No intrigue in gothic horror misteries

A creature in a town is killing people and PCs must investigate.

They of course find some evidence that theoretically form a complete picture just moments before they confront the actual monster.

The problem is that players are experienced. Bodies without blood=vampire, Attacks on full moon= werewolf.


What satisfying monsters can be thrown at players?

fleshgolem/frankenstein monster that has memorys from all the different people he was sewn together from. so his arm wants to avenge his own murder and his leg wants to take revenge on his cheating wife etc. might take them a while to figure out there are several different peoples motives behind the crimes.

>Bodies without blood=vampire
>run hunter: the vigil game for my group, few of them played a lot of VtM previously
>body with chunks bitten out of them, lots of blood spilled, very little blood in the body
>pretty violent scene, signs of supernatural strength and such, happened at night
>VtM players spend most of the session trying to guess OOC what clan of vampire it was
>they later get attacked at daytime while searching a murder scene in the woods
>collective brick shitting ensues
>it was actually based off of the wendigo
>built it with the book's dread powers
look up relatively obscure creatures from mythology and cultural lore, and create your own spins on them.

>Bodies without blood=vampire
...Or fucking demon cultists? Do we not do blood rituals anymore?

Mad scientist that send tiny pigmy with a cleaver for a hand to collect heads of various people to create a hive mind to increase it's own intellect.
Also once investigation starts he should start making deceptions, faking attacks of vampires, werewolfs so on

Have the monsters take some effort to disguise what they are. For example, a vampire that only attacks on a full moon and puts its victims through a wood chipper.

A serial killer who only attacks on full moon.

Plot twist: there is an actual werewolf in the town as well but he runs off to the woods every full moon and eats deer.

Did /x/ ever produce interesting monsters?

> players spend days preparing their trap for the vampire killing people in the village
> go time
> its actually a chupacabra
> no one in the group knows how to fight a chupacabra, and the holy water trap just became worthless
> panic

The usual darkness beasts or anti-meme fad.

don't those only attack livestock?

i don't have enough faith in players to figure that out

>i don't have enough faith in players to figure that out
If they don't figure it out, you can always have the creature attack them.

>i don't have enough faith in players to figure that out
Honestly user, we've all tried to run Mystery sessions and realised that. You said yourself in the OP, you want them to realise just before they fight the monster. So say you do have a Vampire.
Killing across town, over the past six months every full moon. Tufts of fur at the scene, claw marks on every surface and gore. So much gore. You wouldn't notice a few missing pints surely? You then build the hype up, people closer to the characters start dying. A priest perhaps is a victim, but this time his house catches fire. You know the Vampire couldn't abide his holy symbols and the struggle resulted in a fire, but the players are thinking "aha, it's the Silverware! Definitely a Werewolf". Make everything like a Venn-diagram, and try to hit that sweet overlap spot. A Vampire weakness and a Werewolf weakness. Maybe introduce a little bit of homebrew, and have Werewolves show their true form in a reflective surface, which is why they seldom enter the cities except in a frenzy. The players hunker down and prepare for a fight, when someone shows up. But not in their looking-glass.
>Well, aren't you going to invite me in?

Demons have ruined the market through centuries of objectively bad, one-sided deals. :(

You can either bait-and-switch, use original monsters, or add more steps. For the last, you can start with people disappearing, find a body part, track down the location of the body, get in a minor fight in a graveyard or wherever, set a trap, etc.

By making new shit up.

Fuck with expectation.
It is a murderous but pretty human cult. Have three MO but assign them to the npcs, and show the MOs in their behaviour.
One always kills three people with 3 stabs. The NPC always gives three options, 3 clues or when revealing information explains 3 things. OOC show it with your hands and hold up fingers counting with them.

2 guy is a hunter. His corpses are bloodless (as hunter), give out clues that the body was moved. Bites were taken out of the heart, all victims (give out 3) share nothing but being strong, if they can find the place of murder reveal a chase has happened. The new place of the bodies point to old hunting grounds?

new shit that is good is hard. Fuck the only new horror monster I saw in the last 3 years were Derro.

Give it an extra twist

Okay, bloodless victims, derpaderpa the local lord is vampire.

But the the local lord is actually a "higher breed" of vampires, and he has a collection of willing females that enjoy being fed off of (because they're masochistic sluts). Recently, a lesser breed moved in and have been causing all the massacres and the lord has been trying to hunt them down to keep up the masquerade.

Then you find out that the local lord was actually the one creating them, he was kidnapping villagers and turning them, but they became imperfect vampires. He had them locked in a dungeon for years until they went insane, and finally escaped, going on an orgy of slaughter to slake their incredible hunger.

Or whatever. Maybe it's still too predictable that the lord is the villain, but you get the idea. You can still have story even if the players figure out right away it's vampires.

You could also do like 10 minutes of googling and find any number of monsters that would work. Pop culture supernaturals account for like 1% of mythological beasts.

Add a delict arena to the town.
The first one started recently and should be the reason for the party to search for them. Clues should be pretty obvious so they can actually guess right, atleast the three should be obvious.
Second one is a urban myth, if the group hates the reveal of the human nature of the three killer just change it to mas vampire who was a former arena fighter trapped and released.
The third most likely can stay human and just follow his MO or be another supernatural

Sure. Either way, OP is lazy.

Even if it doesnt sound scary on paper, you can make it scary through their deeds.

Got a creature that seems to be ripping people's heads off and eating their guts? Guess what? Its a head-centipede that wears their face! What fun!

Got people flayed and shit? Now you've got a skinwalker.

Drained of blood? Thats not a vampire, its a sentient blood ooze!

Claw marks? Look closer, the victim clawed their own flesh trying to get the evil spiders out from under their skin.

>My STAND, [RIP AND TEAR], has no weakness!

Humans.

By which I mean do something more involved than learn about monster, find monster, kill monster.

>Derro
>new
You haven't been at this for very long, have you

Now that sounds boring.
>"Oh cool, we've got evidence that the killer was X."
>Lolnope, literally just made up by the actual bad guy scientist.
>Your investigation meant nothing and had no purpose.

First option is to bring something outside their experience. Wendigoes, Revenants, Oni, obscure things from foreign cultures.

Second option is to obscure the evidence. People disappear without a trace. The victim disappeared during the new moon, killed during the full moon, and found on the half moon. The body was drained of blood but then torn apart so it's hard to tell.

Third option is to mix different threats. Someone was torn apart by werewolves and then the blood was drunk by a vampire. A vampire has been selling the corpses of his victim to someone making a fleshgolem. The demon cult venerates werewolves and cleans up after them.

IF that's what happens you've failed as a GM. Leave hints here and there. Add inconsistencies. The body was found on the full moon but it's also partially decomposed. There's a little blood at the scene of the murder but the head was torn clean off the body. There's wolf fur everywhere but the victim was found with tons of silver on them.

You mean to make the PLAYERS afraid and not to make them play characters who are afraid? That's tough. Polite players won't call the shots, but you're right they will know them.

As in your pic, the greatest monsters are really humans. That's what players can relate to. The story need not be as easy as someone having been bitten by a dog.

The vampire being on a prowl because of his cursed treasure being stolen makes the adventure about something totally different, especially if the players can NOT fight the vampire and live.

Maybe the lycantrophy has been caused to someone to shame them? It's not an easy thing to contract. Maybe the town guard made the money lender into a dog person because he made all of his dogs starve to death?

The wraith is easy, but what if people know the wraith's face is that of the mayor's youngest daughter who is not even supposed to live in the city? Turns out her having left on studies was a cover, and the PCs find her body in the Mayor's cellar. Now that's horror.

These are awful. TTRPGs are not as robust a tool as you think. All the players know comes from the mouth of the GM, he can't say anything meaningless. Giving all the clues for one monster and none of the unique clues that tell what it really is a bad way of contriving surprise. It completely devalues the whole investigation. Because you, the GM, can't say anything unimportant. You say the bodies are gored on only full moon nights, you're TELLING the players something. When it turns out the full moon thing was coincidence or purposefully deceitful, it's not, "Oh, of course." It's "Wtf, lame."

Please don't do this.

>what is a red herring

That's why you don't info-dump but have the players actually carry out the investigation themselves and only give them hints if they research them. If you come out straight and have a peasant walk up and say "oh thank the gods you adventurers are here, there have been bodies turning up every month after the full moon and we think it's a werewolf, go kill it" then it's contrived if it turns out to be a serial killer. If you have a murder occur while they're in town and you give them the opportunity to notice the full moon, but also see the tell-tale signs of injuries brought on by metal weapons if they examine the corpse, then it's fair.

I like this one. If vampires are such a cliche it makes sense that the vampires know it, too. And they're intelligent enough to want to cover their tracks. You could even introduce a helpful "werewolf hunter" who shows up to help the party, and he has a list of suspects for the party to investigate. But er, he really needs some of their blood to be sure. For research purposes. It's all very boring alchemy stuff, the party doesn't have to be present for it.

>What satisfying monsters can be thrown at players?
Gingers and daywalkers

I like this. Screencapping it.

Mysteries are hard to run user. There's an inherent challenge in them for both parties, because you want to make a mystery that challenges the players. Otherwise it's no mystery, no challenge. You have to leave some clues of course, or you're not doing a mystery. You're just glorifying how smart you are as a GM who knows everything. You need to give the players enough information, and the characters enough information.

As OP said, players aren't dumb. They know an exsanguinated body is a Vampires calling-card. If you're running with this as a credible story, something worthy of a mystery, then of course the Vampire has to play the game as well. Presumably this Vampire isn't the sort who controls a castle/town with an iron fist and the villagers live in fear of his awesome power and unholy might. If they go on a hunt with pitchfork and hawthorn, he could well die. So he has to be smart about it. This is the mystery. It's how you convey it to the players, and that's up to the GM. We're throwing plot-hooks, not running his game for him.

Make monster want more than just kill people. Like say vampire? But while he feeds he is more interested in taking people alive. Why? Vampire hunters killed his vampire girl and he is trying to resurrect her with an ancient ritual that may or may not work.

Werewolf? On full moon he actually spends time in a cage that he made for himself in his own basement. He doesn't like killing people that he doesn't know. On the other hand he is more than okay with killing or shitting over people that somehow wronged him and does it on non-full moon nights. To transform he uses special concoction that takes somewhat rare ingredients to make.

What about a seemingly random killing spree among nobles in town, with the corpses being emptied of all valuables?

Turns out the culprit is some kind of butthurt ghost or specter looking for the medallion or coin it is bound to.