How do you make witches scary?
Use movies as inspiration - The Wizard of Oz (the classic cackling green witch everyone loves)- Pumpkinhead (southern accented witch who summons demons)- Weapons (flamboyantly dressed witch who sucks the life from children)- Suspiria (dance academy that is really a witch cult, worshiping their head hag)- The Witches (beautiful regal witch who is really a super-hag under a mask)
>>98456017Generally witch horror is them going after kids and succeeding. They're not interested in adults, adults can fight back.
do reddit's favourite monster, the false hydra, but it's a witch coven.
>>98456017Base them off of real women.
>>98456017Depends on what system. Which is?
Wow, all of the above. OP you got some good material here, do not let it go to waste. I'd add that do not forget to describe their visual identity
>>98456043What about The VVitch?
>>98456043>>98456205I loved the three witches in Stardust.
>>98456043Pumpkinhead was such kino https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cp3Pbt3gfLs&pp=ygUQaGFnZ2lzIHRoZSB3aXRjaNIHCQmjCwGHKiGM7w%3D%3D&ra=m
>>98456017they take away your peepee
>>98456082I remember when the false hydra first came out, and everyone I tried to discuss it with said it was a shit concept. There's still a good concept there, but that it was latched onto so hard by secondaroes is disheartening. As for witches, run them either as folk magic practicioners tapping into magic in a less organized way, a la Discworld, or run them as evil women using evil means to accoplish evil goals.
>>98456017Find what your players are scared of, then tool the witch to play to those fears. You can toss a basic green hook-nosed hag at them, make her a really difficult encounter, but that alone is not gonna *scare* them.Look at your PC's backgrounds for hints, see what traumas lie in their backstories and exploit it. Magic is nothing but invoked intent; with that in mind, making a threatening witch is as simple as crafting a character whose ill intent is powerful enough to be made manifest. Consider the concept of Lovecraftian horror; not specifically deep-sea critters with tentacles, but the base idea that the horror on the surface of a situation pales in comparison to the actual scope of just how bad the situation is. A headache is inconvenient, discovering signs of black mold AFTER experiencing frequent headaches is a nightmare.>A village tasks the party with finding a missing child>The party susses out that it's a witch who took the boy, presumes it's a standard Hansel and Gretel job>They find the child and free her>Surprise, the child was really the witch in disguise>Surprise, the child is already dead>Surprise, the child is one of many; the witch has been using the nearby village as a farm for centuries, viewing the townspeople as we might view a population of trout ("if you overfish, they'll stop having kids and the supply dries up")>Surprise, the witch casually mentions something that might indicate that she was the cause for one of the PC's siblings going missing at a young age>Surprise, she dies before that PC can interrogate her and know for certain
European oral tales like Hansel and Gretel were strongly shaped by the grim realities of medieval famines, particularly the Great Famine of 1315-1321 at the onset of the Little Ice Age: Several years of unrelenting rain destroyed European grain crops, killing roughly 10-15% of the population. Facing total starvation, families abandoned their children in forests or towns, leaving them to fend for themselves, or casting off dependents so the remaining family members might survive. Medieval chronicles record starving populations eating horses, dogs, leather, and eventually human corpses. In extreme cases, starving parents consumed deceased children. Beyond reflecting famine trauma, the story served as a practical coming-of-age lesson for peasant children: beware of strangers offering food, rely on sibling solidarity, and keep your wits about you in times of scarcity.
>>98456301>the witch in question is a survivor of such times of scarcity>she did what she had to in order to survive and embracing what she'd done was the only way she could stand to live with herself>she's just been living in the woods, eating missing pets and toddlers for centuries at this point>when the players get her HP low enough she mentally regresses and starts reacting like a terrified child
>>98456298oh right, you want them explicitly scary. The friendly old women knows everything you've done. She encourages your worst, most destructive impulses. It is her who hands you the bloody knife with a smile. Cackling laughter in the distance while the party rests. Animal entrails spelling the parties name found on the road, or in the bed they just woke up from. Children in peril or cages, clearly orchestrated by the witch. Strange fetishes hanging from trees, then windows, then finding them in your pockets. Seeing an ugly old woman with a bloody sneer everywhere, just out of the corner of your eye. Your equipment growing a foul black sludge. Animals going mad, then dying while screaming your name. People, friends even, shunning you and not saying why, or making signs of warding against you. Finding strange scratch marks across your body. The feeling of being watched and knowing that whatever it is, wants you harmed.
>>98456017Honestly there are so much possibilities that's difficult to pinpoint a right way.What game?
>>98456347>Seeing an ugly old woman with a bloody sneer everywhere, just out of the corner of your eye.This gives me a great idea. My group tends to have Discord open when we play in person, so that the DM can post art and whatnot in the server for future reference. I'm envisioning DMing a player a really gnarly picture of a hag, then deleting it right after I see them check their phone, so it only shows for a moment before disappearing.
>>98456243Stardust mentioned alert!>Climactic battle>What's the point of living if you can't have your homeboys?> :'(>Heroes leave>Witch returns for a second stage bossfight because ending the movie on that note would have caused audiences to go home and cry, take up heroin, and quote Camus We were ROBBED! ROBBED! Been a few years, planning to show it to my family this winter. Gonna be good.>>98456017Witches attack the weak, they offer you seemingly amazing deals for letting them go about their business, if you try to kill them they usually turn into jam and slither away, or transform into a bat with the head of a man. If you get too close they'll body horror you, like detaching their hands, or an eyeball might go missing, or a big juicy centipede might live in their nose. All of this is inherently scary and you need no extra squeeze, witches represent stranger danger and that's all they need to.>Hey kid want to come in my magic pumpkin carriage? It's pretty based, ngl>Are you going to rape me to death in there?>No, something worse, but I promise you'll like it.>pic relatedWitches are instant horror because their sole defining feature is that they'll hit you under the belt in a way you can't predict. There's nothing you can do where the GM can't flip it around on you; you burn down the witch's hut but that only made them angry and now your asshole makes weird noises at night and you know nothing good can come of that.
>>98456205Only scary if you're a retard puritan or a woman.
>>98456718It's a little like saying a plane disaster movie can't be scary if you never fly.
>>98456073In folklore they also curse and torment adults
Make them extremely attractive with enormous tits and make them have sex with a character that looks and acts exactly like me.
>>98457294Are you gay anon
>>98456017Step 1: the villageThe village is the spaceship by which the PCs navigate an unforgiving world. Without the village you starve, freeze, go mad, lose touch with God, etc. The village is stronger than the individuals inside it, but also fragile. Enough damage to the ties that bind it (structures, relationships, people) will cause it to unravel, and then you're all going to die in destitution. Step 2: the outsiderShe lives in the hedge. The space between the village and the true wild. She never wanted to live there, away from warmth and love. She was wronged, or wronged another. She may have suffered tragedy or been born under a bad moon. Her hate is born of envy. Step 3: usurpation She wants in. She wants revenge. She cannot take it by force, because one cannot seize a butterfly in a mailed fist. The village cannot be destroyed if she is to have it. She must strike at the weak parts, tempt the gullible, hide in doubt, poison and demean. Step 4: walking on wickerThe PCs know there is a witch amongst them. The know her by her work, by the signs. But they do not know her name or face. They cannot simply oppress the womenfolk: this will shatter the village as surely as a granary fire in midwinter. They must move slowly and learn much, discover what powers the witch has learned and who she has suborned. They must do it without becoming outcast. They must do it without driving the witch to reckless destruction (for if she is to be denied she will deny them too). Step 5: the devilEvil never truly dies. Old Nick marks those who kill his daughters. Women are milled by life's stone every day. Some of them will hear him whisper. He will whisper the party's names.
have them call me an incel and say my penis is theirs for the taking.
>>98457294>Make them extremely attractive with enormous tits and make them have sex with a character that looks and acts exactly like me.Anon please, they should clearly turn YOU into an extremely attractive woman with enormous tits as well!
>>98456111Hello???????
>>98456111>>98466026aaah, no answer because no games...
>>98456111avatar.
>>98456017My go-tos would be:> Non-lethal D.O.T.s. for capture> Target vulnerable, liked NPCs.
>>98456017Evocative description of activity and appearance that hint but don't show. Real player character mortality as part of the game you're playing and notable threat of that via witch things. Doesn't have to be direct. Knowledge and power that is entirely unconcerned with proper womanly conduct. Cool names like >Grandmother Carapace >The Tall Witch Gross servants.
>>98462116There's worse fates.
>>98466677>There's worse fates.I mean yeah, just look at Witch Girl Adventures...
>>98456017A witch as a woman who has fallen for the Devil's temptations in exchange for power isn't really scary.A hag as an otherforce of nature that operates outside the bounds of reason or sanity, that interacts with mortals in a way that suggests she isn't on the same plane of existence as you, that it understands the true nature of reality that you only ever glimpse in a dream; and your only value to it is just like your body parts as reagents for a spell or potion. Hags can be spooky.Or if i'm late to Professor McGonnagall's class.
>>98456043Suspiria was fucking terrifying. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GpIFLwyp5Ug&pp=ygUNSGVsZW5hIG1hcmtvcw%3D%3D
>>98467798That music is fucking awesome
>>98456017I'm sure using crushed baby to oil up your flying broomstick is pretty scary dude.
>>98456017I was playing Runequest, system is always important; high lethality systems can make any encounter scary, low lethality systems make nothing scary. (Looking at you, D&D drones)I rolled on my random encounter table as my players were moving between settlements, and they ran into the local Chaos witch.She was a fairly generic old crone wearing a pile of rags, with filthy talons, but she was about seven feet tall, and riding side-saddle on a plow, which was moving under it's own power, and ploughing up the dirt road coming the opposite way to the players.As she moves, she destroys, because that is her nature.My duo of players decided they would rather work for her than piss her off, but they got TPK'd a couple miles up the road by a pair of pretty run of the mill Orlanthi raiders on horseback, because they decided to attack them without buffing up first; and since they were playing as Telmori wolf-men, buffing up is the difference between being basically a naked stone age retard with weak spirit magic, and too many bad tattoos, and being a conditionally invulnerable lupine abomination.So yeah, they fuckin' died.But if they HAD survived to work for the witch, they would have regretted it sooner or later.
>>98456017how do you make the baby-eating, crook-nosed cultists scary? give them social power and connections just like in real life! don't forget victimhood!
>>98456017They are only effective because they rely on manipulation and deceit. The authorities and acquaintances should see them as harmless and potentially even friendly, and this allows them access to vulnerable people. Around these vulnerable people they turn into monsters who abuse them, and potentially even kill them or eat them. They can only strike the vulnerable, and they rely on not being discovered until its too late. They are more horrific if you are a vulnerable character like a child or a mute. If you have powerful characters, they use poisons or wait until they are asleep or injured before they attack.If your character is investigating them, have them go to dark and isolated areas, like the middle of a forest or a cave at night where they perform disturbing rituals using blood, hair or stolen items. Ultimately they commune with devils that own their souls; climactic encounters would see the frail woman displaced by a slobbering and vicious demon that must be banished to hell.The fear is created by making you feel helpless and isolated, by having those who should safeguard either not perceive them as a threat or even side with them and accuse you of lying, and by the immediate change in their demeanour as soon as they are alone; changing from harmless and friendly to cold, stern and murderous in the blink of an eye. The final horror is the demonic aspect but that should be kept for the finale.Intriguing ending can be that after you kill her and banish the demon; society turns against you, accuses you of being a liar and a murderer and a superstitous idiot; with those 'conscientious leaders' that are accusing you being hinted at as either being witches themselves or devil-possessed, hinting at a far deeper and darker 'conspiracy', and making people wonder about real world events pertaining to witches and even modern political and religious leaders.
>>98468208can you tell me about runequest anon. I am actually here for magical reasons , but for that same reason if I ever want to play a traditional ttrpg , I would want help.
>>98472920It's a percentile die system, so all your skills are given as a percentage out of a hundred (or over for overtly superhuman skill levels, which is handled a bit differently) and you want to roll low.It's simple to pick up the core system, which is BRP, "Basic Roleplay" like Call of Ch'thulhu.Runequest's default setting, Glorantha, is a Bronze Age fantasy world shaped like a lozenge, written by an anthropologist, and the current edition is very Glorantha-centric, which makes RQ Classic probably better for running games in your own settings; Mythras is very similar, because it is also a BRP derivative designed to handle Brinze Age mythic fantasy.It has three magic systems; Spirit magic or minor or petty magic, which in Glorantha is quite ubiquitous in most cultures, Rune magic comes from Gods, is powerful, but Gods want sacrifices to grant it and Sorcery, which is autistic logic-driven magic, and is remarkably scalable if you can mass enough POW (Power) from cult members or a pre-existing source of magical energy, like an imprisoned spirit or the like, but also requires you to do actual maths in order to determine parameters like strength, range, duration and area of effect, so technically Runequest is a game that has built-in facilities to blow up/ensorcel the entire world with a magical ritual, IF you can gather enough people and enslaved entities to gather enough POW to cast a spell on a global scale.Though frankly, doing the sum would be a feat unto itself.
>>98473742that sounds interesting for my porpuses , thank you anon!I assume their also could be ways of mixing and matching the magic systems if I really understood them well , I mean I see no reason not too.
>>98473751You can certainly use both sets of skills on one character, though in Runequest, some cultures have taboos against certain types of magic.And the way the magics function is sorta intertwined with their nature.Spirit magic spells tend to be learnt up to a level, so they scale up a ways, and can be taught by a spirit or a god, and they are re-useable, coming from a character's pool of temporary POW, which is restored after recuperation, and is equal to the character's POW stat, representing their natural total.Having a high POW stat is important for all sorts of spellcasting, but also for acts of will in general, spirit magic tends to be minor charms with subtle effects, and minor manifestations of elements and powers; exceptions to this would be when used by a powerful spirit or shaman (spirit work specialist) who can do strange and terrible things with what is otherwise considered minor magic, and lesser spirits, such as those inhabiting local landmarks and/or controlling local functions of nature or cultural life.God magic is different; it tends to have a fixed, but relatively high base effect, and in order to attain divine magic, it has to be sacrificed for; normally in the form of permanent POW points dedicated to the god; Gods in the proper sense live in the Godtime, mostly, God magic is always based on a feat of the god, it can be based on a general feat, like hurling lightning, or a specific feat, like slaying Aroka, the blue water dragon.Of note, in a contest between spells, god magic is point for point the most powerful, and to overcome it, or resist it, spirit magic and sorcery must use proportionally more POW points.Sorcery is reliant on the personal power of the sorcerer, and their understanding of the world itself, rather than using spirits or gods.As a result, sorcery tends to be slow to deploy, highly ritualized, and dependant on profound lifelong dedication, but you can BORROW energy from all sorts of places.
>>98456017Study Baba Yaga in general.
Fuck off, slopspammer.
>>98456243Showing that movie to random girls was such a huge part of my college experience.What are some other kino that are having fun with the concept of fairytales without being too disrespectful or Whedon-y? I know about The Princess Bride of course. >>98456604I feel like if my playoids were willing to let a BBEG go because they were just that emotionally vulnerable I'd want to spin it in an interesting way like they redeem themselves or something. I don't like to encourage that ultra-paranoid mindset where they have to confirm/double-tap every fallen enemy to make sure they're dead, for instance.
>>98456017https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8yUGE3kUsEhttps://pompasaur.itch.io/gnarled-hag
She seems scary enough already, don't you think?
>>98456017There's a witch in my game. She lives in a swamp and looks like a female satyr. Well, that's just her avatar. In reality she's a primordial being who IS the swamp, she just used different forms to communicate with people.The PCs chased the last surviving member of a necromantic cult in to the swamp. When they found her, she leapt into their arms, begging to be taken away even if it meant she'd get beheaded. The witch hadn't appreciated her intruding, and had put her through hell. Inside the swamp, the witch can basically bend reality however she wishes, so the last few days had been more like several weeks to the necromancer.The witch trapped the PCs too, demanding that they give the necromancer to her. They refused, saying she needs to be taken to stand trial. Fair enough. The witch said she'd exchange the necromancer for one finger. One PC agreed, cut off his finger and gave it to the witch. The witch enchanted it and gave it back. Witch Fingers are magic items that boost spellcasting and give you a free cantrip. Depending on the creature it came from (the rarer the better) and how well the wielder knows the creature, the power it grants is greater. My plan was that later, when a calamity falls upon them, they'd be tempted to try to get more witch fingers done, creating a moral dilemma.20% of the continent is being looted, pillaged, and raped by Orc Mohammad (ṣallā llahu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) and none of them have even mentioned the witch and a possible deal :/
>>98456821Most people fly, but only half the population are women, and almost no one is a Puritan.
>>98456017I can't do anything with my group because they refuse to immerse themselves and are number crunching faggots.
>>98474013Baba Yaga could be a monster or a sage. It depended on her mood.
>>98484118Most of the people don't go to the beach, but Jaws was scary to pretty much anyone.
>>98484152The scariest thing in the world to that type is permanent decreases. The witch steals your XP. She unenchants your magic items. She forces you to allocate your level ups poorly. You're cursed to multiclass into whatever you've minmaxed yourself out of being any good at.
I like the old slavic folklore witches. They kidnap babies. They eat the boys to gain their youth/vitality and raise the girls as their daughters, but are terrible mothers who do all sorts of rituals to make them possessed by demons. The more demons the witch is possessed by, the more powerful but also the more inhuman and insane she is. Then the daughter grows up and repeats the cycle. So each witch was once an innocent victim who goes on to murder and convert other innocents.
>>98486991could you save them , by doing paladin stuff.
>>98487022Sure, it's all make believe, maybe if they're still relatively young and not too insane or possessed
>>98456017Powers far beyond the players’ capabilities which they do not understand. Knights, serial killers, bears, they all bleed. They follow the rules of the universe. You can hide from them. You might be able to run. A witch isn’t bound to these rules. She might follow strange ones you don’t know, if any at all. If you stab her she might just laugh as you hit her enchanted hide. If you hide from her she might find you with astral projection or familiars. If you run from her she might fly up to you and strike you dead. You never know if you’re really safe.
>>98456043Aunt Gladys was certified KINO
>>98486933ADND2E here, it fucking sucks to have your con permanently sucked by an undead. Though watching a fatalistic barbarian go chimp on a vampire is pretty funny.
>>98486991This is interesting because it is clearly derived from an essentially negative slant on Siberian shamanic practices, where the shaman allows themself to be possessed by spirits in order to allow them to speak and act through the shamanShamen also tend to have congenital fitting conditions like epilepsy, which are sometimes referred to as the "shaman disease", and is supposed to eventually kill one who is not initiated properly.
>>98456301And then 30 years later the Black fucking Death shows upThey could NOT catch a break in the 14th century
>>98474104I've watched that scene a dozen times and I always miss the pineapple
>>98456298>and everyone I tried to discuss it with said it was a shit concept.It is a shit concept... for a tabletop game. For a novel or youtube greentext reading, it's perfect.
>>98480789is that a fucking bimbofied Nick Cage
