Nightmare Fuel

Howdy, Veeky Forums, I'm looking for inspiration. I want to truly horrify my players and because I don't want to use anything my players might have become desensitized to from popular media, be it violent anime, horror movies, or novels, I need your help.

If you would be so kind to share with me any horror elements that have disturbed your players, I would greatly appreciate it.

Fetish or majical realm scares need not apply.

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youtu.be/PIsNo22DWCY
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Humans/mammalian creatures moving like insects.
Just recently pulled this with a group I'm running a game of Qin: the Warring States with, with them getting into a fight with a mosquito spirit possessing a woman. Describing the wet grinding sound as her joints bent back to climb on the ceiling got me some genuine creeped out grimaces, and giving her entirely nonhuman motion (scrabbling on all fours, moving in short, sudden bursts, bending joints back to flip around, climbing over everything) really helps to freak them out.
Until Dawn also did this pretty well. Frankly, nonhuman traits applied to an otherwise human form really ping the "nope" center of the brain.

>Be me and my party last session
>Tracking down some dickass cultist dudes
>We find one hiding in a laboratory in the snow
>He's grafted beholder tentacles and eyes onto himself
>This is not okay
>We whittle him down and remove the tentacles
>He's barely standing
>He grabs his chest
>Whole party "wait what"
>Tears it open, fucking butterflies himself
>Entire party is visible and audibly disturbed
>Fucker somehow summons the strength to pull a bag of holding out of his chest cavity and shove a portable hole into it
>My fucking face when

>Fucker somehow summons the strength to pull a bag of holding out of his chest cavity and shove a portable hole into it
It would have been better if you said that he had another eye inside his chest. That would have been metal.

Next time say that instead.

Currently a player who's character is prolly gonna succumb to madness and will need to re-roll.

Pretty good chance I'll be a dick and talk to the DM about letting my dying character give birth to a new abomination Ridley Scott style as she tries to tell the party to take care of it with her entrails-vomiting dying words. Make those fuckers roll madness for not protecting the healer. In exchange, I'll get to keep my old loot.

Mirrors that absorb the physical form into the image. It's like that scene from Rugrats where Tommy and Chucky run into the mirror to get inside it and everything is incredibly fucked (to their perception.)

Another alternative is that they stumble upon a mirror in a dungeon or abandoned lair that if you touch it, your reflection escapes from within. This doppelganger will do anything in their power to prove you were always the trapped spirit, and it was finally freed by destiny to put you back within it. Have your players learn the hard way that killing their doppelganger also kills them, wounding causes wounds, etc. So this spectre will follow them, and there is no known way to return the mirror spirit to its rightful home. This is an unpredictable spirit that knows you in and out, and will do anything to deface you if it can't kill you or store you within the mirror.

Can confirm. Stutter-moment and humans moving in ways we're not built to is prime creep-out fuel

I can't suggest any specific content, but consider this: the absence of something spooky (and the subsequent anticipation) is often spookier than if that thing were to appear. Try presenting a few eerie hints of something spooky and then leave the gaps for your players to fill in. The horror is implied. It's not always easy to pull off, but that kind of thing sticks with people. Subtly is key.

Well, with tabletop gaming being a very visual light medium, you'll need to get into your player's heads to really freak them out. A perfectly gruesome monster can fall flat if you fail to describe it well.

>those three white dots in the doorway

N O P E

Less is more, the adult Xenomorph from the original alien movie was on screen for three minutes.

Find a way to establish that something dangerous is out there, but don't let them know what. It could be a monster or a strange phenomenon. For example, entire fishing ships that go out in the fog of night have gone missing entirely, and the player characters have to find out why. This creates a scary, threatening unknown capable of making a ship disappear, limits visibility in the fog, and gives them a feeling of helplessness as there's nowhere to run out at sea.

...

I don't know how you would translate this into the tabletop, but some of the best scares come when you think you're safe.

Take the first Dead Space for example. You get to the engineering station where you can do your upgrades, you know you're safe. You have a breather where you know the outside world gets paused and you can relax while you do whatever it is you're doing.

But then at one point, you go into the engineering station, start your upgrades, and BAM, you've got a big terrifying bastard attacking you and it's the biggest fucking scare in the whole game.

So just something to keep in mind.

A bulimic predator would freak me out.
Something that looks roughly like an animal and seems to behave like one but who actually kills and eats for pleasure and *never* has enough. When it kills its prey, it gorges itself on meat until it's close to bursting and then regurgitates everything, just so it can finish its meal and be ready to hunt later. As things progress, hint that there's something definitely abnormal with this animal's appearance (a wolf with long fingers to its claws, bite marks that show front teeth and not only canines) to build up to the beast being a human warped by sorcery or just cursed by its own gluttonny. Animals wasting food goes directly against the naturan order and can serve as a great foreshadowing of something wicked.

...

That's kinda nasty, good job.

I dont make games but as an avid horror player I can say that Amnesia still holds up. Becaue it is more scary to hear a sound and not immediately see anything than it is to see a monster. It's just how the human brain works, I guess. Darkness and sounds are more horrifying than ay monster.

Make the player thing the're going crazy. Did you see the movie Grave Encounters? Shit movie but they got one thing right: the fact that the map has a really simple layout but somehow they still get lost, and behind the exit there is just another hallway. That kind of Kafka maze nightmare shit is scary as hell.

Holy fuck

Reminds me of a more nightmarish version of Pretas or Hungry Ghosts. I'm also totally stealing this for a game I'm running as a horrifically brutalized manifestation of a nature spirit/possibly just a famine spirit.

We already have this thread.
But for the sake of argument, I'm with . Last week I had a nightmare with that very premise. It turned out I was being stalked by some kind of banshee, but for some reason she gave me a really deep kiss at the end. To make things weirder, it was felt really cold, like "ate an entire can of Altoids at once" + "frozen corpse". And in case you think I'm lying, I have the notes I took about it right here.

And because my phone is a faggot, here's a rotated version that's actually readable.

What game ?

Qin: the Warring States. I'm the user with the mosquito-woman from up top in the thread. I've also had them fight a nue, and negotiate with a gigantic shoebill-crane-stork spirit.[/]

I don't want to sound edgy, but... Go to gore threads on /gif/ and /b/. See how human death looks like. Learn to describe it - it's almost never insantaneous, it's messy, it takes time and leaves time for the victim to act, knowing their fate fully more often than not. Death is a horrifying, scarring matter to all parties involved.

Other than that, learn pacing. The scares don't need to resonate with players actual fears, if you just deliver them well. One of my favorite scares was a car just driving by a gas station. It went by once, I described it in boring detail. Later on, it passed by again, I again described it fully, from the headlights lighting up the road to the sound of engine, carpaint, window tint, the whole works. The third time it went by, someone jokingly said that kids are having a joyride. Then I pointed out that the car always comes from the same direction... on a stretch of the road going 30 miles one way, and 40 the other, between just the nearest cities. The next time I began to describe it, players weren't so fast to joke. They knew that this is some freaky shit, now. And the next time, I said it started to slow down and parked outside.

Learn how horror works ffs. You can make something as simple as moving shadows work well if you foreshadow well and make it a subtle fuckery instead of HERE IS THE SCARY THING, BOO BE AFRAID. Oh and avoid trying to do horror where characters are heroic. Actually, only do horror with the barest mechanics possible, just make a general call and toss a die if you need to at all. Never let anyone fight the scary thing, because if it bleeds, it can be killed. Don't let players enter a combat mindset.

>it takes time and leaves time for the victim to act, knowing their fate fully more often than not
Samefagging, but as an example of this I just remembered seeing a webm of a guy shot in the head by the police who lied there, acting like he was drugged up - patting himself on the head, waving his arms about and playing with his spilled brain noodles while hemorrhaging from the head wound and generally being in the process of dying. That seriously fucked me up somethig fierce.

>Party is constantly stalked by a mohrg assassin
>Mohrg doesn't kill us, just toys with us
>Party has set up camp in a forest
>Party monk decides to go a walk by himself
>Finds the mohrg, challenges him to single combat
>MoHRG knows martial arts
>Pretty cool fight on top of a large tree
>Mohrg beats the shit out of the monk, monk looks close to death
>Mohrg uses it's paralysing tongue instead of killing him
>Picks him up and places him over his shoulder
>Sneaks into our camp
>Tucks the monk into his bedroll
>Kisses him on the forehead
>Wishes him a good sleep
>Sneaks back out the camp

I played a midget once.

This is fucking awesome, wow.

>Eventually, one of them has to notice

Oh you poor dumb bastard

Do you want to scare them at that moment or are you trying to make a lingering horrifying feeling?

That'd fuck me up more than a tentacle monster that injects your brain with parasites. Holy shit, I wouldn't approach that assassin with a 200ft pole after that.

>making plans based on how you think players will react

>Games are about numbers not feelings

>missing the point

>not knowing your players well enough to predict their actions

>tsundere Mohrg

What's the problem m8?

The easiest way of all. Cement in the player's mind that x is safe, and then take it away. For instance, suppose they're investigating a dungeon and someone scrawled STAY IN THE DARK in blood on a wall. So the players have a chuckle and light a torch and something BAD happens. So they stay in the dark. When the wizard casts light, something BAD happens. Eventually, the races with darksight or whatever...lose it. So your party is fumbling around in the dark. But they're safe. They cower in shadows in the sometimes-lit hallways. Keep this up for two sessions. Make every move they make when not in pitch blackness feel like a risk. So they're safe. And at some point have them meet an NPC who's friendly enough. He yells howdy at the players and says, what're y'all doing skulking in the dark come out where I can see ye. I've got food and all. And he starts lighting a torch, and the surviving players have to deal with him. Build and build and confirm that dark is safe light is bad. And then they arrive at the treasure room, or the goal, or whatever. During this trip they've slept in pitch black at least once. So they are convinced the darkness is safe. Having kept them on edge for so long, break that rule. Violate that safety. Potentially with a different monster, ideally one they've met before. Let them win the fight with it easily, and draw out their escape. Make them as paranoid as possible. And once they're outside, go back to normal. This can only be done once and may enrage your players, depending on how you do it, though.

Holy shit, your DM is awesome.

>
There are no white dots, user...

I know, right?

Came here to post this. Good job user.

This
youtu.be/PIsNo22DWCY

>tipfedora post
kill yourself

素晴らしいブラックジョーク

Visit a fat hate thread on Veeky Forums.

That’s fucking SCP-tier bullshit right there

So first things first, you can't scare a player that doesn't want to be scared. Players that like to joke around, players that crack wise, they're poison to a scary atmosphere. The best players for a horror game are the ones that can live inside the head of their character.

The three big rules of horror fiction are Isolate, Separate, Pursue. Help is not coming, no one can be trusted, and you are operating under intense pressure.

One of my most successful horror games was a CoC game where the players were snowed in at a mountain hotel and the guests began to fall ill to a mysterious disease that turned them into fungus zombies while the hotel itself phased into another dimension. One of my players said she had nightmares afterwards. What made it work was the sense of isolation, the feeling of being completely alone against an unbeatable enemy. The imagery of the setting was familiar and yet twisted enough into a new form that made it incredibly threatening. I described the players running down hallways while the zombified guests pounded on the doors, which I accompanied by pounding on the underside of the table. I described one of the hallways filling with solid darkness and had a player say outright, "I have no idea what I would do in this situation." Stuff like that makes me proud as hell. Sometimes you don't need to go all-out to make haunting imagery. Sometimes mundane is better.

You sound great!

Other posters have pointed out that you can create horror by establishing a paradigm, then twisting it around once the players figure it out. One idea I've had in this vein involves the players repeatedly encountering some kind of monster. The first few times they interact with it, it attacks them. On one of their future interactions, however, the creature attacks while screaming in terror, pleading for the players not to kill it as it rips them apart. Better yet, on it's first appearance describe a horrible being but let them get the drop on it. If they attack, make curl up into a ball and sob until they either leave or kill it.

I want to read your hotel nightmares user

Another thing that games can do to build tension that books and movies cannot is to force players to make 'irrational' choices in order to move forwards. A great example of this is Silent Hill 2, where you saw something inside a hole and had to blindly reach in to get it. You can work this element into your scenario. Make your players trudge through waist deep, muddy water that they just something slithering through. Put a necessary item inside a garbage disposal and force them to reach in for it. Re-enact that part from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. where they have to creep through a room of slumbering monstrosities. In all of these circumstances you get more tension by not providing payoff. When they have to reach into the garbage disposal, talk about the item slipping through their fingers but don't have it kick on to shred their hands.

Is this really clever? I mean it's interesting I guess but it doesn't creepy me out particularly. Eh, disregard my opinion.

>That comment.

I'd ride that dick.

thats fucking metal

Watch the original Ju-on (the Grudge).

The actress is absolutely terrifying. And apparently a total sweetheart.

>The party's faces when they exit beach street
>Onto beach street

A ten foot radius void bomb sounds pretty freaky to me. I was expecting some demonic chest mouth to snare a player while melting into a pool of lovecraftian horror goop that effects the captured player in more ways than one if they manage to escape

That’s the back end of the door in the shadow, probably just missed in the strokes of the brush

The creature shouldn't be treated like a raid boss in WoW, it should be treated as somewhere between a predator and a force of nature.

For example, Trolls being weak to fire is relatively common knowledge for anyone who has played D&D at this point and just switching its weakness around is boring, so how do you make such a creature scary?

First off, make them ambush predators who have learned how dangerous fire/acid are to their regeneration. Then, leave the remains of past victims floating in the bog, probably with large gashes or body parts removed. Finally, have them stalking the party until they rest and then having it chuck something heavy at them to get them to move.

The last part's important, because many GM's don't stop and think how effective a STR of 18 is beyond damage, and even if it's an improvised weapon, that's still a large tree being thrown at the party, which they probably aren't expecting.

Then if someone gets separated from the group...