3 Ways to Scare Your
Players in Fifth Edition D&D
By: Dan Powers
Fear is the most difficult feeling to encapsulate in the
role of a Dungeon Master. You can throw all manner of vampire or werewolf at
the players – but if you don’t present it in the right light, it’ll just come
off as another forgettable combat encounter. Fear isn’t just a useful tool for horror
adventures like Curse of Strahd – it’s become my favored instrument
in my arsenal as a professional Dungeon Master. So how do you make your players
dread what’s around that next corner? Here are my three indispensable tips.
Phantom Rolls
There’s something I like to do in my games that I refer to
as Phantom Rolling. Picture this scenario: your party is travelling
through a shadowy, mist blanketed forest. With the thick creeping fog, it’s impossible
to see more than five feet ahead of you. You hear your Dungeon Master roll their
dice behind the screen. You pause, waiting for them to tell you about the
terrible creature that lurched out of the fog – but they simply glance down and
blink at the dice.
Here’s the secret: That roll behind the screen wasn’t
anything. I threw the dice so that my players would hear it. I promise if
you make a casual roll in a way that your players notice – they’ll ask you what’s
going on. When they do, just shrug and tell them that the fog is thick, and
they can’t see anything amiss.
Passive Perception
The next time your characters are travelling through a tense
area, ask them what their passive perception score it. When they tell you, tell
them that they don’t see anything – extra points if you combine this with Phantom
Rolls. I like to use this trick when my players are doing long rests or
travelling through dense woods, to keep them on edge.
An alternate to this technique is by getting the players to
roll a perception check. Regardless of the roll, just describe the area around
them as being apparently empty. If they end up rolling a natural 20, you can
describe them catching a fleeting glance of a shadow flitting behind a tree –
or hearing the snap of a branch just off the trail.
Visceral Detail
Before I get into this point, make sure your players are
comfortable with grotesque details. Your players should be scared, but comfortable.
That sounds like an oxymoron, but just stay with me. First things first, when
your characters are heading the direction of danger, describe what they might
hear or smell just out of view. Make sure you’re using language that paints a dark
picture in their head, like: As you creep through the crypt, you hear a
distant crunching. After each wet snap, you hear a greedy slurp. As you approach,
you realize that the ground is covered with bones, each snapped in half and
sucked dry of marrow.
The name of the game here is foreshadowing. Take your time
leading up to the encounter, let the dread build in the minds of the players as
they try to figure out what the heck is around that next corner. People are
naturally afraid of what the don’t know.
If you incorporate these tools into your next session of Curse
of Strahd, your players will have an unforgettable time. More than once, I’ve
had players praise me after the sessions for particularly grotesque
descriptions. Using these tools, I’ve had players avoid entire swaths of Barovia
to avoid a particular creature hiding in the woods. Take these three tips and
strike fear into the hearts of your players and keep them crawling back for
more. If you have other tools that you like to use to create dread, leave them
in the comment section. Happy Rolling!
