3 ways to do horror in D&D right (and 2 ways to do it wrong)
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Another thing is, in the wise words of Pointy Hat, have your monster involved in a story. A scary monster is fine…but a hag that uses children to manipulate a town or a woodland spirit that kidnaps and creates false children of surrounding villages is so much scarier than Ned the Nothic
Yes! Absolutely love Pointy Hat's video on horror - it's chock full of great tips for creating a good horror arc!
I love that Ginny Di loves Pointy Hat
Idk man, Ned is a frightening lad
@@GinnyDithe goat knows the goat
I liked the bone puns they really tickled my ribs
*rimshot*
That pun is a real “knee” slapper *rimshot*
For some people, puns are just in their bones. Sadly, I've fractured my funny bone. I just don't have the stomach, or guts, for proper punning.
I got a bone to pick with you now
Yeah, the puns were great - that's no fibula.
I once accidentally achieved it by designing a final "trap" for a dungeon next to the artifact the players were seeking that was designed for guilt tripping. It was just an auditory permanent illusion of multiple people in agony begging whoever gets in to not pick the artifact. It was only the sounds, so they couldn't locate the source. One character attempted to detect thoughts to locate whatever is making the voices...... I replied "it doesn't have a mind". All my players lost it XD.
To be fair, I freak the F out too in that situation.
"It doesn't have a mind"
Excuse me, *_WHAT?!_*
That's horrifying. This tempts me to use something similar, but I don't wanna rip off your exact thing ofc.
I do.
I forget where I read this but it's always stuck in my head and I generally use it as my formula for pacing my Call of Cthulhu sessions or horror one shots.
*The Cycle of Fear*
1) Establish Normalcy (Things are much scarier when contrasted with a baseline of normalcy)
2) A Sense of Unease (Something is off, like NPCs going missing or a door is open that wasn't before)
3) Signposts of Dread (Seeing a bulky shadow move in the closet, ragged breathing, or a scream heard close by)
4) Disarm (It was only a cloak moving in the wind, an NPC makes a joke, or followed by a much calmer scene)
5) Repeat cycles of dread and disarm in increasing severity as the pressure builds
6) Terror (Explicit signs of immanent threat like a growling monster approaches in the dark, or the smell of blood as you're about to enter the room of an NPC you were looking for)
7) HORROR (The terrible thing you've been afraid of happens, quickly and shockingly)
Note: Once the horror happens the tension also goes away for this particular moment. You can do a few things to make player characters squirm afterwards by your descriptions but nothing will top that initial horror. That's why I like to conclude the horror parts quickly such as with a rapid fast paced combat (don't give players time to strategize or think. This is horror we're talking about! They have 5 seconds to declare an action or they're toast!) or shift the scene rapidly after. You can then begin the cycle all over again for another threat or build upon the last one to make it even greater.
I love this! Great tips!
the rapid combat tip is so good! i once had a dm who used what we called quicktime events, where you had to get a nat 20 to succeed your skill check, but you were allowed to reroll as many times as you could while the dm counted down from five. it made the players have to work quickly, and we absolutely panicked. it was used sparingly, so it didn’t get old. i think timed combat turns could have a similar effect of instilling panic and intense focus.
@@plushdragonteddy What an awesome idea! I'd never thought about taking a video game mechanic like that and turning it into a way to build pressure. Love it!
Holy moly, this is the goal right here ...
This is seriously such an awesome way to break down what you do. Will definitely model some plot skeletons off of this, thank you!
Once I DMed a full, 3-sessions-long (we usually make sessions of 3 to 4 hours) of an investigation around a series of murders. Quickly, the villagers starts to accuse each others and the PCs, paranoia takes hold both within the NPCs and the PCs, and chaos spreads. The murderer was in fact a Doppelganger, taking the appearance of villagers to cause havoc in the village.
Did the party succeed in unmasking the murderer?
That’s a good hook, line, and sinker there, lol!
@@DJROCKSTAZ yeah, After about 12 jours of game
@@Cold2413 haha, thanks
@@iilaunch phew! Thank GOD!
My biggest difficulty thus far has been trying to keep scary stuff consistent; my players just start talking amongst each other when I’m describing a room and enemies and it’s beginning to become really frustrating.
Have you talked to them about it? Maybe their character sound be so scared, that they cannot talk or the place is under the illusion spell that hide every noise they can do?
Session zero: "When I'm describing stuff, you shut up."
Can alternatively be brought up after S-zero. Either way, communication is key.
The one rule I establish with my players at the beginning of a horror campaign is "don't make fun of the horror." You can be silly sometimes but when horror happens you need to do your part and react as your character would react. YOU don't have to be scared but your character certainly will be. I explain to them that we're telling a story together and what you do sets the tone just as much as my descriptions. The moment you call Cthulhu "hentai boy" all the build up is sucked out of the room and the scene is ruined. (Note: No one's ever actually done that but it gets quite a few laughs and gets the point across).
I also explain to them that while horror may be uncomfortable for some people as this is a horror campaign if they cannot handle a bit of uncomfortableness without blurting out a joke or talking to relieve tension then this probably isn't the campaign for you. That being said I still use pre-campaign polls for what stuff they want to be off limits and use the "x card" strategy when it really goes over the line.
Also, one other thing that I've no idea if you're doing but I know I've been guilty of doing in the past myself. How long are your descriptions? When describing a room, are you describing every little detail or just the key elements? (A vague statement, quick general features and lastly what you want their attention focused on). If it's just an ordinary scene and not a boss encounter or a grand horror element, I take a maximum of 3 sentences, if that.
Good horror can often be sharp and quick. You can sprinkle in maybe one or two little details of unease in each room before a big reveal to slowly build pressure but if every room is an over the top monologue, well... players have short attention spans and they likely won't follow you forever. Also, it takes away the spotlight from the players and onto myself as a performer which is not my job as a DM. I used to think the more scary sentences I strung together the better the horror would be but I've often found that ends up being quite the opposite.
Sometimes helps to freeze for a long pause until their attention comes back to you
You have the best ad reads ever (btw your house is totally getting egged by that pumpkin)
Fair 😂
I don't remember if that session was during halloween, but I wil never forget the tension at the table.
Our DM had us on an island to retrieve an artifact for someone. There was fog. Dimensional fucking spiders. But that was fine.
What was not fine was the traveller sitting in their cloak near a campfire, their back to us. Like all was normal, despite the fog and spiders popping in and out nearby.
Our fighter went to talk to the stranger, and the moment he touched them, the thing stood up tall, had no face but a gaping hole of a mouth to breathe in... something from us.
It was the first time that our characters could potentially be crippled (I hadn't ever heard of strength or int or wis damage before, I didn't know something could lower our stats).
The thing walked slow but had an aura of paralysis to force us to stay put until it reached us. And it never stopped walking.
It kept going after us for our whole adventure on this island. Our characters couldn't stop for a break, or it would catch up to us.
And of course, we also had to face our characters' fears down in the central dungeon. With that thing behind, after us. We really, really had that tension at the table - the DM even found a way to tell us it was coming without having to say it, he just tapped its footsteps on the table. To this day, tapping a slow rhythm on the table triggers uncomfy smiles and giggles amongst us. The player who played the fighter even chose to give his character a new deep fear, the fear of that thing specifically.
Fun times!
Theres currently a kickstarter from the LoA team called "Crooked Moon" thats all about dark folk horror, for any one interested
I know it's been almost a month now but can I just say your comment put me on to pledging this Kickstarter and I'm now going to use it for my upcoming Gothic horror campaign. So thanks for the tip! Also, the Crooked Moon turned out to be the highest funded 5e Kickstarter ever so that's pretty cool.
Steinhardt's guide to the eldritch hunt is another good option
D&D is also a tricky system in that the players by default are often combat focused and powerful. You really have to play to ambience and themes to get the effect, rather than the monster itself.
Isn't the Ravenloft setting horror themed by design?
@@robertchmielecki2580 Yes, but it isn't necessarily always a horror story. Although, Curse of Strahd did a decent job at it.
@@robertchmielecki2580*themed*, yes, but 5E took out a lot of Ravenloft's mechanical teeth
Today I saw a short that inspired a new character: the minstrel-hating sword bard who doesn't realize his own class.
Listening to you introduce your horrifying mother, I heard my bard panic, prancing in place as he tries to fan the tears back in his face. "Guys," he sobs, "I think we're in a horror.... No, you don't understand... I'm the pretty one and the pretty one's always the first to die!"
A sign of a great story teller is when an introduction can bring a rando's character not only to life, but to an existential crisis.
I once played an Orc ganster in a Shadowrun game who didn't believe in magic and the supernatural. The GM chose to make it a horror campaign where we were going up against a powerful vampire. My character was all-in on the mission, but didn't believe in vampires. Being the brute of the team, the other characters expected him to stake the vampire, but he thought that was silly and instead relied on his trusty submachineguns.
That was a lot of fun. Led to some situations where the vampire was as confused as we were, and he managed to escape and then we all had to figure out what to do next.
Concerning the last point, I think a good balance in horror games is for the players to feel strong but also very vulnerable. There’s a special kind of tension when something is working but it feels like it could go off the rails at any time
I remember one DM tip ages ago where they were describing how they make goblins more then weenie punching bags.
They made them into little cruel cockney thugs, and even weak, if they had the chance they would do mean things the players hated to give them more of a threat.
They would maybe try to steal a magic item and escape, or if a player got down they would mercilessly gang up and fight dirty kick and stabbing the downed player until full death.
That kinda stuff prob can work with horror too! Try to have consequences the players truly want to avoid. Zombification, death of a beloved NPC, etc?
Our table had a great genre awareness moment during our horror session when I described a lonely, dilapidated cabin in the spooky woods surrounded by fog, not long after they had already encountered a shadowy figure with one glowy eye that ripped an NPC apart and disappeared into the fog... One of the players went "we're going to go to that spooky cabin, aren't we?" And they did the stupid thing by going up to the cabin, but then they did a smart thing that I didn't expect, by opening the door from a distance and throwing in a rock that the artificer infused and using an animal to look into the cabin, and therefore avoided the horrible scene of walking in and looking up to see dozens of baby Ankhegs sleeping on the ceiling. Needless to say, they found a *different* way to progress the adventure after that! No less spooky, but full of character agency.
A trick that I used recently is the stacking effect.
In the RPG setting that we play in, rats are the "holy" animals of the nameless, the god of pure evil.
So I created a battle against time where things got worse and worse.
They encountered a village where people get slaughtered by some animals.
One of the villagers helps them to learn more about the animal here.
That villager turns out to be a really nice, sympathetic and helpful bloke, eager to help the heroes.
They soon realise that their foe is a lycanthrope.
Little do they know that the critter is none other than their new friend!
This is where the stacking comes in.
1. They're hunting a really dangerous and vicious monster.
2. The monster is their friend, who obviously doesn't know what he's doing.
3. He turns into the monster before their very eyes!
4. The only cut is it's death.
5. They thought it would be a wereWOLF... but it turns out to be a wereRAT! Remember? The rest being the critter of the nameless?
Horror, on top of horror, on top of horror, ...
Stacking effect!
Lycanthropy is actually pretty easily cured. Knock out the friendly villager, cast Remove Curse. Done.
My most successful moment in running a horror campaign was built around an NPC who was with the party. Her mother was a hag, and throughout the adventure she kept having more and more uncomfortable "hag thoughts." "I wonder what that kid tastes like." That sort of thing. The NPC was very uncomfortable with this, and it only got worse when a fight with some ghouls left her infected with ghoul fever, a disease that causes cannibalistic insanity and death. She had to try really hard not to eat parts of corpses, and towards the end of the adventure, she was a sobbing, nervous wreck. Right before the final boss, she snapped and tried to run off to find "Mother," but the party incapacitated her and tied her up before they went to fight the boss.
I can see ways in which such an NPC could frustrate or annoy players, but in this case they really connected with and sympathized with her. It probably helped that she was a Cleric who was otherwise helpful much of the time, so they got attached before she started becoming more of a burden. But I think having this character undergo a mental breakdown in front of the players really got them in the mood of the insanity-type horror of the rest of the adventure. And, as a bonus, it made the bit of the ending montage after the final boss was defeated when the NPC was still tied up but sleeping peacefully feel really nice. The players knew that THEY did that for her.
Dang, thats awesome! Well done :).
Really cool
expert play on your part! showcasing insanity and 'going crazy' horror without imposing that on PCs. well done (i love that ending, so happy for her
@@mackenzireese9476 It hasn't happened yet, but eventually we are going to do a sequel campaign set a few years later, and I plan to have that PC reappear in a minor supporting role, showcasing that she is doing much better now (but has also become a vegetarian).
@@michaelramon2411 😆 sounds awesome. I'd definitely invest in some tofu after that experience too!
Great timing with these tips! Working on a one shot for some friends the week of Holloween. I have most of my background for the story and significant characters worked out (just need some names) setting it up to possibly work as a story hook into a longer campaign. I need to work up some descriptive "reminders" to use for some characters and locales. Wonderful and insightful as always! Thx
Indeed timing is splendid
Ambience and scary music is great but when you combine it with silence, it's chef kiss!
Have music and ambiance during the build up, get your players use to it and then when you present the threat, hit them with silence turn everything of. It's super effective. The players know that shit just got real and their terrified. It worked wonders on my group atleast 😊
Reminds me of the lich's speech in adventure time. Someone had added music and while it did fit, it wasnt as chilling as the original which had no soundtrack
Love the bone puns. They're frightingly funny.
They are very humerus
glad they tickled your funny bone 😎
Pacing is also incredibly important for horror. This also applies to how you speak, slowing down to build tension speeding up when the action strikes.
All incredible advice as always. Atmosphere is paramount when it comes to horror. Something I'll add is that word choice and description can make a big difference as well. The forest doesn't sway, it creaks. The tower doesn't rise, it looms. Candles that would shine, now gutter and flicker. As mentioned, D&D and other TTRPGs are played in the imagination, so anything that can be done to make the imagined space as foreboding and ominous as possible only contributes to the atmosphere. And the reminder on content boundaries is always appreciated!
Some other choice phrases I love to use are the monster never just moves it lurches, lumbers, crouches, skitters, scampers, bounds, leaps, etc. The wind doesn't just exist it whispers, rattles, sighs, howls or screeches. Also personifying inanimate objects like you did with the tower. The chest squats at the end of the room, the gate lets out a shrill cry of pain, the sagging roof moans in protest as the weight of the oppressively clinging moss and dirt pushes its spine into an unnatural position.
I had somewhat of a horror session recently, my players had to deal with a hag who disguised as a beautiful woman. I told them to get in their character’s heads and picture the absolute peak of beauty. One player could kind of see through the illusion, and so I gave hints every now and then of the horrible hag that was underneath; A polite smile turned into a hideous snarl for a moment, and a manicured hand shaking theirs was suddenly a multi-jointed claw. Got some fun reactions from them :)
I'm going to be trying out Candela Obscura in a week, and this is perfect for developing the horror atmosphere! I've developed different music playlists, but all these other tips of delaying the big reveal and pitfalls to avoid are just what I was missing! I'll just have to work hard to wait to crack any jokes until after the session
You can also let your players/you crack jokes whenever the horror isn't being described. I always tell my players "don't make fun of the horror but anything else is fair game!" It keeps the horror sacred, allows the story to build tension while also letting players get out some of that nervous energy. It keeps it fun, yet spooky! And if anyone forgets that rule, I gently remind them that this is a collaborative storytelling game we're playing and it really kills the vibe when they do that. It usually only takes one or two reminders before everyone is on board and having fun playing scared when bad stuff happens.
@@sarahcb3142 That sounds perfect thank you so much!
Oh man, I can't wait to play Candela Obscura! It looks so fun!
@@sarahcb3142 It's a difficult thing to do great, but you can also tell your players that any jokes they make about the horrors have to be fully in character, and will probably be used against them in the campaign. This is an actual thing from multiple pieces of horror media, the characters will let their guard down with a tension defusing joke, only to be met with the horrors immediately afterward. "Humor Invites the Horror"
This will, if discussed ahead of time, be a great tool to build tension, because they know from the start that if they make a joke about the thing they need to be scared of, it WILL show up to make them regret it.
@@tiph3802 I really can't recommend Blades in the Dark strongly enough instead, Candela has but it's not a very good game, it's based on a genre of games that Blades is sort of the pioneer for though, you'd probably have a lot of fun with it if you think Candela looks cool.
Many years ago (I've not played D&D in over a decade), I ran a single campaign where I borrowed from Silent Hill - mainly the scenery and the world flip flopping between normal town and the fog shrouded town. Most was atmosphere and the players really enjoyed it, living out their "horror movie hero" fantasies. There were many seemingly random checks throughout. After facing off against the big evil at the end and someone finally succeeded their check, it was revealed that the whole party was basically in a group delusion thinking they were saving the town, but in reality (well game reality) they just massacred an entire town of innocents. That was the end
I did a spooky session recently using the false hydra!
I tweaked it a bit to be a Plant, a result of durach (dark druid magic). As they traveled through the town overrun with trees and foliage, they would hear whispers from the trees themselves, they would grow louder the more they failed stealth checks. On a final failure, the blights the former citizens were transformed into began peeling themselves from the bark and vine of the environment, in search of fresh meat
Having players roll initiative before they see what they're fighting is ingenius.
A few of my friends struggle a lot with horror when DM’ing, and on the few occasions I’ve DM’d myself, I tend to implement a few horror elements myself (though the games aren’t nearly serious or long enough to keep it consistent). But one of my DM’s ran a horror game wonderfully, and it’s one of my favorite games I’ve ever played.
It was a game based on the standard 80’s summer camp horror movie, but it worked so wonderfully well. The monster was a changeling sort who would pretend to be our fellow counselors (even my fellow player once! It was super cool), and after putting its next victim into a nightmare, it would often kill them in a very brutal fashion. The killings had a set order based on archetypes, and it was so much fun having characters act differently to try and avoid their deaths once their turn came up.
She set up such wonderful atmosphere for the games, killing off an NPC when we were away from camp, and attempting to kill two others before our PC’s were up next in order. What made the tension even greater during the sessions was that we saved the first NPC, so we knew it could be done, so there was the pressure to succeed even if the odds were insurmountable. It was just so much fun, and getting to cut off the monster’s head with a superheated Greataxe as the forest burnt down is still my favorite monster kill over three years of play :)
And don't forget to discuss lines and veils, before you do a horror session. Do respect everyone's boundaries, and don't make fun of someone else's. It's not silly, even for otherwise tough adults, to not want to experience certain things in a DND session. Some of us feel very strongly with our characters, to a point where trauma can potentially bleed over and affect the player. That's not weak, it's a different focus on roleplay. Sadly I have heard and read so many stories about this kind of player having had bad experiences with horror themes, and I can add my own first hand account. Please be mindful of this and maybe offer your players some safety tools, even if they are all big, tough, grown up men. You never know when something might hit a bit too close to home.
So glad to see this right now! I'm DM'ing a one-shot in a couple weeks for my second time DMing a session ever and they want to do a Halloween themed game so this is perfect.
I've been running a horror game (Vampire the Masquerade 🧛♂️ 🤘) for about a year and half now and I got to say these tips are spot on 👍
My most succesfull horror game went like this.
Characters were traped in a pocket dimension. They transformed into a dolls. (players could choose how they looked like). No abilities, no weapons... they had to find stuff in the house. Your leg got cut off by a giant scissors trap? Better find a needle and put it back. Hammer can be a weapon against the little things in the basement. They had to get creative. And they did.
But during the night... the Big Thing walks the house. You better run, you better hide, because you can not fight it.
They had to hide during the nighttime and explore the house during the day, finding shadows of previous victims, finally finding heart of the Big Thing, destroying it.
Weird traps, all the scarry doll tropes... They did not know it during the game, but every time they helped a doll in the house not to be destroyed or something (Like risking their lives for a doll about to be crushed by a falling stuff, or just sitting on a seesaw, playing a bit, listening to a music one of dolls played... ), they saved one of the kids they went in to find. They were very, very happy when they got out and found out they got everyone out.
Good times.
A villain that I made up has upset/traumatized/unease players for ages: Secrets. Forewarned; for a mature player-base. Wanted something that was very much a creepy murder-mystery.
He is a human that has a couple of abilities. First is invisibility, self explanatory, and the other is the ability to read thoughts. This one needs some background. In his youth the ability to read a person's thoughts; however, the kicker is that he can't turn it off. Over the years hearing others' thoughts stole away his sanity. The only time he receives some reprieve is focusing on a secret that a person has (the more juicer/vile the better). Again over time this became an obsession to the point he will kill the person because only he can have the secret. Either one day I'll ask players to come up with a secret or two that heir character may have in background or in gameplay. I'll also set up that there is a string of murders happening in an area to hook them in. He also writes "Secrets" on the walls of his victims... a fun way have the players investigate why the person was murdered in the first place.
He works in the shadows and will only get into combat if he has the advantage. Looks wise Secrets has fairly pale grey skin, unkempt hair, and almost black brown eyes with a slender build. He wears tattered clothing and carries a magically enhanced straight razor or slender sword ("scary sharp"). To add flavour I usually eat or drink something that cools me down enough that I can act a shiver and stutter. Here is some dialog I wrote of him once for my creative writing class:
Spittle runs from the corner of his mouth in a gleeful smile, " Y-Y-You has a secret! I want it... Please! N-N-No keeping it, selfish elf!"
Great video :)
I’ve had a great time flipping this on it’s head in my game. Most of my party is undead and the living members are a very scary sort. They make most of the horror and get very creative in doing so. I tend to push back with the witch hunters and knights they fight but ultimately they send guards and civilians running whenever they turn up.
10:05. A former table I was with had a host/hostess couple who liked to play characters and had guest DM’s often.
In 2019 for Halloween they put a costume on their Boston Terrier that made it look like a spider.
The DM was arachnophobic and ran from the front door upon seeing the pet’s festive look.
I've been running a comedic horror Ravenloft game and my tip is to looked for monsters, spells and game mechanics that are scary but also fun to roleplay - like the nothic weird insight, detect thoughts or Aboleth's disease. I find it helps at Session Zero to make sure you find out what your players do/don'ts are for a horror campaign - but also to include fears and weaknesses in character creation so you have the ability to play on this later! For my Ravenloft game I made it very clear that the PCs are Dreadlords and 'the worst of the worst' so the players actually like seeing them fail. This created a really fun dynamic that I can go from something surreal and kind of silly (but also horrible) or have the characters end up in a very serious/bleak situation where they may not find a way out. However I also think it's important to consider a saftey-net for if things get too bleak/bad so that it doesn't risk being a bummer for your players. Eg I had a mechanic that if a player answers yes to 'Have they given up all hope?' the PC would be taken to the Carnival of Dread where there was friendly NPCs to help them cheer up.
The look that trick-or-treater you threw over your shoulder as you walked away from the house was perfect.
I helped a friend make something of a horror-ish themed first mission. It was inspired off a funny story of myself as a child though without the actual horror elements. So it starts with the party hearing some crying up a tree. They notice a tabaxi child up there who tells them they got stuck and their sibling who was at the bottom of the tree never came back. The child has no idea how long their sibling has been gone. The party that played this did get the child down and helped then went along with the hook for the next part of this, looking for the child’s sibling. Except it leads them into darker and darker areas. Eventually the party, after defeating many scary things and with saved child in tow, finds the sibling….well…they find the sibling’s remains. The saved child approaches the body and spirit comes forth, both hug and thank the party and then both fade away, leaving the first child’s bones to clatter to the ground. Both tabaxi children were ghosts all along. If the remains are brought back the the villagers nearby they party is set to find out more about the children and the parents who passed away with grief. The villagers are supposed to gratefully but mournfully help bury the children and are gifted the reward the parents had offered to any who had information on the children. Now this is just the main plot. I skipped over some of the encounters but the path to the second child is also a bit of a maze with lots of things that try to trick and mislead you and poke at your character’s unease before scaring you. It’s why that dm had the player’s write down the fears and insecurities of their characters (and emphasized that they needed to be usable so the players didn’t include their own off limit ones). There is other branching horror themed adventures around this village that the party can explore. The idea is that the fey wild and the shadowfell both border this area and it’s created a weird anomaly and mixing of those energies to create horrifying things. I left dm to figure out rest of it. It was a fun thing to help them create though! Oh and the childhood incident this was inspired off of? I climbed a tree and got stuck in it. I sent my sister inside the house to get our dad but dad had the tv on so sister was utterly distracted. I neighbor noticed me after some hours up the tree and got me down to escort me home. As for why my parents didn’t question where I was, they are very used to me quietly reading in my room and thought that was what I was doing. My sister was hyper focused on the tv the entire time and, being we are both adhd and she was quite young, I don’t blame her, though I still use it as fodder to tease her even now. That was that incident and I climbed that same tree not even a week later. Was able to get down though. Anyway, so that’s how that incident inspired this one as I twisted that into a horror genre story. The other elements in this story the dm included obsession, forgetting, broken promises, and not everything is as it seems. There is also a hag planned in there somewhere. Honestly it’s pretty dang cool and almost wish I was a player lol. The dm also throws in some cute but creepy child voices singing unsettling nursery rhymes. Pretty cool.
I am running a semi-horror campaign. Where at the moment they keeo dipping in and out of necromancer cultists and their newborn undeads. In the last encounter they had planned to spar amongst themselves in the morning since nothing was happening. But their morning was cut short by a party member’s friend contacting them through their circlets of communicatipn, those that send over a mile’s distance. They shoved their breakfast in their mouth as they moved towards where their friend had called them. Supposedly that morning 15 guards had been sent to investigate a cultist hideout. Upon arriving a bloodied limping guard exited the alleyway, and in a final dying word spoke to a random civilian, asking them to send more guards. The players got to see their friend arrive, but shortly after another townsgyard exited the alley, however the skin limp, the eyeballs missing. And a limp in its step, before the nevk curled back over the head. This was a boneless and a skeleton. Roll initiative. And in the next one there was a wriath or smtn. An intelligent zombie boss with 6 zombies following him. (All town guards.) and he spotted them during their stealth (nat 20 sgainst a 20 stealth) and during the fight he would single out and drain party members. Downing 2/6 and almost draining their lives. With 2 party members having 2 failed death saves. The party got desperate, felt cornered and trapped, yet were the only ones with an ability to move anywhere, as the alleyway square had 2 exits. And they blocked one.
Since you mentioned other TTRPGs more specifically designed for horror, it’s worth mentioning: You can steal from those systems! Lots of Call of Cthulhu scenarios or locations can be reskinned without all that much effort as D&D scenarios or locations.
The delay is what made Jaws such an impactful movie. We don't get a clear look at the shark until we're well into the second act. By then, we've only been shown the aftermath of its terrible work, and been given time to build up how monsterous it may really be.
And the irony of that is that the director WANTED to show the shark, but he didn't think the animatronic one looked all that good, so he decided to hide it.
@@RumpusImperatorhah, you mean Spielberg? Just funny to hear him just called "the director". Cool how a challenge led to a better movie though!!
Exploration is a big part of horror. Play hide and seek with the monster until they locate on artifact to stop the monster, or find a way to help the person in need. The trick is to make someone dread going down a certain hallway, and then creating a reason to force them down that hallway.
The SFX for the title logo was perfect. Flawless. I noticed that.
Ginny's first Do Not point has really clarified why my game of Bluebeard's Bride came with some frustration despite really discussing with my players what they wanted and if that was it.
Also to players: if your GM is talking to everyone as a group and individually to get a sense of what people want and don't want, please be fully honest and clear! If you want a game that's winnable and not focused on having fun through telling a story, or vice-versa, explicitly tell your GM! Don't insist that whatever they want to do is fine, because then everyone will miss out on the best version of that game where everyone is having fun
Some of the most tense moments in D&D thus far has been:
- Encountering my first dragon while escorting villagers. Doing things to make the dragon target me was both desirable (Save the villagers) but also risky (I get killed by the dragon if i aggro him too much)
- Being ambushed by a cult... but they run past me and into the temple. There's 3 paths and choosing one, knowing the cultists could jump us at any point... while at the same time taking too long meant the clerics/acolytes would be attacked instead was heavy
- Overwhelming odds. Rouge explored an orc camp and so we stealth/sneak into the least protected area. We kill the 2 orcs but not before they sound the horns and close the doors. We either spend time opening it again or bolt to a different exit while swarms of orcs find us every so rounds.
- Player betrayal. We literally just started so finding the first boss after 2-3 sessions we are ready to take this vampire down... except one of our main fighters decides to side with the vampire. We realize that if we dont deal with the traitor or the vampire ASAP, we will get very easily picked up one by one now that the fight balance is tilted in the enemy's favor.
One of my favourite moments as a DM was narrating a long rest the players took in a haunted house during a storm. Just describing the low creaks, the muffled wind, thunder and rain lashing at the window, distant noises that sounded like voices perhaps?
One player cracked a joke during their watch and I just. Looked at them. And carried on without laughing or smiling.
It got to the point when I described slow, halting footsteps approaching the door, one character actually woke up another and they both huddled in the far corner with weapons drawn, only for the footsteps to just... carry on down the hall and fade away.
Even though all I'd done was slowly read out a small paragraph I'd (mostly) pre-written, it was far and away the most engaging ten minutes of the session and we didn't even role for initiative lol
I. Hate. Commercials.
But yours are so entertaining and clever that I enjoy them almost as much as the subject at hand. lol Quite the talent, Ms. G! Keep up the great work - content and ads alike! 🥰
Last halloween I run a game where I manager to scare all of the players around the table, I tried to set the mood early by trying to do similar things that are said in the video by having the monster in this case the vampire, making noises like evil laughs and clinging with a sword while the players were walking around in a spooky labyrinth. Then at one point I popped a balloon that was hidden underneath the table. And from that moment on the mood was set. Then like maybe an hour or so into the session, i had a third part person, quietly come into the appartment. I made sure to throw a glimse over the person to slowly make the players realize that something was up and when one of the players noticed them they run out and slammed the door behind them. From that moment on the players were really scared and they all loved it afterwards. A session I am really Proud of.
When I have DM'd one of my favorite things to do to create a creepy atmosphere is if a creature they are fighting can telepathically communicate, send texts to only one player (at a time) with what the voice is saying to them and make sure that they understand the voice can only be heard by them. Back in 3.5 I did a wendigo fight and wendigos can whisper to one creature pseudo telepathically (back then). It would whisper things like, "turn back" if the creature possessed by the wendigo was in control, or if the wendigo spirit was in control it would whisper things like, "just a little further" or "time to feed." I got a lot of good feedback from my players when I used the texting tactic and it helped them get in the mindset of a character feeling "crazy" out of fear.
Pretty great tips. I've done writing challenges where I wrote some TTRPG horror modules and one of the best sources of advice I found was blogs about horror movies. Specifically how they're written and made. A lot of the tips in this video are similar to ones I found there. Especially the foreshadowing of the horror, or what I've heard as "the glimpse into the unknown." It doesn't have to be the monster directly; Think of the beginning of Tremors where the audience is shown the townsfolk getting pulled underground.
Love your profile picture from LOGH!
Apparently I'm pretty good at doing horror as a GM.
I know this because several of my players confessed to me (sometimes months after the fact) that some of my narration genuinely terrified them, which is a reaction I actually didn't expect, but still made me feel very proud of myself :)
There was a campaign I was part of where we started adding some things from Magic the Gathering. In this case… Glistening Oil.
There were a pair of dragons that had been felled and left to rot. From their wounds, mouths, and eyes, a black ichor dripped.
The players were wary… except one, the rogue. The rogue went in to take a tooth from one of the dragons. As he came closer, the ichor defied gravity and trailed across the dragon’s corpse towards the rogue. The warlock spotted this, thought quick, and teleported the rogue out with barely enough time to avoid the ichor splashing where the rogue once stood.
music and anticipation does alot. this sunday i had one of my villains attack the players. they were walking down the road and all of a sudden i put on scary music and clouds came out of nowhere to darken the sky. They also had a feeling of being followed. That alone with a wisdom check made them use 2 or 3 spellslots to prepare. Now, if i were mean i could have told them that whatever it was moved away and have it return, after the spell effects wore off xD
This all makes me remember a pitfall my DM accidentally fell into last year, when he tried to run a sorta "nightmare episode" session.
Our DM had asked us at the beginning of the month, "What is your character's greatest fear?" Come Halloween, he acted on them. In the middle of a Spelljammer campaign, all our characters fell asleep, and experienced personalized horrors. For most of us, it was crazy effective: The narcissist experienced absolute depression from being ignored, despite all his rampaging fire spells; the former slave Hadozee lost 100% of his shit seeing other Hadozee caged and tortured; the dragonborn soldier re-experienced the consequences of refusing an order to attack civilians; and so on.
Except, one of us was... I'll put it nicely and say he was bUiLt DiFfErEnT from the rest of us. When his character was confronted with a "greatest fear," his response was ".... k....." I don't mean that this player was super-resistant to horror elements, that "k" meant he gave absolutely zero shits about anything that wasn't him doing cool stuff. This player was the sort who'd play on his phone the entire combat round, then when told "your turn" would say "yay, finally, MY turn.... what can I do?"
I guess this is all a long way to make the gentle reminder that, sometimes, it's the player who's a complete failure.
heard that one a long time ago and took it to heart. few people are afraid of the dark, most are afraid of the unknown
Subtle conditioning can work too. I once had this "bbeg" who was a tiny, grotesque looking aberration of an all gray harlequin puppet that was a dark fey creature haunting the characters dreams. It gave them nightmares of all sorts... and the only hint to its presence was the sound of a tiny (tinker)bell that i subtly rang while describing the scene... they grew so... "fond" of the sound, that hearing it today still makes them uncomfortable... 11 years later... 😈
The one time I made a horror themed one shot, my level 5 players got scared of the thing I hadn't expected. The intellect devourer. Safe to say, our Barbarian died to it and our Warlock made a contract with Vecna to revive them which made our Paladin just go NOPE and walked away while they were doing the contract making. 😂
i will begin running curse of strahd this october so i will definitely use some of your tips
There is a good page or two at the start of the book that gives some tips too! Good Luck! :)😮
Once that pumpkin finds out how cool World Anvil is you're gonna be the busiest house on the block!
My favourite trick for creating player unease is handing them an envelope of information about their character that the character is not immediately aware of. Now this is potentially contentious; player agency, lines and veils, etc. But, if you have players who are willing to engage with the horror of the unknown self, it's great. For example, a horror campaign where the first session opens with the players discovering their characters are undead, and the envelopes they received in Session Zero are how they died and what the consequences of that are.
Love the bone jokes ! Also would love to see a video on how to use music/ atmosphere to feel more immersed in the campaign universe!
I know of a good atmospheric sounds video that's not too intrusive, let me see if I find it in my playlists
Neat @@TeknuAddict
well boo if I post a link here UA-cam will just delete it, but you can find my public playlist "Horror ambiance" that has all my favs I saved up for my MOTW game, that never was😢. So I recommend starting with a less creepy one like "DARK FOREST Ambiance and music" by Martia's Muses and then ramping up the creep factor with "Could you stay here all summer? Haunted Summer Camp" by Mystical Soundscapes, (LOVE that one!) Finally the last one I'll mention is "Night Mist" by Adrian von Ziegler, which is a 20 minute eerie dark lullaby with thunder and rain. Less atmospheric but with the right context can be used to great effect. Hope this helps.
I've also considered getting a sound program, and getting a few long loop tracks with subtly creepy sounds. Then I could start with perfectly normal not creepy ambiance, and just slowly start adding the creepy loops, at low volume and then gradually increasing them, and wait and see how long it takes for the players to notice the atmosphere has changed from peaceful woodland to haunted forest 😂
Well, I agree that player buy in is definitely important, a player cracking a joke doesn’t have to break your immersion. After all, if you’ve got a big bad monster, who can literally TPK the party, that can always overwhelm any jokes they might make. And comedy often appears in horror movies anyway. Very often, in a movie a funny moment is followed by a very serious jump scare.
If you’re worried that something like that might happen with your party, even if they have buy in, I would recommend incorporating into the environment something that will set them straight if they make a joke. One version could be if the character takes things lightly, and the other could be if the player doesn't.
For example, reskin a creature that is attracted to jokes and laughter, and whoever made the last joke as a character now is being attacked by the creature, or multiples of it. Make it something that is difficult for the characters to battle. Make a part of the puzzle that the character cracking a joke or laughing is what attracts them, so if the characters work that out, they can then use that as a strategy to distract the creatures, and find a way to defeat them. Some kind of phantom or ghost comes to mind.
On the other hand, if it’s the player who is cracking the joke, start rolling percentage dice on the table in front of the players. Have a table behind the screen of what might appear to attack them if they keep cracking jokes, add a D4 in front of them, and then keep adding bigger dice to that roll until they ask what the roll is for. Let them know that this is a magical place, an ancient place, a place where anything can potentially happen. on your table, have several effects that can occur when the dice roll lower than say 80. And then, as the rolls get higher over 90, perhaps small creatures appear, centipedes, rats, a bee swarm, or a fly swarm. As the rolls reach 100 and above, more serious foes appear. if the dice get up to the point where you’re rolling percentage dies plus a D 20 and it gets past 115, have something appear that there is no way that the characters can survive. If they’re wise, they’ll run away, but if they don’t, they will definitely take the location much more seriously.
Yes, setting is the sound. I often play the fallout 1&2 soundtrack when running “scary” scenes
I feel called out by the first mistake- I don't do scary things very often and when I do (usually alone thankfully, with others only if they want me to) I often end up instinctually trying to dispel it and diffuse it. I knew I didn't like feeling scared, but wow. Anxiety's a bitch 😅
Also, when you mentioned the uncertainty of what to do with your turn in the mother and children encounter, I felt that but like in a bad way; I feel like I would have spent an eternity trying to decide on what to do. This sometimes happens in intense encounters and such, it's something I continue to struggle with. I wonder if you or anyone has any advice for that, about managing analysis paralysis and how to figure out what you want to do.
Haha, same! I haven't played DnD yet, let alone a horror session, but if I do play a spooky game, I can see myself making dopey puns and only realizing afterwards "Oh, shoot, I'm ruining the horror! Sorry!" XD
For the analysis paralysis (LOVE that term, btw! never heard it before), like I said, I haven't played DnD, so I'm just spitballing here, but I wonder if maybe it would be a good idea to tie that into your character? Like, make it so that your CHARACTER also has a tendency to stop for too long to think or otherwise have "deer in the headlights" reactions to tense situations.
I actually used all of the first 3 suggestions in my first homebrew campaign 5 years ago when my party fought a chain devil and a pack of hell-hounds.
After the initial fight of hounds, they hid in the woods and hunkered down. Since they were being hunted I knew it was horror time.
I lowered the lights, had a red glow going, and a rain sound effect from Spotify playing in the background. (Suggestion 2)
I kept the chain devil from showing up for as long as possible, with the sounds of scraping chains from the chests they had coming to life and moving across the camp. (Suggestion 3)
Then I was circling my players and talking in a low voice, and describing the environment to build tension. (Suggestion 1)
Suddenly that tension snapped when Spotify cut to commercial and jump-scared us (including me) with a max volume ad for a camera.
This horror moment has forever lived on as the ‘I’m your camera’ incident in our friend group. Good times.
Not a DM and I don't think I'll ever have the skills to be one but I really love when they write secret notes or wispers to one player in particular a piece on knowledge to increase the mystery
Good idea! A disturbing nightmare they have, or a voice only they can hear?
I have been running a horror game recently and my players have been loving it, i think personally my favourite horror trope is subverting expectations, slow and methodically getting players to expect a horror and then pulling the rug is very fun and they all appreciate the world building because they know that there is something bigger and badder just waiting to be revealed
I feel like getting player buy-in is really the most important thing about this. Like... you have to have players who are willing to play their characters like they're not powerful enough to just fight the stupid monster.
As an aracnophobe, I hate that giant spiders are such a go to monster in so many games and stories, but I have particular trauma from Dnd minis. My roommate had been decorating the apartment with his mini collection, which I thought was pretty cool, until I found the giant spider by the TV. I told him I didn't mind the minis but could he please not put out any spider ones, they made me uncomfortable, he responded that he hadn't put out any spider ones and I pointed out the one by the TV... And the spider moved! It was a wolf spider that had been standing on an empty large creature base, I ran out of the room and had to be repeatedly assured by the roommate that he had caught it and moved it far away (he didn't like to kill spiders, so he usually tried to catch them and put them in the bushes out in the courtyard of the apartment complex). So now when I see minis even if I know it's plastic and attached to the base my brain goes 'what if it's real again' and it makes me uncomfortable. I like getting into the world and imagining everything that's happening, but as soon as spiders show up I check out, I'll still play the game but now it's numbers and dice and decision trees to me instead of a character in a full vibrant world
Oh, damn, that kinda sounds like a horror movie: You blame someone close to you for the spooky stuff, telling them not to prank you or whatever, and then the other person goes "I didn't..." and then the truth is revealed in a shocking turn of events.
Like, you LITERALLY lived a trope I've seen done so many times.
There's a homebrew RPG I'm currently running that revolves around a town populated only by clones of the main characters. There was a moment where they were goofying off while walking in for the first time, noticing how the clones mimicked them and saying funny things for them to copy. The thing is, the moment they started laughing about it, every single clone in the vicinity started laughing too, and the moment I described the chain reaction of laughter they created it immediately grounded them back down into the "ooooh shit" mentality. It wasn't something grandiose but it's currently one of the scenes that made them the most scared, you could feel the funny laughs turning into nervous ones as they tried to get somewhere else other than the middle of the street surrounded by laughing clones
You inspired me to write an entire halloween one-shot based on that small snippet of an introduction story with your Monsters and everything!!!! Micropest step in it, looking forward to a scary spooky Halloween, one shot!!!!
This is the first time I've seen her mention a non-D&D RPG in a video. I really appreciate her making that acknowledgement of the rest of the games out there.
This might be the first time you've seen it, but it is certainly not the first time I have mentioned non-D&D RPGs! I have whole videos focused on non-D&D RPGs - not many, since in the end this is primarily a D&D channel, but they definitely exist! Just because my channel is not an "all TTRPGs" channel doesn't mean that I am not aware of or appreciative of other types of games.
@@GinnyDi This is really heartening to hear! I don't have a problem with D&D, that's not my angle, but I think a lot of people have no idea how wide the world of RPGs is and that's a shame, you know?
I love your videos and sense of humor. I recently played a Halloween test weekend for a DM friend. He has a long-term group but when working on details for something new the DM has old friends who cannot play every week and stand-bys wanting long-term join for a couple long sessions over a weekend. A person who always seems to have characters with his ooc knowledge of creatures was also there - usually blurting details and best ways to attack. Arg. However, I was pleasantly surprised when the DM did a great job with his Halloween campaign by mixing up creatures, spells, magic potions, using the townspeople to elevate the scary mood, making new bosses and creatures (ex: blending stats of 2-3 bosses then making a couple new balanced bosses). Lulls of feeling safe helped before getting wrapped in the mystery again. Clues, puzzles… and everything was logical. I wish I could be a fly on the wall when he starts the campaign for his long-term group tonight!
My players are going to be heading down the Deep Roads into an empty empire where the entire population disappeared overnight... it'll be GREAT!
My hot take(?) is that ambience is MANDATORY if you want to make the environment of your game scary. At the very least, it makes it way easier. Finding the right track to rack up the tension keeps my players on edge but remember to also give them time to breath. If they're ALWAYS on edge, it loses it's sting and becomes oversaturated.
Give players a little break before easing them back into the fear factor.
Ooh, Crispy's here! *fangirls* How would you advise handling this in a pbp game, where you're unable to use many of the typical ways to present ambience and atmosphere in that format?
It might just be me but, beyond techniques for ambience and narrative, I've found that D&D 5e, being a "heroic fantasy" system, can be tricky to run a horror-themed adventure in, at least beyond a few levels into the campaign. Very few things (unless you go complete overkill) can threaten the characters with insta-death and their magical capabilities will allow them to scry or spy to avoid the "surprise" monster and then quickly heal anything that they do suffer. Don't get me started on widely available darkvision - that monster lurking in the natural darkness, only the poor humans wouldn't spot it. If it exudes magical darkness that's a give-away too. You can implement mechanical rules like "stress" or "sanity", or try and isolate individual characters, to cause some player concern but that just becomes un-fun for the players.
I keep talking about my Candrla Obscura session that I’m writing, but I try to apply this as best I can. I have key notes on each segment or encounter including where and what the ultimate information gathered will be. So it’s more like “you will eventually have to go into that scary basement with that noise, but it’s up to you what you’re taking with you, be it flashlights, flash bangs, butcher knives, or crossbows.” The agency is there for them to utilize, but as investigators they will need to follow the breadcrumbs.
One of the scariest moments in my experience in D&D was when our DM had a Undead Minotaur in a Labrinth but he ended up messing up his perception roll so my party ended up walking out into a hallway and the Minotaur was just standing there silhouetted unmoving and face completely hidden. It was so unnerving. But it was all because our DM had bad luck in his rolls. So even your bad luck or oversight can be used to impress horror into players if it is described correctly.
You made me laugh with your puns. It takes a lot of spine to do them, trully.
Commenting on 2:53 , i love the idea of just having the pkayers enter an empty area and immediately roll initiative with there being no visible or obvious threat. I feel like that gives anticipation as well
"Di votee"! This is the first time I've heard that term. Love it!!
Great tips, my personal two favorite tips to add: 1) Have something that is deliberately in the "uncanny valley" aka "almost normal", like villagers who look and act "almost" like you'd expect them to but maybe one of them has a hidden third eye that sometimes seems to glimpse out of one of his ears when nobody is looking directly at him. And maybe the woman selling vegetables at the farm starts repeating sentences for no explainable reason after a few hours, seemingly talking to herself, as if stuck in a loop.
2) Have some abnormal "force" be a major obstacle that can't simply be beaten in combat, something like a deadly fog that surrounds the village at night, an intaglible and invulnerable shadow that leads travellers astray in the moors surrounding the town or the sound of cheerful singing luring children under the age of 8 into the woods with no dicernable source. There should definitely still be some bad guys to fight and there should also be a solution to getting rid of the evil "force" but those two don't have to be connected.
Happy Ravenloft month!
love this as for me what i did was "as you walk down the tunnel you start to hear a tick sound, much like a clock slow at first." they asked some questions poked things and then i kept going. "what you see is four metal statues about 5" 8" and two snakes close to the exit and as you keep walking the sound gets louder. so good and now they waiting for the tick, tick, tick. the tunnel was just the first of it, every time they hear it i try to make sure there is at lest three ways out for them and just let them chose oddly they keep making things worse.
I love your Halloween themed scenery! The skeleton cat is especially brilliant!
I remember how one of the best scares in video games ever was "game crashing" in Arkham Asylum. I recently played a Call of Cthulu game, however no real rules was given and I rarely had them throw dice. It was all about solving a murder mystery using logic on a story I wrote based on The shadow over Innsmouth. I wrote characters based on my friends. Such as my good friend who grew up fighting MMA was given a character who knew fighting and so on. And then I wrote a backstory and threw in mind twisting puzzles and encounters. It was a ton of fun. One character had to fight his younger self worse mistake, another was forced to face his sins and such. I gave all characters a backstory but also gave each player part of their backstory secretly to create tension between them. They all knew something the rest didn't. Either way, it was a ton of fun. All characters recognized themselves in their characters, hence the Arkham reference, and therefor connected more deeply to their characters since they more deeply reflected themselves in them. Then I used their own characters against them and the others while they tried to solve the murder. It was in person..so I used a lot of images and sound effects. Only one jump scare. Else it was just ambience like you mentioned. Build up the big unknown horror.
Best scare was however unintentional, I opened the door to the balcony for air and suddenly during the roleplay it slammed shut. 100 % would recommend to sneak the roleplay out of the actual roleplay to create a more... alive environment. My players were so engaged they sometimes forgot the outside world and the atmosphere was so much fun to play around. Lovecraft is gold here.
Also dare to act! I am rather new with GM/DM but in one scene I almost screamed at a player and that made him almost scream back. Force them to use sides of themselves thats natural, but not just the every day part. Its too... comfortable just being our regular old self constantly. We as GM want them on edge and uncertain.
We are Swedish, and it made such a difference in just playing it all in English. Easier to become someone else.
Ginny you are my favorite D&D youtuber. When I started DMing I used one of your "steal quest" for my session 0 and it went so good that now my campaign continues on it 46th Session. You are a great inspiration for us players and DMs that are both starting in the hobby or confident enough to try new things. Thank you so much for your hard work and creativity. You are golden! 🏅
I usually like to do Halloween specials for my D&D game and my game has more of a comedic tone and I decided to use dungeon Ai to help me get some ideas.
The first special the party was sent on a mission to find a valuable ruby but it happens to be in a old creepy house in the middle of nowhere.
And yet the party ended up summing a magic wizard from the 80s and somehow getting caught in a divorce trial between two monsters.
The second special was that the party was volunteering at a reopened camp that was actually an old demon burial ground.
And by the end of that session they befriended a Vampire named Nibus and adopted a spiderhuman hybrid.
Love your videos! Thanks for all the great advice!
I think an important lesson to learn from horror movies is *pacing*. The greatest horror movies have it down to a science; you can't just exist in maximum tension for too long, your nerves literally can't sustain it. You start to burn out and feel numb. In order to maximize your terror, you need to take some time to recuperate and sharpen your senses before building the suspense again. Good horror has a curve to it, of building tension, holding it as long as it remains effective, and then a sudden climax that releases the tension while getting your heart pounding. Then you need some down time to catch your breath before the next scare can be effective.
The trick is that this sort of cycle of suspense works best over chunks of time of one, two, or three acts of a movie. 45, 90, or 120 minutes. If you're playing a 4 hour game, or several games, you'll have to build and release several times. Don't try to just keep building and building and building, include some time for players to catch their breath so they're ready for the next thing.
This is good I think for almost any storytelling. "High moments" (action, drama, horror, romance, wonder) followed by "low" moments to recenter mentally.
It's just that much more noticable in horror movies.
Tangent: I've found I really love stories that can even make the mundane "low" moments engaging and wonderful. It can really make us get attached to characters to CARE when they get to the high moments.
Examples: Harry Potter - just going to class, or chatting in the common rooms/lunch room. The writing makes me feel like I'm there just shooting the shit with friends.
Ghibli/Miyazaki movies. Kiki's Delivery Service her doing chores around the bakery, or even walking down the street. Makes the city/world feel so real with the characters mannerisms and slow realistic actions.
Cowboy Bebop anime: The bounty hunter crew chases dangerous badguys in gunfights and spaceships but usually before and after they are lounging about the living room together nagging on each other, self reflecting, Jet (large muscle guy) has a few scenes where he just calmly trims his bonsais or cooks.
:)
This is a great tip and definitely worth factoring in!
Your puns are delightful, and you should be proud of them!
Great tips! Another one I found super helpful I was told years ago was that what is implied is often scarier than what is known. It's why Lovecraft's horror seems to have such a timeless appeal. When you leave your audience room to infer/imagine/guess what might be around the corner, it'll invariably be far more terrifying than what terrifies you, personally because they'll add bits of their own fears and phobias to that image. Lovecraft's elder gods are terrifying because they are alien and unknowable as well as being actual, physical threats. Make something terrifying and unknowable, and even the most mundane thing can become utterly terrifying. Case in point: Go read the Juji Ito manga Uzumaki. You'll never, ever, EVER see spirals the same way again.
Thanks so much Ginny! I'm about to run some spooky horror False Hydra one shots this month and this was just what I needed! You're the best!
I have an upcoming arc planned that is gonna be very fun, but will definitely require employing these rules. And it's gonna be wild considering the concept is a mixture of Freddy Krueger and Pod People, all inspired by the song "She Doesn't Sleep".
The bone jokes were great.
Having attempted horror in D&D previously, I feel like there are things that the game (and player expectations) have built into it that makes the experience immersive. The first is that D&D is built on the premise that the player characters are supposed to be heroes; sure, they might fear some bad dice rolls, but they ultimately expect to win every encounter. The second is that the magic spells, abilities, and magic items that players naturally gain by leveling up make threatening the players increasingly difficult. Not to say that it can't be done, but an encounter that can be cut short by Banishment or a barrage of Divine Smites isn't going to be scary, regardless of the atmosphere the DM can build up to that encounter.
You reminded me of the start of the new "IT" remake.
(spoilers for start of "IT" movie). A young adorable little boy wanders somewhere he shouldn't, finds IT, and gets horribly disfigured in a rapid brutal attack, then trys to get away, before being finished off.
It left me feeling like no one is safe, not even kids for the rest of movie I was worried for basically all characters, esp the kids could very quickly die at the drop of a hat.
So if we can find a way to translate that into piercing the Players feeling strong and confident near start of story might help?
One thing I did was have players roll initiative at the very start of the session, and then AFTER every combat. That allows the players to still roll initiative basically as normal but it doesn't give them a hint when the next encounter starts. On top of that private notes and chats are your friend.
Regarding the "unknown" element, I find giving local legends a name and description that's interesting (and not immediately associated with a common D&D monster) is really important when setting up tone and expectations. Even common monsters can become scary with the right atmosphere and foreshadowing, but if you call it a troll or a minotaur, the monster's out of the bag. Also make sure that the local legends include information that is spot-on, some that is vague, and some that is... incorrect, perhaps, but not completely useless.
I managed to set up a troll in this way - "the Bauka" was a local legend, a tall, gangly monster with matted dark fur and rending claws that supposedly hated the light, even though it had recently attacked during the day. The party chose to run off into the Vine District to save a missing girl by sneaking in, at night, with only a single hooded lantern out for visibility (so I got to play with all the poor lighting tropes, eyes reflecting light in the darkness, and so on). When it eventually was time for initiative and the Bauka started regenerating, things were tense. When it kept attacking the guy who was holding the lantern, one of my players was like, "Wait... it's not the light, it's afraid of fire!"
And then they realized that all they had was the lantern itself and six torches from their starting equipment :P It got a little survival horror for a bit - they drove the Bauka off by smashing the lantern over it's head and briefly setting it on fire, then set up an ambush to kill it later (using one of their own as bait).
Running Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, my players got the giggles during the break. It went on for several minutes and they couldn't stop. I had a soundtrack that I had been playing, but had put on pause. My players were like, "That did it. I'm ready." 😅
The triple Skeleton puns alone were a reason enough to give this video a Thumbs Up.
Planning on doing a spooky strixhaven one-shot this weekend, this really helped in deciding how to set the atmosphere! Thanks 🙏
Oh god. I did not know there is a T-shirt for TPK "We be goblins" Pathfinder module characters :)
A few halloweens ago I had the party secretly get swept away into basically the D&D version of the Matrix. I threw some combats at them that they would either barely make it through or die horribly. It built a lot of tension because the players didn't know they were in the Matrix until the first PC died and the actual character woke up strapped into some headgear that was wired to an iron golem.
In reality a wizard had captured the party, put them to sleep, and put them into a combat simulation to train the iron golem on how to fight and survive (a la the tyrant/mr. x/nemesis in resident evil slaughtering stars members)
It was a lot of fun and put the fear of the gods into the players because they had no idea about being in the Matrix, it seemed like they were just dreading the inevitable tpk.
Great video, also very appreciate that you didn't do any jumpscare because somehow people feel like they need to do it when talking about anything horror-related.