The Horror
Size: At our height, we had six players in total. That's a lot in action horror, and it makes it difficult to really scare players. They feel less vulnerable in large groups, and if they split up it becomes a headache for me as a game master. Handling six players is doable, but four at most is comfortable for me. Three is ideal: it's enough to create role-playing tension but not so fatal that if one character goes down the team is doomed. For Convergence, we had just Guppy, Hammer, and Jim-Bean.
Investigation: The scenario started slowly. The few corpses that were left were found oddly bruised. Hammer, the investigator character, got an opportunity to put his forensic skills to the test. I described the corpses and scenes in gory detail. The most effective scenes had no gore at all, but were suspiciously odd – a napkin on the floor, a chair overturned. It really creeped the players out.
Role-Playing: Hammer's player (George) and Guppy's player (my brother) were willing to role-play their conflicts. They played it straight, logically escalating their actions without resorting to outright player-killing. I couldn't control this, I could just sow the seeds of dissent and hope that they were mature enough to handle the tension.
A Shocking Moment: The non-player characters who joined the team were a sheriff and his deputy. They were of course there to die. The sheriff died in a particularly horrible fashion – his brain was sucked out through his eyeballs by a Mi-go. The attack and the bizarre circumstances by which the sheriff was "killed" put them on edge.
Props: I used several audio props, including the buzzing sounds of the Mi-go trying to communicate with the players, creepy old classical music, and the sound of a Mi-go braincase (that'd be the sheriff) speaking through a voice synthesizer. All of this is easily handled with a laptop, but these simple audio clips enhanced the atmosphere.
A False Sense of Security: At one point the agents logically did what anyone would do: hole up and wait for help. I let them get a cell phone call out and an entire platoon showed up. Then said platoon disappeared. The monster was that powerful and that scary.
Paranoia: The shapeshifting creature could be anyone or anything. It appeared and spoke through the mouths of various victims and at one point showed up as a cute dog. As everyone knows, never pet the cute doggie.
A Big Finale: The monster could only be killed by a bacterial infection that spread slowly, which meant that it would take several shots to keep it at bay, and then the agents would have to run for their lives. And that's exactly what they did, but not before the thing literally tore up the entire town. It was less a monster to be harmed and more a natural event to be survived.
In the end, the scenario's success was as much attributable to the players as it was to my planning. The right mix of investigation, role-playing, and conflict made it the pinnacle of action horror. It'll be hard to keep the bar high, but at least I know it can be achieved.
Lesson Learned: With a small group, creepy props, and just the right amount of fear and anxiety, a good game can become an awesome one.
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