"What would scare modern people?" Topic

Going to run a modern Cthulhu campaign and was wondering what would scare people enough to try their sanity? We are immersed in blood, guts, gore tv and movies; we've seen all kinds of outer space/other dimension horrors; what is actually scary? An invisible thingy?

thanks,
Brian

Seeing those things in real life shocks the crap out of people.

Exactly what I was thinking.
It not only scares them but can damage them long term and alter the way they think about life, which seems right up the Cthulhu alley.

I can say that simply stumbling onto a dead body had a pretty profound effect on me, despite all the gaming, video games, books, movies and general brazen trash-talking of my youth.

It is easy to sit in the safety of a theatre or living room and call all the "right" moves and talk about how you wouldn't do this or that, but in a real life situation I figure most people are about as freaked out as the people in the movies.

I will say that the unknowable or the unquantifiable tends to be much more frightening than simple gore and death. A strange, persistent sound that you cannot explain. The constant flash of something out of the corner of your eyes. That little something that isn't quite the same or not right in some way.

I've found the best thing is to attack players at their core; like their families, friends and loved ones. And as "emu2020" said persistent sounds are ace as it can be something you can actually put in with a cd/iPod then as people are getting engrossed in something else either turn it up slowly or just stop it and wait to see when the players notice.

Shadows seem to scare players as well. Just give them flickering lights and hinted shadow movements.

Bank forclosure notice.

Tax audit.

I agree with emu2020, the thing that has terrified me the most in recent years was the New Orleans/Katrina disaster & thinking about me & my family being in it, & what I'd have to do (or possibly couldn't bring myself to do) in order to provide for my family's basic safety & care.

British Petroleum

Robert the doll in Key West Florida. hauntedtours.com/Robert.html

See if you can find the adventures published by Chaosium back in the 90s for modern day Cthulhu; I can't remember the book titles but the series was called Cthulhu Now.

Two story ideas I remember (and ran for my CoC group back in the day):
– a graphics computer program rendering an occult sign which opened a gate to let in a big nasty.
– a series of arson fires which were ritual sacrifices to … I forget its name … the Cthulhu god associated with fire; turns out a city fire truck crew was the cultists, and the adventure culminated on the top of a skyscraper which was going to be burned down as a huge sacrifice to open a gate.

Truth.

A failure in the power grid, cause unknown and duration unknown.

Coupled with all telecommunications going down.

Cthulhu-induced EMP???

Hoser

All the normal Cthulhu tropes still seem plenty scary to me… regardless of some hipster claiming he wouldn't be scared of 'Deep Ones' because he's seen "The Creature From The Black Lagoon".
But yeah… if it's more personally threatening then it's all that much worse.
Kult was a good RPG for that sort of personal/body horror (good for ideas that is… the rules were a bit cack).

I agree with emu2020 also. Use the unknown. But dont overkill it. A simple closet door the players must open to get a must have object. Only problem, theres a scratching sound from within, a low moaning sound & a bad smell. Between you and say 3 other people, who would open the door?

Anything that can be reasonably assumed to be related to an act of terrorism.

In other words, if all of a sudden your entire state goes dark, no power, cellular/telephones cease to function entirely, no internet access, satellite phones have failed, radio just gives static, etc. etc.

THAT will scare the crap out of people.

I would definitely suggest getting Arkham now:

link

And The Stars are right:

link

..They are both chock full of ideas. Where is the campaign set?

In other words, if all of a sudden your entire state goes dark, no power, cellular/telephones cease to function entirely, no internet access, satellite phones have failed, radio just gives static, etc. etc.

THAT will scare the crap out of people.

That old 'Twilight Zone' episode 'The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street' illustrates that well.

nowadays, just about anything. For real, most of the above got it just right. Any shock to the system-beloved electricity,phones, -routine in general. Any recent Stephen King novel seems to get into the subject of what un-nerves us as a society.

Losing control of something that we take for granted is scary, as others have said . . . But it goes deeper as well. Alzheimers and forms of insanity frighten us because we like to think we are the captains of our "souls" or at least, in command of ourselves. Heinlien's "The Puppets Masters" sits head and shoulders above most 'Red Scare' SF of the time because the threat was so alien and at the same time so basic – The slug-like "Puppeteers" simply supressed all the normal routines of the victim for as long as they needed to use them, including hygiene, hunger and pain, which lead to severe problems for the host when released.

A sistuation in which one is powerless is still the major terrifier of people – Look at the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies, and the nigh-indestructible, smarter thah everyone force that is Freddy Kruger. The idea that something is greater than you and capable of doing whatever it wishes without you being able to resist it either inspires worship in humans, or a deep fear that leads in turn to anger and hate. Either way, it stirs deep passions within.

Haemorrhagic fevers.

MR Walrus has created the foundation for your list. Try a list of stuff that you can't deal with but can deal with you!
Cthulu-wise that is.
For the most part. your plot won't diverge much with the 'conventional' mythos but just add some 21st century spin. Internet wierdness? Stuff appearing on facebook? Go nuts…

Modern people? We are all very much animal underneath that thin veneer.

Clowns.

No kidding.

What could be scarier than a Cthulhu possessed clown?

No hand sanitizer

Cloudcaptain,

I'm sending them to help tame Hell House
Book
link
Movie
link
but changed somewhat to edit out the sexual parts…family game store…as a precursor/test clue so they will eventually go into the past to see the Mayans and their predictions for 2012. They must then close the gate that will open in 2012….maybe more civilizations and more gates.

To Everyone else, Thank you!!!

One-ply toilet paper! Scares my ass, yes indeedy.

I agree with Cincinnatus, and would add that what truly panics people is occurrences out of context and out of experience. I imagine most of us have seen far more blood and gore (real and faked) via photographs, television and films, than our forebears ever did. However, what they saw was real, and something they were reasonably certain to encounter in the course of their day to day lives.

Have you ever been in a restaurant when a woman's water breaks and she goes into labor? Chaos, I assure you. Nobody expects that sort of thing during the salad course.

I was at a softball game once when the shortstop took a hard driving hit to the temple. It sounded like someone dropped a melon. Blood started pouring from his ears and his left eye was dangling from the socket. The crowd reaction was like the sinking of the Titanic. People were literally screaming and running for the exits, trampling and shoving each other as they went.

Never underestimate how unprepared people are for life's unpleasantness.

seeing something like THESE start coming out of 'sinkholes' like the one in Guatamala!

link

Zombies.

Their favorite idol on American idol being voted off. Their favorite dance couple being voted off. But if Oprah says it's going to be Ok then we have nothing to worry about.

Humans are like sheep. They herd and panic when frightened. I think if a demon/devil wanted to scare the populace witless they would gain control of the media and create panic and conspiracy causing mistrust and upheaval in the society. Then sit back feed some lies to steer the masses and let nature take it's course.

A failure in the power grid, cause unknown and duration unknown.

Coupled with all telecommunications going down.

People always say this, but why, exactly? So the power's out, big whoop.

My Dad used to get into feuds with the power company all the time when I was a kid; not having electricity for weeks at a time is annoying as hell, but it's far from scary.

As for telecoms… if they're down, and you want to find out what's going on, get in the car and go see.
-Kle.

picture

Hey Buff

Where did you get a picture from the donkey sanctuary ?

zombies, werewolves, non sparkley vampires

the power going off in December and never coming back on.
(maybe not scary in its self but lots of people in cities will die and be killing each other after a week or two)

5 out of 10 people getting sick and dieing.

a 800lb tiger eating people in the park.

6 800lb tigers eating people in the park.

someone driving around town shooting random people from ambush.

someone setting off small bombs or CS gas in malls around the county.

someone walking up to random cars at stop lights dropping a fire bomb and walking away.

someone blowing up a big bridge and blowing a new one every 3 days till they get stopped.

and lets not forget WOMD's in the hands of people that hate everyone that does not believe.

etc etc

Recently it's become like Open Season on police officers in my home state. In the last year we've had something like 7+ unprovoked shootings of police officers with at least five deaths. Four were shot while sitting enjoying a break in a local coffee shop. The fact that the authorities seem to have become acceptable targets is scary.

-Eli

Two story ideas I remember (and ran for my CoC group back in the day):
– a graphics computer program rendering an occult sign which opened a gate to let in a big nasty.
– a series of arson fires which were ritual sacrifices to [Cthuga]; turns out a city fire truck crew was the cultists, and the adventure culminated on the top of a skyscraper which was going to be burned down as a huge sacrifice to open a gate.

These are both in The Stars are Right, linked to by Cloudcaptain. The scenarios are "Fractal Gods" -- which needs updating, since it's 1990s computer tech; and "This Fire Shall Kill" -- which is 9 kinds of awesome, and would be fun to adapt to the post-9/11 world.

A particle accellerator creating a miniature black hole which swallows up the earth – or rip a hole in the time/space continuum to allow…Something to get through to our world

Thanks Jeff Ewing, I have my old CoC Now stuff somewhere but didn't want to dig it out. Yes, The Stars Are Right was a great book.

I would say weather… I mean depending on where your at even the mention of snow can close down most of a state. Now imagine it out of season and it keeps snowing.

Start of a new ice age would kill the US.

A return of the previous administration.

A disease. In bygone days a lack of understanding of sanitation and germs would have prevented people from comprehending or fearing a virus but now we know something we can't detect can kill us or alter us horribly. Now gaming a virus is more difficult. Unless of course it drives people mad and then they infect others….

Pyrate Captain – Why do you feel the need to posts crap like that? If you can't act like an adult in the conversations about Cthulhu then just be quiet.

Being kidnapped by organ pirates on the high seas disguised as people smugglers who are desperate to deliver a kidney for a Yakuza boss and have just rendered useless the only person they were smuggling with the correct blood type- apart from a 17yo gap year recruit who proves to have that blood type, who was placed in your charge- and you're the only slightly medically trained person available to dissemble it from her in a room more like a morgue than a sickbay.
Well it happened on Sea Patrol last night.

The sudden inability to aquire oil?

@Klebert- These are a people who can't drive six inches without a cell stuck to their heads, no matter what the law says; can barely be trusted to occupy themselves without a machine stuck in their faces; and have been known to call Information Services when they open their emails and find there's none there, thinking their email is broken.

Sunken shipwrecks and flooded buildings give me the heebie-jeebies.

Truthfully, I almost think people would be MORE freaked out…

Alot of the less intellagent people out there, are bcoming "used" to this kind of stuff, and think it "could" happen. So if it does, they'll think of the consequences.

Twenty years ago, if you had a Chtulhu movie, everyone would laugh, and think nothing of it…

Now, watch a chtulhu movie…and you're wandering what made that ripple…..

Leastways. My 2 cents.

P.S. For example, I know it ain't possible, and I truthfully can say it is for the oddball's sake, but after reading "Monster Hunter International", I have a terrible urge to want 20 rounds of .308 and 17 rounds of .45acp silver bullets……

@ Klebert L Hall

If you want to see what could happen in a major power outage watch the movie "The trigger Effect".

Total loss of Internet Connection.