@kviiri Have the basement be an old stone-and-wood basement that's full of trash, and bury the chest beneath some of it. Or behind some hidden stonework, a false fireplace back, a secret door, etc. Your investigators may still be able to look for it once they have an inkling there's something hidden here.
Another thing, I want an ending that hurts, should it come to it. Like, really packs the idea that "things are seriously bleak" if the maggots escape with their mother. Without just stating things like "well there's a thousand of them, they wriggle towards the lake, soon more lakes will be infested by these pests. Better stay dry. The end"
@doppelgreener Yeah, this is actually what I've been planning to do. Maunu (being a good craftsman) has put a lot of effort into concealing it.
A kindly mayor that helps them, or an insane person they really enjoyed
Gets infested by maggots, or their corpse is used as a breeding ground.
If the players go back to an inn room or something, everything can seem fine, until they go to lay down and when they do they notice their mattress is wriggling
Alexander Pimenko is their friend, and he's also sort of a red herring. His last name is (as far as I know) not an actual Russian name, but rather pretty close to the word "pimento" (umbra) which suggests an underlying malevolence to his character. It's not there. He's just a normal officer who likes to chill out with his friends.
@Skathix Very quick summary: Cthulhu is a creature from the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. His stories focus on Cosmic Horror. The primary theme of Cosmic Horror is that humans are insignificant and inconsequential in the greater cosmic reality and worth no notice whatsoever, that there are creatures so great that they are utterly indifference to the existence of humanity, much like we are utterly indifferent to the existence of ants.
Many of these creatures pose existential threat to individual humans or all of humanity by consequence of their ordinary natural processes -- like taking a breath. They won't kill people with specific intent, since humans aren't worth that intent and focus -- it's just a thing that happens, and they think less of it than a human may think of crushing a bacteria underfoot as they walk across the city.
Ooooh, like a really fucked up thing to do would be take a character that they like or trust enough not to murderhobo (I make this distinction because the most beneficent thing my group has done is assisted suicide) and have them say something like "Well it looks like everything is going to be okay" but have him cut off halfway through as a maggot (or whatever) falls from his pant leg, then another, and as he begins to stare in horror at them, maggots begin to pour out of his eyes and nose.
That'd make me run like hell
Excuse the language, my apologies, running on very low sleep
There's some Cthulhu RPGs like Trail of Cthulhu (a gumshoe mystery investigation game) or Call of Cthulhu (a d20 game, complete with fighting and stuff). Cthulhu Dark is a super-minimal investigator RPG which really effectively embodies the notion of human insigifnicance and futility -- the author originally thought of calling it Cthulhu Lite, but Cosmic Horror is anything but Light, so he called it Cthulhu Dark instead. :)
One thing you gotta give Angry: he can pithily summarize a beloved behemoth of the genre. "The Lord of the Rings has a single plot arc: it begins with a conflict (evil dinosaur conquers the midwest) and ends when that conflict is resolved."
We've been playing some Call of Cthulhu. I barely know the rules, the GM is of the type who prefers that we just roleplay and he applies rules where applicable.
Anyway, I've been planning for Pimenko to become seriously unhinged too. Like getting scared of water to the point of forgoing drinking completely.
@Skathix One thing you have to be very careful of in horror stories is desensitizing the audience or breaking suspension of disbelief. If you escalate things too fast, the audience is immediately conditioned to be less sensitive to the rest of what you do. If you come on too strongly with the horror aspects, you can break suspension of disbelief and your audience disengages with the story.
It's for these reasons horror stories usually only very gradually escalate, such how in tons of horror movies you only get glimpses of the monster in the beginning, and get to see slightly more and more as the movie goes on -- and might only see it in full in the final scenes, if ever.
It keeps the audience very sensitive to the horrifying circumstances you steadily dole out to them.
@nitsua60 Yes! You can't keep the audience on edge for the entire story or you similarly lose their buy-in to your story. Humour is a great way to relax, so a lot of horror stories include some of it, and it's been my experience in horror games that players will actually try to make jokes and humour. That's a good thing.
One stupid monster idea I have is the Ghost of the Artist. He travels by night, striking his victims and turns them into portraits, with brutal expressions of terror and all. He then hangs the portrait somewhere close for people to see. No other trace.
(spoiler alert for a thirty year-old short story; also, it's a little gross) A doctor is marooned on a desert island with nothing but the cocaine? heroin? he'd been smuggling. We read his journal as he slowly (a) has to amputate parts for food and (b) swirls around the drain of madness.
(Also @kviiri since we appear to be moving on, parting words -- I like your scenario a lot. Be careful about making the green jewels anything anyone's entirely comfortable with or understands well; avoid those circumstances.)
@Skathix Evil shadow doppelgangers is a very well-used and fun trope people understand well, and a popular action aspect. It's hard to make that properly horrifying just on its own. Compare a story like The Thing, which has a parasitic creature kill and replace a person as their doppelganger, but continue to act like them, which breeds major paranoia and existential questions.
For example, in one scene, someone wants to tie everyone else down to a seat so they can't go anywhere, then wait until the parasitic organism shows itself and he'll kill it -- but what if that guy is, in fact, that parasitic organism?
What kind of feeling and atmosphere do you want to use these shadow doppelgangers to create?
"The shadow plane pouring into this one" is already quite a potentially scary on its own that has a lot of space to play around in, without introducing shadow doppelgangers.
@Skathix In another horror-game (although more DnD than Cthulhu) I had a witch's house that was cursed with "living darkness" that was impossible to penetrate well with plain light. It also made everything look more terrifying (rotten, desolate, and malicious). The secret to penetrating the darkness was using a special lantern that was hidden in one of the rooms.
The witch herself was a pretty benevolent gal. The living darkness made her appear as a corpse while her real form was that of a 30-ish blonde woman. She just preferred isolation so her powers wouldn't be pressured into malicious uses.
@Skathix You could have the "core" of the darkness move around, even. Make it a game of hide-and-seek. (That could get tedious if not done very well, though)
@Skathix Ok. Breaking things down: horror stories are all about making the audience feel a certain way (mainly, horrified, primarily at key moments). Every part of the plot exists to help the audience feel a certain way. It may be to make them relax for those relaxation points @nitsua60 talked about, or it may be to make them feel terror (tension, dread, anticipation, anxiety, etc), or it may be to make them full-on be horrified.
Shadowy plane bleeding out into the temple is, itself, ripe for little setpieces that create terror or horror.
But "shadowy doppelgangers" sounds like a setpiece that is cool, but it needs that question answered: if this exists, how do you want the players to feel from it?
and if you want those players horrified by it, are shadowy doppelgangers really the right tool for that kind of feeling?
I want them to feel like they're almost powerless at certain points. They've been so used to being powerful enough to strike down anything. I'd like them to feel like they don't need to take that power forgranted
@Skathix Hm. One thing Cthulhu Dark does very well to create that feeling of insignificance is this: the investigators succed at almost everything they attempt; they only roll to find out how well they succeed. (The exception is when something actively opposes them, which is rare.) And the combat rules involve just one rule: if your investigator fights any creature, they die. (They might fight and achieve something in the process, but they will die in that very scene.)
@Skathix I hadn't thought of that bit yet... but first, you'd need to avoid having the "actual" doppelgangers having too much shadow tropes. They need to seem real so your PCs can feel legitimate doubts about whether they are real or not. Instead, make those shadowy tropes apply to your PCs... it'll require good narration to work well.
@kviiri I feel "are we the shadowy doppelgangers?" might require running into other people, as well as people who are theoretically potentially the original party.
You can make it a rather "traditional" challenge, a hostile party, fight or three, get it over with. But to make it really spooky, it has to pack more significance.
To make it horrifying, it has to deal with bigger themes. Loss of identity, loss of humanity. Make the players and the PCs unsure whether they're real, or just shadows and reflections.
Mostly your emotional tools at high-tension points are: tension, anxiousness, terror (dread and anticipation), and horror (which is largely considered a mixture of shock and revultion).
For example, pick a friend, family member, or an ally of a PC. Someone who's usually friendly, or even intimate with the PC. This NPC could see the PC in question and their shadow, and outright shun the PC as a monstrosity and treat the shadow as they normally would treat the PC.
Revultion comes from a few sources. One of those is things our instincts warn us away from, such as decay. Another is seeing or experiencing something that's similar to what we know or to what we're comfortable with, but not quite right in some way, or twisted in some way. This is exactly what the Uncanny Valley is about. It's also a lot of what powers the horror in Stranger Things.
Meanwhile, the shadows display emotion beyond what one'd expect from a doppelganger. They are alive, emotional, not mere monsters.
And of course, they (and everyone else you encounter in the temple) should treat the question "which one is real?" as if it was the simplest question ever: of course the shadow is real.
Alien tapped into other sources: audiences were already getting used to horror circumstances (they were desensitized already, which is why modern horror films go to significant extremes, like SAW). The creators decided to tap into a different source of horror: rape. Everything horrifying in Alien is effectively intended to confront people with their feelings about that. (Yes, even that thing. And that other thing.)
That's something you'd probably want to stay away from in your own game (seriously, you're almost always better off just simply never broaching the topic of rape -- odds are good your group has someone who's been a victim of it or knows someone who is, and those feelings are best left alone) but I bring this up to show where horror can be sourced from.
(We have at least two questions on main site which are basically a GM saying: "A character was sexually abused in the game I ran, and then I found out [one of the players / the player of that very same character] is a sexual abuse victim. I've totally messed up. They say it's OK but I know it's not. What do I do?")
@Skathix Awesome. Gently dip them into feelings of detachment and exclusion and you might get a very horrifying session.
I'm thinking at some point I could have a slot where it looks like a knife or sword might go near the end when they begin to realize they're real, and when they insert a blade, they kill someone important to them
Like they realize that wasn't a wall, that was your sister
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@Skathix That would require some gentle foreshadowing and warning; if you just dump that on the players they'll disengage because it's coming on too strongly.
For example, establish the notion of this kind of device (stick sword in -- thing happens to someone); establish a symbollic language; establish that both can coexist -- then throw in "keyhole device where symbols indicate NPC the players are actively invested in". Things like this take major build-up and care.
A few scenes in the SAW movies come to mind, but I'll just discuss them in spoilers or something.
@kviiri Completely agree with this as a useful device. However depending on how you use it, it could provide immediate answers of "okay we're not ourselves" rather than preserving the uncertainty around that.
@Skathix Well like... personally, I don't have any desire to experience what SAW is designed to make me experience. Intellectually I would like to watch it as evidently a major achievement in film and horror, but emotionally I would rather leave it be.
Yeah, it's still debated how much of the book is actually Lönnrot's own work and which parts are actually older tradition. There's a lot of parallel's to the Estonian folklore collection "Kalevipoeg" (sons of Kaleva) which lends it some credibility, I guess.
You'd need to just as carefully approach implications re: the players being forced to potentially kill someone they're attached to, and you may want to consider the gravity of making that have to happen.
In one of @BESW's campaigns, the player characters over a long period of time made friends with an NPC (and the players grew attached to that NPC), who was also one of BESW's actual player characters at some point in a previous campaign. Eventually, the player characters made some powerful enemies - who gave that NPC a very gruesome death to send a message to the players' characters.
The players -- the actual players, not the characters -- were quite shaken by this, and then became furious at those enemies who'd done it and vowed to destroy them.
I feel like killing off an adored NPC should be done with great care and be treated with all the gravity it deserves -- it should be no less than a driving force, and not a one-off that's later forgotten about in the plot.
(That's in the context of D&D. In a Cosmic Horror story set in a different game, there'd be different narrative rules. But with D&D you have to be careful about certain things: killing off people the players get attached to wthout something in exchange like emotional payoff, can just make them avoid forming attachments and turn the characters down the path of murderhobos.)
@Skathix There's a GM section for Cthulhu Dark's story structure that I know @BESW knows how to find, but I don't know where it is. Might provide a useful reference point.
(unless that's what you're talking about @kviiri?)
I'm designing a horror part of my campaign. I've heard of the Five Layer Model for horror scenario design but I'm not sure what it is. Has anyone heard of it and if so can you either explain it or provide a link to it?
@Skathix [game-design] is for designing game systems themselves; we have [adventure-writing] for scenario/adventure designing. (I've done the edit already. :)
there's a popular third option i'd probably use if I played/ran D&D again: no encounter XP at all. instead, your players level up when the GM says so, typically at the end of every second session.
that way your characters can focus on the story and doing what's fun, and fight only those fights they consider important, instead of both the GM and the players feeling obligated to make sure regular meaningless fights happen so as to ensure progress.
@Skathix I highly recommend the book Nightmares of Mine. It's an analysis of the various elements and techniques of horror through the RPG lens.
A lot of the horror concepts @doppelgreener used in your conversation (like the difference between revulsion and dread) are derived from Nightmares of Mine.
@BESW I haven't read this; would you recommend it?
I am interested in actual analysis & breakdown of what prompts various experiences, like horror and comedy, since I've found what little knowledge I've picked up about these subjects over the years very useful.
@doppelgreener Very much so. Any GM who's interested in horror gaming will find it invaluable, and I think any GM or RPG player at all will find it useful even if they have no interest in horror gaming.
And yeah, even as a non-RPG discussion of horror it's got some very useful chapters.
@Zachiel I would caution that PHP is widely regarded as the only programming language that's objectively fairly broken; if you'd like to do further programming you may benefit from learning languages such as Python, Ruby, or C#.
(Lots of languages in popular use have an abundance of flaws and problems; PHP is systemically comprised almost entirely of them.)
just pointing out, programming in PHP is not necessarily ... good. it's a bit like joining the guitar player industry but you're using the Guitar Hero guitar with the five buttons and the switch-toggle thing.
it'll do you well! it's pretty easy to pick up for newbies and it's really good for building relatively simple things very fast; it might well be ideal for your site.
but if you wanna do much more programming it'll be good to switch to, like, any other guitar and learn how to play those.
@BESW nice.
@BESW Radical. Thanks. I'll put it on my reading list.
@doppelgreener I see. I've had my problems building a working interface for managing the Joomla Mail from a form (JQuery Ajax into php enveloper that I'm not 100% sure is spammer-safe)
I'm also pretty proud of my "PHP that builds a HTML page according to the variables of my ajax call and draws a nice html e-mail with inline css and all"
@Zachiel mainly i'd suggest you learn about how SQL injection works, and learn how to use stored procedures (because those guard against SQL injection). understand the same sorts of principles can apply to any other data someone can send your server, and that people can send data straight to your server without using your HTML page and thus are able to send your server data that the HTML page would never permit them to send.
Yes you need to protect against this.
Let me show you why, using Firefox's developer console:
If you don't cleanse this data, your database will be destroyed. (This might not be a totally valid SQL statement, but I hope I've gotten my point across.)
Just because you've limited what optio...
@doppelgreener I had the built-in mailer (PHPmailer) care about injections (I also did some basic anti-injection things like looking for carriage returns and other suspicious things, but regex mail validation is a horrible idea)
My big pronblem was trying to ensure that the data to the php page came from the same joomla session. When I got told that was not enough anyway I just gave up. It looks like the PHPmailer author has already taken his precautions and I'm not using databases of any other kind.
I'm more worried about that kind of attack where I say I'm someone else and start spamming and all the replies go to the address I used.
This is a public service announcement about the Canada lynx and its ginormous fluffy paws. Thank you for your atten… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/777982493513383936
Why the Soviets Sponsored a Doomed Expedition to a Hollow Earth Kingdom @atlasobscura http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-the-soviets-sponsored-a-doomed-expedition-to-a-hollow-earth-kingdom
@doppelgreener -- btw, the term you're after is prepared/parameterized statements not "stored procedures" -- I have written SProcs that do dynamic string SQL mangling (as you can't parameterize DDL in Oracle), and have written injection-proof code in RDBMSes that have no stored procedure facility whatsoever (such as SQLite)
I'm designing a horror part of my campaign. I've heard of the Five Layer Model for horror scenario design but I'm not sure what it is. Has anyone heard of it and if so can you either explain it or provide a link to it?
Yes you need to protect against this.
Let me show you why, using Firefox's developer console:
If you don't cleanse this data, your database will be destroyed. (This might not be a totally valid SQL statement, but I hope I've gotten my point across.)
Just because you've limited what optio...
