Wow. Such depth. First, unnerve them. Then, place them in a false sense of security, after that terrify them with gruesome imagery and disgust as you break down their sense of security and comfort and replace it with horror that surrounds you. And finally break them with the horror of letting them know all that they had mistakenly done. Let them know they were the monsters and they created an evil that was not only responsible for this savage massacre but also the the butchering of their new characters. All while being explained in great, intricate detail to enhance the imagery. Bravo!
Also the elf wasent bothering anyone and the towns folk never tryed to harm them so as soon as they started to mess stuff up I expect a you are the bad guys moment but the delivery of that genius!
BRO!!! THEY DIDNT BREAK THE ELF'S BOARDS THEY BROKE HIS LEGS!!! Holy shit that whole campaign was the players thinking they did one thing and doing something else. How much you wanna bet the orcs were actually just bandits not zombies!?
Holy crap, I didnt realize the boards were metaphorically his legs... I thought he was actually just crazy and stayed there until death after the party broke them. That DM is brilliant and should be writing novels.
You took the elf's planks and broke them then he refused to walk. You found his corpse with broken legs. I think they were already gone before they got to the town. But the whole thing. And dying from their previous characters. Truly amazingly horrifying. It's art to be sure and scarring how it will stay with those players forever.
It can be both a compliment and an insult. Either means the person is rich with their description of the environments that everyone listening can easily picture in their heads OR that the person takes too damn long to describe the useless details of a pretty dress of a random girl no one cares of has any relevance to the plot.
Different attention capabilities or amount of time (between other reasons) can make it a bad thing, if you only have a couple hours for a session because of reasons, you don't want 3/4 of it just listening to the world building that the DM spent a lot of effort and time to create and wants to make sure that it doesn't go to waste, or if the appearance of the place isn't really that important for you, all that description is wasted time that makes you stop paying attention unintentionally. This kind of things are better to be discussed cordially with your DM and party, if you are the only one with the problem you might want to make a better effort to push trough it or find another table, if the party agrees with you, the DM can make efforts to cut it shorter, it's important to compromise in TTRPG games.
To be fair while Tolkien is an amazingly descriptive writer he also spent like 100 pages or some nonsense describing practically the entire hobbit culture and its history before he even started his book. So not always a compliment lol.
@@legogsrdi8349 yeah I actually dislike that kind of writting if I'm reading, I can listen to it and it's all right for me to pay half attention to it while doing something else, but I understand that it's not that Tolkien is boring/ad or something like that but that it's an style that doesn't appeal to me, just like with Lovecraft, I'm really into what they build but I don't like to read how they build it.
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."- H.P Lovecraft. This DM obviously has mastered fear.
Yup, reality disappoints when compared to that which we can imagine. It's why the scariest things in reality are: things that are inevitable and which you can't stop or change, like a nuke having been dropped and you watch as it will soon hit the ground, people with a blackened heart who can commit horrible acts with a kind smile on their face, such as the nazi's who tortured and murdered so many people simply because they didn't like them
I dont agree with the saying, fear of the known is more fearful knowing what is coming but not knowing when scares you more it's how religions work feeding off peoples fear of death
@@chaosincarnate7304 The fear of death appears to be a combination of the fear of the unknown combined with the fear of the known but unstoppable. Death comes for everyone and cannot be stopped, as well as us not being able to understand what happens when we die. That is why some of the most ancient myths are about becoming immortal or bringing someone back from the dead, it is a conquering over both aspects of that fear.
First of all, that village that they got to, I would’ve peaced out immediately. I’m paranoid by nature. Hearing that a place is perfect, is the most terrifying thing you could do to me.
Not paying attention to descriptions, resorting to violence at the first opportunity and messing up with friendly npcs. The classic tale of a great DM giving a lesson to Murderhobos. That poor DM deserves a better group.
I didn't get that feeling at all. Except for maybe when they broke the elf's "boards." But the inclusion of the drug makes it seem like everything in the first adventure was an effect of it.
@Holo Lives Matter ahh well... when you have boneless, eyeless husks of former humans trying to nibble, claw at you... black long tongues looking like they would engorge through you and slurp your innards out a hole... and everything around you turning to look like hell... just carefully picture that in your head slowly being described in excruciating details to you and the party... jumping out of random places ready to slay and seemingly devour you all to a slow methodical rhythm... possibly even a lavender town vibe song... now picture that in vivid imagination and you can get the horror... if you can't imagine that, well theres your answer of why its not scary to you
“The women’s hair were black tongues. Tongues which we got accustomed to last night.” With all the grim happenings in the campaign, that was the only part I laughed at.
Please more stories like this. All the crap about people making miraculous natural 20s and overly descriptive stats is not why people play. It's about story telling. I almost swear some people made stuff up just to get noticed. This is consummate story telling by the DM. And hearing it from the player makes it even better.
Don’t forget the cliché were the narrator always gets the last laugh and is absolutely 100% right during the entire campaign. Cause our own personal bias makes us a reliable source. Reminds me of all those fake Karen stories.
had to watch twice to realise... The starved corpse of an elf with broken legs, clearly an orcs' work. the elf of whom they'd broke the planks he wanted to walk on. "The mook would just sit down, and started crying after that."
I heard of one where they were trapped in a traven. They start in a tavern, form the group and exit... Into the same tavern. Walked through a hall and when they opened the door and back at the tavern. Can't recall why that was but it was.
@@BoneBeastKimimaro a few months back this channel covered it. The false hydra was a really well done baddie, and it broke one of the characters. I'll see if I can find the title of it and post it here for you.
@@BoneBeastKimimaro just do a search for false hydra. There are a few different ones out there, they're all freaky. You want to mess with a group, False Hydra was made for it.
@@BoneBeastKimimaro this channel already has at least three stories with false hydras, basically subterranean monsters that alter people's perception and memories on a massive scale, so when they kill anyone people forget they ever existed, and when presented with evidence of said existance they'll be compelled to deny it somehow instead of realizing their situation, capable of turning vibrant and busy cities into ghosts towns without anyone noticing, great for psychological horror, and due to their ability to conceal themselves from your memories and senses, pretty tricky to take down, probably requiring scorch earth tactics.
I like this DM’s storytelling! The reveal is subtle but impressive: it was never the wheat that corrupted anything, but rather the marching powder the first group was given that drove them insane. It was DEFINITELY some kind of drug, one that distorted their perception into something truly twisted. The reason the second party saw things from such a vastly different perspective is that they were never given the drug.
Methinks that "marching powder" might've had some unforeseen side-effects... (Hears hoping the writer of this story managed to reconcile with their DM)
I wanted to know too what made the first party go mad. I already knew exactly what they were going to find with the second party as soon as they came across the "elf with broken legs" referring to the elf the first party broke the two "boards" of.
I have a theory, they described traces of a monster chasing something when walking through the woods and that something acquiring the characteristics of its pursuer. Perhaps they found something in the woods. Or something found them. But whatever happened, the three men that entered werent the three men that left in some way or another. Its clear their perception was somehow altered or manipulated. The elf wasnt walking on wood stumps, they broke his legs and left him to rot. The people werent monsters, they were a peacefull, happy town, slaughtered to the last.
@@axios4702 that's a good theory indeed that that you say it that way. I just assumed the "monster" was just apart of there mental illness, the paranoia. But that would make sense, if they didn't know what the creature was and ran into it without say weak wisdom of perception checks then they probably ran into a mind altering creature without their knowledge. Kinda like a false hydra of sorts, but probably a more op homebrew of it.
@@raymondaugustus8841 I think it just depends on how the module is used. Whenever I use modules, I take it more as a guideline rather than set of directions. I’ll look at the BBEG, the important NPCs, locations, items and other stuff, and just run with it. This is also why I usually like to run modules in my existing worlds. Giving your players more autonomy can really heighten their enjoyment in a module.
I cannot believe that the players in this situation didn't notice that no one was attacking them. It should have easily tipped them off but something was amiss. Even if they're unspeakable horrors that are twisted and wearing the skins of humanoids, if they clearly mean you no harm, then why are you killing them? What those players were killing wasn't just the monsters that they thought they saw, it was the disgust with themselves for having laid with them.
Yes. And this is the beauty of it. Even when they thought the villagers were lovecraftian horrors, the actual monsters were then. "They don't have eyes. They never did." That sounded a lot like: "You are not heroes. You never were."
To be fair, that's the kind of twist that usually signifies that you're in mortal peril, have always been, and the only reason that hasn't been clear is because whatever the threat is has been lulling you into a false sense of security. So when the sheet is torn off, the trap is closed. It's not an unreasonable reaction is my point.
@@ThePa1riot It's also exactly the kind of trick that a cruel DM would play on characters who got bored with his descriptions of locations and surrounding landscape. Players will say anything to justify their actions after the fact. They were NEVER attacked. Not once through they're bloody massacre through the town were they ever struck, or harmed by the creatures they slaughtered out of fear, and repulsion. Not once through the slaughter did they stop and wonder why this was? Why, if everything is SO evil, and they are in SO much danger, did they never even receive a scratch? Even if they'd realized it part of the way through, even half of the way through, they could have mitigated the horror of what happened. Also, don't forget that they also ran across the guy whose legs were broken - indicated that the dude who was walking around with boards tied to his feet was actually just a passerby whose legs they broke. Why did they INSIST on taking this guy's boards and breaking them? If they saw him as deranged, then why not leave him to his own devices, or perhaps escort him to a village, where he could be looked after? The DM in this story is ruthless, but he's also making a good point about the often reckless actions of players.
@@kevingubernatis3324 Very late reply, but once the players started attacking, due to their sudden panic, the horror NPCs are described as attacking as well. There's even a bit of description of the PCs being flanked and later, of men being cut down trying to defend their families. The PCs still didn't likely take much damage, but saying they didn't have a scratch would likely be incorrect. Still though, I concede they should definitely have noticed that their style of 'Attack' was not consistent with what you'd expect from terrifying unnatural creatures.
I would be willing to bet, because this is how i'd run it, that the GM had them roll initiative. Then just let them go. I have found, having run many games in many settings, that once initiative is rolled players assume everything is hostile. If they go first, they'll attack. I can almost see how this happened at the table. Really clever storytelling
One dm made me start drinking just to try and keep the paranoia down. He has a way to get into your head and make personal hells catered to your characters and yourself....
@@Hangman-yq5uh well the one time he pushed on a few things he didnt know were able to trigger me. He made a npc, cute innocent girl.... save she was a murder victim. She was being rebuilt as a special flesh golem. Come to find out a guy we were investigating was the one making her. This girl was also a friend to one of the other characters. We did everything we could to give her a normal life with us. Then he had the big bad use her voice, her form, and challenged me when I was trapped in a mental room. Offering me everything I wanted.... if only I'd kill myself. She could be free of the hell she was in, my friends would be ok, and the screaming images of the children my character had with someone would not have to suffer. What he didnt know was I had lost my kids and had terrible losses in my family. One of which was my father. Someone who my character was semi based on in honor of him. I dont remember much after that. But he said for abit he wasnt sure if it was me or the character talking because we really get into character. And this one night we were at dennys, he said people came to check on us when I let out a scream to go to hell and broke a steak knife digging it into the table. He knew nothing about what had happened. None of our friends did because a good part of my life I hid all that save my dads passing. Luckily after a break and talking they just made me pay to get the table fixed and for another knife. He also made one of our other players suffer nightmares from how vivid and in detail he was in describing the flesh walls in a hallway after the team got split up, how the child's back was cut open and combined to the throne. How the voices of children that were dead now spoke to her and mocked her. She was six months pregnant with a baby girl. She said after all that she was not sleeping good thanks to his work. I left out details because of how long that would actually be but that's two points his details brought out pain or paranoia towards what he might do. Thus far it's been four campaigns linked in some way and been going on about two years now.
So I just found this channel and I have to say by far my favorite ones are always the ones where morals are discussed (Lizardman, The assassin and paladin one), Horror ones, and the ones where we deeply explore a character's story (my man Astoshan
You need a Barbarian in your group to defuse most of the horror. Every type of creature is way less frightening if a fearless muscle-mountainrange attacks it.
This is what I'll do if my players ever start to complain about my open world games. To each their own, yes, but do you have any idea how much time and effort it takes to create an entire continent, let alone an entire *world* of story? And to keep it all moving and flowing in the background while the PCs head off on their own to do little quests and make their own mark on the world? The little details I have to work in, sometimes on the spot, to remind them that this is a living, breathing world, and not just a backdrop for their characters? I have immense respect for any DM who can create such a world because of how difficult it is for me. For a player to call it "mediocre" despite all that, even with the excuse of preferring modular adventures... It honestly sickens me. Like I said. If my players ever complain about my open worlds, I'm gonna do something like this.
Twist them. Bend their minds. Make them question how heroic their deeds actually are. Any quest taken is to have the opposite effect. Heroic deeds have nightmarish consequences. Villainous acts help the people more. But make them FEEL wrong. The air feeling sticky, then eventually tar-like. Air tastes too arid or damp seemingly changing on the change of direction. Have the earth seem to WRITHE beneath their feet. Read it like a patient teacher helping a child with learning difficulties. Calmly. Methodical. Simple. Eternally patient..
Yes! THANK YOU! I've spent the better part of something like two years working on an entire planet to make a campaign setting for my players. I'm even going as far as making a simulation of Plate Tectonics for the world, since that is actually quite important for the placement of things like Mountains and such.
i was actually a part of an open world campaign, and even designed some of the continents/maps for it for the DM. i was stoked to be playing what promised to be a long on-going adventure (and the DM i knew was good at telling stories and coming up with several different outcomes depending on our actions/choices) sadly... most of the players got tired of it after a while and began to just rush things, not caring about the narrative, and just killing one thing before going off to kill the next. it was disheartening and i could tell the DM was disappointed. he ended up killing the campaign and everyone's characters. except mine, as i was still trying to role play and not be a murderhobo
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim I was gonna do that initially, but then I decided to go with a "flat, infinite plane" approach for the material plane. I'm also now working on a sector within a galaxy for a stars without number game, too, also open world.
I terrified players using mushrooms. The way I went with it is simply, take a mundane object and twist it. In this case, the players had received a call from the police. (Call of Cthulhu) The three arrived at a mummified corpse discovered in an apartment of a John Genaro. The body was hanging from the ceiling from something invisible. The reason for the investigation from outsiders was due to this fact. After taking a look at the body and seeing its lower jaw broken, stuck 2 inch lower then it should and most of its teeth missing. Afterwards they went to the apartment and met the owner who was finishing cleaning up as he explain that when they found him, most of the furniture had started to rot or dried out. They had a few questions and he answered as best he could, though he didn't know the guy well. He recommended to them to talk with the other neighbours, a Mme Maria, with whom he had an altercation recently about the garbage. They inquired about if she would be present at the time, but he responded that she would be at work until 5pm. They ask about other things like had he many visitors, where did he work and the like. The landlord didn't knew much only that he work in a shipping company at the docks and that nobody came to see him. Only the incident with Maria came to mind otherwise he was more of a recluse, though he did borrowed Maria cleaner, which the landlord found and would leave at her door. They then opened the door and found the apartment in an abysmal condition, as if no one had lived there in years. They mention it to the landlord who is frustrated as he spend half the day cleaning and now everything was back the way it was before he started. They start looking inside and light up the dirty feverish yellow light finding a box with pictures of the guy at the docks and others of pages from a book, in a language they didn't understood. It had, however, pictures of plants with very detailed aspect of certain flowers and mushrooms. After that they found the location of where the body was hanging by the blood who had dried and the missing teeth laying around the bedroom. They looked around finding a sort of fibre around the windows, barely visible and only seen by its shadow. They also found a black thing on the remains of the spring bed. It was a black ball who as releasing small amount of greasy liquid on the floor. One of them took it with leather gloves and put it in his bag. They continued to look around and found on the kitchen table a small card with a remaining barely visible ink Lee tea shop. They then left and went to see the tea shop. There they met Mister Lee, who offered then mushroom tea as they talk which they gladly took except for one player. When they left, they remark they were being watch though they aren't sure by whom. They decided to split and go in different direction. One at the docks, one at a local botanist he knew and the last one at a local university to know more about the pictures. The docks revealed that John in his last 2 weeks had change from a 8 hours shift with a 30 minutes lunch break to a 12h without break. His colleagues had being worried at first but when he became aggressive when they wanted him to take some breaks, they simply stopped. After that the player realized he was being tailed again and found who it was. As he did, the other one started running which lead to a chase. The player manage to get close enough to see the child's face who seem to be cracking and leaving small particle of dust. He would have to stop the run as he didn't have he breath to continue. The child fled. The second character left the black oozing thing with his friend botanist to examine and went back to the first character's PI office. The third went to the library but learned that the tea they had drank which was made using cordycep. A type of mushroom which is know to transformed ants into zombies. When they gathered back at the office, it was 7pm. Where they received a call from the police chief wanting to know what was happening at the apartment as they received a call about someone in distress. They left and ran there. By the time they arrived the police was there and where banging at Maria's door. They decided to break it open and inside a net contrast appear as the rooms are starting to rot and change. Half he room was getting dirtier and dirtier as the time pass. The yelled came from the living room and as they reached it, Maria was in the middle with a horrified look on her face. Tear falling on her cheek as a pain slowly rose from her throat, chocking her. She started to convulsed on the ground as something fibrous was leaving her mouth, dragging her onto the ceiling and slowly breaking her jaw while pushing teeth out to make way. The players tried to act, one by shooting the fibrous thing and missing, the second to try and drag her back down and the third collapse in insanity. By the end, the effort of the second would not working would use a knife and cut it, which worked but too late. That was when we stop for that session. A vertical pan leaving the scene with the other police officer reaching inside while his colleagues was leaving pale as a drapes .
Im confused but also not. So were they at any point imagining it from the shrooms? Did the 2 that saw the woman act in a way of harming the woman, breaking here jaw and hanging her while the 1 that collapsed, did so because he saw how the others were acting? Good story all together with horror though
@@cerealguy6359 1. It was happening in front of them. 2. Na, its the shroom that lift the woman in the air and broke her jaw. It was taking more and more space, in her mouth and throat, so it broke the jaw with its pressure. They did make the situation worse by trying to pull her down at some point, which made her lose more teeth. At that point, she could yell but she felt the pain. 3. The other simple roll a 100 on his sanity, so I rolled on the chart and he collapsed.
@@mdbgamer556 Next session began where they left. They tried to help Maria but she was gone at that point. She had started to mummified but the process was stopped when they cut it. This also stopped the process inside the apartment as the tread had slowly aged the part they had touched. So now they had a dead dried up body with a bottle of cleaning spray next to her, an apartment that had haft of itself in a dark ambience, where light is barely dim, and the other haft was impeccable.(Maria liked when it was clean). So they search a bit and find nothing to explain what has happen. As they were leaving they spoke with the landlord again, who wanted to know what was happening. They deviated the conversation to see if something else might have come back to his memory, which he simply replied that only the incident outside and nothing else. They decided to check out the garbage then to see more into the incident and leaves. Outside they spoke with the police and no one knew how to explain what had happen, so they stayed vague about it, and the one cop who joined them was taken to the hospital. They looked inside the trashcan to find some mushrooms slowly growing inside. One of them put on his gloves and take a few outside of the can and as they get into contact with the light they slowly shrivel and dry up. They then split up again: one for the office and two who decided to look into the dock now that it was late. There they would find some mafioso speaking about a shipments to the Lee Tea Shop. From where they where, they couldn't see them clearly so they tried to peak but slip and revealed themselves. The mafioso called them, then whistle which called some grunts. Seeing them the players ran in two different direction, one toward the city and one deeper in the dock. The one who ran in the city took a corner and, as the grunt that was following him arrived, he tried to jab him but did it too early. So he was facing a guy with a baseball bat who tried to swing at him but missed which he responded with a punch in the stomach that knock out the grunt. He proceeded to ran back to the office. The other got lost in the docks and tried to hide, which fail over and over. So he ran back the other way, dodging the two that had followed him and getting back where they had split up. There he saw a grunt next to boxes, his hand on them and body slam him into it. knocking out, the same guy the other one had gut punch(It had take more time on this side so I thought it would fit for him to come back ). This alerted the head mafioso who catch the vest of the character but didn't manage to hold him. He fell and when he got up took out his pistol and tried to shoot at the character. He didn't as the area he had gone was to close to the cops. So the player hide in the police station for a few minutes and left for the office. At the office the other player had arrived to meeting a young man waiting in front of his door. He remark the similitude of this one and the one who ran away at the docks. The kid informed the player that he was spying on them but now he needed the investigator's help in cash. He agreed on the condition to know what he knows. The kid tell him that Mister Lee is the one who hired him and his brother and why he need the money was to help his brother. When the player ask to know more about the condition of the brother the child said that he was taking care of him and only needed the money. So he gave the kid some money but ask to keep in touch. The kid agrees and left. Inside he gets a phone call from the botanist but only take the message for the other player. He opened a bottle of whisky and drank a glass of it. After that they gathered back inside the office and speak of what they saw and heard. The player that knew the botanist called him back and heard that the plant was still alive. He doesn't know yet what kind it s but he should have result for the next day. The player asked him to be careful and hang up. They go to sleep as the sun slowly fade into the sunset. End of session 2.
Pretty brave play! Not many DMs can get away with taking control of an entire party of player characters from a previous game, much less in a manner like that.
They never took time to check themselves it seems. Noone questions why the Wisdom saves? Noone gets sus of DM, they should have been worried about their characters and not what they were going to do in the world.
I know this one is old, but I figured I'd post my little horror anecdote anyway. I was running Call of Cthulhu, and opened the first session with the party tracking down a desperate old gentleman's missing daughter. She had been taken by a cult of Yog Sothoth. The clues they uncovered throughout the adventure pointed to the cult wishing to sacrifice her to enable Yog Sothoth to rewrite history according to its design. They slaughtered the scarred and gibbering cultists, too invlved in their ritual to fight back. They spoke in bizarre rasping voices in unfamiliar accents at their ritual, but the young woman rose from the altar and grinned, glowed in colors never before seen by the eyes of men, grinned and gibbered at the party, then moved in reverse, faster and faster, until she vanished. The group continued to investigate and found out that their patron had been behind the whole thing all along. They confronted him, found out that he had found ways to move through time, and used these abilities to track down the aspect of Yog Sothoth in the girl's body in the past. Over their adventures in time, they suffered changes to their bodies, physiology, and voices, and picked up the speech of the eras they visited in their quest, trying to save people from the horrors that the aspect of Yog Sothoth was inflicting on history. Eventually, they tracked her down to a few weeks prior to the first session, armed with eldritch weapons, the Elder Sign, books from Leng, and a way to banish the Aspect for all time. They subdued her and followed the banishment formula, adapted from the sacrificial rite they had interrupted. The ritual would severly limit their abilities to do anything else. Just as they were bringing down the weapons to slay the aspect of Yog Sothoth and end her threat forever, a band of familiar voices were heard, and familiar figures burst into the room and attacked them. As they were cut down by the attackers, they recognized their own faces on the day they killed the twisted cultists and 'saved' the young woman from the altar. They died hearing the mad laughter of the Aspect as their deaths provided the sacrifices needed to power her ascension. One of the players threw dice at my head.
The crazy thing is, this story is still a "bad players" one: heckling the dm, insulting the world as being shitty- albeit that was in writing not necessarily out loud- and murderhobo-ing everything instead of finding other solutions (just pick the little plank man up and piggy bank him, jeez). The players deserved all the horror they witnessed if they all acted the way the writer presents them
This is an amazing narrative, 8/10 stars to the DM for wonderful descriptions and a genuine understanding of a horror of something which shouldn't exist, yet in defiance it remains! Side note, please narrate more D&D horror stories (not toxic player, but 2SPOOPY4ME style stories).
My Pathfinder GM played this type of thing so well. He left hints and clues here and there that pointed to what we would be walking into, but never let us see the whole picture. Only to find out that the village that we had been residing in, sleeping in, eating in, and conversing with, was the epicenter of corruption, a chant from the church blocking all of our perception of what was happening around us. The whole village was engulfed in flesh, and the citizens we spoke to, did quests for, and had really cool moments with, were one by one being assimilated into the flesh. Our own horses were also assimilated due to being stabled there. But you would not know unless you could break through the perception barrier, as everyone still acts thier normal selves. And the consequence of breaking through was a large amount of Sanity damage
I once DMed a dungeon run into a necromancer's lair. Pretty standard stuff. The players had some fun, but weren't impressed. As usual, they brought their loot back to civilization and sold all kinds of things they had taken from the necromancer and the graves of his victims. And started a zombie apocalypse. Every item they had looted, even single coin they spent in bars and weapons shops and bakeries, all of it was cursed. It took them a few gaming sessions to put 2 and 2 together. When they finally realized the end of the world was their fault, it was ... special.
If this DM is that good at running a horror campaign, then imagine what happens when he starts running “Call of Cthulhu” as a Keeper!? This campaign almost sounds like the movie Southbound, where madness and horror becomes a full circle.
Have to wonder if the DM drew inspiration from Oblivion, which also had a quest in which the PC slaughtered a village due to drug-induced hallucinations.
That's the fighters guild right? It also makes me think of the side quest were the Argonian woman asks you to go find her daughter in that overgrown town with all the crazy folks underground. I've always wondered if there was supposed to be more to that story. If you went back and found they were all innocents or something else . . .
im running a mystery adventure that i've made with repetitive symbolism, an excessive amount of detail and hidden aspect of tension and horror. so far, my players are loving it and hating it at the same time and it brings me endless joy.
We played a game long ago with no warning it was horror themed. Three of us were hired to retrieve a family treasure from a burnt out keep. People in the nearby town warned us about the monster of the Keep, some creeping beast who preys on the unwary. Pretty standard faire. The keep was partially collapsed in the fire so it's a mess to navigate. We're barely into the gates before a stone floor collapsed and I and Ruger's player went down a few stories. We weren't badly hurt but we had to find a way to get back to the third player. Meanwhile in the darkness far below we can hear whistling. Right away I recognized the tune the GM was whistling as The Carpenters "Close to you". We did a lot of corny stuff when we gamed back then so it was a good laugh and we went on. The GM took Timothy's player player into another room to play out their scene above and we could instantly tell it was going to be the sort of game where out of character knowledge was locked in another room, annoying but we were having fun so it was ok. A few minutes later the Ruger's player stepped on a trap and a portcullis separated us. I had figured out enough of the map that I had an idea how to get to him. I told him to stay where he was and I'd go around to him since I had the lantern. Ruger's player down below with me is dragged into another room for just a second and then we're back on. Now I get dragged into another room for a bit of quick narration of how I was getting around, a few perception rolls, more of the whistling. Now I'm feeling super paranoid, something just wasn't right and the GM was amping up the creepiness so I panicked and ran the course around to find Ruger. I make some rolls and come around to find them, we're back in the living room and Timothy's player up above goes into the back room for a WHILE. When the GM comes out we continue looking for stairs up in the catacombs under the keep, more of the whistling which is getting insanely creepy now that the GM is keeping the gag up and I've forgotten it's a 70's pop song. Without warning the GM tells me I see Ruger, the same character I've been working with for about a half hour to find a way out of the Catacombs, appear through a collapsed ceiling above me. Suddenly the other player shouts at top volume "HANS! IT'S A DOPPLEGANGER KILL IT!". I freeze in confusion as the Ruger next to me draws his weapon and faces off against me. Ruger above jumps down and together we get the crap beat out of us, Ruger finally closed a door on the monster as we retreat and knocked down rubble to block the door. As we catch our breath we hear more whistling. With some difficult climbing rolls we finally get out of the catacombs and up into the courtyard and back to Timothy who is freaked out and paranoid needing to test us to be convinced we're who we say we are. We decide we're done for the night, we need to go back to town and get drunk but before we can leave we hear that lonesome song whistled from outside the gates of the keep and as I'm sitting there the other two other players, sitting on either side of me begin to join in whistling the tune and as I look at them they're staring at me maniacally. Honestly the most terrifying moment in RP for me.
i once run a doppelganger campaing, and let the player go on a caravan with the two leaders, who could get the abilities of every thing they shapechange into. they discoverd the doppelgangers when one of the players went to investigate something in the drivers tent, and discoverd his headles body, and when he returned to the camp fire to warn everybody, he saw the driver smiling at him.
This was something genuinely impressive. I don't know if the Dm thought that far ahead to implement that first campaign like that or if he thought that it would be cool to do it, either way what he did was something I would've never thought of. Hats off to this Dm
The twist in that town before it was changed by another twist is EXACTLY why you shouldn't "do it" with someone you don't know. Especially in a DnD horror setting.
As soon as he mentioned them entering a burnt down town, I had already knew where this was going. That's such a wonderful lesson to apathetic murderhobos and I love how the DM integrated the old characters into the new campaign as the end villains. That's something I wished DMs did more, is integrating previous characters into the current story.
That is awesome. I figured it out for a moment with the falling bodies, and the way he depicted the gruesome horror, but then quickly dismissed it after the burning of the crops. Then it looped back around to being awesome with the second campaign.
@@ThePa1riot no clear cut right or wrong. I've found instead of making people or groups evil for the sake of being evil, give them realistic and sympathetic reasons for the things they do. An example is making the tyrant committing whole sale slaughter reason for doing so is stopping demons by killing their worshipers and people who advance the abyss's goals with their actions. Have the reason why he is doing this to stop an upcoming demon incursion, but he is slaughtering people, or entire kingdoms because they laws of the kingdom have laws that feed the demons, like slavery or create a economic condition that make it easy for people to seek demon deals or give in to the ce. Mindsets. Have the classic 'good guy' or noble king be a idot which has no clue what he is doing. He will work with the party, but he will lead his nation to civil war or revolt due to his inept ruler ship. Or make the person who can unite people to fight a threat be scum of the earth. Or just send them to a place where gods are scared to go to. A place where the environment itself is a threat to their survival and the rules are changed. Like a forest with advanced natural and parasitic lifeforms that is in everything. If something dies the bacteria takes over and if it's eaten a lifeform starts growing in the PC who ate it.only counter is to sprinkle something like sage in it before you eat it, or eat the thing alive before the bacteria takes over. Or classic fear of death with a twist. The forest is made from a dead God, and the flesh of the God is trying to come.back. so it sucks in the soul of anyone who dies. Even if they are not devoured, the dead god keeps the soul bound, preventing it from going to the afterlife and making it so the forest is full of insane or desperate souls that will posses ANYTHING living to experience life or get out of the forest.
Mistakes were made, feelings were most certainly hurt, and nerves struck with an acupuncture needle. Also the second look or “double take” definitely made things worse. This leads me to ask, what in the hells was the source of the madness in the town? A False Hydra would make people forget things or alter the victim(s) memories of events within a listening distance.
@@stevendonaldson1216 Well, I really want to know what the actual source of it. Because it sounds like the first characters were being manipulated somehow. Either that or the DM / GM decided to make it secretly an evil campaign without telling the players.
The biggest difference between the two groups was that the first group was given kerthake marching powder. It was described as being like cocaine, but it probably caused hallucinations and they had a really bad trip that got violent.
This reminds me of a dnd one shot I had thought up in my head. Mid winter, all PCs are some form of military member. Everyone starts out in a tavern within the capital city, merry making and everything, having a great time. Dark as hell outside. A woman bursts through the door screaming and ranting about monsters invading the city. Then a huge hand bursts through the door, grabbing her up and taking her back outside where the party hears crunching and squelching before a decomposing eye socket, with a small light at the very back wall of the skull peers through the new hole in the wall. Starting up the invasion of as many scary ass monsters
When they came across the elf the 2nd time, I had a flash of Silent Hill 3's "They look like monsters to you?", and I knew we were about to hit some terrible last campaign consequences.
Along with others, this story, is now a favorite of mine. Astoshan, Onyxia, the Ogre Smith, the elf friend Green dragon and etc. All great stories among this one.
im damn near positive that the "marching powder" caused the first party to go insane and since the second party dident have any they saw what the first party was actualy doing under the effects of said powder
How do people like me who have never played a game in my life do so with any gusto after hearing a story like this? This is the literal definition of dark beauty.
Dont let anything like this stop you from playing dude. Just give it a go and have fun. There is no correct way of playing d&d and you find your style and group with time. This game is amazing and I personally have never regretted any of my times playing (even with the groups that fell apart).
I'm a novice DM trying to put together a homebrew campaign, this story is terrifying and inspiring and I can't wait to see if I can do something like it in my campaign. Will probably use the central theme of the town appearing normal, jarringly terrifying and then the illusion lifts for the players to see the utter carnage they have wrought upon the kind and welcoming folks of this quaint town. It's going to be the hook that'll focus them up to get back on track after they inevitably derail all my hard work as they galavant off course of my homebrew lmao
Grave wheat so ergot fungus inspiration? An perhaps the townsfolk were immune to the bog water fungus of grasses, and yet not so much the players in the happy little backwater? Either way Bravo.
I don't think so. I think there was nothing wrong with the town in the first place. Something drove them mad in that swamp. First party, finds an elf that refuses to walk on the path without his two planks. When he fights back they break the "planks" and he just sits there crying. Second party through the swamp, finds an elf with broken "legs" and starved to death. Second party didn't find anything about Grave wheat or anything else wrong except the mad writings of the first party and themselves.
@@Sovann_the_Mighty I thought so too maybe but they never said they used any of it. Even still if it was that, I would still like to know exactly how or why it did what it did and why they had it in the first place but not in the second run.
Oooooh, why did I watch this at 3 in the morning?! I need sleep, but YIKES! That was a masterful example of creepiness. I would make it my goal to emulate it, but I doubt I could ever even get close, and I don't actually want to, because I LIKE sleep.
The scariest line I ever heard from a GM: 'You're sailing along the coastline, a few hundred yards from a thick treeline. It's a few minutes after midnight. You're out on deck, smoking and chatting when the stillness of the night is broken by a horrifying scream comes from the trees.' 'Is it a man's scream or a woman's scream?' I ask. 'You can't tell...'
Ngl, as soon as I heard the words "mediocre twaddle" I was instantly in the mindset of "you deserve everything that's about to freak you out"
100%, dude seems like an ass
Agreed. They have my permission to die.
Thank you for speaking my mind, Dms put a lot of work into their worlds, only to be destroyed by ungrateful murder hobos
Yes, total scumbag player.
yeah, i skipped the vid as soon as that came out of his mouth @@stylishlyheartless979
Wow. Such depth. First, unnerve them. Then, place them in a false sense of security, after that terrify them with gruesome imagery and disgust as you break down their sense of security and comfort and replace it with horror that surrounds you. And finally break them with the horror of letting them know all that they had mistakenly done. Let them know they were the monsters and they created an evil that was not only responsible for this savage massacre but also the the butchering of their new characters. All while being explained in great, intricate detail to enhance the imagery. Bravo!
The elf guy gave me chills when he was first described and even more so when I realized the dm never said there were any planks nearby
Same here. As soon as he mentioned the elf with the second "party" I knew what they were going to find was going to be horrible.
:O
Also the elf wasent bothering anyone and the towns folk never tryed to harm them so as soon as they started to mess stuff up I expect a you are the bad guys moment but the delivery of that genius!
BRO!!! THEY DIDNT BREAK THE ELF'S BOARDS THEY BROKE HIS LEGS!!! Holy shit that whole campaign was the players thinking they did one thing and doing something else. How much you wanna bet the orcs were actually just bandits not zombies!?
Or they were just hallucinations
Or harmless travelers
Or people bathing in the lake
Holy crap, I didnt realize the boards were metaphorically his legs... I thought he was actually just crazy and stayed there until death after the party broke them. That DM is brilliant and should be writing novels.
@@zenixkiryu I honestly felt horror when they found the elf but the horror grew as I started to see what else happened later. O.o
You took the elf's planks and broke them then he refused to walk. You found his corpse with broken legs. I think they were already gone before they got to the town. But the whole thing. And dying from their previous characters. Truly amazingly horrifying. It's art to be sure and scarring how it will stay with those players forever.
And now it'll stay with us forever too.
I wonder if the Marching Powder had anything to do with what the first trio of characters saw and did.
It's a little odd for me to hear someone to say that their DM is like tolkein as an insult. Mate do you realise how many ppl would kill for this?
It can be both a compliment and an insult. Either means the person is rich with their description of the environments that everyone listening can easily picture in their heads OR that the person takes too damn long to describe the useless details of a pretty dress of a random girl no one cares of has any relevance to the plot.
Pretty sure the DM wrote the retelling of this, and embellished some details - sounds too DM complimentary to be true as written
Different attention capabilities or amount of time (between other reasons) can make it a bad thing, if you only have a couple hours for a session because of reasons, you don't want 3/4 of it just listening to the world building that the DM spent a lot of effort and time to create and wants to make sure that it doesn't go to waste, or if the appearance of the place isn't really that important for you, all that description is wasted time that makes you stop paying attention unintentionally.
This kind of things are better to be discussed cordially with your DM and party, if you are the only one with the problem you might want to make a better effort to push trough it or find another table, if the party agrees with you, the DM can make efforts to cut it shorter, it's important to compromise in TTRPG games.
To be fair while Tolkien is an amazingly descriptive writer he also spent like 100 pages or some nonsense describing practically the entire hobbit culture and its history before he even started his book. So not always a compliment lol.
@@legogsrdi8349 yeah I actually dislike that kind of writting if I'm reading, I can listen to it and it's all right for me to pay half attention to it while doing something else, but I understand that it's not that Tolkien is boring/ad or something like that but that it's an style that doesn't appeal to me, just like with Lovecraft, I'm really into what they build but I don't like to read how they build it.
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."- H.P Lovecraft. This DM obviously has mastered fear.
Yup, reality disappoints when compared to that which we can imagine.
It's why the scariest things in reality are:
things that are inevitable and which you can't stop or change, like a nuke having been dropped and you watch as it will soon hit the ground,
people with a blackened heart who can commit horrible acts with a kind smile on their face, such as the nazi's who tortured and murdered so many people simply because they didn't like them
I dont agree with the saying, fear of the known is more fearful knowing what is coming but not knowing when scares you more it's how religions work feeding off peoples fear of death
The strongest kind of fear is actually that of death. Fear of the unknown is next
@@PlagueRunner That's technically also a fear of the unknown. No one knows when their time comes, which makes it terrifying.
@@chaosincarnate7304 The fear of death appears to be a combination of the fear of the unknown combined with the fear of the known but unstoppable. Death comes for everyone and cannot be stopped, as well as us not being able to understand what happens when we die. That is why some of the most ancient myths are about becoming immortal or bringing someone back from the dead, it is a conquering over both aspects of that fear.
I truly just want to be a player at that man's table that was incredible
Same!
First of all, that village that they got to, I would’ve peaced out immediately. I’m paranoid by nature. Hearing that a place is perfect, is the most terrifying thing you could do to me.
@@silentmeklar1783 paranoia is highly underrated
Amen to that!
Same
Not paying attention to descriptions, resorting to violence at the first opportunity and messing up with friendly npcs.
The classic tale of a great DM giving a lesson to Murderhobos. That poor DM deserves a better group.
Yeah like, a little bit into that story I kinda help like the players were the real assholes there.
I didn't get that feeling at all. Except for maybe when they broke the elf's "boards." But the inclusion of the drug makes it seem like everything in the first adventure was an effect of it.
They WERE told that these NPCs looked all messed up...
@@johnrivers69 drugs, always mess things up
It sounded like a mix of Tolkien and Lovecraft!
So basically, the “Marching Powder” made their previous characters go completely insane.
Terrified players? ✅
Atmospheric conditions? ✅
Great role play from DM? ✅
Change of pants? ✅✅
Two pairs of pants?
@@Kino_Cartoon 3 actually
Necromancy ✔
@Holo Lives Matter ahh well... when you have boneless, eyeless husks of former humans trying to nibble, claw at you... black long tongues looking like they would engorge through you and slurp your innards out a hole... and everything around you turning to look like hell... just carefully picture that in your head slowly being described in excruciating details to you and the party... jumping out of random places ready to slay and seemingly devour you all to a slow methodical rhythm... possibly even a lavender town vibe song... now picture that in vivid imagination and you can get the horror... if you can't imagine that, well theres your answer of why its not scary to you
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“The women’s hair were black tongues. Tongues which we got accustomed to last night.”
With all the grim happenings in the campaign, that was the only part I laughed at.
Please more stories like this. All the crap about people making miraculous natural 20s and overly descriptive stats is not why people play. It's about story telling. I almost swear some people made stuff up just to get noticed. This is consummate story telling by the DM. And hearing it from the player makes it even better.
Oh for sure a lot of those "nightmare player" or "nightmare DM" stories are fake, it's simply not that common.
Don’t forget the cliché were the narrator always gets the last laugh and is absolutely 100% right during the entire campaign. Cause our own personal bias makes us a reliable source.
Reminds me of all those fake Karen stories.
had to watch twice to realise... The starved corpse of an elf with broken legs, clearly an orcs' work.
the elf of whom they'd broke the planks he wanted to walk on.
"The mook would just sit down, and started crying after that."
Yup. Everything bad happening was the players doing.
@@stevendonaldson1216 The Dm was real pissed i mean i am too after reading how uncaring the Player was about shit
@@sahilrahman5066 You probably have to be a real heel to play with to make your DM want to do that to you.
@@pyrosniper6431 Right? I could never play with them
This one is even worse than the False Hydra story for messing with the player's minds. Well done.
Please elaborate. I am not familiar with this "False Hydra" story....
I heard of one where they were trapped in a traven. They start in a tavern, form the group and exit... Into the same tavern. Walked through a hall and when they opened the door and back at the tavern. Can't recall why that was but it was.
@@BoneBeastKimimaro a few months back this channel covered it. The false hydra was a really well done baddie, and it broke one of the characters. I'll see if I can find the title of it and post it here for you.
@@BoneBeastKimimaro just do a search for false hydra. There are a few different ones out there, they're all freaky. You want to mess with a group, False Hydra was made for it.
@@BoneBeastKimimaro this channel already has at least three stories with false hydras, basically subterranean monsters that alter people's perception and memories on a massive scale, so when they kill anyone people forget they ever existed, and when presented with evidence of said existance they'll be compelled to deny it somehow instead of realizing their situation, capable of turning vibrant and busy cities into ghosts towns without anyone noticing, great for psychological horror, and due to their ability to conceal themselves from your memories and senses, pretty tricky to take down, probably requiring scorch earth tactics.
A minute in and I feel like a man dying of thirst seeing another drown, this DM sounds awesome
I like this DM’s storytelling! The reveal is subtle but impressive: it was never the wheat that corrupted anything, but rather the marching powder the first group was given that drove them insane. It was DEFINITELY some kind of drug, one that distorted their perception into something truly twisted. The reason the second party saw things from such a vastly different perspective is that they were never given the drug.
Methinks that "marching powder" might've had some unforeseen side-effects...
(Hears hoping the writer of this story managed to reconcile with their DM)
I wanted to know too what made the first party go mad. I already knew exactly what they were going to find with the second party as soon as they came across the "elf with broken legs" referring to the elf the first party broke the two "boards" of.
I have a theory, they described traces of a monster chasing something when walking through the woods and that something acquiring the characteristics of its pursuer.
Perhaps they found something in the woods. Or something found them. But whatever happened, the three men that entered werent the three men that left in some way or another.
Its clear their perception was somehow altered or manipulated. The elf wasnt walking on wood stumps, they broke his legs and left him to rot. The people werent monsters, they were a peacefull, happy town, slaughtered to the last.
@@axios4702 that's a good theory indeed that that you say it that way. I just assumed the "monster" was just apart of there mental illness, the paranoia. But that would make sense, if they didn't know what the creature was and ran into it without say weak wisdom of perception checks then they probably ran into a mind altering creature without their knowledge. Kinda like a false hydra of sorts, but probably a more op homebrew of it.
@@trumansshadow3652 Might have taken the not-cocaine the first group were given and gave them hallucinations.
@@axios4702 I imagined the spot check was a check to see if their trip turned bad.
"he made huge worlds and turned us loose in them, but we preferred adventure modules" what an embarrassing thing to say.
And even if you preferred the modules, isn't it easy to transfer them into a world?
The Dungeon Master will remember that
The Dungeon Master always remembers
I can't even fathom someone wanting toa module over and open world experience I personally find it hard to immursed into modules
@@raymondaugustus8841 I think it just depends on how the module is used. Whenever I use modules, I take it more as a guideline rather than set of directions. I’ll look at the BBEG, the important NPCs, locations, items and other stuff, and just run with it. This is also why I usually like to run modules in my existing worlds. Giving your players more autonomy can really heighten their enjoyment in a module.
Modules are good for groups that struggle with focus. Good Modules help with that.
I cannot believe that the players in this situation didn't notice that no one was attacking them. It should have easily tipped them off but something was amiss. Even if they're unspeakable horrors that are twisted and wearing the skins of humanoids, if they clearly mean you no harm, then why are you killing them? What those players were killing wasn't just the monsters that they thought they saw, it was the disgust with themselves for having laid with them.
Yes. And this is the beauty of it. Even when they thought the villagers were lovecraftian horrors, the actual monsters were then.
"They don't have eyes. They never did."
That sounded a lot like:
"You are not heroes. You never were."
To be fair, that's the kind of twist that usually signifies that you're in mortal peril, have always been, and the only reason that hasn't been clear is because whatever the threat is has been lulling you into a false sense of security. So when the sheet is torn off, the trap is closed.
It's not an unreasonable reaction is my point.
@@ThePa1riot It's also exactly the kind of trick that a cruel DM would play on characters who got bored with his descriptions of locations and surrounding landscape. Players will say anything to justify their actions after the fact. They were NEVER attacked. Not once through they're bloody massacre through the town were they ever struck, or harmed by the creatures they slaughtered out of fear, and repulsion. Not once through the slaughter did they stop and wonder why this was? Why, if everything is SO evil, and they are in SO much danger, did they never even receive a scratch? Even if they'd realized it part of the way through, even half of the way through, they could have mitigated the horror of what happened. Also, don't forget that they also ran across the guy whose legs were broken - indicated that the dude who was walking around with boards tied to his feet was actually just a passerby whose legs they broke. Why did they INSIST on taking this guy's boards and breaking them? If they saw him as deranged, then why not leave him to his own devices, or perhaps escort him to a village, where he could be looked after? The DM in this story is ruthless, but he's also making a good point about the often reckless actions of players.
@@kevingubernatis3324 Very late reply, but once the players started attacking, due to their sudden panic, the horror NPCs are described as attacking as well. There's even a bit of description of the PCs being flanked and later, of men being cut down trying to defend their families. The PCs still didn't likely take much damage, but saying they didn't have a scratch would likely be incorrect. Still though, I concede they should definitely have noticed that their style of 'Attack' was not consistent with what you'd expect from terrifying unnatural creatures.
I would be willing to bet, because this is how i'd run it, that the GM had them roll initiative. Then just let them go. I have found, having run many games in many settings, that once initiative is rolled players assume everything is hostile. If they go first, they'll attack.
I can almost see how this happened at the table.
Really clever storytelling
"Blood for the Blood God."
Wait wrong system.
. . .
It was the cocaine!
Cocaine's a helluva drug
Warp Dust.
Cocaine is my god and I am the human instrument of it's will!
-Snowflame
skulls for the skull throne
Drugs for the drug god!
Cocaine for the cocaine throne!
Great lesson in when things get freaky, ask yourself, "was I crazy before, or am I crazy now?"
One dm made me start drinking just to try and keep the paranoia down. He has a way to get into your head and make personal hells catered to your characters and yourself....
@@kanevivi Damn, sounds like a great story teller, got any to share?
@@Hangman-yq5uh well the one time he pushed on a few things he didnt know were able to trigger me. He made a npc, cute innocent girl.... save she was a murder victim. She was being rebuilt as a special flesh golem. Come to find out a guy we were investigating was the one making her. This girl was also a friend to one of the other characters. We did everything we could to give her a normal life with us. Then he had the big bad use her voice, her form, and challenged me when I was trapped in a mental room. Offering me everything I wanted.... if only I'd kill myself. She could be free of the hell she was in, my friends would be ok, and the screaming images of the children my character had with someone would not have to suffer. What he didnt know was I had lost my kids and had terrible losses in my family. One of which was my father. Someone who my character was semi based on in honor of him. I dont remember much after that. But he said for abit he wasnt sure if it was me or the character talking because we really get into character. And this one night we were at dennys, he said people came to check on us when I let out a scream to go to hell and broke a steak knife digging it into the table. He knew nothing about what had happened. None of our friends did because a good part of my life I hid all that save my dads passing. Luckily after a break and talking they just made me pay to get the table fixed and for another knife.
He also made one of our other players suffer nightmares from how vivid and in detail he was in describing the flesh walls in a hallway after the team got split up, how the child's back was cut open and combined to the throne. How the voices of children that were dead now spoke to her and mocked her. She was six months pregnant with a baby girl. She said after all that she was not sleeping good thanks to his work. I left out details because of how long that would actually be but that's two points his details brought out pain or paranoia towards what he might do. Thus far it's been four campaigns linked in some way and been going on about two years now.
I think it was the marching powder.
So I just found this channel and I have to say by far my favorite ones are always the ones where morals are discussed (Lizardman, The assassin and paladin one), Horror ones, and the ones where we deeply explore a character's story (my man Astoshan
The false Hydra stories and the stories where the party turns out to be the bad guys when they thought they were good.
This DM is brilliant. Truly, a great storyteller.
You need a Barbarian in your group to defuse most of the horror.
Every type of creature is way less frightening if a fearless muscle-mountainrange attacks it.
That depends on if the barbarian succeeds on they're will save.
@@Dualbladedscorpion7737 if he doesn't succed than the horror will double.
@@Kino_Cartoon
That's what happened to my barbarian.
@@Dualbladedscorpion7737 tpk?
@@Kino_Cartoon
Thankfully no 😅
My barbarian got scared shitless during are first encounter with a blue dragon.
The dark twist made me shiver a bit... then came the nightmare. That was genuinely freaky.
This is what I'll do if my players ever start to complain about my open world games. To each their own, yes, but do you have any idea how much time and effort it takes to create an entire continent, let alone an entire *world* of story? And to keep it all moving and flowing in the background while the PCs head off on their own to do little quests and make their own mark on the world? The little details I have to work in, sometimes on the spot, to remind them that this is a living, breathing world, and not just a backdrop for their characters? I have immense respect for any DM who can create such a world because of how difficult it is for me. For a player to call it "mediocre" despite all that, even with the excuse of preferring modular adventures... It honestly sickens me. Like I said. If my players ever complain about my open worlds, I'm gonna do something like this.
Twist them. Bend their minds. Make them question how heroic their deeds actually are. Any quest taken is to have the opposite effect. Heroic deeds have nightmarish consequences. Villainous acts help the people more. But make them FEEL wrong. The air feeling sticky, then eventually tar-like. Air tastes too arid or damp seemingly changing on the change of direction. Have the earth seem to WRITHE beneath their feet.
Read it like a patient teacher helping a child with learning difficulties. Calmly. Methodical. Simple. Eternally patient..
Yes! THANK YOU!
I've spent the better part of something like two years working on an entire planet to make a campaign setting for my players. I'm even going as far as making a simulation of Plate Tectonics for the world, since that is actually quite important for the placement of things like Mountains and such.
i was actually a part of an open world campaign, and even designed some of the continents/maps for it for the DM. i was stoked to be playing what promised to be a long on-going adventure (and the DM i knew was good at telling stories and coming up with several different outcomes depending on our actions/choices)
sadly... most of the players got tired of it after a while and began to just rush things, not caring about the narrative, and just killing one thing before going off to kill the next. it was disheartening and i could tell the DM was disappointed. he ended up killing the campaign and everyone's characters. except mine, as i was still trying to role play and not be a murderhobo
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim I was gonna do that initially, but then I decided to go with a "flat, infinite plane" approach for the material plane.
I'm also now working on a sector within a galaxy for a stars without number game, too, also open world.
Preach man
This DM deserves better friends to play with
These players do not deserve this DM, holy hell this is insane
I terrified players using mushrooms. The way I went with it is simply, take a mundane object and twist it. In this case, the players had received a call from the police. (Call of Cthulhu) The three arrived at a mummified corpse discovered in an apartment of a John Genaro. The body was hanging from the ceiling from something invisible. The reason for the investigation from outsiders was due to this fact. After taking a look at the body and seeing its lower jaw broken, stuck 2 inch lower then it should and most of its teeth missing.
Afterwards they went to the apartment and met the owner who was finishing cleaning up as he explain that when they found him, most of the furniture had started to rot or dried out. They had a few questions and he answered as best he could, though he didn't know the guy well. He recommended to them to talk with the other neighbours, a Mme Maria, with whom he had an altercation recently about the garbage. They inquired about if she would be present at the time, but he responded that she would be at work until 5pm. They ask about other things like had he many visitors, where did he work and the like. The landlord didn't knew much only that he work in a shipping company at the docks and that nobody came to see him. Only the incident with Maria came to mind otherwise he was more of a recluse, though he did borrowed Maria cleaner, which the landlord found and would leave at her door.
They then opened the door and found the apartment in an abysmal condition, as if no one had lived there in years. They mention it to the landlord who is frustrated as he spend half the day cleaning and now everything was back the way it was before he started. They start looking inside and light up the dirty feverish yellow light finding a box with pictures of the guy at the docks and others of pages from a book, in a language they didn't understood. It had, however, pictures of plants with very detailed aspect of certain flowers and mushrooms.
After that they found the location of where the body was hanging by the blood who had dried and the missing teeth laying around the bedroom. They looked around finding a sort of fibre around the windows, barely visible and only seen by its shadow. They also found a black thing on the remains of the spring bed. It was a black ball who as releasing small amount of greasy liquid on the floor. One of them took it with leather gloves and put it in his bag.
They continued to look around and found on the kitchen table a small card with a remaining barely visible ink Lee tea shop.
They then left and went to see the tea shop. There they met Mister Lee, who offered then mushroom tea as they talk which they gladly took except for one player. When they left, they remark they were being watch though they aren't sure by whom.
They decided to split and go in different direction. One at the docks, one at a local botanist he knew and the last one at a local university to know more about the pictures.
The docks revealed that John in his last 2 weeks had change from a 8 hours shift with a 30 minutes lunch break to a 12h without break. His colleagues had being worried at first but when he became aggressive when they wanted him to take some breaks, they simply stopped. After that the player realized he was being tailed again and found who it was. As he did, the other one started running which lead to a chase. The player manage to get close enough to see the child's face who seem to be cracking and leaving small particle of dust. He would have to stop the run as he didn't have he breath to continue. The child fled.
The second character left the black oozing thing with his friend botanist to examine and went back to the first character's PI office.
The third went to the library but learned that the tea they had drank which was made using cordycep. A type of mushroom which is know to transformed ants into zombies.
When they gathered back at the office, it was 7pm. Where they received a call from the police chief wanting to know what was happening at the apartment as they received a call about someone in distress.
They left and ran there. By the time they arrived the police was there and where banging at Maria's door. They decided to break it open and inside a net contrast appear as the rooms are starting to rot and change. Half he room was getting dirtier and dirtier as the time pass. The yelled came from the living room and as they reached it, Maria was in the middle with a horrified look on her face. Tear falling on her cheek as a pain slowly rose from her throat, chocking her. She started to convulsed on the ground as something fibrous was leaving her mouth, dragging her onto the ceiling and slowly breaking her jaw while pushing teeth out to make way. The players tried to act, one by shooting the fibrous thing and missing, the second to try and drag her back down and the third collapse in insanity. By the end, the effort of the second would not working would use a knife and cut it, which worked but too late. That was when we stop for that session. A vertical pan leaving the scene with the other police officer reaching inside while his colleagues was leaving pale as a drapes .
Im confused but also not. So were they at any point imagining it from the shrooms? Did the 2 that saw the woman act in a way of harming the woman, breaking here jaw and hanging her while the 1 that collapsed, did so because he saw how the others were acting? Good story all together with horror though
@@cerealguy6359 1. It was happening in front of them.
2. Na, its the shroom that lift the woman in the air and broke her jaw. It was taking more and more space, in her mouth and throat, so it broke the jaw with its pressure. They did make the situation worse by trying to pull her down at some point, which made her lose more teeth. At that point, she could yell but she felt the pain.
3. The other simple roll a 100 on his sanity, so I rolled on the chart and he collapsed.
What...what came next?
@@mdbgamer556 Next session began where they left. They tried to help Maria but she was gone at that point. She had started to mummified but the process was stopped when they cut it. This also stopped the process inside the apartment as the tread had slowly aged the part they had touched.
So now they had a dead dried up body with a bottle of cleaning spray next to her, an apartment that had haft of itself in a dark ambience, where light is barely dim, and the other haft was impeccable.(Maria liked when it was clean). So they search a bit and find nothing to explain what has happen.
As they were leaving they spoke with the landlord again, who wanted to know what was happening. They deviated the conversation to see if something else might have come back to his memory, which he simply replied that only the incident outside and nothing else.
They decided to check out the garbage then to see more into the incident and leaves.
Outside they spoke with the police and no one knew how to explain what had happen, so they stayed vague about it, and the one cop who joined them was taken to the hospital.
They looked inside the trashcan to find some mushrooms slowly growing inside. One of them put on his gloves and take a few outside of the can and as they get into contact with the light they slowly shrivel and dry up.
They then split up again: one for the office and two who decided to look into the dock now that it was late. There they would find some mafioso speaking about a shipments to the Lee Tea Shop. From where they where, they couldn't see them clearly so they tried to peak but slip and revealed themselves.
The mafioso called them, then whistle which called some grunts. Seeing them the players ran in two different direction, one toward the city and one deeper in the dock.
The one who ran in the city took a corner and, as the grunt that was following him arrived, he tried to jab him but did it too early. So he was facing a guy with a baseball bat who tried to swing at him but missed which he responded with a punch in the stomach that knock out the grunt. He proceeded to ran back to the office.
The other got lost in the docks and tried to hide, which fail over and over. So he ran back the other way, dodging the two that had followed him and getting back where they had split up. There he saw a grunt next to boxes, his hand on them and body slam him into it. knocking out, the same guy the other one had gut punch(It had take more time on this side so I thought it would fit for him to come back ). This alerted the head mafioso who catch the vest of the character but didn't manage to hold him. He fell and when he got up took out his pistol and tried to shoot at the character. He didn't as the area he had gone was to close to the cops. So the player hide in the police station for a few minutes and left for the office.
At the office the other player had arrived to meeting a young man waiting in front of his door. He remark the similitude of this one and the one who ran away at the docks. The kid informed the player that he was spying on them but now he needed the investigator's help in cash. He agreed on the condition to know what he knows. The kid tell him that Mister Lee is the one who hired him and his brother and why he need the money was to help his brother. When the player ask to know more about the condition of the brother the child said that he was taking care of him and only needed the money. So he gave the kid some money but ask to keep in touch. The kid agrees and left. Inside he gets a phone call from the botanist but only take the message for the other player. He opened a bottle of whisky and drank a glass of it.
After that they gathered back inside the office and speak of what they saw and heard.
The player that knew the botanist called him back and heard that the plant was still alive. He doesn't know yet what kind it s but he should have result for the next day. The player asked him to be careful and hang up. They go to sleep as the sun slowly fade into the sunset. End of session 2.
@@tryman1592 Damn...
You're one helluva gm man. Keep us posted, yeah? :D
The horror of our campaign is based in a fear of the unkown.
As in we have no idea when it's going to happen
I see I like to call these types of DM the Batman DM’s because it’s all about fear
that's pretty clever.
Murderhobos are a superstitious and cowardly lot.
More like a "Scarecrow" DM
It would be amazing if a DM could pull that off. Well done, sir. 👍
Pretty brave play! Not many DMs can get away with taking control of an entire party of player characters from a previous game, much less in a manner like that.
They never took time to check themselves it seems. Noone questions why the Wisdom saves? Noone gets sus of DM, they should have been worried about their characters and not what they were going to do in the world.
I know this one is old, but I figured I'd post my little horror anecdote anyway.
I was running Call of Cthulhu, and opened the first session with the party tracking down a desperate old gentleman's missing daughter.
She had been taken by a cult of Yog Sothoth. The clues they uncovered throughout the adventure pointed to the cult wishing to sacrifice her to enable Yog Sothoth to rewrite history according to its design.
They slaughtered the scarred and gibbering cultists, too invlved in their ritual to fight back. They spoke in bizarre rasping voices in unfamiliar accents at their ritual, but the young woman rose from the altar and grinned, glowed in colors never before seen by the eyes of men, grinned and gibbered at the party, then moved in reverse, faster and faster, until she vanished.
The group continued to investigate and found out that their patron had been behind the whole thing all along. They confronted him, found out that he had found ways to move through time, and used these abilities to track down the aspect of Yog Sothoth in the girl's body in the past. Over their adventures in time, they suffered changes to their bodies, physiology, and voices, and picked up the speech of the eras they visited in their quest, trying to save people from the horrors that the aspect of Yog Sothoth was inflicting on history.
Eventually, they tracked her down to a few weeks prior to the first session, armed with eldritch weapons, the Elder Sign, books from Leng, and a way to banish the Aspect for all time. They subdued her and followed the banishment formula, adapted from the sacrificial rite they had interrupted. The ritual would severly limit their abilities to do anything else.
Just as they were bringing down the weapons to slay the aspect of Yog Sothoth and end her threat forever, a band of familiar voices were heard, and familiar figures burst into the room and attacked them. As they were cut down by the attackers, they recognized their own faces on the day they killed the twisted cultists and 'saved' the young woman from the altar.
They died hearing the mad laughter of the Aspect as their deaths provided the sacrifices needed to power her ascension.
One of the players threw dice at my head.
please more of these instead of the bad players ones. i stopped listening to neckbeardia because of that.
Agreed
100% agree. These stories are so good!! The green dragon and the elf child is still my favorite story done on this channel.
Agreed. My favorite was the false hydra one
Mood.
The crazy thing is, this story is still a "bad players" one: heckling the dm, insulting the world as being shitty- albeit that was in writing not necessarily out loud- and murderhobo-ing everything instead of finding other solutions (just pick the little plank man up and piggy bank him, jeez).
The players deserved all the horror they witnessed if they all acted the way the writer presents them
This is an amazing narrative, 8/10 stars to the DM for wonderful descriptions and a genuine understanding of a horror of something which shouldn't exist, yet in defiance it remains!
Side note, please narrate more D&D horror stories (not toxic player, but 2SPOOPY4ME style stories).
Might I suggest Gothic Horror
the wooden boards they broke were the elf's legs. holy shit.
My Pathfinder GM played this type of thing so well. He left hints and clues here and there that pointed to what we would be walking into, but never let us see the whole picture.
Only to find out that the village that we had been residing in, sleeping in, eating in, and conversing with, was the epicenter of corruption, a chant from the church blocking all of our perception of what was happening around us. The whole village was engulfed in flesh, and the citizens we spoke to, did quests for, and had really cool moments with, were one by one being assimilated into the flesh. Our own horses were also assimilated due to being stabled there.
But you would not know unless you could break through the perception barrier, as everyone still acts thier normal selves.
And the consequence of breaking through was a large amount of Sanity damage
"he offers to run us something very special"
That was a threat, not an offer.
Vicious mockery does hit different at higher levels...
Key note, if your DM is a high level bard ooc, stay on their good side.
I once DMed a dungeon run into a necromancer's lair. Pretty standard stuff. The players had some fun, but weren't impressed. As usual, they brought their loot back to civilization and sold all kinds of things they had taken from the necromancer and the graves of his victims. And started a zombie apocalypse. Every item they had looted, even single coin they spent in bars and weapons shops and bakeries, all of it was cursed. It took them a few gaming sessions to put 2 and 2 together. When they finally realized the end of the world was their fault, it was ... special.
The plot twist was incredible... truly something we have to do for a short session
If this DM is that good at running a horror campaign, then imagine what happens when he starts running “Call of Cthulhu” as a Keeper!?
This campaign almost sounds like the movie Southbound, where madness and horror becomes a full circle.
Have to wonder if the DM drew inspiration from Oblivion, which also had a quest in which the PC slaughtered a village due to drug-induced hallucinations.
That's the fighters guild right? It also makes me think of the side quest were the Argonian woman asks you to go find her daughter in that overgrown town with all the crazy folks underground. I've always wondered if there was supposed to be more to that story. If you went back and found they were all innocents or something else . . .
I hadn't thought about that quest in a while thanks. Hist mania
This also reminds me of Higurashi WTC, especially the first arc.
I kinda saw where this was going near the beginning, but never would have if I had been a player in it. Nicely done.
Absolutely lovely story! Horror is one of my favorite themes, and this DM sounds like they knew what they were doing. *Applause* Bravo!
Of all the types of horror, I prefer "Gothic" Horror.
im running a mystery adventure that i've made with repetitive symbolism, an excessive amount of detail and hidden aspect of tension and horror. so far, my players are loving it and hating it at the same time and it brings me endless joy.
We played a game long ago with no warning it was horror themed. Three of us were hired to retrieve a family treasure from a burnt out keep. People in the nearby town warned us about the monster of the Keep, some creeping beast who preys on the unwary. Pretty standard faire. The keep was partially collapsed in the fire so it's a mess to navigate. We're barely into the gates before a stone floor collapsed and I and Ruger's player went down a few stories. We weren't badly hurt but we had to find a way to get back to the third player. Meanwhile in the darkness far below we can hear whistling. Right away I recognized the tune the GM was whistling as The Carpenters "Close to you". We did a lot of corny stuff when we gamed back then so it was a good laugh and we went on. The GM took Timothy's player player into another room to play out their scene above and we could instantly tell it was going to be the sort of game where out of character knowledge was locked in another room, annoying but we were having fun so it was ok. A few minutes later the Ruger's player stepped on a trap and a portcullis separated us. I had figured out enough of the map that I had an idea how to get to him. I told him to stay where he was and I'd go around to him since I had the lantern. Ruger's player down below with me is dragged into another room for just a second and then we're back on. Now I get dragged into another room for a bit of quick narration of how I was getting around, a few perception rolls, more of the whistling. Now I'm feeling super paranoid, something just wasn't right and the GM was amping up the creepiness so I panicked and ran the course around to find Ruger. I make some rolls and come around to find them, we're back in the living room and Timothy's player up above goes into the back room for a WHILE. When the GM comes out we continue looking for stairs up in the catacombs under the keep, more of the whistling which is getting insanely creepy now that the GM is keeping the gag up and I've forgotten it's a 70's pop song. Without warning the GM tells me I see Ruger, the same character I've been working with for about a half hour to find a way out of the Catacombs, appear through a collapsed ceiling above me. Suddenly the other player shouts at top volume "HANS! IT'S A DOPPLEGANGER KILL IT!". I freeze in confusion as the Ruger next to me draws his weapon and faces off against me. Ruger above jumps down and together we get the crap beat out of us, Ruger finally closed a door on the monster as we retreat and knocked down rubble to block the door. As we catch our breath we hear more whistling. With some difficult climbing rolls we finally get out of the catacombs and up into the courtyard and back to Timothy who is freaked out and paranoid needing to test us to be convinced we're who we say we are. We decide we're done for the night, we need to go back to town and get drunk but before we can leave we hear that lonesome song whistled from outside the gates of the keep and as I'm sitting there the other two other players, sitting on either side of me begin to join in whistling the tune and as I look at them they're staring at me maniacally. Honestly the most terrifying moment in RP for me.
Holy crap, I want that DM. That sounded like an amazing experience and I absolutely love horror.
This is Matt Mercer levels of attention to detail.
I had a feeling that ending was coming up
i once run a doppelganger campaing, and let the player go on a caravan with the two leaders, who could get the abilities of every thing they shapechange into. they discoverd the doppelgangers when one of the players went to investigate something in the drivers tent, and discoverd his headles body, and when he returned to the camp fire to warn everybody, he saw the driver smiling at him.
This was something genuinely impressive. I don't know if the Dm thought that far ahead to implement that first campaign like that or if he thought that it would be cool to do it, either way what he did was something I would've never thought of. Hats off to this Dm
That. Was. *Gorgeous!* Kudos to that DM for being able to write horror like that, perhaps he should write a horror novel.
The twist in that town before it was changed by another twist is EXACTLY why you shouldn't "do it" with someone you don't know. Especially in a DnD horror setting.
I love the videos on this channel that showcase good DMing, players, and storytelling so much more than the videos about the train wreck groups
my man said the dm gave too much description and then really said 'rhyming rhythmic mournful furious meanderings' hahaha
This makes me thankful to my DM he made this awesome world for us to explore while keeping us on a quest like a module
As much as I want to play in his campaign, I don’t think my heart could take it
As soon as he mentioned them entering a burnt down town, I had already knew where this was going. That's such a wonderful lesson to apathetic murderhobos and I love how the DM integrated the old characters into the new campaign as the end villains. That's something I wished DMs did more, is integrating previous characters into the current story.
Honestly, i heard this story 2 years ago. And remembering what an awesome Jod the DM did jsut give me joy. I think it one of the best storys so far
That is awesome. I figured it out for a moment with the falling bodies, and the way he depicted the gruesome horror, but then quickly dismissed it after the burning of the crops. Then it looped back around to being awesome with the second campaign.
My goodness... This dm is awesome! And terrifying... That ending really is a mind screw.
Wow, that's like a Resident Evil game. Good shock value and scary setting.
That's what I try to go for, but with gothic horror
I'd say more like silent hill, given the setting. RE deals with horrors science produces, this is more eldritch, which SH goes into.
I’m running my first horror campaign soon, and I’m definitely gonna try to use as much of this as possible.
Make the players terrified to proceed and you've done good.
Details?
@@ThePa1riot no clear cut right or wrong. I've found instead of making people or groups evil for the sake of being evil, give them realistic and sympathetic reasons for the things they do. An example is making the tyrant committing whole sale slaughter reason for doing so is stopping demons by killing their worshipers and people who advance the abyss's goals with their actions. Have the reason why he is doing this to stop an upcoming demon incursion, but he is slaughtering people, or entire kingdoms because they laws of the kingdom have laws that feed the demons, like slavery or create a economic condition that make it easy for people to seek demon deals or give in to the ce. Mindsets.
Have the classic 'good guy' or noble king be a idot which has no clue what he is doing. He will work with the party, but he will lead his nation to civil war or revolt due to his inept ruler ship.
Or make the person who can unite people to fight a threat be scum of the earth.
Or just send them to a place where gods are scared to go to. A place where the environment itself is a threat to their survival and the rules are changed. Like a forest with advanced natural and parasitic lifeforms that is in everything. If something dies the bacteria takes over and if it's eaten a lifeform starts growing in the PC who ate it.only counter is to sprinkle something like sage in it before you eat it, or eat the thing alive before the bacteria takes over.
Or classic fear of death with a twist. The forest is made from a dead God, and the flesh of the God is trying to come.back. so it sucks in the soul of anyone who dies. Even if they are not devoured, the dead god keeps the soul bound, preventing it from going to the afterlife and making it so the forest is full of insane or desperate souls that will posses ANYTHING living to experience life or get out of the forest.
Oh my God. It's both horrifying AND beautiful. How can it be both?!
This is the best horror game I’ve ever heard about on this channel. I absolutely love it. What an amazing DM.
That DM would make a great host for a revival of the Tales from The Crypt TV show that used to be on HBO- what a legend!
Mistakes were made, feelings were most certainly hurt, and nerves struck with an acupuncture needle. Also the second look or “double take” definitely made things worse. This leads me to ask, what in the hells was the source of the madness in the town? A False Hydra would make people forget things or alter the victim(s) memories of events within a listening distance.
The madness was in the first characters. All the crazy stuff in the second story was their doing.
@@stevendonaldson1216 Well, I really want to know what the actual source of it. Because it sounds like the first characters were being manipulated somehow. Either that or the DM / GM decided to make it secretly an evil campaign without telling the players.
The biggest difference between the two groups was that the first group was given kerthake marching powder. It was described as being like cocaine, but it probably caused hallucinations and they had a really bad trip that got violent.
This is the sort of experience I try and deliver as a GM
This reminds me of a dnd one shot I had thought up in my head. Mid winter, all PCs are some form of military member. Everyone starts out in a tavern within the capital city, merry making and everything, having a great time. Dark as hell outside. A woman bursts through the door screaming and ranting about monsters invading the city. Then a huge hand bursts through the door, grabbing her up and taking her back outside where the party hears crunching and squelching before a decomposing eye socket, with a small light at the very back wall of the skull peers through the new hole in the wall. Starting up the invasion of as many scary ass monsters
When they came across the elf the 2nd time, I had a flash of Silent Hill 3's "They look like monsters to you?", and I knew we were about to hit some terrible last campaign consequences.
omg, right??
You guys should keep making captions, I love listening to these stories with captions on. Also helps if there's a word I've never heard before.
Agreed
What a Lovecraftian twist. Demented, terrifying, and well thought out. But where are the monoliths?
The whole story sounds straight from the Necronomicon
They took the powder, that’s why there’s no monoliths
The DM should publish this adventure.
That's one way of dealing with a group. This dm made a grand unknown tale and were all for it
Along with others, this story, is now a favorite of mine. Astoshan, Onyxia, the Ogre Smith, the elf friend Green dragon and etc. All great stories among this one.
I had to pause when he said they didn't get the marching powder
im damn near positive that the "marching powder" caused the first party to go insane and since the second party dident have any they saw what the first party was actualy doing under the effects of said powder
Imagine this dm and the player of Astoshan cooking up a campaign. Ohhhh the chills~
Once I nearly made all of my fellow players wizards, but that would've been a horror for a DM once we got to level 7.
Unfortunately, COVID.
When this group gets to lvl 5 the dm has to start every encounter with answering the question if the enemy survives 5 fireballs
Seriously, you need to contact audible about becoming one of the guys that narrate books. You have such a gift.
How do people like me who have never played a game in my life do so with any gusto after hearing a story like this? This is the literal definition of dark beauty.
Dont let anything like this stop you from playing dude. Just give it a go and have fun. There is no correct way of playing d&d and you find your style and group with time. This game is amazing and I personally have never regretted any of my times playing (even with the groups that fell apart).
@@wolfman2180 pretty sure they were saying this is a definite reason to play, it was a wonderful dark time
Now 'that' is what I call, a Dungeon Master, and I applaud the man for making my smile grow absolutely pleased.
I don't believe it happened, but great story. The would be a great long game on the DM's part, if true.
I'm a novice DM trying to put together a homebrew campaign, this story is terrifying and inspiring and I can't wait to see if I can do something like it in my campaign. Will probably use the central theme of the town appearing normal, jarringly terrifying and then the illusion lifts for the players to see the utter carnage they have wrought upon the kind and welcoming folks of this quaint town. It's going to be the hook that'll focus them up to get back on track after they inevitably derail all my hard work as they galavant off course of my homebrew lmao
It's a little bit like that Oblivion fighters' guild quest. Glitches and everything 😬
Grave wheat so ergot fungus inspiration? An perhaps the townsfolk were immune to the bog water fungus of grasses, and yet not so much the players in the happy little backwater?
Either way Bravo.
I don't think so. I think there was nothing wrong with the town in the first place. Something drove them mad in that swamp. First party, finds an elf that refuses to walk on the path without his two planks. When he fights back they break the "planks" and he just sits there crying. Second party through the swamp, finds an elf with broken "legs" and starved to death. Second party didn't find anything about Grave wheat or anything else wrong except the mad writings of the first party and themselves.
@@trumansshadow3652 i thought it was the "marching powder" they had to transport that made them absolutely crazy
@@Sovann_the_Mighty I thought so too maybe but they never said they used any of it. Even still if it was that, I would still like to know exactly how or why it did what it did and why they had it in the first place but not in the second run.
@@trumansshadow3652 it kinda tipped me off when it wasn't given to them the second time, that's when it clicked that it had to have had some influence
@@Sovann_the_Mighty possibly but why did they get it, where did they get it from and why didn't it have that affect? So many questions and no answers
This was a spectacular story. I loved every minute of it. Sounds like they got lit on that marching powder one too many times.
This DM is...amazing. This writer is good, too. Great horror.
Like the work of Edgar Allan Poe
So much planning, work and commitment. This is really horrifying and good.
"Marching powder" is a heck of a drug.
@Holo Lives Matter The joke is that it's cocaine
I wish I had the honor of playing a game with that DM, there's telling a story and then there's *that.* HP Lovecraft and Tolkien would be proud.
Oooooh, why did I watch this at 3 in the morning?! I need sleep, but YIKES!
That was a masterful example of creepiness. I would make it my goal to emulate it, but I doubt I could ever even get close, and I don't actually want to, because I LIKE sleep.
I honestly wasn’t expecting THAT much from this, a good story but not something that blew me away like this story did!
This was so freaking awesome! I want to find this DM and their style to morph how I run future campaigns later on!
I hope that DM found a better group.
The scariest line I ever heard from a GM: 'You're sailing along the coastline, a few hundred yards from a thick treeline. It's a few minutes after midnight. You're out on deck, smoking and chatting when the stillness of the night is broken by a horrifying scream comes from the trees.'
'Is it a man's scream or a woman's scream?' I ask.
'You can't tell...'