Fantasy horror setting help

[Rechan]

I did make a thread on the D&D forum, when I was limited to trying to do this RL. But I got no bites so am doing it online, so I can use any system really. At the time I was trying to basically create a d20 version of 5E, and what ensued was a lot of “this doesn’t fit the spirit of D&D”.

I’m making a non-modern setting where many types of horror stories can fit place, and chose a fantasy setting.

All I’m asking for with this thread is

1) fleshing out this setting based on what I’ve outlined,

and

2) ways to get the players into situations to permit an “adventure”, forcing them out of safety.

 

[generic]

2) ways to get the players into situations to permit an “adventure”, forcing them out of safety.

Okay, just a quick clarifying question: are the characters expected to advance and grow, or is the theme of the campaign or set of stories run in the same world more like a set of CoC vignettes?

 

[Rechan]

pushes up glasses, Um actually, the 30 Days, the majority of the town leaves before the sunset because they don’t want to be in a month of darkness; the movie involves the stragglers and miners who stay behind. Similar to how in Tremors it’s not a town, just basically a truck stop with a few houses nearby. Or for whatever reason the only people there are a cast of like, 6-8?

Sorry.

The Safe Havens are literally pockets of 500-2000 people in ten-mile wide caverns, with farmland etc inside.

 

[generic]

Here's some random fluff, or, setting information, that I am merely throwing out into the Abyss in hopes that some of it might be interesting:

1. Corrupted individuals, not locations, lead to the opening of gateways to realms beyond. These individuals must be killed before they can let the monsters into our plane. The most heartbreaking part of this is that these corrupted individuals have no idea what they're taking part in.

2. Devils and Fiends now openly consort with mortal folk, and many people are willingly going to the pits of Hell to stay safe, because the Heavenly realms wouldn't take them.

3. Fiends promise power, time with family, and safety in exchange for the souls and unending servitude of mortals. Fiends are some of the only beings capable of fighting back the weakest of the Great Old Ones's spawn.

4. The Heavens are quiet, and only the evil can save you from beings so alien and terrible that they cannot possibly be thought of.

5. Undead are too valuable a resource to waste by burying the dead. It's messy work, but putting Grandpa to good use against the chittering swarms is what he would have wanted.

6. Evil fights evil, but it's all evil, so there's no escape. You might find refuge among the Fiend Guilds, trying to stay alive, but you'll never escape the chain of soul-gathering, debt-collection, and eventual, endless torture.

7. As a setting element, you could add a principle where everything the characters do feeds evil, no matter whether it saved their lives, annihilated some horror, or did something of that magnitude.

As for setting elements that have to do with monsters and visual detail, I would recommend looking at Agony, the works of H.R. Giger, archaic tomes, and old treatises like Inferno. In addition, you could draw inspiration for tales where the protagonists are just doing their best to stay alive, earn their way into protected guilds or towns, or, even, prove that they're not star-born doppelgangers.

 

[Imaculata]

Before I respond, I have to ask what you mean here. It’s my understanding that the devil’s advocate is not speaking their earnest opinion.

What I meant is that I was going to say something which may not be popular opinion, but I wanted to give a totally different perspective on it from other posters. But it is still my sincere opinion. I may have used 'Devil's Advocate' wrong here in this context.

I'm not a fan of memory loss plot devices, because it often stretches believability. As if the narrator doesn't want to bother explaining how the players possibly got into this whole mess. It is also a cheap way to hide information from the players as well as rob them of some of their agency.

I prefer it when the plot of any roleplaying campaign unfolds naturally and the players are allowed to make decisions that may prevent them from being captured in the first place. If they get captured, it should be due to the bad decisions they made, and not forced upon them by the plot.

I have no problem with an adventure starting in 'medias res', with the players starting in the middle of an exciting situation. Just as long as it does not rob them of their agency.

 

[Rechan]

Okay, just a quick clarifying question: are the characters expected to advance and grow, or is the theme of the campaign or set of stories run in the same world more like a set of CoC vignettes?

No advancement, it's 1 adventure then all new characters. For all intense and purposes imagine each adventure is a separate movie, whole new cast. The only difference is that I can put it in a fantasy setting, rather than in the modern world, purely for the sense of flavor and it allows various things to exist there (demons, ghosts, magical set pieces) without that being tied to The Big Event.

A lot of your suggestions are in the direction I've been thinking. (PS I love the idea of the portals being people, living vessels. It jives with other thoughts I've had on the topic.)

For instance the Good gods are just silent, and I'm thinking that they perished/went insane/fully locked in the process of preventing the Old Ones from stepping over into this dimensoin and shattering it. The only Gods left are the darker ones, but it ain't easy out there because there's so few worshipres to go around now, that inciting war or trying to take over places is actually risky. It has to be subtler because the resources of souls is a lot smaller. And lots of little fiefdoms sprout up with little protector gods that can enact a steep price, or fiends/liches/bla, that there's not so much prayer to go around.

The stark on-the-ground issue is that the Far Realms breach is more like a radioactive waste spill; there's mutative energy out there. Especially where such creatures congregate, they're walking wounds in reality that taint what they touch. So travel between Havens is dangerous not simply because it's a wild world out there, but you're possibly exposing yourself to being tainted even by simply walking through a polluted area..

Faced with insanity and having one's body melted and transformed, or suffer both in life and in death eternal, many turn to necromancy/the undead. The undead are far more pragmatic. Give us your blood, your dead, sacrifice now and then, and you're safe, we leave you alone. Or become a ghost, it's lonely and cold, but your family can be together eternally, and you will remain you. Mostly.

I would like to add Fae in here, but I think it's getting a bit crowded, and the Fae kind of dip into madness and nightmare/dream too. If I pulled one of the other factions out, it would be easy to contrast the Fae as the wild but natural, the manic fever dream of life, to the unnatural gibbering nightmare of the Far Realms, but I think I have enough as is.

I definitely want to do a haven/town that's fully sworn allegiance to Hell. Which means that everyone living there is already suffering, their sins visible on their flesh, tormenting them in a lesser degree, and they can barter with fiends by committing more egregious acts, thus putting them deeper into a debt of sins. But given this price, the Haven is prosperous, because Hell is making sure to keep this prime soul factory as lucrative as it can.

The more I think, the more this really is very post-apocalypse. Your dystopian cities of brutal warlords, your wastes full of mutants, your scavengers just trying to scrape together. What initially inspired all this was the Scarred Lands, which is a fantasy world in the wake of a war between evil, nasty Titans and the Gods, the war and aftermath polluting everything. Where clerics of good and evil worked together because damn, dude, we gotta get through this.