Horror Campaign Ideas: Pitch them Here!

[MGibster]

I'm toying with the idea of running a Call of Cthulhu campaign and I'm kicking around a premise. The investigators are cultist (though they likely won't see themselves as cultist), and they are tasked by their, well, let's just say benefactor, with thwarting the machinations of other mythos forces. Now that I think about it, this sounds more like Charlie's Angels + Call of Cthulhu. Their benefactor is the Great Race of Yith, who are manipulating the investigators into performing tasks for the benefit of their glorious race.

For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the Great Race, they're a bunch of weirdos who abandoned their bodies millions of years ago to inhabit the bodies of creatures on Earth in the distant past, ended up getting into a war with the flying polyps, and then projected their minds millions of years into the future after the extinction of humanity where they inhabit the bodies of giant beetles. The Great Race is manipulating the investigators to ensure events come to pass that will allow them to enjoy their Beetlemania millions of years in the future.

But here's the gimmick, if/when the PCs fail one of their missions, the Great Race can give them another crack at it. The Great Race presses the reset button, the minds of the investigators are transferred to their own bodies from right before the mission starts,and they being again but this time they have all the knowledge they gained from their failed attempt. This might lead to some sanity blasting fun where the investigator distinctly remembers some eldritch horror belching spittle all over him which dissolved him into a goo but now he's alive and well and about to face it again.

 

[Lackofname]

Oh wow I love this. It's like... Groundhog Day, Cthulu Edition. (There's also a horror movie called To Your Last Death which is not dissimilar; cosmic deities placing bets on the outcome of a Saw-like event, and the game master resetting the situation when the outcome starts turning predictable and boring.)

Anyhow, when you say "pitch ideas", what are you looking for? Investigations for your group, or just folks sharing other Horror Game ideas?

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Reminds me of Edge of Tomorrow - I know I'm crazy but I love that movie.

 

[Lackofname]

Reminds me of Edge of Tomorrow - I know I'm crazy but I love that movie.

Crazy? It's a good movie.

 

[MGibster]

Oh wow I love this. It's like... Groundhog Day, Cthulu Edition. (There's also a horror movie called To Your Last Death which is not dissimilar; cosmic deities placing bets on the outcome of a Saw-like event, and the game master resetting the situation when the outcome starts turning predictable and boring.)

Anyhow, when you say "pitch ideas", what are you looking for? Investigations for your group, or just folks sharing other Horror Game ideas?

Well thank you! And when I say pitch ideas I mean pitch any horror idea you have. Not necessarily for me but for everyone to enjoy.

 

[Nytmare]

I ran Groundhog Day/Murder Mystery one shot a million years ago, and part of the gimmick was that my rolls operated off of a set, scripted, round by round table, and they had a pool of rolls that they could pick and choose from.

 

[Lackofname]

I actually just started running a D&D horror game. The premise is modeled somewhat off the video game Half Life, where a research complex messes with Weird Science things and winds up causing a rift with an alien dimension. In this campaign, a magical research facility has been sucked into the Far Realms. The PCs wake up in the bowels of this complex, no memories but obvious signs they were being experimented on, and have to get home as well as solve the mystery of who they are or what was being done to them.

The general tone swings between two types of horror--body horror, with lots of freaky aberrations that do disturbing things, and metaphysical psychological horror, of living nightmares projected into the mind, psyches torn out and given quasi-life as though they were psychic ghosts, etc. Add in the occasional spatial weirdness (M. C. Escher, a time loop like turning a corner again and again and again...) and other misc things.

I'm taking a lot of inspiration from Dead Space and Silent Hill, a healthy seasoning of Lovecraft, and garnished with a little Hellraiser.

 

[MGibster]

I'm taking a lot of inspiration from Dead Space and Silent Hill, a healthy seasoning of Lovecraft, and garnished with a little Hellraiser.

You really can't go wrong with taking inspiration from Dead Space. Creepy aliens? Check. Creepy cult? Check. The first two games are among the best examples of survival horror games I've ever seen. It's a damned shame about the third game. I skipped it because of the multi-player and microtransactions and I doubt we'll ever get a new one.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I am doing a series of one shots based on Yuan Mei's supernatural accounts. First one is basically a haunted Teahouse adventure involving a massive head ghost. The second one involves the party solving a rash of recent suicides in a city caused by a supernatural force

 

[!DWolf]

A couple of years ago I ran a very successful one shot in Eclipse Phase in which a Jovian marine team was to investigate a distress signal from one of their old bases. You know, standard Eclipse Phase horror. I livened it up though by giving each player an envelope with a letter on it that had a secret objective and partial information about 2 or more other letters (and I designed things so that at least two envelopes had information pointing to each letter). And at a certain times I had additional envelopes to hand out to different letters. The thing was all but two letters “won” by killing/subverting everyone else. So the horror came not from the monster (standard psychic alien horror trapped in ice) or the inhabitants (driven mad by the alien) but the players motivations and interactions. It worked fantastically.

This year I was going to do a horror one-shot for Halloween but since it falls on our normal game day, I asked my players if they wanted to do that or run the regular game (pathfinder)... and I was told that they could think of no game more horrifying than my normal game. So we are doing that.
The one-shot I had partially planned though, was for pathfinder 2e and had the characters (pregens with randomly assigned dark secrets that linked to other characters) traveling through the wilderness one winter. They would see ominous signs and then a blizzard rolling in but luckily there was this old hunting lodge they could shelter in. They would have a couple hours to explore the lodge and settle in then the storm would hit and there would be a monster trying to get in. But the lodge would also be haunted with ghosts each having their own agendas and a tendency to possess people (I would have handed out numbered possession cards that gave different goals and relationships with the other characters and ghosts/numbered cards). The possessions layer with the dark secrets to make very complex motivations and play. And of course the characters would had to survive the monster and the storm as well.