The Monster Manual just came out and Halloween is just around the corner? Coincidence? I THINK NOT!
In this thread we discuss all things spooky, scary, terrifying, and horrorific.
My ultimate goal is to run a 1-shot halloween adventure, so I would love ideas in that corner.
What monsters excite and terrify you? What traps are scary? What locations make your boots shake?
If you nerds can argue for 1000+ posts about ROCKS, then you can fill this thread up with actually useful ideas. Let's argue about fun stuff here. Ready go!
An invasion of spirit-based Undead, led by a Necromancer, Young X Shadow Dragon, Death Tyrant or Death Knight. Numbers and choice of leader level-dependent.
On Hallowe'en night all characters have disadvantage on saving throws vs Posession and the DC of all such checks increases by 2. Roll on the Ghosts! Dilemma on how to deal with those they posess for good-aligned parties. Lots of paranoia for others.
Normal Scarecrows become the animated monster type. Shadows, Wraiths, Banshees, Specters (and Poltergeists) abound.
1eejit wrote:
An invasion of the body snatchers theme... Intellect Devourers are taking over a town as people sleep. Maybe telegraph it with the players finding a corpse that has been pinned under a tree or a broken wagon or the like with his skull opened up... from the inside!
I'm doing a similar thing, Bloodscythe, except it follows Space Jam more-so than Body Snatchers. Someone makes a deal to play a game of Sack Tossing (it was originally played by Bugbears and Hobgoblins, who called it "Gnome Tossing") against a set of Intellect Devourers, thinking they're small and puny, his team versus their team. Then the Intellect Devourers go and possess some beefy bodies to compensate...It's up to the PCs to make it to the stadium in time (their team bus crashed, injuring/killing the majority of the team, they're basically the staff/jv squard) and recruit Carlos (the famous retired sack tosser to fill in the role of Michael Jordan) to stand a chance against them...
But another idea I had was a low-level adventure where they come across a town that is getting haunted/pestered by a headless horseman. Every week he demands a pumpkin, that he uses for his head "or else"! Essentially, he's some sorta monster/NPC riding a Nightmare (Scarecrow, maybe, or something more "deadly" to make him scary). But the catch? The PCs have to uncover the fact that if they wait a week, they can refuse to give him his pumpkin head. Why? Because they rot away, and he needs a carved pumpkin head to see...Not so scary now, is he?!
I have a whole retinue of what I like to call "Scooby Doo" adventures that are 1-2 sessions long that are fun and silly, but could easily ramp them up to dark, gritty, and deadly if need be. But I prefer my whimsy since it doesn't "break character" when we act goofy at the table!
(also, Scooby Doo adventures are SO easy to do when there's a being in your universe that is a magical talking dog...named Bidderdoo...)
I'll be running a modern setting game soon and plan on running a Halloween session. Players will be attempting to find a Halloween food truck that's known to have the last bunch of a new candy bar that just came out for the season - a super hot item. But they'll also have to deal with gremlins running amok in town - who they'll eventually learn are children changed by the candy bar.
I also want to run a game where they deal with a creature like the alien from The Thing - except made out of candy a la The Summerween Trickster from Gravity Falls.
Timborama wrote:
I'm running the Ravenloft module "Circle of Darkness" for bawylie, Lairenn, AkeishaRoberts, and one other player (not sure what WotC handle is). It's a tale of false gods (or are they?), demons, starvation, misery, and power wielded by a corrupt Inqusition. Most of the horrific antagonists will be regular people at their worst, but some classic monsters like supernaturally cunning wolves and hungry ghouls are sure to make their appearance.
Ramzour wrote:
Bloodscythe wrote:
Back in 1981 my fraternity ran 36 hour marathon Halloween camapign, in which the characters (average 16-17th level) were hired to protect a town that was attacked by a horde Flesh Golems, Werewolves and Vampires, oh my! Of course each monster faction was headed by multiple Big Boss - Flesh Golem(s), Werewolve(s) and Vampire(s), oh my. Took some very lucky rolls to survive that phase of encounter, but man did it flow.
Next phase of the battle was remaining characters (11 out 17 from start) against every character that had died (6) as well as several prominent NPCs (5) from the town that had been killed and resurected, which were being controlled by Gargantuan Demi-Lich Cloud. DM had original players run the possessed undead characters to amke them more challenging. This was harder emotionally than in actuality, having several high level Paladins and Clerics were crucial to success, but we lost one of each in that phase of the battle.
The final confrontation with Gargantuan Demi Lich Cloud (3000 hit points) depleted all of remaining spellcasters spells, staves, rods, wands and scrolls, required the sacrifice of several major magic items (relics and minor-artifacts), two of wishes (one Ring and one Divine intervention), and the assistance of an Ancient Gold Dragon to finish it off. When we completed final phase of the campain we were down to only 7 characters surviving, another 4 were able to be resurrected and 6 were irrevocably dead (bye bye, tear up character sheet, :weep
One of the best D&D sessions ever!
Cauldor wrote:
GhostStepper wrote:
So, I found THIS today. Someone converted the original Ravenloft adventure to 5e! It looks like they've done a fantastic job. I think I just might run this one.....
iserith wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
iserith wrote:
iserith wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
In my 2e game I have a Revenant that's about to rise from his grave and lay the smack down on the party. They'll have to put him down several times before they find out how to kill him once and for all. Should be fun. The plan is to have him rise as a Zombie first, than a Ju-Ju Zombie, and work my way up until he is an indestructable Revenant.
There are a fair number of great Ravenloft modules to chose from. I suggest The Created for low level PCs and for higher level PCs give the Forgotten Terror a try.
You could also let them find the hellraiser cube.
iserith wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
"Yes, and" can work really well in strict horror settings. "Your think works aaaand there's some horrific consequence."
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/10/the-terrible-ghoul-of-glamis/
and
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/09/black-eyed-child-may-have-returned-to-staffordshire/
There's some cool adventure/story seeds there for my 2014 Halloween one shot Now...Do I stat up black eyed children in 4e or 5e...? LOL. Both. Probably...I'm leaning towards 5e, though. As this is the first Halloween of 5e's existence.
Actually, Mysteriousuniverse.org is a great place for inspiration, IMO.
Although I am actually running a game on Halloween, I do not have anything spooky planned for the game itself (although there will hopefully be a gargantuan skeletal dragon). I am however planning on baking some of these for my players:
pukunui wrote:
We shall see. 
Just watching the Original version of The Fog and thinking it might make an interesting series Halloween adventures
Ever been to the SCP Foundation? It has some seriously creepy stuff, a lot of which would make a great premise for a horror campaign. The trick is to provide as little information as possible upfront, and have the players discover more about the anomaly very slowly, leaving most of the horror to the imagination. Just take a look at this report on a staircase that never seems to end.
It also won't hurt for the players to, at some point, recieve a message that just says "I see you," and later on get one that says "You know too much." Creepy no matter what sort of horror-mystery is going on.
Fralex wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
I've been playing in a Living Campaign for Cthulhu and just did the quarterly dark carnival so I'm burned out on it creepy stuff to this point.
I'm working on a mario brothers mystery adventure where toad, gumba, troopa, and yoshi must discover what really happened to Princess Toadstool after a nearly botched kidnapping. They will find out about the Mario brothers and Bowser complex protection racket to milk the mushroom kingdom of their gold coins. Bowser has been sending gumba and troopa on doomed raids of the mushroom kingdom and Mario has been setting up princess for kidnappings every time their protection contract is coming up for re-negotiation--The princess always seems to be "another castle" until after Mario gets his coin.