This story comes not from the Roleplayer Guild but elsewhere, at a tabletop far away, now some time ago.

The gist of it, so not to make it needlessly long, was that my players rolled for everything; a truly random, unpredictable table. They had always wanted to roll for their scores, their hit points, even play classes they had not regularly considered because of that. It was more classical that way, but each of them quickly developed characters they were highly protective of. They were weak, fragile, and faced by a world of overwhelming oppression where monsters did lurk in the night and wolves at your doorstep were truly mortal threats. Weak as they individually were, they strove to become something meaningful as they knew death in a low magic campaign was, effectively, permanent. They knew the powers of the arcane were dying, gods no longer answered prayers so the most powerful divine magic was limited, and magic items were scarce.

They were thrown into a story of turmoil where a storm of terror, conceptual and physical, raged against the countryside and left villages reduced to cinder and ruin; one character so happened to have rolled and survive said attack, thus had the only plot reason. Farmer turned paladin, forming a crusade against whatever and whoever was responsible, all they knew was terror seared into them. The player always asked for details here and there and like a therapist teasing apart of tangled knot of dreams, one that could not be so easily tugged apart, they learned more and more grim truth. It convinced them, then in turn convicted them to convince the rest of the party, who were mostly adrift. What is a story without story in a tabletop? All the world open, what to do?

Fight death of course, literal and metaphorical.

They pieced together a myth of the realm's reaper, a being of terrible and horrific power that did not sow strife, rather harvested the evils planted by people. But such a thing could not exist, all the great monsters were dead - dragons, titans, illithids, demons - what was the cause? They were sent on quest after quest, story after story, until they began to find tidings that this force was nothing so exotic. It was no coincidence these fringe towns were being consumed by thunderous storm or blinding fire or their people mauled and mangled. They came to delve deep barrows, searching ancient tombs and graves, pillaging one artifact that terrified them so, for it almost seemed to compel them, that they dared not to touch it; they even tried to cast the blade into a fire, but it showed no sign of fatigue. Instead it menaced and haunted them.

All four became ever more fearful of their quest as the odds played more stacked yet convinced constantly, roused by sheer chance circumstances their leader, the paladin, kept interpreting as fate - with no doing by the Dungeon Master - that this was what they needed to do. So they did, until they found the trail they had been looking for. That was when all the playful, eager, heroic banter ended. As they stalked through the woods of the deepest, unknown places, venturing out beyond what the meager maps of the world had charted into the north before the greatest peak in the range, the anxiety quickened.

The characters had prepared every moment of the game to fight this creature, the culmination of years of efforts playing. They had planned everything they needed based off of all the scattered fragments they could. But now? Now the mood changed and each of them was on edge. When the description was at last read and they faced the myth they created for themselves, they learned just how woefully wrong they were about the world's interpretation of death. All the folklore they had studied, all of it was imagination and creative interpretation by those involved, even the paladin himself.

I consider this my greatest success, as for several years I conned my players into inventing a web of lies and understandings they themselves believed in and out, all by their own creation, with I as the Dungeon Master not needing to do anything for it. This moment of success, that capitalized and epitomized this moment? The sheer pinnacle of the event where the climactic showdown was to take place at last?

The players were afraid to die.

They feared for their characters...