Draculas and Devils: Gothic Horror in D&D

[Bobby Baratheon]

My group and I are going to start D&D up again, and I (as usual) am the DM. I'm toying with doing a Gothic Horror style campaign, with a definite emphasis on urban adventures. I've been using my google-fu to the best of my abilities, but I would like to hear if anyone has specific ideas or experiences with a Gothic Horror style campaign. If it helps clarify what I'm trying to do, this campaign has been largely inspired by the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies and Penny Dreadful.

(and yes, I know about Ravenloft :smallwink:)

[fishyfishyfishy]

I find D&D incredibly lacking when it comes to horror themed games. World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness are so much better at this. Vampire the Masquerade is specifically designed as a Gothic horror themed game after all. Ymmv

[Sian]

haven't personally dabbled in such an campaign, but other than Ravenloft, Heroes of Horror seems like an obvious place to start.

[Rangô]

Hey there!
I'll look through the Ghostwalk, it's 3rd edition but it exists a conversion to 3.5, maybe that book could help you out, adapting the campaign to something more vampiric.
Personally I really like Cthulhu themed and in D&D I use Lords of Darkness for that, aberrations could fit well in that kind of gothic stories.

[Shinn]

I have two advices for that :
First, be careful about the CR. Something powerful, way above us is terrifying, but many classes are able to destroy any encounter of their level with a few attacks.
And frankly, you remove a lot of the fear of an encounter if you can beat it only with Power Attack.
So think about Call of Cthulhu : any non-human encounter is wayyyyy above the PC, so they find them terrifying, knowing their chances are diminutive.
So raise the CR of every encounter by, saying, 3 to 7.

Second, be as vague as possible : look at Jaws, you can be scared without even seeing the shark. Don't say "There's an Aboleth behind you, roll Initiative", show it présence without showing itself. Play with your player's nerves, tell them there's strangely nothing. Influence their dreams, telling they see something dreadful in them. Show them "strange shadows lurking at you", "a deep noise, as if something were running somewhere"... Until they're scared AF.
Then, then, unleash the Aboleth. Without saying it's an Aboleth : describe it only.

[Milo v3]

Paizo is just about to release "Horror Adventures" a book that is meant to help you be able to run horror games, including Gothic Horror, and that even has Penny Dreadful on it's list of "Horrific Inspirations". So that might be useful.

[Extra Anchovies]

I find D&D incredibly lacking when it comes to horror themed games. World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness are so much better at this. Vampire the Masquerade is specifically designed as a Gothic horror themed game after all. Ymmv

I have to agree with fishy here. A game as heavy on tactical combat like D&D doesn't seem like it would be conducive to the sort of slow-building atmosphere of gothic horror. Does anyone have examples of times it worked well? The only things I've encountered that evoked horror or dread were enemies that seemed impossible to directly combat, and that was more akin to the frantic energy of the later stages of a slasher film, when the threat has been revealed and the survivors have to figure something out before it gets to them.

[Flickerdart]

D&D doesn't do horror well, for one simple reason.

You know how in a horror movie the characters come face to face with the monster, it goes "a-booga-booga-boo," and they run? Doesn't work that way in D&D, because of turn-based initiative and rocket tag. By the time the first PC committed to doing something and has discovered that it doesn't work, even if the rest of them choose to flee at that exact moment, the original PC is screwed.

A party needs to be built with the expectation that it will be doing a lot of running and hiding. Talk to your players.

[Gildedragon]

Limit the max spell level to 3 or 4
Make coming back from the dead, or avoiding death all together be... Risky at best
Gothic horror is all about inner flaws becoming manifest in the outside world; fears and insecurities cropping up, and the extent one is willing to go to to retain the appearance of civilization.
Dracula isn't horrifying because he's a monster but because we let him in, because the mores of the period, the rules of society, enabled his depredations; and his monstrous aspects (typically his quasisexual allure) were so... tempting.

Every character ought (ideally) have a dark secret; or a dark secret is needed to advance in power past a certain level.
Re-divide magic not into arcane and divine, but pure and impure; impure magic might allow a greater spell power (bypass resistances etc) but it has a dark and ominous cost.
Pure magic is faint but steady.

And make liberal use of contacts and npcs

And melodrama.
Twisted family trees and high emotions.
No mild distaste: is is a burning hatred met by an icy scorn...
And longtime blood feuds and rivalries.

[Bobby Baratheon]

The main reason I'm using 3.5 instead of, say Call of Cthulhu, is that my player's are relatively new to roleplaying and 3.5 is the system I've been weaning them on. I'm kind of hesitant to use another system which they would have to learn when they're just starting to grasp 3.5

Anyhoo, I had also thought about using powerful supernatural enemies that make it hard for the PC's to harm them. One idea I had was having them start at level 7 (where we ended our last campaign) but with no magic equipment. Without magical equipment, a by-the-numbers vampire becomes a lot scarier. Especially if you're investigating an abandoned house, in them middle of the night, and you know it's there but don't know where. Of course, as the campaign goes on, they'll get access to magical equipment as they level up.

The obvious downside of this idea is to empower casters, which is why I have decided to make the setting extremely superstitious. If vampires and demons and whatnot are running amok, people are going to develop a very healthy fear of magic. After all, how many commoners can distinguish between a wizard polymorphing into an animal and a werewolf? Overt uses of magic will rile up the populace, possibly causing mobs to chase the heroes around. Overt uses of magic will also attract more . . . infernal attention.

I'm definitely going with a massive city setting, and I want the tech level to be higher than standard D&D as a way of closing (a bit) the gap between the casters and the martials. I'm debating between early 17th century and Victorian England. Victorian England is obviously the more standard Gothic horror setting, but I think that a 17th century city could be very interesting as well.

UA does have a sanity system IIRC, but I'm not sure how eager I am to shove another mechanic down the throats of these new-ish players.

EDIT: Yeah I think I'll have to be very open with the players about the nature of the campaign. It's no fun for them if they're not on onboard.

[Flickerdart]

EDIT: Yeah I think I'll have to be very open with the players about the nature of the campaign. It's no fun for them if they're not on onboard.
No, it's not just that you have to be open. The players are newbies, they won't know how hard it is to disengage from combat in 3.5.

[Sian]

Sounds like you want to look into d20 Modern then ...

That said, it might be an idea for you to look through Elder Evils and either steal one of their example Elder Evils, or use the tools in the book to either tweak them to your liking or making a completely new one.

Taking a couple of pages from 'Princess Mononoke' with Nature raising against the aggressive, polluting Urban sprawl, where the antagonist 'San' have come to the conclusion that the only way to save the setting is to empower and enrage nature to cull sentient life, forcing them back into a pseudo hunter-gatherer society)

[Bobby Baratheon]

Yeah I think I'll just pick one of the Elder Evils as the ultimate bad guy in the setting.

One idea I just had is to use unique monsters. Instead of facing a minotaur, you're facing the Minotaur, and he's pissed. I think that will make for a lot more memorable encounters and a more exciting story. Recurring antagonists are always fun, especially when they're massively powerful monsters chomping at the bit to tear the PCs a new one.

Another idea is to secretly roll a d100 every time the PCs use a spell. On a roll of 001, an infernal being takes note of the PCs (as potential rivals or tools). On a roll of 100, a celestial being takes note of the PCs (as sinners to be purged or as potential servants of divine will).

EDIT: Not a huge fan of d20 modern.

[Red Fel]

I've said this before, and will say it again - much of horror, and particularly Gothic horror in this case, is atmospheric. It's not about the monsters, if there even are any, it's about what the characters do to themselves, either by examining their own humanity, or succumbing to the terror in their own minds. Here, let me cite a scholar on the subject.


The thing to remember is that most players have their characters, as mental constructs of paper and numbers, acting as insulation between the player and the source of fear. As long as it can be statted, as long as there are rolls to be had, as long as the mechanics provide the player with an out, a canny player will be able to limit his terror.

So remove the mechanics as a block.

I don't mean actually remove the mechanics. I don't mean unfairly rob the PCs of their powers or skills. I mean put the PCs in situations where their powers won't make any difference. And it's so simple to do - as others have mentioned, atmosphere does the work for you.

Some of it is environmental description. Mention flickering torches. Mention the wind rustling through the bushes. The storm raging outside, rattling the shutters and shaking the walls. The sound of whispers behind doors and the play of shadows in the corners of a room.

Some of it is NPC conduct. A leering street merchant with crooked teeth. A pair of giggling children watching the PCs before darting around a corner, out of sight. A too-pale guard whose eyes widen as the PCs approach. Perfectly explicable behaviors, but also perfectly suspicious.

And some of it is active detail. The most innocuous things can be terrifying if given sufficient detail. One poster in these forums described a summoning of an imp - an imp, the most unimpressive of evil entities - in such detail that his players became terrified at the mention of its name.

It doesn't require specific scenarios. Just set the situation up in such a way that the PCs encounter these coincidences - individually creepy-but-explicable events and people - in large quantities. When they keep running into creepy stuff, it adds up. Throw in some called-for skill checks (e.g. "Roll Perception") that reveal nothing, and the paranoia rises to the high-water mark. Even a perfectly ordinary town, forest, or cave becomes a gateway into hell with the right ambiance.

Basically, if your goal is horror, combat needs to be de-emphasized. Anything involving dice rolls needs to be de-emphasized. Mechanics form a comfortable wall between what the characters are experiencing and what the players are experiencing. Horror - true horror - is about immersing the players to the point that the two are one and the same. A horror movie frightens you because, for one brief moment, you are there. Every time a player has to roll, that wall divides him from his character, reminds him, "It's just a game." Take that away.

Gothic horror, as a genre, is about people in forbidding situations and locales, dealing with enigmas that are disturbing to say the least, and questioning their senses, their judgment, their humanity. Gothic horror, at its core, forces us to confront the monsters within us through the threat of monsters without, but rarely directly. Most of the time, the monster is like a force of nature - lurking in the background, motivating the plot, moving the pieces, but not jumping out and saying "boo."

It's not about pitting a party of unarmed heroes against a vampire. It's about pitting them against the unknown.

[Bobby Baratheon]

lots of great stuff

I suppose I should clarify:
I'm looking to make a campaign with a distinct Gothic vibe while still being an enjoyable experience for the players. I'm not really looking to scare the pants off my players, I just want them to recognize that their characters are scared as hell and that they should be played as such. Basically, I'm looking to create a campaign that runs on the Gothic Horror version of Lovecraft Lite.
The BBEG driving the events of the setting will be enigmatic, too powerful to be beaten in direct combat, and horrifyingly human. There will be situations where the PCs believe themselves to be going mad. Little signs and clues that drive their paranoia into overdrive. Dark secrets from their past that threaten to consume them. There will also be times when they bust down the door, empty some lead into the cultists, and stop the bad guy of the week. I'm just of the opinion that a straight Gothic Horror campaign would be too taxing on newer players who are not wholeheartedly into it. I probably should have elaborated on this in the original post.

Thank you for all the ideas! Keep 'em coming!

[Gildedragon]

Gothic Horror doesn't need to be scary, it can be (Turn of the Screw), but it can be appalling or gruesome (Dorian Grey, Frankenstein), or mostly thrilling and titillating (Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)
But it requires strong participation from all parties (readers in the case of books, players in this case)
Are they ingenues whose purity is to be tried
Broody heroes haunted by their past deeds (as them for what dark secrets Haunt them...)
Lastly take note that there will be some need of jerryrigging because the Gothic formula is usually 1 hero, 1 damsel in distress, and a villainous setting; party arrangements where gender isn't an issue do run counter to the oppressive social mores that spawned Gothic Horror (oh the transgression of social boundaries is a huge theme... ie the poors are wretched, and the rich that imitate them (ie hipsters) are literal monsters)

Monsters needn't be literal and they ideally can pass for human(oid)
If you do want literal monsters have these monsters be the secrets of the elites.
The minotaur of Crete, Audrey 2 from little Shop of horrors, etc are good ideas. Stop the humans that do the evil, stop the immediate excesses and abuses, but the true evil might not be stoppable
Also one of the PCs's family is responsible for a lot of the evil

[Bobby Baratheon]

Gothic Horror doesn't need to be scary, it can be (Turn of the Screw), but it can be appalling or gruesome (Dorian Grey, Frankenstein), or mostly thrilling and titillating (Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)
But it requires strong participation from all parties (readers in the case of books, players in this case)
Are they ingenues whose purity is to be tried
Broody heroes haunted by their past deeds (as them for what dark secrets Haunt them...)
Lastly take note that there will be some need of jerryrigging because the Gothic formula is usually 1 hero, 1 damsel in distress, and a villainous setting; party arrangements where gender isn't an issue do run counter to the oppressive social mores that spawned Gothic Horror (oh the transgression of social boundaries is a huge theme... ie the poors are wretched, and the rich that imitate them (ie hipsters) are literal monsters)

Monsters needn't be literal and they ideally can pass for human(oid)
If you do want literal monsters have these monsters be the secrets of the elites.
The minotaur of Crete, Audrey 2 from little Shop of horrors, etc are good ideas. Stop the humans that do the evil, stop the immediate excesses and abuses, but the true evil might not be stoppable
Also one of the PCs's family is responsible for a lot of the evil

Yeah the party dynamic might be tricky to handle, but Bram Stoker's Dracula kind of has a party dynamic. I think I might ask the players to go for a specific archetype and work from there. One of them can be the smart guy (Van Helsing), haunted by that which he has discovered; another can be the fighting man at a loss to understand the forces against them, maybe with a secret or two of his own (Ethan Chandler from Penny Dreadful, or to a lesser extent Quincy from Dracula). These are just two examples; I might compile a list of basic Gothic horror archetypes and let them pick from them and flesh out their characters from there.

[LordOfCain]

May I suggest the E6 homebrew rules set for added realism?

[daremetoidareyo]

I have to agree with fishy here. A game as heavy on tactical combat like D&D doesn't seem like it would be conducive to the sort of slow-building atmosphere of gothic horror. Does anyone have examples of times it worked well? The only things I've encountered that evoked horror or dread were enemies that seemed impossible to directly combat, and that was more akin to the frantic energy of the later stages of a slasher film, when the threat has been revealed and the survivors have to figure something out before it gets to them.

D&D has a demand for high player agency, so horror in this game is difficult, in addition to the reasons above. The only way I've seen it work is with high gore content and lots of choices the PCs make being regrettable later in a "what have we done" sort of way. Blackwidow prostitutes that lay eggs in their John's. Sentient pus from a monster bite. Stuff like that. Diseases that make your skin invisible and your innards get sunburned.

Invade their body. Make them witness invasions of body and mind.

[Zaq]

You might shift the design goal to be a Gothic Horror setting without necessarily trying to make a Gothic Horror game—basically, focus on the Gothic rather than the Horror, because actual horror is difficult in D&D.

I think your model here should be Castlevania. Everything about Castlevania's setting and iconography screams Gothic Horror, but it's not a horror game, and it doesn't try to be. See, D&D 3.5 does a good job of making powerful and heroic characters, but it doesn't do a great job of making the players feel powerless (without just steamrolling them with monsters they can't/shouldn't fight), so play to the game's strengths rather than to the game's weaknesses. You can include horror elements, and you don't have to play 100% fair and make sure that the PCs never get in trouble, but you also aren't going to put primary importance on a carefully crafted atmosphere of creeping powerlessness (that then gets torpedoed by someone pulling out a win button). You can still put in a lot of the trappings of Gothic Horror, but you don't have to set yourself up to fail by insisting that the players will feel horrified.

Maybe that's not what you want. It's definitely not exactly what you asked for. Maybe you think that this suggestion is just giving up and taking the easy way out. But my point is that you can have fun in a Gothic Horror setting without necessarily insisting that D&D feel like reading a horror novel or watching a horror movie, and while exceptions certainly exist, you can usually have more fun with a game by working with what it is than with what it isn't.

[Sian]

D&D has a demand for high player agency, so horror in this game is difficult, in addition to the reasons above. The only way I've seen it work is with high gore content and lots of choices the PCs make being regrettable later in a "what have we done" sort of way. Blackwidow prostitutes that lay eggs in their John's. Sentient pus from a monster bite. Stuff like that. Diseases that make your skin invisible and your innards get sunburned.

Invade their body. Make them witness invasions of body and mind.

Doable by prodding at the Elder Evil rules, more specifically the signs.

[Gildedragon]

Yeah the party dynamic might be tricky to handle, but Bram Stoker's Dracula kind of has a party dynamic. I think I might ask the players to go for a specific archetype and work from there. One of them can be the smart guy (Van Helsing), haunted by that which he has discovered; another can be the fighting man at a loss to understand the forces against them, maybe with a secret or two of his own (Ethan Chandler from Penny Dreadful, or to a lesser extent Quincy from Dracula). These are just two examples; I might compile a list of basic Gothic horror archetypes and let them pick from them and flesh out their characters from there.
Mmm. Go for "give me N things that haunt your character: either what keeps them up at night OR what they can never let their friends/the world know OR things they'd be willing to shift alignments for"


Doable by prodding at the Elder Evil rules, more specifically the signs.
Very doable via them. Though if one wants to not break the setting: the signs are proximity of the villain based and limited in geographic scope.

Also: allies, true allies (that don't secretly work for the badguy), ought be hard to find and either have another cause that keeps their help to a minimum or get gobbled up as soon as they'd be helpful, leaving behind only cryptic notes, a gibbering madman, or a clue strewn crime scene (for example head torn off body, prompting players to realize the superhuman str of said deed)
Also out goes immunity to fear
Maybe immunity to Intimidate and demoralizing and panic but not to being shaken etc

[Extra Anchovies]

You might shift the design goal to be a Gothic Horror setting without necessarily trying to make a Gothic Horror game—basically, focus on the Gothic rather than the Horror, because actual horror is difficult in D&D.

I think your model here should be Castlevania. Everything about Castlevania's setting and iconography screams Gothic Horror, but it's not a horror game, and it doesn't try to be.

Ooh, that is very good. It didn't come to mind when I thought about gothic-styled media to draw inspiration from, but it's definitely a fitting way to approach the genre in a combat-focused system. The knowledge that Dracula is somewhere in the castle, essentially waiting for the PCs to show up so he can ROFLstomp them unless they scour the labyrinthine halls for every weapon they can find, could (along with some good environmental description) establish a very nice atmosphere to an otherwise normal-ish dungeon crawl.

Just don't give the PCs a crissaegrim :smalltongue:

[Bobby Baratheon]

To re-iterate:


I suppose I should clarify:
I'm looking to make a campaign with a distinct Gothic vibe while still being an enjoyable experience for the players. I'm not really looking to scare the pants off my players, I just want them to recognize that their characters are scared as hell and that they should be played as such. Basically, I'm looking to create a campaign that runs on the Gothic Horror version of Lovecraft Lite.
The BBEG driving the events of the setting will be enigmatic, too powerful to be beaten in direct combat, and horrifyingly human. There will be situations where the PCs believe themselves to be going mad. Little signs and clues that drive their paranoia into overdrive. Dark secrets from their past that threaten to consume them. There will also be times when they bust down the door, empty some lead into the cultists, and stop the bad guy of the week. I'm just of the opinion that a straight Gothic Horror campaign would be too taxing on newer players who are not wholeheartedly into it. I probably should have elaborated on this in the original post.

These are my design goals.

[Gildedragon]

So first I'd kill the detect line of spells... Except maybe Detect Taint
And raise the protection from X spells by a level or two, or straight up turn them into incantations

Then figure out a big bad, or the big bad's dragon/mortal agent
Let's say the very pleasant acting and beloved heir apparent; they've pushed for reforms that make them insane popular among all strata of society
But is also the masked leader of an evil cult
And the secret sponsor of a dozen or more small evil cults and vile experiments

Then come up with some small villains
The disappearances that are ultimately tracked back to the small coastal town a few days north where the Navy Admiral has been bribing an abboleth with lives for years now so as to rise in power

Or the rash of break ins meant to reassemble a "destroyed" mummy by bringing together the parts of their body and performing a blood sacrifice on a certain night

Also I think the Age of Worms campaign has a lot of that sort of stuff going for it

[Bobby Baratheon]

So first I'd kill the detect line of spells... Except maybe Detect Taint
And raise the protection from X spells by a level or two, or straight up turn them into incantations

Then figure out a big bad, or the big bad's dragon/mortal agent
Let's say the very pleasant acting and beloved heir apparent; they've pushed for reforms that make them insane popular among all strata of society
But is also the masked leader of an evil cult
And the secret sponsor of a dozen or more small evil cults and vile experiments

Then come up with some small villains
The disappearances that are ultimately tracked back to the small coastal town a few days north where the Navy Admiral has been bribing an abboleth with lives for years now so as to rise in power

Or the rash of break ins meant to reassemble a "destroyed" mummy by bringing together the parts of their body and performing a blood sacrifice on a certain night

Also I think the Age of Worms campaign has a lot of that sort of stuff going for it

I'm liking the ideas. I actually had a more radical idea of only allowing spellcasters to choose from two schools. It's not as mean as it sounds, since most of the party plays martials or gishes. I think it'll remove a lot of the win buttons that spellcasters can call upon, or at least reduce the amount that any individual player can have while creating more specialized PCs, which IMHO is more in line with Gothic Horror. Obviously I'm going to talk to them about it first.

What is the Age of Worms campaign? Is it a published campaign setting, or what?

[Flickerdart]

I'm liking the ideas. I actually had a more radical idea of only allowing spellcasters to choose from two schools.
Everybody chooses Conjuration and Transmutation, and keeps playing.

[Tiktakkat]

Look at the plot more than the mechanics. (Although everything Red Fel said is essential to implementing the mechanics.)

A significant portion of Gothic Horror is the story, particularly the morality play elements, rather than the more surface mechanics. You can get a suitably Gothic Horror theme even with egregious violence and gratuitous skill checks - Alien and Pitch Black should be the prime examples. Even Penny Dreadful had some rather grand melees.

Getting that story right is however the hard part, and where Ravenloft repeatedly failed, with the Dark Lords perpetually immunized from any consequences beyond the perpetual torment the demiplane inflicted on them.
You have to construct stories of real tragedy, where most solutions are irrelevant, and where petty good deeds can magnify into overwhelming significance.
You need despair to be so common that even overwhelming heroism is barely noticed, until the least reciprocity among the NPCs attains profound significance.
You must show evil being rewarded again and again until that last moment when the PCs can bring some justice about.

Of course that is difficult to maintain. The old War of the Worlds TV series had that problem, with every episode being another pyrrhic victory until chain watching them becomes an exercise in induced depression, and you wonder why exactly you are setting the next one up to run.
You must find that "right" point to let the players "win" - if they can of course - then give them a chance to enjoy that victory before moving on to the next excursion into hopelessness.

[Sian]

What is the Age of Worms campaign? Is it a published campaign setting, or what?

Its a line of 12 adventures going from 1-20, it was published in Dungeon Magazine #124-136

[Big Fau]

Wizards of the Coast released Plane Shift: Innstrad not too long ago. That's essentially what you're looking for (albeit in 5E). Free to download, but it doesn't really contain much playable information.

[Gildedragon]

I'm liking the ideas. I actually had a more radical idea of only allowing spellcasters to choose from two schools. It's not as mean as it sounds, since most of the party plays martials or gishes. I think it'll remove a lot of the win buttons that spellcasters can call upon, or at least reduce the amount that any individual player can have while creating more specialized PCs, which IMHO is more in line with Gothic Horror. Obviously I'm going to talk to them about it first.

What is the Age of Worms campaign? Is it a published campaign setting, or what?

Let them be generalists (cutting out levels 5-9 removes so many I Win buttons)... Know a bit of all sorts of magic (I'd remove the class uniqueness... Find an ancient spell on a book, anyone can learn it)
But tweak some spells to be... Insidious
[Healing] spells deal subdual damage, or a negative condition (the sickened line perhaps). Out if combat healing is NECESSARY but it leaves them vulnerable.
A divination might leave one shaken (or worse) if the effective spell level is above certain threshold (identifying the nature of lingering aura might reveal the human sacrifices needed to produce the effect; invisible monsters might be hideous to the point of provoking a will save against fear; and a read thoughts spell perhaps showing dark fantasies and ideas even the thinker isn't aware)
You gotta strike a balance though, between the new drawbacks of the spell and its utility

on that note: folding detect magic and detect taint together might be good... magic incantations that need too much incantations leave a space tainted... Or even make sensing magic and reading magic and sensing taint not be a spell at all; but something that anyone with training in arcana or spellcraft or UMD can do. That little boost in power makes magical traps and gear more obvious, but lets you build up the scene better:
"The bookcase swings open and you feel in your teeth itch with the telltale remains of magic. The discomfort grows as you go down the stairs to the point you can almost taste the power. -roll a spellcraft check and/or Kn arcana- (21, 26) It's necromancy. strong. And something else... Oozing from the aether, making you feel unclean. The stone floor is scrubbed clean but you can almost see the blood welling out of it... Hot, sticky, painful... Breaking the veil, letting someone, something, come back.
You then see the altar. You don't need to read the runes, you already know what it is for: the blood of six unwilling victims to restore one life. You can't tell how many times the stone has been used, but it has been used all too recently."
"The blade makes the hair on the back of your neck stand. It is rusted and pitted but you can tell it was once, perhaps still is, a relic of power. You grip it and focus your mind on it. There's a flickering and the weapon is ablaze with mystic fire"
"-search for traps roll- (10) the room seems clear and free of traps but there's that smell... Magic ready to strike. You take a deep breath. -roll spellcraft- (19) It is a cold dangerous smell... An attack spell woven into the walls, meant to trap intruders in ice; you turn to the priest, they seem to regard the chamber with similar apprehension "

[Trickquestion]

I'm actually running a Gothic Horror campaign right now, though it's still only two sessions in, and it's more inspired by Tom Baker's early tenure on Doctor Who then any classic literature.

Right from the get go I knew physical helplessness was right out as a source of fear, so I try to focus more on building a paranoid and suspicious atmosphere, where everyone has a secret and you don't know who's plotting against who, combined with combat being fast and bloody. I've managed to actually build a fair amount of tension so far with a setting completely devoid of anything supernatural: a murder mystery on a shady steam clipper crossing the sea that threatens to spark a mutiny. Now, if the mutiny breaks out and the ship suddenly needs to drop a long trail of bloodied, butchered sailors over the side as a burial at sea, then the depths may notice their tiny boat...

[atemu1234]

As with most things, this all boils down to skills as DM and mood as player.

I've had World of Darkness campaigns that held themselves in as much esteem as a pratfall, and horror campaigns in D&D that still inspire terror in new players.

The trick is presentation, and training the players to recognize a certain vernacular - if they're fans of the genre, using vocabulary similar to the classics can help inspire primal fear and dread, as they would with the original.

[Bobby Baratheon]

Everybody chooses Conjuration and Transmutation, and keeps playing.

These are not optimizers by any stretch of the word. I'd be more surprised if they didn't choose Evocation.

Also, @atemu1234: Fluff advice is more of what I'm looking for here. I have a more or less solid idea of what I want to do mechanically, I'm just sort of fishing for good story/setting ideas at this point.

EDIT: @Everyone else: Thank you! I think I'm going to lift a lot of stuff from the Masque of the Red Death module for 3.5. It's a little cliche, perhaps, but we've settled on Victorian London as our setting of choice. I told the players that it will be a Gothic horror themed campaign, and that they will (at least initially) be involved with a secret order dedicated to protecting the city from the supernatural terrors that threaten it. Where they take it from there is up to them. If they want to become evil cultists, cool. I'll roll with it. I'm going to re-read Dracula and some of the darker Romantic poetry to get a good handle on the vocabulary (which was a great suggestion, btw).

There will be some secret spell mechanics. Such as a % chance of any non-cantrip spell cast attracting the attention of a supernatural entity (1% for a 1st level spell, 2% for 2nd level, so on and so forth). I do like the idea of attaching negative rider effects to some spells, thought I'd probably ignore healing since it has more of a "white magic" vibe. Heck, healing might be exempt from the supernatural entity awareness roll too. I might just draw up a table of random, mostly negative results for spells with the [evil] tag that only get set off if the caster fails a will save. Incantations will definitely take on a greater role, especially with divinations and other out of combat utility spells.

[Gildedragon]

Let's see: fluff
An eternal monarch that has extended their life indefinitely through alchemy... Or perhaps necromancy... Or perhaps has not at all, but the heirs take on that legendary monarch's persona to make the empire look stronger and eternal

A flurry of discovery: be it reliable creation of magic items, several utility spells, elemental binding (as in Eberron) that allows the creation of (cheap) labor and transportation (perhaps not binding elementals but the souls of the underclasses that fall into debt)

Commerce with far off lands bringing in all sorts of "barbarians" to the heart of the Empire

A corrupt church sponsored by the state; full of ineffectual mysticism and superstition and pageantry (perhaps echoes of past magical Power)

Secrets. Everyone has two faces in the society. The face one gives to Society and the secret face, the private face

Galleries and museums are opening. Men (and women) of learning show their discoveries to the world. Some of said discoveries were perhaps best left forgotten.

Industrial barons are metaphorical vampires that drink the labor of the poor to line their pockets in gold. But their Great Works have made the city a glistening beacon of modernity

A topsy turvy weather. Is secretly Highly Morphic, and affected by strong emotions.
Hence the society's desire to keep things hidden and secret give rise to thick and impenetrable nighttime fogs, and perhaps walking nightmares that are barely tangible

Crime is on the rise. The widening gap between the haves and have-nots has pushed many to make a living either smuggling, robbing, or worse; and the middle class is a quagmire of bureaucracy and corruption

Entertainment districts cater to every taste and pleasure... Even horrid ones, in secret alleys and back rooms

The city is built atop of a mass of tunnels, cellars, and catacombs

Now: it is tempting to make it all look Victorian England but there's a few spaces in history that can have the same sort of vibe
Meiji Japan, what would be Tokyo in particular; the trading ports of China circa the opium wars and up to the turn of the 20th century; the antebellum US south...
Or early Renaissance Italy (with a flux between religion, humanism, merchants, and nobles as sources of power); or Imperial Rome (eastern or western, both work lovely) edit: nvm that...