Horror campaign idea

[Nornalhorst]

I've been playing FEAR lately and of need of a campaign idea so I had an idea how about have a horror campaign, one thing I thought about was having something like Alma in the campaign an unstoppable monster that basically screws with the PCs from time to time for this I was thinking of throwing a very high level female lich (rarely do I ever see liches portrayed as female so that would be a little different i guess) in a campaign for low levels taking an interest in the PCs manipulating them, helping them, hurting them, stalking them, maybe having a strange morbid obsession with one PC (like Alma to Beckett in FEAR 2) but never actually killing off the PCs.

I know I didn't really give much info but would a horror campaign work?

Any ideas/suggestions/tips?

[Yukitsu]

It can depending on the group. A horror campaign is very, very different from a standard one, or even one like shadowrun where it's less about badassery and more about planning. In a horror game, the players are supposed to feel completely helpless, and in a direct confrontation with whatever, completely impotent. A lot of players don't really get into that.

On that note, if your players do like horror, the Alma like figure shouldn't have any stats at all. Like I said, in a direct "we attack her stats" confrontation, the party should be obviously and completely impotent. Also, Alma was only scary when she was still somewhat mysterious. Giving your character a specific build and template defines what she is and how she got her powers.

This doesn't mean this figure should be an omnipotent god from the get go, but make it clear that if the characters stick around too long, inevitably other bad things happen, and if they don't take the threat she represents seriously, she can begin to directly threaten them more and more often.

Don't overuse that figure, but do make it clear that it's out there, that it's important, and that solving some kind of puzzle or something can destroy it. Even then, make sure that the scares come from a wide variety of sources, and not just that figure.

[Yora]

I think a sorcerer ghost works better. They can be of much lower level and can disappear at will. With the malevolence ability, they can possess living people and frightful moan, corrupting gaze, and horrific appearance would all be great abilities that make anyone who comes close to the ghost freak out.

[Azoth]

In horror games I've run, I have found that death is in the details. You have to get them picturing the environment and enemies to truly bring out the feelings of dread and fear in them. Just saying it is a sppoky environment doesn't cut it, or saying the monster is a horribly disfigured beast won't get them going. Get vivid with the descriptions, and if you can throw in some eerie music at key points.

Immerse them in the situation, and you will have them ready to piss themselves as a rat scurries across the floor in front of them.

[Nornalhorst]

I think a sorcerer ghost works better. They can be of much lower level and can disappear at will. With the malevolence ability, they can possess living people and frightful moan, corrupting gaze, and horrific appearance would all be great abilities that make anyone who comes close to the ghost freak out.

I don't know liches seem pretty scary, especially if its a lvl 30 munchkin:smallbiggrin:. At that level they can cast spells that could mimic all the powers of the ghost and more. Plus I do want her pretty up there in power to make it clear you are not going to just hack and slash your way out of this.

http://th06.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2011/288/6/d/vigil_of_the_lich_queen_by_dblac-d4cxdwc.png

[John Longarrow]

For a good horror campaingn, you need to star out normal and work your way into the spookey and scary.

If you start out running from the big bad evil Gal (read being the classic teen girl screaming in the woods as she runs from the killer), many players get disinterested.

If you start out fairly normal, but let the BBEG start influencing them through seemingly random actions (undead attack their home town, then start targetting their family), they can realize something is up without ever knowing who's behind it.

Once the players start figuring out there is something big and nasty looking for them, they can start trying to figure out how to deal with it.

The biggest issue with a good Horror game is making sure the players don't feel like they can't win. They also work better if you have several layers of BBEGs that lead one to another.

For your Lich, you may have this all start with one of the players being stalked by a former friend/family member who's now a wight. The wight was turned by something up the power chain that views it as a favored pet. Once the wight is destroyed, next villian starts taking an interest. This works best if there are obvious clues that say the wight isn't the BBEG...

[Segev]

The real problem with a horror campaign is that it is nigh-indistinguishable from a DM-fiat scripted scene. Why is the statless horror going to terrify players in horror, when it would just annoy them as "the DM's unbeatable monster-sue" in another game? It doesn't even matter that they've bought into the idea that it's a horror game. The perception that it's the DM's heavy hand rendering the gameplay aspect pointless is going to damage it.

Then again, I'm not much of a horror fan because I tend to find it either gross (not scary, just gross) or funny. Because of the heavy-handed expectation of terror. It takes very well-done suspense to really move me appropriately, and that's even harder to do in a game than in fiction, because pacing is so much under player control.

[Nornalhorst]

For a good horror campaingn, you need to star out normal and work your way into the spookey and scary.

If you start out running from the big bad evil Gal (read being the classic teen girl screaming in the woods as she runs from the killer), many players get disinterested.

If you start out fairly normal, but let the BBEG start influencing them through seemingly random actions (undead attack their home town, then start targetting their family), they can realize something is up without ever knowing who's behind it.

Once the players start figuring out there is something big and nasty looking for them, they can start trying to figure out how to deal with it.

The biggest issue with a good Horror game is making sure the players don't feel like they can't win. They also work better if you have several layers of BBEGs that lead one to another.

For your Lich, you may have this all start with one of the players being stalked by a former friend/family member who's now a wight. The wight was turned by something up the power chain that views it as a favored pet. Once the wight is destroyed, next villian starts taking an interest. This works best if there are obvious clues that say the wight isn't the BBEG...

All good ideas I like. I'll be sure to take these into consideration, and yeah I didn't want to start out with the big bad chasing them thing but like any good horror movie you don't start out with crazy horror you actually build into it. I was thinking of just starting off with a seemingly more conventional campaign for example two nations are at war, the losing nation desperate for an advantage sends for some brave adventurers to find a long-lost ancient artifact that would give them the advantage they need in the war, the artifact however also has ties to a lich Queen, and it goes on from there. (I need to actually come up with something).

[Nettlekid]

I like a degree of Fridge Horror, where it's like, you don't get how scary it is until you think about it for a while. There's the obvious stuff like a village that's in a famine offers the players some meat dish, and mentions that this is the last of the meat that the villagers have been living off of for the past few days. But there's likely to be more soon. Later a villager dies, and rises as a Ghoul. Cue PCs to remember that Ghouls rise when humanoids eat humanoid flesh. Oh dear. So the question is, who to fight: the Ghouls going around turning more villagers into Ghouls, or the cannibalistic villagers who've been killing low-level adventurers and living off of them?

Or something that I've wanted to do for a while, but never got to, was something involving a village whose inhabitants are going missing, and to find them the PCs have to venture into a haunted forest inhabited by evil fey (like Murderjacks. Freaky.) They have to navigate a hedge maze, like the one in Harry Potter 4, which you can fill with all sorts of horrors as well. The final boss has a lot of Splinterwaif associates. And later, or maybe during the fight, the PCs see that Splinterwaifs have the ability to turn a humanoid or fey corpse into a thorny hedge. And then they look around them to the hundreds and hundreds of bushes forming the maze they just cut their way through. It would be like realizing you're in the middle of a crypt.

[squera]

I think an important point is also that you have to prepare good ways for the BBEG (the lich) to let the party survive in the early encounters, if you plan to make her a recurring BBEG.
Moreover, giving the recurring nature of the BBEG, you may want to make it grow in power as well, as so they see that the BBEG has learnt new powerful spells and feel even more trapped, and you should be consistent in the way you use her (if you don't want to roll her but just keep it vague).

Anyway, this seems like a very nice thing to do!

As already stated, it's important to give good description and everything. Besides you giving them, you should ensure that the audience is there to receive them and not wandering off with their thoughts.

[John Longarrow]

Nornalhorst,

Thanks for the kudo's. I do have a bit of an unfair advantage writing this. It is similar to a story arc I'm working out.

To bait the players in, they get to find out about slavers who are kidnapping kids age around 7. This leads them to a tower that has a couple dozen drugged children that is being run by a low level necropolitan. Once they rescue the kid they get to find the map leading to the main slaver camp and some very unsettling ideas what the kids are being used for, mostly human sacrifices.

Slaver camp leads to smuggling ring, smuggling ring leads to crazy Ur-priest on slave route, continue on until you hit Death Knight at fortress. Only after defeating it do you find out what's really behind it, mainly a society of necromancers who turn into necropolitans lead by a Lich with a sick lolita fetish.