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Guest 6801718
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I actually ran a horror campaign based around a fantasy zombie apocalypse. My players were constantly scared, to the point that they didn't want to go out after dark. So here are some things I did to make this suitably terrifying.
-Have the players contribute to the world building a little. Have them come up with friends and family, homelands, and things to tie them to the world. It gets them emotionally invested in the game early on and gives them something to worry about when threatened. No lost orphan adventures with a destiny to save the world. If they have to worry about their best friend or a family member, it adds to the tension and drama. Plus as the DM you get a ton of free NPCs to play with and role play. It makes your work easier.
-Keep it local for a while. Some campaigns work best with epic journeys across the planes and the world. Staying in a small community keeps it personal. Spend more campaign time in a smaller local location and build up how bad the rest of the world is. I even locked the players in the material plane, so they couldn't escape the world. Horror is only truly terrifying if it's personal on some level. It has to speak to something that scares you as an individual. So having a community to worry about and defend goes a long way. Or perhaps having to carve out a safe place and defend it works better for you. Then you can get the party more proactive about solving the problems by going someplace a little more epic towards the end. In my game, the dead afterbirth of the universe Atropos was the cause of the undead. So the party was eventually going to the rotten husk of an undead planet to fix the issue. Until then, they had to set up and maintain a safe place on their world.
-Track resources like food, water and ammunition. Usually I don't both with that kind of micromanaging. Though in horror that stuff is important. If the safe house or town is running out of food, someone has to go out there and do something about it. If your archer is getting low on arrows, things get tense. It's a horror classic.
-Foreshadowing. Gradually build up to things and let the players imagination run wild. It could be a monster or it could be some kind of event. Villagers go missing. There are strange blood stains on the wall of a house. People report seeing glowing eyes in the woods at night. I actually started off the campaign like any other high fantasy game and gradually worked in little signs here and there. There would be an undead encounter that just didn't make sense for where they were. Farmers talked about how crops had started to fail for some reason. The weather became unseasonably cold. People started getting sick more often. Then things gradually build until they get out of control. The horror that really scares me it the slow burn kind of horror. Things start off a little odd and just build from there as they get worse.
-Outnumber them. Make it clear that they can't just go out and kill undead until the problem is solved. If a city had 100,000 people in it, they're all monsters now. There has to be another solution other than kill your way to victory. Also let them know that running is perfectly ok. You have to give them other solutions and problems to solve though. Otherwise things get real grim and people stop having fun. They are playing heroes, so let them solve the problem. Just have them be more creative about it or provide more creative solutions.
-Props. Use your phone or laptop to play creepy sound effects. Randomly drag your fingernails or tap on something while they talk to each other. Use anything to make some unexpected noises during the game. When they notice, play it up a little and keep details to a minimum. "Does anyone else hear that tapping noise?". Don't do the sudden, loud noise for a jump scare. Just work in sounds subtly to add to the atmosphere. Atmosphere is everything.
If you can find a copy of the 4E book Open Grave, they have lots of good advice for running a horror campaign. They even offer three different campaign tracks you can try (including zombie apocalypse). Obviously you can't use the mechanics of the book, the flavor stuff was quite good. It also doesn't hurt to watch some really creepy horror flicks before doing some campaign writing.
-Have the players contribute to the world building a little. Have them come up with friends and family, homelands, and things to tie them to the world. It gets them emotionally invested in the game early on and gives them something to worry about when threatened. No lost orphan adventures with a destiny to save the world. If they have to worry about their best friend or a family member, it adds to the tension and drama. Plus as the DM you get a ton of free NPCs to play with and role play. It makes your work easier.
-Keep it local for a while. Some campaigns work best with epic journeys across the planes and the world. Staying in a small community keeps it personal. Spend more campaign time in a smaller local location and build up how bad the rest of the world is. I even locked the players in the material plane, so they couldn't escape the world. Horror is only truly terrifying if it's personal on some level. It has to speak to something that scares you as an individual. So having a community to worry about and defend goes a long way. Or perhaps having to carve out a safe place and defend it works better for you. Then you can get the party more proactive about solving the problems by going someplace a little more epic towards the end. In my game, the dead afterbirth of the universe Atropos was the cause of the undead. So the party was eventually going to the rotten husk of an undead planet to fix the issue. Until then, they had to set up and maintain a safe place on their world.
-Track resources like food, water and ammunition. Usually I don't both with that kind of micromanaging. Though in horror that stuff is important. If the safe house or town is running out of food, someone has to go out there and do something about it. If your archer is getting low on arrows, things get tense. It's a horror classic.
-Foreshadowing. Gradually build up to things and let the players imagination run wild. It could be a monster or it could be some kind of event. Villagers go missing. There are strange blood stains on the wall of a house. People report seeing glowing eyes in the woods at night. I actually started off the campaign like any other high fantasy game and gradually worked in little signs here and there. There would be an undead encounter that just didn't make sense for where they were. Farmers talked about how crops had started to fail for some reason. The weather became unseasonably cold. People started getting sick more often. Then things gradually build until they get out of control. The horror that really scares me it the slow burn kind of horror. Things start off a little odd and just build from there as they get worse.
-Outnumber them. Make it clear that they can't just go out and kill undead until the problem is solved. If a city had 100,000 people in it, they're all monsters now. There has to be another solution other than kill your way to victory. Also let them know that running is perfectly ok. You have to give them other solutions and problems to solve though. Otherwise things get real grim and people stop having fun. They are playing heroes, so let them solve the problem. Just have them be more creative about it or provide more creative solutions.
-Props. Use your phone or laptop to play creepy sound effects. Randomly drag your fingernails or tap on something while they talk to each other. Use anything to make some unexpected noises during the game. When they notice, play it up a little and keep details to a minimum. "Does anyone else hear that tapping noise?". Don't do the sudden, loud noise for a jump scare. Just work in sounds subtly to add to the atmosphere. Atmosphere is everything.
If you can find a copy of the 4E book Open Grave, they have lots of good advice for running a horror campaign. They even offer three different campaign tracks you can try (including zombie apocalypse). Obviously you can't use the mechanics of the book, the flavor stuff was quite good. It also doesn't hurt to watch some really creepy horror flicks before doing some campaign writing.
