Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 8101677" data-attributes="member: 6855114">A bit late on the thread but D&D can be used in the horror genre with no problems.You need the following premisesA) Horror has many faces. Fear and disgust are two of these. Use them.B) Horror needs high stakes, PC's death should be possible and the players should be warned that the game will be gritty, that they might stumble upon creatures that are unbeatable at their level and that resurrection might not be always possible. They must learn to flee. With these in minds.1) Do not play encounters in a standard way. Use weird encounter sequence. One thing I did in fourth edition was to have the group attacked by a group of zombies. When the last zombie died, it glowed red and all zombies rose as skeletons! Once the last skeleton died, they all glowed again and their hands started to move as skeletal crawling claws. Players were not ready for that and it set the tone for that crypt (a small one shot, one evening adventure). Single handedly, these encounters were not really hard, but the sequence was not expected and thus, shocking and unexpected. (2nd edition)2) Monsters should be harassers when it is to their advantage. Don't give the players a break.In CoS, the werewolves were not attacking en masse, but in waves. When one werewolf was wounded and at risks of being cut down, it simply fled in the woods to recuperate. When the werewolves were far enough, they were taking a short rest, used their HD to heal, and headed back to the group to attack them again. Players were facing one wave every half an hour sometimes more. I pushed as far as having one werewolf saying:" You fight well, you suffered many wounds. How many of you will join us next moon?" With a wolfish grin, the werewolf went away.3) Roll save dice in advance for both your monsters and the players. About 20 rolls should do the trick for one evening. I roll on the open, but even I know when a to roll a secret die. I take the first die rolled and mark it off the list and so on. Players can see the list at the end of the session if they want to. Not knowing if you made a save or not adds a lot of tension, especially on such things as lycanthropy or unknown effect.4) Make the players hesitant to use their powers.In CoS, the cleric had used his turn undead on ghouls. Immediately after that, Strahd appeared and said:" With that now out of the way, my brides will be able to feed on you. You don't mind that my darlings take a bit of your blood don't you?". And Strahd sent a group of vampire spawn against the PCs.5) Make the monsters attack when the players are distracted or from unexpected directions. The following two examples are quite good. A thief listened to a crypt door only to hear:" I have been expecting you. Please come in and free me from my prison". (It was a simple magic mouth on the other side of the door, set to say these words if someone was near the door). At the same time, a group of ghouls attack from out of the ground clawing at the feet of the players. The cleric got paralyzed and the group fled as they thought there were too many ghouls (a few of the clawed hands were simply zombies) but the effect was the same. The wizard said to the group's leader:" Told you we should not enter a cemetery at night! You dope!". (1ed)5B) Don't let the monster behave normally. Again, a simple example. In a castle, the group was on the 7th floor. The thief starts to listen at the door and two furry clawed hand bursts through the door and grabbed him. Before the thief could react, the werewolf ran to the end of the room and jumped through a window with the thief in its claws. It was a 100 feet fall. The werewolf survived so did the thief but not very long, as he was alone against an elite werewolf (4ed). 6) Sometimes, the players must not fight for themselves. Players, especially in 5ed, are of the Heroic sort. So horror must not always be against them, but they should be witnesses. In fourth edition, I had a city transported into the plane of shadows (DiA anyone?). The city was besieged by undead and the players were tasked to help protect the northen gate. Naturally, the gate was breached. The players set themselve to receive the attack of the wights only to see the wights ignoring them to go to.... the ORPHANAGE! Every players protested and yet, they had the city map, they knew the orphanage was there. Both of my group nearly lost the orphanage. Many children were killed and transformed into wights. Even when the city's officials told them it was not their fault, the players felt cheap and sad at the fate of children. This event set the tone of the whole campaign as the groups tried to redeemed themselves.7) A rumor can be a powerful tool to set the stage.Players can be warned in advanced of a particularly strong enemy. The more they hear about it, the more they'll start to be afraid. This helps raise tension. I had a big infernal ogre in 3.5 edition that was a terror to the inhabitants of the dungeon. Players kept hearing about Burger Face but when they finally met it, they were in a big surprise. In the middle of the room, there was a big fire pit and the ogres was there. He grabbed the fighter and threw him in the pit. A bit at la Butcher in Diablo he was screaming:"Fresh Meat! Fresh Meat for tha PIT! BURN little pinky pigs! BURN!" the fighter failed his climbing check taking fire damage and the Ogre even succeded in getting the wizard in the pit too. Two characters died and the rest fled when they saw the ogre jump into the pit and getting his wound closed by the fire. It never occured to them to douse the fire pit with the three scrolls of create water they had found earlier. Here, the tension of knowing this ogres was to be feared made this ogre way scarier than it was for a group of 7th level characters. They got really scared and the survivors fled the place. And yet, they knew everything there was to know about the ogre. They only did not take into account what the monsters were saying, putting their words into the domain of gross over exaggeration. 8) Have a friend turn against the players.Horror comes in all shapes and size. But having a friend betray you from no fault of his own is shocking. The closer that friend is, the better. I once had a beloved NPC be transformed into a vampire. This friend, when it was discovered that he was the vampire creating all these lesser vampires, only said:" I'm so sorry, I don't want to do this, but I can't help it. I want to die, but the curse forces me to stay alive to kill more people and to make more of myself. I'm so sorry, I never wanted this!" With these words, the once friend fled the players. But they were shocked and angry. If they destroy the vampire, their friend is lost for ever. If they let him live, they will be over run by vampire at some point. Could they cure him? Could they find the original vampire? They went from we need to kill to how do we capture a vampire. They set themselves up with incredible restrictions. Only to finally destroy their friend as he was making more and more vampires. (2nd edition, 15th level adventure or about)9) Use random encounters if the players are have to much of an easy time, but do not over do it. If the players feel too safe, the tension goes down and so too does the stress. You doN't want them to feel relief. You want to keep them on the edge but not on the brink of death unless they were reckless or behaved as to be killed. You want them to fear for their lives.In 5ed, there is only one thing that must be done to allow the possibility of horror. It is to modify the rest rule. I use no healing on rest. HD to recover HP only. A short rest is one hour of uninterrupted rest and a long rest is eight hours of uninterrupted rest. When rest is not a sure thing, even a short one, players get edgy and more prudent if not downright suspicious. This opens up a lot of possibility and</blockquote>

Verification