Haunted Carnivals, IT, Help?

[Angelsboi]

the campaign is like this ...

the PCs are starting out as 1st level commoners. They are sneaky, bully, knowledgeable, earthy, etc. to reflect what they will become.

I want to use a haunted carnival. I mean, what kid DOESN'T like carnivals? I want it to be scary to them and very disturbing (Ideas? Suggestions?).

They will destroy the great evil and the carnival will resume and go out of their town. Next session ... 13 years have passed and one of them has stayed behind in the old town while the rest have gone off (insert level 2 adventuring classes). They get a message from this person that the carnival is back in town and the kids are dissappearing again.

See? kind of like the plot to IT. My game starts Saturday the 28th and was needing help before then. ideas, suggestions .. help?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Death trap fun house - you have seen them in the movies. Pits, swinging blades, flashing lights, rocking floors, fake creature that pop out at you from the shadows. Balance fake with real.

Dunk the PC/NPC - basic hit the taget, sends the person into the water. Looks fine but later the water becomes something else and a captured PC/NPC goes splash.

Freak show - see the half snake half woman, see the dog faced boy...

Bearded lady - She ain't no dwarf but she has love for a PC and she has been dead for sometime.

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To make a haunting work you need surpise, need to describe thinks in detail. Use a lot of illusion, mixing real with fake. Things like broken steps appear whole, spears sometimes are real, sometimes fake. Keep the players moving and off their game plan. Use 'fear checks' or 'sickness checks', drop a few leeches or magots onto the PC.

Watch Fear Factor on TV.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

hey angelsboi!

i while back, i thought about using this kind of 'device' (adventuring when they were kids) to give a party of adventurers a common background and history, so here are some ideas i had:

1) have the players create 1st level PCs, and then scale them back to reflect what they may have been like as children. you could reduce their ability scores (and skills, etc.), keeping in mind that a 10 or 11 is average for an adult. you wouldn't necessarily have to change their mental stats as long as their skill points were reduced or not calculated at all. (i've met really smart kids, but they simply don't know as much or have studied as much as any adult.) if you thought that the kids should have some abilities based on their future classes, you could even modify the apprentice level character rules in the DMG

2) don't have the players generate anything at all, except a background, a name and maybe a general physical description. talk about ability scores only in the abstract (he's a strong kid, she's really cute). this would force the players to concentrate on roleplaying and team building, instead of individual accomplishment. (the difference being, a rogue with a +10 climb and a +10 escape artist would know precisely that he could climb a wall and sqeeze through a window. a kid may have to think, 'well, i'm small, i'm sure i could get through that window if someone would give me a boost!')

(you could also think about skills in the abstract by having players write down things like, 'good with animals' (handle animal), 'sneaky' (hide and move silent), 'lies throughs his teeth' (bluff), etc.)

during gameplay:

a) CHEAT! (you want the little tykes to live, right?) become best friends with your DMs screen

b) include things that may not normally affect an adult adventurer, like a Will save because a scary monster just popped out of nowhere! (failure = a loss of a partial action, or something else non life threatening)

c) watch Goonies ! add that to It and maybe something like Monster Squad to get inspiration.

hope that helps a little