Death House: Got Advice?

[Vemynal]

Hey yall, in a few days I'm going to be running Death House for a few friends as a bit of a spooky Halloween themed 1shot so I'm looking for advice.

My friends are a Dragonborn Fighter, 2 Half-Elf Monk brothers, a Half-Elf Wizard, and a Human feat Cleric.

I've literally gone through everything in the book; screenshoted the monster manual entries for all the possible monsters and tabbed them so I can instantly and easily pull them up, I've hand drawn out each floor of the maps with annotations and summaries of the rooms so I can quickly give detailed descriptions, and I've written the juicy bits of flavor text on not cards that I can read off to the players for particularly good scenes.

They are already aware that this is a highly lethal 1shot and are ok with that.

I guess I'm just looking for advice at this point on how to make it the most fun for my players while keeping the creepiness and danger levels consistent for my players.
Since we will be doing this in a single 8 to 9 hour session and I don't want anyone to be left out I'm thinking of allowing each character a single "death" where the Dark Powers return the character back to life (a la the Adventure League thing before level 4 for Ravenloft) but passing them a note card reading that the House has returned their soul to their body but their soul is now tainted by the touch of the Dark Powers of Ravenloft.

Their character is influenced by the house to lead the remaining non-dead characters down to the alter to sacrifice a player and appease the house. However since their character has already died they can't be the sacrifice and having died in the Manor are forever bound to its walls. Sound like a good/creepy idea?

[BDRook]

Don't be afraid to go off book, and use horror tropes to mess with them. For example when I ran it; when the players got to the grand ballroom they found the harp playing all by itself. When one of them walked up to it, the music stopped, and one of the harp strings snapped. When they tried to leave the door slammed shut on last person out trapping them in the room by themselves, with the torch lights flicking on and off, plunging them into darkness in 5 second intervals. The Death House used Phantasmal Force on said person, making them see the image of a horrible disfigured woman with a knife, and every time the lights would come back on she would inch closer to them. Trust me the player in question nearly **** their pants.

Another change was I added a dozen manikins to one of the storerooms, and when they left I had the last person turn around and notice they had changed positions. The manikins were completely harmless, and just the house messing with them, but you wouldn't know that by the way the entire party sliced and burned them into 1,000,000 pieces. Just stuff like that made the session way more memorable. A lot of those rooms have nothing going on, so feel free to use your imagination.

[CaptainSarathai]

Oh boy, a horror campaign! I used to do these yearly, and they were probably more fun to run than to play.

I've never used your idea about the resurrection before, but I love it. You could do so much with that.
I would set it up as an adversarial thing. Explain to the players that you can "win or lose" this just like a traditional boardgame. I would offer a reward (big bag of candy or some cool trinkets or trophies, etc) to really incentivize the teams.
Teams? What teams?
Think of games like 'The Resistance' or especially 'Panic Station' where there's a traitor mechanic. If the traitor can stop the group from attaining their goals, then the traitor wins. Panic Station is great because the traitor secretly gains teammates as you play.

I'd play the game as a "reverse" dungeon. The players are all gathered for a dinner, and someone drugs their food. They wake up to find that the house is a haunted nightmare, and their only goal is to escape through the front door.

The trick I'd use to keep the teams a secret for as long as possible, might kind of tricky in itself:
Use damage cards, and know the PCs hitpoints
Don't let the PCs tell each other their HP at any time. Have it recorded on your screen though. Have some damage cards written up. Just plain cards with numbers on them for the amount of damage they take. Among these, have the "you are dead" card, with the explanation about how they are now working against the others. Make sure to write who else is dead on the card before handing it over so they know who's on their side. The next card to go to anyone on "Team Dead Dudes" has the name of the new player included.

This has a twofold effect on players.
1) It keeps things totally secret. They don't even know there is a second team, until they die and join it. Everyone is getting cards all the time. They don't even know there's a special "you died" card.
2) It makes them super panicky and suspicious, if they DO start to catch on that dead characters are working against them.
"Uh, John - so, back there in that room where we got mobbed by Zombies, it looked you took a lot of damage. You feelin okay buddy?"
"Yeah Tim. Just a scratch. I'm fine. Juuust fine"

All of that leads to my favorite part about horror campaigns:
Gas-lighting the players, on a metagaming level.
Use cards. Use LOTS of cards.



At the start of the night, tell them that Perception and Insight checks are all added to use their Passive score (10+Ability). Have them roll a couple of D12s, and record the rolls to give to you. They can record them for themselves if they like. Now, any time they want to "roll" Perception or Insight, you randomly choose one of their D12 rolls. The result of the check is D12+8 instead of D20. This means that it's usually better than Passive, but they can't metagame the actual roll. They have no idea if they rolled a 19 or a 9.
The easiest way to do this is have them make 6 rolls at the start. Whenever they ask for a roll, you roll a D6 to randomize. Cross off the used roll and replace it with their passive score.
You can add a measure of "Madness" to this if you like. Whenever a player has crossed off all of their rolls (not necessarily made 6 rolls, but actually gotten all results 1-6) they make a new set of 6d12 for you, and gain a level of Madness (one can only force themselves to stare or listen to so much evil, before it changes their very soul).
You can either RP the madness, like "You are now irrationally afraid of Spiders" or you can just apply a negative modifier to their rolls each time (-1/level, etc). A certain level of Madness could even corrupt the player entirely, and put them on Team Evil just like dying.

By keeping Perception rolls uncertain, you can have the house play tricks on them. They all listen at a door:
"Your ears strain against the silence, there seems to be nothing."
Then hand everyone a card - everyone's card is blank, except one person. One person gets this card:
"You hear faint scratching from the other side of the door, and the voice of a small child, asking to be 'let out"
Now, that player can either tell the party, or they could assume you're just messing with them and not say a word. They don't know how good anyone's roll was.
It also gives the evil players a chance to mess with the party themselves. Never be scared to hand everyone a blank card - Team Dead might decide to tell the party that they hear cries for help from the other end of the impossibly creepy hallway that nobody else wants to go down. They might also be the only players to hear the quiet sobs of a dozen tortured ghosts, and decide to tell the party that they hear nothing dangerous at all...


Keep an hourglass at the table, like the one from Pictionary or something.
Whenever the table slows up the pace to discuss something, or goes off topic, you can turn the hourglass.
Sometimes, when it runs out, you throw a ghost at them or change the environment. Sometimes nothing at all happens. Sometimes, you just turn it over and start again...
This drives home a sense of urgency, a sense that they're never really safe, and keeps the party under stress.
I use this outside of horror games for chase sequences or other scenarios where time is of the essence, and it drives home that sense of rapidly encroaching doom.
Extra points if you actually get a nice spooky hourglass from a Halloween store or prop-shop, and have it sitting by your DM screen to "just to add ambiance" - they will freak out the first time you actually turn it over.


Roll pointless dice at random intervals, behind the screen. The players will think that something is going on, and you're planning something. You're not. You're just rolling dice.
To heighten the effect, you can even add careless foreshadowing.
"Oh, well, nothing yet" or "Not that time"
Don't try to sound menacing - just sound like you don't care or it's no big deal. That way, they think they caught you slipping, and don't suspect that you're messing with them.

You can also read them "the wrong description" when entering a room, "by accident". Something like:
"You enter the crypt. Before you is a low sepulchre, and water drips from the vaulted ceiling to collect in murky puddles on the floor. The air is heavy with mildew and grave-rot. At the far end of the crypt, you see several pairs of glowing eyes, all staring...
Oh crap, sorry guys, never mind - you weren't meant to see any eyes."
Say this even when there aren't any eyes to see.

This is the equivalent of a horror movie only giving you a glimpse of the monster, just to have it rush past the camera in a split second.
Don't do it too often, but it will terrify the players. They might not metagame their characters, but in the players' minds, they are hell-bent on finding those eyes now.


Do the normal scary stuff, not game related at all. Just scare the players for the fun of it, or thematically as part of the story.
Suddenly raise your voice mid sentence to make everyone jump.
Lunge at them from behind the screen.
Generally just be creepy - this is the one time where it makes the most sense to push the "disgust" envelope as far as they'll let you. Graphic torture, bloody dismemberment, rotten corpses, and all things truly disturbingly evil.

Music is fun too, especially if you can have two sources or have software to edit and splice music on your own (Windows Movie Maker can do that, albeit somewhat inefficiently)
Play your normal D&D music or just some ominous classical music from soundtracks like Phantom of the Opera or Jaws, and behind that or intermixed into the gaps between tracks, play bits of those "Haunted House FX" CDs you get for a couple bucks at seasonal stores. Rattling chains, moaning, wailing screams, cats and howling - all that. If you modulate the volume on a dual-track setup, or just mix a few random seconds into the playlist here or there so that it occasionally grabs the attention of the players, it can be really effective.

WARNING
a session like this is obviously an exercise in solid DMing and knowing your players. Know when you're pushing them too far for their comfort. There's comflrtable discomfort (why we like horror movies) and then there's the traumatizing stuff of actual nightmare.
You dont want anyone to throw up or pass out over a description of zombies eating some guy's intestines. Nobody should be crying because they're too scared to open an imaginary door.
A solid 8-9hr session heavy with paranoia and stress can wear people thin, both in terms of what they can take, and their tempers and relations with other people. I usually only ran 3-5hr Crawls on "full terror-pee" mode, and even then, if it was open to random players we'd have people excuse themselves from the table and just bail because they couldn't handle it.
Be careful of player attitudes. Taking agency from players is a great way to make them uncertain and scare them. But some people are control freaks for a reason and just can't handle it - you'll just make them mad, and they'll whine and argue. The same goes with adding a running Traitor element - remember to limit the violence and paranoia to the characters, and not let Tim and John get into a screaming match because Tim thinks John is lying about having hitpoints left.
It's D&D - allow humor, allow a little off-topic table talk, give breaks for smokes and food (as long as players aren't sharing secrets or ruining the table activity) and stuff.
I'm serious. Going to hardcore with any D&D stuff can mess with people, but horror campaigns can really hurt some folks.
I tried running a full horror campaign once, and we decided to kill it after the first adventure. It just wasn't fun. People were having nightmares and were dreading coming to sessions to be put through the wringer like that every week.