Survival Horror

I started a new D&D campaign last weekend that is basically survival horror. Think 28 Days Later with swords. lol I've seriously enjoyed creating the plot for this world. I won't type it all out here, but I can give a long-winded summary if anyone wants one. btw, I'm using the Following the Light deities from Deities and Demigods (but I gave them eight domains each).

The party consists of a dwarven cleric, human monk, human fighter and a human ranger (favored enemy undead). All are 1st level. Because the party has traveled into a realm where 90% of its population has died and risen as undead in the last two weeks and the party will be isolated and low on material goods and supplies, I decided to allow elite ability score. I allowed the following scores: 18, 16, 14, 14, 12, 10. I also set starting equipment restrictions: one focal weapon, one back up weapon or shield, one suit of armor, one torch, one trail ration, one class item (spell component pouch, quiver or arrows and so on) and five items of equipment (backpack, rope, ect.) I'm allowing maximum hit points at each level and banning the Leadership feat.

The party started off by arriving at a seemingly abandoned garrison. Half of its soldiers remained as zombies. A few ghouls were also prowling the grounds once the sun set. The party fought half a dozen zombies and later slew a few ghouls before barricading themselves into the armory and hoping to recuperate before running out of food and water. They joined up with the only survivor in the garrison, a teenage stableboy who's secretly in the final stages of ghoul fever, and kind-heartedly gave him a large cut of their rations and water (the boy hadn't eaten in three days and was dehydrated). Next Saturday, the party will attempt to carry out an planned breakout.

So I'm curious, who here has ever ran/played in a survival horror campaign? I'm looking for some creative insights to keep this thing alive (or undead!) for at least ten levels or until my players grow bored with it.

Maybe it comes with being old and jaded, but undead just don't scare anymore. Once the first NPC starts turning into zombies, I'm inclined to yawn and reach for my drink, just waiting for the next thing to happen. The truth is, nobody can help you. If you want to do something truly horrific, you have to do something nobody's ever thought of, and that ain't easy. If anyone here told you something, that would mean it wasn't a novel concept.

I can offer the following advice: Think about something that's never, ever happened before, something nobody's ever thought of. Not in any movie, book, game, or TV show. Something which has never, ever happened. Now make it happen.

ArcOfCorinth said:

So I'm curious, who here has ever ran/played in a survival horror campaign? I'm looking for some creative insights to keep this thing alive (or undead!) for at least ten levels or until my players grow bored with it.

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Well the main thing that drives the survival/horror movies/games (IMHO) is vulnerability, shock and relentlessness.

At least for low level characters the vulnerabilty is relatively easy. Once you get past 4th level or so it becomes more difficult, since characters aren't always skating on the thin edge of survival and are much more competent at what they are doing. You need to keep the players constantly in fear for their characters lives. Restricting the availability of healing, not giving them time to rest or having them besiged every time they try to is one good way of helping to achieve that.
In short it's hard to make someone afraid when they think they are invincible or in no danger. I probably would try to make them be able to rest uninterupted no more often than every 3-4 days. You have to drain their resources and make them stretch them out as far as possible. If an even ECL encounter drains 25% of their resources then hit them with at least 5 before they get to rest, etc...

Well, you could dig up some photographies of dead people in various states of decomposition. I'm sure you could find that somewhere on the net. Show them to your players the next time they encounter an undead human. That ought to remind them how scary and gross undead really are.

If you're playing with children or overly sensitive adults it would probably be a bad idea do this.

I tend to like to overwhelm the PC's initialy. Then I let them deal with that and start to get a bit of the upperhand. Then, I hit them with something new. Something designed to make them sink further down.

If your players are well-versed in the contents of the various monster books, you will have a harder time surprising them. Rely more on in-depth descriptions than stock descriptions. Make each creature sound worse than it is described in the MM.

If you are playing with incorporeal undead, take advantage of it! Attack from the walls, the floors and the ceiling. The 5' square the undead is in, is a wall! How can the PC's attack back? Make some house rules that they can ready an attack and try to swing when the wraith peeks through to swipe at them. Maybe a positive energy burst can go through walls? Maybe they can still turn, but they won't know if it worked until the attacks stop ... and there is nothing saying that smart undead won't stop and wait for the cleric to turn his back...

If you want to continue the campaign for a while, you have to strike a balance. You can easily kill everyone off quickly, but where is the fun? The PC's have to feel like they _can_ make progress, but it requires that they adapt to each situation and they can never drop their guard. At least, not for long. It is OK to sometimes throw in a holy temple that is still safe. (Or it will be for the next few days.) So the PC's can pause, regroup, reflect in pithy ways on mortality, fighting the darkness, just wanting to hold a loved one again, etc. If your players are into the RP, they will take the time to go through the "movie scenes" before the undead manage to crash down the doors and the Evil High Ghoul Priest casts a desecrate and it is time to fight and run again. (Yes, change the rules so that Desecrate and Unhallow can affect someplace with an existing Altar to Good.)

Once the players get into a routine with the zombies, work with it. It will be tedious to play through 20 fights with 5-10 zombies once they go up in levels. Make your players adopt a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for easy undead. Maybe the first 3 times during the day, they will use a Turning from the Cleric, then the fighters hack away. Figure out what the "average" time to take out the zombies is and just apply that for those encounters. Sure, arbitrarily deciding that the cleric successfully turns 8 zombies to dust every time and the fighter takes 3 points of damage in the ensuing battle after the turning seems to be anti-DnD. Yes, you miss elements of luck. But, this just allows you to have random encounters that retain the atmosphere of the campaign while you get to the next _important_ battle. This is the combat equivelant of taking 10 so that you don't get into a humdrum routine of "more zombies, let me roll my attacks, there is my damage. Hey, did you see Buffy last night?" At least, that has worked for me in the past. You do need your player's buy-in for this though.

As a side note: Anything you can do to discourage none-game conversation will help retain the atmosphere. Don't be afraid to drop the lights and use candles. Just make sure you can read what is important. Maybe you can setup a TV tray off to the side with a desk lamp so you can roll dice there and check character stats. Or, ask people to bring small flashlights. If people are chatty, take a bit of a break. Start off the night by asking for initiative. Setup the next important encounter ahead of time and go through the flavor, RP, and small encounters. Then, when the big encounter hits, immediately ask what the first person is doing. Do not give them much time to think! Tell them what they see and ask how they are reacting. If you have an encounter that might turn to combat, or not, let everyone begin their actions, but as soon as a PC or NPC makes a hostile action, drop into combat mode. You already have initiative, so work with it.

Shock and vulnerability are harder to bring across for heroes in DnD. Anything you can do to keep meta-game thinking out of it is good. Also, if 90% of the population has died, do you include non-humans in there? Non-humanoids? What about undead animals? Undead monsters? This is DnD after all! Also, make up monsters. Take a troll and turn it into a big skeleton. I probably wouldn't give it regeneration, but the rend attack ... oh yeah!

Hope this helps some.

Here is another suggestion. Change the rules. The next time the cleric tries to turn some undead, instead of turning it acts like a dinner bell for the undead. Basically every undead within a certin radius goes for the cleric like a dog after a piece of bacon.

You also might want to punch up the survival aspects of it. Keep food scarce, potable water supplies hard to find, spell components rotted or death aspected, etc. Plus, what about the animal and insect population of this place? Are they after the PCs as well? There could be some pretty fierce eat or be eaten sorts of events going on.

One cliche of survival horror movies (and it's a cliche because it works) is to allow the protagonists (PCs) to hear about a place of hope, a refuge, that last bastion of humankind amid a sea of zombies. Let them uncover clues to this place, listen to legends of how it came to be, perhaps meet someone who has been there. Let the PCs battle their way towards the refuge, every slow step of progress a hard-won victory.

Then when they get there... the gates are smashed, the houses are burned down, a layer of ash covers everything. It's too late; the refuge has been destroyed.

If you set it up so that it takes the PCs a couple levels to reach their goal, they will have that sense of accomplishment that comes in a D&D game; this will make the eventual disapointment even more bittersweet. You can play the metagame: allow the players to think that you are allowing them to gain levels so that when they reach the refuge, they can defeat that last hoard of zombies or big bad ghoul to gain entrance. Only there is no climactic battle; there's just a cloud of dust and the passage of tumbleweeds.

I think that could be damn effective in your campaign.

KaosDevice said:

You also might want to punch up the survival aspects of it. Keep food scarce, potable water supplies hard to find, spell components rotted or death aspected, etc. Plus, what about the animal and insect population of this place? Are they after the PCs as well? There could be some pretty fierce eat or be eaten sorts of events going on.

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That, I have already done. Each PC started out with one trail ration and one full waterskin. The monk quickly offered the stableboy his food and water (which the stableboy consumed so fast that I think the player was shocked to realize none would be left for him). They explorered most of the fortress (using a modified version of the stout fortress at Wizard's Map-a-week so it isn't very big) and discovered that they only water the found may be contiminated and there was no unspoiled food in sight. The last room to be explorered is the kitchen. The party is trapped in a barricaded room and plans to sneak out after daylight and head for what they hope is the kitchen. They're going to find it empty of anything except two pieces of hardtack.

As for shock, I'm working on it. The first zombie they encountered didn't look undead at all (other than a slightly pale face). One of the PCs attempted to knock in a wooden door and overcame the DC so much (and since he described it as charging with his shoulder) that I made him roll a reflex throw to keep from blasting through the other side of the door. He failed and I asked for a balance check. Upon failing that as well, he found himself prone before the first encountered undead. The zombie had only died a few days ago in a negative energy burst that did no physical harm to him. He was dressed in the robes of a priest of Elishar and the room was well lit with continual flames cast on symbols and runes on the walls. All of this contributed to the PC thinking he had found a survivor. The zombie said nothing. It stepped over beside him and reached out his hand. The PC thought it was to help him get up so he reached up. The zombie immediately grasped the hand and initiated a grapple (and succeeded). The zombie began slamming him with its free arm every round. The other PCs ran to aid him but were slowed down by two more zombies that lurched forward to the door. When all three were dead, the PC discovered that the corpse had still not relented its grip. They had to pry the stone cold fingers from his wrist.

The PCs later made a decision to split up (something I guarentee they'll never do again). I had modified the fortress so that several of the rooms were actually a lower floor. The cleric, fighter and monk headed downstairs to investigate them and left the archer ranger to stand guard in the circular room (which I modified to be the base of the tower.) There was spiraling staircase in the middle of the room that led up to a trapdoor on the ceiling. The archer climbed halfway up it and set down in a sniper position that allowed him to see the entire room with ease. Then he hid and started his listen checks. It was much longer until the first ghoul arrived into the room. btw, I've modified the ghoul slightly to give it Scent. I like it better that way. The ghoul sniffed around the room before pausing at the bottom of the stairs. And then the fight began. The archer hit it with his first shot and pulled off maximum damage (8 bow + 1 point blank shot + 2 favored enemy = 11 to the ghoul's 12 hp) and nearly slayed the ravenous monster. Unfortunately, he missed the next round and it rapidly closed the ground on him. He attempted close combat with his sword but was only clawed and bitten for his efforts. His HP was spiralling down so he retreated to the roof. The ghoul didn't immediately follow through the door so he backed away from the trap door and readied his bow.

The Ranger had a 12 on INT while the ghoul had 13. Feeling that the 13 gave it an edge, I refused to send the ghoul up after him. Instead, it relaxed beneath the open door and taunted him in common, describing what it was going to do to his corpse and what little would be left of it. Then it talked of stalking any friends he had and slowly slaying them as well. When it finally emerged (and his readied action missed...terrible roll) the ghoul let out a horrible howl. Seconds later, the PC heard three howls from the courtyard answer it. He now knew that he was probably dead. The ghoul decided to back down the stairs and wait for its nefarious companions. That was all the incentive that the ranger needed. He ran over to the door and shot the ghoul from above (killing it) and watching it roll all the way down to the base of the stairs. He rushed down in hopes of arriving before the ghouls did. He and a ghoul arrived at the same time. However, he was closer to the room his companions had journeyed into earlier so he made a break for it. He managed to outrun the ghoul and slam the door and lock it.

Unfortunately, another ghoul appeared at the window and attempted to break in. The door had a large wooden shutter that could be closed like a door. He managed to shut it before the ghoul got in, but he trapped its hand on the window. Luckily, the rest of the PCs arrived from the battles downstairs to aid him. When the session ended, that room had been barricaded (though two ghouls had managed to get in anway). They killed one ghoul and the session ended. When we pick up Saturday, they will have to immediately fight the ghoul that's inside with them.

After the session, the players all mentioned that they were shocked by the combat sessions (since none ever went as they planned). The ranger's player stated that he refuses to separate again.

Survival horror is a little tough to do in the standard d20 rules for one basic reason. You have to play a little fast and loose with hit points. One of the things that keeps survival horror tense is that anybody can die at any time. The hp system conflicts with this a little. You may want to think about going with grim-n-gritty or wounds/vitality to help get past this.