Mundane Horrors

[DannWyrm]

So, I've been running a Ravenloft 3.PF game for the past year, and I felt kinda strange, because since the beginning, I've done all sorts of supernatural horror in the game. I've done a mix of adventure paths and custom content, and it invariably went to some sort of spectre or vampire or zombie threat, and I fear that I have made the mistake of throwing too many,"Spooky, scary skeletons" at them and made them somewhat jaded towards the horror aspect of the setting.

However, after a two month hiatus between sessions (and a happy coincidence of it being during party downtime) I've decided to reevaluate how I'm doing the campaign, and chose to get some mundane threats on. In this case, the party has been working with a merchant to build a ferry station, and wolves have started picking off workers, like a twenty-five strong pack of the Man-Eaters of Tsavo. The first night has passed, and the first victim has been claimed, a worker dragged into the woods and partially eaten before the party could intervene.

When they came across the carcass, all the wolves had already dispersed into the wilderness, howling to one another before going quiet, leaving the two party members in the clearing with nothing but a half eaten corpse and a dead-silent forest surrounding them.

I'm excited. The party is starting to freak out. They're level 7, and I've got them on lock down with a simple wolf pack. The question is, how should I go about cranking up the fear factor?

And for future possibilities, what are some fairly or totally mundane threats you've thrown at your party/had thrown at your party that had them on the ropes/curled up in the fetal position? I'm finding I like the narrative approach quite a lot, because it gives them something to fear more than just numbers. "Oh no, I've taken 50 damage!" isn't as dramatic or compelling as, "Oh gods, the workers keep disappearing, we can't stop it, they're too fast. When will it be me?!"

[Dark Angel]

Creepy and horror can be hard. It is also subject to the DM and their players levels of tolerance. A person terrified of insects could panic at the arrival of giant insects grabbing their pc. My group has a fairly twisted and high tolerance that has kind of evolved over the years. Nothing abusively over the top, but there have been moments. In a recent Planescapes game, we encountered a hag's lair and found her "toys". One was a near corpse that reminded me of the sloth template from Se7en and the other was a living doll with their limbs attached by cordage. Both were alive and the cleric and I tried our best to save them. However, the near corpse died that night (while we were resting) and I reluctantly killed the other as a sign of mercy. It was creepy and depressing, but the DM knew how far to go (and went a bit more) and knew what buttons to push.

In Ravenloft, I make a point of all these terrible monsters killing and doing things that help them survive. I always strive to push the envelope for humans and demihumans to possess a capacity for greater evils than monsters. Easily my favorite were the Falkovnian soldiers who came into another domain looking for a AWOL officer. They threatened, maimed, and killed townspeople to try to achieve their goals. Luckily the group managed them correctly and are living longer lives because of it.

[Band2]

You could always go with ordinary humans. Their capacity for cruelty can easily surpass some of the monsters out there.
As for animals, I always preferred bears over wolves to threaten the characters. Though a swarm of snakes works too.

[vipera aspis]

I have a Blackfly season in Nova Vassa where everything is swarmed by horrible biting flies controlled by a hive mind. Only lasts for a week or two as long as a proper sacrifice, by will of lottery; is given freely. It's sortof mundane. Kinda.

[Dark Angel]

You could always go with ordinary humans. Their capacity for cruelty can easily surpass some of the monsters out there.

I use Dungeon Magazine adventures and have substituted humans (or elves in Sithicus, etc) for certain npcs and hostile humanoids. Not only does that keep the primarily human realms more true to their populations, but I noticed that many monsters my group encountered were monsters (literally). The native populations only served as continual victims and that bothers me (as much having a woman constantly be the damsel-in-distress cliché in my games). Also, they can be just as deadly without some form of magic or monstrous traits.

[High Priest Mikhal]

You could always go with ordinary humans. Their capacity for cruelty can easily surpass some of the monsters out there.

Oh, yes. Human(oid)s can be more monstrous than the monsters. Try a build-up of ghastly, utterly heinous crimes, things that only a "monster" could be capable of, only to reveal that the true villain is all too human(oid). Study the crimes of real life serial killers, terrorists, cult leaders, or just local crimes that never get mentioned. This works especially well if the villain is a reflection of one or more of the PCs. We all have dark sides and a reflection of that should rattle anyone.

[DannWyrm]

I have been toying with a serial killer idea, but nothing set in stone yet. A while back I had a human cult headed by a nobleman that was attempting to revive a vampire, and used his daughter as one of the feeders to speed it along. That got my party whipped up pretty good, and they felt pretty righteous when they struck him down. The girl survived, but was traumatized horribly from her treatment. The monk in the party keeps tabs on her recovery, him being the most affected by the act.

[Nathan of the FoS]

I had a couple of amusing experiences with mundane hazards as a PC--one, for example, in which the PCs had to cross a stream and put out a building fire, or at least rescue the contents. Unless you're a druid, tasks like that can be surprisingly difficult with a D&D skill set.

Another good example is the weather in Dark of the Moon. If your party is dropped into Vorostokov from the Mists and doesn't have climate-control magic prepared, even quite a high-level party might find it a very uncomfortable experience.

[brilliantlight]

I think my players were never more spooked than when they entered a very lawful evil town. No zombies, no werewolves, no ghosts just ominous quiet. The populace was very nervous and quiet. There were no bars, no brawls or even arguments. This is so unlike normal human society the players were really jumpy.

[Boris Drakov]

In that context letting them stumble over a single silver or gold knife depending upon their experience with lycanthropes can unsettle them as well.

Fearing being stalked by 25 lycanthropes might make them extra wary of encountering them and might even have them try to fight off the wolves with soft silver or golden weapons.

I did a random encounter once with two bandits whom I described in the most ominous manner possible making my 10th lvl party almost hand over their money to 0th lvl bandits.

When they finally fought back their relief at winning so easily made them spare the lives of the bandits.

[Dark Angel]

In that context letting them stumble over a single silver or gold knife depending upon their experience with lycanthropes can unsettle them as well.

Fearing being stalked by 25 lycanthropes might make them extra wary of encountering them and might even have them try to fight off the wolves with soft silver or golden weapons.

I did a random encounter once with two bandits whom I described in the most ominous manner possible making my 10th lvl party almost hand over their money to 0th lvl bandits.

When they finally fought back their relief at winning so easily made them spare the lives of the bandits.

My group was a bit put off when a showdown with Ivan Dilisnya came to a head and (in 2e) he had only 7 hitpoints. They felt a bit slighted, but they did have to bust through his guards and travel quite a ways to get to him. He had a Bond-style revelation that the group did not see coming. He also had a gun with enchanted shot that kept them at arm's length a bit. Remember, Hitler was not a large or imposing warrior type. Yet he killed millions at the cost of his demented dreams. It's all presentation folks!

[DannWyrm]

Had another session last night. The group consulted some of the locals for some insight into why the wolves are so intent on attacking the encampment. Some fear that a curse may have been placed upon the site, while a select few think it might be a witch or druid controlling the wolves. The party's alchemist tried a hunter's trick of "marking territory" around the camp with wolf urine in an attempt to intimidate the pack into staying away from the camp. The rogue pressganged some workers into clearing a field of tall grass to remove one of the wolves' possible hiding spots. About an hour into the clearing, one of the workers was ambushed by a couple wolves and killed, cutting their project short.

Unfortunately, they reacted aggressively to this tactic, and during the night, the wolves found her tent by tracking down the scent of wolf on her, and dragged her out. The rest of the party, and a few of the workers taking watch attempted to fight the wolves off, but she was killed before they could intervene. They got a glimpse of the alpha wolf and its mate amidst the other pack members, and managed to wound it before the pack withdrew.

They managed to kill two wolves, but they are certainly on the defensive. Morale amongst the camp is starting to drop, and the group is considering torching the woods in a last ditch effort to get rid of the wolf problem (assuredly creating all sorts of new problems in the process).