What would be in your perfect Halloween setting?

[Voadam]

A farm with a pumpkin patch for a potential Pumpkin King to rise up from and other crops that require a scarecrow.

Probably a dark forest outside the farm.

 

[Voadam]

Abandoned haunted mansion.

 

[aco175]

I made a Halloween adventure called Hydra Hollow-een. It had a forgotten temple once run by clerics of Oghma who kept bodies on ice from all over and it served as a repository for knowledge. People could come and ask questions of the dead. Of course it had a zombie hydra to fight and scarecrow guardians of the hollow to keep people out.

 

[Wolfram stout]

Honestly (as a nearly forever DM) if I got to play in a Halloween one shot I would be thrilled if the DM used one of the minor realms from the 5e Ravenloft book and used the suggested adventure hooks to build an adventure.

That may not be helpful, so more specifically, I would love an adventure in the Egyptian styled Pyramid realm delving in ancient tombs trying to unravel the mystery of a Mummy Lord.

 

[aramis erak]

A few years ago, I ran a deeply mediocre Christmas adventure and then, last year, an even bigger wet fart of a special adventure. However, I made a great town the first year and it occurred to me that what I probably ought to do is return to that setting each year and just add extra holiday adventure stuff onto it.

But this is spooky season. If one was making a Halloween setting, what would you put in it? Assume you'd want a (relatively) safe village for the player characters to work out of as a home base, but what other stuff would you add to such a setting? It doesn't need to be as robust or "realistic" as a regular D&D setting, since this would be mostly used for Halloween-specific adventures and include those tropes.

My preferred RPGs for Holloween avoid the hell out of the holiday.
Og: unearthed.
KAMB 3rd/Deluxe (BEER system)
Ninja Burger (SAKE system, aka 1e)

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

A couple other Halloween experiences I've had playing, besides the Bloody Barber who was making human parts into creepy scarecrows and jack o lanterns...

1) Using Dread, we played as kids who were invited to a rich kid's halloween party. The kid's dad owned the steel mill and we were all kids of his workers, so it was a 'give back to my workers' thing. The parents all went out so we started playing sleepover games... like one with a voodoo doll you'd play hide and seek with. He'd chase you with a knitting needle and stab at you. You had to keep salt water in your mouth because if you opened your mouth - say, when it stabbed you - it could possess you. During the curse too, we didn't know it at the time but our costumes became 'real' so the kid who came as GI Joe was actually relatively safe. The poor kid who came as the 'robot' - the washing machine box wrapped in tin foil - not so much.

2) My friend was going to run a horror D&D, using some Ravenloft stuff, but decidedly NOT Ravenloft. He started with the Hell House(?) adventure. The setup was we were orphans, and the bullies said we were chickens. So we decided to stay at the Wycker House overnight - no one ever had. All kinds of bad things happened to us ten year olds. We survived, and saved the two NPC brother and sister, who became paralyzed after she hid in the dumbwaiter and it dropped.

Fast forward ten years, we come back together to the brother's funeral. He'd never been able to cope with the experience and swore he'd destroy the House. He, and we, found out the house would reform when destroyed. He did discover the basement had a portal to The Other Side, and his theory was if it was destroyed from the mirror side, that would solve everything, but ... the House arranged his death first. So, we were put on the path to avenge our friend.

 

[Voadam]

My favorite Halloween game that I played in was just the normal campaign but we had to go deal with a witch that week to get information and make a deal. Not over the top horror or gore. It was very creepy and atmospheric and fun.

 

[overgeeked]

Spooky. Take all the things normally associated with Halloween and make them sentient. Talking jack-o-lanterns, etc.

Mild scary. Take all the nasty urban legends around Halloween and make them true. Drugs and razors in the candy, etc.

Medium scary. The dead come back to seek revenge on the living. Not general zombie stuff, rather specific murders, accidents, etc. Find out there’s a serial killer in the town. It’s the nicest guy in town.

A bit scarier. Everyone turns into their costumes. Sexy nurses, serial killers, cats, Naruto, Joker, Harley Quinn, Killer Klowns, werewolves, Darth Vader, etc. All the props become real. So most of the children in the town are now some kind of supernatural monster and the only ones to stop them are their own parents.

 

[R_J_K75]

I ran a Halloween adventure in Waterdeep about 10 years ago based on Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees. Wasnt much of a premise other than Jason running around killing people and the players had to figure out who the killer was and stop him. It was a fun one-shot.

Lot of good ideas to take from Paizo's Carrion Crown. Namely haunts and spirit planchettes, so much good flavor.

I ran the first Carrion Crown adventure, and my players got crushed by the haunts. They didnt know what to do. Instead of trying to figure the encounter out they just whined, cried and gave up.

 

[jdrakeh]

Graveworld (a setting that is a giant, endless, cemetary). A few of us here actually had a good deal of work done on such a setting, but then the server crashed (as was common in the old days) and nobody had made a backup.