How do I scare my players?

Show them this board. Tell them that you think the people here are brilliant and have great ideas that you plan to use.

This works incredibly well.

Don't forget to smile or chuckle once in a while.

This helps but if used on its own will only make panic rather then real fear. Use with several tactics at once.

Like pic related. Fuck with their trust OP. Fuck. With. Their. Trust.

I read a story on here a long ass time ago that involved a GM running a space-horror game, complete with making the players wear gas masks and inadvertently turning them against each other. Anybody else know what I'm talking about?

I would be incredibly grateful if anyone could deliver.

But if OP is maleanon and tries this he goes to jail

1. Know what creeps out your players or is generally distressing to them.
2. Isolation and the fear of the unknown are your greatest weapons. Use them.
3. Make them occasionally feel powerless, without making them feel inconsequential.
4. Never fully explain what's going on, feed them small bits and pieces.
5. Prevent them from using 'easy out' spells or abilities that would instantly resolve challenges.

Spook them.

Nevermind, found it:

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12130366/

Fire can also scary.

The specific mechanic there won't work in tabletop I think.

Isolation and the unknown can contribute to fear.

Once tension is properly built up, a spooky surprise can release the tension with a good scare.

It certainly wouldn't invoke fear if you start changing your games' rules of thumb around. In fact it may come off as kind of bullshit.
You'd have to be careful with it

Even an otherwise mundane situation can contribute to an atmosphere of fear... if one altered detail can turn the context on its head, and that leads to frightening implications and deepening mystery.

Eternal Death. No Resurrection. Basically your dead characters are soul locked and they can not change bodies or come back.

EVEN WORSE: Have their dead party members haunt them.

Make 50% of the treasure chests mimics.

>Take a revolver
>load one bullet
>Place it on the table
>every time your character is attacked, you must play russian roulette

I think that what's scary about death is fear of the unknown. Just, not knowing what happens after those final moments, on earth or to one's mind. Will your family be glad you died? Will anyone in the world remember you in ten years? Do you stop to exist? It can be hard to bring those fears through in tabletop RPGs.

...

You know how there are some details you don't notice until it's too late?
There was an NPC traveling with the party, and all the players just assumed she had been there as they met up with another NPC.
But when they got there, she was already there, as if she had been there the whole day.
There was no warning that she had left, because the characters themselves didn't notice.
Freaked my players the fuck out.

My players hated it when I did this, it got them so on edge.

It's not about the rules or mechanics. It's about expectations and set-up.

The more logical the reason for the expectation to be turned on it's head, the better.

Another part of fear is worrying about the consequences of failure. Sure, it's one thing if the PCs die, they signed up for it. But what about innocent people that might be hurt if the players fail? But when losing (or simply not winning fast enough) means an innocent child being eaten alive by goblins, or a gorgeous maiden forced to marry to a vile and abusive knight? That kind of thing can raise the stakes in way that simple damage and soul-shenanigans could not.

What did you describe to the girl that slip out of reality?

>Atmosphere
>Tension
>Immersion

The tools of the amateur. Want to know how to really scare your players? Threaten their gear.

Players can have quite a lot of attachment to material goods, especially treasure they think they earned. In moderation these feelings can be used by a clever DM.

>select all the pizza

>Will anyone in the world remember you in ten years? Do you stop to exist?

I shall live forever.

It's always been a secret dream of mine to build a massive, hidden Aztec Pyramid complex about 50ft underground in East Texas. I'd fill it with gold, silver, jewels, and most importantly, Venetian glass and African artifacts from the 1400's. In the center would be a massive, 25ft tall statue of Huitzlopoctili, surrounded by bronze statues of humans lifting skulls to him. X-rays reveal that the statues aren't statues, but rather human remains permanently sealed in wax and then bronze. The walls of this temple are literally plastered with Zodiac signs and a direct representation of the night sky as it would have been seen in 1476, with different precious gems representing the various stars in the sky.

At the base of the statue of Huitzlopoctili is one word, carved in ancient Latin characters - CROATOAN.

touchdem

you magnificent bastard

It could be something as simple as having your players roll for something they'd only expect during combat situations after they've gotten that they expect to be safe. Get them used to one specific thing equaling safety, then spring something on them.

False Hydra

I still can't decide whether rust monsters are bullshit or brilliant. What's especially funny is my arguments for both are kind of the same

My player was being cheeky when he came to the session saying he would just play himself.

So I put his fiance and his dog into the game and role played her as if she'd never seen a horror film before (even though she's an old school /x/phile). He was completely paranoid for the remainder of the game. The experience taught me that the player has to cherish something and fear losing it to get really emotionally involved and properly afraid.

For a Halloween campaign of call of Cthulhu I shut all the lights off and lit 4 candles, one for each player.

I had a friend help me by lurking around in all black.

Their exploring an old house, and I'm detailing how it creaks, and my top floor starts creaking like someone's up there.

They hear a door open and roll to hide. The front doorknob wiggles, then slowly creaks open then slams shut.

When a character died, I blew out the candle. If they had another character I replaced the bright tall candle with a little tea light.

It really messed with them. Flickering lights, creepy stuff happening. And the candle lifeline was my favorite part. They spent a lot of time protecting their little flame.

Atmosphere, the setting your using, and the system really matter if you wanna unsettle or scare them.

Unrelated but my friends and I were trying out five nights at Freddy's when it first came out. and a thunderstorm knocked out power at 11pm so I lit a few candles, thunder wind and rain whipping super fast and tiny candles in the middle of the night really made it tense for us.

This haha.
Had a game where i did the whole "little girl running into a corn field" thing.
Shot was hilarious. They were legging it from something they couldnt see chasing them and kept running into a scarecrow(golem) playing possum.
Then shit got fun.

>You find a +11 vorpal masterwork rock.
>Next to some +10 weightless full plate encrusted with jewels of power and enchantment
>You see a lone very timid and afraid rust monster sitting on this loot, if stressed the loot is gone forever

Mega Satan hath spoken

Threaten their /gear/. A rust monster will get your average fighter turning a 180.

Its about trust.
And you CAN exploit that.
Lets say you have a fantasy world right?
Monks of the order of Oggly woobadah whatever.
Cool guys, not religeos just philosophical.
Travel around teaching healing and beaing cool beans.
Total pacifists.
Spend the whole campaign doing good things on their behalf, since, as pacifists, they can only hire some mercs to fight off evil.
At the end of the campaign pcs kill generic bbeg no 27 and stop his dread summoning of whatever.
Monks hold victory feast, invite all the liked npcs along and drug the third course.
Or just get everyone smashed.
Pcs wake up on the altar watching every npc they give two shits about me sacrificed and have to overcome drugs and bonds then fight off highly skilled unarmed specialists to stop the summoning of THEIR dread devil lord watsitface, lord of long term planning.
Establish a belief.
Reinforce that belief.
When they internalise that belief...
Violate it

"are you sure you wanna do that?"

In GURPS you can actually take a feat (or what they call it) for your charcter that means the GM has to ask you that if you're about to do something monumentally stupid or suicidal. Could be it's once per session.

Cool idea, might have to steal it

What's a tea light?

In old world of darkness there is the "common sense" trait that works the same. Being a newbie and knowing the DM was kinda harsh I took it as fast as I could.

I once played LARP where combat mechanics used these toy guns, that when fired, make a sound and smoke (it was using some little little pyrotechnics)... excepts sometimes it wont do shit. WHen you shoot at someone, you either insta killed or missed. I kinda liked that.

>The good guys were secretly the bad guys all along!

DO NOT DO THIS. IT WILL *NEVER* COME OFF AS COOL AS YOU THINK IT WILL.

_NEVER_

ONCE MORE FOR EMPHASIS

___*NEVER*___

Instead, go read everything this ancient namefag ever posted.

archive.4plebs.org/tg/search/username/Awake/

And while we're at it

Awake, Awake, Awake

At least one parent part is suppose to be male.

HOW do you open the door?

>The good guys were secretly the bad guys all along!
>DO NOT DO THIS

It doesn't count as being bad if it's just like... ONE of the good guys was helping the bad guys all along, right? This is specifically advising against the good guy faction gets revealed to be evil?

Yes and no.

Yes if there was no sign, clue, or build up whatsoever that could possibly clue them into betrayal. That's gay. Supergay, even.

See, build up and pay off are what stories are all about. If you are going to heelturn and pull a 180 on a character, for god's sake, make sure to establish some fucking narrative that could hint at it.

If it's a guy established to have money problems or greed issues or some shit, then that's your build up for when the "Sorry friends, can't feed the family on a good man's wages" moment comes. And you know what? It feels good, because it makes sense. There's an explanation there, something the players saw as existing before the moment came.

And that something is all you need. Something more than nothing. Because "nothing" is what you have when you go "The good guy was secretly the bad guy all along."

And I get it. On some level, you want it to be a surprise. You think it should be a total surprise, a total shocker. But our eyes roll when it happens in movies, when that kind of shit comes out of nowhere without some kind of build up, so it will happen in your game as well. Because oddly enough, people don't actually like to be surprised in stories. They like a set up and they like a pay off.

Bills. And debt.

Dogs on two legs

CIS scum

You really can't actually frighten your players, the best you can do is create an atmosphere of uncertainty and place their characters in legitimate peril, or at least what appears to be legitimate peril.

>not using real guns and simmunitions

I had a fun variant on this for a game of Mage, the characters whose personalities were the most blatant stereotypes were also the ones who tended to be in disguise or double agents. Fat feminist mage fucking up during an investigation; later discovered by the party to be a guardian who was planting false evidence.

Drongo australian mage by the name of "Larrakin", happens to find a cache of hithero undiscovered artefacts and tells both sides of a schism about it. Also keeps mind shields up at all times. That one was a seer spy.

The more the players can fill in themselves about a character the less noticable that character is when dropping clues that they're about to betray the party. With larrakin, the players figured it out after realising that every other mind mage in the region had been killed off.

The really important bit of course is for the players to understand who betrayed them about 5 seconds before you reveal it.

It's a really small, short candle.

This kind of thing

You don't. Horror is the lowest genre and it simply doesn't work in RPGs.

Build up tension, describe the place, set up an atmosphere. Try using sound in your advantage, like something playing a tune at 18hz, it can disturb people.

Have the king's Taxmen cone to collect their income tax

______________________________________________________________________________________________Boo!______________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________
__________________
_______

_________
_________________
__________

_____

Oh fuck! I can't and won't be sleeping tonight

O_O

Find out their neuroses, their fears, their triggers

Get their character powerless then make it personal. Colours, smells, phrases - anything that makes them remember

Luckily I'm known for having a shit poker face '

Which works especially well for this, although they don't know I'm trying to suppress a smile over the fact that I'm actually doing nothing.

I feel like there's a reference I'm not understanding here.

What? Are the extra heads made out of paper-mache or something?

>What did you describe to the girl that slip out of reality?

She found herself on a table, surrounded by disgusting giants with mangy beards and orange crust around their mouths.

>I feel like there's a reference I'm not understanding here.
It's every ancient-aliens missing-colony Atlantis-y pseudoscience narrative mashed together.

simunitions are great, but good luck getting that shit. They don't seem to like to sell their product to civilians for liability reasons or something. They also don't sell the conversion kits to civilians either.

which seems really dumb to me but whatever.

Dunno.

See, I would be more inclined to have the players half way through the feast realize something vaguely unsettling about the order, just unsettling enough to make them investigate instead of outright murder, or just ignore. From there, you set up roadblocks. If they think their way around them, that's fine, but if not, that's better. Gradually introduce more upsetting hints about how the monks might not be what they seem. In the end, don't give the monks a world ending agenda, just an abysmal and selfish one (eat people for immortality, capture mindbreak the new monks instead of actual recruitment, something like that)

I usually don't like overnegative posts in this kind of thread, but this time I have to say that what you wrote is absolutely and indisputably awful.

>How do I scare my players?

It's more of an art that a science. Just start with things that scare you, and experiment from there

There's a webcomic called Demon, where a guy has the ability to transport his consciousness to the nearest person's body in a certain radius every time he dies (I think it's 1 km, but I don't remember exactly). He evades the authorities by constantly killing himself.
The only way to kill a demon is by killing them normally and having the only other person in that radius also be a demon, or have nobody else in the radius.

Have the PCs try to fight one, and drive them mad with paranoia. They can never really know if they're safe.

Poison their cheetos

Your best bet would be creating nervous atmosphere.

To really invoke terror in your playes you have to learn their deepest fears.
Deep sea,giant robots,darkness,spiders,left-wing extremists,woman,dying alone are all tools in your arsenal.

This will make your players either hate you or love you.

Well, hairless bears ARE a great place to start

See, the idea of messing with expectations is one thing, but by god "THIS RELIGIOUS GROUP IS ACTUALLY EVIL!" is so fucking overdone that it's downright mindboggling.

you fucking dick

Jump at them form a dark corner.

give them a good spook

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12130366/

Don't lie, the academic insanity that would come about because of this would be monumental.

sorry to be a party pooper, but
>implying archaeologists wouldn't eventually recognize a hoax, no matter how well constructed

>the conspiracy theories that would come about because of this would be monumental.

FTFY

Put the notes for the scary stuff, and only the scary stuff, into a container, book or binder covered in Call of Cthulhu printouts.

Oh, I don't think I'd be able to convince them it's REAL or anything. I'm just hoping to create a debate and make it plausibly done well enough to not be easily disprovable.

It doesn't have to be verified, just unexplained. That alone would cause a nightmare headache for everybody trying to figure the thing out for years, especially given how academia functions.

Carbon dating
Checkmate

>women
kek