1000 Creepy Adventure Ideas!

[jester47]

3) Party is hired to fulfill the last request of a deceases noble. His ashes are to be tossed to the wind from the top of a tower amid some ruins. Of course the ruins are haunted and full of undead...and I pity the party that can't complete the mission. The ghost of the dead noble won't be happy.

Hey Boothbey, I like that idea but in fleshing it out I got another...

Make the ashes haunted. The ashes are in a very valuable urn, and so it just keeps getting sold and stolen and given away. Eventually it makes its way to some abandoned cemetary where the ghost wont bug anyone. The heroes go and explore the haunted cemetary and find the urn, then they eventually find out that the cemetary was not haunted but rather the urn. The ghost of a necromancer or cleric haunts the urn. He/she/it keeps raising dead wherever the heroes go. Eventually one the heros figureit out they can talk to the ghost and find out what he wants done, which is to have his ashes scattered from some tower somewhere.

 

[Savage Wombat]

An idea I had long ago, when I was considering adding Lovecraftian elements to my Al-Qadim campaign ...

Stage 1 - The PCs go into the hills looking for whatever has been killing the plants / sheep / peasants / whatever. Tell them "you search for several hours, but don't find anything interesting." When they complain at this obvious glossing-over, insist they don't remember anything out of the ordinary.

Reason - the monsters generate a weird psionic field that suppresses long-term memory storage - much like anesthesia. So they get into the hills, find the mysterious shaft into the hill, go back to town for a key supply, and immediately forget everything they learned.

Keep this up until you finally decide to start allowing Will saves.

Stage 2 - the PCs are in the dungeon, looking for the mysterious monster. They round a corner ...

... and click. Everyone is bloody and bruised. Start telling the PCs how much damage they've taken, how many spells and charges they've used, etc.

They've just been in a pitched battle with ... something ... and they don't remember ANYTHING about it.

This one might have gone well in the Freak Out Players thread, too.

 

[dave_o]

Wow.

That's obscenely cool!

I ran a really creepy adventure once. It was set in the Realms, on the way down to Mistledale from Shadowdale (or Battledale? I can't remember and have...misplaced my FRCS). They were in a sort of platform boat, going very slowly down a river. Suddenly, countless red eyes appeared on the banks, and the boat began being hosed with arrows.

Throughout the night various gurellia tactics were used on the party, until they were afraid. It was so creepy I had players looking over their shoulders out the dark windows, and such.

It got that much worse when Mistledale was in a fog and suddenly big, scary, black armored knights (the city guard) would loom at them from the mists.

And when some of the things started following them around, and scratching on their windows at night.

Muhahaha.

 

[crowquill]

There's an adventure in this passage. Probably a whole campaign. From "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel C. Dennett:

<blockquote>
Phillipe Pinel reported in 1800 the curious case of a man who fell into "a true delirium brought on by the terrors of the revolution. The overturning of his reason is marked by a particular singularity: he believes that he was guillotined, and his head thrown pell-mell onto the pile of the victims' heads, and that the judges, repenting too late their cruel deed, had ordered the heads to be taken and rejoined to their respective bodies. However, by an error of some sort, they put on his shoulders the head of another unfortunate. This idea that his head has been changed occupies him night and day. . . . 'See my teeth!' he would repeat incessantly, 'they used to be wonderful, and these are rotten! My mouth was healthy, and this one's infected! What a difference between this hair and the hair I had before my change of head!'"
</blockquote>

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

'See my teeth!' he would repeat incessantly, 'they used to be wonderful, and these are rotten! My mouth was healthy, and this one's infected! What a difference between this hair and the hair I had before my change of head!'"

Ooh, actually a case history of that. In CoC 5.5 (Chaosium), in the mental illness chapter, it lists this as "delire negation". Just so ya know.

 

[LostSoul]

I ran a pretty creepy adventure once.

It had a reclusive Baron living in a small keep in an out-of-the-way area of the kingdom. A Hag was plaguing his lands, and he could not kill her. There was also a ghost haunting his keep. She lived in the one ruined tower.

The Baron came to the PC's aid, and freaked them out quite a bit while they stayed at his keep. The ghost made them wonder what was going on (they blamed the Baron for her death). Then one of the players read a "damned tome", and went slightly insane. (Great timing!)

The real story was that the Baron's father was abusive, and the Baron's mother called on the Hag to kill/abuse the Baron. When the Baron's father learned about this, he killed her in her room (the ruined tower). Shortly after, the Hag killed him, but still plagued the lands, since the child was now the Baron.

Nothing particularly new, or even that interesting, but it worked pretty well with the right mood.

Tales of Terror Here's a site that has adventure seeds for Call of Cthulu, but can be adapted for any setting.

 

[Kai Lord]

Reason - the monsters generate a weird psionic field that suppresses long-term memory storage - much like anesthesia. So they get into the hills, find the mysterious shaft into the hill, go back to town for a key supply, and immediately forget everything they learned.

Actually that would be short-term memory suppression. Remember Sammy Jenkins? Sweet ideas.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I believe we are at number

17. A demonic entity wants a gem that the PCs are currently guarding. Unfortunately, it gets repelled by even dim light. So it simply kills and reanimates everyone and everthing in the PCs' vincity and sends the zombies to extinguish the light sources...

(I used zombie cows, zombie horses, zombie pigs, and even zombie chicken to great effect... )

 

[Sidran]

Fleshing out the Movie Idea ( Aliens)


This would work if A) the party had to get somewhere to flee the highly remote area B) The Dungeon or Maze was linear and had multiple levels that sometimes may be closed, some times may be open C) A host of scarry icky evil meanies (yes I am speak Piffany) that persued the Characters insessantly.


This same effect can be done with a load of Zombies and other evil ickies, but preferentually I would use my version of the Reaper from Blade II and their Master the Dark Huntsmen


My Question is How do I get my players into the Dungeon, and How do I get them out again on the other side.

Where I plan on placing the Dungeon is in a Steap mountainous region with a Vile broken land on one side, and a Snowy kingdom of evil on the other.

My Characters are currently in the mountains at the Large Bridge City of Drakesbridge

The Dark Huntsmen is in the City hunting my Players


I am thinking a huge tunnel that heads from the entrance which can be reached via a Sewer entrance in the city all the way down into the Broken lands the players are running for their lives from the Huntsmen, but may be running further into trouble than they can survive.

( How do you do the long dark of Moriah with creature the equivalent of the Balrog chasing the players)

 

[Azure Trance]

Rip Off of a Twilight Zone episode

If you can remember which one, it had a rich dying old man gather his ungrateful family to his home if they wanted to stay in his will. It might've been Halloween, or in New Orleans, but he makes them wear Fuuugly masks. IIRC they might've been parodies of what they really were. Piggish looking for his son, Ugly for his vain grand daughter, etc. He wears a skull. They keep it on until midnight, at which point he dies, but the family realizes they can't take the masks off ... except the old mans (dun dun dun)

-=D&D Reinterpretation=-

There's a costume ball at the princes remote wilderness resort. All of the social elite are invited, provided they have a costume to wear. Identities will be revealed at midnight when people get the pleasure of seeing who they actually met. Guests will have an invitation to display to gain access to the festivities, which include the standard wining, dining and dancing. The latest fad are the unique, expensive and exotic facial masks created by a strange old gnome which look so lifelike and realistic they -must- be had for the party. The gnome creates and delivers the masks - masks showing beautiful faces, or wild animals.

And ... that's all I can think of. Sorry folks, it's 2:40 in the morning. Hopefully some other blessed wonderful mind can put a twist with this hopeful beginning.