Detail some moment in your game when the players had a sincere "oh... shit!" reaction; where they realized that they were well and truly fucked, or that things were much worse than they thought.
What technique did you use to help bring about this moment?

RPGPundit

That time when they were on a strange plane with giants wandering around everywhere, and they cut loose that wolf that was tied down with silver string, and the wolf turned out to be the Fenris Wolf...

Technique: I presented clues about their location gradually, counting on one of my players who I knew was familiar with Norse Mythology. The clues didn't sink in until after the Fenris Wolf was cut loose, grew to enormous size, and started devouring everything in sight. But when that happened, the player put together Weird Plane with Mountains and Caves + Fire Giants + Huge Devouring Wolf = We're Fucked.

I didn't have to disclose anything at that point. The player just muttered "holy shit - we've released the Fenris Wolf." One of the classic moments in our RPG history.

Chill. Spending the night in a house in the country, inherited by one of the PCs (was their grandparent's house). There to investigate strange goings-on related to spirits seeking revenge on the family for something an ancestor did 100 years ago (old-west style double crossing). Anyway, spent some time describing the house, making sure to detail the old clothes, the obvious signs of rats (including hearing them scuttle around from time to time). Standard stuff.

The first night, one of the PCs was alone in their room when they woke up because they heard scratching and scrabbling at the door. It was too dark to see, and they had no inclination to turn on the light, so I said that after a bit the scratching and scrabbling stopped, and they drifted off to sleep.

Next morning, they woke up and saw scratch marks - half way up the door!!!

He said it made his skin crawl.

I think it would be the bit where my players in their current REIGN campaign (in which they play the leaders of a successful democratic-theocratic revolution in an Alexandria-like city-state) found out that the dictator that they ousted in session 1 had come into fleeting contact with a vast underground sentient demonic empire deep in the desert shortly before the revolution happened, and had woken the thing up.

The one that sticks out in my mind was the result of a wandering monster roll.

A couple years back, I ran a short AD&D campaign, using the classic Village of Hommlet module to start things off.  After a night spent at the inn, the PCs made their way to the moathouse, dealt handily with the giant frogs outside the gate and made their way in.  The bandits on the ground floor managed to get away undetected, but the party was bloodied by a giant tick that seemed to have an endless supply of natural 20s.

So, everyone was down to 1-3 hp, the m-u had burned his spell and they had no cleric (the paladin's powers were sapped, too).  But they pressed on, searching for a way into the basement.  I rolled a wandering monster check and it came up positive.  No monster was rolled, however; instead, I rolled the result that had the PCs hearing the squeals and foot patter of giant rats from afar.

For some reason, that sound galvanized the fear of death in everyone.  Dan, playing the paladin(!), was the first to say, "Let's get the fuck outta here!"

The party hightailed it and ran from the moathouse, returning bruised and beaten to Hommlet.  I loved the fact that the party had faced giant animals and insects with no fear, but were scared shitless by nothing more than a few noises.

In my current Aces And Angels game, the PC's Carrier (The escort carrier USS Maui) had been hit by torpedoes from a sub while the PCs were in the air. The PCs and escorting destroyers nailed the sub, but the Maui was listing too badly to land on, and the PCs were diverted to a half finished strip on an Australian held-island. They made their landing checks on the boggy mess, avoiding the tree stumps and bulldozers, but all of them were almost out of high-octane Avgas.

They were stuck on the island for a week. Then the radar at the airfield spotted a flight of Japanese planes heading toward the island from Rabaul. The  players looked at each other: "Oh, Shit!" :eek: I laugh evilly - "Hehehehe!" :hehe:

Then they made a plan.

They pooled their gas into two planes and sent two of the pilots up to intercept while the others manned machine guns at the airfield. The two pilots managed to shoot down a bunch of Vals in a truly amazing tear through the stacked Vee formation, one tearing his own wing off by horsing his plane into firing position to get just one more Val, the other running out of gas, and nursing his plane in for a dead stick landing on the still-being-worked-on runway. The others shot down the three planes that made it to the island on their bombing runs. Bastards! :eek:

The one pilot who glided back has a 5% to land his plane without crashing, due to the state of the runway, his own wounds, and the condition of his plane, and no gas to make a second attempt.

He rolls an 01 on percentile. A perfect landing! Bastard!

The other pilot - the one that tore his wing off - managed to bail out, and fought off sharks with his paddle from his little rubber raft until the other PCs came and rescued him in a boat. Bastard!

My players are just freaking awesome! :eek:

-clash

[Minor Spoiler Warning for the Hackmaster module "Little Keep on the Borderlands"]


I started up a Hackmaster campaign. I was running the module "Little Keep on the Borderlands". In Hackmaster PCs get a 20 hit point "kicker". They basically roll hit points as if they were in AD&D and then add 20 to what they rolled. The players of course thought this was great. AD&D with 20 extra hit points at level 1!

Little Keep is a parody/tribute to B2 Keep on the Borderlands. So naturally there is a network of caves filled with various humanoids. The cave they entered was occupied by orcs. Their first encounter was a classic 4-5 level 1 PCs versus 4-5 orcs. Also the orcs appeared to be very drunk (in the module the orcs even got attack penalties because of the drunkeness). The PCs thought this would be easy, especially with 20 extra hit points. So they charged in on the orcs without much of a plan. Shortly after the fight started the PCs realized something. A rule I did not mention (because it was none of their business. ). In Hackmaster all monsters get a 20 hit point kicker as well...

The PCs got their butts handed to them and began a route. A couple died and  the rest ran out of the cave and fled in all different directions. It was priceless. Especially since none of them were really RPG novices.

I can not take credit for any technique because this was all due to a meta game assumption on the part of the players.

AD&D story here. Every Halloween I would run a Ravenloft-esque horror-themed game. One Halloween, I grabbed the 2e "Feast of Goblyns" adventure off of the Wizards website and ran it.

So the party of standard fantasy adventurers transplanted into Ravenloft consisted of a paladin, a thief, a ranger, and Brun the Barbarian. Brun was a fighter with an 18/97 strength, a two-handed sword, and a lot of good hit point rolls. This guy was a Combat Monster.

Our heroes blunder into a town full of wolfweres. Dramatic reveal of the horrifying secret! Panic! Chaos! Fighting!

Unfortunately for the players, I had misread the damage code on the wolfweres, which was "2-12." This obviously means 2d6. Unfortunately, I read it as 2d12...everyone's eyes bugged out when mighty Brun, the cornerstone of the party's combat tactics, died on the second round of combat.

A few years ago, I ran a Runequest campaign that lasted about two years. My main villains were a creepy cult called 'The Taken', who had sold their souls to other- dimensional entities in return for wordly power. I was inspired by the "Phantasm" movies, and a series of very realistic nightmares I'd had. Years later, "Stargate SG1" had the Ori. Very similar vibe, only my guys had better fashion sense.

Anyhoo, the closer my players got to the bad guys' main hideout, the creepier and wierder the encounters got. The main lair was a series of caves with lots of water features, like falls, cascades, etc. The party followed the water to a rounded cave whose entrance was a cascade flowing down (to make escape that way less likely). The water formed a swirling pool, that was obviously draining out the bottom of the cave (stole this from Disney's "Island at the top of the World"). The drain was the only other exit.

In the cave was a single giant spider. The party attacked. When the spider reached half hit points, bamf!, it split into two spiders. The party split up, each group attacking one of the new spiders. When those reached half hit points, bamf! it split again. This trick was stolen from the classic movie "She", starring Sandahl Bergman. Did I mention that I steal ideas from anywhere? The party leader (or pushiest player) did the math: 1x2=2, 2x2=4, 4x2= yikes! Did I mention that the spiders were poisonous? Relax, it only paralyzed them. In hip deep water.

The party quickly realized they would perish if they stayed. They tried to climb up the rushing cascade, but failed. In desperation, they all dove down the drain! Being soft- hearted I had designed it to exit into another cave below, not some watery grave, but it still led to some tense moments since everyone was in armor ! But now they were cut off deep in enemy territory.

The funniest thing was, if they had stayed one more round, they would have realised that the spiders stopped splitting once there were eight spiders. It was really no different from an encounter where a guard pulls an alarm bell, and seven more guards show up. If the players had seen eight spiders, they probably would have waded in anyway, and probably won. The encounter was no more threatening than anything else they had already handled, but the element of the unknown, of uncertainty, of "Shit! That's not in the Monster Manual!" got the better of them.

What do you think, next time, let the beasties keep multiplying ad infinitum? Or is that too cruel? Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

Lull them into a false sense of security for half an hour and then remove the lynchpin. Security can be achieved by increasing their reliance on an NPC, being in a place that appears to be safe or simply having a laugh and chuckle at the table. Then inact a betrayal, upheaval or play upon the one thing the players prayed would not happen.

(Posted on another thread)

In Harms Way

The PCs were given orders in the last session to bring in a British vessel and her captain for questioning.

For a good couple of hours the players entertained/roleplayed amongst themselves and then looked at me expectedly. I figured it was time for the them to chance upon the vessel they were after and bring it in....but I really did not have anything to work with. No stats, no NPCs...no idea.

So I just said they find the ship drifting aimlessly. Repeated calls to the ship's crew went unanswered. Finally after a while the PC Captain forms a boarding party (made up of the rest of the PCs) and boards the ship.

They find the ship abadoned. (Think of the opening credits in 4400). It's as though in the middle of doing their duties, the crew dissapeared. The PCs start heading to the Captain's quarters and I am wondering how the hell am I going to end this session.

They reach the door of the Captain's quarters and hear a faint rocking sound coming from behind the door. The lead pc slowly tries opening the door but it's locked. After a hurried whispered conversation, the PC Captain motions one of the crew to kick the door open. The door burst open and a loud pistol shot greets the players. They scramble ducking for cover and then silence. When the smoke clears and they look inside the room, they see a man strapped to a chair, with a pistol pointed at where his face once was.

"Captain" says one of the pcs

"Yes" says the captain (another pc)

"Did we just kill a royal cousin?"

"Yes"

Regards,
David R

In Osere, a modern espionage game, the PCs were leading everything, doing all the investigations at their own pace, seeking out their enemies and planning how to deal with them. Then while watching a corrupt politician's office, a Russian mercenary (the politician's driver) rammed into the back of their van. They chased him down, shot and grabbed him. So even though someone was gunning for them, they still felt they had the initiative.

They called the boss into the offices to discuss what to do with the Russian and their general course of action. Then the boss went outside, started up his car, and a big explosion flipped the car over. Car alarms went off across the street, flames poured from the front of the car, broken glass was everywhere. The PCs rushed out to help their boss.

They were absolutely shocked. It meant that the people they were investigating were very, very serious, and very dangerous. The shock around the game table was genuine.

The technique was to simply build up the events of the game so that it all seemed logical after it happened. The funny thing is, they never found out who bombed their boss' car. But then, that was the tagline of the campaign: no questions, no answers - that's business we're in, you accept it and move on. Boom.

Castle Falkenstein: The PCs were on their merry way halfway across a bridge over the Rhine near Koblenz in a Steam Explorer (a steam driven vehicle) they had stolen from the Prussians. They were convinced that they had escaped their pursuers when their arch nemesis Oberst Herrmann von Bollen pulled up on the other side of the bridge in a Landfortress, all guns pointed at them. Lessons in swimming ensued.