PCs are lost in the woods and have to survive. There is no supernatural,

>>52659091
>The players hear muffled voices in the brush, moving laterally to them or near wherever they are camped. The voices are obviously human, but are either too quiet to understand or are in a different language. They don't sound aggressive, but neither do they really sound friendly.

If you've ever been seemingly alone in the woods, you know how absolutely fucking terrifying this can be.

hear a deer wailing nearby (look it up, spooky shit). investigating they come upon a fresh kill, blood everywhere, and the creature that torn the deer apart no where to be seen
>yet

>>52659091
Wolf pack. Always the wolf pack. You just can't have a forest game without highlighting how terrifying an organized pack can be.

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>>52659091
I ran a couple games where the players were Neanderthals. There was a Cthulhu element to it, but most of the game was about hunting, finding shelter, caring for the injured and dealing with Cro-Magnon.

Anyway, I would set it in a fairly harsh environment, and design the area the way you would a dungeon. Think about what natural features and hazards the characters might come across. A frozen lake might be a shortcut, but the ice is dangerously thin in places. Figuring out how to ford a river while keeping their meager supplies dry is good too. There may be several good looking places to shelter, but each could have its own hazards or compromises: camping by the river risks encountering other animals in the night, the cave nearby looks inviting but is shared by a young bear, a rocky outcropping would be easy to defend but is exposed to the elements, etc.
Remember what the players need every day: Food. Water. Shelter.
They can carry some supplies with them, but they'll always want to augment with what they can find as they travel. The more they carry, the slower they travel. While I wouldn't reduce it to bean counting, I would encourage players to think about sacrificing tools for supplies and vice versa.
Consider a low powered, gritty system where injury is a big deal. Most animals won't fight to the death but flee after being injured, make getting injured a pain in the ass for the players too. A whole session could be based around finding a good place to nurse an injured party member back to health and getting the rudimentary supplies to do so.

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>>52659091
Wizard casts Leonmunds Tiny Hut for shelter, Create Food and Water or Goodberry to feed the party, and then in the morning gets his high-level spell slots back and teleports the party back to civilization.

>>52661934
What was the Cthulhu element?

>>52659320
This'll get you, but even just hearing obviously human footsteps without being able to place them can set you on edge.

Speaking from some firsthand experience of my own, just finding something out of place tends to be a bit paranoia-inducing. I went far enough back into the woods behind my house as a kid one time to find some burned out tin shacks and a bunch of rusting metal barrels (empty) behind a halfway collapsed barbwire fence. Another time I came across a few "signposts" probably made by some other kids that pointed to a bunch of seemingly imaginary landmarks they'd laid out, as they didn't really lead to anything and only helped get you lost deeper in the woods.

>>52661939
>>52659091
>There is no supernatural, just man versus nature
>hhhhuuuuuuuuurrrrrrr wizerds

make like a sailboat and keel yourself

>>52663076
But anon, magic is just science, it's not supernatural!

>>52662142
The worst shit is when you're already inside your tent at night in the woods and you can hear someone is walking around outside your tent.

Happened to me once, nearly shat myself, worse yet is that I never found out who it was.

I'd have them come across an abandoned makeshift hut and crashed plane in a nearby lake. You got a time period in mind?

>>52661939
In D&D Create food and water is cleric/ paladin spell and Goodberry is a druid spell you anime loving non-dork.

>>52659091
If supernatural forces are out of the question, you could have natural forces taken to the extreme. A drought hits, leaving the ground cracked, parched, and devoid of life. Anything which could not migrate to greener pastures is left sunbleached and worn in the form of gleaming bones. A blight or disease sweeps in, leaving animals twitching and spasming on the ground. The leaves begin to rot on the trees, falling to the ground as rains of vegetable decay. A nearby volcano erupts, covering the sky and blotting out the sun. Until the ash clears, the PCs are living in a world of darkness, where food is hard to come by and the starved ache for any source of food.

>>52661939
>Wizard casts Create Food and Water
Get out of here, poser.

>>52661939
>Wizard
>using Cleric and Druid spells
>in a setting with no supernatural elements
You are both a poser and a retard that didn't read what OP wanted. Go back to /a/ you fucking double tsundere.
>>52659091
Spookiest shit that happened to me was when I was living near the woods and kept hearing whispering. The sound was coming from the tree branches rubbing together and the leaves moving the in the wind. At night time, that shit got scary.

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>>52659091
>Fog, Rain, Snow make it hard to navigate and force constant perception checks (even if not required) making the PCs think there's something just beyond their view.
>Wolf pack hunts them for a few days...
>PCs come between Mama Bear and her cubs...
>Forest was the site of an battle long ago. Tattered banners, broken armor and grinning skeletons dot the landscape.
>PCs need to ford a rushing river or spend days finding a safer crossing.
>Starvation is a thing...