Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Jeeves on <11-15-10/1049:14>
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I need advice on campaign antagonists that would genuinely scare the players. Right now we have a r8 mage who can spellsling and do crazy stuff, and a beastmaster with a force 8 ally spirit.
I was considering making a cyberzombie to combat them.
any suggestions on how many points past zero i should take the essence?
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The advice for scaring players could (and already has) fill a book. The short of it is this: Don't give your players all the information.
Have something happen, and don't tell them how it was done. Have them become aware of something nearby, but don't tell them what it is. Have a creature attack them, have it do something to one of the PC's, but don't tell them what is happening to the PC. Let their fertile imaginations do the work. Fear of the unknown is powerful.
As for the specifics for a cyberzombie: If they are potent enough to warrant this kind of attention, and you want it to be a recurring enemy, then a minimum of 3 under is what I'd recommend. I would say most groups capable of producing a cyberzombie wouldn't just go slightly beyond the edge, they'd take a running leap over the side. With delta grade cyber, the zombie is walking around with effectively 24 unmodified essence worth of augmentations (12 from cyber and 12 from bio, cut in half from delta grades, with one of the types further reduced because of stacking rules).
That is a hard target if I ever saw one. And pretty scary to boot.
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A really great way to freak out players:
Have the run go really badly. None of the objectives were met, covers got blown, barely got out alive type of deals. When they meet up with their Johnson to give him the bad news, have the Johnson absolutely beaming with delight at how well they did the job, gives them an extra 10% and leaves, humming a happy tune.
Watch the confusion set in, quickly followed by paranoia.
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Remember, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you.
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If you're having trouble directly challenging the players (they aren't scared when confronted by much of anything in a head-on fight), start going after their friends, loved ones, contacts, etc, that aren't protected by Force 8 friendly spirits.
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Also, if brute force isn't working, you aren't using enough of it.
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Spam golems and Alma.
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Alos, bear in mind that scaring the players is completely different than challenging them. If your threat is a big "scary" tough bad guy then its not gonna scare them. It may challenge them and make them aware of the fact that the characters may "die", but if you're looking for true fear, that is - in the sense of running a horror game - then just making big bad guys isn't gonna do the trick.
If you just want to put the fear of god into them - threaten their characters with a bigger badder bad guy - then make a big bad guy and withhold some info as already mentioned. Then go from there...
But if you really want to scare the players, well, that's a whole other ball of wax. For that I would say look into some books on amazon, there's quite a few good ones. the two I would recommend are on writing horror (http://www.amazon.com/On-Writing-Horror-ebook/dp/B0033ZAVVC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1289858828&sr=8-4) & Nightmares of Mine (http://www.amazon.com/Nightmares-Mine-Rolemaster-Standard-System/dp/1558063676/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1289858897&sr=8-1-catcorr).
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For reasons I don't quite understand, the easiest time I have scaring my players right now is to quietly put this mini (http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=1341.0) on the table. Don't have to use it, don't have to be in combat, or thinking about combat.
As Gun Nut said, lack of information scares players, they don't know what that mini is, how it would be represented in-game or anything else. They just know that I'm crazy enough to use it.
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An eight year old girl who speaks in calm Shakespearean English with a voice of someone much older that echoes even when it shouldn't. Said eight year old advances slowly and calmly, shrugging off absolutely anything the characters throw at her. Done right, the overall impression is that the party is about to be overtaken by a walking nuke. Great as a recurring character. Have her guarding something not on the objective list (like that armory with the rail gun). She calmly but adamantly refuses to let anyone past. Actual stats for this monster are your problem. ;)
Alternately - a pack of vampires. Be sure there's plenty of lead-in so the characters know exactly what vampires can do to them. Permanent essence loss will send everyone ducking for cover, playing smart not strong and reaching for the big guns.
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"You're all going to die down here." /shiver.
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An eight year old girl who speaks in calm Shakespearean English with a voice of someone much older that echoes even when it shouldn't. Said eight year old advances slowly and calmly, shrugging off absolutely anything the characters throw at her. Done right, the overall impression is that the party is about to be overtaken by a walking nuke. Great as a recurring character. Have her guarding something not on the objective list (like that armory with the rail gun). She calmly but adamantly refuses to let anyone past. Actual stats for this monster are your problem. ;)
Sadly, due to the overwhelming number of horror / wanna-be horror movies and video games that have used this idea, my characters generally pat said little girl on the head, give her a lollipop and go on their way. If they then get nuked, they roll their eyes, tease me for using such a tired cliche and roll up new characters.
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Gah! You're right. That was much scarier in the mid-90's when I was using it. Same concept, though. Take something seemlingly innocent and give the players just enough info that they know something is horribly wrong.
Step 1: Allow Emotitoys RAW. Go with the logic on this and pretty everyone who uses social skills frequently will own one. Don't bother with too much description but every time the party meets a Johnson, a Fixer or any corp type at all, casually mention that the character has an emotitoy on a necklace, a Share Bear drone on his shoulder, whatever.
Step 2: For the next run Mr. Johnson is a cute Emotitoy and no matter how hard they try the team tech types can not find an incoming signal controlling it. If they're rude enough to try and hack it, the toy fries itself the moment they break through. He has the team do something quick and seemingly innocuous on the first run. Like pick up a car at location x and drop it off at location y. Don't open the trunk. 5,000ny for an hour's work. There's a numbered account and an escrow, so the team doesn't even need to meet again for the second half of their pay.
Step 3: The job goes down without a hitch and the team gets paid with no problems. Then something terrible happens. SCIRE's doors break open, a bomb blows up in the middle of a shopping center killing a ton of civilians, whatever. Whatever it is, its clear that the easy money run was part of a bigger plan. Further investigation (and it will take a lot) determines that a dozen teams were all given innocuous instructions. No one thing caused the event but the collective total of the actions added up to something awful done in such a way that no surveillance systems saw a thing. Stranger still, everyone got their instructions from a talking toy drone. If they dig too far, whichever character is drawing too much attention may wake up in the middle of the night to find half a dozen toy rats drones (the famous Desnai Rat) with chainsaws surrounding his bed.
Step 4: Let that sit for a while, but every time the characters see a cute fuzzy toy drone in a store display, in a kid's hand, on some Johnson's shoulder (see above for how common they are), point it out, especially if its the same model as the one they took a job from or its a playfully cute rat (sans chainsaw). Further investigation of the proprietary emotitoy software and production may reveal certain anomalies. Basically, get them thinking that every Tickle Me Jojo is out to get them.
Step 5: Those other Runner teams that helped set up the Bad Event start disappearing one by one. Are those omnipresent emotitoys watching them as they pass? Does anyone in the party have one of their own?
The enemy is everywhere. It can't be captured (if the toys attack in the night, any that are disabled fry themselves). There's no way to tell a good one from a bad one. They're cute and no one else is ever going to believe a story that the emotitoys are plotting a revolution. They only strike when the characters are weakest and more often than not, there's no direct proof. They have the resources to blow up an entire shopping center without leaving any evidence. The implications should put the shakes in even a hardened Troll.
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I like it, if only for step 3.
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Short form, take something harmless and slowly reveal that its been scary all along. Bonus points if its something the party relies on.
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Well.. right now I'm running the players through an re-activated ACHE facility... and they're finding out how much they /didn't/ take out of the building.
Sometimes half the fun is seeing the players prepare for hell when they open the door only to find nothing, it was cleaned out.. and then it's seeing them being casual about it and opening the next door to be looking at a biodrone that was just decanted... and hungry.
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I like it, if only for step 3.
I thought step 3 was "profit."
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Nomad, that was brilliant. You'd do a good Horror, cause that's the way they operate. :P
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Yea, the horrible innocent is a wonderful horror trope. I prefer using dolls. I've used dolls as creepy antagonists in a number of games over the past couple decades, always to good effect. And emotitoys are the perfect shadowrun equivalent. so - Kudos. :)
edit: wow, I'm bad at typing.
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I like it, if only for step 3.
I thought step 3 was "profit."
Not in this case, step three involves rats with chainsaws. . . I like rats with chainsaws. ;D
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Of course YMMV. Some players like having super-jaded characters who are flippant in the face of even the most mind bending horrors. Others enjoy a little horror in their games. The scary little girl may get a pat on the head or (as in the game I'm currently in), Humanis knocking on the door late at night while a character is sleeping might be enough to scare the character. Someone wrote a really great book on horror in RPG's, but I've forgotten the title.
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I like mixing horror and sex. In the movies, it's a big cliche, with the slasher taking out "sinful" characters during the act. That's not horror, it's villainous righteousness. I avoid that trap and make it about the vulnerability instead. It's especially nasty if you include the horrible innocent idea, or a betrayal of trust. The fear comes from turning perfectly ordinary things into mortal weaknesses.
Lots of players will respond to this with hypervigilance. Is it unsafe to be naked? Well then let's sleep in our armor and swear celibacy until the threat has passed. The next step is to play a Xanatos Gambit: You're expecting them to turtle up, and stage 2 plays directly to that reaction. Sabotage the protective gear, perhaps. Or even better, now that they know just how dangerous it is to be vulnerable, put them in a situation where they want to do it anyway.
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Nice. I appreciate Xanatos Chess since my PC is pretty good at it. If you want a simpler, combat oriented, visceral fear, use Mike Pondsmith's answer to power monkeys.
First, have three goons for every PC. Nothing superhuman, just the kind of people that the PC's are used to slaughtering wholesale, all with Supersquirts. When the shots hit, nothing seems to happen immediately. (Perception rolls may apply to later rounds). About the time all of those guys go down, the acid rounds will really be doing a number on your PCs' armor. That alone should have everyone who doesn't have armor in their body getting ready to run. The next wave can use whatever you want but if you want fear, use gas. More accurately, use boxed text like this:
"Your armor is all but demolished. Wet drippy shreds hang from your shoulders but it doesn't look like it would stop a spitball, let alone a bullet. Anything that was previously sealed clearly isn't now. From around the corner you hear a distinct *FOOMP*, followed by several clangs as a grenade ricochets off the walls headed towards you. When the thick yellow gas starts spewing out of it, who is not running?"
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Yea, the horrible innocent is a wonderful horror trope. I prefer using dolls. I've ysed dolls as creepy antagonists in a number og games over the past couple decades, always to good effect. And emotitoys are the perfect shadowrun equivalent. so - Kudos. :)
And everyone despises them, either secretly or openly. I thought it would be a fun play on that. Let them be cheap, common and provide a ridiculous bonus so that everyone wants one. Then reveal that they're cheap because they're Evil. Its a more plausible variation of the conspiracy that everyone but the PC's is in on. In this case no one's in on it except the PC's. No one would believe them because the Emotitoys are so innocent and useful (and get +6 to convinve their owners of this). So no one will believe you and they're all carrying around an evil robot on their shoulder. . .I really should expand this into a full Mission pack.
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One caution regarding putting fear into your players: It's often a fine line between scaring them and humiliating them. Tons of GMs love stuff like Tucker's Kobolds where you challenge the players with foes who would ordinarily be beneath them. However, when you do that there's a big risk that they'll feel you're just setting them up to fail against chumps. Same thing goes for the scary toys: With the right tone it's creepy, with the wrong tone it's mockery.
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I had a thought involving emotoys or drones in general that kinda freaked me out. I read a book that featured an AI that became obsessed with a woman and trapped her in her house and was trying to be born in a flesh body through her and would then take her as a lover.
Anyway my thought is kinda a scaled back version of that. An AI or Ghost in the Machine for some reason becomes obsessed with a character. If the character has drones they watch the character while he/she sleeps, cameras always seem to point in the characters direction as they pass, the character always feels like they are being watched by something.
You could take it further and have the AI/GitM build itself a body to be with the character, but I feel that goes too far, best have the "admirer" in the background.
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If you're having trouble directly challenging the players (they aren't scared when confronted by much of anything in a head-on fight), start going after their friends, loved ones, contacts, etc, that aren't protected by Force 8 friendly spirits.
in my game, one of my pc has the ennemy negative qualities for 8 BP, he took his brother as his nemesis who is in japan, him bieng in seattle he tought no worries he wont get me ...
what i did ? i sent assassins out for his skin : not to kill him but to make his life miserable : the place he stays most of the time burned to the ground, the people he cared about dead , the people he is working with aka the other pc are thinking twice before helping him, and he cant do a thing because the assassins arent dumb to show themselves; they operate form afar.
nothing more frustating to a pc than that.
on the other end he is not so bright, and wants to do everything by himself
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i had this idea of a johnson who would give the pc the worst jobs ever, underpayed full of risks, and completely closed for negotiation. and the only one they can get jobs out.
i would push them to the edge to kill said johnson , with these last words : " we will meet again and i'll make you regret it ... "
next meeting for a run in a public place ( cafe or a bar ) ,said johnson appears with the same suit they gunned/stabbed him down with all the wounds still here for all to see ...
" arent you happy to see me again ? my master was not pleased with your past performance and ask you to step up your game , here is your misson... "
now , if that doesnt scare them...
ooc : J = shedim :p
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i had this idea of a johnson who would give the pc the worst jobs ever, underpayed full of risks, and completely closed for negotiation. and the only one they can get jobs out.
i would push them to the edge to kill said johnson , with these last words : " we will meet again and i'll make you regret it ... "
next meeting for a run in a public place ( cafe or a bar ) ,said johnson appears with the same suit they gunned/stabbed him down with all the wounds still here for all to see ...
" arent you happy to see me again ? my master was not pleased with your past performance and ask you to step up your game , here is your misson... "
now , if that doesnt scare them...
ooc : J = shedim :p
I could see this being fun, if you had already established a rapport as a good GM and we went into the game knowing that we were going to get yanked around at first. Otherwise, I'd probably walk away from your table after the third under-paid, over-risk, rail-roaded mission if I thought my options were to keep playing with the J that gave the jobs that weren't fun to play or to keep playing with the J that gave the jobs that weren't fun to play.
No offense, I guess I could see how that would be scary, but in a world like Shadowrun where my character has a Fixer I should be able to pull better jobs from, grinding the players with frustrating, crappy runs doesn't set the stage for scary. It sets the stage for bored & frustrated. Scary comes in when the tables are turned for the worse.
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As an old ED player and GM i would use Horrors. Not exactly in person, nor indirect influence. The very possibility, or suggestion they are involved can do wonders. :)
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Building the tension is always good. In a campaign I ran years ago, Seattle based, just prior to the Chi town shut down, the players were slowly introduced to the bugs. I forget what the original eye-opening run was, but it was something along the lines of Project New Hope. There they encountered their first bugs, who were tough, scary in the dark, and hurt the players (who in the previous two runs had pretty much cake-walked through heavy security teams).
As the party was trying to get out of the insect tunnels and to their vehicle, the troll bruiser PC goes down, bleeding all over the place, still alive, but forcing over half the party to drag him out. Which meant that less than half the party was now actively fighting off the insects. Even when they were not being attacked, I told them that they constantly could hear chitinous clacking above their hurried footsteps. Before they could see the light at the end of the tunnel, they were all wounded. As they were getting into their vehicle, looking over their shoulders, they could see the light reflecting off of tens of multifaceted eyes down the tunnel. The bugs were getting closer and closer and they screamed at their rigger to get the vehicle going. One of the bugs got the RV's side door before it shut, grabbing the NPC team member, nearly killing her before the others could send the bug twisting in the wind. They all breathed a sigh of relief as they drove away, dropped the two unconscious team members off at the nearest street doc, met the Johnson and got paid.
I then went around the table to go through end-run upkeep where each player lets me know what they do or plan to do with their cash, role-play with their contacts, etc. I got through everyone and then turned to the unconscious troll's player. I said to him. "You wake up and you notice you're at some cut rate street doc and you feel like you've been drugged but that's probably stopping you from feeling the pain from your wounds. To your left you see the NPC that went down during the getaway. She's unconscious, but still alive. You lay your head back down, and just about drift off to sleep, then open your eyes again and notice the doctor standing beside your bed. He doesn't look at you. He most likely thinks you're unconscious. He lifts up the IV tube, and taps on a needle that probably has antibiotics. As he pulls the cap off the needle with his mouth, a cockroach scrambles across his shirt and up his sleeve. With the cap still in his mouth, and now noticing that you're awake, he simply says with a slight shrug, "You know too much.""
The look of horror on every player at the table at that moment...well, it makes me giddy even now, some 15 years later. What happened next was an epic all out whirlwind of chaos and confusion as the troll escapes with the NPC teammate over his shoulder, and over the next few days bugs start showing up around every corner, at their houses, as their contacts, until finally most of the party makes it on to a cargo plane through the help of the few contacts that they could trust.
An hour into their flight the pilot informs them, "We've got to land in Denver instead. UCAS military has shut down O'Hare."
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@FizzyGoo: very nice, me likey.
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That one was good. Really good. I'd say it's worth at least five points of rep. :P
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I am SOOO stealing that for an upcoming game.
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I hadn't expected the troll to go down. The original plan was to have the bugs come in waves where they'd rush in, attack, and then fall back fast...giving the impression that they were making room for "something bigger - balrog style" even though they'd just come back with healthier reinforcements. But the troll going down combined with the players trying to save him added so much fear, terror, and tension that I felt my "GM mission" had been accomplished and changed the length of the tunnels out. My back up, if the players had questioned me on the mismatch between their previous intel and how long it actually took to get out was to hint something along the lines of a friendly spirit with movement helping them out.
The second most scariest moment (but damn funny) for my players was when they met a Great Feathered Serpent and his Aztlan blood mage "friend." The team was in the wilderness, driving on an old road when a small sedan falls out of the sky, blocking the road. The team stops their RV and the Serpent and rider land on the other side of the fallen car. The man hops off and yells something along the lines of "we need to talk." Well, the party was pretty paranoid so they've taken up battle stations and two of the runners are now kneeling behind the fallen sedan. One of them, who had great unarmed (and other) skills was also non-cybered, non-adept...just really good at a lot of skills (but epic in none), had previously purchased a shock glove and really really wanted to use it. The other had a grenade launcher but wasn't so sure about "engaging the enemy." The blood mage talks a bit more, something about putting down the weapons and talking. This was the party's first dragon encounter, so they really had no idea. Mr. Shock Glove decides...well, maybe it was fear that pushed him over the edge, maybe too much D&D and the heroics were kicking in, maybe it was just really late...he decides to leap over the hood of the sedan and punch the dracoform in the face.
"You sure?" I say. "Yeah," he says excitedly. "Its head alone is about 2 meters long, like as long as you." "I know, I'm going to teach it a lesson." "Okay, roll'em."
My description was something along the lines of, "you rush up fast, the mage just kind of watches you. Your fist swings around, a haymaker sweeping in, and you see you're going to connect hard on it's nose. Then, just before you connect, you realize the nose is gone, well, up, and the rest of you," talking to the other players, "just see him rush up, swing, but his body is blocking what happens." Then back to Mr. Shock Gloves, "there's a pause, you barely have time to inhale, as you realize your arm is in its mouth but its mouth is closed. The Feathered Serpent whips its neck up, sending you flying over head, landing several meters behind it. Then it spits out your arm at its feet. You need medical attention."
I'm always amazed at the players who, even after several GM "are-you-sure-you-want-to-do-thats'" still do that which they were warned not to do.
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Y'know, a story like that makes me want to just quote another shadowtalker...
"Ha! Friggin' Ha!"
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:)
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Also, if brute force isn't working, you aren't using enough of it.
And when in doubt, ask yourself: What would Sergeant Schlock do? 8)
As for the "scare" factor, I too find that anything "horroresque" tends not to work; my group being a lot of long time hard core gamers who its hard to impress. What I can often do, is mess with their minds.
Two examples spring to mind.
First was an SR game. This group made the bad choice of double crossing their "Johnson" (aka the lieutenant of a certin merc I know and love) during a run in 'Nawlins. Without going too much into detail, said runners decided to shoot Johnson in the back (literally in an attempt to resell the recovered objective. They accomplished it, got back to Seattle, only to keep running into said boss of said Johnson over and over...No matter where they went, he was there, setting up booby traps, sniping, leaving forget me nots around etc. By the time it was done, I had one player begging his fixer to set up a meet to betray the only other survivor of the team to save his hide. The rest were pissed because "I didnt fight fair". (Hello, Shadowrunner!)
HOW? One person cant be everywhere, but several all dressed the same can. I got the idea from the Three Amigos, who got it from the Magnificant Seven, etc etc
Second time was from a Marvel Superheros game. Long story short, intrepid group of heros meet a little girl in what was a literal "Apocalyptic" wasteland (heh). She was ragged, torn clothes, covered in blood splatches, big doe eyes, etc, and huddling among several bodies holding a ragged teddy. And yes, they fell for it (I still can't beleive it!). No sooner had they offered help, her eyes began to glow red and she says "Teddy dosen't like you!" and said bear becomes a 12 foot tall mountain of fluffy, cuddly, velvet death. Said heros eventually win, but not after Teddy drops three out of the five in the party. Two sessions later, when the new "team" sees the same girl (or they think); they give chase into a dark building, making damn sure she didnt have a bear before doing so BTW. Well, as they enter the dark, building, the lights come on in the warehouse, (evil grin) revealing endless shelves of nothing BUT small, cute, fluffy, stuffed teddy bear and a small but evil voice echoing in the distance "teddy dosen't like you..."
I ended the session there, to a chorus of "OH *BLEEP*!! You *Bleep-Bleep-BLEEEEEP!!!!!". That reaction (and a couple pale faces) told me all I needed to know.
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I had some success in scaring my players, though it doesn't happen often. Yet.
One time i was GMing a short Call of Cthulhu campaign, and besides scaring the hell out of two girls in party with a moving severed hand (i showed how it rushed at them; future note: ask your players if they fear spiders, and such. Sometimes too much is far too much.), i had a really good idea with an old, evil, occult book. Well, there was one in the (official) story i was playing, with a note that it's probably too damaged by age and environment to use. So i decided to destroy that book in a scary, but not dangerous way.
One of the girls drom the 'hand incident' (boy, my ears ringed for the rest of the evening :P) decided to enter the basement, where an evil cult was based, before the authorities took it out. She stumbled apon the pedestal on which the book was based... And rolled a critical success (02 to be specific) on Occult, to recognize the book. I started describing all those fearfull notes she found in other occult tomes, mentioning those dark secrets and evil rites that the book she just found contained. Described the eerie silence that befall and dar, damp athmosphere of the place (it was autumn, around 22:00, and her friends went around asking questions, so they weren't around). She reaches for the book... Fails her perception test...
And the book explodes into wet dust and gray, fast mooving shapes... (i use fast, almost spat out words to decribe it, no motions this time)
And she faints. Really... And when she comes to, we finish the game session with getting info and having the usual occult-undead-boss-fight, with a levitating knife, and things like that. And it didn't spoil the mood. I'd say that was a success.
The other time i managed to get my players (more experienced ones this time) scared was a World of Darkness game this spring (i think). I had them looking for a IIWW russian occult treasure transport reclaimed by Wehrwolf and a nazi occult task force. They found where it was and decided to enter the bunker complex. Making their stumbling around in the unnatural, thick mist and flickering lights that shouldn't work after over fifty years not getting dull and boring was a pain, but it seems to have worked. Especially that the thing that was inside tried to wor what it has got, and manipulated the wolf-blooded character's emotions and urges... Which he did surpress with great difficulty and good roleplaying. Finding twisted and preserved nazi soldier bodies (with a 'nazi zombie' hint - they encountered those already, as they look for things the modern nazi occultists want too), boxes full of seemingly intact, but rotten dollar bills, and the mist doing things it shouldn't helped make the final encounter scary enough, though they managed to fight the thing, and drive it into hiding...
Well, they also managed to set that thing free, by removing what is has guarded. So odds are, when they finally Awaken, they can meet it on terms that will make it an even fight.
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I knew a guy in a WoD LARP who consistently sent entire boots squads into full retreat despite having relatively little offensive power. Sure, the guy could throw Infernal fireballs but he was still just one guy. He had a fearsome reputation and every time he got ganged up on he'd just slowly advance through all sorts of carnage and collateral damage without showing the least bit of concern. There's only so long you can watch a bad guy do the serial killer walk through half a dozen military grade undead baddies without getting freaked.
Turns out (as we found out years later), he had a trick version of Fortitude/Obfuscate where he didn't show the damage he was taking. Generally people were running away from someone who would go down with another hit or two. Worse yet, he wasn't one NPC but several. An Elder behind the scenes just sired replacements and spent a few months training them up any time he lost one and rewriting their memories so they would think they were the same guy. The few times he got taken down, the PC's brought so much firepower that there was never a body and no copy was ever captured for close examination, so the deception went on literally for years (5+ years right off hand).
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Ugh. Vampire isn't really scary that way. It's just munchy. As in munchkin munchy. It wouldn't scare me at the least, but hey, i'm a GM. I know the trick. But the old 'elder behind the scenes conspiracy' thing? Cheap. :P
I'd go for the 'scary politics' theme. When you find bitter enemies side against someone, and try getting to the bottom of it, and find a lot of disturbing things. It worked once, in the old Vampire, it should work in Requiem.
P.S. My players managed to kick some vampire ass, but they always did so in broad daylight. One of them even has a vampire skull with a .44 bullet-hole on its forehead. And they're just wolf-blooded/sleepwalkers. Yet.
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It was all in how the player of the NPC managed it. A good actor in that setting really makes all the difference and people tend to get inordinately attached to their long term live action characters. I would have thought the Elder thing was cheap, too except for all the times the Dread Pirate NPC was walking around with a starting character sheet bluffing his way through.
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As an old ED player and GM i would use Horrors. Not exactly in person, nor indirect influence. The very possibility, or suggestion they are involved can do wonders. :)
I keep finding refferences to Horrors on this forum and they're mentioned in the description of "harlequin's back" that i read somewhere but I have no idea what they are, Can someon breifly explain or direct me toward some information about them?
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Jeeves: Here's a brief overview (http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Horrors).
In many of "The Secret History" threads here there's talk about the Horrors, what they are, how they can enter the meat-world, etc.
On a very meta-game (not metagamey, but good to use to smack around metagamey players, heh) level the Horrors are used by the GM to; foreshadow bad things that can/will happen in the future, give PCs an epic-villain to thwart (temporarily) but never truly destroy (which can bring about the game-flavoring of 'heroic' to the otherwise gritty-shades-of-grey setting), and/or insert unforgettable 'what-the-fuck-was-that?!?' reactions from the players. But what this means is that an individual Horror can be anything, look like anything, do anything, that the GM deems appropriate for the story/campaign...just so long as it's bad, like real bad man, like freakin' crazy-bad-all-out-of-Scooby-Snacks-bad.
Typically (using a wide brush here) the Horrors are behind the scenes actors, using agents in this world (metahumans, spirits, etc.) as their way to invoke their desires. It's completely left to the GM to decide how and when to use Horrors in their game. As far as I know all occurrences of Horrors in Shadowrun cannon (excluding Earthdawn of course) are totally behind the scenes and only the Great Dragons and Immortal Elves are aware of them (with the few individual exceptions).
Personally, I feel that once the Horrors are introduced to a campaign it completely changes everything. The game becomes Cthulhu-esq: The Horrors will come here, there is nothing anyone or anything can do to ultimately stop them, the more anyone finds out about them the more the Horrors take notice of them, the more the Horrors are aware of an individual the path to madness and death for that individual increases exponentially. For me, if I introduce Horrors into a campaign then it's a huge red flag that I'm going to spiral the PCs into a swirling nightmare of chaos and confusion from which they will never escape...it's the nihilistic retirement path for the campaign. It sounds bad, but it can be a hell of a lot of fun if done right, each PC trying to be the last to survive and do the most "good" for our world (even if it's just protecting friends and family from themselves until the end) before they buy it.
Again, that's my personal take on introducing Horrors (and I like Horrors as a GM). Throw in an Immortal Elf or Great Dragon to help out the PCs and you can some-what avoid the total doom n gloom inevitable total party kill. There's also the fact that the Horrors won't be able to freely enter this world for about two millennia (though metahumanity accidentally and purposely creating a "bridge" for them to come over sooner is possible).
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It's pretty accurate, Fizzy. Horrors in a Shadowrun game is a spiral down to madness and corruption, as they ARE coming and nothing can stop that. NOTHING. They are the nightmare given flesh and teeth and bone and they will devour your soul and make what remains into their plaything.
In Earthdawn, the mana cycle has already peaked. That means that any Horrors out there are a dwindling population; no more spontaneous incursions. Fighting a Horror becomes more Classically Heroic (TM) then, because there is an end to the nightmare, an end to the tunnel. Killing this one helps the world as a whole, even if there are still many more out there.
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And, in many cases, you're not even "killing" them, just shunting them off the Physical Plane back to wherever they came from...
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In the 'physical minor Horror' case, you are killing them. But wait! 'Derez moar' where they came from. :P
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>Stolen Ph.D. research paper by Paul Simmonet on an MIT&T research project funded by an Ares Firewatch grant in 2068.
"Aetherial cohesion is the level, the complexity, of a spirit's cognitive historical experiences as expressed over multiple summonings especially after banishment rituals and other more violent paths of disrupting the physical manifestation of the spirit. Aetherial cohesion is directly proportional to the quantity of mana channeled by the summoner. For the case of free form manifesting astral entities the cohesion must be dependent, though exactly how is still unclear, upon the background level of mana in the geophysical region from which it emerged.
"Darwaller, et. al., proposed that in order to gauge the background mana levels of a region one could summon two identically draining spirits; one from outside the region and one from within, and then test them with the Spengler & Dee Spiritual Aptitude Test in order to determine if spirits summoned within the region score higher than those from without. (The authors of this paper acknowledge that A ) the need for "two identically draining spirits" has not been verified to within +/- 41.4% and that verifying that the summoner used equal mana between both summonings to within even the enormous error range for two spirits, one of which summoned within a known high background count region, is beyond our current ability to accurately measure and B ) The SDSAT is not without its critics.)
"Our tests have shown that, over the course of 424 summoning tests, that in every case those spirits summoned within a high background region have scored higher on the SDSAT by an average of 32.8% than their "twin" summoned in non-background regions. Even ally spirits and watchers, when called, scored higher when summoned from the high background regions."
"Our Data.
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"In conclusion, with recent measurements indicating that there is a global increase in the natural mana levels, not to mention the spike seen during the return of Halley's Comet, we expect to see an increased aetherial cohesion among summoned spirits, especially those "born" freely from the environment and that summoning spirits will become easier and less taxing on the summoner. In addition, with the tests done from Renolds, Chou, et. al., that with rising mana levels more and more spirits will be able to manifest on our plane without the need for a summoner, including spirits from the metaplanes, our data shows, when matched against Renolds, Chou, et. al., that spirits in 10 years time will, on average, have nearly three times the aetherial cohesion and mental aptitude as the spirits summoned today. Our greatest concern is that this will include astral and metaplanar entities that are hostile towards metahumanity."
OpusMe1
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It's pretty accurate, Fizzy. Horrors in a Shadowrun game is a spiral down to madness and corruption, as they ARE coming and nothing can stop that. NOTHING. They are the nightmare given flesh and teeth and bone and they will devour your soul and make what remains into their plaything.
In Earthdawn, the mana cycle has already peaked. That means that any Horrors out there are a dwindling population; no more spontaneous incursions. Fighting a Horror becomes more Classically Heroic (TM) then, because there is an end to the nightmare, an end to the tunnel. Killing this one helps the world as a whole, even if there are still many more out there.
In other words, it turns ShadowRun into Call of Cthulhu.
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If you look at some of the classic "horror" movies (Alien comes to mind), the horror comes from the unknown.
Isolate the characters. Contacts become unreachable. The NPC's around shy away, shop owners close up shop. Bartenders seem nervous when serving them. DON"T TELL THEM WHY. Vehicles breakdown, cause unknown, on a deserted block of the Redmound Barrens.
In classic horror movies, they hunt down the main characters one at a time, seperating them from the group. Now, in my games, the PCs are smart, and try to stick together. SHOW NO MERCY. Kill off contacts, it has a similiar effect. Have commlinks become mysteiously jammed.
Have the players make random preception checks for no reason. Say things like "the alley APPEARS to be empty". Don't give them "knowns" to deal with, give them "unknowns". Don't say "you hear footsteps behind you", say "you hear a slithering shuffle behind you".
Its all about setting mood. Play eiry music, keep the lights low. Have the NPC's talk in whispers.
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I find recognizing your usual narrative style and then, for no readily apparent reason, changing it in a scene scares the pants off most players. If you're usually a GM who gives verbose, detailed descriptions of places, suddenly give them the bare minimum information. If your NPCs are usually "guy in a bar" descriptions, describe some in excruciating detail. If you use maps with lots of detail, give them one that is lacking or map out locations that really have little to do with the primary plotline in high detail and give them those. Mix the narrative styles in the same game night, in the same scene.
Alter the emphasis you put on words. They make a perception check say, "YOU see nothing." Be intentionally vague on useless checks (again, perception check for no reason that passes or fails, "you didn't really see anything, but there was this buzzing sound..." Emphasize words that make no sense to emphasize in descriptions and NPC dialogue.
If you want to be really subtle, record a game session or two and listen to things you say over and over especially in descriptions, then note them and absolutely refuse to say those things. Take other words and phrases you use a lot and make a list of them, changing them to different words with the same meaning. Your players usually won't notice the change overtly, but they will pick it up subconsciously and get a little nervous without knowing why.
On the down side, if you do it right, you may end up with rampant paranoia and the scene that never ends as they get so paralyzed they don't move on for a while.
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I knew a GM who used to do that sort of thing in reverse, lulling players into a false sense of security then springing a trap. Two examples:
Every now and then when describing the outside he'd say "a drone flies overhead." Most of the time they were innocent but it provided great camouflage for the one time the bad guys sent a scout drone.
Lesson: Repitition of the familiar breeds apathy. Drones, squatters and internal audit programs all show up regularly.
Another great one involved terrorists threatening to release a canister of engineered ebola in a crowded corp meeting unless their demands were met. Straight up adventure, right? Then we got to thinking. If they've got one can of the stuff they've had plenty of time to make more. For that matter, if they could steal a sample culture from a corp biowar department they must have a decent support network. Before we were even in the building, one can had become a huge network with the potential to do things much worse than the situation we were called in for.
Lesson: Leave some clues to make your players and their characters wonder how the bad guys got to the position they're in. Playing off of their speculations can be fun.
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If you're looking for play-style changes...
Ever tried having NPC's fight the players as hard as the players fight them. I had a player who liked to do called eye shots with precision weapons and another who liked to shoot off the NPC's strong-side arm with shotguns and other big round weapons. I turned that around on the players a few times with a huge change to play-style.
Ever try increasing realism or physics on players? Mortality and pocket book always seemed to work rapidly for me.
If you're looking for creep out session/s...
Try something on the edge of everyone's ethics/moral system.
Move into the realm of the great unknown, which can be hard if you have a lot of rules lawyers. I always started putting those types pf players out of their comfort zones by creating a new environment that doesn't operate according to the standard rules (like a closed matrix node owned by a strange party with different rules - possibly started for some kind of specialized training that turned into some strange game or torture/breaking method) or a different dimension (where gravity is different) or put them in a dreamworld (e.g. Inception).
Lastly put them in a situation where none of the players have the skill set that they need, and they didn't know they'd be needing those skills in advance, like deep water or high altitude (e.g. in a submarine 10,000 leagues under the sea). That might fall into the fear for mortality realm.
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It really depends on the players as to what will scare them. For some, the psychological horrors mentioned in this thread are great. But if your players are more focused on the numbers, then only numbers will scare them.
Step 1: give them a run where they end up fighting a foe at the end: cyberzombie, high magic adept, whatever Make it a really tough fight, with at least one runner going down (but not necessarily dying). The runners should win, but just barely.
Step 2: give them a few normal runs.
Step 3: give them a run that starts off with them realizing that there are 5+ foes of the same type as at the end of run 1. If X almost killed us, 5X is scary as hell.
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Reveal that behind the Johnson, they have, in fact, just dealt with a dragon.
I'm going to want to keep an eye on this thread.
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I did it with a Dump Truck at a Con Demo.
Two players kept arguing about using the stolen pimped-out SUV while the dump truck came closer to wrecking the facility they were hired to protect.
The rest of the group were freaking out as I explained just how much closer, and faster, this huge engine of destruction was going. AFTER the engine had been taken out. (It had been on the top of a hill, and I had the guy driving it in AR just drop it into Neutral.).
Closer. And closer. Almost there now.
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I did it with a Dump Truck at a Con Demo.
Two players kept arguing about using the stolen pimped-out SUV while the dump truck came closer to wrecking the facility they were hired to protect.
The rest of the group were freaking out as I explained just how much closer, and faster, this huge engine of destruction was going. AFTER the engine had been taken out. (It had been on the top of a hill, and I had the guy driving it in AR just drop it into Neutral.).
Closer. And closer. Almost there now.
Heh....all depends on whether there are any proper vehicle barriers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGU6IHsLcio) in place ;D
Note: The above link is a remotely-driven vehicle collision test. No drivers were harmed in the making of this video...However, one truck was moved to FUBAR status....
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They had a chain link fence, a small shack that the minimum wage security guards hung out in (And had been leveled by 40mm launched grenades), a series of trailers where the workers slept (And had barred the door after seeing the scary Shadowrunners), and a building that was mostly supports and some exterior walls, and the rest was construction plastic.
Oh, and some garbage bins filled with splintery, low-grade, vat-grown softwood.
And a Pimp's SUV, with the passenger's side looking like the back of the sedan in "Pulp Fiction" after John Travolta failed gun safety forever.
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I did a simple run that ended up freaking out the players, maybe because it was after doing a variation of Bottle Demon. Basic idea was to enter an abandoned building and either recover a lost individual or proof of death in the form of a small item (in this case one of those implanted child locator RFID chips). Photographic ID was provided and detailed richly, including the clothes and a small figurine the child was carrying. After some perception rolls with noncommittal responses "you think you heard X, could be the wind" etc. I had the players roll magic+essence for little reason.
Some investigation/meaningless monster combat later the PCs are drawn toward the closing door ahead of them, figuring the Principal was running from them they followed and found the small figurine. One of them picked it up wasn't expecting this so I figured I'd ad-lib a bit. This player took the figurine with them. As they left the room the door shut again and inside was the small figurine. "I already picked it up man" "You did?" "Yeah" "But your pocket is empty" :o . Mr. Gullible went to pick it up again when the mage stopped him and decided to assense it. More ad-lib later and I'd described this ghostly thingy here
(http://www.keiththompsonart.com/images/full/wight.jpg)
in glorious detail attached to the aura of Mr. Gullible and struggling to break free, however other than seeing it I gave no more info. Of course, I'd already decided that it wouldn't actually do much so after being surrounded by a small army of summoned spirits (2 full mages in full oh-crap mode) I figured it would break loose before getting combo-zapped into nothingness by everything with a speck of magic.
Normally that's where it would've ended, a little side thing to add flavor to what was a desperate hail-Mary idea for a run. However I figured I'd add some extra flavor and rule that all the magic being tossed at the same time knocked the power out in this old derelict so the lights went out for a couple combat rounds, when they came back on the figurine was missing and instead at the exit to the room. Door slams again. PCs yank open the door to nuke the figurine, apparently thinking it's another doomsday maguffin. The PCs just kind of took this and ran with it, talking more about the figurine than the Principal, messaging their contacts on-site to research what they saw, and running data searches. In other words, my 30-minute or less I'm-Out-of-Ideas run just became something more. I had 2.5 hours to fill so I was happy to humor them within reason.
To shock the characters out of their legwork circle, I was being vague on everything, I called for a groupwide perception and gave the highest one the notice that he saw the figurine out of the corner of his eye on a desk. Then things became the Dr. Who episode "Blink" through some buildup. I basically took my own plot, and I use that term loosely, off the short and uneventful rails it was on. Turned out great.
Dr."Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink. Good Luck.
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Beauty!
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Actual stats for this monster are your problem. ;)
Not everything needs stats :) being "invincible" is sometimes enough :)
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Not everything needs stats :) being "invincible" is sometimes enough :)
Everything "alive" should be killable, banish-able, or otherwise solvable.
Giving the players something to chase them around will get boring when they figure out that it can't be killed. My ghost thingy, called an APOLLONIAN WIGHT on http://www.keiththompsonart.com (http://www.keiththompsonart.com) didn't have stats because I made it up on the fly. However, the moment I made it up I also gave it a simple kill-condition. It would dissipate if attacked or the "host" was healed or cleansed magically. The figurine was similar, it wouldn't actually do anything but loom in the background and move ever closer if looked away from. Since there was only one there was never a threat of the party being cornered unlike the Who episode "Blink". It was destroyable as any figurine would be.
Now the party didn't know that of course since on top of them not knowing the Shadowrun 'verses every detail, the figurine was also a custom doodad.
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Everything "alive" should be killable, banish-able, or otherwise solvable.
Obviously not a Lovecraft fan. ;)
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"If it bleeds, we can kill it."
"Um, spirits don't bleed."
"... OK then. New plan."
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Everything "alive" should be killable, banish-able, or otherwise solvable.
That is not the same as needing stats though, and it might very well be invincible in the given situation - but vulnerable at a later time. Just because they runners cannot kill it NOW doesn't mean it cannot be killed later, sometimes they runners just NEED to run into something not covered by rules, something they just simply need to avoid - keeps them on their toes, as long as its not the standard opposition, but happens once in awhile I find it perfectly fine :)
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My Deadlands ground had, I think, five definitions for "Dead".
"Absolutely Dead" involved confirming the body and using acid, IIRC. Even then, they worried, however. But that's Deadlands.
Shadowrun, never consider the opponent dead until their body has been cut up and fed to the Ghouls. And even then, expect family to be really slotted off.
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Try Call of Cthulhu. The only characters you can ever be sure are really dead are your own. And even then it can be a little iffy.
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That is not the same as needing stats though, and it might very well be invincible in the given situation - but vulnerable at a later time.
I, personally, don't like including anything that's both a threat and invincible at any particular time in my campaigns. If they're done very well they can be fun in a 'journey is more important than the resolution' type way but the unstoppable is boring IMO. I've been in too many games where we've fought something that was "scripted" to be unbeatable. Go ahead and hit players with things they should run away from, lord knows I have, just don't do it with a single unstoppable enemy. A more believable strike team or a taskforce built to stop those particular runners. Make sure to express to them that a Bolivian Army Ending isn't what you're going for, lest they fight to the death in an alley with a perfectly accessible sewer escape behind them.
Your mileage may vary of course. I've talked with players who's favorite moment in a DnD 3.5 campaign was fighting to the death over a cart or bricks.
Edit cause of posts:
Letting the player think they've killed someone/thing for a time is fine if there's some reason (ingame or rationalized) for the entity to survive.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoOneCouldSurviveThat (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoOneCouldSurviveThat)
However, don't abuse it, the second or third time a BBEG survives certain doom your players will either A. Prepare for his eventual return or B. Shoot the body into the event horizon of a black hole as I demanded we do to a Sith Lord a Star Wars game, but he came back as a Sith Ghost and found a cloned body of course.....
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Even if something is 'killable' doesn't mean that the players are gonna be the ones to do it...
The closest I can relate to you came from an old AD&D where the players were trophy monster hunters. Yeah they were nuts. Their mage had heard of this crazy creature called a Tarrasque through his research through the years, so they decided it was time to take it on. Well if you've ever seen the stats, pre 3e, it wasn't something to trifle with. They spent ~30 hours pursuing and learning how bad of a mamajama the thing is, and how dumb it would be to continue, and they still pursed (late night college gaming is me trying to rationalize it - maybe they were rp'ing low WIS scores). The players were considered fairly high level (14+) and there was ten of them that campaign. In the end I kept one player 'alive' just so that they could spread the fear (strangely they weren't too upset about how it turned out).
The point: It's alright to let the players think something is invincible when it's not, even if it's near to it. If they insist on doing something dumb, well then...
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My Deadlands ground had, I think, five definitions for "Dead".
"Absolutely Dead" involved confirming the body and using acid, IIRC. Even then, they worried, however. But that's Deadlands.
Shadowrun, never consider the opponent dead until their body has been cut up and fed to the Ghouls. And even then, expect family to be really slotted off.
Especially if the family is "da family".
8)