Pundit's horror tips and Tentacle Ennui

[dsivis]

1st of all, Pundit, I think they were great, especially due to my fondness for messing with my players' heads. Just one objection, tho...

I don't think I'm the only one suffering from a case of tentacle ennui.

I really think tentacles have been done to death (maybe undeath too). Even one of my favorite campaign settings (Eberron) has not one, but two subtypes of evil outsiders focused on tentacles (Quori and Daelkyr)! TWO! ARGH!

Maybe it's just my friends, but we've become sort of inoculated against the things and instead of shuddering, we start cracking up. This was about the time we nicknamed a 1st-year student "Hentai." (I can explain Dagorhir naming conventions in another thread).

So what other physical (or non-Euclidean) objects/things/etc can we throw at our players in terms of creature characteristics besides zombie-ness or tentacles? Right now, I'm fond of the orifices-that-should-not-be, at least until my gaming circle starts giggling over that... :brood:

[beejazz]

Chitin's always good.
Fungus.
Uh... maybe something Colour Out of Space-ish? Incorporeality, done right, can be pretty spooky.
Or just give the tentacles knuckles and fingernails. Remember the paramites from Abe's Odysee et al?

[T-Willard]

Denny stepped out of the shadows when we called his name, and our flashlights seemed to dim (I swear mine buzzed like a dying neon sign) as the beams slid across him. He looked... wrong. He was crouched slightly to the left, like he was favoring broken ribs, and his face was... smeared. The lips twisted on the left toward his eye, and on the right they trailed over his chin. His teeth were all in place wrong, molars in the front with an incisor dead in front. One eye stared at us from a pool of bruised flesh, the other was over his brow line, a bloodshot pool with a silvery iris floating in it.

"It's everything we imagined, George. It's.... bliss.

That's horror.

The tentacles wipped across the room, seeking life and blood, the sucker pulsing and the rotating hooks, usually seen on giant squid, twisting back and forth as the shadows sought our life.

Yawn.

The cat meowed, and its mouth opened wider, and wider, the howl turning into a bubbling yowl as it coughed blood onto the tile floor. It's fur rippled  and we could hear its muscles and bones crack and warp. It's skull free of the confines of flesh and blood, it howled at us, a thick, blood hungry sound.

It's hunting cry done, it moved forward, a liquid slither that bore no relationship to a cat.

Horror.

Need more?

[T-Willard]

BTW-First one? A doppleganger that used a dead man as it's template. A d20 Future game. Think Alien not Army of Darkness.

Second one: Evard's Black Tentacles

Third one: A tiny Krenshaw in a d20 Modern game that had been killing and eating the livers of street bums.



It isn't what it is, it's how you describe it, modify it.

[dsivis]

Also, taking known critters and ever so slightly altering their abilities, like when Monte Cook (I think it was him) took a winter wolf and turned it into a bonespike hound. Stats were nearly identical, but he freaked out his players!