I'm confused with the concept of horror campaigns. I'm a huge horror movie guy, I love them, but how could a good scare happen at the table? Short of a small, hand-held remote for me to dramatically flick the light off with, I can't see how my guys would get scared at much less.
Are there specific guildlines for having a horror session? I'm waist deep in my Forgotten Realms pantheon-themed campaign, but I would like to set my guys up in a haunted keep for a portion of the paragon tier.
Any suggestions or good links for me to check out? Much appreciated.
Screaming something such as "I'll use your guts as my cat's cradle!!!" or some such may get some reaction. It really depends on how greatly you can immerse the players into what's going on in the story.
The light thing would be an excellent one as well. You might even want to pull a reversed maneuver. If you could, get some sort of bright light underneath the table, and keep the room dimly lit. When a dramatic event comes into play, suddenly something glows under the table *might* cause a player to back up from the table.
Give creatures the power to freeze characters to the spot. Basically the monsters are so mid-bendingly horrible and despicable, that everyone who sees it for the first time, has to make a fortitude save or be frozen to the spot for one or two combat rounds. That will unsettle them a bit.
Infections that cause characters to mutate into the undead can be good as well. Basically the players are racing to find the cure before they become undead.
The old 3.5 book Heroes of Horror have some advice on this as do the World of Darkness core rulebook.
In my opinion the trick is to use combat encounters sparsely (but make them complicated and nigh-impossible when they appear), introduce all kinds of eerie effects and vividly describe and detail everything around the players. Using props to make it all seem more real for the players is also a great method, the more immersed your players become in the game the more creepy and personal it'll all feel to them.
I recently designed a horror-themed dungeon for 4th edition, I haven't run any players through it yet but it might be inspirational:
The dungeon is an underdark tomb of an old wizard, the wizard accidentally summoned a shadow god in his library (think the dark gods from the Wizard of Earthsea books) and the dark being now controls his old study. This shadow god have full control over everything in the dungeon aslong as it's dark, when there's light it cannot do anything.
The dungeon is designed with a sort of magical wind that blows through the dungeon at random intervals this wind blows out torches and dispels any kind of magical lightning the players might have, so when the wind blows the shadow god will have free reign for a couple of rounds until the wind have passed through and the players can reignite their fire. While it's dark I'll introduce alot of weird effects one of the players will have a mayor headache and will loose hit points constantly in the darkness, the fighter's weapon will be stolen and end up in the hand of a nearby skeleton without the skeleton having moved when the light is turned back on and so on.
Furthermore I've written up some props, old pages from the former resident wizard's diary following his accidental summoning (think Lord of the Rings in the first book/movie where the "PCs" find the old notes of the dead dwarven king in Moria) and furthermore they'll find clues as to what kinda creature they're dealing with, books about the shadow gods are opened around the library and in one of the first rooms they find the tome of a long dead hunter of these kinds of creatures opened on a pedestal. It should have a better effect that the players themselves can read all these notes than if I just read it up for them as I usually do.
The combat encounters will also be blind-fighting making them extremely hard, when it's dark at certain places the skeletons of long dead tombrobbers will rise against them, but they'll just be piles of bones again as soon as the players light the areas. Furthermore the more information they get on the "boss" the shadow god the more they'll realise that they have no chance in hell beating it on paragon tier and thus their focus will be changed from treasure hunting to just getting out alive. All these effects combined with very detailed descriptions of everything in the dungeon should do well to creep out the players.
Just be aware that some players out there don't like these kinds of adventures, if a player is sensitive around horror material in general you should probably make sure he/she can stomach a creepy campaign, because if you do it right it'll be creepier than any horror movie.
The RPG Dread has a rather nice mechanic that, used well, can really get a good tense feeling game (horror or otherwise): basically it has no dice at all but a Jenga tower instead. Whenever a player wants their character to do something with some element of risk, they have to pull a brick from the tower; if the tower topples when they are doing so, that character is dead. As the game progresses, the increasingly precarious tower is a constant reminder of the iminent risk of character death.
Now, "death" might be a fairly extreme way of ruling it in a long running campaign, unless the party have fairly healthy resources of Raise Dead or such, so maybe the character just goes temporarily insane and the player loses control of their character for a duration or similar temporary loss of the character. As long as it has enough of a threat that the players fear it happening when going to the tower.
The added advantage of swapping dice for the tower in a long running campaign at the haunted setting is that the change can move the players slightly outside of their usual comfort zone. I advise keeping some use of the numerical values (such as higher skills mean less trips to the tower when attempting something using that skill) so that there is some consistancy with the characters and allow them to "utilise" their backgrounds (so maybe the cat burglar Rogue doesn't even need to pull from the tower at all for picking locks).
The trick to keeping the game tense is to not send the players too often to the tower at the start of the game, or you likely find all the players reluctant to try anything at all later on. Better to start with hardly any trips to the tower at all, slowly ramping up the bricks needed to be pulled as things slowly build to a climax in the encounters.
Oh, and players should be allowed to make a dramtic sacrifice by deliberately knocking down the tower at a crucial moment.
The RPG Dread has a rather nice mechanic that, used well, can really get a good tense feeling game (horror or otherwise): basically it has no dice at all but a Jenga tower instead. Whenever a player wants their character to do something with some element of risk, they have to pull a brick from the tower; if the tower topples when they are doing so, that character is dead. As the game progresses, the increasingly precarious tower is a constant reminder of the iminent risk of character death.
Now, "death" might be a fairly extreme way of ruling it in a long running campaign, unless the party have fairly healthy resources of Raise Dead or such, so maybe the character just goes temporarily insane and the player loses control of their character for a duration or similar temporary loss of the character. As long as it has enough of a threat that the players fear it happening when going to the tower.
The added advantage of swapping dice for the tower in a long running campaign at the haunted setting is that the change can move the players slightly outside of their usual comfort zone. I advise keeping some use of the numerical values (such as higher skills mean less trips to the tower when attempting something using that skill) so that there is some consistancy with the characters and allow them to "utilise" their backgrounds (so maybe the cat burglar Rogue doesn't even need to pull from the tower at all for picking locks).The trick to keeping the game tense is to not send the players too often to the tower at the start of the game, or you likely find all the players reluctant to try anything at all later on. Better to start with hardly any trips to the tower at all, slowly ramping up the bricks needed to be pulled as things slowly build to a climax in the encounters.
Oh, and players should be allowed to make a dramtic sacrifice by deliberately knocking down the tower at a crucial moment.
That is at least 86% genius. I think I may have to incorporate that at some point.
I think I see now that I probably will have to work incredibly hard to actually scare my players. I think I'll look at it in more of a suspense outlook, rather than literally being scary.
You guys are great!
Once they took a bite they found it full of teeth, small teeth. Soon to find out children were missing from a near by town.
*cue the music*
Players were immediately hooked and were thinking something was definitely different about this adventure.
Throw them a shocking curveball to set the tone early and don't let up. Humor kills horror.
Although this is a D&D forum, so I should try to keep things on topic and possibly give some ideas about what made that game so scary and how to apply it to D&D. The GM for that game didn't really use "jump-out-at-you" shock value kind of things, he gradually built sort of an eerie mood over the ~8 hours we played, so I would steer away from shock-value fear, and go for mood instead. Another key is using descriptions that are evocative enough to be scary, but giving your players imaginations enough room to do the rest. No amount of detail from you can scare someone, but giving them a general framework and letting their overactive imaginations fill in the details
. That's what'll get 'em. One final thing—keep combat and dice-rolling to a minimum. The less numbers the better. Numbers are not scary, words are.Anyway I hope that was at least somewhat helpful.
I recently introduced the undead in my campaign and normally I would have thought the fear effect would be ruined by the most knowledgeable player who would pick up on the little details. I had an artifact of power glowing a menacing green and he automatically deduced that the undead were going to show up. But I knew he would guess that. This guy also guessed that the party was going to fight a dragon before the damned lizard even showed up. But I still managed to scare the crap out of the whole party because of how I introduced them. I threw at them monsters they had never seen before (I used the Open Grave sourcebook 4th ed.), the artifact teleported the undead inside the house, and besides the standard undead (skeletons) the others I described with little detail. The party knew what was coming almost every step of the way but because I did it dramatically and gave them very little info about what they were fighting it still creeped them out.
I hope this ranting helped. Good luck!
Hey everybody!
I'm confused with the concept of horror campaigns. I'm a huge horror movie guy, I love them, but how could a good scare happen at the table? Short of a small, hand-held remote for me to dramatically flick the light off with, I can't see how my guys would get scared at much less.
Are there specific guildlines for having a horror session? I'm waist deep in my Forgotten Realms pantheon-themed campaign, but I would like to set my guys up in a haunted keep for a portion of the paragon tier.
Any suggestions or good links for me to check out? Much appreciated.
There are alot of different options for pursuing a horror theme in a D&D game. Some of the modes of horror that work well in other games and stories, however, might be more difficult to convey in D&D. This is due to the nature of the game, and the heroes being...well...heroes. This seems to be the case more so in 4th edition than in earlier editions just due to the emphasis on transparency between DM and player, as well as the general hardiness of the PCs as well.
The main point to bridge is that in order for horror to be really effective, the PCs have to want to be involved. Horror isn't for everybody. Some players may feel uncomfortable with it, and thus disengage from it either by showing disinterest, or by adding levity that may break the atmosphere.
And atmosphere is supremely important to effective horror.
Here's just a few things I've picked up from my many years of running a horror campaign.
Mood and Atmosphere:
-I often used taper candles for lighting at my horror games. Using tiny lamps with tea lights or votives in them have been useful as well. Be wary of big fat candles that will tempt players to mess around with the wax. Having such illumination can help create a sense of spooky space. Also, it serves to place emphasis on the table and yourself. Players are less likely to idly gaze around at what's in the room simply because they can't really see it. I'd recommend prohibiting laptops at the table, and disallowing any kind of tv. Have people turn off their cells as well.
-Use compelling background music. You can have cds and ipods and such with certain playlists that you'd initiate for certain types of scenes. There is tons of creepy/spooky music out there, and I'm sure you can get loads of suggestions on different music to play to invoke specific kinds of mood (people love to talk about how awesome their taste in music is). You want music to be noticed, but not to be the focus...so keep volume reasonable.
Kinds of Horror and invocations of Fear:
You mentioned that you wanted the players to kick around a haunted keep. This is a good starting point to figure out how you will establish mood in those sessions. Ghosts and hauntings are a great source for all kinds of creepy and weird. You can raid the literature and films out there for inspirations about how best to use phantasms and apparitions as a means to really creep your players out.
Subvert what they know...Having weird hiccups in space and time are common elements of a haunted place. A PC might be walking down a hall that he or she has walked down a dozen times before, only this time...the hallway just doesn't seem to end, or it leads to a room that the pc has never seen before. In this room could be what seems to be a scullery maid who is showing her back to the pc, the sound of weeping might be issuing from her. The Pc could watch, and it could seem as if the maid is about to turn to face the pc, but never quite does. The maid could disappear if the player looks away, or the maid could turn to the pc and display a horrifying visage before disintegrating into a mist...
If you are going for a ghost story, make sure there is a story that the ghosts are telling. Places are haunted for a reason, and they are usually reasons that make us cringe with both sympathy and revulsion. Have the player's slowly untangle the web and weave of this place, with each pull of the strings revealing yet another terrible little truth.
Vignettes?
The DMG2 talks about using vignettes as a means to provide exposition on a stroy in an interesting way. Perhaps as the PCs explore this haunted keep, they could enter a room or interact with an object that causes the PCs to experience the last living day of some of the now ghostly inhabitants. Create little stories, backgrounds, and very minimal stat blocks for these temporary pcs, and give them to your players. Let the PCs write/RP how things finally ended for some of these unfortunates, and allow that knowledge to be useful in resolving the hauntings, perhaps. I've used this to great effect before.
Beware the Zombie Apocolypse
The kind of game where the players just end up in an endless combat with the undead tends neither to be scary, nor horrifying. There is no tension, and the only kind of fear that tends to develop is fear for a player's character living or dying. I'm not saying that a slog through the hordes of undead is incapable of being fun or rewarding...it just tends not to be horrifyinf. It's familiar to us, and is almost a cliche of good time ridiculous over the top splatterpunk fun. This also applies to exceptionally graphic descriptions of decay, rot, violence, etc. Use it sparingly, lest it just become par for the course.
Hope some of those ideas help. If you want more, just lemme know.
here's another thread that you might find useful as well:
community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
Thanks again.
Thanks, Malphaeus. This post helped out a ton. I particularly took in your "Kinds of horror and invocations of fear" bit. That had me kicking around all types of stuff. (Probably going to pick up the maid deal, too) lol...
Thanks again.
My pleasure!
I ran a ravenloft game for about 7 years. We played weekly at first, then monthly...and then semi-annually...
But, in that time I learned alot about running a game that would creep my players out. I had a fair number of successful sessions, but I also had a number of sessions where the mood I was trying to strike just didn't work out. Lemme know if you have any other questions, or anything like that.
Cheers, and best of luck.