Need horror campaign idea

[Jolly Giant]

First came Libris Mortis, making me want to run an undead-themed horror campaign.
Then came Lords of Madness, making me want to run an aberration-themed horror campaign.
Then came Heroes of Horror, making me want to run any kind of horror campaign.
Then there was this thread, providing some good encounter ideas for a horror campaign.
Then there was this thread, providing good advice on how to make a horror campaign really horrific.
Now all I need is a good plot for a horror campaign.

I know this probably puts me in a bad light. I can almost hear you going "Can't he do anything himself?!?". Well, I can, I've always made all my own adventures. I just don't have the time right now. (I'm concentrating on finishing up Vikings D20. )

It's just that this horror thing keeps creeping up on me (as horrors do ), and it would be nice to have something else to tinker with when I get too sick of thinking about Vikings every waking hour.

So, any ideas folks? I'm thinking of a campaign that would start at level 1 and go on till around level 5. My vision is a campaign loaded with clichès from old horror (undeads) and/or sci-fi (aberrations) movies, yet convincing enough to be genuinely creepy.

Another theme I've considered is a Faust type character who's somehow managed to summon a powerful demon and has it bound inside a magic circle in his basement. Who's really in control though; the summoner or the summoned?

 

[Ilium]

I think the Faust idea would make a great one-shot for a single player. I don't think it would make much of a campaign.

Do you have a setting/time period/genre in mind for this? Fantasy? Modern? Viking-age perhaps? I just watched The 13th Warrior again and it rocked. Those guys aren't exactly vikings, but they're Northmen and the whole setup had elements of horror in it.

There's an absolutely terrible movie called Plan 9 From Outer Space that has a genuinely creepy idea at the heart of it. Aliens want to disrupt Earth's society, so they animate our own dead to attack us. That has alien aberrations and undead, so you can't go wrong.

 

[Jolly Giant]

I think the Faust idea would make a great one-shot for a single player. I don't think it would make much of a campaign.

Do you have a setting/time period/genre in mind for this? Fantasy? Modern? Viking-age perhaps? I just watched The 13th Warrior again and it rocked. Those guys aren't exactly vikings, but they're Northmen and the whole setup had elements of horror in it.

There's an absolutely terrible movie called Plan 9 From Outer Space that has a genuinely creepy idea at the heart of it. Aliens want to disrupt Earth's society, so they animate our own dead to attack us. That has alien aberrations and undead, so you can't go wrong.

The Faust idea was intended more as an encounter than as a campaign theme. If I can somehow find a way to put one or PCs in the position of Faust, that would be even better.

For the setting/genre thing I was planning to use either straight-up D&D or a low-magic D&D setting. This campaign will have nothing whatsoever to do with Vikings though! That's kind of the point...

Plan 9 is indeed terrible, but you are definitely thinking along the right lines there!


EDIT: I'm in the process of setting up a new pantheon for my homebrew world. A newly risen God of Fear & Nightmares (or something like that) could be a nice addition. Who would worship a God like that though, and who would his first few clerics be..?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Put the whole party in the Faust role, where they need to go after forbidden knowledge to defeat the (McGuffin) threatening enemy over the next hill/just beyond the horizon/heading this way.

Having to bargain with nasty things (fiends?), who require them going through icky places (aberrations) and eventually make some pretty awful moral choices (including messing with the Far Realm or the undead) in order to achieve their goals would take you pretty deep into horror territory.

I'd also hack away at what classes, races and prestige classes are available, maybe even spells and feats, too. If the only major power-ups available to characters are horrific PrCs, that gives you a mechanical way to make them consider a devil's bargain. (And don't forget the alienist PrC in this campaign -- few things are as icky as sacrificing your own familiar for a tentacled thing to take its place.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

EDIT: I'm in the process of setting up a new pantheon for my homebrew world. A newly risen God of Fear & Nightmares (or something like that) could be a nice addition. Who would worship a God like that though, and who would his first few clerics be..?

Serial killers. Human beings are scary as hell, because we unfortunately can believe them to be capable of pretty much anything.

 

[fafhrd]

Another theme I've considered is a Faust type character who's somehow managed to summon a powerful demon and has it bound inside a magic circle in his basement. Who's really in control though; the summoner or the summoned?

There is a wonderful short story by Clark Ashton Smith called The Double Shadow, that might serve as inspiration for this kind of idea. The story is related through a scroll found on a shoreline. The scroll was written by an apprentice wizard and documents the events of the story.

It begins with the description of the apprentice's master, a learned old conjurer and necromancer who grew mighty and disdainful of the beings he summoned. The was no entity which he could not bind(or so he thought).

One day, the wizard and the apprentice found a odd fragment bearing strange glyphs that the master couldn't decipher. That piqued his curiosity and so he set out using his art to discover the nature of the inscription. With the aid of the apprentice, they summoned all manner of demons, undead, and stranger entities and questioned them at length about the writing. However, the wizard's frustration grew as even these ancient beings professed their ignorance of the origin and meaning of the tablet.

Finally, the wizard conjured the spirit of an ancient magus from the long dead empire of Lemuria. The Lemurian sorceror explained that the device contained lore from a prehuman civilization that predated even his, but he knew enough of the tongue to explain the basic workings of the spell inscribed therein. The Lemurian finally departed with a final warning against using the invocation.

Full of confidence in his power, the master took little heed of the warning and enacted the spell. He and the apprentice were mystified though when the spell failed to have any obvious consequence.

A few days later, as they strolled along the beach, the apprentice noticed that his master had an odd, darker shadow neatly trailing the masters own. He remarked on this to the conjurer who then noticed it as well. The master first studied the shadow, but then noticing that it was growing ever closer to his own shadow, he attempted to expel it. Yet the shadow remained, and followed, and encroached on his own.

Soon they noticed that a mummy that had been present in the summoning room had a double shadow of its own. It was the first to experience the meeting of its own shadow with that strange other. The mummy keened in horror as the umbral cloak consumed it and made it into something else. The master panicked and attempted every method of expulsion he knew, all to no avail. The bound demons and malevolent entities that shared the wizard's island abode fled to their planes of origin in terror. Then the master's shadow was overtaken to meet a fate similar to that of the mummy.

The scroll ends with the apprentice noting that he has no hope, for the shadow is now but a wand's length from his own...


I'm sure some of the details are off. It's been awhile since I read the story, but I've always been enamored of it and think it could be a great baseline for what you're looking for.

 

[awayfarer]

I was pretty impressed at the changes they made in Resident Evil 4. Having a bunch of seemingly normal villagers that are more than happy to impale you on a pitchfork then go back to feeding the chickens is a bit spooky to say the least.

One thing they did well (at least towards the beginning) was not giving any useful inormation. A bunch of lunatics with tools and farm equipment is bad enough. Knowing that said lunatics are not only after you, but fare also fairly well organized, is worse. Not knowing what they're saying piles it one even further. Add in a healthy dose of uneven odds and you've got a winner.

 

[Wraith Form]

I get too sick of thinking about Vikings every waking hour.

Billy, have you ever watched a gladiator film?



Couldn't resist.

 

[Wraith Form]

a tentacled thing

Face it, you just can't go wrong with tentacled things, especially squamous ones.

 

[Hjorimir]

You need to get your hands on a copy of Nightmares of Mine. It is published by I.C.E. and hands down the best book on Horror RPGs. There are absolutley no game mechanics of any kind in the book. Just 170 pages (half-pages really as it is a small book) on running a horror game.

/*****