When The Dungeon Master Broke Our Minds With A Terrifying Horror Campaign | Narrated D&D Story 

Ngl, as soon as I heard the words "mediocre twaddle" I was instantly in the mindset of "you deserve everything that's about to freak you out"

It's a little odd for me to hear someone to say that their DM is like tolkein as an insult. Mate do you realise how many ppl would kill for this?

"he made huge worlds and turned us loose in them, but we preferred adventure modules" what an embarrassing thing to say.

BRO!!! THEY DIDNT BREAK THE ELF'S BOARDS THEY BROKE HIS LEGS!!! Holy shit that whole campaign was the players thinking they did one thing and doing something else. How much you wanna bet the orcs were actually just bandits not zombies!?

Terrified players? ✅ Atmospheric conditions? ✅ Great role play from DM? ✅ Change of pants? ✅✅

I truly just want to be a player at that man's table that was incredible

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."- H.P Lovecraft. This DM obviously has mastered fear.

You took the elf's planks and broke them then he refused to walk. You found his corpse with broken legs. I think they were already gone before they got to the town. But the whole thing. And dying from their previous characters. Truly amazingly horrifying. It's art to be sure and scarring how it will stay with those players forever.

Not paying attention to descriptions, resorting to violence at the first opportunity and messing up with friendly npcs. The classic tale of a great DM giving a lesson to Murderhobos. That poor DM deserves a better group.

The elf guy gave me chills when he was first described and even more so when I realized the dm never said there were any planks nearby

“The women’s hair were black tongues. Tongues which we got accustomed to last night.” With all the grim happenings in the campaign, that was the only part I laughed at.

So basically, the “Marching Powder” made their previous characters go completely insane.

This one is even worse than the False Hydra story for messing with the player's minds. Well done.

Honestly that group seems terrible they heckled the dm and didn’t appreciate the world

"Blood for the Blood God." Wait wrong system. . . . It was the cocaine!

Methinks that "marching powder" might've had some unforeseen side-effects... (Hears hoping the writer of this story managed to reconcile with their DM)

had to watch twice to realise... The starved corpse of an elf with broken legs, clearly an orcs' work. the elf of whom they'd broke the planks he wanted to walk on. "The mook would just sit down, and started crying after that."

Great lesson in when things get freaky, ask yourself, "was I crazy before, or am I crazy now?"

Please more stories like this. All the crap about people making miraculous natural 20s and overly descriptive stats is not why people play. It's about story telling. I almost swear some people made stuff up just to get noticed. This is consummate story telling by the DM. And hearing it from the player makes it even better.

This DM deserves better friends to play with

You need a Barbarian in your group to defuse most of the horror. Every type of creature is way less frightening if a fearless muscle-mountainrange attacks it.

Wow. Such depth. First, unnerve them. Then, place them in a false sense of security, after that terrify them with gruesome imagery and disgust as you break down their sense of security and comfort and replace it with horror that surrounds you. And finally break them with the horror of letting them know all that they had mistakenly done. Let them know they were the monsters and they created an evil that was not only responsible for this savage massacre but also the the butchering of their new characters. All while being explained in great, intricate detail to enhance the imagery. Bravo!

I terrified players using mushrooms. The way I went with it is simply, take a mundane object and twist it. In this case, the players had received a call from the police. (Call of Cthulhu) The three arrived at a mummified corpse discovered in an apartment of a John Genaro. The body was hanging from the ceiling from something invisible. The reason for the investigation from outsiders was due to this fact. After taking a look at the body and seeing its lower jaw broken, stuck 2 inch lower then it should and most of its teeth missing. Afterwards they went to the apartment and met the owner who was finishing cleaning up as he explain that when they found him, most of the furniture had started to rot or dried out. They had a few questions and he answered as best he could, though he didn't know the guy well. He recommended to them to talk with the other neighbours, a Mme Maria, with whom he had an altercation recently about the garbage. They inquired about if she would be present at the time, but he responded that she would be at work until 5pm. They ask about other things like had he many visitors, where did he work and the like. The landlord didn't knew much only that he work in a shipping company at the docks and that nobody came to see him. Only the incident with Maria came to mind otherwise he was more of a recluse, though he did borrowed Maria cleaner, which the landlord found and would leave at her door. They then opened the door and found the apartment in an abysmal condition, as if no one had lived there in years. They mention it to the landlord who is frustrated as he spend half the day cleaning and now everything was back the way it was before he started. They start looking inside and light up the dirty feverish yellow light finding a box with pictures of the guy at the docks and others of pages from a book, in a language they didn't understood. It had, however, pictures of plants with very detailed aspect of certain flowers and mushrooms. After that they found the location of where the body was hanging by the blood who had dried and the missing teeth laying around the bedroom. They looked around finding a sort of fibre around the windows, barely visible and only seen by its shadow. They also found a black thing on the remains of the spring bed. It was a black ball who as releasing small amount of greasy liquid on the floor. One of them took it with leather gloves and put it in his bag. They continued to look around and found on the kitchen table a small card with a remaining barely visible ink Lee tea shop. They then left and went to see the tea shop. There they met Mister Lee, who offered then mushroom tea as they talk which they gladly took except for one player. When they left, they remark they were being watch though they aren't sure by whom. They decided to split and go in different direction. One at the docks, one at a local botanist he knew and the last one at a local university to know more about the pictures. The docks revealed that John in his last 2 weeks had change from a 8 hours shift with a 30 minutes lunch break to a 12h without break. His colleagues had being worried at first but when he became aggressive when they wanted him to take some breaks, they simply stopped. After that the player realized he was being tailed again and found who it was. As he did, the other one started running which lead to a chase. The player manage to get close enough to see the child's face who seem to be cracking and leaving small particle of dust. He would have to stop the run as he didn't have he breath to continue. The child fled. The second character left the black oozing thing with his friend botanist to examine and went back to the first character's PI office. The third went to the library but learned that the tea they had drank which was made using cordycep. A type of mushroom which is know to transformed ants into zombies. When they gathered back at the office, it was 7pm. Where they received a call from the police chief wanting to know what was happening at the apartment as they received a call about someone in distress. They left and ran there. By the time they arrived the police was there and where banging at Maria's door. They decided to break it open and inside a net contrast appear as the rooms are starting to rot and change. Half he room was getting dirtier and dirtier as the time pass. The yelled came from the living room and as they reached it, Maria was in the middle with a horrified look on her face. Tear falling on her cheek as a pain slowly rose from her throat, chocking her. She started to convulsed on the ground as something fibrous was leaving her mouth, dragging her onto the ceiling and slowly breaking her jaw while pushing teeth out to make way. The players tried to act, one by shooting the fibrous thing and missing, the second to try and drag her back down and the third collapse in insanity. By the end, the effort of the second would not working would use a knife and cut it, which worked but too late. That was when we stop for that session. A vertical pan leaving the scene with the other police officer reaching inside while his colleagues was leaving pale as a drapes .

Man! I want to know the framing and writing of the "horrorspeak" that the DM used. This was incredible. The dedication to speak and read in rhythm. To take all of the mental efforts of world building and apply it to a horror reality twist. Fantastic. Nothing quite shows actions like consequences than having PCs deal with the aftermath of their own actions darkly mirrored to them.

This is what I'll do if my players ever start to complain about my open world games. To each their own, yes, but do you have any idea how much time and effort it takes to create an entire continent, let alone an entire *world* of story? And to keep it all moving and flowing in the background while the PCs head off on their own to do little quests and make their own mark on the world? The little details I have to work in, sometimes on the spot, to remind them that this is a living, breathing world, and not just a backdrop for their characters? I have immense respect for any DM who can create such a world because of how difficult it is for me. For a player to call it "mediocre" despite all that, even with the excuse of preferring modular adventures... It honestly sickens me. Like I said. If my players ever complain about my open worlds, I'm gonna do something like this.

I cannot believe that the players in this situation didn't notice that no one was attacking them. It should have easily tipped them off but something was amiss. Even if they're unspeakable horrors that are twisted and wearing the skins of humanoids, if they clearly mean you no harm, then why are you killing them? What those players were killing wasn't just the monsters that they thought they saw, it was the disgust with themselves for having laid with them.

I see I like to call these types of DM the Batman DM’s because it’s all about fear

So I just found this channel and I have to say by far my favorite ones are always the ones where morals are discussed (Lizardman, The assassin and paladin one), Horror ones, and the ones where we deeply explore a character's story (my man Astoshan

I like this DM’s storytelling! The reveal is subtle but impressive: it was never the wheat that corrupted anything, but rather the marching powder the first group was given that drove them insane. It was DEFINITELY some kind of drug, one that distorted their perception into something truly twisted. The reason the second party saw things from such a vastly different perspective is that they were never given the drug.

This DM is brilliant. Truly, a great storyteller.

The dark twist made me shiver a bit... then came the nightmare. That was genuinely freaky.

The horror of our campaign is based in a fear of the unkown. As in we have no idea when it's going to happen

please more of these instead of the bad players ones. i stopped listening to neckbeardia because of that.

the wooden boards they broke were the elf's legs. holy shit.

Pretty brave play! Not many DMs can get away with taking control of an entire party of player characters from a previous game, much less in a manner like that.

Listening to this gave me the most amazing yet horrifying idea for a future horror campaign I want to run, and I am so thankful for this. This is the sort of thing that rejuvenates me, and I am so blessed to have such DMs around to inspire me.

My Pathfinder GM played this type of thing so well. He left hints and clues here and there that pointed to what we would be walking into, but never let us see the whole picture. Only to find out that the village that we had been residing in, sleeping in, eating in, and conversing with, was the epicenter of corruption, a chant from the church blocking all of our perception of what was happening around us. The whole village was engulfed in flesh, and the citizens we spoke to, did quests for, and had really cool moments with, were one by one being assimilated into the flesh. Our own horses were also assimilated due to being stabled there. But you would not know unless you could break through the perception barrier, as everyone still acts thier normal selves. And the consequence of breaking through was a large amount of Sanity damage

Vicious mockery does hit different at higher levels... Key note, if your DM is a high level bard ooc, stay on their good side.

This is an amazing narrative, 8/10 stars to the DM for wonderful descriptions and a genuine understanding of a horror of something which shouldn't exist, yet in defiance it remains! Side note, please narrate more D&D horror stories (not toxic player, but 2SPOOPY4ME style stories).

I need a DM like that especially horror based. Let the melding of morbid minds condense.

These players do not deserve this DM, holy hell this is insane

I had a feeling that ending was coming up

The plot twist was incredible... truly something we have to do for a short session

Have to wonder if the DM drew inspiration from Oblivion, which also had a quest in which the PC slaughtered a village due to drug-induced hallucinations.

If this DM is that good at running a horror campaign, then imagine what happens when he starts running “Call of Cthulhu” as a Keeper!? This campaign almost sounds like the movie Southbound, where madness and horror becomes a full circle.

im running a mystery adventure that i've made with repetitive symbolism, an excessive amount of detail and hidden aspect of tension and horror. so far, my players are loving it and hating it at the same time and it brings me endless joy.

This is Matt Mercer levels of attention to detail.

We played a game long ago with no warning it was horror themed. Three of us were hired to retrieve a family treasure from a burnt out keep. People in the nearby town warned us about the monster of the Keep, some creeping beast who preys on the unwary. Pretty standard faire. The keep was partially collapsed in the fire so it's a mess to navigate. We're barely into the gates before a stone floor collapsed and I and Ruger's player went down a few stories. We weren't badly hurt but we had to find a way to get back to the third player. Meanwhile in the darkness far below we can hear whistling. Right away I recognized the tune the GM was whistling as The Carpenters "Close to you". We did a lot of corny stuff when we gamed back then so it was a good laugh and we went on. The GM took Timothy's player player into another room to play out their scene above and we could instantly tell it was going to be the sort of game where out of character knowledge was locked in another room, annoying but we were having fun so it was ok. A few minutes later the Ruger's player stepped on a trap and a portcullis separated us. I had figured out enough of the map that I had an idea how to get to him. I told him to stay where he was and I'd go around to him since I had the lantern. Ruger's player down below with me is dragged into another room for just a second and then we're back on. Now I get dragged into another room for a bit of quick narration of how I was getting around, a few perception rolls, more of the whistling. Now I'm feeling super paranoid, something just wasn't right and the GM was amping up the creepiness so I panicked and ran the course around to find Ruger. I make some rolls and come around to find them, we're back in the living room and Timothy's player up above goes into the back room for a WHILE. When the GM comes out we continue looking for stairs up in the catacombs under the keep, more of the whistling which is getting insanely creepy now that the GM is keeping the gag up and I've forgotten it's a 70's pop song. Without warning the GM tells me I see Ruger, the same character I've been working with for about a half hour to find a way out of the Catacombs, appear through a collapsed ceiling above me. Suddenly the other player shouts at top volume "HANS! IT'S A DOPPLEGANGER KILL IT!". I freeze in confusion as the Ruger next to me draws his weapon and faces off against me. Ruger above jumps down and together we get the crap beat out of us, Ruger finally closed a door on the monster as we retreat and knocked down rubble to block the door. As we catch our breath we hear more whistling. With some difficult climbing rolls we finally get out of the catacombs and up into the courtyard and back to Timothy who is freaked out and paranoid needing to test us to be convinced we're who we say we are. We decide we're done for the night, we need to go back to town and get drunk but before we can leave we hear that lonesome song whistled from outside the gates of the keep and as I'm sitting there the other two other players, sitting on either side of me begin to join in whistling the tune and as I look at them they're staring at me maniacally. Honestly the most terrifying moment in RP for me.

When they came across the elf the 2nd time, I had a flash of Silent Hill 3's "They look like monsters to you?", and I knew we were about to hit some terrible last campaign consequences.

As much as I want to play in his campaign, I don’t think my heart could take it

I kinda saw where this was going near the beginning, but never would have if I had been a player in it. Nicely done.

The twist in that town before it was changed by another twist is EXACTLY why you shouldn't "do it" with someone you don't know. Especially in a DnD horror setting.

This is the sort of experience I try and deliver as a GM

This reminds me of a dnd one shot I had thought up in my head. Mid winter, all PCs are some form of military member. Everyone starts out in a tavern within the capital city, merry making and everything, having a great time. Dark as hell outside. A woman bursts through the door screaming and ranting about monsters invading the city. Then a huge hand bursts through the door, grabbing her up and taking her back outside where the party hears crunching and squelching before a decomposing eye socket, with a small light at the very back wall of the skull peers through the new hole in the wall. Starting up the invasion of as many scary ass monsters

My goodness... This dm is awesome! And terrifying... That ending really is a mind screw.

i once run a doppelganger campaing, and let the player go on a caravan with the two leaders, who could get the abilities of every thing they shapechange into. they discoverd the doppelgangers when one of the players went to investigate something in the drivers tent, and discoverd his headles body, and when he returned to the camp fire to warn everybody, he saw the driver smiling at him.

I know this one is old, but I figured I'd post my little horror anecdote anyway. I was running Call of Cthulhu, and opened the first session with the party tracking down a desperate old gentleman's missing daughter. She had been taken by a cult of Yog Sothoth. The clues they uncovered throughout the adventure pointed to the cult wishing to sacrifice her to enable Yog Sothoth to rewrite history according to its design. They slaughtered the scarred and gibbering cultists, too invlved in their ritual to fight back. They spoke in bizarre rasping voices in unfamiliar accents at their ritual, but the young woman rose from the altar and grinned, glowed in colors never before seen by the eyes of men, grinned and gibbered at the party, then moved in reverse, faster and faster, until she vanished. The group continued to investigate and found out that their patron had been behind the whole thing all along. They confronted him, found out that he had found ways to move through time, and used these abilities to track down the aspect of Yog Sothoth in the girl's body in the past. Over their adventures in time, they suffered changes to their bodies, physiology, and voices, and picked up the speech of the eras they visited in their quest, trying to save people from the horrors that the aspect of Yog Sothoth was inflicting on history. Eventually, they tracked her down to a few weeks prior to the first session, armed with eldritch weapons, the Elder Sign, books from Leng, and a way to banish the Aspect for all time. They subdued her and followed the banishment formula, adapted from the sacrificial rite they had interrupted. The ritual would severly limit their abilities to do anything else. Just as they were bringing down the weapons to slay the aspect of Yog Sothoth and end her threat forever, a band of familiar voices were heard, and familiar figures burst into the room and attacked them. As they were cut down by the attackers, they recognized their own faces on the day they killed the twisted cultists and 'saved' the young woman from the altar. They died hearing the mad laughter of the Aspect as their deaths provided the sacrifices needed to power her ascension. One of the players threw dice at my head.

This was something genuinely impressive. I don't know if the Dm thought that far ahead to implement that first campaign like that or if he thought that it would be cool to do it, either way what he did was something I would've never thought of. Hats off to this Dm

Make the players terrified to proceed and you've done good.

Wow, that's like a Resident Evil game. Good shock value and scary setting.

I love the videos on this channel that showcase good DMing, players, and storytelling so much more than the videos about the train wreck groups

Once I nearly made all of my fellow players wizards, but that would've been a horror for a DM once we got to level 7. Unfortunately, COVID.

What a Lovecraftian twist. Demented, terrifying, and well thought out. But where are the monoliths?

Absolutely lovely story! Horror is one of my favorite themes, and this DM sounds like they knew what they were doing. *Applause* Bravo!

Honestly, i heard this story 2 years ago. And remembering what an awesome Jod the DM did jsut give me joy. I think it one of the best storys so far

I once DMed a dungeon run into a necromancer's lair. Pretty standard stuff. The players had some fun, but weren't impressed. As usual, they brought their loot back to civilization and sold all kinds of things they had taken from the necromancer and the graves of his victims. And started a zombie apocalypse. Every item they had looted, even single coin they spent in bars and weapons shops and bakeries, all of it was cursed. It took them a few gaming sessions to put 2 and 2 together. When they finally realized the end of the world was their fault, it was ... special.

Mistakes were made, feelings were most certainly hurt, and nerves struck with an acupuncture needle. Also the second look or “double take” definitely made things worse. This leads me to ask, what in the hells was the source of the madness in the town? A False Hydra would make people forget things or alter the victim(s) memories of events within a listening distance.

I’m running my first horror campaign soon, and I’m definitely gonna try to use as much of this as possible.

Holy crap, I want that DM. That sounded like an amazing experience and I absolutely love horror.

This is the best horror game I’ve ever heard about on this channel. I absolutely love it. What an amazing DM.

That. Was. *Gorgeous!* Kudos to that DM for being able to write horror like that, perhaps he should write a horror novel.

That DM would make a great host for a revival of the Tales from The Crypt TV show that used to be on HBO- what a legend!

That's one way of dealing with a group. This dm made a grand unknown tale and were all for it

I don't believe it happened, but great story. The would be a great long game on the DM's part, if true.

I really hope this DM writes a book and I hear about it. He was mocking them the entire time. I'm speechless at the level of detail from describing the trip, and their high and crash happened in the same town. Ugh, this is real sorry telling What an experience that mist have been.

I had to pause when he said they didn't get the marching powder

The DM should publish this adventure.

This makes me thankful to my DM he made this awesome world for us to explore while keeping us on a quest like a module

Imagine this dm and the player of Astoshan cooking up a campaign. Ohhhh the chills~

5:40 BAWZUMS lmfao

It's one thing to creep out your players, another to scare them good, but they won't sleep with the lights off for about a week

Along with others, this story, is now a favorite of mine. Astoshan, Onyxia, the Ogre Smith, the elf friend Green dragon and etc. All great stories among this one.

Grave wheat so ergot fungus inspiration? An perhaps the townsfolk were immune to the bog water fungus of grasses, and yet not so much the players in the happy little backwater? Either way Bravo.

im damn near positive that the "marching powder" caused the first party to go insane and since the second party dident have any they saw what the first party was actualy doing under the effects of said powder

It's a little bit like that Oblivion fighters' guild quest. Glitches and everything 😬

As a DM, I can find many uses for those knives at the table... especially for those rules lawyers.

So much planning, work and commitment. This is really horrifying and good.

This was a spectacular story. I loved every minute of it. Sounds like they got lit on that marching powder one too many times.

I honestly wasn’t expecting THAT much from this, a good story but not something that blew me away like this story did!

"he offers to run us something very special" That was a threat, not an offer.

Reminds me of the short story "The Dream of A Ridiculous Man" from Dostoevsky where a guy has a dream about visiting a community of people on a different planet that are completely innocent and goodhearted only for him to unintentionally corrupting them.

You guys are kind of jerks to a DM that is actively trying to bring the game to life. If you just want to roll dice, I suspect you can do that on your own.

I like how this narrator buries the DM for being a bad writer when the narrator uses sentences like: 'Orcs cartwheeled and spun out of the swamp dragging moisture from the air back into the swamp as they emerged dragging gore back into their bodies into closing wounds as they did, losing power and glazed expression to take on the green vibrance of life and psychically drawing weapons to them from the ground in brackish water.' I mean Jesus, reading Lovecraft is less painful.

"Marching powder" is a heck of a drug.

I'm not going to say I would love to play this cause I would not, I'd be fucking terrified and probably hide in a corner Even so, a peice of me still just wants to sit in and listen like a public reading or theater

Now 'that' is what I call, a Dungeon Master, and I applaud the man for making my smile grow absolutely pleased.

I love the re dive into the same world but from a different lens great way to intro the world for both it's reality and the f'ed up side

Damn, marching powder is hell of a drug.

This was so freaking awesome! I want to find this DM and their style to morph how I run future campaigns later on!

You guys should keep making captions, I love listening to these stories with captions on. Also helps if there's a word I've never heard before.