Fear.  Such a simple word.  Yet it defines an emotional state so mind-warping, and potentially life-destroying - nothing short of a spiraling rabbit-hole to soul-shattering insanity.  In RPGs, fear is often boiled down to something as meaningless or mundane as a die roll and a short term penalty.  With a little preparation and some interesting gamemastery, Fear can be a recipe for pure gaming magic, becoming the driving force behind your next game session – one the players will never forget, though they may want to.

Monster Redefined

Monster.  The word gets tossed around so much, it loses its visceral meaning.  The fact that a Manual could exist for things so beyond mortal understanding that they fray the edges of our snug reality is utterly ridiculous.  Truly horrific nightmares, worthy of the moniker, should never be reduced to anything we can understand.  Monsters are more than claw/claw/bite or black fur and blood red eyes.  They are shadows that don’t make sense on the wall.  They are grey mangy things at the edge of our peripheral, that when we snap our fretting little eyes their way, just aren’t there.  They are the needly tingling on our necks that we try to ignore when darkness looms at our back.  They are missing friends who vanished without a word or a clue.  They are that mist of blood on the white pillow.  A familiar face looking back in the mirror that doesn’t quite match your own.  They are the sounds of the house settling on a cold evening that go on for a moment too long.  The scrape of nails on the stairs.  The sound of wind chimes in the dead of a breezeless night.

A true monster, one worthy of the moniker, doesn’t merely kill you.  It takes away everything you care about – dignity, family, love, hope.  It doesn’t finish you off until it’s unraveled every thread of your sanity and shattered your warrior’s calm into tinkling shards of paralytic terror.

Encounter with a Monster

Monsters leave scars, and not just on flesh.  A close encounter with a horrific creature whose very existence is a blasphemy on the world scours a deep scratch into even the bravest hero’s core.  That kind of fear doesn’t fade.  It leaves an indelible mark on the psyche.  Why reduce this terror to a simple penalty for a few rounds of combat, when instead this fear could echo terribly through the PC’s life, and smolder through the arc of your campaign thereafter.

To this end, there is no reason for a monster to simply shamble forth from the shadows and fight to the death, and no reason for a GM to rush a final confrontation with a truly despicable monster.  Why not let the party catch a glimpse of the horror first, or worse watch it shred one of their friends to gory bits and pink mist before it slinks away into the shadows with an unearthly howl or teeth-rattling shriek.

Foreshadowing

If it’s avoidable, never spring a monster on the PCs without a few terrifying hints to its horrific nature first.  For one, you can use this foreshadowing to give the PCs some hints as to how to defeat the terrible thing.  More importantly it scares the shit out of your players…

Ratchet Up the Terror: Imagine a scene where the PCs turn up at a roadside inn in the dead of night the door knocking open and shut in the wind.  Inside four traveling mercenaries lie in pieces - flesh literally stripped from broken bone, armor bent and chewed to shards, blood drops raining from the ceiling.  The PCs follow the scent of freshly cooked meat, only to find the innkeeper’s wife lying in the hearth, her blackened skull grinning at them as flames coil and burn what’s left of her bright red hair.  Her belly is open – guts obviously worried and gnawed by whatever monstrosity is responsible for turning this warm homey inn into a human abattoir.

Clues in the Carnage: There is no evidence whatever attacked these poor people suffered a wound from their weapons.  Maybe the only evidence of the beast is the damage it’s done to the corpses and surroundings save one interesting oddity – a pool of foul smelling black blood boils and smokes behind the bar next to the pulped body of the innkeeper.  Shards of glass surround the puddle of repugnant ooze.  The shelf above holds a few surviving bottles of a wine made by pious monks of a hillside monastery – any local knows they bless the wine they make and infuse it with holy water.

Beyond cluing in the PCs on possible ways of dealing with the horror of the monster, scenes like the above also go a long way toward setting the mood of an adventure and putting The Fear into your PCs.

The Lingering Effects of Fear

As the adventure progresses, the terror of the incident takes root in the PC’s brain and grows roots right into their soul.  Food doesn’t taste the same, a lover’s warm caress feels like grey dead flesh, and sleep…oh sleep never comes again without that leering jumbled face peering from the shapeless shadows of the darkened bedroom.  The following is one of many alternate ideas on dealing with the effects of horror or fear in a game beyond a simple dice penalty:

Tainted Mind: As a GM we have more resources at our fingertips than just bonuses and penalties on dice.  For one thing, we control the narrative.  We literally ARE the PCs senses, impressions and memories.  We don’t always have to tell a PC the truth.  People experiencing terrible fear often hallucinate or see things that don’t exist, or worse perceive events in far more diverse ways then those around them.  Sometimes a better Fear effect, than a simple penalty to a die roll, is to feed a PC false narrative.  Tell the PC things are happening that aren’t, so they react to the wrong stimulus.

Sinister Glimpse: At a royal banquet the lordling seated at the fighter’s left suddenly unhinges his jaw and scorpions begin to scamper and jump from his mouth all over the fighter’s face and food.  In reality, the young nobleman is only attempting to make small talk, but the fighter’s horrific encounter with a mummy made of rags, bone and scorpions earlier in the week has colored his take on the world.  The mummy fled after turning the party cleric into a poisoned husk, promising to see the fighter again soon.  You, the Gamemaster, describes the nobleman’s transformation as if it is happening in-game right now.  Chaos likely ensues as the fighter, at best, freaks out, and at worst, draws his ornamental longsword and takes the lordling’s head from his body in full view of the banqueting elite.  Horrified gasps and screams eventually bring the fighter to his senses, and he is staring down at the body of headless sixteen year old boy, gripping the bloodied murder weapon in his shaking hand.

Now instead of a simple penalty on die rolls for a few rounds you’ve got a penalty that punches deep into the character’s place in the world and helps drive the story of your campaign forward (the fighter now definitely has a new arch enemy in the way of the lordling’s father – a retired ranger made good who plans to hunt his son’s murderer through a deadly maze of traps – to give him “a more sporting chance than you gave my son.”)

MORE FEAR: Dozens more examples, advice, and instructions on unleashing Tainted Mind plus loads more devious alternative Fear Effects await you in Anarchist Gamemaster’s Cookbook.  Preorder your copy today…but beware the book brings down a Sinister Curse on any who purchase it. Many victims have already been bitten with the first signs of transformation starting to creep in. Join in for a taste.