Freaking out the players

[Sean Waters]

Just thought I'd share this. Recent campaign we had one characters who would show up for a battle and, no matter where it was, three guys dressed as monks would show up and take notes and get onlookers to fill in questionaires about whether this one character would 'make a good Messiah'. Eevry time he tried to talk to them about it they started quoting things he'd said before prefixed with 'Thus spake the Holy One....' Freaked him right out. I know it is a bit silly but it worked well as a recurrent theme in the game and leaves all sorts of interesting plot development areas open. Try it out. You'll like it.

 

Anyone else use any interesting methods to foster creative uncertainty?

[Short Shot]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

Not to that extreme, but I had a GM in GURPS who started messing with my character. I admit to having had Weirdness Magnet, though.

 

My character was a merchant son named John Chandler who trained intensely in the sword (sabre) and was later forced to leave town due to being forced into a duel where he had to kill his oponent. Every time this guy walked into a new town there would be a beautiful woman arguing with a jeleous man. Just as John would get close enough for her to see him, she would say loudly "Very well, yes, there is someone else! HIM!" and point to poor old John. John, a young man with no real experience with women, would get the deer in the headlights look and end up being forced into a duel. Invariably, the man was the lord or prince of the area.

 

Needless to say, John was not very popular with the party, and much preferred being on the road and deal with things he understood, like orcs and ogres.

[Samuraiko]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

I honestly think my best example of freaking out the players was the night I hit them with the following 7th Sea scenario. (With the exception of Amused, who is not as experienced a gamer as we are simply because most of us have at least ten to fifteen years on her, and our friend Jeff, a novice gamer, the rest of the players are all campaign-hardened gamers. Nothing scares them. They eat punks... er, monsters like this for breakfast. You get the idea. So I used the best weapons in the GM's arsenal - a vivid description and the players' own overactive imaginations.)

 

The group ended up on La Bucca, the prison island currently held by the Brotherhood of the Coast, a roving pirate nation. Allende, the leader, tells the PCs that the only way OFF the island is to fork over cash (which they have, but not really enough). So he mentions that southeast of here is a swamp (a swamp from which no man has ever returned), and in that swamp, there's a building (a building that no man has ever entered), etc. And rumor has it there's treasure there, so why not just nip over there and grab some, then you can get off the island!

 

So off they go. Day one in the swamp, there's flies, fumes, mud, and all sorts of gross stuff (if you've seen the Extended version of Fellowship of the Ring, you know exactly what it looks like). The PCs are bright enough to use long poles to test the ground as they go, but after losing two on the first day to sinkholes, they tread with extreme caution. Then that night, they notice these dancing lights off in the distance. And then they see the eyes watching them. Then the voices start.

 

All night, nothing happens, but the PCs lose a good amount of sleep.

 

Day two, slog, slog, slog, the horses are not happy at all, the courtesan who's traveling with us (no way are the PCs leaving her with the pirates) is grousing the whole way. Night two, not only are there the lights and the eyes and the voices, but then one of the more nervous PCs (Jeff, the novice) notices the skeletal hands that have begun sprouting up from the swamp. They reach out slowly, then sink back, reach out slowly, then sink back. One PC (one of the aforementioned hardened gamers) has the bright idea of reaching out with a stick to touch one. And as he (both PC and his experienced player) are saying, "See, there's nothing to be afraid of," the skeletal hand snatches the stick out of the PC's hand (good thing he made the roll to let GO of it) and vanishes in a flash beneath the muck. And they can't tell if the hands are moving closer or not.

 

The PCs don't get ANY sleep that night.

 

Day three, slog, slog slog, our resident bad-tempered Avalon hunter is getting really annoyed with the griping courtesan and is loudly contemplating handing her over to the skeletal things to get her to shut up. On the bright side, the same Avalon that night catches four of the lights in a glass jar (let's hear it for Lore: Supernatural), and now none of the creatures in the swamp will approach the lights. A little more sleep for the PCs.

 

After seven days of this, jumping at every snapping twig, haggard with lack of sleep, and completely freaking out, they finally reach what looks like the outskirts of a ruin. Covered in Sidhe wards. And one half-Sidhe PC (also a hardened gamer) all of a sudden blurts out IC that he doesn't want to know what the Sidhe were scared of if they had to put wards up. Now all the PCs (and their players) are nervously looking over their shoulders and flinching at every little sound.

 

(It doesn't help that it's getting dark and late IRL at my apartment, but I notice that the players are coming closer together.)

 

The horses are now one step away from bolting in fear, there's solid ground under the PCs' feet and they're still prodding ahead of them with a large staff, and the runes glow in the Will o' the Wisps' light.

 

Then they find a building, the only one still standing. It's overgrown with moss and stuff, and the slime of the swamp has started creeping up the side.

 

And the group of PCs that normally charges in where FOOLS fear to tread are all standing around outside, daring each other to go into the building, while the GM is chuckling to herself.

 

In the middle of the argument, one of the NPCs yells in fright as he notices that suddenly there are people standing in front of the hut. And they're armed. And there are almost as many as there are PCs. But they're not moving.

 

Then the PCs realize that they're looking at themselves. Not mirrors. Not reflections. Real copies of themselves. And their other selves all look... different.

 

At this point, while the PCs and their players were ready to leap out of their skin, all six players started shouting at me not to stop when I decided that this would make a great stopping point for the night.

 

Great night...

 

Michelle

aka

Samuraiko

[Samuraiko]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

From the same campaign, there was also a ghost following the PCs around. To make matters worse, not all of the PCs could see her or even hear her. And none of them knew why.

 

But every time the ghost showed up, I started playing the same piece of music - "Glass Mountain" from this sampler CD I have called "Illusions." Imagine wind blowing through discordant glass chimes and remixed and sampled and you've got it. It became the ghost's theme in my game, and all I had to do was cue that track and the PCs knew that something was up. And after two PCs nearly went mad from dreaming about her, and a third woke up screaming after suffering a real gunshot wound after being shot in the dream, the players knew that sound meant trouble.

 

Michelle

aka

Samuraiko

[dbsousa]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

I ran a D&D game where I had someone draw all the villains for me. Rather than explain what they were looking at, I'd just show them a picture. It led to them thinking the Troll was dead, when it sat back up in the room and nearly bit off a PC's head, and had them freaking out about a dead creature found in the rubble of a mine collapse, even though it was just a kobold...

[Rapier]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

I've used the "recurrent pseudo-stalker" before. You know, the guy that the hero sees FREQUENTLY. Hero goes to the Tesco and there he is. Hero goes to the movies, there he is. Hero goes to a party and parked in a car outside, there he is. The minute the Hero tries to confront him, something gets in the way (a truck drives past and when the truck is past, so is the car the guy was in etc).

 

It really freaked the hero out. Even the player was gettin twitchy.

[winterhawk]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

I have a villain who is a Brick Pro-Wrestler who 'lives his role'. Nocturnus' (think Undertaker when he had a mask) catchphrase was "Darkness Falls!" right before he'd throw his finisher. In a fight with the team, he mashed a pretty tough NPC thanks to a series of good rolls. As a result, he graduated from throwaway goon to a major enemy of the team, and "Darkness Falls!" still brings shivers to my players every time I utter it.

[hawkfu]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

I was a player in a group where the GM would start every adventure with:

"Okay, Shade [player character], you're in the shower...."

 

7 out of 10 adventures started that way and always some villain would attack (he had a public ID). The character started showering with his costume in reach because he got tired of fighting off Viper in his towel.

 

Hawkfu

[RPMiller]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

I think the most I freaked out my high school group back in the late 80s, or maybe early 90s, anyway was with "the silent darkness". It was a Fantasy Hero game I was running for about a year and the players had ventured far and wide and amassed tons of experience and in the process became the ever brave and overconfident group.

 

They had to visit an island castle, and while they were there got to know everyone pretty good, but at one point people started acting very nervous. The characters asked the prerequisite questions and got back a lot of "we heard strange goings on at the miller's place", "just this last week old man Schriv's herd started dwindling". So know they are getting all over confident and promising to vanguish the scoundrels that are preying on the helpless villagers. The go to the lord and thank him for his generousity, and announce that they will be gone for a little while to stop this evil that was afoot. The lord tells them to spend one more night and he'll provide them with all the necessary equipment, horses, etc that they need.

 

That evening as they sat around the fire in the great room they noticed the normal sounds of the castle were suddenly missing. The players quickly make the perception checks and discover that in fact there are no sounds. So the characters quickly head for their rooms to gather their arms, and as the step out into the hall the mystic senses a "great presence", and a chill runs down everyone's spine both IRL and game.

 

So now they are rushing to their respective rooms. As the fighter throws open the door to his room, a harsh chill hits him full in the chest and for a split second he can't see, hear, feel, anything just darkness. Then everything comes rushing back to him just in time for all the torch and candle lights to go out. He turns on his heals and runs for the mystic's room.

 

The others are able to grab a quick weapon and a few belongings as the lights start going out all over the castle. They start to run toward where the lights are still on, but the extinguishing lights are growing closer and faster.

 

They make it into the kitchen, and all the firepits errupt and then go out. Now the players are starting to freak, and not knowing what to do run outside. They head for the stables to find all the horses either missing or dead.

 

The rogue turns and looks up at the windows of the castle and notices that they are all devoid of any light, and then immediately notices that he doesn't hear the familiar sounds of the night. No frogs, crickets, hoots, nothing. So naturally he tells this to the party who also make the same realization just in time for a thick rolling fog/darkness to begin flowing ever so slowly out of all the windows of the castle.

 

The characters start running. As they run, the encounter dead animals here and there, but mostly it is just a lot of "nothing". They are halfway to the shore when the fighter suddenly says "Um, aren't we on an island, and didn't the ship leave yesterday?"

 

The reactions on everyone's face was priceless.

[AlHazred]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

My players were travelling through a "no-man's-land" on their way to a haunted ruin. On their way, they kept passing these large barrows. The baron (a wizard) decides he's interested in finding out what was buried there. He determines through magic that there's lots of different kinds of metal buried in there. "I can take care of any undead; you guys go to!" he says.

 

So, the hirelings and the stronger players begin digging into one of the barrows. I have one of them (the one who distrusts magic) make a PER Roll, which he does. I say, "You notice that the dirt here feels 'funny.' It's far more powdery than the earth you're kneeling on. It seems like all the dirt piled on the barrow is this 'funny' variety." He looks significantly at the baron, who sniffs and waves him on to the job. He shrugs his shoulders and continues digging.

 

Shortly after they begin, they hit a layer of stones. It seems like the dirt is only piled a few feet high on top of these stone shingles. The shingles are "held together" by these metal seals. It seems like someone went to the trouble of melting all different kinds of metals in order to seal all the cracks between shingles. The magic-distrusting player shoots a look at the baron's player, who again dismisses his pessimism.

 

They pry apart the metal and remove the shingles; as they pull up the metal pieces, they snap rather than bending - it seems as if something has "rotted" the metal, so that it's ductility to gone. Removing the shingles reveals a chamber inside the barrow, about eight feet high at the center. The wizard sends his magic light in there. As soon as it enters the chamber, "poof," it goes out. He determines that the interior appears to be devoid of magical juice. He goes in anyway, with a normal torch.

 

Inside, he notes a number of odd features. The walls are an abstract mosiac of tiles that form riotously colored patterns. The floor is made up of a pattern of oddly shaped tiles that seem to form an endless pattern that seems to continue under the walls. At one end of the barrow chamber, the wall is a single copper plate. At the other end of the barrow chamber, the wall is an iron plate with a small recessed square in the center. The wizard plays around with this some more, and determines that the small recessed square looks like it could move. He's determined to find out the secret of this thing, now, so he calls the two strong characters in again with the best pry-bar they can find.

 

They bring down this prybar and immediately go to on the panel. I describe how they strain, exerting their massive strength (each has STR 18), muscles popping, veins starting to stand out on their heads. The baron can just about see that the panel is starting to move. In a fit of sheer curiousity, he grabs onto the prybar (a stout piece of bar steel an inch and a half thick) and tries to help. He pushes his 8 STR and adds just enough to help and slowly, slowly, he sees the plate begin to recess.

 

He sees the plate push in, but there appears to be nothing past the sheet of iron except for utter blackness. As he looks at the opening they've created, he sees that the blackness acts like some form of mist. A few tendrils flow out and seem to caress the prybar. As they caress the prybar, the incredibly strong metal seems to take on an odd color and snaps like dry tinder. The plate immediately snaps shut like it was spring-loaded.

 

The magic-distrusting character grabs the baron under one arm, a rope with the other and pulls himself out of the chamber into the cool, clean air. The other character, suddenly plunging into darkness when the wizard with the torch leaves the room, practically levitates out of the chamber himself. Between the two of them, they pile the shingles back (ignoring the wizard's belated protests), pour the dirt on, and high-tail it out of there.

 

At which point the wizard's player turns to me and asks, "When the panel closed, was all of the blackness still inside? Or did some of it get out?" In answer of which, I just looked at him and smiled...

[Argus]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

Just thought I'd share this. Recent campaign we had one characters who would show up for a battle and, no matter where it was, three guys dressed as monks would show up and take notes and get onlookers to fill in questionaires about whether this one character would 'make a good Messiah'. Eevry time he tried to talk to them about it they started quoting things he'd said before prefixed with 'Thus spake the Holy One....' Freaked him right out. I know it is a bit silly but it worked well as a recurrent theme in the game and leaves all sorts of interesting plot development areas open. Try it out. You'll like it.

 

Anyone else use any interesting methods to foster creative uncertainty?

 

I ran a game once where 1 player kept seeing the number 169 over and over again.

 

"Here's your change sir $1.69."

 

"Chile Dog and Cheese, that will be $1.69 sir."

 

"169 people showed up to protest the construction of the new Super Tower in Down Town Miami today."

 

"The New Super Tower is 170 Stories tall and will finish this weekend. Well you know they don't have a 13th Floor so it only really 169 Stories."

"Yes and its only 1 Year 6 Months and 9 Days behind schedule."

 

On and on over 8 weeks of game play until

 

"There will be a Lunar Eclipse tonight, Oct 31st. It will be the first time in 169 Years that it has happened on this date."

 

The Heroes should up to save the missing Nun who was going to be, you guest it the 169 victim to be sacrificed to a Mad Demon God by a Group of Sorcerers.

 

By the Way 169 is equal to 13 x 13.

 

A.

[Agent 13]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

By the Way 169 is equal to 13 x 13.

Sounds like a good number to me...

[Zeropoint]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

I've used the "recurrent pseudo-stalker" before. You know, the guy that the hero sees FREQUENTLY. Hero goes to the Tesco and there he is. Hero goes to the movies, there he is. Hero goes to a party and parked in a car outside, there he is. The minute the Hero tries to confront him, something gets in the way (a truck drives past and when the truck is past, so is the car the guy was in etc).

 

It really freaked the hero out. Even the player was gettin twitchy.

 

Something like this happened to me while I was visiting my family for Christmas. Everywhere I drove, there was a white Escalade.

 

Creepy.

 

Zeropoint

[zornwil]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

Our super-sleuth, one of the world's 2 most brilliant men (somehow I have the other as a PC ALSO! - actually it's both funny and interesting for an RPG, anyway...) kept losing business in his detective agency. But he kept losing clients and having business problems. Some part of it was the known link between his agency and the antics of the Justice Squad (the PC team), which made some people shy away, but some of it was definitely linked to the Blue Moon Agency local franchise who kept getting his ex-clients (which was sort of fair play as he used to run their franchise and that's how they built their client base).

 

This went on across a few issues and was never center stage, but the player started getting rather animated in his annoyance, getting exasperated that the smartest man in the world couldn't immediately resolve it! This was in part because they were busy with other cases...but as he later found out, and from a bizarre set of coincidences, that infamous mercenary team Fox Force Five, whom the Justice Squad had not defeated in their major encounter (it was a tie), was behind it It was a minor side plot but it definitely got the player's attention.

[Magmarock]

Re: Freaking out the players

 

One GM freaked me out by having an NPC "one up" my character's powers in a mind-boggling way. My PC, Chronamancer, was a half-blood TimeLord and she had this Time Stop ability where she stopped time (via dimensional travel) and could walk around while everyone else was frozen. She'd spend about a minute or so in the Time Stop, recovering and scouting and then return to the exact moment she left, but she could be anywhere when that happened. To keep this power from being really sick, the GM and I agreed that she couldn't affect the "time frozen" world and we also limited it to only one minute so I couldn't monopolize the game.

 

Anyway, it blew my mind when, while she was in a Time Stop, a full-blood Time Lord did a Time Stop inside her Time Stop. Took me a while to get my mind around that one. But it was so cool. And very unexpected.

 

Mags