Eberron horror campaign [Archive] - Wizards Community

Eberron horror campaign [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Pivotal
04-09-08, 09:03 AM Hey, I'm working on creating an eberron horror campaign. So far the idea is that the players will be evil, or at least not worried about doing nasty stuff. They will be employed as a task force doing hired killings, thefts, etc. Theyre hired by an extremly dangerous wizard gnome from karrnath. They start getting entangled with among others the blood of vol as main enemies, but they will also meet others such as the inspired which will mess a lot with them via dreams and such.

Im using a modified version of the taint system. I will be doing a lot of horror situations where I will try to get the characters actually scared and worried with the mood and setting. Among others I will be using undeads and I dont mind using uniqe self-designed monsters spesificly made for freaking out the players.

So, my question is if anyone has got any good horror ideas for this campaign? Im trying to use alot of good eberron flavor. I allow all books and intend for this to be a dangerous campaign for the players and their characters.

Im looking for ideas for missions, run-ins with blood of vol, run-ins with the inspired/dreaming dark, creatures, situations, npc's and so on :)
madninjapimp
04-09-08, 05:30 PM The "trick" to running a good horror game in my opinion is knowing your players well, and relying on as little dice rolling as possible. You may throw the most scary monster CR will allow at the party but once you make them start rolling dice the mood becomes dice rolling, not horror. If you keep the environment your storytelling and character interaction then it can become more tense, and more difficult for the players to detach themselves through their dice.

With that in mind D&D is very much about dice too. When you do run combat make it a point to describe the effects as they occur. Describing the grave dirt and snapped fingernail thats left in wound just taken, the fact that it will linkely infect, the blood now drizzeling onto the grass at your feet as you fight the ghoul, it's far more disquieting than just letting the PC know he took 8 damage and needs to make a save (though those are important afterthoughts).

Hope that gives some food for thought.
Syltorian
04-09-08, 06:08 PM Note that I have not tried this before, but reading madninjapimp's post made me think whether one could not do hit-points behind the DM screen. Tell your players how wounded they are... but not what their exact hit points are. That should keep them somewhat afraid - though perhaps too careful. I'll repeat this, because it is important: I have not tried this, so criticism is most definitely welcome.

Other than that, rather than gory details, horror is mostly about the unknown. An enemy who seems to know their greatest fears and hopes, and can manipulate them, who attacks their friends just when they turn away, who plays with them (diversion attacks), turns their friends against them.

Perhaps one player against another; try to have one of the PCs be captured when they are alone, or simply side-tracked or for one reason or another not show up the next day... then impersonate them - and let the player himself play the impersonator, so the other players don't catch on. This may depend on what your players are like, and, again, it is an idea I had but not one I have actually tried.

Turn the familiar against them. If using dreams, begin by describing the house they are in as they remember it... with one or two details that are wrong. Then begin to slowly pile those details up. Use unseen dangers. Ghosts, any other kind of etheral or incorporeal enemy, poison, disease. Also use enemies that do not seem like enemies. I've always thought of Vadalis as one of the potentially most dangerous houses out there... because nobody expects all the birds, rats, dogs, cats and other critters in a city to turn on them. Or simply spy (especially if they are awakened): so use seemingly normal creatures, plants, animals, and so forth, with a twist.

Perhaps use some coterminous planes to make some vital spells difficult to cast. Or use some of the 'signs' from Elder Evils... provided that does not feel like denying people their class abilities; it should be a difficulty to overcome, not an outright 'you can't do this!'.

Also, check the Mournland Horrors ideas thread, wherever it has gone to, for ideas.
Sakon22
04-10-08, 01:35 AM See the creepy events thread in d20 horror (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=166882)

The Tips, Trick and Advice for Running a Horror Campaign thread might also be useful (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1008815)
Pivotal
04-10-08, 03:38 AM Good suggestions so far but I was hoping for more stuff that was eberron spesific, thats kind of the reason of posting it here :)
Sakon22
04-11-08, 02:16 AM Yea I know, but I figured everyone else would be doing that so I suggested the creme de la creme of the d20 horror. Besides, it doesn't take too much creativity to import some of those ideas into Eberron.
Siran Dunmorgan
04-11-08, 04:12 AM Good suggestions so far but I was hoping for more stuff that was eberron spesific, thats kind of the reason of posting it here :)

Eberron? Horrifying? Aye. There's a lot of that, lad.

Where to begin… where to begin… let's see…

Well, to start with, there's what the others've said, above, about setting things up so the sense of horror is there in your players, as well as in their characters. That's always essential, an' you'd do well not to neglect it. I'll say some more about that in a minute.

Then, there's Eberron. Now, in Eberron, you've got your horrors, and then again, you've got your horrors. Let me explain.

If you're Josef the average Karrn, chances are you're a Last War veteran. You've seen horror. You've seen the war mages call things up to do battle for them. You saw the enchantments that shredded Dulf's mind, when you and your buddies were pulling back across White Arch, just before it all went to Khyber. And now? You're an adventurer. Maybe you've even got a rank or two in dungeoneering, which means you're no stranger either to wizardry or to the creepy-crawlies that wander around in the darker places of the world.

The usual sort of sanity-bending weirdness isn't going to work, for you, because you lived through the worst of it, altogether too few years ago. The Warlord ir'Patan's speech about the puddle of goo that was your best friend's head comes to mind here, as an example. No, you've had gore aplenty, and while you've been afraid for your life—more times than you'n count, most likely—you've not been real and truly horrified.

Horror, now, that's something else. Horror is what comes from thinking there might be something worse than the Last War. Fear is a part of it, aye, there is that, and a good fright is half-way to true horror. Horror is something that happens in the midst of fear, when beyond the fear itself, you come to know that something...that something is different. It takes a lot to horrify an adventurer in Eberron. Most of them have at least a smattering of understanding of the overall history of the world, and an superficial knowledge of the forces that drive it, so there's not much you can do to really horrify them; oh, and mind you, the idea is to get the players to suspend disbelief long enough to be horrified along with their characters.

The problem, of course, is that true horror arises from the contradiction of reality: we can be merely afraid easily enough, but horror... horror is about contact with things that are beyond understanding: not only do we not understand them, but we can't understand them, when we instinctively understand that the mere existence of such contradictions of sanity and reality undermine everything we need, everything we use, to make our world whole and sensible.

Let's try an example: the Church of the Silver Flame. Everyone knows about the Church, aye? More than slightly priggish, more than a little stuck-up? The ones who shredded the western half of Khorvaire with the Lycanthrope Purge? Aye, they're famous for that. Their lives are full of ritual and pious works, but for all that, they still have more than a little corruption in the ranks. Overall, or taken as a whole, a fairly open and honest religion. There aren't any surprises there, surely?

And that's right: there aren't any surprises there, and that's the point:

Horror is what you feel when you finally realize that the Church of the Silver Flame is right: that they've been telling the simple, unvarnished truth about the way the world actually works for centuries, and no one has been paying any attention at all.

Let's change directions a bit; we'll get back to the Church in a moment. Let's try this: let's go visit a hill fortress, a rath in the Karrnath sense. There it sits: a pile of dark stone on dark stone towering above a low, rocky hill, with perhaps a few dark green firs clinging to the slopes. Classic, gothic horror, yes?

We've not even gotten started. :D

Let's go visit those dungeons—you know, the basement of that rath. Huh. The stone down here looks a little different than the stone above. The chisel work isn't patterned quite the same way. A chat with the local Warlord's historian tells us that the stone here was already in place when the present structure was begun, in the generation before Galifar unified the Five Nations, and seems to be of goblin workmanship, possibly dating to the middle of the Dhakaani Empire period; the goblins clearly took advantage of the existing hill, just as we have.

Well, wait—here's something different: these foundation blocks from the Dhakaani era; when the rubble here has been scraped away, we can see that they're sitting on something else. The historian frowns, looking at what at first appeared to be the underlying rock of the hill, but now that you've pointed it out, seems to be another layer of dressed stone—but very, very different. This looks almost as if it had been melted into place, and the stone is… wrong. Not the local basalt at all.

That's when the first shock hits. There was something here before the goblins.. Aye, the goblins built here for the same reason we did: there was a hill, and a ready supply of stone. But the hill the goblins found was itself the ruin of something far older. Perhaps a loremaster could tell, if you bring her a sample of the stone from that layer.

She draws her cowl over her head, and says in a low voice that she can tell us no more, save that we should not disturb the old places overmuch.

The Warlord steps forth, and demands she tell what she know, of the foundations of our keep. Sullenly, she speaks, looking away, as if ashamed of the knowledge, spitting the words, as if glad to be rid of them. "Your keep?" she cackles, "you think it is yours? Or your family's? Pray to the Sovereigns that it is not so, fool! This stone you have brought me? This is demon's work! Even now, the evil that touched it in ages so long ago that even Dhakaan forgot them sings to me; aye, and it will sing in your heart, poison your blood, too, it will, if you linger over it! Cover over your foundations, petty Warlord! Let clean Dhakaani stone soothe the song of what lies beneath!"

Demons! Why, then, the old woman says that our keep is built upon some sort of ruin from the Age of Demons? This is magnificent! We had no idea that there had been a fortress here, a veritable stronghold, from time out of mind! The keep is a special place, then, perhaps one of those rare ancient places where the Rajahs and their minions held revels in the days before the coming of the dragons! The warlord is pleased.

We know, however, as adventurers, that there is likely to be danger there as well; still, it's nothing we can't handle; even if there is something down there, it's, well, it's a dungeon, like any other dungeon. Dangerous, but we're adventurers: that's what we're for. Let's go home lad,

And so we head back to the rath. Night is falling, and we've got sentry duty; it's our turn to walk the walls. From up here, we can see the plains of southern Karrnath sweeping away into the distance, other raths, like this one, rising above the plains every few leagues; from here, we can see the watch fires on half a hundred towers, just as they can see ours. It's a view we've come to treasure, over the past few years: those watch fires mean a strong Karrnath, a safe Karrnath.

Other raths. Like this one… Like this one??

That's when the words of that weird old Flamer priest you took after the Battle of Goram Road come back to you: "Man rules now where They ruled once! They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter, summer. They wait, patient and potent, for here shall They reign again."

They've never told anyone anything but the truth, the Church of the Silver Flame. Millions of years ago, this was Their world: the rakshas, the fiends, and those they serve. We revel, but not as They did. We shout and kill and take joy, but not as They did. Our most vile corruption is childlike innocence beside Them.

Great Lady! Mistress of Sun and Battle! Everything we've ever done, every sacrifice we've made, for Karrnath? They would sweep aside in a sanity-shattering instant if even the slightest tendril of what They were won past the Kalok Shash, the Binding Flame, the Silver Flame. Only the Flame, keeps them asleep, not dead, no, not even the Flame could truly burn Them. But the Flame will one day fail, we know that, we've been told that; that's what the old priest said, before Mizar cut out his tongue, to stop his muttering.

We live, sometimes, cheek by jowl with the undead, here in Karrnath. We once heard a priest of the Blood of Vol speak with pride of the antiquity of the line of Vol, and its origins in the dark rites of ancient Xen'drik. The rites that create the undead, then, reach back, what? A paltry eighty thousand years? An eyeblink of time, beside the antiquity of what slumbers beneath our feet!

This is not our Karrnath! It is Their Karrnath, Their Khorvaire, Their Eberron! Ai! Ai! The wind… the wind whispers with Their voices, the earth mutters with Their consciousness! Their hand is at our throats, yet we see them not!

Yeah. Horror? Eberron's got that. And no one notices, because it never occurs to them that the Church of the Silver Flame is telling the truth.

—Siran Dunmorgan

P.S. I have got to stop posting late at night, when I'm tottering on therragged egte of sleep. Cantthink shrait/
Gurv
04-11-08, 07:36 AM The "trick" to running a good horror game in my opinion is knowing your players well, and relying on as little dice rolling as possible. You may throw the most scary monster CR will allow at the party but once you make them start rolling dice the mood becomes dice rolling, not horror. If you keep the environment your storytelling and character interaction then it can become more tense, and more difficult for the players to detach themselves through their dice.

I agree with madninja. Horror is difficult in D&D. Horror is about dealing with the unknown, and everything in our game is very quantifyable.

Take away their hit points, and the players suddenly have a very realistic fear that the next trap could kill them. Make sure you're being descriptive (a lack of hit points indicates that the character is slowing down, and is having more and more trouble dealing with each attack).

To make this a little less lethal (some players might not handle not knowing their hit points as well as others), make sure to hand out plenty of nonlethal damage as well. That should result in plenty of near-misses, which will only heighten the drama.

As far as Eberron-specific advice...well, I don't know where to begin. Eberron is chock-full of horror. Any quori or daelkyr backed plot should be packed with it, as should the Mournlands. I think the trick will be having enough normal stuff around so that the players don't become numb to the abnormal.

Don't have every horror reflect negatively. Again, this goes back to not quantifying everything. Symbionts are a perfect example of this: mechanics-wise, they're like useful magic items. But unexpectedly waking up on a surgical table with a nice new tentacle whip is not a good way to begin the day.

One thing that happened to a character in a game I ran really freaked the player out, and I wasn't even aiming for a horror game. He had been (unknowingly) possessed for quite some time by an ancient, nearly god-like quori spirit, and it was beginning awaken within the PC. I decided it had senses like a rank 5 god (using Deities and Demigods rules) and could use them for a few rounds each day. So at not-so-random moments, this character would suddenly be able to see and hear over 5 miles, focusing on things that the quori found the least bit interesting.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Pivotal 04-09-08, 09:03 AM	Hey, I'm working on creating an eberron horror campaign. So far the idea is that the players will be evil, or at least not worried about doing nasty stuff. They will be employed as a task force doing hired killings, thefts, etc. Theyre hired by an extremly dangerous wizard gnome from karrnath. They start getting entangled with among others the blood of vol as main enemies, but they will also meet others such as the inspired which will mess a lot with them via dreams and such. Im using a modified version of the taint system. I will be doing a lot of horror situations where I will try to get the characters actually scared and worried with the mood and setting. Among others I will be using undeads and I dont mind using uniqe self-designed monsters spesificly made for freaking out the players. So, my question is if anyone has got any good horror ideas for this campaign? Im trying to use alot of good eberron flavor. I allow all books and intend for this to be a dangerous campaign for the players and their characters. Im looking for ideas for missions, run-ins with blood of vol, run-ins with the inspired/dreaming dark, creatures, situations, npc's and so on :)
madninjapimp 04-09-08, 05:30 PM	The "trick" to running a good horror game in my opinion is knowing your players well, and relying on as little dice rolling as possible. You may throw the most scary monster CR will allow at the party but once you make them start rolling dice the mood becomes dice rolling, not horror. If you keep the environment your storytelling and character interaction then it can become more tense, and more difficult for the players to detach themselves through their dice. With that in mind D&D is very much about dice too. When you do run combat make it a point to describe the effects as they occur. Describing the grave dirt and snapped fingernail thats left in wound just taken, the fact that it will linkely infect, the blood now drizzeling onto the grass at your feet as you fight the ghoul, it's far more disquieting than just letting the PC know he took 8 damage and needs to make a save (though those are important afterthoughts). Hope that gives some food for thought.
Syltorian 04-09-08, 06:08 PM	Note that I have not tried this before, but reading madninjapimp's post made me think whether one could not do hit-points behind the DM screen. Tell your players how wounded they are... but not what their exact hit points are. That should keep them somewhat afraid - though perhaps too careful. I'll repeat this, because it is important: I have not tried this, so criticism is most definitely welcome. Other than that, rather than gory details, horror is mostly about the unknown. An enemy who seems to know their greatest fears and hopes, and can manipulate them, who attacks their friends just when they turn away, who plays with them (diversion attacks), turns their friends against them. Perhaps one player against another; try to have one of the PCs be captured when they are alone, or simply side-tracked or for one reason or another not show up the next day... then impersonate them - and let the player himself play the impersonator, so the other players don't catch on. This may depend on what your players are like, and, again, it is an idea I had but not one I have actually tried. Turn the familiar against them. If using dreams, begin by describing the house they are in as they remember it... with one or two details that are wrong. Then begin to slowly pile those details up. Use unseen dangers. Ghosts, any other kind of etheral or incorporeal enemy, poison, disease. Also use enemies that do not seem like enemies. I've always thought of Vadalis as one of the potentially most dangerous houses out there... because nobody expects all the birds, rats, dogs, cats and other critters in a city to turn on them. Or simply spy (especially if they are awakened): so use seemingly normal creatures, plants, animals, and so forth, with a twist. Perhaps use some coterminous planes to make some vital spells difficult to cast. Or use some of the 'signs' from Elder Evils... provided that does not feel like denying people their class abilities; it should be a difficulty to overcome, not an outright 'you can't do this!'. Also, check the Mournland Horrors ideas thread, wherever it has gone to, for ideas.
Sakon22 04-10-08, 01:35 AM	See the creepy events thread in d20 horror (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=166882) The Tips, Trick and Advice for Running a Horror Campaign thread might also be useful (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1008815)
Pivotal 04-10-08, 03:38 AM	Good suggestions so far but I was hoping for more stuff that was eberron spesific, thats kind of the reason of posting it here :)
Sakon22 04-11-08, 02:16 AM	Yea I know, but I figured everyone else would be doing that so I suggested the creme de la creme of the d20 horror. Besides, it doesn't take too much creativity to import some of those ideas into Eberron.
Siran Dunmorgan 04-11-08, 04:12 AM	Good suggestions so far but I was hoping for more stuff that was eberron spesific, thats kind of the reason of posting it here :) Eberron? Horrifying? Aye. There's a lot of that, lad. Where to begin… where to begin… let's see… Well, to start with, there's what the others've said, above, about setting things up so the sense of horror is there in your players, as well as in their characters. That's always essential, an' you'd do well not to neglect it. I'll say some more about that in a minute. Then, there's Eberron. Now, in Eberron, you've got your horrors, and then again, you've got your horrors. Let me explain. If you're Josef the average Karrn, chances are you're a Last War veteran. You've seen horror. You've seen the war mages call things up to do battle for them. You saw the enchantments that shredded Dulf's mind, when you and your buddies were pulling back across White Arch, just before it all went to Khyber. And now? You're an adventurer. Maybe you've even got a rank or two in dungeoneering, which means you're no stranger either to wizardry or to the creepy-crawlies that wander around in the darker places of the world. The usual sort of sanity-bending weirdness isn't going to work, for you, because you lived through the worst of it, altogether too few years ago. The Warlord ir'Patan's speech about the puddle of goo that was your best friend's head comes to mind here, as an example. No, you've had gore aplenty, and while you've been afraid for your life—more times than you'n count, most likely—you've not been real and truly horrified. Horror, now, that's something else. Horror is what comes from thinking there might be something worse than the Last War. Fear is a part of it, aye, there is that, and a good fright is half-way to true horror. Horror is something that happens in the midst of fear, when beyond the fear itself, you come to know that something...that something is different. It takes a lot to horrify an adventurer in Eberron. Most of them have at least a smattering of understanding of the overall history of the world, and an superficial knowledge of the forces that drive it, so there's not much you can do to really horrify them; oh, and mind you, the idea is to get the players to suspend disbelief long enough to be horrified along with their characters. The problem, of course, is that true horror arises from the contradiction of reality: we can be merely afraid easily enough, but horror... horror is about contact with things that are beyond understanding: not only do we not understand them, but we can't understand them, when we instinctively understand that the mere existence of such contradictions of sanity and reality undermine everything we need, everything we use, to make our world whole and sensible. Let's try an example: the Church of the Silver Flame. Everyone knows about the Church, aye? More than slightly priggish, more than a little stuck-up? The ones who shredded the western half of Khorvaire with the Lycanthrope Purge? Aye, they're famous for that. Their lives are full of ritual and pious works, but for all that, they still have more than a little corruption in the ranks. Overall, or taken as a whole, a fairly open and honest religion. There aren't any surprises there, surely? And that's right: there aren't any surprises there, and that's the point: Horror is what you feel when you finally realize that the Church of the Silver Flame is right: that they've been telling the simple, unvarnished truth about the way the world actually works for centuries, and no one has been paying any attention at all. Let's change directions a bit; we'll get back to the Church in a moment. Let's try this: let's go visit a hill fortress, a rath in the Karrnath sense. There it sits: a pile of dark stone on dark stone towering above a low, rocky hill, with perhaps a few dark green firs clinging to the slopes. Classic, gothic horror, yes? We've not even gotten started. :D Let's go visit those dungeons—you know, the basement of that rath. Huh. The stone down here looks a little different than the stone above. The chisel work isn't patterned quite the same way. A chat with the local Warlord's historian tells us that the stone here was already in place when the present structure was begun, in the generation before Galifar unified the Five Nations, and seems to be of goblin workmanship, possibly dating to the middle of the Dhakaani Empire period; the goblins clearly took advantage of the existing hill, just as we have. Well, wait—here's something different: these foundation blocks from the Dhakaani era; when the rubble here has been scraped away, we can see that they're sitting on something else. The historian frowns, looking at what at first appeared to be the underlying rock of the hill, but now that you've pointed it out, seems to be another layer of dressed stone—but very, very different. This looks almost as if it had been melted into place, and the stone is… wrong. Not the local basalt at all. That's when the first shock hits. There was something here before the goblins.. Aye, the goblins built here for the same reason we did: there was a hill, and a ready supply of stone. But the hill the goblins found was itself the ruin of something far older. Perhaps a loremaster could tell, if you bring her a sample of the stone from that layer. She draws her cowl over her head, and says in a low voice that she can tell us no more, save that we should not disturb the old places overmuch. The Warlord steps forth, and demands she tell what she know, of the foundations of our keep. Sullenly, she speaks, looking away, as if ashamed of the knowledge, spitting the words, as if glad to be rid of them. "Your keep?" she cackles, "you think it is yours? Or your family's? Pray to the Sovereigns that it is not so, fool! This stone you have brought me? This is demon's work! Even now, the evil that touched it in ages so long ago that even Dhakaan forgot them sings to me; aye, and it will sing in your heart, poison your blood, too, it will, if you linger over it! Cover over your foundations, petty Warlord! Let clean Dhakaani stone soothe the song of what lies beneath!" Demons! Why, then, the old woman says that our keep is built upon some sort of ruin from the Age of Demons? This is magnificent! We had no idea that there had been a fortress here, a veritable stronghold, from time out of mind! The keep is a special place, then, perhaps one of those rare ancient places where the Rajahs and their minions held revels in the days before the coming of the dragons! The warlord is pleased. We know, however, as adventurers, that there is likely to be danger there as well; still, it's nothing we can't handle; even if there is something down there, it's, well, it's a dungeon, like any other dungeon. Dangerous, but we're adventurers: that's what we're for. Let's go home lad, And so we head back to the rath. Night is falling, and we've got sentry duty; it's our turn to walk the walls. From up here, we can see the plains of southern Karrnath sweeping away into the distance, other raths, like this one, rising above the plains every few leagues; from here, we can see the watch fires on half a hundred towers, just as they can see ours. It's a view we've come to treasure, over the past few years: those watch fires mean a strong Karrnath, a safe Karrnath. Other raths. Like this one… Like this one?? That's when the words of that weird old Flamer priest you took after the Battle of Goram Road come back to you: "Man rules now where They ruled once! They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter, summer. They wait, patient and potent, for here shall They reign again." They've never told anyone anything but the truth, the Church of the Silver Flame. Millions of years ago, this was Their world: the rakshas, the fiends, and those they serve. We revel, but not as They did. We shout and kill and take joy, but not as They did. Our most vile corruption is childlike innocence beside Them. Great Lady! Mistress of Sun and Battle! Everything we've ever done, every sacrifice we've made, for Karrnath? They would sweep aside in a sanity-shattering instant if even the slightest tendril of what They were won past the Kalok Shash, the Binding Flame, the Silver Flame. Only the Flame, keeps them asleep, not dead, no, not even the Flame could truly burn Them. But the Flame will one day fail, we know that, we've been told that; that's what the old priest said, before Mizar cut out his tongue, to stop his muttering. We live, sometimes, cheek by jowl with the undead, here in Karrnath. We once heard a priest of the Blood of Vol speak with pride of the antiquity of the line of Vol, and its origins in the dark rites of ancient Xen'drik. The rites that create the undead, then, reach back, what? A paltry eighty thousand years? An eyeblink of time, beside the antiquity of what slumbers beneath our feet! This is not our Karrnath! It is Their Karrnath, Their Khorvaire, Their Eberron! Ai! Ai! The wind… the wind whispers with Their voices, the earth mutters with Their consciousness! Their hand is at our throats, yet we see them not! Yeah. Horror? Eberron's got that. And no one notices, because it never occurs to them that the Church of the Silver Flame is telling the truth. —Siran Dunmorgan P.S. I have got to stop posting late at night, when I'm tottering on therragged egte of sleep. Cantthink shrait/
Gurv 04-11-08, 07:36 AM	The "trick" to running a good horror game in my opinion is knowing your players well, and relying on as little dice rolling as possible. You may throw the most scary monster CR will allow at the party but once you make them start rolling dice the mood becomes dice rolling, not horror. If you keep the environment your storytelling and character interaction then it can become more tense, and more difficult for the players to detach themselves through their dice. I agree with madninja. Horror is difficult in D&D. Horror is about dealing with the unknown, and everything in our game is very quantifyable. Take away their hit points, and the players suddenly have a very realistic fear that the next trap could kill them. Make sure you're being descriptive (a lack of hit points indicates that the character is slowing down, and is having more and more trouble dealing with each attack). To make this a little less lethal (some players might not handle not knowing their hit points as well as others), make sure to hand out plenty of nonlethal damage as well. That should result in plenty of near-misses, which will only heighten the drama. As far as Eberron-specific advice...well, I don't know where to begin. Eberron is chock-full of horror. Any quori or daelkyr backed plot should be packed with it, as should the Mournlands. I think the trick will be having enough normal stuff around so that the players don't become numb to the abnormal. Don't have every horror reflect negatively. Again, this goes back to not quantifying everything. Symbionts are a perfect example of this: mechanics-wise, they're like useful magic items. But unexpectedly waking up on a surgical table with a nice new tentacle whip is not a good way to begin the day. One thing that happened to a character in a game I ran really freaked the player out, and I wasn't even aiming for a horror game. He had been (unknowingly) possessed for quite some time by an ancient, nearly god-like quori spirit, and it was beginning awaken within the PC. I decided it had senses like a rank 5 god (using Deities and Demigods rules) and could use them for a few rounds each day. So at not-so-random moments, this character would suddenly be able to see and hear over 5 miles, focusing on things that the quori found the least bit interesting.