Horror; How do I GM horror, having never done it before?

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>>51625982

>>51625839
Have music playing in the background, ambient but creepy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEEgDHPzT-E

When shit start getting real then you can stop limiting yourself to "Music"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SZcSeG4sQ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY92NAdGaR4

Music and background noise is a powerful tool to unnerve players when used right. Randomly play small snippets of sounds but don't mention or admit you did it.

Basically try to gaslight your players as best as you can. It's fucked up, but that's what they're there for, right?

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>>51625982
>>51625991
Thank you for the contributions! Let me skim these real quick and then I'll share my thoughts. These will come in handy, i guarentee.

>>51625839
>>So how do I spook the shit out of them?
>You can't spook them unless they're in the mood to be spooked.
>That's a general rule of spooking, but your medium leaves very little to work with. So it's extra apparent.

>>51534680

>>51536106

>>51626032
First one is nice, kinda like an ambient "overworld" theme. Not for when things are activelly happening, but when talking to NPC's and traveling, it's good to have when you need to remind them "Things still feel off."

Holy Shit that second one. Just wow. The unease, the clash of the tones, it's perfect. I think I saw a video on using high and low tones like this to make the middle ground with no sound unconfortable.

That third one, unfortunately, is a bit annoying and highstrung. Not really unnerving, if anything it will evoke the opposite of what I'm trying to accomplish. This sound evokes a emotions like "Just fucking kill it already" rather than "Oh fuck, I don't know what that is and I don't want to know". I know it's Silent Hill, the godfather of horror for videogames, but this particular song is just ehh

I have a usual formula for horror stuff:
>begin by foreshadowing a threat, weird stuff that isn't really a danger but helps build a tone
>establish a quest which requires the PCs to leave an established 'safe' area and go through a known dangerous one to another known safe area
>once they've left start a countdown, when it completes, everything goes to hell, do not let the players know this countdown exists
>in the dangerous area they should be encountering increasingly dangerous situations, each one of these should also be a indicating more and more information about the nature of the threat and of the countdown
>eventually the players will figure out what's really going on, at this point one of three things will happen (1) they make it to the safe zone, they're safe but the threat remains and will continue to be an issue (2) the countdown completes and either everyone dies or they somehow manage to just live (important to allow for the second) either way they'll have taken a major blow or (3) they figure out a way to circumvent the threat once they know what it is, good, let them have that victory (tension requires hope) just try and make sure it doesn't happen too often

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>>51626093
OP here
On the Horror PDF, I'm going to read into the sections on sowing mistrust in players. That is never something that hadn't occured to me, and is likely to be a wicked way to take the campaign to the next level once insanity builds up. Speaking of, these annecdotes (bad spelling alert) are wonderful, as I find examples to be the best way of learning about these kinds of things.

I'll admit, I havent read the Cthulhu paper yet, give me a few more minutes.

>>51626263
Fuck, it's 4 in the morning.
>That is NEVER something that HADN'T occured to me.

Jesus christ.

That is never something that had occured to me.

and worse yet, Annecdote is spelled correctly, despite the fact I thought I had misspelled it. Thank god I'm taking notes here.

>>51625839
When horroring in my post-apoc campaigns, I sometimes turn the lights in the room off in addition to the creepy music. Usually when they explore underground locations or are stuck somewhere bad at night. A monitor or 1/2 candles give out just enough light to see the dice.

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>>51626302
More advice on ambiance. Thanks!

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>>51625991
Ah, now that i've properly looked at this, it is a collection of systems to run horror in. The one that caught my eye is dread, and though it is an example of those short, 2-3 hour games I had talked about, it looks like a very fasanating system I could enjoy for a quick run as a trial or introduction into my campaign.

>Or even better, as like in lovecraft;s stories, there are letters the characters can read that introduce them to NPC's who had encountered the terror before. Because most of those NPC's die anyway, leaving a session on a part where the characters had found a tome, reading that tome would lead almost to a "cutscene" using Dread as the mechanic. It's easy, just give the players the bio of the NPC's "questionaire" and let them dread out what happened. Once everyone is dead or the story ends, it's back to their story, with new knowledge on what had happened.

>>51626282
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anecdote
It's really four in the morning where you are.

>>51626191
This, absolutely.
In regards to the story, I like to begin brainstorming with a common phobia or fear in mind, like insects, home invasions or being alone in the dark, and build up a threat for the players to encounter from there.

Another useful tool is breaking expectations or bending the general rules for tabletop gaming. Maybe their safe town or camping site they've established unexpectedly is destroyed or overrun by the threat, forcing them to flee, now with no safe place to recuperate.
Or a shadowy/uncanny valley style creature who is healed by all physical damage and can only be combated by spells.

Force them to work out of necessity with/under NPC's who do not care about the PC's safety.
Introduce a helpful NPC, then make the NPC's help a burden in the worst possible situation.
Give the players the option to sacrifice or place innocents in danger to more quickly accomplish their goal. Rub the consequences in their faces if they choose to or let the goal JUST manage to evade them for the time being, if they choose not to.
I have a trick to convince players to tell me what they're afraid of.
Under the pretense of finding any "triggers" of the players before the game, I'll have them name 3-5 things they particularly don't like and 1-2 "no-go's" that would ruin the game for them. The 3-5 things is what I use to expand the list of horror content possible in the game.
It also lets me know when to avoid using stuff like rape or bodily invasions if a player has any legit history with sexual abuse/assault that could negatively affect their enjoyment of the horror experience.
#1 Rule of GMing for me: If they player's aren't enjoying themselves (even in a horror game,) I'm not doing my job right.

>>51626553
Truely testing the moral of characters is interesting, but I feel like even for a good character, a stubbornly moral character, letting the goal get accomplished once in a blue moon might be better to induce horror. Let them think their goal is the truest, most well meaning goal, give them a harsh option to achieve that goal, and if (as you predict) They chose the kinder, moral option, let that goal backfire some how, but lightly forshodow the negative result. Rather than frustrate the character for always failing for being the good guy, let them feel a fear; Are they really the good guy?

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Me and my friend have worked pretty extensively over the course of a year to create an intricately crafted horror campaign.
I've time stamped a moment here where the players encounter their first taste of the paranormal and you can actually hear fear and panic in their voices:
https://youtu.be/bKIpO7YD1pY?t=14m50s

For context, the players were assigned pre-made characters and given no knowledge about the campaign other than its setting, the kicker being that their character has no knowledge of who thy are or why they're there so they are canonically as uninformed as the player.
They all have a letter in their bedroom describing a daily duty they have to perform themed around their character's profession in their civilian life which gives them motive to work together. We didn't hide we were giving certain players hidden information during the briefing so they are aware they have their own secrets and motives and reason to distrust each other.
The language in the documents they read make it clear that the people of this world greatly distrust warlocks and anything to do with 'dark' magic and delightfully the players were quick to treat The Warlock like complete shit.

You can watch the whole session if you want, part 0 is a 30 minute primer so just start on part 1 if you just want to see the gameplay. Session 2 should have been done by now but my co-GM has irl complications at the moment so we're on hiatus.

>>51626696
A good example is actually of my own shame; I was the moral character in an ocerarching non-horror D&D 3.5e campaign. A claric, obviously, I was given a goal and a choice; There was a little girl, my daughter, whom I had to protect. She was being hunted by a Necromancer, and the Necromancer had planned to sacrafice her to block out the sun. The necromancer also had domain over the town we where currently in, and the townsfolk where being mindcontroled to get the girl. My options many, my character decided the best bet was to take the girl and flee, so that the rest of my party had no reason to harm the mind-altered villagers. As I fled, i ran right into the arms of the necromancer, who killed me, took the girl, and doomed the world. And though it wasn't my fault (i tell myself every night to sleep better irl, because it was deep into the campaign and I CONNECTED with this little girl), i still thought up so many reasons why it was. Looking at a monster inwardly, a monster that only existed because I percieved it.

The human imagination filling in the blanks is a much more powerful tool than any planning you can come up with. So give them just enough to spook them and then let their imaginations do the heavy lifting.

Somewhat spooky ambient music also helps set the mood.

Monitoring this thread with great interest.

>>51626898
I'm glad to see you've taken interest. I'm currently looking over so much new material, i havn't been able to contribute. That, and gathering my thoughts at 5:30 AM is not a feat I am used to accomplishing.

>also regretting my own lack of image collection, trying to get more entertaining images.

>>51626719
That nervous laughter is preccious. That's what i'm looking for from one of my players. They are so confident and snarky, i want to break down that sarcasm deffence and see them get mad
>cue evil laughter

>>51626931
No worries and good stuff; good idea to start this thread; will be mining it for ideas.

Horror is an excellent genre to run games in but everyone needs to be on board with what the game'll entail, ie keep the distractions and tangents to a minimum.

I'm also out drinking but just quickly, you could be describing a scene for the players and innocently include "there's a child hanging by the neck from the ceiling", when the players ask what child, you deny all knowledge and proceed with the game as if you said nothing of the sort and look at and act with the players as if they're crazy and imagining things.

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>>51626987
Good lord, that'd be great for later in a campaign maybe, deffinitely not off the bat. That's just fan-fucking-tastic. Can't stop laughing

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Op again. Now, i've got a bit of a request (not an /r/ level request, i assure you). I've got all these ideas and no idea on how to make a starting point. I have a general setting and Idea, though.

>Start Campaign, kinda a light hearted adventure campaign about treasure hunting. (I already see the above comments about being on board, already know it's a bad idea.)

>Start campaign small, first hunt is in american borders, an old estate is left abandoned after man goes crazy, wife and child leave. Townsfolk say the dude was an adventurer himself, but the place is haunted and no one dares enter... except the player characters.

>Treasure is a statue depicting Abdul Alhazared, though never say so. Just say a golden statue of some muslim prophet (technically not a lie, though deffinitely not a *muslim* prophet)

>The players investigate house for a bit, even if they find their way in several spots are locked and they, amature treasure hunters, will have pre-built inventories.

>Someone goes missing, trail leads to locked shed

>Shed leads to tunnel, leads to basement of house, leads to sacrafice room, little easy boss fight, find treasure

>Treasure comes with journal, detailing how the old man thinks the statue is haunted by the ghost of the "mad Arab"

>Adventurers get nighmares about that night, never anything prophetic, but definitely trauma induced, but really hammer in the statue in every dream.

Literally only idea I've got, just want to know if this base foundation needs any cement. I'll build descriptions and encounters and deffinitely deep NPC's later. (NPC's are my speciallty. Players literally fall inlove with them some times. Suck at combat though.)

What system/s?
Horror is best used as one-shots, unless you're aiming for ongoing investigation.

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>>51627359
Ongoing investigation, exploration, and barely surviving. I want to start with standard stuff, and as they get closer to the truth, the more creatures I through in. Eventually, when they fail and die, their next characters will be those investigating the fall of the last characters. Their minds will be a bit clearer, as they only read what had happened to them, rather than experianceing it first hand. I ultimately want it to lead up to a final meeting with the Great Old Ones

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>>51627359
see
>>51627400

I am torn as to what system to use, I am most familiar with Savage Worlds, though its fear system leaves much to be desired. I now have access to other horror PDF's which i will look at after a good sleep, but I'm thinking World of Darkness might be my best bet. It's got some insanity mechanics that I can keep hidden from the players and help me aid in descriptions and other worth while things.

>>51625847
>Dat eldritch spider god
October can't get here fast enough

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>>51625839
I almost exclusively run horror games, they are a delight.

Call of Cthulhu is a fantastic system for playing everyday characters against horrible beings from beyond human imagination. It's incredibly easy to learn and run but it can feel overdesigned at times.

Delta Green is a good one for a more action-oriented adventure. If you want to essentially play as Mulder and Scully versus Cthulhu it's great.

Fear Itself and the rest of the GUMSHOE line work very well for investigative horror. It's another very simple and easy system and what I like about it is that players have a resource management aspect to their skill checks. They can choose to use up points from a skill pool to improve their odds of success but those points are lost whether they succeed or not. Very good for high tension games compared to the slow burn of a CoC game.

Some people like Dread, I'm not much of a fan. In Dread, to make skill checks or test yourself in dangerous situations you pull blocks from a Jenga tower. If the tower falls on your turn, your character dies. It's very tense! Right up until you have to rebuild and reset the tower.

What have you designed so far?

>>51626987
OMG THAT'S AWESOME I'M GONNA DO IT RIGHT AWAY

Here are some of my tips, since horrors are probably ma favourite thing to run

-Build up tension and scary atmosphere very slowly and gradually. It's best if the session begins in a completely mundane, normal way. Your players may even have some laughs at the beginning, this will only make them more uneasy when shit starts going down. The best effect is when players don't even know they've come for a horror session.

-Make it completely clear that whatever they're up against doesn't play by their rules. Break the laws of science and logic. When they come up with a seemingly completely perfect and reasonable plan make it not work. Just don't do it too often, or they might feel frustrated. Make things go right once in a while so they may get even worse later

-Keep them confused. Never fully explain what's going on, it's like King said: "". If you think you can pull it off without stalling to much, split the party and communicate with groups using written messages(best partially prepared beforehand), it's a sure way to keep them uncertain and afraid.

-Immersion is the key. Good story telling is obviously crucial, but introducing irl things can work miracles. Give your players some props or pieces of clothing to wear. Operate the light in the room. Sound design is also very important.

These were just from the top of my head.

>>51625839
I tried to add a bit of a horror to a sci-fi game once. The players overall enjoyed the story arc, though not because they were spooked by it. One of my descriptions of a "horrifying scene" actually became a running joke.

>>51631595
Fuck, forgot to fill in the quote, can't find it now, paraphrasing it was that people fear mostly the unexplained, and when something becomes understandable it stops being scary.

>>51627359
Personally for one-shot horrors I tend to not use any system at all. I just ask the players to tell me about their characters(or premake them for them) and tell them to roll the dice whenever it's needed, the higher the result, the better chances of success. For one shot horrors that's all you really need in most cases.

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This is a fantastic bread! I complement the bakers!
hope I'm not hijacking the thread with this, that it's on topic enough, but I'm about to run an Unknown Armies campaign, and I'd like it to be horrific some of the time, and unsettling as much as I can. Subtle at first, then slowly building, as fits the setting. But how do you do it when the horror is much more psychological and interior than external unknown monsters?
Has anyone had experience with running Unknown Armies as a horror game, and what did you do?

>>51630718
What do you mean by overdesigned?

>>51625839
Never use the official name for the creatures, instead describe them
Like instead of saying "You are attacked by a werewolf"
something like "You are ambushed by a man like beast with an elongated snout in a monstrous snarl, fur running down its whole body and a menacing gleam in its eyes"

>>51627400
I'd also want to have the players ultimately winning, which is sorta a diversion from the hopelessness of horror. The PCs work for an organization or organizations that keep the Masquerade alive and ultimately restricts unnecessary public panic.

>>51634507
This is a pretty good idea. You're not meant to play into the stereotypes and tropes of horror, be as descriptive but at the same time least concrete as possible.
Leave your players guessing what some thing might be.

>>51634426
In the sense that there's Appearance or Charm or Persuade or Fast Talk which all are different abilities for essentially the same thing.

I also don't like the fact that your skills don't correlate at all with your general abilities, so you can be an uneducated professor of medicine or an extremely strong person incapable of swimming or jumping.

>>51637124
I know what you mean with Persuade and Fast Talk. The former will survive someone thinking about it. The latter will fall apart a few minutes later and someone will know they got conned.

Why make it two skills? Make it one with a bonus/penalty depending on method.

>>51637155
My point exactly. CoC has those three abilities (Appearance is an attribute that provides no stated benefit for any of them). It feels unnecessary.

>>51637124
>>51637155
Wouldn't that equate to the difference between Bluff and Diplomacy?

>>51637292
Old school game design. Plus no pressure to change.

>>51637359
Bluff they may never find out you were full of shit. Diplomacy is convincing someone that something is reasonable, even if its not great for any one party.

>>51637391
Bluff is like Fast Talk where there's a likelihood of the something finding out they got conned.

Roll low on Bluff and shit can go suddenly wrong.

Has anyone tried a horror game set in a lighthouse?

Bump for more awesome.

Running a 5e game that centers around monster hunters. I stumbled across the Bodak in the MM and thought it would be an amazing challenge and possibly frightening.

One of the members is a ranger, so I thought it would be a good idea for him to be tracking game, and then suddenly the animal runs into the underbrush, and when he goes to recover it, the body is entirely withered and rotted. The Bodak has a death gaze ability so it makes sense, and if he sees it and peruses by himself it'll fuck him up or incap him.

Later: The monster actually attacks town, and kills two guards. The party then has to chase it and put it down.

How can I make the hunt and encounter scary and uncomfortable?

>>51639468
Sounds really excellent, also check the flavor in this out:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/bodak

Whatever PF may be, it has really good flavor (most of the time).
Have the PCs feel something is always watching them and maybe have them meet the gaze of a blinking abyss.

When it's nearby, maybe have it emit low moans and incomprehensible chatter and occasional screams.

>>51639821
You of course shouldn't reveal what it actually is, only what it leaves behind.
Be sure to describe it rather than name it, and only give fleeting glimpses of it.

>>51639468
Modern-world setting?

>>51639821
I was thinking of having it actually lure the party into a ruins with tight corridor, perhaps splitting them up, and then picking them off one by one by giving them the stare down from down the end of a long hall. Perhaps a rockfall separates the party into pairs?

I want to avoid them ganging up on the thing and beating it to death with sticks.

>>51640028
Oh hell no. Normal sword and sorcery setting.

>>51640131
If it's 5e, you could give it Legendary Actions, otherwise a single target still has a short lifespan.

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>>51625839
Play Call of Cthulhu. Run The Haunting. It is fool-proof. TPK before they ever get to the basement.

http://www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/The_Haunting_(aka_The_Haunted_House)_(Scenario)

>>51640391
How's that?

>>51640391
I recommend Edge of Darkness from CoC Rulebook for beginner group because IMHO it's better than The Haunting for introducing a group of characters working together.

For Trail of Cthulhu I'm not sure what is a good beginner scenario.

>>51627058
Is this comic good? Preordered the HC reprint of vol 1.

>>51638176
I did. Not a typical one: it was a Hellboy campaign, so basically a horror-superhero campaign, but it was still horror and they were definitely spooked in at least few moments. Not sure if you're still here, but I can describe it in details.

>>51640391
How is it a TPK? Aren't only dangerous things in this scenario the moving bed which will kill 1 PC at max and the knife which is in the basement and will probably do the same? Excluding the boss of course. Never personally liked this scenario or understood its popularity. It could be good, the basic idea isn't bad, but unless you modify it it feels really underdeveloped for me. Basically just gather information by going around and making a dozen of investigation/research rolls, find out about the guy in the basement, go there, kill him, well I guess that's it.

>>51642007
Haven't read it, but since it's Alan Moore I would say it's definitely worth a try. Just prepare for dicks and orgies, I doubt he could resist sticking one in there.

>>51642677
I've read Lost Girls and From Hell so I think between those two I'm prepared for anything ranging from extreme acts of disturbing violence to rape, incest, paedophilia etc :)

>>51642622
Yes please do write us a campaign story :)

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I've been doing horror campaigns for four years now, I'll post when I wake up what I've learned from the experience. Keep the thread alive!

One major part is to always invent your own mythos, if that, often it's just one effective horror. Find the things that disgust you, or upset you in thrilling ways, personally, and delve into that. Maybe that overlaps with Lovecraft, but for god's sake don't give it names (unless they're parable-like assigned names, something effective).

The less purple you are with your descriptions, the better. You might have heard otherwise, to sprinkle your fingers in front of you and really dip into the waxing nonsense. You've heard wrong. Cosmic horror can be visceral, and real horror can almost always be conveyed with a few dense, sometimes confusing sentences. Sorting it out is what I substitute for the fear response of the players, understanding what is standing right in front of you, when your senses finally gestalt. The romantic throwback prose should only really be doled out when confronting evidence, never the horror itself, and even then, only when the players take a good, hard look at it.

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>>51643634
By the way, my preferred systems are Delta Green and Unknown Armies 3e. Both are very different, and you can take or leave huge aspects of either (the lore in UA, the agency and fluff in DG), but the mechanics and mood are spot-on.

And never, ever be afraid to get weird with it. If you're having problems with escalating or pacing, give the monster (or the place the monster came from) a reason to come to them. Don't fall into the pit of Stranger Things by having the baddie by a reskinned shark that happens to be from a fungus assworld. Give it goals, things to set up or do, that will lead to nightmare intersections.

>>51643390
All right, here goes. It was a while since I ran it, but I'll try to recall it as well as I can. The lighthouse was the first quest in the longer campaign. The players were sent by the B.P.R.D(the agency responsible for dealing with paranormal stuff to those unfamiliar with Hellboy comics) to a small former whaling town in Maine(because where else). There was an old, but still operational lighthouse standing on the seaside cliff above the city. The lighthouse keeper, now serving mostly as tourist guide, reported paranormal activity inside the house next to the lighthouse. It started with footsteps and knocking to doors, then whispers telling him to go away. He finally broke down when objects started flying around the house and blood started flowing out of taps and ran away. He claims nothing like that had happened before. The PCs are tasked to got there, investigate the matter and get rid of the problem, but there is also another thing to worry about: a storm is coming and the lighthouse is supposed to be active for any stray ships that might get lost in case the standard navigation falls. Since the keeper won't return there for life, it's up to PCs to stay for the night and keep the lighthouse up and running.

will continue in a moment

>>51643634
What the hell that thing?

>>51643634
What the fuck is that in your pic?

>>51643808
Some kind of amulet or talisman I guess.

>>51643805
F5 F5 F5
Toasting in epic bread.

>>51643805
PCs arrived in town and started digging around. They noticed a lot of whale and whaling related ornaments on the building, but hey, it was a whaling town after all, right? They searched for information in the city archives and library. I'm afraid I don't remember exactly what all the clues were, but they surely found out that this wasn't actually the first case of something strange happening around the lighthouse. Many former lighthouse keepers reported paranormal activities or died in mysterious accidents always during or before a major storm. With a correct roll passed, they would also notice that these occurrences were very regular, of course the next one supposed to happen during tonight's storm. They also found out about a local trading guild, calling themselves "The Whalers", which was set up here by local wealthy merchants and did business in the entire east coast. Now it was of course long non existent, but there were still a lot of urban legends going around the townsfolk about it. The guild was supposed to actually be a quite shady, mason like organisation with a big interest in supernatural stuff. Some even claimed it still secretly operated today, although other claimed all these were just tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.(As you probably suspect, they weren't) The guy who built the lighthouse, an English scholar whose name I don't remember, so let's call him Simon, was also a prominent member of The Whalers. He became the first lighthouse keeper and lived there for years, until he mysteriously died struck by a lightning during a storm. The accident also damaged lighthouse's top, although it was repaired later. If the PCs tried checking that, they would also learn that the name of the cliff with the lighthouse was derived from and Indian word meaning "gate" or "passage".

cont.

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>>51643942
Since the entire town was evacuating because of storm, searching for information was difficult and by the time they got it hardly anyone was left in the city. They decided to move up the cliff and to the lighthouse then. When they were leaving the town, one of the PCs noticed something moving on the roof next to them, like if watching them, but it quickly disappeared. They decided not to investigate and continue to the lighthouse. Except from the lighthouse itself, there were 2 other buildings on the top of the cliff, a keeper's house - an old but renovated and modernly furnished 2 floor home and a shed, right next to the cliff's edge. Inside the shed there were some tools, a row boat suspended under the ceiling, a large generator providing the buildings with electricity in case of emergency and few old diving suits, which according to a tourist plaque belonged to Simon, the first lighthouse keeper, who was a very passionate diver. they decided to make themselves at home and wait for the night, most of them spend the time reading through house's library, trying to find some more useful information. Thorough the day, few spooky things happened, can't remember the details but generic spooky house stuff, nothing serious though. They were just slightly disturbed. On one moment, they also noticed something moving in the brushes outside the house, but again decided not to investigate. They found out some info about one of the most prominent merchants belonging to The Whalers, let's call him Joshua. I don't remember the specifics, but there was something fishy about the number of ships he owned, in one source he was supposed to own one more than anywhere else, and after some more digging they also found a mention of a ship of his named "Dante", mentioned nowhere else. In the meanwhile, it was getting late and windy and the sky was already full of black clouds, signalising the coming of the storm...

>>51627145
Please be creative.
>old estate
>crazy man
>another statuette
>once again it's al-azhred
>people disapearing in a small town
>tunnels
>dreams
MEH

Make it the exact opposite

>small appartment in new-york
>reaylly serious guy, expert in financial security
>specific iteration of a Excel sheet
>turn out to be linked to some cult illegal finances
>interesting and creative people all around the city slowly becoming boring and serious and Bateman-like includingkilling whores and bums in weird way for pure shock horror)
>"dungeons" are maze like penthouse at the top of building, connecting in impossible ways
>PCs and NPC can't sleep. Don't know why. Start to hallucinate. Or maybe they don't and the horror is real when then find human hair in their own feces.

>>51644220
Haven't mentioned it before, one of the players started some stupid shit with the guards in the city hall and got himself shot when they were still in the city. They got out of it by flashing badges, but had to leave him in a top floor bedroom to rest. Now they left the house and went to the lighthouse since it was already dark and the storm was starting(I turned off the lights in the room and put on some wind and rain ambience). They turned on the lighthouse according to the instructions they got(turned on a small desk lamp then), made themselves some tea and waited. Everything was going smoothly until one of them decided to check on the wounded guy in the house. He was dead, his throat slit. Their notes and books they were reading were laying scattered around the floor in the room where they left them, as if someone was looking through them. They weren't alone. He quickly rushed back to the lighthouse to alert the others, on his way, he noticed a thick layer of fog surrounding everything and making anything outside of the cliff's top completely invisible.

cont. Sorry it takes, so long, I hope you're still reading it. I have to recall stuff and do some other things meanwhile.

>>51643680
Since you've run unknown armies before, would you mind giving me some tips about >>51632156 ?
How can I make it - weird?

>>51644420
They had an Assassin sent by The Whalers after them, although they didn't know who he is other than he was wearing a coat and mask, was remarkably strong, fast and sneaky and was apparently was after they heads. He hunted tried to hunt them off one by one, luring them out, setting up traps, sabotaging their power source and radio station etc. He managed to hurt some of them, although haven't killed any more players, and since I never made him strike directly they were pretty fucking scared of him in the end. They noticed one thing: The sky seemed to change. They couldn't recognise any of the stars on it. After they decided to hide in the house from the assassin they noticed some strange occult like markings around the fireplace which weren't there before and heard a clear, ghastly voice saying "stop it!" After digging up around the fireplace they found a hidden box containing an old, ornamental key and a very old letter, from Simon to other Whalers concerning some kind of hideout and a laboratory which entrance was seemingly hidden in the cliff's wall. The ghost apparently gave them a clue. They quickly ran to the cliff's edge and found out that the water was now almost reaching the edge, even though it was far below just few hours ago. The sea was almost pitch black and seemed somehow alien, few times they were almost sure they saw something moving in it. They went to the shed, took the boat and diving suits and put it to the sea. When they were getting ready to dive down, the assassin's figure appeared and threw some kind of fire bomb into their boat, forcing them to get into water quicker than they planned. They dive into the abyss, almost sure something unseen touched them few times along the way until they found a cave in the cliff's wall. They went out of the water and found an old ornate door. The key fitted the lock.

>>51644956
They entered the cave and stumbled upon something looking like an abandoned conference room. The smell in there was almost unbearable but the place was obviously long abandoned. They went deeper and found themselves inside some kind of laboratory. Alchemical instruments, strange occult circles and drawings and a glass tube in the middle of the room containing a shoggoth, although I purposely didn't name the creature. They also found Simon's notes explaining the whole thing:

>>51645533
Basically The Whalers found out that during certain planets alignments the cliff becomes a gateway to some other, outer dimension, partially disappearing from our world and appearing in the other. This event is always accompanied by a storm. The Whalers decided to send one of their ships, "Dante" into this otherworldly black sea during the storm with all of its crew dead, in hopes of bringing back the creatures from other world which they perceived as angels. They built the lighthouse, with special magical symbol carved into its foundation and inner core that would let it guide the ship back home during the next storm. However, after some time Simon started getting sceptical and concerned whether they did the right thing. During one of his dives he found a strange ruins complex on the bottom of the ocean nearby. It looked impossibly old and very, very wrong. He deduced that they're the reason for the cliffs trans-dimensional capabilities. He started started investigating and studying the matter. From his notes you could deduce he was clearly going insane at this point. Finally he managed to summon a shoggoth and realised what foul creatures Dante is going to bring on board into their world. During the next storm he sabotaged the lighthouse so that the ship wouldn't find its way and killed himself binding himself to the house using occult rituals, so that he may make sure that every time the storm was coming the lighthouse keeper would be scared off or dead, the lighthouse dark, and the cursed ship wouldn't be able to return. Until this night. The players weren't so easy to scare and The Whalers' assassin made sure that the lighthouse would remain lit and they wouldn't have time to uncover the truth. The lighthouse was on. And Dante was finally returning home with Eldritch abominations using its dead crew's bodies as vessels.

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Maybe this is just me but cults seem to be a shortcut for roleplaying hooks rather than a source of spooky.

The best CoC game I ever ran involved a bunch of travelers snowed in at a hotel in the Rockies succumbing to a mysterious illness. One of my players said that it gave her nightmares.

Any one have any tips specific to Delta Green? I'm starting a game soon. A right-wing militia turned doomsday cult is trying to unearth some Mi-Gos in suspended animation.

>>51648806
Best advices I heard from the Unspeakble! podcast where the creators of DG were giving tips about running the game:
http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/2016/08/unspeakable-episode-26-delta-green-gm-workshop-at-gen-con-2016/

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>>51648806
>>51649059
More importantly, any tips for running a Police Squad! Delta Green game?

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>>51643808
>>51643816
Screencap I took from Texas Chainsaw. Folk practice, especially when focused on mutilative shit and put in strange places, can scare the hell out of people. There's power there.

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>>51644469
Unknown Armies is a world that, for the most part, is made up almost entirely of people. This is fine, you don't need bubbling beasts or creatures from very far beyond to get under people's skin (just look at TCM, a completely harrowing and plausible story about bad times in West Texas). I don't recommend getting as intense as TCM, when all there is to suffer is lost limbs for a group of players it gets fairly one-track, but there's kernels there worth rescuing. Those crazy boys had got their own religion. It meant something to some of them, they weren't mindless, just horribly askew. Warped by the heat and the stench of the slaughterhouse, and their crushing poverty to boot.

This leads to the most important point of UA. For all intents and purposes, humanity is all that there is.

Our legacy goes back and stretches forward millennia, don't waste that. It's still very human to have primordial ritual magic, scrubbed off some Sumerian wall, that is functioning to this day. This works in tandem with adepts, if there are enough in one room who believe in the Antichrist, in a city that mostly does too, they have a chance of making him real. Free yourself from any idea that isn't a human conception, then realize the aren't many things that fall under that category.

Another tip for keeping up atmosphere is personal incidents. Mirrors are great for brief interactions with the self, perhaps even more so is random street encounters (hobos tend to be right about everything, just bad at articulating it). Once my players had spent a whole session with a sewer guide before he dropped a bomb they had only barely suspected.

Lastly, work to give the opposing forces goals so odd that just the preparation can unsettle the players. Hannibal characters are great inspo for this, particularly mushroom man, but feel free to go weirder, less crime procedural to suit your tastes. Maybe he's just trying to catch a chupacabra.

>>51640833>>51641857
>>51642658

My players all freak out at the lack of any visible threat. Poor choices get made and before long they are accusing each other of being possessed.

>>51651321
I really like that last point, and the one about the mirrors. I was going to go with the stirred broad crowd psyche of our setting creating something tangible like a monster or a cursed item for the pcs to eventually deal with, but now maybe that gets to be a side thing. Since there's already several loose cabals I've made for the setting, maybe one stands to profit by shaking up the sleeping tiger a little.
Thanks for the tips, anon.

>>51651436
My players are the opposite, they'd try to murderhobo everything.

How do I deal with that actually? But I can't restrict their choices too much, or else I'm interfering with their player agency.

>>51644220
Just curious, were these names also supposed to be referencing the Bible?

Simon, Joshua?

>>51652249
Nah, I quickly made them up when writing this, I don't remember how they were actually called in the game. Although I think Joshua is actually a correct name.

>>51645554
This was actually a pretty good read, and also an interesting premise. Thanks, dude.

Would you happen to have any remaining notes on it?

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>>51639468
Have the bodak instead look like pic related.

>>51652402
Glad you liked it. I might search for them, although I doubt there will be much more about this scenario than I already written.

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>>51625839

either don't use or use sparingly actual creatures from the Lovecraft books.

If your players out of character no exactly what they are up against from the first clue or throwaway line of dialogue their character receives from an npc it really hampers the sense of foreboding and mystery, even if they aren't meta gaming.

Try to come up with your own creatures that fit the same kind of tone as Lovecraft. failing that look up more obscure folk tales or old writers that your players are unlikely to recognise.

I quite often lift stuff from The night land

>>51654510
What is the night land and what stuff do you lift from it?

>>51654581
1912 sci-fi with weird demons everywhere, a giant pyramid with the last scraps of humanity, and a serious case of time-travelling telepaty/rebirth

free on amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Night-Land-William-Hope-Hodgson-ebook/dp/B0084C981I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486695885&sr=8-1&keywords=the+night+land

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>>51654581
Personally I lift descriptions of the Watchers for eldritch gods and the locations in general whenever the PC's are having hallucinations/ visions/ reading tomes of long forgotten eldritch knowlege. basicly I use the setting as a stand in for whenever a more directly lovecraft setting would have R'lyeh or the dream lands apearing

for more action horror settings a lot of the creatures described that the protagonist can actually fight are preety unsettling/ weird.

>>51627513

It's an older game, but Chill was my favorite for horror games.

>>51654801
Watchers? Are they eldritch abominations?

>>51654510
Is this worth reading? I really like the premise, but I heard opinions that it's really lengthy and gets boring quickly

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>>51646936
this right here is an underrated post, people tend to know what to expect from cults, it lets the air out. You want real horror, you work through it from the ground up.

>>51659362
What the fuck is that in your image?

>>51660031
screencap from AM1200.

it's god!

>>51626302
This. Lights out helps a lot, try to get some candles ( at least electric ones) , too. For maximum overkill: I had much sucess using a stroboscope app with my smartphone to set the mood for a derelict spaceshipround. Flickering cables, scanners etc. all visualized by a free app.

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>>51658950
it was written in a really odd style. depending on who you ask it's either a mild annoyance or almost makes the book unreadable.

fortunately someone rewrote the whole book in readable language https://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Land-Story-Retold-ebook/dp/B004GKNM3W

I powered through the original once to say i'd done it, but since then every time I want to re read it or look up sections I go through the rewrite.

but yes it is definitely worth reading, its one of my favourite settings.

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>>51656054
they are the absolutely enormous (comparable to the great redoubt in scale and that thing is a thousand stories high) beings slowly but unstoppable advancing on the redoubt to devour the souls of mankind. they aren't quite Lovecraft because a big thing in Lovecraft is how utterly disinterested the all powerful things are in human. the watchers are absolutely focused on us but with a malevolence beyond human comprehension. (sortas like that computer in I have no eyes and I must scream). I mostly use the descriptions of them instead of lovecraftian gods because there is some really good fan art of them. also they are the reason the setting is perfect for an adventure party. they could break the will of one human and march them towards themselves with an of hand thought, but individually we are so far beneath their notice that as long as you are careful you can travel through the night land without them noticing. they are like whales and you are an individual krill. , 1 guy, 2, a half dozen moving together. dangerous as fuck but doable. small armies. does not go well.

there are however lots of smaller creatures, giants, fell dogs, abhumans of various shapes.
those can catch the scent of and hone in on individual humans, but they are also fight-able on human scale .

>>51660054
can I ask for a resume of the plot? with the twists and all, I just wanna know what the full story is quickly...

>>51652084
Don't give them something obvious to murderhobo. Make invis or make it not actually stay on their plane long enough to hit. Some horrendous creature appearing from shadows to shoot toxic/corrosive spines at people then disappearing before anybody sees. Apply some sort of will/wisdom save to not begin seeing it in places where it isn't actually. Make them question everything else and they'll begin questioning each other.

>>51625839
You need to keep constant tension on your players at all times.

>>51652084
>>51662000
Alternatively, killing the thing has no effect. Maybe it just keeps coming back, seemingly invulnerable to damage while the players get worn down. Maybe the creature isn't even the real threat. Subvert their expectations. Have them come across a creature that's shuffling towards them and when they try to kill it just describe it flailing and shrieking and sobbing. Even after they stop attacking it it just curls up and weeps.

Or make the antagonist the environment, not an individual creature. For example, the players all wake up inside an abandoned building, where the windows have been boarded up. Crude but vicious traps fill the darkened hallways and something seems to be watching them, toying with them.

>>51661850
Guy embezzles money from the agency he works for, blames it on alcoholic coworker, goes on the run. Hears some weird shit on the radio, something about needing medical assistance at an AM1200, while tooling down the interstate. After passing out at the wheel, he eventually gets to a crossroads (he takes a right) that leads him to a dead end fence. His car breaks down. Then the crickets stop chirping and he sees a light in the distance, which gets closer, then blares in his face. It turns off and then there's nothing there. The fence reads AM1200.

Salaryman is properly freaked, panics for a while in his car before deciding to go inside radio station. Lights flash, he hears evangelical talk radio come from bright lights in hallways. Inside the radio room there's a guy acting really erratically, handcuffed to a pipe. He talks about God, about "it," and that he would tear the main character apart and wouldn't have a choice. He starts to whip himself into a frenzy, asking for the key to the handcuffs, saying "Would it help if I told you I did it myself?" Then he rips his hand out, flaying his skin and probably breaking something, and the main character beats him to death with a crowbar.

Main character starts to act funny, drags his body downstairs, and then puts him on a table. He might still be alive, just comatose. His eyes respond to bright lights. Main character gets really shaky, picks up a table saw, then psychs himself into removing limbs from the old radio operator. He takes the parts to a well, and that thing is there. Then he goes upstairs, nods at the lights outside, and says something strange about a medical emergency into the radio mic.

Man, so much great stuff here. Thnx, really need to go back to writing my own campaign

Is running the PCs as solars through a horror game a bad idea, it's meant to represent the fact that there's something even scarier than things like vampires, bodaks, the girl from the Ring or the Grudge.

>>51666324
I'm not sure I know what "solars" mean. Is it a setting specific term? Could you explain?

>>51666637
upper planar beings
angels basically

>>51667040
Sure, I guess it could work. It's basically like a normal horror, but both PCs and monsters are taken one tier higher.

There was an old D&D supplement in some magazine called "And Madness Followed" that was presented pretty damn well. It's worth trying to look it up if you can find it because it had some great pacing that you could try and emulate.

>>51667040
I don't think so. A core tenet of horror is helplessness. Unless your characters are practically human it will diminish any scariness.

>>51667313
I think the point the guy was making is that he wants to introduce stuff that angels come to fear. It makes the fear even better when the player goes
>we're fucking angels, we can handle a tentacled shapeshifter
then gets swatted into oblivion.
That there is always a bigger fish.

>>51625847
What is that from?

>>51667313
>>51668191
You could still have situations like the one from the Conjuring 2.

Could you run a horror game using D&D 4e?

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>>51673181
D&D doesn't have mechanics to simulate a character's decline, or temporary insanity where they lose control. Some systems like Unknown Armies 3e even disguise health bars from the players, so they only know the physical description of their wounds. Traditional roleplaying (especially 4e) boils a lot of your character down to number crunching, which is a death knell for in-the-moment horror. I ran a horror space game in a Hard SF Traveller mod once, and I wish I had used something else, because even though I had everything else (a huge playlist of music for cinematic moments and general atmosphere, light dimmers, walkie-talkies to simulate EVAs, and a plot I spent a lot of time on), the only consistent problem we ran into was the system itself.

The mystery plot also took a lot longer to unfold, because I didn't place as many clues as I thought would do it, and the pacing suffered. But that's not part of this narrative.

If you're cool with having ALL the horror be roleplay based, or just want horror overtones (like diablo or some shit), you'll be good, but odds are you won't be getting an emotionally charged experience.

>>51668191
I'm still inclined to believe that it won't register as scary, just frustrating or boring. Empowering the players beyond their personal, human limits does not make for scary gameplay. It's why Dead Space and most of the Resident Evil games aren't that scary outside of jump scares. Letting superhuman characters deal with a creature that is beyond their ability to harm isn't horror, it's a DC comic.

>>51676058
>Dead Space
DS is scary when you play it on the proper difficulty. The problem is that EA went fullretard by not letting you start that way without completing the game first. With that being said, even on Normal your guy moves slowly, sucks at close combat, dies fast and is sometimes put against an unkillable enemy. It's quite a different experience than playing Resident Evil 6 where you can suplex zombies.
The above is valid only for DS1 and 2, of course.

>>51678200
Nah I wouldn't say so. DS has a great atmosphere and is good at creating a feeling of constant danger, but I wouldn't say I was ever truly scared while playing it, regardless of difficulty

>>51678267
To be honest "scared" in video games is a difficult terrain to navigate. I was scared in Penumbra and Amnesia, for example, until I accidentally realized the AI was extremely dumb. And if what scares you is simply dying, then that fear can go away pretty fast (in a game). What I liked about DS1 was that I cared about Isaac and Nicole and I wanted them to somehow get out safely (Isaac especially never felt like a superhuman and has his fair share of miserable things happening to him in the first 2 games). And DS2 felt like a familiar Lovecraftian investigation, where a character pursues things and knowledge he knows shouldn't, and his mind starts deteriorating. Both games did many, many things much better than newer "oh my god 2spooky" games IMO; Outlast being a prime example of disappointment.

>>51626987
I used this trick A LOT last session and it worked wonders. I used it in a way to emulate "jump scares" with narration. The players were really scared and always questioning what they were "seeing." Thanks a lot for the tip. :)

>>51626987
I'm stealing this

>>51652084
Alternatively, let them do their shit them make them pay the consequences. Make it matter.

What are some good generalist horror systems? Ones that are good for most survival-ish horror scenarios. Dread would be a good example, except that it's completely based around one-shots, with basically no capacity to handle multiple sessions.

>>51626987
Expert mode: Coach a player to do this with in-character dialogue or action.

Anecdote:
>Player 1's character had a relationship with a woman named Tanya
>it is never explicitly stated how it ended
>instruct Player 2 to work the phrase "Tanya was your fault" into the next thing he says to this character
>he does; character responds "What the fuck man, that's a bit harsh"
>I immediately inform every other player at the table that, in fact, Player 2 did not say anything

>>51684042
How exactly would you go about coaching player's dialogue?

>>51684603
In the anecdote given, I passed a note to Player 2 that said "work the phrase 'Tanya was your fault' into the next thing you say to Player 1"

>>51684701
That doesn't really seem like expert mode? Expert mode would be to give him a compelling reason to say what he needed to say and have him say it in his own words.

>>51683922
Fear Itself would work well. It captures the sense of rising odds and hard choices that amplify tension.

Is it possible to make a sympathetic horror game where the PCs are the horror?

Pure brute skill, my dude. This is all in very well delivered, carefully succinct descriptions of what is going on. You don't even need a system.

Back from the brink.

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Tips for creating a horror scenario by one of the main guys from Delta Green