Checklist: 20 Terrifying Star Wars Moments

Exactly how scary Otherspace played out depends on how heartless a jerk your gamemaster was. Otherspace was an adventure module designed by Bill Slavicsek and published by West End Games in 1989 for the first edition Star Wars roleplaying game. Presaging the icky organic tech-using Yuuzhan Vong warriors by a decade, the story throws a group of Rebel agents into a parallel dimension infested with spider-shaped death worshipping cultists called the Charon who use unwholesomely grown devices. As soon as the Rebels are deposited into "otherspace," they explore an abandoned Rebel transport whose inner chambers are filled with strands of webbing and worrisome claw marks. When their search takes them aboard the lumpy Charon flagship Desolate, the Rebels get a taste of the bad luck to come with a simple house cat (or Star Wars equivalent thereof) crosses their path:

...But something is very wrong. Force users making a Very Easy sense roll detect no life within the creature. In fact, the feline registers as a total absence of the Force. Easy medicine rolls determine that while the creature mimics life functions, it has been altered and is no longer alive. Most of the nerve cells are destroyed, some replaced with micromechanical switches, circuits and fibers.

Deeper inside the vessel, the players are exposed to clouds of mind-altering red mist, prompting the gamemaster to slide players who fail their save rolls a card of printed text. The GM would eye the affected player to see if they stayed "in character," even if their character was now suddenly changing thanks to the alien mist. A sample card:

"The mist ahead parts and you see the others from your group. They are laughing and joking, full of life and vitality. You hate them! Don't the realize the futility of it all? Only death awaits you within this desolate place. The image fills your mind, and you long for the peace and security of the Final Jump. Life has become too stressful, too random. It must be destroyed. You reach for your blaster, ready to extinguish the curse of life from the others."

In the sequel to Otherspace, Invasion, published a few months later and designed by Douglas Kaufman, the aliens breach the dimensional divide and crash-land on a Rebel safeworld, tearing through the base of non-combatants and webbing them up faster than a xenomorph cuts through LV-426 (if you don't get that reference, turn in your geek card now). If that wasn't hair-raising enough, the adventure module engineers a classic horror movie cliché into its final act: the false ending.

Devious gamemasters were encouraged to let their players think the story was over. It even came with a "read-aloud" that basically served as a "THE END" title card, and advised the gamemaster to hand-out end-of-evening rewards and experience points. Then as part of wrapping up and setting up the "next" adventure, that poker-faced GM tells a player that he thought he heard something coming from their ship's hyperdrive. When the hapless character goes to investigate, the GM springs the trap: the biggest, baddest Charon -- a nasty hybrid of an Imperial officer and a spider-warrior -- strikes in the cramped confines of the ship's engineering section.