It’s the scary season around our gaming tables, and that brings up one of the age-old questions about DMing: Can you reasonably expect to scare adult roleplaying gamers?

Maybe, maybe not. But what you can definitely do is remove the illusion that they’re in control. Undermine that false comfort that their characters will be OK. Whether you’re threatening their hit points, sanity or character attachments, if you can shake the players’ sense of security, then you can scare them — and that’s what Halloween gaming is all about.

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about the things they’ve done to try to bring some terror to their tables and times they’ve felt the fear for their own characters’ lives and worse.

1:00 Can you expect to scare adult players at the RPG table, or is this a lost cause?

2:00 DM Dave’s Curse of Strahd Dinner … in full costume with a DM’s assistant playing butler and running NPCs

7:00 Give the players something to be afraid of: Unbalance the threat level, attack character sanity and get them out of their comfort zones

10:00 Upgrading Castle Ravenloft to make the final showdown with Strahd deadlier and scarier

14:00 The PCs must be vulnerable: Why super characters undermine horror gaming

17:00 It’s a long campaign: Don’t be afraid to let the players laugh and have some fun in your horror game, it just makes things scarier when the tension ratchets back up

24:00 Attachments are key to RPG horror: NPC allies and friends give the players something to lose

27:00 Pirates of the Caribbean is not a horror movie — atmosphere and threat build terror, not zombies, skeletons and undead pirates

29:00 Let the characters feel comfortable behind the armor and weapons they have, then introduce a threat that cannot be handled that way

33:00 Horror gaming is unfair, and you need players who are willing to go with that without complaining

37:00 Is a deathtrap like Tomb of Horrors really horror gaming or just a hardcore puzzle?

50:00 Keep power creep on your side

54:00 Some of the most horrifying games we’ve been in

59:00 The one mechanic you cannot allow in your game if you want to maintain a horror vibe

65:00 Final thoughts on horror gaming for Halloween