hey fiends Jenny D here and it's Halloween well it's October 4th but close enough if there was ever a month to run a horror D and D session this is that month but as opposed to games like Call of cthulu or vampire the Masquerade D and D wasn't necessarily built for horror themes so if you want to make your D and D session scary you have to do a little extra leg work but don't worry I'm here to give you a hand sorry I'll stop making skeleton puns I know not everybody thinks they're humorous jeez
tough crowd I'm going to share some of the best advice from tabletop games and from fiction and film for sending chills down your player spines but as much as I always try to stay positive on this channel I'm afraid I have to share something else too a warning there are two extremely common ways that I see people undermining their own attempts to make their game Scary even if you do everything else right if you don't account for these two things you're just not going to pull it off so let's go over three ways to bring
horror into your D and D game and two mistakes that you should definitely be afraid of for a few days now now your players have been hearing about something in the woods several people have gone missing and the characters get a chance to examine the bodies finding their flesh shredded and their bones crushed the more superstitious in town talk of a little boy who went missing long ago while playing in the woods and his mother who went mad searching for him some Say She searches still Twisted by her grief and the dark magic of the
wood your players enter the forest and the one with the highest passive perception catches the distant sound of children's laughter through the trees as they near their Quarry survival checks are made at disadvantage and the thorny Vines force them to slow their Pace or take damage fighting their way through the Briar when they find the Grove shrouded in Shadow even at midday they spot the first Lost Child it's shaped from soil and twigs in a sloppy approximation of a little boy others appear around you moving closer twig claws grasping and scratching if a character touches
or talks to one it opens a muddy pit in its featureless face and cries out for its mother the sound of movement behind it in the trees tells the party she's on her way everybody roll initiative if there is one technique that is most fundamental to horror it's building anticipation you can magnify the effectiveness of a scare by forcing the audience to anticipate it think about how much dread you feel watching a character in a horror movie Turn Around slowly in a pitch black basement with only a dying flashlight to see by you just know
that any moment now that flickering beam of light will illuminate some horrible creature just inches from from the protagonist face knowing that something scary is coming makes the thing more scary it gives you time to build it up in your mind that's why if you want to make something scary it is absolutely essential to spend time on the setup if rolling initiative is the player's first clue that this monster or villain even exists your description and choices in combat will need to do a lot of heavy lifting but by sewing the seeds of anticipation well
before your players actually come face to face with their opponent you leave room for that opponent to grow larger than life in the party's mind Minds making them fear the eventual encounter for the next tip let's do a little experiment I'm going to play back some of that same description but with a little change for a few days now your players have been hearing about something in the woods several people have gone missing and the characters get a chance to examine the bodies finding their flesh shredded and their bones crushed the more superstitious in town
talk of a little boy who went missing long ago while playing in the woods and his mother who went mad searching for him that was a lot less threatening wasn't it that's because Ambiance can really influence the vibe at the table if you want to get your players into the right head space for horror you can help them along by creating atmosphere if you're playing in person that might mean lowering the lights and lighting some candles maybe you go really hard and bust out the fog machine or use themed props whether you're together in a
room or playing online you can use music and soundscapes to create an unsettling feeling tons of people on YouTube and Spotify have already done the work of creating themed playlists and videos so all you have to do is search and if you use maps or terrain anything you can do to make sure it looks scary can contribute to that Ambiance we talk about immersion in D and D a lot because at the end of the day the game takes place mostly in our heads and if we can't focus on how we imagine everything it's a
lot harder to connect to the game and have the best possible experience so whatever you can do to help your players feel that sense of immersion will also make it easier for you to shake them up with the scary things that happen in the game there's one more thing I did in that description earlier That's a classic tip from horror movies did you spot what it was if a character touches or talks to one it opens a muddy pit in its featureless face and cries out for its mother the sound of movement behind it in
the trees tells the party she's on her way everybody roll initiative there's a Trope called Monster delay where in a horror movie they will often avoid showing the monster on screen for as long as possible sometimes the viewer will catch a glimpse of the monster's tail or eye but never enough to give you the full picture that's because one of the most fundamental fears that humans all share is is fear of the unknown our brain's job evolutionarily is to constantly observe and analyze what's going on around us so that it can protect us from danger
when we encounter something unpredictable it triggers an instinctive sort of fear we don't know how to protect ourselves in that description initiative starts before the players even encounter the monster herself they know she's coming and they've seen the damage that she's done to the towns folk who already fell victim to her but they have no idea what they're actually going to be facing and for every minute of combat before she appears that uncertainty is going to be looming over the battle what abilities will she have how strong will she be how much damage will she
deal should the players conserve their resources will killing her childlike minions weaken her or anger her should they try and run away before she gets here when we don't know what to expect we imagine the worst thing possible and we're out here playing a game entirely built on imagination so the worst thing your players can imagine is probably pretty terrifying maybe even more terrifying than whatever you could describe you can use that oop hang on trigger treat love your costume I've got a Halloween treat for you you can use the code jinny to take 51%
off any yearly subscription for World Anvil what's World Anvil it's today's sponsor a toolkit for writers game Masters role players and World Builders to help them organize and document the details of their world I'm confused I know there are so many features it's hard to even wrap your head around you can write Wiki style articles using more than 25 different templates for things like characters or countries or myths and legends you can categorize and Crosslink them and customize each article with everything from images and maps to stat blocks and timelines don't you have any candy
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entirely possible to do all those things right and still fail to create that electric feeling of apprehension in your game in my experience there are two big mistakes that DMS make that can squash a scary session before it even starts have you ever experienced A Moment Like This you're describing something dramatic maybe it's a villain's deadly threat or a description of a terrifying monster but halfway through your narrative a player cracks a joke or makes a pun and suddenly it all feels silly and stupid as a DM you have to work so hard to create
tension at the table but it is incredibly easy for players to diffuse that tension and fear is uncomfortable some part of us wants to relieve that discomfort in some ways it's almost flattering if a player does something like this because to me it indicates that they were feeling that tension they felt that fear and that's why they had the impulse to dispel it but whether it's a compliment to your dming skills or not it can really take the wind out of the sales of a scary scene very very quickly and that's why one of the
biggest mistakes I think you can make when trying to run a horror game is to not get player byy in do your players actually want to play a horror game do they want to feel scared if they don't then not only are you going to be fighting an uphill battle trying to impose that feeling on them but they won't be having fun either and if they do want to be scared then let them know that they have a role to play in that as much as you do if you describe something that's clearly meant to
be scary they should be ready to receive it that way nobody likes to go to a haunted house with somebody who's just pointing out how unrealistic the decorations and costumes are the whole time you came to get scared a scary D and D session is exactly the same ultimately the DM and the players have a shared goal which is playing an enjoyable and immersive game D and D works best when everybody recognizes that we're working towards that goal together that means not just sitting back and waiting for an opportunity to poke holes in your carefully
constructed spook atmosphere now I know I've talked a lot about horror movies in this video so far but there is at least one huge difference between a horror movie and a horror tabletop game and that difference is the Players one of the scariest feelings is that of feeling powerless but while it's okay and even compelling to make their characters feel powerless there is no faster way to ruin a d and d game than to make the players feel powerless it's okay to trap the characters to take things away from them to Corner them and put
them into difficult situations but in the end this is a game and there's nothing fun about a game you can't play whatever situation you put the characters into the players need to feel like they have control over their actions and the ability to make choices I know this line can easily get blurred but in the end it's the characters who are supposed to be scared not the players it can be exhilarating to get to experience that feeling of fear vicariously to imagine how scary it might be to be in the situation that your character is
in but your role as a DM is not to SCAR or traumatize your players it's still important to understand and respect any any content boundaries that they've set if a character has a fear of spiders and they have to face down their nightmare that's a compelling encounter but whipping out a giant spider miniature and describing it in detail when you have an arachnophobic player doesn't make you a great horror DM it just makes you an in any D and session but especially with something as potentially emotionally impactful as horror it is crucial to protect your
player's agency you know that classic horror movie scene where the protagonist is going down the dark stairs into the dark basement to investigate the mysterious noise and we're all sitting on the couch yelling what are you doing don't go down there you're going to die that is not the feeling that your players should have during your game they're the ones who decide if they're going to go down into the dark scary basement and trust me it is so much more fun when they make that stupid ass decision on their own by the way the description
at the beginning of this video was my home brew monster the grasping mother in my humble opinion she's a great monster to whip out for Halloween and very easy to drop into any location that has a nearby Forest you can Download a pdf of her her Lair and her lost children minions in my patreon shop at the link in the description or pledge at the devote level and get access not just to the grasping mother but to more than 35 PDF downloads for fifth edition from the last 2 years of monthly rewards happy Halloween month
from me and my son
