Something is tapping faintly from the toilet pipes.

The sound seems to be synched with your footsteps.

Another point; the hospital stafdf in general are stong advocates of the Cognitive school of phychology; so phobias are normally treated with the person facing them. This makes for really twisted situations where agoraphobics are thrown into people-filled rooms, claustrophobics are locked into small spaces, scotophobics are left in the dark, etc. Other treatments can be things like the doctor telling his schizophrenic patient that things the patient sees or hears aren't real, which is all and well, until the deranged individual that the doctor is, tries to take advantage of the patient's disbelief or reality for things.

And so on. Everything is supposed to be very pitch-black and disturbing to the players and their characters, with the few lights available probably snuffed out too quickly for them to use. There will be an overhanging goal, if it is about excape, revelation to the world, or deals with devils are up to the players, and I haven't thought about the great plot a lot yet, but give me every good idea you have.

>>10344341
OP here, heh, that's a good one. Could be used with the walls too.

I'm also thinking about a girl having an extreme bile-fascination with spiders; she's deathly afraid of them, yet obsessed with them, making her room (she's creepy, but rather harmless) a place of extreme contradiction; on one hand she has drawn pictures of spiders all over the walls, yet she almost jumps in chock every time she looks at one of them, she talks about arachnids almost constantly, but does it with the face of someone deathly afraid of blood describing a person dying from blood-loss after a sword-blow.

Add some "level two" elements, like the skittering of small feet, and the almost constant feeling being scaled by a handfull of the fuckers eveytime she's around, or you're in her room and the players will be at the edges of their seats...

under one door in the sanitarium, you can faintly hear the sounds of the sea. No one else can hear it when questioned and it's just indistinct enough to be the heartbet you can sometimes hear in your own ears. The door is always locked and the handle is always wet to the touch, but the corridor is very cold so is it condensation?

Put the players in Silent Hill and let Pyramid Head chase them around from setting to setting.

Have the players just keep finding teeth. Like, one at a time, but you can't walk through three rooms without finding one, just sitting there, dead center. Is something leaving a trail? Is someone collecting teeth? Are they even really teeth, or could they be bits of other bones carved to LOOK like teeth?

have them keep finding notes that say things like HELP! or LISTEN TO ME! that are found all over the place, as though in a running conversation. These notes can't possibly be placed by one person as they can be found behind things that haven't been moved in years, or inside things that were never opened.

They also talk back if you "lose" a piece of paper with writing on it.

>>10344420

Cognitive treatment is gradual, you don't throw people into anything, ffs.

I'm running a 60's campaign next week.
I wasn't gonna go CoC on my players, but god damn it /tg/, I think I won't be able to resist now.
They don't expect it.

Have them start tasting metal or smelling Ozone whenever a particular janitor walks by

Sealed off rooms, excessively locked doors (like 3 keyholes, a deadbolt, and a chain) with no real explanation.

When you get into the REALLY creepy shit, they'll wonder whats in there.

Suicidal penguins.

Do it.

recurring symbols that are just normal enough to be rationally explained but hint at conspiracy.

Card suits and chess motifs are usually good, and are obvious enough that the players notice.

>>10344960
Brotip: it's horror.

Second brotip: Some people have actually done just that, mostly to see how a panicking person deals with it.

Third brotip: Again, it's horror.

>>10345188
better: there's a corner of the courtyard where dead birds are always found, necks broken. Players eventually discover that birds fly into the wall next to it repeatedly until they kill themselves with alarming frequency.

>>10345277
OP here:

God yes.

What system will this game be run in?

one of my favorites what, walk into a dark room floor is sticking to their shoes, about one inch of goo settled over the entire floor, everything smells putrid. You can hear a chattering in the further corner, where things are at its darkest. When you light up the room you see a pile of corpses, realize the goo is rotted human flesh. You see the origin of the noise as a man in the fetal position shivering, in shock as he is peeling the flesh from his face. The chattering was his just his teeth as he trembled.

Strange symbols are left above some doors. The decision of what doors to leave them over is seemingly random. You can't tell what the symbols were written with/in, but they appear to be scrawled by hand.

One room is full of plush rabbits of various ages and states of cleanliness/disrepair. There is no inmate in that room. Nobody knows why they are there, but the staff feel compelled to leave them alone, and the inmates are terrified of them.

There is a room that is not marked on the floor plan. It appears to be completely bare and devoid of distinguishing features.

At least one of the nurses is a patient who has been convinced that he/she is a nurse. There is also a patient who claims that he/she was a nurse, but that he/she keeps being told he/she is a patient.

Richard "Dick" Brown, orderly at ward 4 didn't get his nickname because of his name; he earned it through many years of hard work using the most violent methods of "helping" one could ever get away with. His record of misconduct is extensive, but although reports of his actions come in at an almost weekly rate, he's never once been caught dead, something very important in a ward that deals with sufferers of delusions, up to and including mythomania. Richard's hatred for the patients is believed by some to come from a broken childhood, others claim that it's because of his extensive steroid use, a final group just believes that he's an asshole because he can, and the mountain of a man, with army-cut hair and beady, aggressive little eyes truly is a very, very evil individual.

Well, there's a thread here about scaring players for nothing:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1791071/

Here's one that very clearly shows you what sorts of crazy shit you can pull off in this kind of game:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/6088875/

Also, here's something for people to be talking about casually in your institution, since it's kind of nightmare fuel:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/5978922/

always tell them they feel as though they're walking downhill.

This sensation continues when walking upstairs, and even continues if you double back on yourself.

Things dropped on the floor roll away as though on a very steep gradient, even on supposedly "flat" surfaces.

Pyramid-Head.

Orderly who rapes patients, or actually Rape Made Flesh?

Endless, looping hallways. If the patients (or staff?) walk long enough down the institution's halls, they end up back where they started. Did they just lose track of time and double back without realizing it? Or are they not allowed to leave?

Have them find out about 3/4 of the way through their first session that their doctor is another patient, and have the doctor seem very, very nervous that they were mistakenly left alone in a room with him. Have him apologize and swear that it will never happen again. Never explain why.

Extremely elaborate dream sequences. Sometimes, don't tell them it's a dream sequence. Sometimes, have them finish the dream by going back to their cell and sleeping, and then let all the NPCs act very distressed when they mention what they think happened "yesterday."

Sometimes, deny that stuff happened. If they ask about that time the doctor got sick in the middle of group therapy, have nobody remember...except that gibbering lunatic who's always talking about "the plague, the plague, o' both the noble houses."

Every few scenes, describe a room in iambic pentameter. Don't draw attention to it, just do it.

Slip things into the room descriptions like blood caked on the walls.

If they ask to investigate, tell them the walls are white.

Act like you have no idea where they got the idea that the walls were bloody.

Notes detailing someone's convictions about what's going on in the institute and/or the larger world are found from time to time.

You feel like you have butterflies in your stomach when you see this female inmate.

Later, you cough up a handful of maggots.

a subtle meta-scare for the players is to start speaking to a certain beat or scheme like poetry.

Watch Poltergeist. Notice that some of the scariest shit is just stuff that spooked you as a kid COMING ALIVE.

That scary tree outside your window, for example.

When derealization/depersonalization hits, you feel like nothing is real, nothing is really there, including yourself. It's almost like anti-solipsism. Sometimes there's even a physical sensation of prickliness leading to numbness, it feels like you're on the verge of disintegrating. It's horrible. It would be very easy to panic in that state. It might be tempting to try to grab onto things very hard to keep from going away. It might be tempting to try to viscerally affect the world around you in order to prove to yourself that you are real and the world is real.

>>10346086
>>10345958
>Shakespeare is your new DM

>>10346103
When you've got insomnia, nothing's real.

Everything's a copy of a copy of a copy...

Darkness is scary even to rational people in familiar environments, because it makes it impossible to be sure that nothing has changed in those environments. I know my house well, but when it's dark, how can I be sure someone or something hasn't slipped in to wait for me?

And in faint or partial light, things look unfamiliar and threatening.

>>10344284

The only advice I can offer to you is this OP: nothing scares the shit out of players like the unknown and claustrophobia. Don't try very hard to come up with silent-hill style deformed creatures: it all becomes remotely ridiculous when exposed to broad daylight. Keep your nightmares in the shadows and their purposes as far from the players' thoughts as possible. Never give them supposedly scary but very tangible purposes, like "coming out of the madness-realm to wreak havoc on the real world". Death and torture as the definition of evil just doesn't scare anyone anymore. Their purposes, if they are to have any, is to slowly drag the players' mind to utter insanity and paranoia, but this also must never become perfectly clear. As for claustrophobia, they are two ways to play with this very useful element: a place full of walls and corridors, and a place with no corridors and walls at all, like a huge barren landscape, where a player feels no matter how much he walks he's still gonna be trapped in the same place. There is no escaping an enemy that lives inside your head.

Guess that's it. Good luck.

Pic related, I always manage to interest (and scare) my players with autophagy and cannibalism.

Pass a note to one of the players saying that he hasn't been to the bathroom for a while. And he isn't feeling very hungry either. In fact, he doesn't feel like he needs to eat at all.

If he checks, he's sure he sees a faint scar on his stomach, but no-one else can see it.

Download Delta Green: Countdown from /rs/

Read Hastur Mythos section by John Tynes

Win.

have had same nightmare for while

running from some unseen horror in underground passage what gets smaller and smaller until crawling on my belly in the dark and something sharp-toothed clamps around my leg

>>10345452
Haven't really made up my mind yet, either WoD for the simplicity, or Neotech for that gut-ripping detail of everything.

Which would be worse: Discovering that your worst fears were justified, and that you were at their mercy?

or, believing that, fighting back, and then discovering that you were actually just delusional?

>>10346218
>a place full of walls and corridors, and a place with no corridors and walls at all, like a huge barren landscape, where a player feels no matter how much he walks he's still gonna be trapped in the same place.

...Like the house in the House of Leaves?

>Death and torture as the definition of evil just doesn't scare anyone anymore

You just need more creative torture.

Modern medicine gives us a lot of good ones. Haven't you ever watched those commercials for medical supplies for old people that talk about reusing your old catheters day after day?

Did you know that most drugs we test on animals aren't for diseases we share with those animals? We tend to manufacture the disease's symptoms and causes in the animal, then cure that. Now, imagine that your doctor were trying to treat, say, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva and you drew the short straw to be the first human test subject (remember, this isn't the most standards-heavy environment).

That's all well and good, yes, but then there are the old standards: you and your doctor in a room with a bottle of Sodium Pentathol and a bunch of rusty fishhooks, for instance.

>>10346261
This.

>>10346244
This is win if you make it clear that at least one of your players is actually crazy at the beginning of the game.

Tell them that one of the reasons they're all being kept there is because they all seem to believe the delusions of the crazy one. If they can just figure out who that is and stop listening to him, maybe they can get out.

If they take that bait and do it, remind them that they just abandoned their friend to that place, alone.

You might have the ending be ambiguous, too. The crazy one watches his friends walk away, and he can't even remember their names. It's alright, though. The doctor says he's making progress by letting go of these delusions and imaginary companions...

>>10346218
>>10346204
OP here, yes, darkness and paranoia will make most of the scares, which is also why I'm mostly interested in fleshing out the hospital for my own sake, because if I can create a threatening environment where everythings works, yet all is broken, and then run that world in the background all the time, the players will scare the shit out of themselves just by BEING there.

But some kind of actual threat has to be present, otherwise it's just a very long-winded way of saying "lol ure all insane and scerd of nutting!".

I'm considering making at least one of the characters being the figment of his own imagination; he suffers from a deep-seated split personality disorder, and sometimes when he stays and talks with the party, he actually wanders away to sleep, letting his "auto pilot" completely take over. This, however, requires straight faces from the rest of the party and a great excuse, but if I managed to pull it off it's be great.

>>10346421
>Get the players all to gaslight that one guy

Great plan, if you can pull it off.

Making one of them ACTUALLY imaginary, though...

>>10346291

Can't say I've read that, buddy.

>>10346320

That's interesting. Guess what I really meant was an NPC should have a purpose when resorting to torture other than just because he's a big bad boogeyman.

If you manage to get the players so off their nuts as to give them the idea of resorting to torture themselves for a cause that their madness and paranoia suggests to them is "good", then you can be sure you did an excellent job.

>>10346529
Eh. The first Saw was alright, but I'd hardly call it good horror.

How old is the hospital?
Was it always a hospital, or did it ever have some other use?
Have many people died there?
Where is it, and why there?
Is it creepy because it's an old, Victorian place that's falling apart around everyone? or because it's a clean, modern facility with the same beige walls and flourescent lights everywhere?
Are there lots of orderlies, running the place like a prison, or is the place understaffed and therefore tense?

>>10346320
OP here, I'm thinking that the institution has 25 wards, numbered 1-12, 14-26, one of those could definitely be more medical areas, so it would work brilliantly. I loke that you also understood the point of this basically being an asylum run by even more mad people, as that's one of the big points; great exterior, cancerous interior with "scientists" doing basically whatever the hell they want with long-term patients.

>>10346561
The best part is that most of the patients know they're crazy, so they think that surely, this treatment is good for them.

I mean, if you can't trust your doctor...

the big bad should be the insanitarium itself, feeding off fear. It is only animalistically intelligent, but very hungry.

One patient is a sociopath, involuntarily admitted by court order after his role in some violent happening. He believes the apocalypse is happening, and sees signs of it even inside the hospital. He thinks this is a good thing, and wants nothing more than to enjoy and hasten the end. He seeks to manipulate whoever he can into letting him out of his room and letting the other patients out. Maybe he intends to orchestrate a mass suicide; maybe he actually just wants to escape.

Maybe the world really is ending.

The big bad should, of course, be the guy in charge of the institution.

Their therapist is on their side, of course, but is convinced that this place isn't the horrorshow they think it is. He tries to help them let go of these delusions that their doctors are poisoning their food to test the effects of rat poison in varying dosages.

If they would just work with him, they could leave.

If they could just show him the truth, they could escape.

>>10346547

Guess because mere survival cannot be considered a "good" cause, in the moral sense.

Maybe a fair example would be Dr. Steinman from Bioshock, tough for some reason I regret to use it (guess cuz the game didn't scare me one bit). He wants to make his patients beautiful, all considered.

spiders

>>10346690

You see a cabinet.

You walk up to the cabinet.

You put your hand on the cabinet.

You open the cabinet.

In the cabinet, there is a midget.

If confronting fears and delusions is the best way to overcome them, then why stop at simply making a "mentally ill" person "well" by the standards of the status quo?

Who can argue that most people aren't held back by fears and false beliefs, and that they are consequently unhappy?

Wouldn't it be better to treat people not only for what society considers mental illness, but also for the mental illnesses that riddle the "healthy" normal mind? Fears of risk, of judgment, of conscience, et cetera?

>>10346558
It has acted as a hospital, asylum and prison, often at the same time. The facility is very modern, very clean: individual rooms, lots of personell, and where it's required, edge security technology. There are older parts, however, some are just low on patients, others have been abandoned for one reason or another, but everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is built in steel and concrete.

The ward where the PC's will start will have for the facility low-to-medium security, no suicidals, and theoretically pleasant. The reality is something else, and those cold, badly managed corridors with sometimes flickering or dying lights are not fun to be around after dark.

One of the goals I have is that the players will somehow try to break in to other parts of the hospital, thus unveiling the workings of the machine; sneaking into personell areas, stealing or reading files, perhaps murder or incapacitate someone, etc. All while the mental damage becomes worse and worse, since the very atmosphere is heavy with unease and hopelessness.

Somewhere in your campaign, even if just for a little bit, add in an institutionalized Batman.

>>10346743

Nobody really cares much for a madness that keeps to itself. Mostly people only receive care for mental illness when they become "a danger to itself or to others", whatever the fuck that means.

OP, you should look up JAGS Wonderland. From the sound of this it would be right up your alley.

Control of those who cannot control themselves is fascinating -- and a social good. Nothing could be more interesting than plumbing the depths of the human mind, unraveling the intricacies of willpower, and reorganizing them to respond -- perfectly -- to outside authority.

The major world governments enlisted some of the finest minds in psychiatry and psychology to explore these very subjects, and financed them for decades.

Perhaps the experiments continue. Perhaps Dr. Ewen Cameron's "sleep room" methods are still in use, or perhaps they've been replaced with something better.

>>10346792
>They'll break into other areas

Start them out like above, convinced that just one of them is crazy, and the others are being held because they seem to share in that one's delusions. If they can just get ahold of their patient files, they could figure out who's crazy, distance themselves from him, and get out.

After three or four attempts, they might realize that there are no patient files.

There aren't any personnel files, either.

In fact, since everybody wears the same white outfit, there's not really any evidence that the doctors and orderlies aren't actually just power-hungry patients.

Alternately, their files are in personnel. It says they've got top security clearance...but the files are all dated ten years ago...

>>10346595
OP here, as I've said I'm a bit split at which point the natural should end and supernatural take over.

One of the more "rock and roll" ideas I have is to simply let go of all breaks and make the collective of all souls within that place, awakened by a certain patient that the PCs need to find, go nuts and make the entire place in a Silent Hill ripoff, but that seem kinda, well, not "tame", but just too fantastic.

>>10346819
I was suggesting a mentality a crazy doctor might have, trying to go the extra mile in curing people of the things that make them unhappy.

>>10346905
Even if you go that route, don't let it be absolutely clear (or true!) that that's actually happening and not just another delusion.

>>10346897
That's something I'll definitely consider.

>>10346905
Then horror the idea up.

It turns out, the place isn't a hospital, it's a quarantine.

One of the patients seems to have a contagious form of madness (that infects other people, but doesn't spread from there), but the authorities can't figure out which one. Be sketchy on how the madness infects people. Make the players do something kind of strange to get things (like how prisons use cigarettes as currency).

The method of transmission, of course, is whatever they've been using as currency.

The target could be one of the players, or perhaps their fixer, or maybe, the whole thing's an elaborate social experiment to see how a medical community like this responds when fed a barely-plausible story like "contagious insanity."

Even the doctors and orderlies don't know it's a lie, yet.

>>10347027
That's fuckin' brilliant.

>>10347074
Coming up with these ideas is easy.

OP's got the hard job of turning my crazy soup of mindfuck movie pitches into a semicoherent game.

There isn't even anyone else in this place but us. We are the only people in this building. Someone puts out food, sure. But all the doctors and orderlies and other patients aren't real. They're dummies. Mannequins. Whoever put us here is using machines to make us think the mannequins are people. But they're not real.

Orderlies like to sneak in at night when you're tied to the bed and jack off on your chest.

>>10347195

Mo medical care. The sick or injured are just left where they lay.

The orderlies wake you up in the middle of the night to tell you you have a guest, someone to see you. Make you shower, clean up and get dressed, then take you to the front room where they tell you no one's coming for you. And you go back.

Sometimes, you wake up in another room instead of yours.

Nobody remembers the room you used to stay in.

When you open the door, there's a disused old room with twenty years' worth of dust, a bed that can't have been new even that long ago, and a message carved on the desk underneath all the dust that simply says, "They'll send you to Ward 12 if you keep this up."

Oh, by the way, keep making ominous references to Ward 12. Nobody comes back from Ward 12. Ward 12 is where they keep the real crazies. No, Ward 12 is code for having been wrongly institutionalized; If you get to Ward 12, they release you. Wait, don't go there! Ward 12 is where the really gory experiments go on!

>>10347225
If you're lucky that's all they do.

>Another point; the hospital stafdf in general are stong advocates of the Cognitive school of phychology; so phobias are normally treated with the person facing them. This makes for really twisted situations where agoraphobics are thrown into people-filled rooms, claustrophobics are locked into small spaces, scotophobics are left in the dark, etc.

Exposure therapy performed correctly is usually highly effective.

>>10347346
By the way, there is no Ward 12.

It hasn't been used in decades.

Yep, definitely gonna recommend Wonderland to you. I know I must sound like I'm shilling but I'm really not, it's made for this kind of thing.
http://www.jagsrpg.org/

>>10347366
It tends to be the most effective method, in fact.

Traumatic still, but one gets over it.

>>10347366
Yes, but we don't give a shit for correct application. That's boring.

An imp or spirit that is curious about humans. It follows you around exclusively and loyally and sometimes makes itself corporeal. It thinks its helping you but it is utterly inhuman and incapable of being human. It does horrible things to other people around you so you benefit from it. Eventually the isolation from this mad little creature will drive you insane.

>>10347372

Nonsense. Ward 12's the next hall over. It's where all that constant screaming's coming from.

>>10347346
I am actually going to use a "warning ward": Ward 14.

What's so wrong with it noone really knows, at least not the patients, because noone comes back from there.

Whether there actually IS anything there is uncertain though.

>>10346561

Find a door marked "Ward 13". Open it.

Inside is a midget.

>>10347454
What screaming?

*odd looks abound from everybody else in the room*

Drugs can make it hard to tell the supernatural from the imaginary.

Pic related.

Wilford Brimley.

His pancreas is faulty. He's going to take yours.

This is what they see when the TV shows the Wizard of Oz.

Somebody asks them if they can turn on the TV.

>>10347608
Holy shit!

OP here, thanks for the great ideas, saving this and going to bed, hopefully this will still be here in the morning, night you all!

Use this line.

I don't care how.

I don't care when.

I don't care in what context.

This diagram explains everything.

>>10347695

He cuts you open, and pulls aside your guts to find his prize.

Instead, he finds a midget.

>>10347856

Have one of the male patients be seen cooing over his stomach and patting it happily as though he's pregnant.

Of the weeks you see him it becomes clear he's very ill with -something-, as his stomach becomes grossly distended, his skin becames pale and wet, and his hair starts to fall out. He still walks around as though he's fine, though he's carrying the extra weight. Other crazies even compliment him on his "healthy glow"

He eventually succumbs to this illness, and autopsy reveals that instinal worms replicated massively inide him, bursting his intestines and continuing to grow inside his abdominal cavity. No one can explain why he acted so fit and healthy before he died though...

later that night, from down the hall out of sight from their little cell door windows...

"So many little new boys and girls! Daddy loves you so much!"

>>10347849
What the fuck is this from?

>>10344960
There are shock exposure treatments. Graduated exposure is the norm IIRC, but.

>>10347890
there's something very wrong about that.

I'm planning a Hallucinogenic-horror based M&M session soon.

The trick is that they're in the sewers while colourless, odourless hallucinogenic gas is being pumped out. I'm going for is that every round (in combat) and every few minutes out of combat I'm going to roll a hidden fort check for all the players. And no matter if the minority is the people who passed or failed, I'll be passing them notes depending on what their character might see, while whatever the majority see is actually put on the map. If the majority fail, the minority will be passed notes about what things actually look like. If the minority failed, they'll be passed notes on what they believe is happening.

The fact that the players don't know what is true and what isn't, is going to make things difficult for them. They HAVE to react to whatever they see. The fun part will be when the Hulk-like villain who grows stronger on fear shows up, and half the players believe he's part of an army of similar monsters, while the others don't know if he's there or not.

>>10347423
Cognitive therapy in general is a good part of most psych treatments.

>>10347849

BAAAAhahaha, gods. What a fucked-up comic. It's what extra-terrestrials might write if they were trying to come up with fapfic.

>>10347442
My point is that saying "WOO THE DOCTORS FORCE YOU TO FACE YOUR FEARS!" is fucking ridiculous to even an undergrad psych student, because it's done and it works just fine.

>>10347890
what...

Have orderlies ever-present, but utterly dispassionate- Inmates have been known to get into brutal fights and sometimes even kill each other with an orderly just standing by, watching with an impassive stare.

Likewise, make the doctors as unhelpful as possible- Always cynical, always doubting, and utterly sure in their mentality that the patients are a bunch of worthless loonies and everything they experience is a delusion.

These things tend to work because the fear of isolation is a strong one, but nothing is quite as bizzare or horrifying as being isolated in the presence of others- That there are people, but they will not help you, will barely even acknowledge you. That, what should be the strongest source of comfort in the face of unknowable evil, the companionship of human beings, is just another impassable wall trapping you in your own madness.

One of the doctors has facial features that seem slightly off. His movements are jerky and strange, his forearms are longer than they should be, and his always-gloved fingers never seem to move.

If the PC's ever attack him, he turns out to be a midget that was using prosthetics to seem normal sized.

This is your warden.

>>10348209
lol, you fucker

>>10347890
Not OP, but I've gotta use that somewhere..

>>10344284
I've not read through the thread, so my apologies if this doesn't sit well with your established goals however:

Breaking the 4th wall in order to mess with your players I find to be an essential tool for seeding the responses you want out of them, the nature of the game itself can be manipulated in a way to put your PCs in the mindset you want them to be in for the narrative.

To this end I suggest you use a redundant stat. Give each player a different score in this stat, don't explain what it is for (because it's for nothing), name it something that holds resonance with the tone you're setting. Then start fucking around with this stat freely, establish patterns for it's change then completely toss them out of the window three sessions in.

Make sure the stat doesn't seem pointless to the players though, ask them what level it's at whenever you feel like (say when they're about to attempt an action or just before they rest), pretend to jot something down and pretend it's made some bearing on what you're about to do then ignore it and carry on.

Properly excecuted the players will obsess over this stat and typically encourage paranoia regarding it, giving them an item that fills or reduces the stat will potentially start long debates over whether or not it's safe to use. Bonus points if the item has other uses, is it a sacrifice for the item's properties or another bonus ontop of it's other utility? Have fun watching them try to figure it out, just remember that if they cotton on that the stat is worthless they'll ignore it so it's up to you to keep them engaged.

Watch Shutter Island, its a good example of what the conspiracy side of things should feel like.

Also the scene in the maximum security ward is absolutely perfect for claustrophobic, dark, wet corridors

Go torrent the nWoD book "Asylum". It has a lot of info to work with.

Quote Dr. Seuss in the therapy sessions.

Exclusively.

Bob from Twin Peaks is in the hospital.

rolled 8 = 8

>>10347346
Writefaggin'

Woke up in another bed today. Which is funny, considering I slept on the couch in the lounge last night. I know what you're most likely thinking if you're new. "The orderlies found you and bought you back to your room." Say that to anyone, look at their response. The orderlies, the doctors? Obviously, don't ask them. They'll want to find this book. But the patients, in private, ask them, ask your fellows, your peers, your kindred, maddened spirits. Them? They'll laugh. They'll laugh because they know that we don't have rooms here.

Okay, let me rephrase that. You're most likely IN a room now, DESIGNED for an inmate, where you just WOKE UP. We have rooms in the most literal sense, but no one is assigned to just one room. Ask the orderlies about this, about why the room numbers were scratched off. They'll tell you it was an old patient, OCD, HAD to do it. They'll tell you the reason you think you're in a different room every morning is a side-effect from the pills. You're just groggy. You just THINK you went to sleep elsewhere, that something's happened in your sleep, and that you were put back in the WRONG room. Right, none of that happened.

It did. But the reason I'm writing this, the one section of pages in this notebook I don't intend to throw out, why I've hidden it here, in the dust-covered desk in the unused room at the end of the hall of the second floor of Ward 3, is because someone, or something has caught my attention.

rolled 1 = 1

>>10348432
When I woke up here, today, I found two things that were noteworthy. One was, very obviously, the desk. None of the other rooms still have desks ever since what Jenkins did in '76. Not in Ward 3, anyway. But the other thing of note is that the draw you've most likely found this in, the draw that you KNOW has a false bottom, a planks of wood just as decrepit as the rest of this desk, as the rest of this room, on top of many, many pills, and this notebook.

I don't know what happened to whoever originally owned this notebook. What was here before I started writing this diary was a mess of scribbles, a plethora of various notes and diagrams and maps. None of them made sense. So what, you say? Meds stashed away with a notebook filled with paranoid ramblings? One of the inmates had paranoid delusions.

Again, friend, you'd be wrong. Not one. Look at the torn bindings before this page. There is a LOT of them. In fact, based on the different pens, writing styles, clarity of the writings, and very obviously, the dates, I've deduced something. This notebook didn't belong to one person. It belonged to seven others before me, and thus, before you.

So, what's important about this book? What made me start writing this... diary? Journal? This is more of a warning. I couldn't tell what everyone before me was talking about (It'd be useless to you, I promise), but one thing, at the end of every person's notes, the most clear thing any of them ever wrote, was one sentence. It's the reason I'm writing this, and the reason I'm trying to warn you.

"Beware Ward 14".

If you're new here, here's the problem: there is no Ward 14.

Like someone else said, have plenty of characters, but make them totally impassive and disinterested. Isolation is something that'll draw the group together and make the players feel alone.

For fun, maybe have some female doctors who seem "different." Typical neckbeard attempts to latch onto something female and pseudo-human result in them discovering increasingly erratic behaviors and tendancies on the part of someone who they should have NEVER gained the interest of.

The cafeteria serves steak dinners the evening after a patient death.

Your doctor is the spitting image of Heavy Weapons Guy.

He sneers at you as being infantile.

>>10348445
>The next page is in a different handwriting:

If you're reading this, you're probably wondering why that guy was talking about this being in Ward 3, when the desk he's talking about is here in Ward 8.

It's because he's crazy. What, you thought there was something deeper?

I've got a buddy who's seen Ward 14. It's just another Ward, just like any of the others.

Quit it with the cloak-and-dag

>The corner of the page is stained with something inky. It could be blood, but it's so old you can't really tell. It could just be red ink. There are about twenty or so pages ripped out after that. The last page in the journal that's actually bound reads as follows:

If this book has really been everywhere that the people who wrote it say, then it means there must be a way to follow it out of Ward 14.

Please, God, let there be a way!

>After this, there is a small pile of papers shoved in to make new pages. Some of them, oddly, seem older than the ones bound into the book.

>>10348445
>>10348432

Nice, very paranoid, but with that believable edge. I like it. Your writefaggin is much appreciated

In the back of one of the doctor's offices, there is an old, decrepit, half-rotten chest. From it exudes an awful stench, and an occasional shuffling is heard. If the PCs mention it, the doctors will tell them that nothing is there and have them restrained and injected with sedatives.

The chest has one lock for each of the Wards, and in each ward, there is a person with a key for one of the locks. A doctor, a patient, a nurse, whoever.

When the PC's find all of the keys and open all of the locks, they can open the chest to find a midget.

>>10348771
WHAT'S WITH THE MIDGETS?!?

Welcome to Larington Memorial Sanitarium, Mister Phillips.

You'll be staying here in Ward 7, where we keep all our paranoid schizophrenics. Your roommate is Gerald. He has delusions that we are trying to poison his pillowcase, but I assure you he is mistaken.

Now, I'm very busy, so please allow Gerald to show you around. See if you can't get his pillowcase for me. I shall reward you heavily.

Nevermind what I intend to do with it.

Shadows point the wrong direction relative to light sources.

Freshly stained lobotomy gear left out in an obviously disused room.

An eldery inmate who has pictures that make it clear they've been in the asylum since they were children.

One player ought to have trouble remembering when was committed.

At some point in the game, let them see a picture of the founding of the hospital back in the 30s.

He's identical to the old warden.

Have most of the patients (when they are coherent) talk about other long gone inmates, where they have gone is unclear, but they don't mention that part. Have them discuss these other inmates in a very fond way, just like friends.

Have some patients one day act completely coherent and nice, the next they may be catatonic or outright spittle on ground deranged. Have no one else notice the difference

One day, have the patients in the game play The Floor Is Lava.

Ignore what the PCs do. Pay attention to the actual players' feet. If they touch the floor, the players sustain inexplicable burns.

Having an old asylum is nice, but there's also a significant effect that can be gained from settings where everything is modular (i.e. any room can look exactly like any other room in a very brief period of time.)
There are two ways to play it from there- either a mindfuck where it turns out that the asylum is much, much smaller than originally thought, or creating tension through artifacts that were left behind. Graffiti is good, as are stains, but the subtle stuff is often the best. I'm a fan of Fun With Multiple Layers of Wallpaper, for one.

>>10348956
Have Spambot in your game.

Read the stuff out loud from the PA system.

Have it respond to stuff that isn't said. Sometimes, make it address the players directly.

I added some to the last thread about this. From memory:
- three patients have switched identities between one another; old man, young girl, burn victim left sexless. Hilarity ensues.
- two patients act as a primitive "telephone"; what is said near one will be repeated by the other. Both are on different floors and wards.
- paperwork shows a man has been in solitary confinement, without water or food for over eighty years. His door is rusted shut; the name on it is written in Gaelic.
- PCs find a cache of documents from the century prior, sealed inside a bag of cotton balls. The documents are records for medications not used in over a hundred years.
- every patient that is in the coma ward abruptly turns its head towards them as they enter the room. Even those who haven't moved in years. Sounds like dry branches popping.

Do some research onto the actual security precautions in place at actual mental hospitals, new and old.

Elevators need a key for each floor.
Security checkpoints at the end of each hallway.
Random searches.
etc.

Now, imagine all the ways to fuck with players using these things.

Every PC can find a relative of theirs in the patient files.

I was really ejoying this thread, but now I have to go. Someone archive please so I can read it tomorrow?

>>10349026
>Elevators need a key for each floor.
The idea of what qualifies as a key intrigues me.
>Security checkpoints at the end of each hallway.
Posting a guard at the end of an unlit corridor, guarding a brick wall. He's sealed inside a Lexan shack, armed with a shotgun. He won't say why, but he's glued his hand to the grip.
>Random searches.
Even when they're in a fully deserted wing, someone is tossing their room while they're out and about. Whatever or whomever is doing it, it spills talcum powder and doesn't leave footprints.

If your doing the "modern everything looks the same" asylum have VERY subtle markings on door jams or walls. A tiny drawing of a totem animal, certain other plot-specific rooms have other animals drawn by the same hand, but these are tiny, barely noticeable.

Have the same animal motif used in a part of the grounds, like a sundial or gazebo

>>10349088
Have them stay in place for most of the game, convincing your players that they are real and stationary.

Move them late in the game.

Don't tell the players. Insist that's how everything was.

Players find transcripts of old patients' therapy sessions. During group therapy, the collected inmates began a sing-along, turning the players' last names' into a bad rhyming scheme, a twisted limerick or a funeral dirge. Date is twenty years prior to the oldest PCs birth.

>>10345277
WAAAAAAAAAALT!!!

The warden changes daily. One day he is one guy, the next he is another (and you could have sworn he was patient 429) the next its nurse Grundy (but its NOT -nurse- Grundy its WARDEN Grundy), the next he's the tollbooth man.

Once again no one notices, and the Warden's personality and attitude is always static, no matter "who" he is

There's a movie room in the asylum that only plays one movie, which is at least a couple decades old and amateurishly done, with grainy, washed-out video and sound, and is played on an old fashioned double-reel projector.
It's about an elderly married couple who verbally spar over various subjects in their home, and for the most part takes place from a single camera angle showing their living room. The PCs are always interrupted by some development or the orderlies before they can finish watching more than a few scenes, but the anecdotes and conversations that the couple has always seem to eerily relate to the events the players have just experienced, as well as some that occur after they watch the film.
Exploration of the room if the screen is rolled up while the projector is running reveals that there's an exact replica of the living room behind the screen. There are more doors to the rest of the house, some of which are more accessible than others.
In every scene, the husband appears more and more agitated, sometimes outright threatening violence. The wife doesn't seem to understand that he's upset, even when he grows red in the face. A passing mention earlier to a gun in the woodshed becomes more sinister now.
When the projector is not running, there is not any evidence that the room behind the screen is there.

>>10349145

>>10349269
... wow. That is awesome. I would like to add something akin to that to my CoC campaign.

They're not the Doctors, you deluded fool!

They took over the hospital! They rushed us! They injected us with drugs to make us forget!

DON'T YOU SEE?!

WE'RE the Doctors! This is our hospital, and these bastards are insane!

You've got to believe me!

>>10349366

>>10349242

If the PC's ever question him about this, he will profess complete ignorance.

The next day, he will be a midget.

>>10349242
I am now reminded of Kingdom Hospital (the Stephen King remake) and the maintenance guy in the basement.

After a long and harrowing campaign, it turns out the only way to escape the asylum is to perform the most badass electric guitar quartet imaginable!

>>10349451
These riffs are INSANE!

>>10349443

I'm kind of pulling most of my inspiration from that, so you're partly right

I really enjoyed Kingdom, glad someone else saw it too

>>10349414
>>10348771
>>10347856
>>10347524
midgets, midgets everywhere!

Can't you see them?

Hiding in every closet?

>>10349476
What midgets?

*odd looks abound from everybody else in the thread*

>>10349302
I originally had it planned as a puzzle. It'd be the way that the PCs would first get a weapon. The last scene you'd see there is one that begins with the gun leaning against the counter. When you enter the room, An identical gun is sitting there where it was placed, at which point the movie version is picked up and put to use. At the sound of the first gunshot the screen suddenly goes black, the projector's film runs out, and you're trapped in the dark inside the fake living room.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_%28TV_miniseries%29

At some point, have somebody say something about feeling like they're the only real person in a fantasy world.

Like, I don't know, like a game. And I only ever feel like one or two other people are real.

Have him look at your PCs and ask, "You understand, right?"

If they agree, have them drugged and experimented on.

If they don't, have him scream about being no better than the imaginary people as he's dragged away to be drugged and experimented on.

>>10349511
That's terrifying and I love you.

This thread has been archived. Go upvote!

>>10349779
>tags: Midgets

THEY'RE EVERYWHERE

>>10349813
What do you mean?

You keep talking about midgets like they're stalking you from room to room around your house, chuckling in their midget way at your fears.

>>10349893
brb checking all cupboards attics and locking all doors

PCs walk into room, the room is midgets
PCs check their watches, the time is midgets
PCs go to take their meds, orderly is a midget, upon closer inspection, the meds are midgets

>>10350018
I don't know what you're checking for. If I were a midget following you around the house, I'd be hidden in the crawlspace under your floorboards or in your ceiling.

>>10350121

The midgets are made of more midgets
PCs bite into apple, apple is midgets
PCs find paper, paper says midgets, PCs look into mirror, PCs are midgets
PCs break outside, the outside is midgets

>>10350018
Better lock the cat-flap, too.

>>10350291
No, John, you are the midgets.

4chan is just you and midgets. We're fucking there. Always.

Go watch the Faculty again.

About 2/3 of the way through the movie, when they murder their principal, stop the movie. Imagine that there weren't actually any aliens.

That's your campaign.

>>10350349

There weren't any aliens, they were midgets

>>10350375
SPAAAAAACE MIDGETS!

>>10350441

Best Marine chapter ever?

Yes.

>>10350501
>Every Marine chapter ever?

>Yes.

>>10350167

Midgets love cabinets. This is an incontrovertible fact.

White Wolf published a book focusing on institutional horror.

Check out World of Darkness: Asylum

>>10350651
John Stalvern waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were dwarfs in the base. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Cernel Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
John was a space marine for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the spaceships and he said to dad "I want to be on the ships daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY DWARFS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the space station base of the UAC he knew there were dwarfs.
"This is Joson" the radio crackered. "You must fight the dwarfs!"
So John gotted his palsma rifle and blew up the wall.
"HE GOING TO KILL US" said the dwarfs
"I will shoot at him" said the cyberdwarf and he fired the rocket missiles. John plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
"No! I must kill the dwarfs" he shouted
The radio said "No, John. You are the dwarfs"
And then John was a midget.

Have any damage taken, either sanity, physical or otherwise be curable by the painkillers they all carry.

Whenever one goes for an extended period of time without the painkillers, have them start hearing things, like worried nurse voices and the sound of busy doctors.

When a person goes into negatives for damage of any kind, have them hear, over other things, the sound of a man going 'Quick, strap him down!' or 'Force feed him! Force feed him!'

If a person goes for a week without the painkillers and successfully fights his way through the side effects, have some 'monsters' detain him immediately and drag him off into a darkened room.

He will return the morning the next day completely healed and oblivious to any ill-effects.

For patients 'on the mend' have them sent to the idyllic sounding 2nd Ward, where the doctors apparently prep patients for reintroduction to the outside world.

All the nurses, doctors and other patients either have first hand experience of 2nd Ward or are filled with anecdotes of 'out-of-hope' patients who were transferred to 2nd Ward and have made a miraculous recovery.

Except one patient, the only man to have been transferred to 2nd Ward and been transferred back out.

When not under heavy medication, he strains and jumps and yells against the sound-proof walls of his isolation cell, forever struggling to escape the straight jacket that is on him 24/7. When questioned under medication he will simply respond 'Wasn't fit for 1st Ward, wasn't fit for 1st Ward' over and over again.

When lucid, and this will be most rare, he will speak about 'Dodging the White Light.', 'Escaping those labcoat butchers.' or 'Vowing to die before entering 1st Ward.'

Upon investigation, 2nd Ward will be a surgical unit with some highly unusual operating staff and equipment.

1st Ward otherwise known to the general mental institution populace as Hope One can be found under the hospital.

It is a morgue.

>>10352257
...a morgue full of dead midgets?

>>10352257
reactionimage.jpg

You wake up late. The alarm didn't ring in your room. The group meets every morning at 8 and walks to therapy on the lawn.

You reach the counter, and are informed the group has left. You don't know the way. You've only been here a few weeks. It's okay though. You ask the orderly.

She says "It's just down that hallway. Take the first left." You don't remember that hallway. So you walk. Except there are no lefts. The numbered doors keep getting larger on the right, but still no left. If you ever turn around, the counter is right there behind you with the orderly blinking at you.

>>10353779

The orderly is a midget.

>>10354203
>>10353779

Not initially. But the corridor starts to get smaller. Only then when the player turns back to look at the counter is the orderly a midget.

>>10354319
The counter? Several midgets, holding sectional plywood over themselves.

There is no furniture: only midgets, thousands of 'em.

rolled 78 = 78

It's like that thread with the spiders a while ago, except midgets.

wtf reactionimage.jpg

>>10344284
Pretty much anything relating to or involving this.

You're going to have a problem with scaring your players. Horror games are hard to run because you can scare characters easily, but not the people who play them. Sure, you can be a dick and bring up the phobias you know they have, but then you're just being a dick.

I myself am not sure of how to actually scare players. Instead I find it more satisfying to get them to role-play terrified characters, and they themselves be thrilled. Yeah, that's it I guess.

Thrilling your players is a good place to start with a horror game.

>>10355049
Players in my campaigns enjoy being scared; I, in turn, enjoy scaring them. Yes, there is the disassociation between player and character - being able to make bridges across it, and get into some truly terrifying ideas... that's the fun and the challenge.

Running games for a long time helped me figure out the winning and losing proposals for how to accomplish this. Playing off of phobias is one thing - tapping into primitive fear is another.

YMMV.

Allow for one player to consistently see a red door in every room the players enter.

That one player is the only one who can see it.

When they try to enter, something makes their vision immediately snap to the left or right. When they look back, they're just holding a small note with a letter on it. Again, only they can see the note.

The letters, when spelled out in receiving order, spell out something like "WHY ARE YOU NOT LOOKING AT ME" or something to that effect.

(As to determine which player, make it the first one who touches a door to get into a particular room or something.)

I think I could pull this off with the right crowd and I knew some more misdirection. The best thing would be having each player have folders that they always carry with them (IC and OOC), slipping things into them. Especially when something occurs without them noticing. Not "Oh I went to the bathroom and now I have this clue..."

>>10355411

One of the PC's goes to the bathroom. Halfway through taking a MASSIVE SHIT, they start to hear scratching coming from the pipes. The walls start to creak and groan, and blood leaks from the ceiling. As they release the last bit of turd, it all stops.

If they look into the toilet, they see that they just shat out a midget.

I wish I were in OP's horror game :/

Having spent a brief time in mental hospitals and having a general phobia of hospitals as well as a degree in psychology and a vivid imagination....

>>10357002

One doctor is almost always writing reports. Hunched over his desk scribbling away, always putting these reports into the outbox with his left hand. You never see him leave the desk, or him put down the pen. He's always touching his eyes with his hands when not writing, sleeves stained black with a little red, a little blue in spaces.

On closer inspection, his forefinger on his right hand is a pen itself, his eyes a pair of inky black pools, that seem to bleed if he does not dab at them with his sleeve occasionally.

I don't know why no one has mentioned this yet: Psychodrama. It's a therapeutic technique where you, basically, role play. I've met a few patients who said the experience was quite traumatizing. Now, imagine it directed by a sadistic therapist... Usually there's props involved and it's quite theatrical, according to Wikipedia. Imagine your players are in the audience watching a fellow patient play the protaganist, all kinds of inappropriate props are lying around. Sharp things, bats, etc. The patient flies into a fit of rage and savagely beats his fellow npc players. Maybe you have a PC on stage and they have to decide how to handle it, talk the guy down or attack him? Maybe you have the therapist laughing and clapping his hands at the slaughter or encouraging the npc or pc to kill each other. THE SHOW MUST GO ON, BOYS AND GIRLS!

Maybe the psychodrama sessions are used in a perverse sexual way (if your players are ok with that) and patients are abused and exploited or just humiliated, maybe made to relive past abuse in a very direct manner. Lots of room for PTSD flashbacks and dissociative episodes. I do hope someone has mentioned DID (dissociative identity disorder) because I've met some VERY dangerous identities of seemingly normal or timid people.

But yeah I think the psychodrama has lots of potential. Maybe the play starts to become more and more real. Plastic knives turn to metal, there's weather, wind blows, fake trees become real, the auditorium disappears to be replaced with a true landscape. The PCs are confused and disoriented unsure if they're sharing a mass delusion or if it's "all in their head" so to speak.

GOD DAMN OP I WANT TO BE IN THIS FUCKING GAME :l

Bumping this.

i just got back from therapy. mentioned this thread. he thought it was interesting. especially the psychodrama part since he is a psychodrama instructor.

>>10362299

Not to sure if you should creep yourself up if you're actually in therapy :)

Wow this thread is still here.

Anyway I just thought of something, since I absolutely love Don't Rest Your Head, get you players to write up a quick summary of their motives and why they are insane. Similar to the "why are you here?", "what keeps you awake?", "what is on the outside?" and "What is on the inside?" questions.

It will help you get your players into their characters and let you tailor things toward your players better

badadadabump

don't tell them but assign a sense to each of your PCs. When you get to the supernatural stuff only answer questions about the sense assigned. so don't talk about physical manifestations until the sight guy asks about it or the noise it makes until the hearing guy asks. super kicks make one the voice of the group, and docs/orderlies don't listen to the reports of stuff until the "voice" says something about it.

read arkham asylum you need insanity that is filled with it

>>10346785
>>10346785
>>10346785
>>10346785
What in the fuck?

>>10363704

You ask for a midget, I give you a midget. You raise it to your lips and take a bite. Your eye twitches involuntarily. Across the street a midget of three falls down the stairs. A dwarf shifts uneasily under the little person. I give you a midget. You look at my face, and I am pleading with you. The midgets are crying now. You raise the midget to your lips, tears stream down your face as you take a bite. I give you a midget. You are on your knees. You plead with me to go across the street. i hear only midget's laughter. I give you a midget. You are screaming as you fall down the dwarfs. I am your midget. You cannot see anything. You take a bit of the midget. The stunty rushes up to meet you. You awake with a start in your own dwarf. Your eye twitches involuntarily. I give you a midget. As you kill the midget, he does not make a sound. I give you a midget. You asked me for a midget, and I gave you a dwarf in a raccoon suit. You asked me for a midget, but it turns out I'm really a midget. Where I was originally standing, a picture of a midget rests on the ground. You awake as a midget. You start screaming only to have dwarfs fly from your lips. The world is shorter. Why are we speaking Dwarven? A midget cries softly as he cradles a little person. Your midget grandfather stares at you as the little person falls apart into dwarfs. You look down only to see me with midgets for eyes. I am singing the song that gave birth to the midgetverse.

You ask for a midget. All the dwarfs in the midgetverse have shifted one inch down. The midget asks for you. Somehow you have appeared in soviet Midgetland. You start awake sweating in your own midget. I give you a midget. Shrieking, you stagger into the dwarfs in a daze. You ask for a midget. The dwarfs do not arrive in time. You ask for a midget. I give you a midget. As you take a bit you notice dwarfs all over your sking. You ask for a midget. The midgets cry over their midget's dead body. You ask for a midget. You are short, but you can feel the dwarfs writhing in your stomach. I am your midget. I give you a midget. You giggle as I waddle around. I ask for a midget, you give me a midget. You awake with a start in your own dwarf. I give you a midget. The wizened midgets explode to dust and you realize eons have passed and you are alone in the Mines of Moria. You awake screaming.

I give you a midget.

You take the midget with trembling hands. Your eye twitches involuntarily. As you take a bite the midgets crawl into your mouth. You look at me desperately. I give you a midget. You awake in the corner of your midget in tears. I give you a midget. You notice the dwarf bearing down on you. You try to take a bite but your midgets refuse to open. I give you a midget. Your midgets stop giggling as they hear the sickening crack of your tiny skull meeting the pavement. I give you a midget. Collapsing, you vomit on a dwarf. You take a bite. Your eye twitches involuntarily.

I give you a midget.

There's a closet door in the facility that leads to a random other door in the area each time it is opened. When you walk through the door, you might step out of a locker in a completely different part of the facility, or you might even end up outside the main entrance.

The door is one way only, naturally.

>>10364309
Yeah chaos architecture is always good for a wtf? especially if the players try to map out the place

>>10364309
>Walk through door
>Come out of the same door

whatthefuckjusthappened.jpg

>>10364376
even better if doors never or rarely lead to the same place twice

>>10364309
Doors are fun

http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-004

>>10346785
what the FUCK man

>>10364571
SCP Foundation is awesome

http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-087

Shadows on walls are also really great for scaring people. Even more so when they are told not to turn around. Ripping this one straight out of Metro 2033, have one of hallways between wings closed off, taped up or even boarded up. Now have them HAVE to go down it to get to the other side. Introduce them to eerie lights and something in the dark, now play with the shadows a little, again, making sure that they know not to turn around. Have the shadows on the wall in front of them, move towards them, take on hideous shapes. All in an effort to make them turn around. Now, the fun part comes when they turn around. The patient or patients that were in that area wake up in another part of the hospital, perferably far away from both their objective and that hallway. Then allude that whatever was trapped in that hallway, is now loose on the entire facility. Happy scaring.

>>10364748
Infinite stairway?

I like

>>10364844

The stairs are made of midgets.

>>10357584
DID is extremely rare and its legitimacy is somewhat hazy, especially after the clusterfuck in the 80s.

Morphic architecture seems like it could be fun. PC opens door to cafeteria, finds himself standing at a bare drop to the ground from the 7th floor of the institution.

The institution is 3 stories tall.

If you go from nonhorror to horror you can create instant paranoia if you say your villain has been there watching all along