Dumping my meager collection of images and such to support this..

>Jersey Devil

Is really a short Mexican named Carlos.

>>9929908
Thought that was Juan?

First, stop following the RAW.
You are going to be houseruling the shit out of this campaign if you want to do it right.

Second, stop with mobs and monster shit. There's only so much horror that can be conveyed by description when you're all sitting in your comfy gameroom.
You want psychological horror. Give the PCs incentives, give them limitations, and then watch as they dig themselves deeper into sin, before realizing the truth.
Now that's horror, and it'll hit the player just as hard.

"Digging for a Dead God" on /rs/ is a good place to start your inspirations.

>>9929937

So focus less on the fights, more on creeping the shit out of the players? I imagine vivid descriptions of the buildings and settings would be required...

Some general tips I've accrued over the years:

The ideal horror group is probably around 3-4 players. Any more and it's going to get really tricky to keep the atmosphere in check.

Speaking of atmosphere: ATMOSPHERE IS EVERYTHING.

Don't go out all guns blazing when it comes to horrors; a little goes a long way.

To re-iterate: don't go too thick with the despair. Without hope players are going to get frustrated.

Most horror campaigns aren't really conducive to long-term campaigns. Consider trimming it down to a small number of sessions, if not keeping things as one-shots.

Villains should be threatening. If the antagonist is a punkass no one is going to be scared of him/her/it

Let me guess, you're into mirrors?

>>9929990
Less is more. The last thing you want is,
"You see the 9 foot beast approaching you, hideous black ichor seeping from the uneven cracks in its frozen carapace."

"Oh good, at least it's not a 10-foot beast."

My personal rule of thumb:
It's logical combat if they're scared of the monsters.
It's HORROR if they're scared of the dark.

Fuck with them. Give a few grizzly descriptions of bodies, tie in some foreshadowing and keep them guessing. For atmosphere, get some suitable ambient music. I personally enjoy Lustmord's stuff, gives me creepy visuals to present the players, but is better suited for modern/future horror campaigns http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMFiwSTIHKk
Just think about what creature might make that noise and what abandoned corroded facility it resides in.

>>9929866
Horror and DnD in general don't go well together. The system just isn't right for it. Just my advice, go with a system meant for horror. Not trying to put you down or anything, do what you will, just throwing my two cents in.

Remember how the gman was everywhere, watching?

Do that. Except he never interacts with the characters. Som,etimes he's not even watching - just sitting somewhere, with a cup of coffee, reading the paper - like ontop of a mountain, on a peak the Characters can't possibly reach. But he's there. Always there.

Never explain why.

Go digging on suptg. There's some good shit there.

>>9930117
(Not OP)
I've always wanted to try putting my players on that wall.

>>9930080

This goes on for several months of campaign, covering years and years of in-game exploits. The players rise and fall, find and lose fortunes, narrowly save themselves and the world time and again by the skin of their teeth and too much luck to rely upon forever.
The day comes when they fear themselves beaten, when no help comes to their hands nor water to their lips. They see the buzzards circling overhead, the heat of the sun warping the air.
They grasp the sand beneath them and curse the world, so ungrateful that, after all they have suffered, they must endure so ignoble a death.

The mysterious man appears again; he strides right up to them this time. There is a moment where they wonder: Is he god? Is he the devil? He's watched us throughout everything, what can he have to say to us now?

His eyes sweep over the harsh, barren landscape around them, and with a sweeping bow, Hassan inquires if they're finally ready to purchase some fine used camels.

>>9930024

That was my plan.... use things more like Alma than Frakenstein's Monster

My favorite horror trick:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

>>9930036
My favorite was a bunch of dancing limbless corpses on a street ankle-deep in blood.
There was an illusion on the area to make people think nothing was wrong- Easy for the characters to pass after a touch or two, but none of the villagers had saves high enough.
The only thing it didn't cover was the clicking of the bones against the street.

I'm typing an outrageous tl;dr right now (don't ask me why, but tonight was the night to throw together a novella about horror in D&D).

>>9930226
Fucking Alma.

Me and some friends were playing scary videogames one night. One of my friends brought FEAR, so we thought we'd play that. After 2 hours of constant playing, we had to stop, turn on the lights, drink beer and tell misogynistic jokes in order to man ourselves up.

By the morning, we were all emotionally drained and terrified of little girls.

>>9931201
You have to be a pussy of an unbelievable magnitude if you thought for a second that game was remotely scary at all.

>>9929937
Trying to run D&D horror without mobs and monsters and shit is like trying to run cyberpunk horror without dehumanizing transhumanism and AM-esque malicious AIs. Your advice isn't bad, but it looks like you're trying to make it less D&Dish because you don't think that the standard D&D recipe is conductive to horror.

The thing is, it totally can be. Monsters can be completely freaking creepy- not just for how you describe them, but for what they *do*.

Mob exhibit 1: the Staj
There's a critter in one of the Malhavoc books (either Legacy of the Dragons or Diamond Throne) which looks kind of like a badger with no skin on its face, and a scrawny tentacle ending in a spindly eye-snatching claw.
The PCs hear screams the next room over, and when they investigate this thing attacks them. It jumps onto the fighter and immediately goes for the face, but misses and is easily dispatched. They then find a blinded and miserable explorer who tells them that there were three of them, but the first two got what they came for.

The PCs don't have time to consider buying closed helms before their next encounter- far from civilization, they find themselves staring down a hallway as dozens of the ravenous little bastards scurry towards them.

THAT is fear.

>>9931643
And note that this doesn't undermine or circumvent any of the things that make D&D what it is- it USES them. The heroes are still badass action heroes exploring a hostile environment, and the challenge is one which they can still triumph over via might or luck or cleverness. It's horrifying because it makes those badass action heroes feel frightened and vulnerable, because the threat is strange and cruel, and because the consequences are not merely death.

If they fail, they aren't dead- staj don't actually kill their victims. Instead, the PCs have to hole up in a foreign and hostile location- they have to stay alive until dawn, when the cleric can prepare his spells again and cast Remove Blindness/Deafness a few times.
That is, unless they'd rather stumble blindly through miles of hostile wilderness in a desperate bid to reach civilization. Which would be madness. That said, fuck with their heads enough (enough unseen threats, enough shuffling or voices in the distance, enough skirmishes where otherwise-unthreatening monsters attack and then slip out of their fumbling grasp to await their chance to attack again, enough implications that there is SOMETHING out there way worse than the skirmishers and that it is thrilled with their predicament) and they'll seriously be considering this before the night is over.

THAT is horror.

And it is horror not just because of how bad it is, but because there is still hope- that thin glimmer of hope forces the players to stay engaged, to continue giving a damn, and to continue being scared of whatever new horrors you might have in store for them.

Heroic horror means that things are rarely or never hopeless- even when you're hanging on by a string, it's still worth hanging on. Do your job right and there will be a lot of hanging-on-by-strings.

>>9931610
Seconded.

>>9931650
Monster exhibit 2: the Vaath
There's a critter in the BoVD that burrows a mouth-tentacle into your body and then uses its telepathic powers to show you how delicious your own guts are. It totally works, in terms of being gruesome and horrifying, but note that this is NOT the kind of stuff that a good horror campaign is made of. 'Disgusted' isn't the same as 'scared', even though both are arguably different flavors of horror. "Fear" and "revulsion" are great tastes that taste great together, but one is no substitute for the other. If your game is just a hackshow your players will get desensatized and bored.

If you've ever played in a beer-and-pretzels Call of Cthulhu game you know exactly what I'm talking about- if something started eating a CoC investigator's guts and broadcasting the sensation to him, the player (in that sort of game) would just laugh and ask how much SAN he was about to piss away. Players in a hack-and-die CoC game regard their PCs as victims in a corny monster flick, but players in a standard D&D game regard their characters as noble and powerful establishments which they are proud and protective of.

And this, gentlemen, is where D&D horror derives its strength- if you run a game driven by something OTHER than horror, the horror becomes far more meaningful. The threats actually matter because there is something there that's worth threatening. Most successful horror games use curiosity as the carrot here (driving the players forward with layers of mystery), but standard D&D baits- loot, bitches, the salvation of inhabited worlds- work fabulously as well. It's kind of like the standard campaign goals keep their heads pointed forward while the horror elements sneak up behind them: keep them invested in the game and they'll be at your mercy.

>>9931660
Mob exhibit 3: the Vargoyle
Yesterday some guy posted telling a story about how horribly his latest DM had screwed up their game. Apparently they were all kidnapped by drow, then escaped and half-snuck half-fought their way through a guantlet of horrors in their quest to reach the surface. By the last encounter they were all bruised, scared, and making due with nonmagical equipment; their cleric had been smothered to death by some kind of subterranian jellyfish, and this player's PC had been infected ('kissed') by some kind of floating head monster and informed that SOMETHING horrible would happen if they didn't make it to the surface fast. And blocking their path stood the original drow party that had kidnapped them.

Apparently, this poor dude hadn't actually signed up for a horror game and regarded the whole thing as a trainwreck (a lesson in managing expectations), but I couldn't help but admire it as a good horror setup. It had all the ingredients, first and foremost being nerve-wracking tension: extreme danger drove them to caution, yet scary time constraints forced them to take action. There was mortal fear, fear for companions, body horror/fear of self ("something is happening to me"), and fear of the unknown ("what IS happening to me?!"- something like this is arguably more effective if the player isn't too familiar with vargoyles). They had been in deep shit for a long time and were on the verge of even deeper shit. At the same time it was quintessentially D&D, DO OR DIE TRYING, humans-fighting-their-would-be-enslavers-with-spell-and-sword. Shit was grim as hell yet the promise of sunlight kept them going.

>>9931673
Anyway, what did I mention there? Oh yea, body horror- D&D players WILL get freaked out if you cross certain lines in threatening or screwing with their characters. Vargoyles, if you weren't aware, are an MM1 monsters which looks like a demons head with bat wings. If "kissed", you eventually turn into a vargoyle- first you grow some tentacles on your chin, then your ears turn into bat wings, then your head just pulls itself off of your neck and flies away. Violating the sanctity of the PC's body can be a powerful tool, and is not conincidentally one commonly used by D&D monsters. The vargoyle, the vaath, and the staj all do this. .
Players get used to facing and accepting death. Fucking up their shit in nonlethal ways (turning into a monster/losing eyes or otherwise being disabled/oh-christ-its-under-my-skin-get-it-out) will often have more impact than simply killing them.

Also, fear of the unknown is a BIG one. This can be a problem in D&D because all the monster stats are available to everyone. The world's monstrosities are laid bare, and nothing kills horror faster than calm familiarity. Like many things though, this can be turned into an advantage- let them grow complacent in the familiarity of the game's non-horror elements (goblins, trolls, even undead). That way you can catch them off guard when you use something terrible and mysterious that they AREN'T familiar with.

>>9931610
The fact that they were doing a scary videogame marathon implies that they wanted to be scared. Some people are better at this (being afraid of things that aren't real) than others, and where horror media is concerned, this is a good thing.

Enjoy never being able to experience the same game that he did.

Well, now I don't think I'll sleep tonight, /tg/.

>>9929957
holy fuck thats awesome, any more?

Thread should be archived

>>9931876
Sure thing bro, artist's name is Keith Thompson.
In fact, there's flavor text.

VIRAEMIA

The civilised world lies on its knees, a sickness wracking its body. The affliction causes a necrotising of tissues so perfectly uniform in distribution that victims take on the appearance of corpses long before death occurs due to organ failure or secondary infections. The crumbling remnants of academia swing from fatalistic resignation to maddened optimism in their addressment of what could be done to fight the sickness.
The vast numbers of doctors attempting to stem the tide of infection, invariably falling victim to the malady they treat, have begun to form fanatical extermination squads whose policies are condoned by authority. A notion forms, twisting the tenets of the Hippocratic oath to say that when the oath taker is subject to the half-death of infection they are obliged to spend their lasting days attempting to destroy the source of the contagion. The paramilitary forces formed from the infected medical practicioners find themselves deigned to mete out persecution to the sufferers they were formally treating. Equipped with the leftovers of dissolved military forces, the Doctors' Militia are organised to burn all infected areas and sufferers; a campaign which stalks across blasted lands, mirroring the wave of infection in an addled attempt at backtracking all the way to some imaginary source.
Extensive bombing campaigns start firestorms that incinerate whole cities. Squads of "scorched earth" units are tasked with eradicating outlying locales. The distinctive appearance of the plague doctors, the only sight originally associated with any idea of hope, often causes the confused survivors of bombing runs to rush, open armed, towards the oncoming squads.

I took the Tarrasque's stats, added the infernal template, and totally described it as a creature of my own imagination. Players in my game shat brix at how impervious it was, and we made it into a scenario of running the fuck away from it. One nigh-impervious miniboss encounter should make them realize their own inabilities and put them in their place.

ANTHROPOPHAGUS

While not undead themselves, these corpseherds bear down on the aftermath of battle fields, reanimating the strewn dead and consuming the irreparable. These beings loom up eight feet, headless with unreadable faces set in their chests, mumbling to each other as they collect their cattle and return to the hills.


"And portance in my travels' history;
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak- such was the process-
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

Othello
-William Shakespeare

>>9931954
i thought it was thompson, but those guys are so cool looking, with the plague doctor masks lol

APOLLONIAN WIGHT

When experiments testing the viability of tapping into the quantum vacuum for energy were performed on the Apollo 21 Lab Station, reports devolved into strange ramblings about how their conclusions were inconceivable to human minds. Before all communication ceased, garbled messages were sent to earth from the astronauts about their experiments revealing to them the "howling face of the sun." A rescue crew was violently repulsed from the station by corpses in the astronaut's space suits. Footage of the incident show ghostly images of tormented figures hanging just behind these corpses, struggling, but seemingly unable to pull themselves apart from their decaying bodies.

>>9931739
There was nothing scary about that game, at all. I love horror/scary/creepy shit, and LOVE scary games, but FEAR wasn't one of them. FEAR was a standard FPS on rails where the girl from The Ring would pop up and try to spook you sometimes. Big flippin' deal.

If you find cheap, poorly executed, predictable attempts at "jump out and say boo" shocks scary, then enjoy. But that doesn't mean you're any less of a pussy for being frightened so much by something so poorly done.

>>9931972
>Yea, it's pretty cool. His undead set is only tangentially related but I'm dumping it because I love this shit and will take any opportunity to do so.

COBBLED SKALD

When a talented skald of the Swedish courts, renowned across Scandinavia for his unparalleled musical prowess, revealed himself as a disguised woman, she was swiftly executed, and the embarrassing events were stricken from polite conversation. Her sudden return to court functions shook even the staunchest war veterans, but not enough to stay a second wary, though swift, summary execution. Upon further returns, each revealing the scald to be strangely repaired in a manner befitting tailor more than physician, the court began to almost embrace the eerie presence. This cycle of returns and executions leading to a more and more transfigured court poet became something of an exalted tradition.

DAMNED 02

Men who have committed such unimaginable atrocities in life that Hell has purposefully barred their entry in death to ensure that they continue their work on earth. Stiffened and deformed by the enveloping scar tissue from constant injury, and devoid of any trace of rationality due to pain, these immortal creatures can only be imprisoned, contained, and hopefully forgotten. This one has just escaped. Number 02 was executed by immurement.

DAMNED 03

Number 03 was executed by hanging.

>>9930205

Okay, I laughed. Hard.

DAMNED 04

Number 04 was actually Rasputin in life, assassinated by poisoning, shooting, beating, freezing and drowning.

>>9932011
>immurement
lol a la The Cask of Amontillado

DAMNED 09

Number 09 was killed by a policeman's shotgun during a shooting spree.

>>9931975
So...the SUN did that to them!?

FUNGAL ZOMBIE

An entire division dropped out of communication with Le Premier Consul in the eastern campaign when they hacked forth into uncharted marshlands. Written off as lost to desertion, or more likely victims of the harsh elements, it was with great surprise that their madly twisted forms returned only to attack and consume their fellow countrymen. Shambling and mutilated, these corpses harbour a crop of fungus that animates their stiff forms. Acting as though consumed with a ravenous hunger for dead or living meat, these beings are only driven by a neurologically enforced desire to transmit their carried fungus to new hosts via saliva or blood.

>>9932072
Don't forget your sunscreen

http://keiththompsonart.com/pages/liche.html
(Part if this is apparently offensive to the chons)

>>9932072
I think it's implying more that the energy source (i.e. 'light') which they found in the "quantum vacuum" did that to them.

Still, "howling face of the sun" is some sweet imagery. There is something that I LOVE about that piece- it hints at a sort of quantum-horror/spacehorror appealing to fear of the unknown, and using the brink of science to invoke that fear.

I ran a game call of cthulhu game with the slenderman as the main antagonist. because almost all the players had never heard of it and thanks to some mood lighting and pictures taken off the internet of him i managed to get one of the players to say he was glad he didnt have to sleep alone that night, and the other players all seemed noticebly shaken. slenderman is really nice because the internet has already made all your props, think about showing some of the marble hornets vidoes if your doing a modern day game.

GHOUL

As crops fail and famine wracks the land, those who turn to the last resort of cannibalism contract kuru, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, and their brains become pitted like sponge. As they degenerate the ghouls form into familial packs which whoop and laugh uncontrollably as they pull down the healthy in mob attacks. However they only feast on the bodies after weeks of decomposition, as the notion of consuming fresh meat disgusts them. The ghouls numbers are disproportionately comprised of pregnant or child rearing mothers. They are particularly resistant to the pull of despair and suicide, if only to care for their single child; the greatest number a desperate mother can afford to care for in such conditions.

>I'll be surprised if this goes through; NAZIZOMBIETANK is a pretty popular image on /tg/

LEICHEOBERSCHÜTZE

Many commanders panic as the Allied forces press on to Berlin. Some disappear, others commit suicide, and most don blinders to the future, continuing their tasks regardless of the futility. A select few however begin to pull back from directionless rationalism and pore over the occult texts so commonly passed around among the officer classes. This infusion of unwholesome study coupled with the inventiveness of a strained weapons industry has seen soldiers unable, or unwilling to continue defense of the Fatherland return to the front cinched into obscene contraptions. These mutilated puppets are often left behind during controlled retreats, erupting from piles of corpses amidst the oncoming Allied troops working their way through the wreckage.

WENDIGO

While the pillis hail the coming of the deity Quetzelcoatl in the form of the white bearded man who calls himself Cortés, others in the higher echelons of the Aztec Empire believe the visitation to be that of mere men from foreign lands. Cadres of elite panther warriors are sent out into the wild to hunt the pale imposters. Driven by apocalyptic visions, these warriors degenerate into frenzied murderers, eating the flesh of their victims to gain their strength, forgoing the confines of humanity. Depraved and twisted with flesh stoked potency, the wendigos decimate the conquistadors in a bloody harvest.

YOKAI

As an object is used over time it begins to take on a personality of sorts, and once one hundred years pass this personality has had time to physically manifest in the object, a twisted, half-formed soul either viciously mad or functioning with motivations incomprehensible to man. Perverting everything they can gain influence over, they are invariably hostile to people, killing them and staking their own claim to seemingly random spots in the wilderness or along roadways. Once settled in their now blighted locales they dwell and wait for something that never arrives.

LILI

The twisted children of Lilith and Adam, these creatures are almost as old as the earth itself. Able to don complete facades, it is said that even the busiest settlements are riddled with their presence. They tend to only be discovered when they carelessly let their personage last, unaging, for unnatural stretches of time. The presence of a lili seems to sow distrust and confusion among people. It is not unknown for ships to be found becalmed at sea, the crew dead by their own hands and a single woman alive on board, strangely unshaken by the ordeal.

>Also a favorite

NECROMANCER

Madame Theodosia hearkens from the Aeolian islands and is part of a long lineage of necromancers. Growing up in a family with a long tradition of raising the dead, she was uncharacteristically shaken to learn of her barrenness, and in a rather emotional state vowed to give birth, if not to a new life, then to an already passed life. For this purpose she had found assistance in fashioning a steel, pressurised womb in which the souls of the freshly dead were to be trapped and condensed. This gestating entity came to be referred to in hushed tones as The Collect. The expectant mother now unnerves her followers with a detached resignation towards her eventual agonizing death; a necessity to feed her newborn babe in a self-sacrificial fashion akin to a mother spider.

NECROTIC COLOSSUS

Towering hulks of reshaped and animated flesh are a common sight in the Northern Steppes. Once terrifying siege engines employed in the Horizon Upheavals, a prolonged spate of peace has seen them decommissioned and adapted to cultural rituals. This specific necrotic collossus is actually functioning as a nomadic funeral temple. A site of excarnation that can follow tribes in their caravans, the collossus, once directed by a whip cracking beast master, is now only directed by two weary oxen.

PRIPYAT BEAST

When the secondary explosion occurred at the reactor, spewing an almost immeasurable torrent of radioactivity into the jet stream, surrounding locales could only survive long enough to form mass graves for their dead. The under supplied, unprotected and ultimately doomed clean up crews sent their overseeing emergency committee a flurry of distress signals and sporadic reports of beasts emerging from the piles of bodies on the outskirts of towns. These beasts were said to vary dramatically, and appeared to be sickening amalgamations of people and livestock.

>>9932367
christ this thing is horrible

SARACEN GHAST

Atrocity matches atrocity as the crusades grind onwards, and most hope to only suffer the moaning ghosts of the massacred heard during moonless nights. A sudden increase in caravans and pilgrims found slaughtered has led to the clergy admitting their knowledge of a raiding force of ghasts haunting the crusader's supply line. It is later unearthed that the warrior monks tasked with confronting the threat have been intentionally lax, benefiting from the drop in pilgrims living to reclaim the money the Knights Templar hold in safe keeping for them during their travels.

>I'm pretty sure the thing tied to his ankle is an ass expander. No, really.

UNDYING FLAGELLANT

Unable to fully reach true devotion, and resultantly undeserving of entry to the Kingdom, the Brotherhood of the Holy Scourge divined a method of self abuse that would cleanse them of sin, but send them into a state of half death. Wandering the land and collecting alms, the undying monks seek worthiness through their self debasement. They deceive themselves with notions of piety, but secretly derive pleasure through their pain. This sin of pleasure negates their purpose, and their path has cost them their mortality, binding them to the earth, and robbing them of any chance to die and ascend.

>last

THE COLLECT

Formed in a steel womb fitted to a female necromancer, the Collect is composed of souls captured at death and contained under high pressure with liquid aglaophotis. These souls were condensed into each other until enough life force was coalesced for the birth of a unified entity. The Collect now hangs in the upper stratosphere, a collection of uncountable eyes overseeing the earth and influencing world events. As humanity is led towards war and strife, the souls of the dead rise in large clouds which the Collect drifts through, absorbing more and more souls into its fold and growing ever stronger for it.

>>9931975
This one I find the most disturbing, as it implies OUR MOTHERFUCKING SUN is actually some kind of malevolent being and we are just unable to see it, yet.

>>9932437
yeah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_pear_(torture)

>>9932445
There is no heaven. No hell. Only The Collect.

All these things are great ideas for campaigns.

Lets see...

Screwing with time/space perception is always fun to mess with someones mind.

Also, dead/creepy cities...

>>9932445

This remains funny to me because I read "hangs" as slang for "loiters" or "passes time".

Like it's just, you know, hang'in in the upper stratosphere.

>>9932599
holy fuck! i read about barlowes inferno before it had even came out when i was a kid, and had always wanted to find it. i totally forgot about it, thanks haha

Always freaked me out.

That which is seen cannot be unseen.

>>9932621
It's where life goes to chillax.

>>9932646

I know the rich people have to literally live "above" the commoners...


...But do they have to be such DICKS about it? Do ho ho ho!

And of course, theres just something so unwholesome about flying a kite at night.

>>9932639
I wonder if it was based on this, similarly freaky gate.

Dear OP - I can't sleep now. Fuck you.

>>9932855

aw don't be such a puss

Hmm... I think I've a story tell. It's from a League of Extraordinary-ish GURPS campaign that ended up in Lovecraft's Dreamlands at one point.
Well... they ended up in Sarkomand... and... well... one of the PC's has Cursed and another is a descendant of Abdul Al-Hazred with Weirdness Magnet.
They met Nyarlathotep four times in that session, only one of them knowing that both IC and OoC.
Well... they're final meeting with Nyarlathotep wasn't with one of his regular avatars. Oh no it wasn't.
But first, let's talk about something that happened in the beginning. Atim Alharazad had accidentally summoned a byakhee when they had to fight off a cthonian in some ghoul warrens. And it's not like they he didn't oh Nyarlathotep some favors anyway.
But later on, after an assortment of misadventures and ending up in the red desert beyond the Vaults of Zin.
There they wandered for a time until they found an oasis of strange plants and black waters...
There, they heard a voice. A human voice! Kaloo-kalay! A human here! A... a human here?
It called again.

>>9933033
It was a strange arab man outside of his merchants tent, a great paddock of camels out back. He welcomed them in, introducing himself as "Crazy Hassan, of Crazy Hassan's Used Camel and Riding Crocodile Emporium". When they found out he was out of riding corcodiles they asked what else he had.
They discovered he had a two-humped flying camel. After hearing about this they paid with glee and ran out back, looking for it amidst the roaming camels in the paddock. They couldn't find it.
They asked Crazy Hassan where it was. He pointed to a great and terrifying creature tied to a nearby stake. It was the byakhee.
Atim Alharazad proceeded to freak the fuck out and convince the party that getting on was a -very- -very bad idea.
The rest of the party decided to see if they could trade for a regular camel.
"I am sorry sir, we are out of stock."
"What are you talking about we just saw a bunch of them in the paddock!"
They look over to the paddock. Which is now completely empty. They proceed to walk off silently and quickly as Hassan calls to them.
"Thank you, we will see one another soon good customers!"
Crazy Hassan? Yeah, he's an avatar of Nyarlathotep.

Quoth the Craven: "Nevermore."

"Thar she blows!"

im probably pretty late on this OP but have you considered running it in a WoD campaign instead of DnD? might be better suited

>>9933244

WoD is "dark", not "horror".

Pathos-ridden vampires in trenchcoats are fun, but they have absolutely nothing to do with horror.

Anyway, I'm out for the night, but it's been fun.

>>9933271
although could be transitioned easier into the whole horror vibe. dont allow them to become vamps / werewolfs / etc. or at least not for some time. get them hiding from alot of that stuff. hell im sure just one bad encounter with a nosferatu would have them shaking in their boots

>>9933271

well, ok so that's Vampire. But vanilla WoD has plenty of great horror mechanics like morality, degenerations, and the virtues and vices.

>>9933353
took being bi-polar as a flaw one game then continued to play that character and he accidently became malkavian. one of the more fun and enjoyable games i have played

We had a game a while back when the party was shunted into the abyss while preventing the drow from opening a permanent portal to the place. We ended up with the gating macguffin on the other side and managed to puzzle out that we could use it to open a gate back home at the right place and the right time, but if we missed our small window of opportunity we were going to be stuck in the abyss possibly forever. Trekking through an extremely hostile environment while undersupplied, beset by alien monsters on all sides, and on a deadline was, well, hellish. But that wasn't the worst of it. Things that looked relatively harmless were usually (but not always) much more dangerous that the obviously monstrous critters. Making the knowledge checks didn't help much either, since all it did was make us realize many of the potential encounters were those we could barely handle on a good day. Starting one fight also tended to draw the attention of others, which if it didn't kill us outright would still delay us. That made the sessions a lot of sneaking around, punctuated by a few brutal slugfests and knuckle biting "rest stops" often interrupted by monsters that may or may not have been chasing us. Goddamn Vancian spell preparation was really biting us in the ass.

While not playing an actual horror based game I felt the that throwing undead at my players seemed lame. The skeletons and zombies they had fought so far had fallen like wheat before them (ranger has favored enemy:undead, that don't help) so I mixed it up a little.
The Failed One was a magical experiment that, as the name implies, failed. By stat/power/effect he was just an extra tough zombie, all the same traits and weaknesses, but I built a little tension before loosing him on the party. He didn't just charge out, he was released as part of a trap, a door he was behind slowly ratcheted open. The PCs turned over a table to hide behind and waited not willing to fire at him with cover (ammo being is somewhat short supply for them at that moment). When the door was halfway up he ducked under and stood for a moment looking at them, sure they got a round of ranged attacks on him but I'd buffed up his stats assuming that would be the case. "He stands there as you shoot at him," I told them, "making no effort to defend himself" (all his AC was armor and shield) "and he is breathing heavily."
"Wait," one player asked, "he's breathing?".
"Yes, like this..." I made as if I was trying to catch my breath after a run and hold back a scream at the same time " he lets out a long exhale that might be an attempt at speech but without lips or a tongue you can't understand him."
This little twist rather freak them out, suddenly they didn't know if they got their bonuses, or if the cleric's spells would work on him? After the silent, shambling, weak undead they had been facing this unknown added some real concern to the fight.
And a wonderful time was had by all.

>>9933439
But worst than the seriously bloody fighting were the horrifying sounds of battle that kept trailing us, often from different angles and always just out of view. A few hours from our portal destination our scout finally catches a glimpse of a massive rampaging spider demon making the same shrill warble we'd been hearing all week. Even worse, despite the size of this demon nobody had seen it in person until now, and the only reason we finally spotted it was due to mob of critters fleeing this thing in every direction. Didn't take long for us to realize we were both alive and on schedule (both very unlikely considering our level and where we were) because this particular demon had been herding us from the very beginning. Finding out that evil forces greater than yourself have all along used you for its own ends, now that was horrifying.

The final fight itself was crazy awesome in the what the fuck the spider demon is immune to necromancy and shooting laser eyebeams kind of way (retrievers look really similar to bebilith demons, surprise!), but the earlier realization that this thing had *wanted* us to open the gate, now that was magic.

A good horror game doesn't have to be a rule 0 heavy GM power wank.

>>9933575
A good cake doesn't have to have chocolate in it.

>>9933645
No, no it does not. Because it might be a lemon cake or a pumpkin spice cake.

Been awhile, but as I remember it happening....

During a d20 post-apoc game, one of the DM's in my old group had the players find an old military complex hidden half-buried in an old trash heap.

After making their way inside the long-sealed facility, strange things started happening: the discovery of massive amounts of blood splattered throughout the dusty building, hallucinations of personal enemies from the past and of laughing children running down the blood-stained halls, broken vials and strange experimentation equipment being discovered and hints that someone/thing was tailing them through the facility.

Finally, in the final moments of the session - our tended to run upwards of 6 hours - they were confronted by an insane failed-experiment that had killed the facility personel and been trapped by a lockdown. Think Freddy Krueger + Akira + Edward Scissorhands.

After a week of nail-biting, the battle ensued with the creature being immune to pretty much every type of damage at the group's disposal. Fleeing, they found the complex's hibernating AI, which woke up and helped them kill the monster - only to reveal that 'he' released it in the first place.
In time, the AI turned out to be just as dangerous as the monster :p

(pic unrelated)

>>9933650
Ooh, spicy lemon cake party! Will there be goats?

>>9933680
And monkeys?

>>9933575

It has to have some pretty tight rules if you want a grim dark feel, and it against the players.

There's some decent advice in this thread, and some nice stories too. Too bad there's all that direct copypasta from Keith Thompson's site, WHICH HAS BEEN DONE AT LEAST A HUNDRED TIMES. Fucking a, just leave a link and be done with it.

>>9929866

How do you create horror?

Atmosphere. Atmosphere and willing participation.

You cannot scare someone who doesn't want to be scared. You are describing things verbally, and if the player refuses to imagine them, they will never be scared of them.

Atmosphere is how they will imagine them. Use small wrongs to build up tension, larger wrong to accelerate that tension, and when that tension is at its peak, hit them with a horror setpiece. They won't accept either of the latter early on, because they're not in the mood. The small wrongs are there to get them to set their disbelief back just that little bit, and push up the tension slightly higher. That lets you worm in something more wrong, and the process repeats. Never drop a setpiece until they are demonstrating physical signs of discomfort or you'll waste it. The walls, roof, and floor of the giant room you're in all growing faces and starting to sing folkloric music is silly if you aren't in the mood, but if you ARE in the mood, it will fuck you up chronically.

Something critical to your success, or failure, in a horror game will be rules.

Rules provide predictability. Rules provide stability. Rules provide a known quantity to which everything can be reduced. These are all bad things for horror. If you want to make horror that works, you have to be willing to adapt the rules of the game to meet your needs. You need to keep the players tense and on-guard, especially if you intend to use their paranoia against them. Follow the rules, more or less, but make sure you change them. Make large changes to the rules and keep them that way for a while. Make a one-off exception. Change something, then change it back soon after. If possible, use a system the players are not intimately familiar with. If the players lose the sense of predictability known rules provide, it firstly provides tension, and more subtly, forces them to listen to your descriptions as a whole, instead of just hearing the relevant stats and rolls. That in turn makes them more susceptible to horror tactics. Be sparing, though. Make sure every change is backed by, and appears to have been caused by, something operating in the game world. If they draw causality from there they will pay more attention to the game world, and that makes them listen more and imagine. This also ensures that your players will believe that there are rules. While you don't have to let the players know what the rules are, and you should never do so for horror, the players have to believe a set of rules exist or they will instantly have all immersion destroyed as they realise this is purely based on arbitrary whim. They won't see the point in playing if their cause doesn't lead to an effect.

The challenges the players face are the basis of the game. I like to divide the challenges the players will face into four categories here, for ease of description.

First, normal threats. These are threats you can beat by fighting, as in a normal game. Normal things for that world. These challenges the players will beat by fighting. If they run, they escape, but the threat remains. If they ignore it, they get hurt. If they play along, well, work it. These should start the game, to establish the rules you're going to change. As the game progresses, these challenges should get more and more difficult to fight, without actually becoming implausible to beat, to maintain tension.

Next are the Unstoppables. These are challenges, threats, or things that the players can't reasonably overcome. They should run from these, as fighting will get them hurt, ignoring will get them hurt worse, and playing along will get them hurt worst of all. These should come up soon. As the game progresses, these become more dangerous, going from likely hurt, to certain hurt with death chance, to certain death.

Next comes the phantasmal challenges. These are challenges that aren't, usually the result of twisted perceptions. They come up later in the piece, once the rules have been changing considerably. These threats cannot be fought without being hurt, and cannot be run from because they will just follow. If you play along you'll either get hurt or stay trapped. The only way out is to ignore them. These must come later in the piece, so that the tone of the campaign already fits things undefeatable by normal methods. The effectiveness of such threats is overwhelmingly based on your description. As the game progresses, these should be less and less obvious, and take more effort to discern the 'escape move'.

Finally, there are the ineffable challenges. These are challenges the players cannot beat, run from, or ignore safely. To escape these, the character must play along, or find a mental escape. Think the Creepy kid from movies and games. These are often the part of the Big Threat of a horror campaign. These have to come latest in the piece, because firstly you need something that is threatening enough that the players have to play along, and secondly you need to show them subtly how to do these. As you progress, these challenges should take more complex, vicious, or unwanted actions from players to play along.

At first, keep all the different challenge types distinct. Then, as the players start to figure out the differences, blur the visual lines. Then, blur the actual lines of the rules. Always leave the players in doubt as to what it is they should do here. Not crippling doubt, save for big setpieces, but ensure every time they plan to deal with something there's that niggling concern in their minds that this might not be the way they think it is.

Pacing is next. This will come down to your ability to read players, and set the pace appropriately, but I find that when I run campaigns a fast pace works best. Always keep things moving slightly faster than the players want to. Don't give them time to stop and think. They start analysing, they start wondering, they start to figure out the rules and your part in playing them. Keep them moving fast, and don't let them quite catch their breath, and the tension will keep up. Vary the pace slightly, to keep it interesting. Generally accelerate things towards the end. I like to keep the denouement of my horror campaigns with things moving so fast the players barely have any idea what's going on, which is extremely effective in building up the tension. Force them to choose fast, and give them the worst result if they don't choose quick. Just make sure you don't push it too far, into the realm of being unfair instead of just tense, or they'll stop playing along.

Also, if you think you can do it well, try to throw in sudden stops near the end. Points at which everything just slows down. If you've turned on the little paranoia in the players' heads, this will drive them insane. Do this very rarely, though, or it gets very obvious and very old.

Be descriptive. Being descriptive is utterly vital in horror. A good descriptive GM can make anything seem scary. A mechanical rote DM will make having Yawgmoth propose to you seem mundane and uninteresting. I can't tell you how to be descriptive, since everyone has their own style, and trying to play to another person's style just doesn't work. What I can do is give you a few tricks.

The first, and most common, way of creating tension is the nearlythere. That's where you take something very ordinary, and change just the littlest bit. That exploits the players' familiarity, and can work quite well. Another trick if you can do it well is to exploit that familiarity further and not fill in that missing detail until later, playing it as the characters having overlooked it. If you can do that well, it works wonders, making their acceptance of something comfortable even more disturbing. Something like an ordinary beach, plain sand, plain water, buckets, pails, dead fish every so often, and a little seaweed. All rather ordinary, save that the waves are rushing outwards from the sand. Be subtle here, though. Doing this hamfistedly will just annoy your players, kill the mood, and destroy the tension you so painstakingly built up.

Next comes the opposite, or the things that are just wrong, except for one small detail. Focus more on the one small detail than the wrongs. This is more effective once tension has built up, and the players are more willing to accept the strange.

Then comes the outright wrong, where there are no redeeming or familiarising features to a thing. This only works once tension has mounted considerably and the players accept these things without thinking. Because these depend on their alien-ness, use them as sparingly as possible. They make good cores for horror set-pieces.

Finally, there's the absolutely normal. Only working once the tension has driven your players paranoid, this is something that appears completely normal because it is. Once you've been encountering the horrific and ineffable for hours at a time, something completely normal represents a drastic shift in the rules. You can, if you're good, achieve more fear from something utterly normal than something ostensibly terrifying.

Critically for all descriptive GMing, be descriptive, not prescriptive. The more alien a thing is, the less direct the information should be. Ideally, you want most of your descriptions to raise far more questions than they answer. Even the most horrific known thing can only be as horrific as it is. The unknown, though, is as horrific as everything it can be.

Description is also where you produce real fear in your players. When something goes wrong in horror, never let it be a strict number, or simple YOU ARE DEAD. When something goes wrong, it should be incredibly unpleasant. If what the players fear about failure is that death means end of game no more rewards, you've failed. If the players fear failure because of what happened to their character the last time they fucked up, you're doing it right. A player doesn't fall to zero HP and die; they have their ribs torn open and feel the edges of their vision fading, as they desperately try to stop the bleeding from everywhere at once. They don't get hit by a shadow damage trap, they're sucked violently into a shadow on the floor, fingers gouging tracks in the wood, and after falling under screams of primal fear and pain can be heard from inside the walls, before the character inexplicably falls through the roof, bloodied, and with a look of utter terror on their face.

Seeing as we're on description and its role in producing horror, there are some types of horror eminently suited for roleplaying, and many that are not.

> pretentious cocktwaddle

Hi, it's the 21st Century. We have cell phones and technoology. Horror is so 20th century man

>>9936340
Right here, this is the attitude that ensures horror will never die. Your cell's batteries ran out and your GPS bought the farm. All of a sudden, for the first time in a very long time, you are isolated from anyone who could help you. And you've been so reliant on your technology you never bothered with that boring boy scout shit, so now you don't even know how to do something simple like start a fire.

Disturbing horror, as in describing things that just make you feel personally uncomfortable, takes exceptional skill, since it's completely dependent on your ability to read your players. If you can do it and maintain it just below the point at which the player has had enough and just leaves the game, do so. If you can't read the player, don't try. Also, don't do it to any player unless you can do it to all, as it'll make that player feel you're trying to go after him personally.

Fear of consequence works well, since the total control over the character and the tension you're creating work to make players empathise with and become immersed in their characters. This is where the consequences mentioned above become truly upsetting.

Paranoia creation works perfectly here, since you have complete control over information, and the players are inherently using their imaginations. Use it, and use it well.

WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT may or may not work. That all comes down to your ability as a descriptive GM. If it does, exploit it mercilessly.

On a sidenote, the use of motifs can work very well in horror. Try to associate all the worst events in the game with one motif, and put them before it. The tinkly music box is one of them, or a certain NPC's voice, or anything. If you use that motif and the players immediately start to get visibly tense, you're doing it right.

You won't find BOO horror in there. This is because it is the worst kind of horror and is only used in compensation for the failure of the creator to produce something meaningfully terrifying. Even then it's entirely visual, and this sort of game is entirely not. Short of metagaming things, you can't even produce BOO horror.

There is also the option of fucking with the players, and turning them on each other, but that is a very individual choice. It may work; it may not, all depending on your group.

If you want to do like I do sometimes and create a setting where the players are almost outright hostile to each other but work together still solely because they need to survive, combine separation and concentration to produce mutual paranoia. Being alone makes them uncomfortable, since they don't have any support and they don't have anything to confirm that what they see is real. Being with someone else makes them uncomfortable, since there is an excellent chance that they aren't who they say they are or even real. Remember to slide a note to one or both or all players every time they meet, even if it's blank. Sometimes, it will say 'you are an angry/sad/violent/helpful hallucination/ghost/disguised enemy' or 'you are his friend, but have become slightly/significantly/murderously hostile/antipathic/helpful/lustful for reason XYZ;. It takes work, but making players completely distrust one another without once making an actual PC willingly betray them makes for excellent horror. You want to create that unique-to-horror feeling of immense relief followed by deep suspicion every time you see another living human.

Or for a less personal feel, do like FEAR, and have the other players almost always good, but with the caveat that if you ever meet another person it's because something absolutely horrible is about to happen to both of you. This is my personal favourite, because they instinctively want to stay other players and NPCs to feel safe, but the moment they actually see someone else they try to get away from each other as soon as possible because something nasty will happen. Try to capture that feeling from FEAR where you're screaming at the screen NO YOU FUCKHEAD DON'T MEET UP WITH ME YOU'RE GOING TO GET BRUTALLY FUCKING KILLED.
One trick I like to use in that situation is to have the players roll up multiple characters. Not individually, since that creates a sense of privateness, but as a group. Hand them ten character sheets and tell them to fill them out as a group. They take one character at a time, and you work the others as you need to in the plot or under their direction if not. This gives you a much greater ability to produce incredibly harsh consequence, without compromising the extent to which players empathise with their characters, and turn up the difficulty considerably to add to the horror without making the game objectively more difficult. It does add an enormous amount of extra administration, though, so be careful with it.

Just remember the basic rules of horror GMing.
The rules system is irrelevant. The content is unimportant. Delivery is everything.

>>9936496
SAVED, and THANK YOU.

>>9930080
GODDAMMIT, THE G-Man's ON A MOUNTAIN WITH A CUP OF COFFEE

I WANT A CUP OF COFFEE

FUCK HIM

>>9936648
I actually wish he'd gone into more detail. While helpful, he jumped around a bit too much, and more examples would have made it a lot better.

bump

The Slenderman isn't an urban legend. He was directly created with input from SA goons and /x/ and shit. He's more like a "false legend."

>>9942095

It's kind of like the difference between scientology and christianity.

>>9942556
Let's not go there. It's been a good thread and we wouldn't want to ruin it.

Give them things that work too well, a power that's a bit too awesome, villagers that are a bit too friendly. Give them something they don't want to part with, and have it destroy them by degrees.

Also, illusions and body horror is always nice. A king's lovely daughters want only your devotion. Forever and ever and ever.

>>9942793

If you don't already have a horror tone established this doesn't work. They say "AWESOME, we've got an artifact weapon!" Then when they come to regret using it they just feel kind of screwed.

It DOES work well if the PCs already get that a.) it is a horror game (doing something good for them will make them suspicious and paranoid) or b.) that the item/power is Bad in some way that they don't understand yet.

Either way, they might still feel forced to use it, but they'll get this creeping feeling that they're digging themselves deeper by doing so- you create a sense of foreboding which will grow as the campaign advances, which is awesome.

>>9943118
Strangely reminds me of Ruby and her third eye.

Stab everything.
Burn everything.
Don't read shit.
That house looks weird? Reduce it to rubble.
Some guy looks at you funny? Shoot him. Then throw holy water all over him. Then light him on fire. Then maybe some more holy water.

DON'T USE D&D

D&D sucks for horror.

I sugest Nemesis.
http://www.arcdream.com/dennis/NEMESIS.pdf

>>9943301
>I haven't read the thread

>>9943433

DON'T READ ANYTHING BURN IT BEFORE IT GETS INTO YOUR MIND!

>>9943467
>>9943467

Reminds me of something from an older thread.

Wizard finds a scroll for a new spell. Wizard studies it, thinks he had figured out what it does, transcribes it to his spellbook, and memorizes it.

As soon as he prepares it the first time, the text in the spellbook is replaced with the words "Now I'm in your head".

>>9943543

IT'S IN YOUR HEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!

KILL THE WIZARD!

>>9943181

I think this ends up being more destructive and horrific than the horror that we'd be facing.

Wait a minute...OH GOD WE'RE THE MONSTERS!

>>9943588

Then PCs were shoggoths.

See: H. P. Lovecraft's "The Outsider"

>>9943637

NOOOOOOOO!

I KILL MYSELF!

>>9943649

/campaign

bump

>>9936373
Newsflash: that shit stops being scary once you leave your twenties, maybe sooner. Real horror comes from things that can actually happen; i.e. being mauled by animals, seeing your children die, watching your government collapse into anarchy and warfare while the general populace eats itself. Things you can't control, where your only solution is to run. Run somewhere where this can't happen. That's fear.

>monsters
DOING IT WRONG

You don't use monsters. You keep players on the edge by having them think that monsters WILL appear, and do horrible things to them.

As noted above, wrongness is key. It isn't about what's lurking out there, but what you think lurks out there.

>>9943854
No, actually that's just your opinion.

>>9943854
you sir have no imagination. I still get freaked out by not knowing what is in the dark

>>9944013
Almost every species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark...

>>9944025
No. You're wrong there.

It's not "irrational".

>>9943998
>>9944013
Then you're fucking children. There is nothing scary about "the dark." There is nothing "out there" that is not an animal or another person. Grow up.

>>9944013
>>9944025
>>9944052

That's why fire was invented.

Lots and lots of fire.

>>9943854
To be honest, I can only remember a few times in my life where Ive actually been afraid.

Ive worked with large predators since I was a child, so big scary animals dont really do it for me.

The scariest moment I can remember, off hand, was the first time I took mushrooms.
Story:
A buddy and I decided to try some shrooms - or rather, he bought some and convinced me to take them. He SAID he was putting a quarter ounce of shrooms on a pizza we were splitting; but ACTUALLY put on twice that amount.

Twenty minutes after ingestion, two other friends showed up, and the dude who had the shrooms got noided and fled to his girlfriend's place. Other two friends left soon after.

Let me tell you, there are few scarier things than not knowing what is real and what isnt, what is possible and what is not.
That night proceeded to be a 14 hour nightmare of skittering shadows, ghostly touches from the dark, hallucinations of swarms of lizards invading my apartment and of several police cars parked out front; but the grand finale - what sent me screaming into my room to awaken the next morning under my bed with a tear-soaked pillow wrapped around my head - was when a black dot appeared on my cieling and slowly spread to become a void overhead, out of which a monstrous and ghastly hand (think Giger's alien) reached down and contorted into what (to my mind at least) appeared to be a throne.

It wasnt the hallucination itself that scared me though - it was the deep seated notion that I should take a seat, because something wonderful/terrible was about to occur.
And that was the last time I took shrooms! XD

Reality is what you make of it, and if your perceptions are clouded or being manipulated, reality can be a very scary state.

>>9944095
What are you even doing here? Sounds like you don't have the proper attitude for roleplaying.

"There's nothing in the dark."
"There are no monsters."
"Only reality matters."

>>9944095
The reason it's called an 'irrational fear' is because IT'S FUCKING IRRATIONAL YOU MORON.

Get over yourself.

>>9944095
Well, we like to pretend.

Why do you think people intentionally seek fears and thrills? 'Cuz we like it. And because we like it, we take the important attitude that we like the thrills: as was discussed earlier on in this very thread, even the worst and most frightening things won't do shit if nobody wants to get afraid.

Maybe if I took a similar attitude to yours, nothing here would be the slightest bit frightening. But that'd be friggin' boring, so I won't.

>>9944147
>XD
Your image of some furfag's wish-fulfillment mutilation-fetish creature only increases my disdain for you.

>>9944217
Well, what would YOU think if you took some mushrooms and began to see furries everywhere?

Sure, they might not be frightening otherwise, but when you're delusional and irrational...

Rational thought is something that many people believe will protect them from the things that may-very-well go bump in the night.

You are a human - you have horrible senses of smell, hearing and sight; by comparison to most lifeforms, at least.

You have no natural defenses, aside from tool use.

Your brain is only capable of withstanding so much twisting of your perceptions, before 'rational' people become 'insane' people.

Truth is, if there IS something out there - be it nasty undead, a slithering horror from beneath the seas or a shadow demi-God from beyond the stars - you arent likely to see it unless it wants to be seen.

Oh, and thus far your species has experienced/explored about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the universe - dont be too hasty in declaring what can be and what cannot.

>>9930288
I dont understand how you could use this unless its meta, moving chairs and tables etc when the group breaks for food or whatever (but even then convincing 4ish people that nothing has moved is going to be hard).

>>9944217
Thats a furry?

Christ, its even scarier now than when I thought it was some kind of demented sock-puppet come to life...

Also, why dont have a coke and a smile and shut the fuck up, hmm?

>>9944148
>>9944167
>>9944207
>I still sleep with a nightlight because I'm a dripping wet pussy. X3

I've never seen horror deviate from this formula:
>You go someplace. Someplace SPOOOOOOOOOKY.
>You hear noises. Try to wave them off, just your imagination!
>WWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIRRRD SHIT HAPPENS!
>SOMEONE DIES!
>OH NO WE'RE ALL FUCKED!
Then it branches off into: "They all died horribly" or "Several escape and agree never to speak of this again." Every fucking time. You want to talk about imagination? Try writing something that isn't riding Lovecraft's dick across New England.

>>9944307
How is that different from any other genre?

>>9944279
Ingame example I'm going to use tonight-the party left a temple of the Raven Queen last week and will return to a temple of Pelor, same location same leadership different god. Small changes that happen regularly, the smallest of oddities will begin to catch the attention of the players and make them increasingly paranoid and then drive them to the depths of terror BWAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH!

>>9944307
Oh, I get it now, you've just had some really bad experiences with horror.

Well don't come whining about it to us.

Oh wait, got you now. 4/10.

>>9944307
So if I'm playing CoC, I shouldn't ride Lovecraft's dick? Because I'm pretty sure in the setting based on his shit, it generally makes sense to use his shit.

Bodily alteration/mutilation.
Gross-horror (see: Human Centipede, Hostel, etc).
Alteration of perceptions pertaining to time and space.
The appearance of unnatural or unwholesome beings, devices or locations.
Anything dangerous which cannot be easily identified, injured or perhaps even detected.
Being powerless as something terrible is done, extra points if you are forced to watch or take part.
Loss of individuality.
These are the things that scare most people.

>>9944250
>Rational thought is something that many people believe will protect them from the things that may-very-well go bump in the night.
As they well should. If you can keep a cool head, or at least seem like it, that should be enough to rally others to you. Further, whatever's hunting chasing or following you is still bound by physics and nature. Magic is bullshit.
>You are a human - you have horrible senses of smell, hearing and sight; by comparison to most lifeforms, at least.
And yet, between those senses and sheer numbers, we've killed mammoths with little more than pointy sticks. Some squidgy thing in the dark shouldn't be too much trouble.
>You have no natural defenses, aside from tool use.
Considering the potential tools at our disposal, that's pretty fucking handy.
>Your brain is only capable of withstanding so much twisting of your perceptions, before 'rational' people become 'insane' people.
In which case you get thrown in a closet and ignored until we've finished the job.
>Truth is, if there IS something out there - be it nasty undead, a slithering horror from beneath the seas or a shadow demi-God from beyond the stars - you arent likely to see it unless it wants to be seen.
Good. Maybe it's friendly. In a relative sense anyway. I'd trade a life of once-a-week cult worship over death if I had to.
>Oh, and thus far your species has experienced/explored about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the universe - dont be too hasty in declaring what can be and what cannot.
Oh look, it's an otherkin. What's the furgoth club look like these days, anyway? You guys used to be a riot, I remember.

>>9944484
>And yet, between those senses and sheer numbers, we've killed mammoths with little more than pointy sticks. Some squidgy thing in the dark shouldn't be too much trouble.

That was thousands of years ago, though, when you used to do that kind of stuff for work.

Good luck killing a mammoth these days, with your fat neckbeard physique. Even if you had a gun. Which you couldn't shoot very well.

>>9944307
>>9944484
>HEY GUYS I'M SHITTING UP THREADS FOR NO REASON LOOK AT ME PAY ATTENTION

Look, couldn't you just go away and let us be in peace? There certainly is nothing for you here, considering you're such a fearless macho.

>>9944391
>This uninspired cretin doesn't even understand the basohgoddon'tturnaroundit'sBEHINDYOU

>>9944609
>AUGH HOLY SHIT WHERE

>>9944624
>IT'S RIGHT THERE MAN. CAN'T YOU SEE IT? IT GOT JERRY. IT FUCKING GOT JERRY.

>>9944484
Hahaha, shows how much you know.
So much of the 'physics' and 'nature' that we understand is based on theories that have been concocted in the minds of humans to create a means by which we can explain what happens around us.

Before great exploration, humans believed their world to be the center of the Universe and a flat plane - wrong.
Before venturing into the deep-sea, humans believed life was dependent on the sun - proved that theory wrong as well.
Are you really too much of a moron to realize that there likely - infact, given the size of the Universe and its age, almost CERTAINLY - are places and things which defy our current conception of 'nature' and 'physics'?
Its like a kid that has only learned the colors yellow and red claiming that there can be no blue.

Also, reality check: The people who are 'rational' to the extreme are usually the ones that go bat-shit insane when something beyond-rationalization occurs - because their fragile psyches cant handle that kind of exertion, let alone their piss-poor imaginations.

Sorry, Im not an internet-based bellend like you, so I cant make a comment on what an 'otherkin' is, let alone furrygoths; but I can make a pretty good assumption: you are an overweight neckbeard that has fallen into the science-explains-everything-perfectly! mindset.

Im a scientist, and Im here to tell you - we dont have much figured out at all. We are still struggling with the Universe's equivalent of 2+2, and you think you are in the right to claim there is nothing in existence you cannot explain....?

Yeah, youre a bright one alright.
Go watch some more Star Trek and stfu.

>>9944500
>Even if you had a gun. Which you couldn't shoot very well.
I'll thank you to know I've known how to fire a rifle since I was twelve. It's not hard; maintaining it is another matter. Hell, shotguns don't even take *that* much effort, unless you're trying to leave the target intact (which is why small-game is such a bitch). Just point it in a direction, pull the trigger. Scatter handles the rest.

>>9944651
>OH SWEET GOD I DON'T EVEN LIKE JERRY AND I'M SCARED.

>>9944762
THERE IT IS. FUCK. FUCK. IT'S GONE! WHERE'S MIKE?!?! WHERE THE FUCK IS MIKE?!?!

>>9944747
It's still a big target. That's likely to trample you under it before going down, even if you do manage a killing shot.

>>9944747
Have you ever seen an "elephant gun"?

They are some of the largest bore weapons man has created for handheld use.
And they STILL usually took more than 1 shot to kill.

Mammoths were larger and (likely) more aggressive than present day pacyderms(sp?).

Unless you happen to have a .50 cal on hand, I suggest you take part in the one thing humans are good at - bipedal running.

>>9944786
>FUCK I THINK I SEE SOMETHING MOVING. ARGH I DON'T WANT TO DIE, MIKE AND I WERE BEST BUDS.

>>9944821
>JUST FUCKING RUN. RUN AND DON'T LOOK BACK. OH GOD THE SCREAMING. THE SCREAMING.

Fear of the dark isn't all that irrational - or rather, it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view.

The guy who scoffs at the dark is likely the guy who gets complacent, and thus falls prey to predatory things with good night-vision. Meanwhile the guy who's scared of the dark is pumped full of adrenaline and jumping at every tiny noise, and is thus more ready to react to a potential threat.

It's a good survival instinct.

>>9944696
>Before great exploration, humans believed their world to be the center of the Universe and a flat plane - wrong.
That was centuries ago. We had just left the age in which we believed animals were born from meat.
>Before venturing into the deep-sea, humans believed life was dependent on the sun - proved that theory wrong as well.
Unless I'm mistaken, UV light does scatter into the deep sea, it's just very sparse.
In reality, the only science we should be concerned with--physics--is pretty concrete on the small-scale. So your argument is haughty-taughty bullshit.
>Sorry, Im not an internet-based bellend like you, so I cant make a comment on what an 'otherkin' is, let alone furrygoths; but I can make a pretty good assumption: you are an overweight neckbeard that has fallen into the science-explains-everything-perfectly! mindset.
SCIENCE ISN'T PERFECT! HOLY PENIS WHAT A SCOOP! No shit, Sherlock. How is that relevant?
>Im a scientist, and Im here to tell you
I'll bet your Chemistry PHD from your shithole community college counts for a whole lot, Junior. Let me know when you've got an engineering degree, and we'll talk big-people talk.
Pop your X-Files DVD in and jerk off some more.

>>9944928
>That was centuries ago. We had just left the age in which we believed animals were born from meat.

Yeah? Who's to say we know any better now?

Erotic horror. Romantic entanglements in the luscious meadows of pink-tipped tendrils of alien sex fiends.

>>9944832
>I CAN'T LOOK AWAY FROM IT. HELP ME, MAN. YOU GOTTA HELP ME.

>>9944696
>So much of the 'physics' and 'nature' that we understand is based on theories that have been concocted in the minds of humans to create a means by which we can explain what happens around us.
I read that as:
>FUCKIN' MIRACLES EVERYWHERE IN THIS BITCH.

>>9944928
I have read none of this thread but I saw this post and just had to comment

>PhD from college
>whatthefuckamireading.jpg
>He thinks undergraduate institutions give graduate degrees
>laughinggirls.jpg

>>9944928
Not sure I want to travel up the link chain to read this debate...

>>9944928
>Let me know when you've got an engineering degree, and we'll talk big-people talk.

You technicians are priceless.

>>9945010
Bravo sir, you've found me out.

>>9944928
>Unless I'm mistaken, UV light does scatter into the deep sea, it's just very sparse.
Actually, there are life forms in deep sea trenches with entirely sun-independent ecosystems running off of thermal vents.
Not the guy you're arguing with, just wanted to point it out.

>>9944013
>>9944518
>>9944696

This man has admitted that he is opposed to the notion of playing games of pretend for pleasure.

On /tg/, this is the point where it is traditional to stop replying to such a poster, as his viewpoints and insights have nothing to offer us.

>>9944956
Bingo.

>>9944928
The day I want my car fixed by an ignorant incompetent, I'll come looking for you and your 'engineering degree' down at Meineke.

For the time being, why dont you go jerk off to a turbine or something.

>>9945044

>>9944997
>GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF. DON'T MAKE ME HIT YOU. REMEMBER THAT YOU'VE GOT A WIFE AND KIDS. JUST PICTURE THEM. PICTURE THEM IF YOU DON'T COME HOME TONITE. AND JUST RUN.

>>9944956

What? We do know better now.

We don't know everything, there are some things where we're still trying to put together scientific models that properly match the observable facts, but a lot of that is either really really big (trying to get our models of gravitation straight so that the mathematics matches reality) or really really small (working out how various molecules affect complex biological systems).

We've got a much better appreciation of how the world works than we did five hundred years ago, but we're still learning. Trying to equate incomplete 21st century scientific understanding with ignorant medieval superstition is pretty facetious.

>>9945000
Damn right!

Do you have any idea how complicated the expression of genes is?
FFS: Biology/Genetics > Physics

>>9945077
Backed out of that one real quick, didn't ya junior?
That puts you at a number four right here.
>>9945085

>>9945092

Call of Cthulu+XCOM=High Explosives for everyone!

>>9945097
You're fucking retarded.

...And yet another awesome thread ruined by bullshit arguments.

Shame on you, /tg/.

>>9945119
>>9945147

Where are these from?

>>9945077
Let's be real here; you're both faggots.
>>9944696
>So much of the 'physics' and 'nature' that we understand is based on theories that have been concocted in the minds of humans to create a means by which we can explain what happens around us.
That's some pretentious bullshit. The whole purpose of science is to better understand the world around us. Just because it's seen through human eyes doesn't make it any less sound.
>Are you really too much of a moron to realize that there likely - infact, given the size of the Universe and its age, almost CERTAINLY - are places and things which defy our current conception of 'nature' and 'physics'?
Nature, sure. Physics though? That's pretty universal. Unless by technology or biology the thing in question can subvert gravity, inertia, and mass, it still applies.
>Also, reality check: The people who are 'rational' to the extreme are usually the ones that go bat-shit insane when something beyond-rationalization occurs - because their fragile psyches cant handle that kind of exertion, let alone their piss-poor imaginations.
You're sounding like a fundie now. Chill out.
>Sorry, Im not an internet-based bellend like you, so I cant make a comment on what an 'otherkin' is, let alone furrygoths; but I can make a pretty good assumption: you are an overweight neckbeard that has fallen into the science-explains-everything-perfectly! mindset.
See, now you're just mad.
>Im a scientist, and Im here to tell you - we dont have much figured out at all. We are still struggling with the Universe's equivalent of 2+2, and you think you are in the right to claim there is nothing in existence you cannot explain....?
"I'm" a poster on 4chan and I seriously doubt you've even graduated yet.

>>9944484
>As they well should. If you can keep a cool head, or at least seem like it, that should be enough to rally others to you. Further, whatever's hunting chasing or following you is still bound by physics and nature. Magic is bullshit.
Are we talking in-game or in general here? The chance of you or anyone else keeping a "cool head" in a life-or-death situation is slim to none.
>And yet, between those senses and sheer numbers, we've killed mammoths with little more than pointy sticks. Some squidgy thing in the dark shouldn't be too much trouble.
Squidgy thing we don't know what it is. Weapons we don't have. Outlook: poor.
>Considering the potential tools at our disposal, that's pretty fucking handy.
Yeah, speaking of tools.
I kid. What tools at hand? Gardening tools? Chairlegs? That will do a whole fucking lot against an enemy you know nothing about.
>In which case you get thrown in a closet and ignored until we've finished the job.
...and now you're one more hand short. Assuming you have enough to even restrain them.
>Good. Maybe it's friendly. In a relative sense anyway. I'd trade a life of once-a-week cult worship over death if I had to.
So you think you could fight it, but you'd be willing to quit anyway? Man of action, you are.

>>9945226

I have no fucking idea.

So this is still a horror thread right? Dumping inspirational nightmare fuel here.

Best horror themed game was my half-assed Silent Hill homebrew. I thought my hometown was shitty as it is, so I just used our city map and had the game take place in "alternate" _____ city. Shit was fun.

Again, what's this one guy doing here anyway, explaining away all the bullshit with SCIENCE and rationality? That's no RPG mindset.

I claim he's a troll from /b/. Stop feeding him.

can you faggots stop fucking up the awesome thread please.

nobody gives a shit about what youre saying or how you think about this

Sometimes the best way to scare PCs is to get back to basics.

>>9945554
>how you think about this

For the record, I think that's badass.

>>9944500
All you have to do is scare it and walk after it until it collapses.

>>9945470

Yeah, please continue with the Horror pics. These goddamn idiots wont quit it.

ah, fuck it, i has a huge folder of this

KOMMENCIN DUMP

>>9945593
'Course, you can't just throw a pack of wolves at 'em. You need to make them chase the party through a cold, dark winter night. Something in the distance howls, the light from the full moon casts countless quick shadows to the snow. Better run...

monsters made of bits of people are my favourite kind for freaking players out

where is that armball picture

>>9945631
I like this one. Reminds me of the 80s sci-fi/horror movie, "Leviathan."

FFFFFFFLOOD DETECTION!

CURSE YOOOOOOUUUUU

>>9945674
Ball os Arms Man?

>>9945077
>>9945128
Settle down you two. The original post that started your little circle of hate was largely correct.

>Rational thought is something that many people believe will protect them
Correct in most applications. The human mind's defense against threats is a preemptive fear of what could be so that the body is ready for just about anything, but the overwhelming majority of things the mind is afraid of don't really exist, and tempering the mind's irrational fear with logic lets you dampen fear.

>you have horrible senses
>no natural defenses, aside from tool use
Absolutely correct. We are social, tool-based omnivores because we are individually weak, physically incompetent, and even when using tools and hunting in groups we still need to turn to plants lest we starve; compared to most other creatures on earth, we suck.

>brain is only capable of withstanding so much twisting of your perceptions
Correct. Feet are down, things you see exist, dead things stay dead, gravity affects all thing, et'cetra; if certain truths about reality are dismantled in a person's mind (or there's enough traumatizing events), that mind will collapse into an infantile state.

>you arent likely to see it unless it wants to be seen
Most likely correct. If those creatures survive exclusively by hunting other living things it's almost guaranteed to have an easier time stalking us than we would it, but humanity has a large number of tools at its disposal, so when properly outfitted a human would probably have the advantage.

>dont be too hasty in declaring what can be and what cannot
Theoretically correct. How the mind works, what matter really is, where we are - these have been revised hundreds of times over a mere two thousand years. There is always the possibility that something could be until it is proven to not be in all possible circumstances.

>>9945749
its like this quick sketch of like a sphere made entirely of human arms. its been doing the rounds on tg recently

>>9945776
BALL OF ARMS MAN?

>>9945746
I'm not quite sure why, but that picture reminds me of the FUCK YEAH HUMANITY threads we used to have all the time.

>>9945781
is that its name?
ffff lemme find it

>>9945756
YOU FUCKNUT, THEY SHUT UP.
WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO STIR IT UP AGAIN?

>>9945836
i am officially too shitfaced to do anything moar than image dump

armball will forever be a mystery, probably one that i dreamt up

>>9945749
>>9945781
Hi.

>>9945927
YOU FUCKER THERE YOU ARE

A failed bard attracts a number of young followers, sort of Pied Piper-like, into a cult of personality around him. He claims to be all of the gods, incarnate, and prophecies an apocalyptic war.

Then he tells his followers that it is their role to set off the war with a series of grisly murders...

>>9945980
meant to say: this was concept art for the 40k soulgrinder
it makes me sad for what could have been

>>9945927
Reminds me of Hecatoncheires.

Here's a trick I've been using.

Don't tell them how much damage they take in numbers. You, the DM, rolls all damage both ways. You tell them how effective they believe their attack to be, and conversely tell them how badly they believe themselves hurt.

It's slightly more work on your part, but oh so very worth it to have them scrambling.

>>9946004
Good god, that 100 Greatsword attack

Hi. I'm a Japanese Giant Hornet.

I am one of the creepiest bugs alive.
I murder entire cities to steal their unborn children for later feasting.
I am pure evil.

Sometimes, I kill people ... well, Japanese people, not sure if that really counts.

To see my exploits, look here: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/206326/10_giant_japanese_hornets_vs_10_000_honey_bees/

and thats it for me

>>9946052
Yeah, but you get your ass kicked by a bunch of chicks.

Imagine entering a village and finding every reduced to things like this.

>>9946045
One of the more epic monsters from the ELH.

Another fun one:

The undead result of deific miscarriage - the Atropal Scion.

>>9946000
There were a few daemon engine concepts like this. One amounted to a floating dreadnought with sonic blasters embedded in the sides. Really wish they would've gotten an entry.

>>9946070
and they move around when youre not looking at them!

>>9946165
Yeah!

After this thing has devoured the PCs, the next party they roll up will discover something eerily familiar in the next Madden game.

Beholder birth. Look it up in the Lords of Madness book. Your players will never be the same.

>>9932599
This always makes me think of Charn from The Magician's Nephew.

This would be only slightly post-Deplorable Word.

(If you are like 'Zuh?', google 'Charn')

>>9932599
>>9932609
Nothin' like a good old fashioned Barlowe.

>>9944484
You're the neckbeard that got eviscerated and fucked in the ass in Crossed.

>>9946396
Crossed was a shit comic. Stop pushing the issue.

>>9946456
>comic
>issue

iseewhatyoufuckingdidthar.jpeg

>>9946490
No you don't.

>>9933105

Talk about some jumbo shrimp. Amirite /tg/? Eh?

>>9946613
instantrimshot.com

Thanks to all for making this thread.

And fucking it so badly. I hate you.

>>9946895
<3

>>9929925
Sauce?

Dumping my garbled horror notes. This was all harvested threads on /tg/ (some archived), but god knows where the ideas are originally from (I know that many of them are copy/pasts from the 'weird events' table in Heroes of Horror. Which, by the way, is a pretty solid book if this is what you want).

>HALLUCINATIONS, HAUNTINGS, AND OTHER BULLSHIT

-The players find an old cassette tape in a shoebox. When put into a tape player, they get only a few seconds of heavy, wet breathing before it cuts out. Upon inspecting the tape afterwards, there is no magnetic strip inside.

-One of the PC's shirts is bloody. It starts off as a small stain, but over time gradually covers a wider area, as if they were bleeding. This begins at dawn and ends at dusk, and the effect persists no matter how often they change clothing.

-When on board the elevator, scratching sounds and deep toned incomprehensible whispers can be heard. If examined, the elevator shaft is empty.

-A puddle on the road has a drowning woman hammering on the bottom of the surface as if the water was solid.

-A large puddle appears after a rain storm. if you look down into it you see a full town submerged underwater.

-The sound of a whetstone sharpening a blade not far off can clearly be heard, yet neither the direction nor location can be discerned.

>HALLUCINATIONS, HAUNTINGS, AND OTHER BULLSHIT (cont.)

-A PC's Holy Symbol begins to weep blood from nonexistent wounds.

-PC discovers pieces of the last monster or person they killed mixed in with their rations.

-For one night, there is an extra moon in the sky. It's fully visible and pockmarked with craters. It's gone the next night. The pc's have dreams of this moon the night before it appears, and for one week after.

-When walking down a hallway (mansion, hotel, whatever) the players suddenly notice a set of bloody footprints being imprinted on the carpet, passing from one wall to the other, as if an invisible person just walked through one wall and continued across the hallway through the other wall.

-The character is asleep in his bed, and he wakes up to the sound of drops falling on water. He looks around and the bedroom floor has turned into a black ocean in which he can see things moving underneath the surface...black, tentacled things (and they're not octopi).

-Player wakes up with no shadow. Shadow returns inexplicably 24 hours later.
Twist: An extra shadow of a person, acting as if it was part of the group.

-Call for a will save from all players once in a while, and those who fail will begin to hear a low whispering chant that repeats a few times. "Sath Ar Kathool. Ie mthach Agh-Mnyorliathep." (This event works well if you use it frequently during a game.)

-A PC awakens hearing chewing noises inside their bed, with no sign of what had made them.

>HALLUCINATIONS, HAUNTINGS, AND OTHER BULLSHIT (cont.)

-One of the party members feels scratching and poking in their sleep. When they wake up, they find that they're stuck inside of their mattress.

-One of the PC's awaken with a black line tatoo'ed onto their arm. Every day, another line is added until MINE is spelled out.

-During a particularly dark and stormy night, upon looking up at the sky during lightning flashes, huge shapes can be seen moving behind the clouds illuminated by the flashes.

-All the clerics and paladins in the land vanish, but reappear a month later with no memory of being gone, in fact they can recall everything they've done that month including interacting normaly with everyone.

- A sound like a thousand plates wobbling on a floor comes from the next room over, but there's nothing there, let alone any plates.

- Your players exit a room, as soon as the door closes behind them they hear horrified shrieking and violent thumping, and possibly see blood pouring out from under the door, despite their attempts to get in the door remains locked (even if its not possible for it to be locked), suddenly the shrieking stops, the door unlocks and they're able to enter again, when they do they can only find blood pooling from their side of the doorframe, everything in the room is in place and it looks like absolutely nothing happened.

>HALLUCINATIONS, HAUNTINGS, AND OTHER BULLSHIT (cont.)

-Upon searching the library of a large house or mansion, the players discover that every single book in it is blank. If they begin flipping through the pages anyway, a word shows up here or there, in a way that makes them think they missed it before. If they continue flipping through the books they will encounter essays and stories about people that sound remarkably similar to them. If they keep investigating, the books start dropping their names, and eventually addressing them directly.

TOWNS
-After a few hours in a new town, it slowly dawns on the PC's that there are no children.

-Everyone in a town the PC's are passing through stops what they are doing and intently stare at the PC's. If questioned the entire town continues moving, working, having conversations etc. and act as if nothing ever happened.

- The shadow on a particular sundial in a town is frozen and refuses to move with the sun or moon. If questioned about the sundial the townspeople become flustered and will not speak of it.

-The party comes across a town void of people, but in the places where they would normally be working, their clothes are very neatly folded and piled.

-The party comes across a town with architecture featuring a lot of marble or other high-quality stone. This is because they are near the remains of a vast city which was turned to stone by a great curse and they've been using it for raw materials (perhaps if the curse that turned the town to stone is reversed all the stone taken will turn into blood and flesh).

>CREEPY DUNGEONS AND OTHER PLACES:

-When the PCs return to the dungeon, all the dead bodies left over from the fight before hand are now propped up against the wall, and their faces sowed into smiles. All of their heads facing the entrance.

-The pc's enter a dungeon, ahead they see shadows of horrible beats and the like, but upon rounding the corners, they find nothing but house cats that quickly hiss and run away, a few may hang around the adventurers in a friendly manner. Further delving finds the dungeon filled entirely with house cats, but shadows of horrific beats still lurk around corners. Upon grabbing the dungeon treasure and heading out, suddenly the cats are gone, and in their place, horrible monsters casting shadows of cats around the corners.

-The woods are completely silent. Utterly silent. And empty, for that matter, even of mosquitoes. As a counter: the woods are filled with chirps, and the sounds of thriving life. But every creature seen is dead, and in a fairly advanced state of death.

-The pc's discover a chest in the woods. Upon opening it, they find a painting of the party with an unknown marks painted on their foreheads, each with a different mark.