How do I make my players fear with this? Like, what's something I can do to genuinely terrify my players, thinking along the lines of "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark", but not edgy. How do I hit that sweet spot of faerie horror ?
Think dolls. Describe your enemies look vaguely human and their brains will do the rest.
With the fae, the human sized ones are close to human, but subtly off. Not so much you'd notice unless you were really looking, but enough that you're uneasy. Their smile is too big, all their teeth are sharp, they put mustard on their steak. Minor oddities, they might be eccentric, or they might be something wrong.Little faeries though, start with little things, like a ghost story. Little stuff goes missing, a rug gets pulled just so that you'll trip, the table is slid a bit to stub your toe. Then it starts to escalate, the top four stairs are greased, lights are out and a bunch of broken glass scattered on the floor, gas gets disconnected from the stove, things that are decidedly more lethal and painful than just annoying. And if the escalation continues, they might come and do direct stuff. Fairy magic, can do crazy stuff, think of just absolutely nightmarish curses, and that's probably all fairy stuff. Want to add extra horror? Fairies lay eggs, and they need somewhere warm to incubate them. Lucky most mammals are just the right temperature. They'll keep you alive until they hatch, which will be real damn painful as the young fairies will of course be hungry, and you're just chock full of delicious nutrients.
>>88095380I'm just going to say what I say in every "how to run horror" thread:Player buy in is essential and you will never scare players that don't want to be scared. There is no magical set of words, atmosphere and system that can scare someone who doesn't want to be. Movies rely on visual and audio to scare people and even then if a person decides to just not get invested they usually won't be scared. A horror book requires the reader to get invested and set the mood. If they're reading on the subway they'll never be scared. A horror TTRPG is even worse because you're relying on the GM to have good enough storytelling skills to essentially adlib what took a horror author hours to write, and have none of the other players fuck up the mood.It's possible to do, but it's very difficult. I just want to set expectations on player reactions for you. Horror themed games are great fun and I love them to death but just understand that you're mostly building one of those haunted cart rides they have at the fair.
>>88095745Good point, I'm gonna have to basically use all my skill for this, thankfully I have access to a very nice shed with a great set of mood lighting and surround speakers for immersion, so I can at least use a little bit of visual and audio for inciting fear.>>88095423This could work well for the appearance and mental mind games. Could riddles also work? Basic idea I've got is "oh shit it's faeries" and the entire party trying their best to find them, to their detriment or betterment, all depends on how they react to different things they find and see
>>88095380The Gentry are grand and pompous. And they don't give a shit. There is a lot to fear from them and their whims.Like a cat they can spring from one extreme to the other and should be portrayed like that. Hobs are just bad people but at least can be reasoned with, the Gentry run on what can be described as PC logic a lot with blue and orange morality.Leave dubtle drops that relate to the Title(s) of the antagonist, go into detail on red herrings to bait them. Maybe have a specific colour be overrepresented (like magenta) that is uncommon but related to the Keeper. Fear from a mechanical PoV is warranted simply due to how busted Gentry are, but narratively it's not that easy.Tell us a bit about your players. Paranoia is easier to invoke than fear and can get the same results
>>88097737Three are your average working Joe's who enjoy a good beer, the ones out other dm for our current d&d campaign where a warforged fucked a dwarf to death and I eat people's corpses. Ones an electrician, good guy, drinks heavy due to job stress, noticeably actually he is scared of skinwalkers. Ones a rather tall gymbro, best friend and brother, guy can get scared by stressful situations that rely on exact accuracy. The other is your average pothead, never really gotten a bead on fear for him, never actually seen him be scared of anything, but his dad was Spec Ops and told him a lot of shit that jaded him to fear. DM bro is a pretty laid back guy, notice he's got a fear of not having a distinct home.
>>88095380Let them accidentally enter a mirror dimension in the hedge where things are just slightly off, and then use the villain's powers and GM fiat to gaslight the shit out of them. They'll have to figure out you're (aka the villain) are bullshitting to get back to their own world. Many faerie stories begin with children getting lost in another world...
>>88095380Fore me True Fea are a little bit like Other gods from Lovecraft. They are extremely powerful, but the scariest part is that they are totally alien in thinking. For them humans are just like toys. And you can't do anything against them. Other scary part of Changeling are Fetches. You escape fea just to discovered that no one even noticed your dissidence. Just imagine that everybody you love didn't recognize you. Every thing you ever have was taken from you. That some pice of junk taken your place in the world (some times it is even better than you).
>>88106674"Outer God" - stupid auto-correct.
>>88106681Nah, Other Gods is actually appropriate toohttps://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/og.aspx
>>88095380Attach their dicks to a car battery.Randomly give them electric shocks during scenes with tension. randomly use a TENs unit to really confuse them
