Monsters the Manual never mentioned

Nature can come up with nightmares worse than the most inventive DM.

Pleasant dreams.

Fear on Friday - Apaches

You may have had this experience in dungeons past; setting out with a strong, confident party, optimistic and looking forward to some good old-fashioned monster hacking and gold-garnering.

But then it all starts to go wrong. Someone fails a save or a monster gets maximum damage or a trap that no-one spotted claims its first victim. Then someone else falls to the capricious dice of doom and before you know it, you're stuck in a dungeon that's somehow acquired a personality - that of a serial killer.

Now, it's not so much "Will we get out alive?" but "Who will be the last to die?"

It's a routine that's familiar to slasher movies since time immemorial but in those movies, there is usually more than one survivor to bear witness to the horror that they've just experienced.

So now, let's take a look at Apaches - a public information film for children, made in 1977. This tells the story of a bunch of kids who decide that a farm is a great place for games of Cowboys and Indians.

Bad move.

We soon see that the farm is the countryside version of Tomb of Horrors as one by one, the children fall victim to the Grim Reaper in some pretty gruesome ways. Watch out for the slurry pit!

Stuff like this, with its impending sense of doom, and The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water that we saw last week must have had some traumatising effects on kids back in the 1970s. I remember a film that we were shown at school about the risks of bad driving that put me off learning to drive until well into my twenties. Perhaps the British attitude to health and safety stems from the generation whose elders thought it a good idea to show them this sort of thing...

Fear on Friday - The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water

This Public Information Film was broadcast in 1973, when I was a lad of eight. It was well-intentioned, warning kids of the dangers of swimming where we weren't supposed to - but it scared the living **** out of me and many others of my generation. The sight of the hooded figure sends a shiver through me even today.

So, if you've not seen it before, enjoy! And if you watched it when you were a kid and got traumatised like everyone else, prepare to shiver once more!

Fear on Friday - Trapped in the Dark

Today I'm looking at horror films. I can't bring much to the table on this one, because I see so very few of them. Since becoming a family man, the films we go to see are very much suited to a child-friendly perspective and so I have to think back to stuff I watched in my single days or things I catch late at night when everyone else has gone to bed.

The last film I watched that had me truly shaking on the way home (this will show how rarely I go to the cinema and how little modern horror I watch) was Event Horizon. I found its use of jump cuts very effective at immediately raising the heart rate, and its slow unfolding of the true horror of the rescue crew's predicament gnawed away at my nerves. There were some rather corny bits but the combination of the aforementioned elements and its ambiguous ending meant that I was jittery and jumpy on the way home and for sometime afterwards.

Other than that, it's hard to think of other films that have chilled or scared me to a similar extent. The appearances of the skeletal Death in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Navigator send a shiver right through me but the rest of the films hold little terror for me.

So what is it about the cinema that makes it a more powerful, more affecting experience than reading or watching television? Is is that perhaps we find ourselves a truly captive audience whilst at the cinema? Sitting in the darkness, devoid of any other sensory distraction, we cannot turn off if we think it's going to get too much, nor - unless we want to make a spectacle of ourselves - can we get up and walk away. There is also the factor of the cost of the ticket if we do so - cinema isn't cheap these days. The huge screen, with its visual impact magnified and the much louder sound levels mean that the senses are rivetted and overwhelmed. If you go on your own, there is not even the sense of another human to whom to turn for comfort or escape.

Of course, not all of us watch horror movies at the cinema. Home viewing makes up a sizeable proportion of the occasions on which such films are watched. The impact of these may well be slightly lessened, since there will be the option of escape, others to talk to and contextualise the experience. There is no option to pause a cinema film while you go and get a beer and some pretzels.

Regardless of where we watch horror films, I'm opening the floor to you all to share your cinematic terrors with me. Is it modern splatterpunk or old-style chillers that send shivers down your spine? Do you find sitting in a cinema more evocative and atmospheric than sitting on the couch with the remote in your hand in case it gets a bit too scary?

Over to you...

Fear on Friday - Televisual Terrors

Many thanks for the comments on last week's post; I see that I shall have to check out Thomas Ligotti forthwith.

This week, I'm turning my attention to television. Being of a certain age, I was lucky enough to be in my early teens when the great scary TV shows of the mid to late seventies were coming out. Stuff like Sapphire and Steel (specifically the one with the abandoned railway station and the one about the entity that can trap you inside photographs), Doctor Who (The Green Death and the Ark in Space stick out in my mind), The Omega Factor (in which a team of scientists investigate the paranormal and get more than they bargained for). I was only seven when The Stone Tape came out so never got to watch it but I'm told that authorities on the genre praise it as a very scary piece of work indeed.

TV moves us one step further from the kind of imaginative playground that books evoke; with the written word, much of the visualisation is done inside our own minds, whereas on TV, we are forced, to a certain extent to accept the visual opinion of the writer and director. That's probably why a lot of what I found scary as a youngster derives its initial premise from everyday reality - I could imagine that somewhere, perhaps quite nearby, the events of the programme could actually be happening.

More recently, I found the three-part Crooked House by Mark Gatiss (League of Gentlemen and occasional Dr Who writer for the new series) able to crank up the heart-rate quite considerably. It combined a creeping sense of menace with some serious shocks and an excellent twist at the very end which made the watching all the more worthwhile.

Crooked House occupied the slot where usually sit the BBC dramatisation of M R James ghost stories for Christmas. James' stories, which I quite like for their quaint and generally understated effect, work particularly well on TV, especially the ones with the framing device of Christopher Lee as James, telling the stories to his undergraduate students.

So, being British, my recollections are of UK programmes; I'm sure that my US readers will have fond memories of TV shows that have scared them witless over the years. Please feel free to share...

(next week, I'll be moving on to the cinema)

Fear on Friday

What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read?

I ask this question because I’m currently the Keeper for my Call of Cthulhu pbem and as such, am delving into the realms of horror literature for hints and tips on what scares people.

There is, however, one problem. None of the stuff I’m reading really frightens me. Nothing unnerves me, nothing sends a chill down my spine. I go to bed after reading them and my dreams are normal.

Is it just me? Perhaps it's because, being a bit of a rationalist, I don't really believe in ghosts, the supernatural and paranormal happenings.

However, I like to know what scares people because it means that I can tailor my Keepering more precisely to achieve a truly spine-chilling and memorable experience.

Note that I’m not including films in this impromptu survey – they’re a different medium. Books is what I’m interested in today.

So what’s given you goosebumps after reading? What would you never read at night? What title truly encapsulates fear in your opinion?

Scaree Monstaz!

Found this whilst out on the net today. Check out the site - it shouldn't work but it does - hilariously. And I don't even like lolcats.

It also introduced me to the macabre work of Michael Whelan's Halloween collection. Whelan is a brilliant artist anyway and well worth a visit; he does do lighter stuff, honestly.

My 50th post - Undead Stirges!

And you thought regular stirges were bad.


Frequency: Very rare
No appearing: 6-24
AC: 6
Move: 3”/18”
HD: 1+3
%ge in lair: 85%
No of atts: 1
Damage per attack: 1-3
Special attack: Drain levels (for each round following the achievement of a hit, half a level is drained away, per stirge)
Special defences: +1 or better weapon to hit.
Intelligence: Average
Alignment: NE
Size: S
Attack as if a 3HD monster.

Not affected by sleep, charm, cold or hold person, poison or paralysation.

Turned as a wight. However, such is the cunning of these creatures that if they sight a cleric, they will circle him/her so that only part of the flock is affected by the turning attempt and the others will attack from behind.

These sinister and horrible creatures are clearly related to normal stirges but how they attained their unlife is a matter of debate and conjecture. Suffice it to say that they are greatly feared for the reasons listed below.

They look much like regular stirges except that their wings are of bone and rotten leather, and their faces are mere skulls, with the long proboscis a razor-sharp talon of bone. It is through this that the life energy of victims is drained.

As with most undead, a vial of holy water will do 2-8 damage if it hits an undead stirge. The problem is getting a hit.

If, at the end of a particular round of attacks, a victim is left with but half a level, that victim becomes a semi-zombie, still alive but totally under the power of the stirge flock. They can be used to seek out living beings, and lure more victims to the feeding ground of the flock. The victim’s pallid appearance and trance-like state may give their status away. The semi-zombie can try to break free of the stirge flock once per day by saving vs. WISD and then making another save vs. CON. If they manage this, they are no longer under the control of the flock but are still in a state of semi-zombieness and are filled with a craving to restore their lost levels by draining others until they have returned to their normal level. The semi-zombie can drain half a level per successful hit achieved on a victim. The freed semi-zombie possesses its normal intelligence and will use it to cunningly set up opportunities to regain its levels.

If a victim of the flock loses all or more of his levels in a particular round, he becomes a full Stirge zombie.

Stirge Zombie

Frequency: Very rare
No appearing: 2-16
AC: 7
Move: 9”
HD: 2
%ge in lair: 85%
No of atts: 1 (bite)
Damage per attack: 1-4
Special attacks: None
Special defences: Cannot be slept, charmed or held. Cold-based spells have no effect.
Intelligence: Non-
Alignment: Neutral
Size: M
Turned as a normal zombie, although the turner gets –2 on the die roll if the stirge masters are within 30’ at the time of turning.

The Stirge zombie is what becomes of a victim of an Undead Stirge when all their levels are drained. They are a pallid grey with numerous puncture wounds all over their bodies. Whilst they can attack, and will do to protect their stirge masters, their primary function is to prevent the escape of a group on whom the undead stirges intend to feed.
Holy water will do 2-8 damage per vial that hits.

(Not being the world's greatest artist, I've not attempted to depict these creatures pictorially. However, if you fancy having a go, feel free and let me know what you come up with)

Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

"My name's Jason and I'll be your Dungeon Master tonight...."


Recently, Jim Raggi was posting on Horror in RPG, the mechanics of fear for PCs and particularly on scaring your players. He’s not posted Part 2 yet, which I’m looking forward to reading. But it led me to think on ways that DMs have of putting the frighteners on players, or creating that feeling of unease in a dungeon.

A recent blog from Alexis on Tao of D&D talked about keeping players in the dark and allowing their imaginations to fill in the blanks. This is sound advice – no-one is better at scaring someone that the person himself.

A wise man once said “When you know what frightens someone, you can control them”. If you’ve been playing with the same group for a while, you will have a fairly good idea of how they react and what does frighten them. That knowledge can be used to rack up the tension and make the players sweat. Everyone likes being frightened at a certain level and there’s nothing guaranteed to make a dungeon memorable like making it scary.


Here are a few of my ideas – some are just DM psychological tactics, others are things to present to your players that may well create that edgy feeling.


Ask the players to describe what they are doing in great detail. Then seize upon the most mundane statement and repeat it back to them as a question, putting the stress on some harmless word.

E.g.

Player: “We’re standing around the table, looking at the dusty bottles to see if they’re potions”

DM: “You’re standing around the table?”

Player (as minis are hurriedly moved) “No, we’re well away from the table. We’re nowhere near the table. Wherever the table is, that’s where we’re not”

The same can be done as a party enter a seemingly empty room.

DM “Okay, now could everyone show me exactly where they’re standing”

Have a corridor strung with fine wires and strings which are perfectly visible. The party must try and bypass every one as they have no idea which is the trigger for the inevitable trap. Maybe they all are. Or maybe none of them is.

Finding the remains of other adventurers who have fallen to the dungeon’s perils is a sure-fire memento mori, especially if those adventurers look as if they’ve died horribly and are sufficiently fresh as to display that.

Ask the players to make a series of D20 rolls but don’t tell them why. Once they’ve rolled, scribble something down, check in the PHB or DMG, mutter meaningfully to yourself, then smile pleasantly and continue with the game. Now the players are on edge, waiting for the inevitable. Or is it inevitable?

A DM with whom I played long ago used to observe dryly as the party marched down a corridor in a tight cluster

“Oh look – fireball formation”

And how quickly the party would spread itself out.


Smells – DMs often forget this feature of a dungeon – I’ve recently been using it myself and the party now associate a certain smell with carrion crawlers. What they didn’t realise was that ghouls smell very much the same.

Dungeon floors – why should they be level and smooth? Why not have them made of uneven slabs, crooked flagstones, pieces that don’t seem to match the rest of the floor. They’re not pressure pads but the party don’t know that.

Whilst we’re thinking about dungeon geography, the walls don’t have to be perfectly smooth and featureless. If you’re underground, you would expect there to be small holes, perhaps a foot or so in diameter every so often. Dark holes. Holes out of which things could crawl when you’re not watching. And why stop at the walls? What about the ceilings? A lot of players ask about the walls and the floors when they enter a room but how many look up?

The party is confronted by a stretch of water blocking their way. It’s only knee-deep but there could be anything in there. Or nothing.

If your party is one of those that actually remembers to post rearguards, they can be a good source of tension. As they move deeper into the dungeon, either pass the rearguard a note or ask to speak to them alone. Suggest that they hear slight noises, unnatural shadows. When they report back to the rest of the party, someone will invariably ask if anyone else sees anything. Say no. A bonus will be if the party then starts to mistrust the rearguard and subsequently ignores real warnings.

That having been said, shadows that flit across the far end of a dimly-lit passageway and then vanish are a good way of making players edgy. Do they investigate and risk being led astray or do they press on and risk something following them? A lot of DMs treat a monster encounter as a pretext for immediate attack, but more tension can be obtained from having the monster bide its time, waiting for the right moment to strike. Stalking the party.

Splitting the party is always a good tactic – I mean, what’s the one thing that the bold adventurers on any good horror film always do? If the party has split up and is out of visual contact, why not have magic mouths that are triggered by one or two people passing by and let out a blood-curdling scream of terror or something like “Help me! Please don’t kill me! No….aaaaargh!”

The idea is really to keep the tension up. If the players are scared of their own shadows three rooms in, the DM has done his job well.

What do you think? Have you got any techniques for getting the players freaked out and ready to run? Or perhaps you’ve got a story about a time when this happened. Let me know.