[Fizzygoo]

Building the tension is always good. In a campaign I ran years ago, Seattle based, just prior to the Chi town shut down, the players were slowly introduced to the bugs. I forget what the original eye-opening run was, but it was something along the lines of Project New Hope. There they encountered their first bugs, who were tough, scary in the dark, and hurt the players (who in the previous two runs had pretty much cake-walked through heavy security teams).

As the party was trying to get out of the insect tunnels and to their vehicle, the troll bruiser PC goes down, bleeding all over the place, still alive, but forcing over half the party to drag him out. Which meant that less than half the party was now actively fighting off the insects. Even when they were not being attacked, I told them that they constantly could hear chitinous clacking above their hurried footsteps. Before they could see the light at the end of the tunnel, they were all wounded. As they were getting into their vehicle, looking over their shoulders, they could see the light reflecting off of tens of multifaceted eyes down the tunnel. The bugs were getting closer and closer and they screamed at their rigger to get the vehicle going. One of the bugs got the RV's side door before it shut, grabbing the NPC team member, nearly killing her before the others could send the bug twisting in the wind. They all breathed a sigh of relief as they drove away, dropped the two unconscious team members off at the nearest street doc, met the Johnson and got paid.

I then went around the table to go through end-run upkeep where each player lets me know what they do or plan to do with their cash, role-play with their contacts, etc. I got through everyone and then turned to the unconscious troll's player. I said to him. "You wake up and you notice you're at some cut rate street doc and you feel like you've been drugged but that's probably stopping you from feeling the pain from your wounds. To your left you see the NPC that went down during the getaway. She's unconscious, but still alive. You lay your head back down, and just about drift off to sleep, then open your eyes again and notice the doctor standing beside your bed. He doesn't look at you. He most likely thinks you're unconscious. He lifts up the IV tube, and taps on a needle that probably has antibiotics. As he pulls the cap off the needle with his mouth, a cockroach scrambles across his shirt and up his sleeve. With the cap still in his mouth, and now noticing that you're awake, he simply says with a slight shrug, "You know too much.""

The look of horror on every player at the table at that moment...well, it makes me giddy even now, some 15 years later. What happened next was an epic all out whirlwind of chaos and confusion as the troll escapes with the NPC teammate over his shoulder, and over the next few days bugs start showing up around every corner, at their houses, as their contacts, until finally most of the party makes it on to a cargo plane through the help of the few contacts that they could trust.

An hour into their flight the pilot informs them, "We've got to land in Denver instead. UCAS military has shut down O'Hare."

[voydangel]

@FizzyGoo: very nice, me likey.

[Kot]

That one was good. Really good. I'd say it's worth at least five points of rep.

[FastJack]

I am SOOO stealing that for an upcoming game.

[Fizzygoo]

I hadn't expected the troll to go down. The original plan was to have the bugs come in waves where they'd rush in, attack, and then fall back fast...giving the impression that they were making room for "something bigger - balrog style" even though they'd just come back with healthier reinforcements. But the troll going down combined with the players trying to save him added so much fear, terror, and tension that I felt my "GM mission" had been accomplished and changed the length of the tunnels out. My back up, if the players had questioned me on the mismatch between their previous intel and how long it actually took to get out was to hint something along the lines of a friendly spirit with movement helping them out.

The second most scariest moment (but damn funny) for my players was when they met a Great Feathered Serpent and his Aztlan blood mage "friend." The team was in the wilderness, driving on an old road when a small sedan falls out of the sky, blocking the road. The team stops their RV and the Serpent and rider land on the other side of the fallen car. The man hops off and yells something along the lines of "we need to talk." Well, the party was pretty paranoid so they've taken up battle stations and two of the runners are now kneeling behind the fallen sedan. One of them, who had great unarmed (and other) skills was also non-cybered, non-adept...just really good at a lot of skills (but epic in none), had previously purchased a shock glove and really really wanted to use it. The other had a grenade launcher but wasn't so sure about "engaging the enemy." The blood mage talks a bit more, something about putting down the weapons and talking. This was the party's first dragon encounter, so they really had no idea. Mr. Shock Glove decides...well, maybe it was fear that pushed him over the edge, maybe too much D&D and the heroics were kicking in, maybe it was just really late...he decides to leap over the hood of the sedan and punch the dracoform in the face.

"You sure?" I say. "Yeah," he says excitedly. "Its head alone is about 2 meters long, like as long as you." "I know, I'm going to teach it a lesson." "Okay, roll'em."

My description was something along the lines of, "you rush up fast, the mage just kind of watches you. Your fist swings around, a haymaker sweeping in, and you see you're going to connect hard on it's nose. Then, just before you connect, you realize the nose is gone, well, up, and the rest of you," talking to the other players, "just see him rush up, swing, but his body is blocking what happens." Then back to Mr. Shock Gloves, "there's a pause, you barely have time to inhale, as you realize your arm is in its mouth but its mouth is closed. The Feathered Serpent whips its neck up, sending you flying over head, landing several meters behind it. Then it spits out your arm at its feet. You need medical attention."

I'm always amazed at the players who, even after several GM "are-you-sure-you-want-to-do-thats'" still do that which they were warned not to do.

[FastJack]

Y'know, a story like that makes me want to just quote another shadowtalker...

"Ha! Friggin' Ha!"

[Fizzygoo]

[Mystic]

Also, if brute force isn't working, you aren't using enough of it.

And when in doubt, ask yourself: What would Sergeant Schlock do?  

As for the "scare" factor, I too find that anything "horroresque" tends not to work; my group being a lot of long time hard core gamers who its hard to impress. What I can often do, is mess with their minds.

Two examples spring to mind.

First was an SR game. This group made the bad choice of double crossing their "Johnson" (aka the lieutenant of a certin merc I know and love) during a run in 'Nawlins. Without going too much into detail, said runners decided to shoot Johnson in the back (literally in an attempt to resell the recovered objective. They accomplished it, got back to Seattle, only to keep running into said boss of said Johnson over and over...No matter where they went, he was there, setting up booby traps, sniping, leaving forget me nots around etc. By the time it was done, I had one player begging his fixer to set up a meet to betray the only other survivor of the team to save his hide. The rest were pissed because "I didnt fight fair". (Hello, Shadowrunner!)

HOW? One person cant be everywhere, but several all dressed the same can. I got the idea from the Three Amigos, who got it from the Magnificant Seven, etc etc

Second time was from a Marvel Superheros game. Long story short, intrepid group of heros meet a little girl in what was a literal "Apocalyptic" wasteland (heh). She was ragged, torn clothes, covered in blood splatches, big doe eyes, etc, and huddling among several bodies holding a ragged teddy. And yes, they fell for it (I still can't beleive it!). No sooner had they offered help, her eyes began to glow red and she says "Teddy dosen't like you!" and said bear becomes a 12 foot tall mountain of fluffy, cuddly, velvet death. Said heros eventually win, but not after Teddy drops three out of the five in the party. Two sessions later, when the new "team" sees the same girl (or they think); they give chase into a dark building, making damn sure she didnt have a bear before doing so BTW. Well, as they enter the dark, building, the lights come on in the warehouse, (evil grin) revealing endless shelves of nothing BUT small, cute, fluffy, stuffed teddy bear and a small but evil voice echoing in the distance "teddy dosen't like you..."

I ended the session there, to a chorus of "OH *BLEEP*!! You *Bleep-Bleep-BLEEEEEP!!!!!". That reaction (and a couple pale faces) told me all I needed to know.

[Kot]

I had some success in scaring my players, though it doesn't happen often. Yet.
One time i was GMing a short Call of Cthulhu campaign, and besides scaring the hell out of two girls in party with a moving severed hand (i showed how it rushed at them; future note: ask your players if they fear spiders, and such. Sometimes too much is far too much.), i had a really good idea with an old, evil, occult book. Well, there was one in the (official) story i was playing, with a note that it's probably too damaged by age and environment to use. So i decided to destroy that book in a scary, but not dangerous way.
One of the girls drom the 'hand incident' (boy, my ears ringed for the rest of the evening ) decided to enter the basement, where an evil cult was based, before the authorities took it out. She stumbled apon the pedestal on which the book was based... And rolled a critical success (02 to be specific) on Occult, to recognize the book. I started describing all those fearfull notes she found in other occult tomes, mentioning those dark secrets and evil rites that the book she just found contained. Described the eerie silence that befall and dar, damp athmosphere of the place (it was autumn, around 22:00, and her friends went around asking questions, so they weren't around). She reaches for the book... Fails her perception test...
And the book explodes into wet dust and gray, fast mooving shapes... (i use fast, almost spat out words to decribe it, no motions this time)
And she faints. Really... And when she comes to, we finish the game session with getting info and having the usual occult-undead-boss-fight, with a levitating knife, and things like that. And it didn't spoil the mood. I'd say that was a success.

The other time i managed to get my players (more experienced ones this time) scared was a World of Darkness game this spring (i think). I had them looking for a IIWW russian occult treasure transport reclaimed by Wehrwolf and a nazi occult task force. They found where it was and decided to enter the bunker complex. Making their stumbling around in the unnatural, thick mist and flickering lights that shouldn't work after over fifty years not getting dull and boring was a pain, but it seems to have worked. Especially that the thing that was inside tried to wor what it has got, and manipulated the wolf-blooded character's emotions and urges... Which he did surpress with great difficulty and good roleplaying. Finding twisted and preserved nazi soldier bodies (with a 'nazi zombie' hint - they encountered those already, as they look for things the modern nazi occultists want too), boxes full of seemingly intact, but rotten dollar bills, and the mist doing things it shouldn't helped make the final encounter scary enough, though they managed to fight the thing, and drive it into hiding...
Well, they also managed to set that thing free, by removing what is has guarded. So odds are, when they finally Awaken, they can meet it on terms that will make it an even fight.

[Nomad Zophiel]

I knew a guy in a WoD LARP who consistently sent entire boots squads into full retreat despite having relatively little offensive power. Sure, the guy could throw Infernal fireballs but he was still just one guy. He had a fearsome reputation and every time he got ganged up on he'd just slowly advance through all sorts of carnage and collateral damage without showing the least bit of concern. There's only so long you can watch a bad guy do the serial killer walk through half a dozen military grade undead baddies without getting freaked.

Turns out (as we found out years later), he had a trick version of Fortitude/Obfuscate where he didn't show the damage he was taking. Generally people were running away from someone who would go down with another hit or two. Worse yet, he wasn't one NPC but several. An Elder behind the scenes just sired replacements and spent a few months training them up any time he lost one and rewriting their memories so they would think they were the same guy. The few times he got taken down, the PC's brought so much firepower that there was never a body and no copy was ever captured for close examination, so the deception went on literally for years (5+ years right off hand).

[Kot]

Ugh. Vampire isn't really scary that way. It's just munchy. As in munchkin munchy. It wouldn't scare me at the least, but hey, i'm a GM. I know the trick. But the old 'elder behind the scenes conspiracy' thing? Cheap.
I'd go for the 'scary politics' theme. When you find bitter enemies side against someone, and try getting to the bottom of it, and find a lot of disturbing things. It worked once, in the old Vampire, it should work in Requiem.

P.S. My players managed to kick some vampire ass, but they always did so in broad daylight. One of them even has a vampire skull with a .44 bullet-hole on its forehead. And they're just wolf-blooded/sleepwalkers. Yet.

[Nomad Zophiel]

It was all in how the player of the NPC managed it. A good actor in that setting really makes all the difference and people tend to get inordinately attached to their long term live action characters. I would have thought the Elder thing was cheap, too except for all the times the Dread Pirate NPC was walking around with a starting character sheet bluffing his way through.

[Jeeves]

As an old ED player and GM i would use Horrors. Not exactly in person, nor indirect influence. The very possibility, or suggestion they are involved can do wonders.

I keep finding refferences to Horrors on this forum and they're mentioned in the description of "harlequin's back" that i read somewhere but I have no idea what they are, Can someon breifly explain or direct me toward some information about them?

[Fizzygoo]

Jeeves: Here's a brief overview.

In many of "The Secret History" threads here there's talk about the Horrors, what they are, how they can enter the meat-world, etc.

On a very meta-game (not metagamey, but good to use to smack around metagamey players, heh) level the Horrors are used by the GM to; foreshadow bad things that can/will happen in the future, give PCs an epic-villain to thwart (temporarily) but never truly destroy (which can bring about the game-flavoring of 'heroic' to the otherwise gritty-shades-of-grey setting), and/or insert unforgettable 'what-the-fuck-was-that?!?' reactions from the players. But what this means is that an individual Horror can be anything, look like anything, do anything, that the GM deems appropriate for the story/campaign...just so long as it's bad, like real bad man, like freakin' crazy-bad-all-out-of-Scooby-Snacks-bad.

Typically (using a wide brush here) the Horrors are behind the scenes actors, using agents in this world (metahumans, spirits, etc.) as their way to invoke their desires. It's completely left to the GM to decide how and when to use Horrors in their game. As far as I know all occurrences of Horrors in Shadowrun cannon (excluding Earthdawn of course) are totally behind the scenes and only the Great Dragons and Immortal Elves are aware of them (with the few individual exceptions).

Personally, I feel that once the Horrors are introduced to a campaign it completely changes everything. The game becomes Cthulhu-esq: The Horrors will come here, there is nothing anyone or anything can do to ultimately stop them, the more anyone finds out about them the more the Horrors take notice of them, the more the Horrors are aware of an individual the path to madness and death for that individual increases exponentially. For me, if I introduce Horrors into a campaign then it's a huge red flag that I'm going to spiral the PCs into a swirling nightmare of chaos and confusion from which they will never escape...it's the nihilistic retirement path for the campaign. It sounds bad, but it can be a hell of a lot of fun if done right, each PC trying to be the last to survive and do the most "good" for our world (even if it's just protecting friends and family from themselves until the end) before they buy it.

Again, that's my personal take on introducing Horrors (and I like Horrors as a GM). Throw in an Immortal Elf or Great Dragon to help out the PCs and you can some-what avoid the total doom n gloom inevitable total party kill. There's also the fact that the Horrors won't be able to freely enter this world for about two millennia (though metahumanity accidentally and purposely creating a "bridge" for them to come over sooner is possible).

[The_Gun_Nut]

It's pretty accurate, Fizzy.  Horrors in a Shadowrun game is a spiral down to madness and corruption, as they ARE coming and nothing can stop that.  NOTHING.  They are the nightmare given flesh and teeth and bone and they will devour your soul and make what remains into their plaything.

In Earthdawn, the mana cycle has already peaked.  That means that any Horrors out there are a dwindling population; no more spontaneous incursions.  Fighting a Horror becomes more Classically Heroic ^(TM) then, because there is an end to the nightmare, an end to the tunnel.  Killing this one helps the world as a whole, even if there are still many more out there.