons, so stick with pack defense. Campaign plot hooks, instead of hooking up with copper or bronze dragons have player PCs hook up with young adult green dragons dealing with juvenile red dragons raiding farms. Then see how much extra tax/protection money they can get out of the village.
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I heard many children during my childhood say " I would have just [socially brave thing]" and usually I didn't believe them. On the one hand, RPGs are about escapism and what you would do if you were not limited by the confines of being you, but on the other hand, we are trying to tell stories about believable characters. I find little ruins the atmosphere of a game more than characters effortlessly being stupendously brave. The bravery comes in part from the belief that if a challenge is presented in the game, then it must be within the capabilities of the PCs and that they are supposed to meet it. Particularly irksome is the player who smirks and is cheeky to the king to his face in public. In reality. that level of social bravery is beyond almost everyone. If the solution to a problem is to do X, then real people still may have a tough time doing X. He has his back turned. This is your one opportunity to grab the knife and stab your brutal captor in the back. If you miss it, he'll lock the door and you'll be trapped forever. Real people hesitate and miss the moment. That they might hesitate makes the moment significant. That a PC can automatically over-ride that hesitance and do what is needed robs the moment of its drama.
Hmm thoughtful comment.
I confess guilty as charged. The higher on the social hierarchy the figure with whom our party communicated, the more derisive and sarcastic we treated them. Our out was often that a suspicious number of aristocrats appeared to be afflicted with high-born hard of hearing:
King: Oh thank you, humble wanderers!
Player: ‘Oh thank you’ says the great queen like a la-di-da #!@?#!
King: I beg your pardon?
Player: Thats alright, sir, call again.
OMG I can't believe Lindy Effing Beige commented! I've seen many of your videos because as a gamer they are relevant to me. But somehow it never occurred to me that , ya know, you were an ACTUAL gamer that is still deeply involved. lol Makes sense to me that you would be into OSR kind of stuff. I can totally see that! 😄
@@4saken404 he has quite a few videos about crafting terrain for the tabletop.
I try to let my players know that the world and it's characters are dangerous. If not treated with proper respect a price will be paid. If you don't pay proper respects to the king, you'll be warned once. Maybe twice if he's feeling generous. After that it's game on. The player either quits or respects the world after that.
You can learn a lot from scary movies. Isolation is scary; fall in a pit that leads somewhere where you no longer have your party to back you up. The unknown is scary; telegraph your monster with the carnage they wrought on previous challengers. Permanent losses are scary; meet a guy at the tavern who is blind and missing an arm from having gone into the dungeon before you. An old ally can turn on you. Things you were previously sure of can suddenly be unsure. Hacked up those zombies, but wait! Are they ... regenerating?! There's lots of ways to create anxiety and fear in players.
Thanks for sharing!
Awesome! Here's my tip for creating scary and it's a simple three-step formula: 1) foreshadow - there is something perceivable, ominous, that is not right be it scratching noises in the distance, bloody prints, maybe a fresh almond-scent in the air AND it doesn't immediately ring of something fatal (it's just some prints, not a wellspring's worth of blood); 2) horror - which is the immediate recognition that the stakes are deadly so this is where you find the severed head, the pile of bones, a death wail, etc and it's very clear death is on the line from here on out; 3) terror - this is when mortality is at the precipice for our heroes where they see the monster and are told a natural 20 kills them, or encounter the ghost where if you roll a 1 on a save the result will be you are a withered husk. So when writing your narrative just give thoughts to the 1, 2, 3 and ensure they're discretely events the PCs can interact with, and as it is a game it never hurts the moment they hit #3 to tell them exactly how they may just randomly die very soon. Hope that helps!
With your great sword in front of you, you stride down the temple, surrounded by shadows in odd corners of the columns, in spite of every few meters, a lit torch. You can make out... corpses in the darkness along the walls. Their eyes stare back at you in horror. Their stomaches are gouged out, limbs missing, faces contorted in agony. Blood smears the walls continuously.
At the end of the hallway is a very tall man... not a human, a hobgoblin? An ogre? You aren't sure.
His sword is massive, and on the end of it, is another soldier, impaled straight through the poor man's armor, and held aloft. Quiet croaking indicates that he is near death, and the point is esclamated when the man-thing, with a flick of the wrist, hurls the soldier into a wall. The newly deceased's body makes a sickening crunch. The big man turns his head to stare at you, and his eyes come into focus.
The eyes of an animal. Is this thing a creature of this world? The man-shape, possibly 8 feet of muscular mass with jaundice skin, bare chested, turns around to face you. You detect immense calm and focus within it, wielding a colossal sword in one hand. A sword that is incredibly wide and curved, the sheer size of it affording length, and blood drips quietly from the gore covered metal of the blade. Aside from that, you can hear your heart beating, and the immense breathing of the foe. What do you do?
"I roll initiative!"
The beast booms with laughter, "Finally! A fitting challenger." He waits for you to strike first.
"... okay. I charge! +9 to attack... 25! That hits right?"
No, it misses. You parry at each other for a time, your own immense strength is barely a match for his. He knocks you into the wall for 14 damage.
"Crap! I rage. Okay? I rage! I scream a battlecry and... +11 to attack. Oh man! Yes! Does 30 hit?"
You scream the scream of someone who is cornered, heroically summoning the will to... stab him in his right pectoral.
"Yeah baby!"
Blood spurts as your wide and long blade digs one third of its length in. You 25 damage. The man grabs your blade, an iron grip that halts it from burrowing further, and he laughs.
"Wtf?"
"Never has anyone wounded me thus!" He laughs lustfully, as his body grows ever larger, fur sprouting out of his skin like that of a werewolf. His clothes tear apart, revealing hooves, and thick fur. Wings sprout from his back, large bull horns shooting out of his forehead, as his face widens and grows. He continues to laugh with mad excitement. "Never has anyone wounded me thus in 300 years!!!"
He appears to be some great minotaur-like creature with wings and a great tail, grown to nearly double his prior height and width, with eyes red of pure undiluted focus and rage. His hands have become twice as massive, covered in fur as of a beast, one of which still grips your blade. Roll a will save.
"Um... I failed?"
You are paralyzed with fear. You think you're facing some sort of monster.
"Guess I'll just die?"
He knocks you against the wall, then picks you up and tears at your limbs. You can do nothing but scream in agony. Then your friend Griffith arrives with a squad of crossbowmen to save you!
"Oh uh... Yay!"
@@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin Ah the Nosferatu Zodd encounter I ran that module. It was fantastic! However the follow-up published adventure was even better; eclipsed that one, I'd say.
Thanks for the great ideas, Eric 😀
Good old fashioned Energy Drain. There’s never been anything scarier in D&D.
You touched on the truth of making D&D scary when you talked about the "Baldur's Gate 2"-era vampires.
The players of superhero 5E characters don't fear losing hit points, they fear losing their power.
Losing items, ability scores, levels, experience, or suffering exhaustion -- that's what they truly fear.
Good point.
in a more mechanical way of putting it, maybe things that cannot be easily recouperated immediately after an engagement.
Rust monsters are one of the more frightening D&D 5e monsters 😄
Levels of Exhaustion is what I intend on using in upcoming games. It is a good mechanic which is often ignored. ADDITIONALLY I am considering making a mental exhaustion table very similar to the physical one presented.
That was something I found great in WARHAMMER 3rd ED by Fantasy Flight.
@@CharlesClemens I give characters a level of exhaustion whenever they are reduced to 0 hit points.
It changes their outlook on getting dropped in a fight completely.
I recently used "Nat20 instakills" in an encounter with the BloodLake Beast (a monster I created.) It was really interesting to watch the Characters run when they realized how they weren't going to overpower the beast on its own terms.
Sanity is just another kind of hit points. Running out of sanity is as scary as running out of hit points.
It certainly should be!
It's scarier. When you run out of HP, you die. When you run out of SAN... That's when the fun starts.
I find horror and fear is about atmosphere. Get good at descriptions, and engage at least three of the character's five senses. Fear saves are more something you want to pull out for magical effects or players that simply *refuse* to feel fear in character.
Describe the slithering groans of the character's ramshackle bunker as the beast slithers overhead. The weighty thump of it's massive body coming down off the shed, low hiss of something enormous breathing out, filling the wooden tomb with the scent of fetid meat and a light, almost imperceptible increase in humidty. Followed by a calm, polite knock at the door. Pause to let them sweat or answer quickly. If they do not, then that polite knock gets firmer. Then turns into banging, slamming, walls heaving from the force being so casually applied to the front of their shelter. Yet the do not break. Not by some miracle of woodwork, but because they know *it* does not want them to break. Not yet, anyway.
Makes door to door saleswyrms much more imposing than they sound.
Good points. Thanks for sharing!
I introduced it by having a random encounter that rolled really unfavorably go ahead as planned. I knew that the PCs couldn't harm the creature, but after looking at it's intelligence and desires, decided that it was just passing through...
Every blow and arrow just bounced off of it, as it "strolled" on by them, completely ignoring their presence as it went about it's business! The PCs didn't see it that way when it blew through their campsite, but who was I to tell them what it was doing??!
🤣👍
I once had a margarine tub with mud behind my DM screen and splattered players with it suddenly at a climatic moment. People were horrified and I got actual screams out of my players. Best shock and horror thing I ever did. Players weren't just surprised they were in fear. Of course it takes the right build up of tension but you can actually scare people with these games if you work at it.
In a recent adventure in my Pathfinder campaign, the party watched from a distance as a creature tore into a heard of stags taking them down easily. One of the NPC's told the story of when he was a child, his village had one of these creatures sneak into the town and slaughter people. It took his village several weeks of this to track it down and kill it, but not before it took out some of the villages best hunters.
One NPC' shearing how this thing could track, started to try and camouflage her scent with pine and other natural things and the party scurted the creature. But then they stumbled upon a hill giant who was out hunting. They feared the giant and hide themselves only to watch this animal take down the giant. They Bolted in fear with it chasing after them. They managed to escape (all in the DM's plan) My players were generally fearful they were all going to die and a TPK would happen. But they all enjoyed it. Not once did they have to roll a dice for fear!
Nice!
The easiest way for the players to feel fear is to have meaningful stakes. My players are in Rapan Athuk using 5E rules and Tasha’s Cauldron. They have felt fear because I play the monsters smart and they realize the combats are dangerous
This dude gets it
Rappan Athuk is awesome for generating fear... unbalanced encounters...
Of course I DM swords & wizardry (complete & whitebox), so fear is implemented in the lethality of the game.
@@smugzoid5156 Rapan Athuk is a great mega dungeon & my players are enjoying it immensely. Been playing for six months and they hit level 7. I have the huge Orcus mini and I hope they make it to him so I can finally use it
@@solowolf7418 i had 3 different adventuring parties going through at the same time. I even had one view the remnants of the others destructive wake.
One party tpk in the purple worm chamber with the hidden chamber and the fired trap (level 3: beware of the purple worms - room 3)
@@smugzoid5156 Interesting that you mentioned that as we just finished that chamber. The purple worms are deadly but everyone survived. The part then fought the were-rats. Thank Paladin for fireball!
Counterpoint : Taking away the player's agency is, in itself, upsetting. Horror often thrives on moments when we are disappointed, upset, or distraught over what's happening in the narrative to the main characters when they react poorly to the situation they have been placed in. I'm reminded of Pet Sematary, where the father keeps relenting to the force of the Wendigo's "sour land" and it's alluring ability to bring the dead "back to life" despite knowing the consequences will be bad. Had he had full agency, he would never have succumbed to the temptation, or the unnatural forces that overpowered his better reasoning. Instead of obeying his rational mind, he all but abused his wife by not allowing her to grieve the loss of their own child, sending her away instead of letting her come to terms with the death, despite knowing this would prolong her suffering. It doesn't just move the plot forward toward unhappy endings, it irritates the observer while informing them that this threat is not as tangible as a typical danger we might encounter. It demonstrates our smallness, and fallibilities, and that by itself is horrific.
Yeah but it's also less fun for a game. Pet Semetary is a novel and novels can do a lot that doesn't work well in games.
Yeah, taking away the agency is a REALLY fine line between horror and asinine.
@@oz_jonesIt is, but I get his point. I mean, there are , spells, effects, powers, etc. that can actually take that player agency away. I just think it takes both good referees AND good players to make those scenes (which should be rare) memorable and exciting.
'take player agency away'- so does DEATH and we play with it- and while some hate it so much as to avoid it altogether its pretty much consensus that games feel and play very diferently with or without its possibility, and how no stakes takes some of the fun.
I think its more about how, when -and giving alternatives. Idk how it could be hacked into dnd or particular systems (i run my own ruleset), but from stats to what they player can do/try to avoid it all could factor in (example: mental health/hp in games with that, taking damage in it instead of losing control)... anything that ties loosing control/getting scared to an outcome players couldve avoided if they played diferently
Its a lot on perception really, and how its usually made feels cheap- the gm pulls a roll on you 'out of nowhere', no reward but to avoid being nerfed or loosing control, this is where most of the backlash comes from
The whole level drain thing of Wights and vampires from 1st edition did instill authentic fear into players.
Yeah honestly old school undead were terrifying. A pack of ghouls was even scary at any level as ghoul paralysis could be a TPK even for mid-level adventuring groups if they rolled poorly.
The worst thing about how level drain used to be was that it could really screw up your group’s level spread and make the player affected feel like a pariah. People would just consider their character ruined and want to roll up another one. OTOH, I always thought it’d be cool to partly drain down a group that was getting too high level to be fun any more.
I ran a Call Of Cthulhu one-shot once for my regular gaming group. During the course of the investigation, one player failed a check that resulted in them fainting for a hour in-game time and the rest of the investigators had to continue on without them for the session. They wound up being the only player to not go insane or die.
Lol I've had that happen in CoC too!
Cal;l of Cthulhu - where often the best stratagem is to stay at the back of the party with your eyes closed.
Awesome video. I'm currently running a 5E game, players are level 1. Low level D&D instils fear. Had the first encounter escalate as they were sent to find someone that was lost in the woods. They find an area covered in webs. So they didn't want to just light the webs on fire as the person they are looking for might be cocooned in the web. Cutting there way to the whining cries of a young woman normal spiders started crawling out all over. As they get to the girl they find her webbed and had cuts to the back of her knees making it hard for her to move. It was then that an Ettercap came out from behind the group, hiding like a trap door spider and caught one player and start to drag him off. The other players managed to damage the Ettercap who ran off without his prize, survival is more important.
Fear in that game came from, fear of getting killed. Fear for the players and NPC's. But accomplishing that in a meaningful way is best done when you can lure the players into false sense of security. Normal spiders was the lure and attacking the most injured from behind was the trap that drove the fear for the party.
Thanks for the comments!
Check out Greg Stolze's Madness Meters, they offer a flexible way to handle sanity. It can be seen in the Nemesis rules (free ORE horror rules) and in a modified form in the Delta Green RPG.
I run OSR games and my players are usually cautious and often afraid of encounters, largely because they know that any encounter could be overpowered for their level. They've learned to look for clues, spy, observe, use diplomacy, and other tactics before getting into a fight. They've also learned to avoid or run away from encounters if there's nothing to gain and they have a goal.
Will do. Sounds cool.
Just switch to savage worlds
We always hated the level drain rules, right from 1st ed. Like a fail of a fear save it could instantly or quickly end the participation of a player in a fight. This applied especially to martial characters but could effect casters as well. One of the DMs in the campaign came up with a house rule that involved tracking hit point advancement at ever level, what you rolled, and when you regained a level, either by magic or XP, you would get to roll a new HP die and either take the new result or the result you had originally had as a reward for putting up with the much hated rule. I adopted that rule too until 4e did away with level drain.
Today, however, I mostly play with new players, low RP players and high ego players (we've always had those though), so a mechanic that simulates fear comes in handy. It gives the new and low RP players prompts to help them play out characterization (So what does your character do, you're afraid and desperately need to run away?) and it helps when the high ego player just believes "My character would never do that!"
Each method solves a problem but creates its own problems. It seems the solution depends on the DM and the players they work with.
Thanks for sharing!
I played 3E on a server running Neverwinter Nights that was set up for Epic play (up to level 40). Everyone quickly leveled up to 40 and ran around. Nothing could cause fear in the party so much as a few randomly encountered 19-hit point Rust Monsters. I've seen 40th level characters run in a panic at the alert of a Rusty Sighting. As a ranged character (Arcane Archer) I could clear all of them with the loss of a few arrows. I was very popular in those moments.
Lol I’m sure you were.
NWN rust monsters particularly suck though.
By table-top rules you were quite safe if you went after them in leather armor with clubs or staves, as overall they're not extremely dangerous monsters. So say, a monk with leather gloves & in their usual bathrobe should have been fairly safe too. NWN Rust Monsters are scripted to just delete whatever they find in an equipped slot on a hit. Because it doesn't have information for the material of individual pieces of equipment, and I don't think I've seen anywhere that went through the insane work to make sure any piece of equipable gear had a defined material that the script could check and ignore if non-metallic.
Character background questions:
3. What is the adventurer motivation?
4. What is your character's fear, and fear response?
The problem with rules like the level drain thing is that it's difficult to think of anything that would entice me to continue into the vampire's home with that on the line. "It's ok; I'll meet another fiance."
Good video. Fear has to be the hardest emotion to get across to players. Especially when they think they are unstoppable. One thing could be failing your saving throw and for 1 round your immobile. Basically, your brain is trying to figure out fight or flight which is very real, even for trained professionals. They are adventures and seen a lot so I believe they would work through the fear, but it takes your brain about 6 to 10 seconds to process the information. At least that could work on some situations I believe.
Even harder than fear is seduction. I've got friends who are complete dogs, in real life and in character, but the second they realize they are being seduced to a "nefarious" end, their characters become Sir William the Chaste.
"Dead" is the easiest emotion or status to convey in an RPG because even the most stubborn player can't just say "it doesn't bother me" when they get dismembered or set on fire, like they can do in so many other circumstances.
I would agree with this 100%. Disadvantage isn't forcing them to act in any particular way but it's DEFINITELY not causing them fear or causing them to pause to rethink their life choices. As always, great tips and insight! You always deliver and I'm happy to be here listening.
This one is a tough subject for me as a GM. I think the first thing is group buy-in. Explaining the setting out of game and providing excellent description in game help to encourage the right atmosphere and mood, but it really depends on what the players do (as it often does). In a weird way, our 1980s and 1990s D&D group was almost ruined to horror campaigns because we wanted to see the monster and the gruesome way that we died, and there was almost an eagerness rather than a fear. One great specific suggestion I grabbed from a random D&D supplement: Place something powerful in the beginning. Throw off the players by having a significant encounter right up front--rather than building up as the adventure goes. Then mix it up after that, not necessarily providing a rhythm the players can get used to. I stuck with that one and describe everything in a gothic way, like I've read too much Edgar Allan Poe.
Can never have too much Poe! Nice
My players and I have always had an issue with the fear rules in DnD. Different people act differently when they are scared, not everyone will run away or cower in terror. Sometimes people run, sometimes people cower, sometimes people attack the source of the fear until it isn't moving any more.
I thought the mists of Ravenloft nerfed your equipment, did they change the rules? That's how it was in the first boxed set, I remember that distinctly.
I play online, and my favorite way to make players scared is to separate them, but still let them see the other rolls. I played a scenario in a fey forest where their sense of reality was slipping. I didn't tell them that, but I changed the narration in a sort of gaslighting way ("You want to head back to the road? You never came here by a road, in fact, you're pretty sure you've been wandering this forest for years, trying to get out."). Then, I had them roll saves, and anyone who failed a save would be taken to a one on one chatroom. It's my equivalent of passing a note.
Players absolutely loved that adventure, and they were all gushing about how terrified they all were, especially the ones who *made* their saves.
I think one of the most necessary components to cultivate fear in your game is player buy in
I agree
The mechanic is in place for rule guidelines and those players that wouldn’t abide by the social aspect and theme. You know there are a ton of players that would just ignore fear and it would be a meaningless ability.
5e DM here, and you're exactly right. I've had players get hit with a Frightened condition and go, "I'm so scared of it, I'm just gonna keep using [INSERT SPELL HERE] until it dies!" They don't wanna act scared because "we're the heroes," completely ignoring that heroes are still human(oid) and can (and *should*) get scared in crazy situations. Every game should have meaningful FEAR rules, or else a decent amount of players will just ignore the concept altogether.
Exactly one of the troubles I have. I classify those as the "high ego players." Fear rules also help the "Newbies" and the "low RP" players.
If your'e not convinced by the mechanic, then you can create a house rule that says something like "anyone who fails a saving throw against fear has advantage in anything that will get him away from the object of fear and disadvantage in anything else". That way they still have their autonomy and can chose to ignore the fear, but will pay a price for doing so. If they chose to roleplay the situation, the get a bonus. I didn't get why PDM likes the substraction of two levels by vampires but not the disadvantage mechanic for dragons.
To be fair to the new Curse of Strahd, it's written to be run with characters starting between levels 1-3, so chances of them having *any* magic equipment on entering Barovia are pretty slim.
One of the revised versions of Vampire had a system for flaws and social powers where any time you chose as a player to take an additional downside or have your character work significantly against their own interests, then they got to record a mark in a box, and once you got a certain number of those, you got additional XP.
This is a solid “opt in” systems where players will choose to take worse effects, roleplay being under a negative emotional influence and so on because their characters learn and grow faster from the harsher experiences.
Other things players fear, loss of character control, imprisonment... mainly loss of player agency. Something that 5e seems to frown upon. Which is really sad, some of the most interesting games I played in my youth were about a player being possessed by a sword or turning into a werewolf and the rest of the party having to capture and cleanse them of the affliction. Most of the time the DM let the player still play their character (just as the werewolf etc.) It made for great fun and great stories "Hey remember the time you met that barmaid and we had to chase your hairy*** around the town for three sessions until we could cure you..."
Lol
I have been thinking about this since I played Alien, the stress die mechanic is brilliant and is not because you may panic because that is more of the same about loosing agency, but because the chances of botching go up, but on the flip side the stress dice can also help you succeed. So I think this could be tested on CoC by increasing the % of critic/botch maybe by using the same amount of sanity loss.
Ahhhh. Cool idea!
in 5e my players weren't afraid of anything.
in OSE the same group of players planned a several-day detour around a ruin due to the very rumor of a wraith that locals told them haunts the location. A local farmer went there on a dare and came back raving, his hair drained of colour, and died of fright that very evening.
Great to see someone with experience share those experiences.
BECMI D&D provides plenty of tension. No death saving throws, no short rests. I use Willpower checks to overcome extreme new scenarios coupled with horror checks from Ravenloft. Failure means they suffer from an acute mental instability, which they can potentially recover from after a significant rest. It works wonderfully.
Nice!
Thanks Professor. That was some good advice. I tend to keep things more secretive than I should, and just coming right out and saying that the 20 results in you losing your head, or the 1 leads to death by lava, is simple but brilliant.
Professor, this topic is extraordinarily timely. I was just chatting with my players about this. We’ve got a BBEG that’s a greater mummy (think Mumra from Thundercats with less warmth) that’s the last high priest to a Lovecraftian outer god. One of its nastier supernatural powers is Horrific Presence. I’ve made this a Charisma based save vs Spells (I’m using 1e saves). It can “exert” this ability when it so desires and anyone who can see or feel it’s presence is subject. Players will suffer penalties to combat modifiers and spell failure can occur. There is also Awesome Presence which is similar but is the purview of powerful good / celestial beings and dragons.
Based on the comments I’ve seen in here I think you could get a good deal more mileage out of this topic - Fear as an effect / spell / power vs fear via atmosphere and story setup. As always excellent work, sir.
Thanks!
One other example of miss direction. The players come across a small ball shaped thing rolling around bumping into things and cooing plaintively, calming and purring as the player approaches. Once he's touched the warm cuddly ball, small feet/tentacles are shown to be mostly how it moves.
The player now sees dimly a plush, ripped (cloak) velvet nest, inside are several snuggling, snoring balls.
All the descriptions I use are oriented towards Tribble like things, except one of the biggest furry balls, probably the oldest. It can open its one, big eye now, starts to hover a teeny bit, just as someone else sees Mom hovering down a corridor...
I ran a one-shot monster hunt. No one had ever seen it, yet it was huge. Footprints the size of a couch but hardly any tracks through the jungle. They found out more and more. They stumbled into a Hobgoblin party including a mage and a couple ninjas who were camped in a stockade, paralyzed by fear and indecision because of this monster.
When I cued some.music from Predator and described it slamming into the ground amid the party, they were good and scared.
When it grabbed a PC and loped off with him into the canopy where there was total obscurement instead of fighting the party, then they really got scared.
And when the druid summoned apes into the trees to chase it down and finish the monster off, and it fell from the trees with a thud....and I didn't end initiative. Well then they were truly scared. Of course it regenerated. Only got half of one more extra round, but boy it got them going.
I don't really do fear mechanics but I enjoy permanent insanity for characters. I just keep a note on my DM screen on who has what and then I alter the reality I share with that character/player. Works real well for 1:1 sessions and campaigns.
Some games have made sanity/fright systems more interesting. Personally I like systems that have an immediate effect that is triggered by the players actions, and that don't take them out of the game for a prolonged period of time. The Alien RPG does a good job at this with its stress mechanic, where unless stress gets really high most of the effects are on top of what the player is trying to do. As its often triggered by the player's rolls this also makes them more directly involved in causing the negative outcome, and most of the results make sense. It also results in some really memorable scenes.
Thanks for sharing.
I do agree that vampires used to be the scariest monsters in the game-all level drainers were. Up until Pathfinder I think, then they became only scary to low to mid- level characters. There was jewelry that could protect you somewhat, previously. In my last fight against level drainers [in Pathfinder] they were not even a minor nuisance, I just kept up the spells that give total protection against energy drain {[Death Ward I believe]. And there were dozens of undead energy drainers we had to fight [even incorporeal ones]. No fear at all, just a job.
I remember interactions with the unkown in combination with potentially overwhelming odds were the most scary parts of our games. Infiltrating an unfinished gulag to free an inmate or exploring a merchant's home during the night to find incriminating evidence. I once had my group hunt a dragon. On their way they encountered an elf (kinda) kid at a magical pond, who hung out with a troll family that had lost their home to the dragon. The trolls didn't speak the common tounge, the elf kid wouldn't talk at all, but they knew where the dragon lived and were generally very friendly. Later my players told me they were scared shitless of these guys, while the dragon was just a simple task for our group of murder hobos.
Playing as ordinary people, half lights and outcasts helps. 5e and other superhero games really aren't build for scary encounters, unless you find something wild to throw at them. The idea of Challange Rating and the heavy combat focus also discourage DMs from challanging the players with anything other than a perfectly balanced encounter. Also, cheat spells like Comprehend Language and Darkvision really spoil the tension in these situations.
Thanks for sharing!
I went into Hereditary wanting to feel a little fear. What I got was complete terror.
If you're letting a player coming to Borovia with a +5 holy avenger, you're doing things wrong.
The best part about those 1 hit kill monsters or stone bridges across the lava that might kill you outright? It forces the players to get creative.
"Ok everyone we can't melee with this guy. How do we work together to hit from afar?" Or "So there's a chance I just fall and die?! What equipment do we have to make sure we get across safely..."
In our Delta Green game we made temp insanity "Fight, Flight, Freeze". You don't have total control but roll a d6. On a 1-2 you can still fight for your life. Freezing in place on a 5-6 however is terrifying!
My table uses old-school rules for level drain, petrification, and poison. Some dangers result in level loss, and others in instant death. it really amps up the tension in the game and it works well for us.
I like the Fear mechanic in WFRP 4e - if you fail, you don't want to go near the source of your fear - you can engage with other things in the area, but you give that thing a wide berth. However, you CAN overcome your Fear by making a subsequent roll and passing; so it doesn't shut you out of an encounter (unless you're REALLY unlucky with your rolls!)
Dungeon Craft: May all your rolls be 20s
Me, the DM, using his Ginormus monster: This will be fun
A great tactic I have is a villain who just doesn't care about the players. Attacks seem ineffective; maybe he's an illusion, maybe the armor he wears prevents magic from affecting him. But the real fear is the unknown.
I have insect people that cannot speak because they don't have to; they communicate instantly through pheromones and can unanimously do something with seemingly no coordination (I have rules for them, like it requires a turn to "talk" or if a player uses a wind spell they get disrupted) but so far they are scared whenever they see them
Cool.
Again I love those games that encourage role play by rewarding those who willing take disadvantage on things. FATE & DEADLANDS (OG) do this splendidly.
In Fate you can assign a player an aspect that they feel afraid and as the DM you can compel them to be afraid. (Aspects are by a far the most powerful tool in the game and should be used in all games.) However when compelled or better still when the PLAYER says, "well I have this aspect which is bad so I am going to do such and such," you get a fate point. For FATE this is powerful since its the currency you use to do everything in the game.
DEADLANDS has disadvantages. When your player actively uses his disadvantage to do something that could be detrimental to the mission/character/etc etc than you can award the player poker chips which you can use as rerolls or save for character advancement.
I ran Deadlands for a number of years and would give players temp DISADS to be the ZOINKS in their Western Flavored Scooby Doo adventure. At the end of the game we would review the DISADS and how they impacted things and I would award the bonus chips in sort of a group consensus. Players were always free to ignore these and not collect the chips but it was always more immersive to do the thing so it was rare to have anyone refuse to follow them.
~Chuck
Thanks for sharing!
Fria Ligan’s Alien RPG has a great Stress mechanic that works wonders. You gain an extra dice for each point of Stress gained. More chance of succeeding (by rolling ‘6’ on any dice) but a chance of Panicking when you roll a ‘1’ on any Stress Dice.
What I use to adapt into a variety of systems when I need a fear check apart from the natural effects of narration, is using the check result to inform a false reality to the player, making the character act odd because corrupt information.
Loss of agency IS Horror! Lol. But depends on the feel of the game?
A few tips (simplified)
1) More horrific descriptions (use creepy and human body related adjectives) Also use more senses. More brutal and atmospheric. ex: The zombie slowly crawls its way out of the nearby grave in the cemetery and attacks the helpless mayor you were hired to protect, roll initative. vs; the misty gravestones are hard to decipher in the moonless night. The mayor holds the ghostly blue everburning torch high to see the area clearer. The hair raises on the back of your neck as you feel a creeping sense of impending doom. Nearby The ground shifts as if a badger would emerge but it is too large to be a badger, as the greenish grey hand bursts out of the loose soil of a nearby grave. The rotting corpse of a man with white undead eyes and tattered clothing it lurches the grave dirt sloughing off as it stands and lunges towards your employer. Maggots squirm on the ground where they fall from the zombie, roll initiative.
Read good descriptions form books to help here. Study and take notes. Remind yourself to include visual, sound, scent, temperature, time, taste, touch and even other senses.
2) give more powers and special abilities to monsters/ make custom monsters have things do/have unexpected abilities.
3) Have more surprise rounds and give extra and more horrific/scary actions to monsters
4) run games at lower levels (tier 1) for D&D 5e lv0-4 only. OR use much higer CR monsters more often
5) play monsters at max tactics for who/what they are.
6) use special terrain/terrain based tactics/Traps/ group tactics/gear/ magic items/ magic and weird area effects. Ex: Don't just use 1d6 kobolds. "Tuckers 1d6 kobolds" in a tunnel system who pop up to shoot then duck back under total cover, and use traps and poison and use different 'types' Kobold trapmaster/fighter/druid/etc. I bet I could max tactics 1d6 kobolds and defeat a low tactics party of 4 5th level characters If I tried.... Especially if you add good gear/traps and tactical tunnels, etc. What if the kobolds have a cheap way of making alchemists fire? What if they use oil and fire traps? Collapsing ceilings? Poison? Pits? etc.
7) Sudden unexpected things. Jump scares. A ghostly face or woman standing behind their reflection in a mirror, turn to look. Nothing it there...
8) Twist/betrayal. ex: Friendly NPC they like replaced by imposter such as a doppelganger assassin.
9) Use scary monsters and describe how scary they are. This also includes foreshadowing/lore/clues and NPCs being afraid and urging the PCs to 'be careful' or 'run away from here and never come back if you know whats good for you", etc.
10) Dangerous loss or rule/game element that is harder to recover from/spirals. Ex: For D&D 5e: Exhaustion, Ability drain/Hp drain, Confusion, instant death, immunities, Legendary resistance, Legendary Actions, etc.
11) Always get consent and be careful about players triggers. always get players buy in/permission for adding madness/level drain/ memory loss/loss of class abilities/ loss of spells/magic/ permanent injury and other 'brutal effects' into games especially more 'superhero' style games like D&D 5e. Having said that adding those things is great for horror!
12) Loss of gear/items ESPECIALLY items that increase AC/ offer protections/ any magic item or valued heirloom
13) Target loved ones/beloved NPCS. Have evil/horrific villains or enemies that use characters loved ones against them. BUT in a heroic fantasy game typically the players SHOULD be able to 'win' and save those people BUT the worst and most horrific version has it happen 'off screen' and be too late... ex: PCs ignore the growing rumors of a necromancer near their home base town to go on a very high paying quest instead despite clues it could get really bad for the town? They return to the town only for it to be under the necromancers control they realize this when the lights are not lit and there is no smoke from the chimneys. Its oddly silent but the highest perception PC can smell the decay. They see a guard walking oddly. Its a guard they recognize and like have had conversations with but never can again as his undead zombie eyes and broken jaw denote a lack of personality, etc. (phrase more horrifically with much better adjectives) You get the idea however!
14) Huge twists in 'fundamental' world lore/reality previously established and existential apocalyptic threats. Best when foreshadowed/prophecy. Doomsday clock and time based count down to a dangerous date/event. Be creepy when pointing out an event that matches a dangerous prophecy. Really emphasize the description and remind the player that their PC makes the horrific gut dropping connection to the prophecy. Remind them they are 'running out of time' And likewise time sensitive missions/events in general.
15) Stakes in general and missions to succeed at that put other things/people at risk besides just the PCs and their personal wealth. Such as pets/children/ townsfolk/etc.
16) Take inspiration from your own nightmares/fears!
17) use horrific events from your own life and the real world and fiction as inspiration.
As always discuss lines/veils and what players are ok with and make players comfortable with having a method to stop play if at ANY point they are triggered or things become 'too much'. It should be fun for everyone.
18) Discuss allowing horrific elements typically banned in most TTRPG tables/campaigns/groups. True horror for your group could include such taboos BUT ONLY if EVERYONE is actually comfortable and ok. Check in after intense sections and after sessions. AS GM also be honest with what YOU want and are actually ok with YOU are a player too! Be careful even broaching this make sure you trust the group AND consider not risking it as well because people have been kicked from groups/caused harm to friendships/ been misunderstood or otherwise harmed for even asking the wrong group; to say include very graphic violence, racism, sexual assault, torture, etc. As these things are offensive/triggering and potentially harmful if done incorrectly so be warned. Its very valid for people to not want such elements focused on, described or more than lightly implied in a game even if its 'realistic' to include such elements logically in a dark horrific world. Respect everyone involved BUT be aware that some people may be so sensitive/triggered or sometimes frankly close-minded and sanctimonious its dangerous to even ask to include such things. Again horror is tricky.
19) Mind control/fear/loss of agency. oddly this stuff IS baseline but MORE horrific (when you think about it) than most taboos in TTRPG! The balance here is to use them FOR horror but not to frustrate/annoy the player into being 'too helpless' and a total loss of agency. Its truly horrific but also 'not fun' so tread carefully here as well.
20) Always adjust to YOUR themes/group/world/campaign/power level/story/and most of all Players. More intelligent and tactically skilled players require a greater tactical challenge to reach the same level of horror. Walk a fine line of using players fears vs triggering them by crossing a line. Always backtrack and apologize immediately if you do cross a line. Like wise (again) also recognize your own.
I hope this helps. I'm sure there's more but this comment is long enough LOL.
I've found that when investigating, if you occasionally have the PCs make a d20 roll and don't tell them what its for, this helps build tension and concern... especially when nothing seems to happen. Using this is a metagaming way to help inspire concern in the characters. Obviously, you shouldn't overuse this practice, but used occasionally in moments that are perhaps less tense, it can yield good results. Beyond that, good description, by which I mean using all the five senses of your PCs in description, is an excellent way to help build the tension as well, though I suspect I'm not revealing any amazing secret there. I will certainly agree with professor DM that withholding the monster, or at least the main monster, long enough, merely providing hints about its presence through various strange sensory descriptions provided to the PCs, that this helps. They never quite see what's moving in the distance, or flashes by out of the corner of their eye. Or everywhere they have encountered a grisly and terrible death, they always smell something like a combination of roses and sulfur so that when next they are heading down a passage and they begin to smell roses and sulfur, they start to get concerned! Just some thoughts.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I always enjoyed the WFRP various systems for handling damage, insanity, consequences of magical abuse etc. Highlighting how grim the world is and the rigours that the worlds residents have to go through daily.
Showing off a character’s ever more likely downward progression as they strive to make a difference in the world. Seeing how you can hold out just one more adventure before fully succumbing to madness or the like.
A few characters leave and become NPC minions or the like. Who better to try to stop the adventures then some one who knows their darkest moments.
Thanks for sharing.
I love the examples at the end. Such a good explanation of level drain. I want to give another creature a similar power where they drain max HP instead.
6:20 "I have a 15 appearance I'll find a new fiance". That made me laugh far harder than it should have.
7:27 Biggest problem with level drain was having to rework the character sheet multiple times during a combat encounter, rally sucks if you are doing everything on paper.
8:07 - "A black wind blows through your body. All weapons drop to Level 1!"
Fear... this is an interesting topic for me in D&D. I felt fear all the time in the 70s & 80s with B/X and Red Box. Why? It goes back to my disdain for backstories with modern gaming - never write a BG! Writing a three page BG is a sign that the Player does not expect or fear losing this PC. I feel that BGs are made to be... well made or lived in game / in character. Meaning, I lost a ton of 1st level characters until I got one to 5th-6th level. A ton! Natural fear kicked in when supplies dwindled and when I got back down to 1st level equivalent HPs from encounters. That is when fear of losing that "Character", that BG, and all the work put into them happened. You couldn't wait until you hit 7 HPs either before you said, "Nope, I'm done. Heading back to the Inn!" You had supply issues and random encounters to worry about. Prolonged worry led to suspense, prolonged suspense led to fear. All those 'trivial' ignored 'dumb' rules; encumbrance, supplies, mapping... all caused the Player to worry, "Will I lose this investment!?" Torches burned out, weighted down with treasure slowed you down causing more random encounters, if your map was wrong it added time to surface, etc. This, to me, is what defines OS play - the ingrained Fear.
To inspire fear in players, I recommend working on your poker face and your DM smirk. Well timed use of that information to players even if there is no threat can induce paranoia and fear. The other thing is the use of NPCs to sell a grisly demise at an environmental hazard.
In addition, any creatures that use exceptionally brutal or deadly tactics can create fear - kamikaze or assassination tactics
Super video Professor DM! I think you can play fear when your players are really tense and it is typically when they first enter an area, don't know what could happen next, etc. Once they see a monster and you throw a mini on the table, it's much harder to play. Your player is not scared so it's a bit sticky to get the player to believe their character is scared. I think you can DM your way around such things to some extent. Cause effects on the players before they can either see what did it and/or before they really know what's going on.
It made me so happy when you said "anything but a 1" - I use that too! When my players are facing a really difficult situation I sometimes ask them to roll a d20 and say "roll well! Don't roll a 1!" It puts so much tension on that moment and the sigh of relief or the scream of failure depending on the outcome is worth so much! Recently one of my players was trying to stabilize a dying player and this came up - I said "don't roll a 1!" They promptly did and killed their friend right then and there!
My players have done things like that often!
I can remember being so afraid of a 1e vampire's energy drain that I immediately went nuclear with several single use magic items that maybe the DM shouldn't have allowed me to acquire, let alone to use all at once. It was quite memorable, and I definitely was afraid I could lose a character that I built to level 5-ish over the course of a year. In a 5e Curse of Strahd game, my fellow players wanted to be scared. The DM told us in session zero about various game mechanics designed to instill fear. He didn't have to utilize them. Just letting us know that we were supposed to be scared, and perhaps that there were looming mechanical threats to reinforce that feeling, was all we needed. We ate it up. While I can't deny that the mechanics helped, the players were into the idea of being frightened. Having players willing to immerse in the DM's game is what you need most to create a mood at the table. I realized this when I watched your video about MacDeath. If you have players who want to be immersed in a fantastic dark Shakespearean tragedy, that game is going to make for a memorable evening. (I definitely would love that evening).
Thanks for sharing.
The example with the dragons frightful presence isn't rly about player autonomy, since when you compare it to the vampire's drain level the disadvantage is not nearly enough of a deterent. Vampire drain level = players are encouraged to avoid fighting it all together. While with dragon's frightful presence = players can still fight it, but it's just harder.
Autonomy is just not the best word there.
The first time you actually use the stealth stats on goblins, you’ll scare the living crap out of your players. They’ll try to avoid resting anywhere other than behind locked door after that.
I knew a DM years ago who would never tell you if you succeeded or failed trap checks. He’d just say, “safe as nails” after you told him what you rolled. Only when you actually opened whatever it was would you learn if you succeeded or not. That was terrifying.
Great advice, Professor! But I’m having trouble finding the coursepack, is it just at Kinko's, or…?
Dear Prof DM...ABSOLUTELY!!! I feel kind of sorry for 5e players who have never experienced this feeling. So when I was a noob back in early 1982 after I got Basic D&D Box for Christmas in 1981 and read it cover to cover, somehow I got into an AD&D group and, after my first-level magic user died in Hommlet after casting my one spell, I played a Paladin who managed to survive! WOOOH!!! Well we were playing with some older guys who had high-level characters and were kinda mean to us "little kids" (8th graders). And the next dungeon my Paladin was in was the Tomb of Horrors!!! AHHHHH!!! Talk about scary!!!1 The big players bullied us and made us be the guinea pigs and sent us through that misty archway, so now we are naked in a place we don't know where. Quite a shock!!!! So we found our clothes and gear nearby, and we wind up inadvertently get into Acererak's house and we see the skull on the pile of dust. We don't know what to do, so one of the other noobs goes, "I tap the skull with my sword." The DM tells us that the skull slowly rises up in a some swirling dust and the eyes light up red. When it got as high as it would go, it said "I'm going to drain one of your souls, who will it be?" Talk about being scared! I just went through this with the magic user and finally had some success, all to be ruined!!! We were all like "Why did you do that!!!??" to the guy who tapped the skull. We wanted his character to be the one that dies...Fast forward to 2016 when I was in a 5e group and offered to DM Tomb for them, using Perkins's conversion. I had no idea what level 5e character to use because Perkins didn't specify, so I just followed the guidelines on the original (level 10-14). Well that was a mistake!!! They had characters that could fly and monks who could walk on walls, so all the traps were a big joke!!!! I did all this work to make a beautiful set with props and stuff, and they just walked right through it with the superheroes. I called the 5e version Perkins put in Dragon Magazine the "Tomb of Borers" and really lowered my opinion of him as a DM...Moral of the story, you need to make the players afraid by threatening the lives of their characters. It's one of many ways to prevent murder hoboism so common in 5e. (We never did that back in the day!!!) You are 100% correct Prof. DM....Your friend, Dr. Violet Deliriums.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
"I have 15 Appearance; I'll find a new fiancé." Cold-blooded, I love it.
I once played in a Weird War II game where our platoon dropped into France and were separated from the rest of the company. While picking our way through a bombed out occupied village, we had to whisper at the table as to not alert the zombie Naz troops of our presence. This went on for about twenty minutes and it had an amazing effect of heightening the tension. When at last we were attacked the game master broke into a loud voice and slammed his hand on the table describing the werewolves who assaulted us. We all jumped out of our seats!
We sounded like the marines from Aliens when they were ambushed under the reactor as we shouted at one another what to do as we only had 30 seconds per player to take a turn.
it was the most horror feel I've had in a RPG.
I'm glad you released this video. The campaign I'm running is... Shall we say, "Horror-esque." I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from "Darkest Dungeon" and "Bloodborne" for inspiration on setting and themes.
I was going to run it like Darkest Dungeon, where the characters lose sanity and act contrary to how the player would want them to act. However, after watching this video and reading some of the comments, I'm going to run it more like Bloodborne.
I'm reminded of a let's play of Bloodborne, where the person watching the game says, "This would be a terrifying game to play at night." The person playing the game says, "Well, it's more terrifying because it's hard." The imagery may be a bit viscerally disturbing in that game; but the real fear comes in knowing that, at any point, any of the enemies - even the weaker ones - could catch you in a combo or gang up on you, and there's nothing you could do about it.
The real kicker is that the PCs in Bloodborne are supposed to be nigh super heroes, but it still instills a sense of fear in the Players because of the mechanics.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Bloodborne is a better game to try and emulate if you're looking for fear in your campaign than Darkest Dungeon.
Thanks for sharing.
oh wow - Shadows over Bogenhaven! Now that brings back memories!
GREAT scenario.
For those familiar with the Hero System, there's Fear-Based Presence Attacks. If you want the fear to cause insanity, an option would be a Mental Transform that must follow a Fear-Based Presence Attack.
Was watching your replace session zero video (love the channel by the way, recently bought your death bringer supplement and trying to convince my players to give it a go) and had a question maybe you could answer, or possibly make into a new video if there’s enough interest. You discuss the campaign you were running and how you were trying to make everyone’s rogue character unique; one is a tracker, one is a thief etc. This got me wondering if you do anything in regards to subclasses in your games. Example, did the tracking rogue have different abilities vs the thief rogue?
Deathbringer Dice allow one thief to be a tracker and another one to be scout and another to be a spy.
I remember how scared my players were when I was running the Age of Worms adventure path. They were at a colosseum, fighting a party of dwarves. They were pretty confident because they had some distance. The dwarves had drunk a potion of fly and immediately opened the combat by flying towards them and targeting their weapons with sunder attacks with their adamantine great axes. The risk of losing their precious magic weapons is what triggered the fear response better than any dragon, dracolich or incarnation of the Worm God could.
The temporal insanity could be interesting if it was inverted, like stress mechanic in Blades in the Dark. PC would have an abillity to gain additional dice or other siginificant bonus to their actions by voluntarly spending their sanity points.
Thanks for more great ideas! I like the clear communication on the consequences of rolling a nat-20 or a nat-1. My players have become a little too comfortable with 5e mechanics that keep them alive to easily. I don't want to take away player agency or take punitive actions. I like your ideas for increasing the tension while allowing them to take the risk.
Best success with fear - introduced Skaven from Warhammer to my 5e gane. First encounter there is almost a TPK in the sewers, second encounter they barely save an ally who is about to be mutated by said Skaven. Now, whenever they see the sigil of the Horned Rat or see even 1 Skaven they freak out. We left last session with them in the sewers again...and they THINK there is only 1 Skaven down there...
I think a good way to create fear that is perfectly in line with the modern 5e near invincibility is simply having the dearest NPCs be put in danger.
The animal mascot, the infantalized goblin/kobold prisoner, the support NPC that brings healing. There's always something.
Great advice! I always thought that Level Drain was like the Morgul knife that stabbed Frodo... you can recover from it, but you're never quite the same as you were, or could have been. Some things just leave an indelible mark. One alternative that actually is less merciful but might make some players happier is that you permanently lose a Hit Die. So you still keep your spells, your To Hit bonus, whatever, but you'll always be down that Hit Die (or two, if it's a big hitter like a vampire). Since wizards have cruddy Hit Dice anyway, you can also let them sacrifice HD for "dark pacts". They might actually be tempted to do it!
interesting
I tend to belong to the school of tension by diversion. One game I had the players so frazed by beamer turret traps, changing gravity and escher stairs that...
"You come upon two door like panels at the end of the corridor, two buttons by each."
The players cautiously approach..
"As you get closer, you see a box between the two. It has a fan shaped metal turret with a quarter inch hole. It's pointed at you. There is a switch right next to it..."
So the players decide who is going to crawl close and slow to avoid motion detectors, see if the button switches it off.
The tension builds as he shakingly moves his pike to the switch...
Then a stream of water goes from the hole in the 'fan' into a basin at the top of the box. The thing makes a hum shortly after...
The players wouldn't have reacted that way unless they'd experienced the tension of similar traps zapping coins tossed to see where the gravity was going.
omg I needed this video! I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden as my first game as a DM and I wanted to use the Dread mechanic from Sandy Peterson's Cthulhu Mythos for 5E. I'm partial to CoC's sanity mechanics but I really like your ideas! thanks!
I agree. I run a Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign, and I had players that passed their Sanity rolls but still chose to role play being afraid of the situation. They felt that’s what their character would do. I also ran a game recently where a player went temporarily insane and ran to hide during the monster encounter, completely missing the end of the scenario. I’ve decided to remove that mechanic from future games and allow my players to role play their characters’ actions.
Another suggestion for instilling fear is to set the mood with creepy descriptions. I find lots of subtle hints work best
Eerie music helps as well.
Old School Vampires.
Back in the 1980's we did the permanent level drain for Vampires. After it happened once the players refused to play any module with level draining in it (including refusing to finish that particular adventure it 1st happened in). After all, although death is permanent (they way we play it) you at least get a fighting chance. SOooo, what I do now is that they get a save and if they fail they are drained for the duration of the adventure but after 1 month of downtime between adventures, they regain their level. It doesn't happen very often but it is now understood that the encounter is bad but not permanent. It is a game intended to be fun after all. I try to run P2e with hardcore variant house rules but I guess the level drain is too much for some.
That permanent AC drain from JSBozick above, is a plausible alternative.
Alternative fear system: L5R 4e gives a numeric penalty by how much you fail. Different numeric system, but you can get as high as a -60 or as low as a -1 to a roll to act against the source of fear. Does not last longer than this encounter, so you can conquer your fear or try to power through it.
I actually ran a one-shot experiment based on the Dead by Daylight game. From this I learned that players immediately start to sweat when they realize the most straight-forward tactics do not work. The main key to making encounters scary is to give your players reasons to not want to fight your monster. Their objective is finding an enemy in the monster's lair, the monster is immune to damage and can only be hindered by certain status conditions. And most importantly: D&D 5e players don't fear losing hit points. So instead, you threaten them with Exhaustion levels. Your monsters manages to hit one of your players, they take 0 damage, but take a level of exhaustion. And with that level of exhaustion, have the monster try to grab the player and drag them away. Now the frantic search for a way to slow this menace and escape from it really begins.
The key to fear in D&D 5e is making the players feel powerless without being useless.
Cool advice.
Playing a certain old school Mesoanerican quest utilizing roll20, and there is an encroaching shimmering graphic of a wall of green gas.
They have no idea what it does and they are significantly terrified!
There is a lot of optional rules for temporary insanity in 7th edition CoC I have had one player run so far because he got claustrophobic in a sewer another got enraged. Had her psychic powers increased during the insanity ... I really have had fun playing with insanity
I believe it was the Ravenloft box set that had a few red herring suggestions that I found useful. If a monster does one point of damage, as the GM take a long time describing the scratch and then say "one point of damage." The players will spend a long time figuring out what might have happened to the character. Or write down a note saying something like "lycanthropy" after a player took damage. Later get up to use the restroom, and leave that paper in view. It's extremely difficult to make a player actually afraid. My all-time favorite was when I was describing a fear effect that hit some characters "you remember when you were a child in bed in the dark? You try to open your mouth and call out for your mom and nothing happened, that's how your character feels right now." Also in the Ravenloft rules 2e there were many spells that just did not work. No teleportation, no Resurrection, etc. In my current game I have a group of characters stuck in the "well of hell' and they just realized they couldn't teleport back to town to rest up and recuperate after a fight. At that moment they realize how dire the situation is
Describing their character''s feelings at the time is interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I like this. I've played in systems where failing a horror roll either makes the character lose initiative, run or are paralyzed with fear but I don't usually use initiative (what if it is a social interaction?) and either running or freezing means they do nothing during the encounter which makes it very boring.
I concur
9:05 that is a great idea!!! I will stat asking for Very Easy [+60] checks where its instadeath on failure on my WFRP4 games.
maybe a Difficult [-10] test with intadeath on -6SL works better for some situaitons.
The players will probably just spend fortune to reroll, but if they don't have fortune they will probably have to make a deal with the dark gods to survive.
I hear you. I see both sides (as I often do - it's an irritating habit of mine). I approach RPG as an acting role. Yes, I am playing a game, but that game (to me) is portraying the character on my sheet as best as I possibly can. If the character on my sheet would run from the monster, then I should act that out. My autonomy is how I choose to make that happen. So, if I fail the save or however the mechanics are set up, then I need to think of exactly how that character would act that out. There are many times when I am in the middle of a session and I see my character doing one thing that I absolutely know (as a player) is a huge mistake, but I know the character would do it, and so I let him make that mistake - and for me those are great moments in roleplaying. I look forward to that stuff.
First COC scenario I ran was the Dead Boarder. In this short scenario, there is only one chance of Temporary Insanity. Now my player was new and I didn’t want it anticlimactic with his character being turn apart during a bout of madness. Planning ahead, I kept it simple, scared stiff until surprised by a loud noise. Naturally, my player failed his saving thrown and I had the horror let out a blood curdling scream right before he and a friendly NPC enter combat.
Now what made my player, not his PC but the player terrified were my description of the monster itself and not knowing exactly how to kill it.
Fear and insanity are great mechanics if used wisely. They’re tools to help drive the story forward and should never be used to punish your players.
The best answer... is a good DM and good players. I love my players who buy in to the world and don't approach the game like their character is an 80s action hero.
I'm not trying to be a dick... nor am I bragging. But I run 5e mostly as written and I don't have any difficulty making the game feel dangerous.
The truth is my players look at each other at least once a session and say, "This is it... someone's gonna die here." I'm not some extra special DM. I don't give awe inspiring Matt Mercer style descriptions. I don't have elaborate Deborah Ann Woll style puzzles and plot twists. I just work really hard to make the world feel lived in. The peasants complain about the aristocracy. The merchants don't like adventurers messing up their towns. The characters see the consequences of the villain's behavior. So, when the farmer says, "Something evil lurks in the woods," my players believe it's scary.
As a DM verisimilitude is the most important component. But you can't do that alone. Your players need to engage with the world and roleplay their reactions to those emotionally charged moments. A good player empathizes with the downtrodden peasant and resents the aristocracy. They act defensive when merchants assume they're ill-intentioned. Good players give into the fear and all the other available emotions.
Honestly a lot is about past history too. The first time PCs enter the cave of no return, they may not know when to expect, but after returning successfully from 4 other "dangerous" places and living to tell the tale, they're going to be skeptical when farmer Bill tells them about the next set of spooky woods/caves/etc.
@@taragnor that's why there are always more NPCs. And you can also kill off NPCs the players like and respect. It makes the threat real when the rival adventurers who stole their treasure 3 weeks ago are found mutilated by something huge.
Dungeon Crawl Classics has a fantastic mechanism for instilling fear: the monster critical hit tables, especially at higher levels. There’s no way to cancel or avoid a critical hit in DCC, and getting critically hit by some monsters has a decent likelihood of outright destroying, much less killing, anyone or anything in a single attack. When I first looked at those tables, I immediately realized why even a level 10 character would balk or even laugh at a group of townsfolk or a lower-level party approaching them for help facing a dragon. You really do have to be desperate or foolhardy to dare enter the same room as one. No amount of min-maxing can guarantee there will even be enough left of its opponents to bury.
Great food for thought as always, but how about effects other than fear that temporarily remove player autonomy such as charm person, confusion, dominate person, hypnotic pattern, etc? In 5e these often have many opportunities to reverse the condition through several additional saving throws and the results can be less permanent than other DnD hazards like petrification or disintegration.
"Fear means nothing when you have nothing to lose."
THIS is the entire problem with horror in games.. completely does not matter the level of experience, the quality of writing, the player investment nor the talent of the DM)GM.
"Fear is merely a mechanic." Doesn't matter the system. You can only find balance within said system
Great video and thanks for the Gen Con seminar. It was a ton of fun!! Still laughing about the missing cables 🤣
Holy crap that was so funny! I've been there 100% like DAMMIT forgot the one cable I needed! Lol
Probably better than the slides I had prepared!
Great video Professor. I was surprised though that you didn't mention anything about switching from chance (i.e., dice) to a skill based outcome.
I mean the players should have autonomy, but the DM really determines a lot of things. I think you can easily add a skill mechanic. The game Dread uses a Jenga tower and I think there's so much that can be done with that.
Saving throw? Pull a block
Roll a crit? Pull a block
The enemy surprises you? Pull a block
Finding the nerve to attack a vampire? Pull a block
What's nice about this idea is that it puts the player in a tactile situation and every players pull affects everyone elses next pull. Plus the crash really brings a nice jump scare.
I’ve used that system for many one offs. Great game.
instead of temp insanity why not inflict a particular penalty. stuff that a character wouldnt control, like shaking hands for reduced dex or equivelent, or stress for reduced int, etc.
Love these old rules - I miss level drain I really do. One thing I do want to point out to newer DM's is the idea that making a player feel fear for their character does require the player to have more invested interest in their character than their need to "win" the game so in your time at the table you will have players that you wish to put in a fear mindset because it is theme and table appropriate, but it doesn't work solely because when you say "I roll a 20 and you lose your head" they're going to think "that's not fair" and they'll let you know (hopefully before it happens). This is generally what we would refer to in the old school as a power-gamer who will manipulate your ability to arbitrate the rules fairly; I don't know if I have a solution human interaction is complex but if you are at least aware that it could happen then you'll be better ready to handle it when it inevitably does (but hopefully doesn't).
My players have been good about their character's demises! Thankfully
"I have a 15 appearance. I'll find a new fiance." Now that's some real RPing.
Hello Proffesor dungeon master, great video, what dp you think about the fear effect in path 2e(it decreases the stats and roll in 1 point per level of fear) i think that it worked pretty well from in the system and even others, god bless you pardon for my english
Thanks for sharing!
Eldritch tales is a whitebox version of lovecraftian horror. Insanity is a great way to have characters scared to even look in a desk drawer, because they may cause them to gain insanity.
However, since they must look into the drawer to get the clues.... the group rolls dice, to see who gets to be the unlucky observer..
Funny thing it is an amazing caveat, the viewer gets to know what is inside, and everyone else gets their verbal description.
Urban myth, no one Knows what the Necronomicon is called, only what it is.
If you see a book with a leather cover that looks like a human face was stretch across it.
Leave the room and never talk about it, ...
If you don't leave the room, do not look/stare at the cover, ..
Do not even Touch it.
Whatever you do, never ever read it.
G*D help you if you ever speak any of its words outload.
If you stare at The Book, you have to make a saving roll to keep from receives Bestow Curse. Anytime the Player's PC is alone at night The Book will Teleport to a table in the same room with the PC in it. The PC has to make nightly Willpower/wisdom saving throws to keep from reading The Book. Reading the book Calls/Summons an 8hd fiendish outsider from a story within the book to hunt people within the local village/city the PC is in.
We had a whole list of rules as to what happens when things go wrong.
@@krispalermo8133 i love this....
@@smugzoid5156 Thank you, storyteller campaign metaplot, .. telling too many ghost stories involving The Book invokes saving throws to Teleport the Book to the PC. Or leads the PC into encounters that are Lovecraft in nature.
Makes Wisdom/Spot checks DC:15 to 20 to notice Strange Things and roll Will save or suffer 1d2 or 1d4 temporary Wisdom damage.
See something that makes the PC .. Jump .. out right from a failed Fear check. Go with low level wizard spell Scare or 4th-level Fear spell. Follow with a Dexterity/Reflex check to maintain balance or fall down hard enough to twist your ankle and walk with a limp for 1d6 hours resulting in movement penalty.
Best plots involve at least two or six games till the true horror sets in. Don't do a one-shot horror game, let it build up after a couple of game plays. Are they being stalked or are they getting fore warnings of a future event ?
Player one, " What the hell did I just see ?! "
Taking Wisdom damage.
Player two, " I have been seeing that type of thing for the pass month, this is kind of normal to me now."
Player one, " Why didn't you say anything ?"
Player two, " No one would believe me."
2.) With 3.5e, the DM would just hand out N/PC expert class levels as skill boosts and Will saving bonus for plot. Such as the player running a fight PC getting a couple of levels of N/PC warrior for Fort save bonus and a few skill points/ranks.
Along with D&D Ravenloft campaign source book my gaming shop played Whitewolf/World of Darkness: Vampire so playing fear, frenzy, and sanity derangements are a normal thing for me.
b.) With 3rdE one Player multiclass a PC with high Fort saves to recover temporary energy drains faster which metaplot his PC was being hunted and feed off of by succubus.
Another player went with high Will saves and their PC was being stalked by illithid mind flayers and other mental draining outsider fiends as an oddity to study and dream stalkers to feed off of.
Players with PC of high social skill rankings and saving throws become campaign plot devices. For my last gaming shop, we ran part time adventures with day jobs. The fighter/rogue is part of the village militia doing road patrols and cave clearing of goblins and earns an income as a carpenter.
Or a rogue/bard is a trade merchant politicking lesser nobles or so sociable everyone wants them at their parties and to refuse means your wagon train will get raided.
c.) The PC school teacher/baby sister that taught some of them wizardry is a mind flayer in hiding that alter their minds to have pisonic wild talents to be used as pawns. The plot catch the mind flayer regards the PC as Her grandchildren and is one of the secret lord protectors of the seaport village.
Most players run their PCs after finding out about the mind flayer, " She bake me cookies my whole life and taught me to read, write, and do math .. she is my granny."
d.) Young adult green dragon pushed over trees and claw/rake out a wagon road short cut through a group of foothills for faster trade cause the green dragon was bored. The dragon is not much of a bully and loves many of the local farming hamlet/villages' old people for the storytelling of the young children. Lets human children play on it and snuggles and listen to a good story.
The areas local noble lords and bandits are jockeying the green dragon for road tax protection and political leverage against each other.
The green dragon bridge and road was created by the dragon so it could flex its muscle stating " .. look at what I drag and build .." for its own prestige amongst other dragons, and the green dragon just likes the river view. Now the humans are trying to bribe and hustle it.
The dragon will politely not pay attention to anyone who doesn't pay the bridge toll. But will laugh and watch any challengers twitch to death after the dragon rip their leg off. Pin with claw then bite grapple the leg and make strength checks till the leg is pulled off. PC hp don't matter with such action. Roll hp dmg only for prolong torture action.
Green dragon favorite meals are sheep brush with chicken grease season with garlic, goats brushed with bacon grease with onions juice. Pigs rub down with goat butter and a few other meals.
Green is more than happy with gold and silver from the farmers, but large amounts of coin from others the dragon is warry of bribes and social contracts since green dragons are naturally Lawful evil, there is always a catch.
Green flex its muscle for the farmers by pull cut timber, tree stumps, and claw ranking/plowing fields and digging shallow ponds to catch rainwater runoff. Resulting in Green have larger than normal muscle mass for the average green dragon. Along with farmers and merchants .. gifting .. green with cattle/herds for food. Since Green has such a nice domain other dragons are coming a courting or challenge for territory. Local human adventure PCs have to deal with the other dragons, nobles, and dragon slayers working for other nobles to take over the green dragon bridge road.
Of note, the dragon's cattle and other livestock are taken care of by the local farmers and groom for the hair /wool for cloth/tent production making a tidy profit.
Which other nobles want that cloth and cattle to field their soldiers with.
Each game play have the players random draw an index or play card to get the chance to Role play the dragon. So when the dragon is killed they will Feel it.
@@krispalermo8133 this is great stuff... i love the idea of an antagonist/ helper that can turn on a whim
@@smugzoid5156 The mind flayer regards the PCs as Her grandchildren, but I know what it is like to have a highly educated grandmother and what her high standers are like.
Both the mind flayer and green dragon are Lawful evil, and Lawful beings follow their own form of strict code of conduct which you can use against them. As for dealing with .. humans .. well that is a different matter all together. One feudal petty lord trying to hustle their neighbor's land for taxes and troops to take someone else's land and there is that green dragon's hoard to make use of.
Other than granny is always or nearly always right, a young adult green dragon is a bickering insulting creature being regarded as a sport jock hustling to being the team leader.
Other than being happy to listen to old people tell stories and passing on knowledge to the younger generation and cuddling with children. Once you become a teenager or young adults your elders hold you to high standers you are not experience enough to understand. A young adult green dragon maybe warry of middle-aged humans for their skills but consider any human in their twenties to be .. rivals .. the same way you competed against your siblings, cousins, and friends in a given sport.
Mind flayers and dragons may live by their word, humans had to come up with multiple oaths, vows, curses for breaking oaths & vows, and written contracts enforce by courts to make sure two parties work together. " Turn on a whim," is a very human thing to do.
I still won't trust the dragon too much, maybe the mind flay granny after years of mental/emotional conditioning cause there is no choice in that matter, but you don't full trust a dragon. Evil only .. respects .. strength, and only offer mercy to those it doesn't deem a threat and have a use in a short or long term goals.
Bridge and road tolls were heavy enforce, hell even in modern USA there are highway toll booths to charge road tax to pay for road maintenace which is skim/pocketed by state officials. But toll tax is chump change to this given dragon. Why be concern over a chicken wing drop in the dirt, now a whole bake chicken that is a different matter all together. Single wheel cart or back packers is something to sleep through, a wagon train is another matter. The dragon keeps a human around at all times to function as a bookkeeper and to rake scratch and broom brush him/her behind her ears and tell stories and sing songs with. The humans tend to come out just as bickering underhanded as the dragon they socialize with. But a decent bag of coins, magic items, and live snacks greased and butter makes a happy dragon.
2.) Humans show up at a village, town, city for a joust, follow with dragons showing up just outside of spell/ missile fire range to kick up dirty and wrestle each other for regional picking order and to find mates. And to show the humans how big and powerful they are. Red dragons are mostly loners, but greens are family units of extended members. An elder female green dragon in AD&D lair with a few of her daughters and could have three or five clutches of wrymlings ( around 16 babies ) and close to a dozen teenagers hanging around helping with looking after the younger ones. Even the young adult males lair within a half a day's flight from their parents and sibling if able for Protection. Keep your friends close and your family/enemies closer to keep a better eye on.
In AD&D the green dragon greatest enemy and killer were red dragons, so stick with pack defense. Campaign plot hooks, instead of hooking up with copper or bronze dragons have player PCs hook up with young adult green dragons dealing with juvenile red dragons raiding farms. Then see how much extra tax/protection money they can get out of the village.