Scary Monsters.

[zylosan]

Kromm wrote this

"The good GM convinces PCs not to go after scary monsters by giving the monsters a bite to go with the bark. Making it clear to the players that they'll die on the first turn of combat is the right way to make monsters scary."

How do YOU go about conviencing your players in game that attempting X will be a real death trap rather than a heroic challenge that NPC's fear to take on but heros accept.

For example. If Bob and Tim are happly killing every "monster" they meet (school children, nuns, cattle, members of a disadvantaged ethnic heritage (orcs), etc. When Sid the NPC tells the characters that the cave ahead is home to a terrrible monster that no man can defeat. (small white rabbit being popular.) How do you distinguish this as a real GM warning that your going to die if you do this dumb ass rather than simply more flavor text. (said small white rabbit wiped out a quarter of the party before they wised up.)