Horrors needed.

[MethodicalMeat]

So here is the situation, I am running a "horror" campaign, only, it's not that spooky as I have no idea where to go next. Currently, the party just finished rescuing the mayor's daughter a the local priest from a cult of Orcus, a new player is also joining, and I'm trying to think where I can put him in, any suggestions?

[Ceres]

I'll be needing some more info on the new player's character, the direction you plan the campaign to be going, the personalities of your current party etc. to be able to help you.

However, if you're ever looking for monsters to fit a horror-setting, you should browse MitP II. It has some of the creepiest creatures ever concieved.

Also, this post should probably be in the Gaming (d20 and General RPG) section.

[Bearofbadnews]

Things that are scary:

Recurring images, symbols, words
Violated expectations in general (just when you think you're safe...)
Allies that are revealed to be enemies
Eerie calm, especially as a break in the horror for something disquietingly banal
Little children, old ladies, cute animals, anything you think would never hurt you
Horrible deaths, or more specifically, rumors or tales of horrible deaths (much scarier than the actual thing)
Underground passages, old houses, deserted towns, etc.

The keys to good horror gaming in my opinion are summed up thusly:
Mystery, Mood, and Misdirection
Or in other words, keep your players guessing with unique storylines, settings, and characters, do what you can to build a thick atmosphere of tension and suspense (music helps a lot), and finally, take every oportunity to subvert your players expectations of what happens next-- clever manipulation of your audience is at the very heart of the horror genre.

It would help to know more specifics.

[Xuincherguixe]

Ooo! A thread I can answer :P

First up, it's a good idea to browse up on some Cthulhu Mythos. It's much more influential than many people realize, and much of what you see in Horror has been inspired by this. It's full of general tentacle doom.


I'm also working on a campaign in which the players are monsters, and I've been working on a Demonic pantheon. I've posted about some of these creatures before so I'll give a brief version for people getting sick of it and you can tailor the details as you like (this is of course the best thing to do anyways)

Any of these make for good monsters, evil cloud, evil wind, evil puddle of mercury (just a variation on you generic blob monster really), massive fungal blooms.

More serious threats could include a thinking black hole, a being that exists as a set of 'waves' (when in sand, you might get say a tidal wave of sand. In air, you could hear it, if you were in the creature), and being of warped space (distorts reality and spacial relations. A string thrown perfectly straight would curve wildly, wrap around itself, and maybe even change colour.)

One of my lesser (but still god like) beings was going to be a creature who would grab people and impale them on giant metal spikes on his body. It would draw strength from them and the spikes would channel negative energy into the bodies. When they died, they would become undead and this thing would then consume their bodies. My plan for how to kill the thing is that you have to get a bunch of people to carve out their own hearts and throw them into it's mouth. Yeah, it's going to be a pretty dark game.


Hope that helps! No stats yet, but I think I've got some great concepts. Give them whatever stats you choose. I could come up with some powers they might have, but half the fun of horror games is making up your own monsters.

[Wulfen]

Several things to think about regarding horror. First what isn't seen can be worse than what is. Never let the characters see what the evil is, only the results. If they are at an inn, and the stable boy goes out to tend the horses and doesn't come back. The innkeeper grumbles about him being lazy and sends someone out to the stables to bring him back. Second person comes in horrified and lets them know the stable boy has been slain, or just disappeared, but bloodstains etc indicate something very bad has happened



Other ideas are the evil ones are not outsiders or extra planer beings but standard humans/pc races. Just very evil and warped ones.

Entire empty villages and things like that. think of the numerous horror films regarding the abandoned ship/outpost/village that you cant easily escape from because of whatever reason.

Just a few ideas

[Fax Celestis]

Any monster from the following supplements: Lords of Madness, Champions of Ruin, Book of Vile Darkness, Libris Mortis.

I am a particular fan of taking mundane animals or monstrous vermin and adding the multi-headed (MM-II) and half-farspawn (LoM) templates. Now they have multiple heads and tentacles. Ick.

[stolenchariot]

An idea I had a long time ago concerning the topic would be taking creatures not necesarily hideous, or even evil and twisting their personalities into the cruelest interpretations possible. For example, perhaps the fair maidens of a village are often found in the morning, dried up featureless husks of their former selves. The culprits would be a vain, narcisitic nymph who seeks to destroy anything but her that is beautiful and of course enhance her own beauty and her gang of pikie minions. The beauty draining would function in the form of a magic amulet of sorts that permanantly drains charisma.

Alternatively looking at the above example, you could homebrew a fey generally evil with a special atack to achieve the same purpose.

[EagleWiz]

Well, I just created (For one of my campigans) a "Corruption" The land and air itself was evil in one area and the area was expanding.
The PCs are sent to investigate, go to town, nothing there. Everyone dead, and no clues.
So they go to the next town: Everyone is insane trys to kill them and they can occasionly see movement out of the corner of their eye but when they look... nothing.
The next town: Deserted. The first house they are in is creepy, old, creaking floor, etc. etc. So the rouge goes first and a monster (compleatly white) with huge claws look of horror, etc etc. jumps out, runs at pc and dissapears.
Then zombies attack. Oh and they halucianate a lot.
So they go to a castle in the center of the effect, are captured by an insane wizard who experements on them and explains that the corruption is monster that dosn't actualy exist except in one spot inside the castle.
PCs escape, go to the room with a weak ooze and a BUNCH of traps and start halucianating agan... (The ooze controlls what you see, more as you get closer) But the PCs kill it and save the day.
Except that that was all another halucination. It is still there. (Inside a PC)
Eventualy battles for controll of pc, gets killed for good and everything is back to normal.

And even though everything is realy back to normal this causes extreame paranoia for the PC's, they wonder if it is actualy dead or not and they are generaly suspicious of EVERYTHING.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Horror ideas:

Over 1001 frightening ideas found HERE (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=407341)

Some good chilling imagery found HERE (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=800587)

Another great source of creepy events found HERE (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=166882)

If these don't give you enough ideas to frighten your players almost to death, or at the very least instill horror, you're doing something wrong.

-The Djinn

[MandibleBones]

Djinn, you are my absolute hero for posting those links (mainly because I'm too lazy to look them up on my own).

Horror game, here I come!

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Happy to have helped :smallbiggrin:

-The Djinn

[Grim Greyscale]

Over 1001 frightening ideas found HERE (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=407341)

Some good chilling imagery found HERE (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=800587)

Another great source of creepy events found HERE (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=166882)




Oh man. I'm gonna have nightmares now.

S'only fair I give them to my players, now, too :D

Have a creepy doll that bleeds from it's eyes as a reward.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Yea, there's little creepier than a cute little shirley-temple lookalike giving you this odd look and popping off with something like "Oh, I see you've arrived. Don't step in the pools of blood on your way to your destiny, you might slip and fall..." then when something distracts them and they turn around, the little girl just... isn't there.

Things appearing and dissapearing the moment you take your eyes off the place, cute girls that say the creepiest things in a matter-of-fact voice as though they were speaking about the weather, things that just are off somehow...

I highly suggest not only Undead, but Oozes and Demons as monsters to fight in your campaign. Ilithids can be too, but can also become overused and corny. Personally, I never liked the Cuthulu stories, any of H.P. Lovecraft's stuff actually, and I always thought of illithids as corny rather than scary.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I highly suggest not only Undead, but Oozes and Demons as monsters to fight in your campaign. Ilithids can be too, but can also become overused and corny. Personally, I never liked the Cuthulu stories, any of H.P. Lovecraft's stuff actually, and I always thought of illithids as corny rather than scary.


Sorry to be critical, but the Djinn in fact recommends none of this. Undead, Oozes, and Demons have their place, but in Horror it should be in small amounts, if they appear at all.

Player's aren't frightened by undead. What is most frightening (in clinical studies) is when the ordinary suddenly is the unordinary. Some examples: Flowers lash out and tear at your flesh, staining the petals red with blood. When you wake up, the walls of the cave you slept in are now bleeding and pulsing, as if the stone had been scraped away to reveal muscle beneath. Every time a PC looks in a mirror he sees his reflection smashed up against the glass, obviously killed violently. Even tiny things, like a bone that, no matter how far the party travels from it, always ends up mixed into their rations, can freak human players out.

If you haven't picked it up yet, take a good look at Heroes of Horror, one of the best books (in the Djinn's opinion) WotC ever produced.

[Fizban]

Not quite a jest, but do a board search for threads in homebrew by Fax Celestis, The Vorpal Tribble, and The Demented One. They turn out some creepy creatures, and those that aren't creepy can easily be made so with a couple templates, some of which they have also provided.

I know it's not answering the question, but if you're looking for monsters I highly recommend them.

[Fax Celestis]

Not quite a jest, but do a board search for threads in homebrew by Fax Celestis, The Vorpal Tribble, and The Demented One. They turn out some creepy creatures, and those that aren't creepy can easily be made so with a couple templates, some of which they have also provided.

I know it's not answering the question, but if you're looking for monsters I highly recommend them.

I will always take praise like this. :smallbiggrin:

[Fizban]

Edit: that was a weird double post....

[MethodicalMeat]

Thanks to everyone for the ideas, epic brain-fart is now officially over!