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Skrum
2022-10-09, 10:03 AM
It's October, so I'm beginning prep for a horror one shot. And I want it to be *scary.* Not just a monster hunt or something basic, I want to shake 'em. Any ideas, maybe from a previous horror game that you found particularly effective?

Inevitability
2022-10-09, 10:09 AM
Halloween session: PCs were exploring a haunted house: lots of scared prodding around, fleeing from noises (the house contained some kind of immortal revenant with offscreen teleportation who roamed around looking for them), and looking for a way out.

Before the session started, I'd taken ten little electric candles and put them on the table, 'for atmosphere'.

Whenever I felt like the PCs were being too cautious and wanted to prod them into action, I'd grab a candle, turn it off, and put it back without saying a word. If PCs question what's going on, reply "Nothing :)". If they ask what happens when all ten are off, reply "Definitely nothing :)". Do it well, and they'll start panicking if you as much as glance at the next candle.

Obviously, anything the candles actually measure or count down to is secondary.

Quertus
2022-10-09, 11:36 AM
“You travel back in time… to a time before Google.”

No, seriously, that’s all it took to shake a younger audience.

Reversefigure4
2022-10-09, 10:45 PM
Dread, the Jenga tower system, is a wonderful wonderful way of generating tension for horror one shots. Every horror story I've run with it - across very different genres and styles - has felt tense.

Segev
2022-10-10, 02:16 PM
The false hydra (https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/false-hydra.html) is pretty good as a core for a horror concept.

There're also a few youtube videos discussing it, but I figured the original writeup (as far as I know it to exist) would be easiest to reference and mine for ideas. Despite the notion being flavored for an isolated town in a pseudo-medieval fantasy, the concept could work in a modern day setting or even in something like a cyberpunk corporation or on an isolated starship that is mysteriously breaking down...and it takes a while for the PCs to realize the "mysterious" breakdowns are due to the fact that it's supposed to have a lot more crew...so how did it get this far out without breaking down if they are all the crew it has ever had?

animorte
2022-10-16, 01:13 AM
1. Create the setting. This can greatly help immersion. Perhaps the lighting is down a bit and you have a soundtrack of ambient sounds of the night, dripping water, the howling wind, etc…

2. Remember that what you don’t blatantly present to the audience (your players in this instance), they must use their imagination. In the words of Teller, “Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself.”

We try and make it a point to do various holiday related one-shots throughout every year. It’s always been an absolute blast.

Pex
2022-10-16, 01:25 AM
I have run a one-shot that is literally the movie Night of the Living Dead. It starts at the graveyard. Most of the time the party reaches the house, but one group decided to stay in the graveyard a bit longer. I had to improvise them hoarding up at a church. They would eventually get to the house.

My only difference to the movie is there is an ending where it's possible to stop the zombie plague. I'm not happy with it, but I stick with it because I can't think of anything better. It does require leaving the house. There are clues in the house this is required. Most groups have done so, but one group refused to leave the house and had to deal with the full on horde until finally they decided to follow the clues and leave the house.

Most of the time the players recognize it's the movie, but I have run it long enough to reach the point no one did. :smallfrown: It happened to be the group that refused to leave the house.

S@tanicoaldo
2022-10-16, 03:06 PM
Reading this Thread title struck me with crazy inspiration so here the ideia I was granted my the muses:

-PCs are a group of supernatural investigators.
-The local authorities are aware of the supernatural and often contact the group when they have a case they can't figure out. They trust and respect the group judgment and turn blind eyes on any extra official needs of the group.
-The case is about a mass murder in a night club, the wounds and the event are all impossible and done by something non-human.
-The owner is douche arrogant rich kid and is the only massacre survivor.

The group is called to investigate.

In the integration they found out the family of the guy is a long line of occultists. A "clan" of some sort.

In the past they started as a group of friends who were often bullied and mocked by others (kids and adults) for their strange and unconventional aparece, behavior and interests.

They form a brotherhood of some sorts, trying to stick together and survive their youth, one day in one of these bullying interaction with other kids one member of the brotherhood is accidentally killed.

Filled with anger and frustration, specially on how the kids responsible for the murder suffer no consequence fr their actions they decide to take revenge.

But they are poor and lack any resources, but decide to create a "tulpa" (an object or being that is created through spiritual or mental powers. Modern practitioners, use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend or creature which practitioners consider to be sentient and relatively independent, a thoughtform).

The ritual consist in creating many forms of art related to anger and revenge, and shoving it inside a hollow tree the group used to hang out at, all this frustration and anger coupled with a emotional significant place creates a powerful mystical resonance at the place, after that they spent years accumulating cursed artifacts and objects related to anger and revenge and seal all of that inside the tree, in one night after collecting and creating enough cursed objects they set fire to the tree and fuse the flames, ash and smoke with their will, anger, hatred and practices related to the concept of hyperstition they are able to create the entity and bind it to their control.

For the following days this spirit of revenge would rain righteous fury among the population of the city, all those connected to the case, be it directly or indirectly, tough action or omission would be confronted, killed or forgiven.

After this event filled with renewed purpose and ambition, the group would use the power of their creation to enact vigilant justice thought the country, consolidating their presence in the society at the same time.

The creature would love to bring justice to the ones who escape justice and comfort to the ones who are unjustly persecuted, discriminated or wronged. Specially by the justice system that should be protecting them.

With time them and their descendants would grow complacent, using the spells that bind the tulpa to force it to enact personal vendettas and facilitate the gain of personal power and wealth.

In years the descendants of the clan would grow to be some of the most powerful and influential families of the country, all thanks to the creature their ancestral created so long ago.

But the creature was not happy, at each injustice it would grow more and more angry, until one of the descendants, tried to use it for a heinous crime and it snapped, it broke free from the binding and, one by one killed all the other scions. Only sparing the nightclub owner because of an amulet he has protecting him from harm.

Now tired of existence and disgusted by it's own actions and the corruption of it's initial somewhat noble purpure it just wants to die, to stop existing, but belief is what feeds and powers it's existence, so as long as someone knows of it's story and existence, it won't stop existing.

The young scion smiles wickedly, now the investigators are a target of the creature just as he is.

The game is now race against time where the investigators must find an alternative way to kill or stop the tulpa before it goes against them as well.

I dunno... I feels like a good hook imo.

LOL

Mastikator
2022-10-16, 04:12 PM
Some ideas:

Zombie Town
Players are sent to investigate a town, something strange is going on there. They have received a letter from a friend who says the town is in peril, but when they go there the friend says it was just a prank.

Many of the towns folk (including the friend) have been zombified and are disguised as living using magic by a cult of necromancers. The zombies mime every day tasks, but at night drag people of of their homes to be zombified by the cult.
If the players try to investigate the disguised zombies will try to convince them to go into a trap to kill them. Same if they try to escape because now they know too much.

The horror element will come from not knowing who to trust, it's important that the players don't know about the zombies until they kill someone who is a zombie. Make sure there are enough zombies that the players can't brute force it. A town of 10000 would mean 1000 zombies already. Every night a handful of townsfolk are converted. Have the players interact with and remember one NPC, someone who is generally worried and has anxiety about strange noises at night, only for this NPC to be zombified and sneakily turn on the players.

For a non-fantasy game turn the necromancers into an alien that uses pheromones to disguise the zombies and itself. Killing the alien/necromancers should cause all zombies to die.

Pex
2022-10-16, 09:53 PM
I have another one shot I name Brady Bunch of the Corn.

As an opener, the party enters a thick cornfield. They eventually find their way into a flattened crop circle with a scarecrow. Whoever examines the scarecrow is the first to discover it is in fact the Scarecrow monster having to make the save vs fear effect. Roll initiative. The party will also be attacked by an Animated Armor or Helmed Horror depending on party level and a Dire Lion using the Dire Tiger statistics since there is no 5E Dire Lion arriving from the opposite side of the crop circle.

That done the party moves on eventually coming across what appears to be an empty village. No one is on the streets. All windows are covered in dust and dirt. Let the party explore whatever they like. Inside the buildings are dead bodies posed in whatever is suitable for where ever they are. A tavern has a dead bartender serving a drink to a dead customer. A dead waitress serves dead customers at a table. Of course all drinks in the tavern are poisoned. Go to the church. The dead priest is at the pulpit. Dead worshippers sit in the pews. Etc.

Eventually the party will hear singing. The party going out to the main street see 6 singing children approach - three girls with hair of gold, the youngest one in curls, and three boys. Their names are Greg, Marsha, Peter, Jan, Bobby, Cindy. They are all Bards. Choose levels appropriate for the party. Greg and Marsha are highest level, Peter and Jan middle level, Bobby and Cindy lowest level. Roll initiative.

On the roof of a building is the BBEG. He's a Nature Cleric or Land Druid (your choice) higher in level than Greg and Marsha. His name is Oliver. Killing Oliver causes any surviving Bard children to stop fighting and be normal kids, ending the combat. You can end the one shot there or roleplay any aftermath if you want.

TeChameleon
2022-10-17, 03:37 AM
I've talked about this before on the Playground when the topic of horror games has come up, so apologies if this is familiar ground, but I did run a quite successful horror-flavoured Shadowrun campaign a few years back. It was specifically in the vein of Aliens- the team was well-equipped, heavily armed, and totally unprepared for what they actually found (TL:DR at the end).

The general gist was that they were headed into an area that the game materials themselves build up quite heavily as being desperately bad news, overrun with giant, literally demonic bugs that the government had actually attempted to nuke and failed, after unleashing a magic-eating plague that failed, and a large-scale military attack- also failed, for those not spotting the pattern (a future Chicago- Bug City- for those that are familiar with Shadowrun).

So there was already a fairly heavy dose of tension, as they were expecting to be going up against enemies that had survived conventional, biological, and nuclear warfare. Still, they prepared as best they were able, gathering the special materials that their research had shown were effective against the Bug Spirits.

After a mildly harrowing journey (frankly a milk run by Shadowrun standards, they were only attacked by horrible things once) and an initial slightly weird, off-putting encounter in Chicago (with a species of shapeshifting predator that typically disguised themselves as a poor woman pushing a baby carriage, with the carriage also containing a predator), they managed to track down the tunnels that they needed to investigate.

Creepy journey, dimly glimpsed monsters in the distance, yadda yadda.

Then they found out that they had inadvertently stumbled past a large nest of Bug Spirits, and were left with the gnawing unease of how they were going to get back out once they had scouted their objective. However, once they reached the final tunnel, they found that a) they were being left alone, and b) the entrance hole they were expecting had been sealed fairly heavily, apparently by the Bug Spirits themselves.

A collective shrug was given, and some of the team started to work on cutting through the wall with the tools they had brought, while the rest of the group set to work laying traps on each end of the tunnel to hopefully provide some cover while they escaped, making it a lethal gauntlet for anything that might try to get through.

Not long after the trap team was finished, the cutting group wrapped up as well, cutting a large plug of resin out to make for easy passage into the bunker they were searching for.

Cue every Bug Spirit within hearing distance (and there were quite a lot of them, given, y'know, nest right there) going insane, horrifying shrieks echoing from all directions.

And then the waves started coming, black, chitinous bodies scrambling over one another in their desperation to reach the Runners, and dying in swathes as the traps took their toll. The Bug Spirits were crawling over their own dead in their raging rush to reach the PCs.

This was watched with a sort of fascinated horror for a little bit, and then I informed them that they probably had about half an hour before the traps were overwhelmed and their defenses breached (they had set a lot of traps).

The party nervously left a gun drone by the entryway to warn them in case anything got through unexpectedly, and got on with the job at hand, namely, exploring the forgotten bunker they had been sent to find and assess.

The first thing to be assessed was the fact that the room they now found themselves in was liberally painted with the dried, splattered remains of the kin of the Bug Spirits that were trying to get at them now. Floor, walls and ceiling.

This was not a sight calculated to reassure.

Now in a fairly heightened state of tension, the players cautiously moved through the darkened hallways of the bunker, empty save for the faint echoes of children's laughter, and the rustling of the omnipresent drifts of old paper that lined the edges of every room and filled every hallway.

Upon reaching the central room of the complex, just as they were opening the double doors, the big Ork Medico (as the physically most imposing character present) was struck hard enough to almost take him off his feet. He wasn't hurt, but a strip had been torn off his kevlar.

((At that point, we had to break until the next week. I am still overly proud of that bit of storytelling, as I'm pretty sure that none of the players actually realized that they had spent the very nearly the entire session doing nothing but walking down empty hallways. Also, we were playing in one of the nicest rooms I've ever gamed in, with big windows to let in the gorgeous late-summer sun.))

Anyways, upon resuming the game, the doors were opened, to reveal what used to be a posh private school auditorium- the players had previously found that the bunker was a hidden magic school for the children of the rich and powerful.

In the centre of the auditorium was a huge ritual circle.

And in the ritual circle were the mortal remains of the entire student body, dead these fifty years.

The PCs eventually figured out that the sacrifice of the children had powered a big blood magic ritual intended to protect the school from the invading Bug Spirits on their first arrival, fifty years previously.

Unfortunately for the murderously desperate faculty members, they had left a loophole in the 'protect the school' spell, neglecting to include themselves as a part of the school, and were promptly slaughtered wholesale by the golems they had created, with a dried, bloody smear starting at the top edge of the ritual circle indicating where the headmaster had been overseeing the ritual.

The players knew that the blood-magic powered golems had to be roughly humanoid in shape to begin with, and that there had been no time to prepare appropriate receptacles, but were unsure as to what could have been used, so they ventured out to explore further (and to get away from the grisly sight in the auditorium).

Another rustling, laughter-haunted journey through the black corridors led them to a janitor's closet, which was jammed with all kinds of outdated surveillance equipment, save for a small clear space immediately inside the door.

Upon turning around to leave, the players were confronted with mad scrawls all over the walls, door, and ceiling. "Don't Blink", repeated over and over and over and over in ink, paint, blood and feces.

Now badly shaken, the players started to return to the auditorium, hoping for more clues, but were interrupted by an alarm- the Bug Spirits were about to break their perimeter. Hurrying back to their entrance, they braced themselves for heavy fighting as the huge insects swarmed towards them, bodies glistening in the tactical lights... and then suddenly blurring and starting to fade.

The Bugs Spirits were spraying mucus, replacing the resin plug, and thickening the 'wall' until it was twice as thick as before.

Now confused as well as uneasy, they headed back to the auditorium to resume the hunt for clues to the giant invisible monster they were convinced was roaming the bunker, hunting them.

And there they spotted the medico's missing kevlar, sticking out of one of the ubiquitous piles and drifts of paper.

A clue! Papers were gingerly brushed aside with long arrows, to reveal... dusty pink fur?

Realization was starting to dawn. Roughly humanoid, already existing in a Kindergarten-to-Grade 12 setting? The party was looking around in mounting shock as they realized just how many apparently-innocuous stuffed toys and the like there were just in the auditorium alone.

At this point, the eagle-shifter archer went berserk on the harmless-looking pink teddybear, and at this point the party caught its first major break- the shapeshifter was doing elemental damage with their gear, and this was one of the only ways they had to break through the blood golems' damage resistance- standard bullets and arrows would have done nothing. So the pink stuffy golem was summarily dispatched, releasing the spirit animating it to rush upwards in a spray of blood that formed into a shrieking, viscous horror... which was also slaughtered immediately by the crazed eagle shifter, who was long past caring at this point.

Beyond that, this portion of the campaign was largely a bug hunt- once their stealth was broken, the blood golems were not a major physical threat to a well-prepared Shadowrunner team, as the Runners didn't rely on magical senses like the Bug Spirits (the plush golems were invisible to magic senses), although I am proud to say that the party was still so unnerved by the end of everything that they refused to believe me when I told them they weren't finding any more, continuing to make repeated search checks until I gave up and let them 'find' one last blood golem in the ventilation.

TL:DR- With players who are willing to be invested in your story and the right buildup, you can scare the piss out of them with a pink teddy bear.

More seriously, playing into 'there's always a bigger fish', 'even monsters are scared of something', allowing tension to build with just enough release to keep things from spilling over into tension-fatigue and not caring, and keeping things fresh with just enough unsettling twists (not the Robot Chicken 'what a tweest!' type, though) can have grown men in a well-lit, comfortable room shrieking at finding a plush toy in the game.

Bulhakov
2022-10-17, 09:21 AM
A fun one-shot horror story I ran with my VtM crew was actually an improvised adaptation of an old Charmed episode I watched with my sister. It's flexible enough to adapt into any urban fantasy setting.

Players stumble on an ice cream truck operating in the middle of the night they spot a few kids being drawn to it in a trance (only characters with paranormal senses could hear the music). They see the ice cream man shoving a kid into the van, hear a short scream and a flash of magic. The truck speeds off before the players can intervene (but maybe they manage to save a kid or two). Of course the players assume this was some "magical bad guy of the week". They escort the kids home, finding the parents acting a bit weird (either distant or acting a bit "fake"). They dig into the case finding such kidnappings occuring regularly every year for a few nights before Halloween. They set up an ambush trying to get the "Ice cream man". Plot twist - the ice cream truck driver is actually a hunter - in posession of two relics - a music box that plays a tune attracting demons/devils (only works around Halloween) and a magic mirror that is a portal to some small frozen hellish wasteland dimension. The kids are basically little demons that are terrorizing their parents (like in Omen or "The Twilight Zone" It's a Good Life episode). In my case two players actually managed to fall into the frozen dimension and had to fight to survive and figure out the way back. The portal back is actually always there, just 10m above the ground and invisible to those without special perception skills. You can scale the power of the demon kids to whatever your game requires.

Pauly
2022-10-17, 02:48 PM
I’ll also recommend DREAD.

I’ve run it in as a Halloween lesson in ESL classes, and it’s a huge amount of fun. The Jenga mechanic really amps up the tension. More than once I’ve had all the players ending up backed up against the wall and slowly approaching the table afraid to even breathe on their turns.

The twist I used as a teaching device was for player A to instruct player B on what block to move, Player B instructs player C and so on. No pointing allowed.

olskool
2022-10-19, 10:17 PM
It's October, so I'm beginning prep for a horror one shot. And I want it to be *scary.* Not just a monster hunt or something basic, I want to shake 'em. Any ideas, maybe from a previous horror game that you found particularly effective?

Pull a horror version of the Matrix...

The PCs return to their base that day, but the people there seem to be just a bit "off." Describe to the PCs the townsfolk doing things that are "out of character" or "just a bit odd." Then the scary stuff starts where they begin to see strange things and people that they know and love begin acting ever more strangely. As the darkness begins to set in, those same townsfolk then try to KILL THEM in very creative ways. Swamp them with townsfolk and animals and drive them into a defensive perimeter. Throw that mimic into the mix or a lurker of some kind. There's nothing worse than having that standing bookshelf you're trying to barricade the door with come to life and try to eat you! Don't hold back one bit... Go for that gory TPK! And when the last PC dies, they all wake up from their terrible collective nightmare! It was ALL JUST A DREAM...

... So who left that burning torch in the street?

D&D_Fan
2022-10-20, 11:36 AM
Here's a list of things I would evoke for a scary one-shot.

One. Horror in implication of actions and discoveries. Anyone your players didn't save had a family. What if a man they let get eaten by zombies knew how to make a working radio and could have helped them call for help. And now he's been torn to bits.

Two. Weird mysteries. Perhaps in eldritch horror, if they come across a dog and pet it, once the dog leaves, point out that no other living thing is present in this area, all the birds, trees, fish, all dead. And yet the dog was fine. How?

Three. Terror in expectations, drive up paranoia. It can never be certain there's a safe retreat anywhere. Everything has to be framed as a potential trap, nobody can be trusted. Even ordinarily positive things like an NPC smiling can be twisted to seem off, or like there's an ulterior motive. Any floorboard can be of a weak enough durability to snap, any basement door can be locked suspiciously tight with an unknown noise coming from beneath it, any dead body can be a zombie in minutes.

Four. Environment. You need to really sell the atmosphere, cold, dim, devoid of people, in a state of neglect, peeling paint, moldy rafters, rusty metal, nonfunctional or barely functional streetlights. No houses lit at night, except for one, Etc...

Five. Hopelessness. Never give your players certain hope, and if you do, crush it when it hurts the most. You can even end with a bad ending, since it's a one-shot, where the players know they will die and they can only face a horrible doom.

Those are my tips.

For actual horror, my recommendations are zombie apocalypse, classic cosmic horror, or whatever was going on the twilight zone where there was that one evil kid with godly power.

tomandtish
2022-10-20, 12:25 PM
I ran one many years ago where Linus had finally successfully summoned the great Pumpkin. It was not what he expected (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkinhead_(film))....

Easy e
2022-10-20, 12:55 PM
Here are a couple key things about horror that are antithetical to a lot of things that are normally "fun" in a TTRPG.

1. Degradation - Characters do not improve, they only get worse
2. Powerlessness - You can fight back, but you can not defeat the foe
3. All options are bad - The situation only gets worse and worse, and worse

These are not areas that are conventionally suited for a "fun game". Therefore, the expectations of the game must be suitably calibrated before play begins.

Kurt Kurageous
2022-10-20, 02:45 PM
Student came up with this:

Red gem shards. When implanted (medicine skill) in a beast or other creature with am animal or greater mind (INT 3+), allows implanter to dominate mind. The mind dominated is aware of everything and is basically a passenger in their own body.

If removed, the victim has to deal with the trauma, guilt, and all that comes with it. Sometimes they react in very violent ways.

Various humans, beasts implanted and then freed create a chaotic situation.

Gnoman
2022-10-21, 05:54 PM
Very difficult one to pull off, but potentially quite effective.


Party is investigating reports of an apparition in an abandoned/ruined area. Upon investigating, they find that every night, the ghost of a young woman appears and can be conversed with. The ghost is dressed in ways that suggest extreme poverty, and what style she has is antiquated.

She does not remember much of her living experience, and the proper skill checks reveal that she needs to remember how and why she died before she can move on. All she remembers is fragmentary memories of extreme violence.

As the party investigates her past (via investigation of the abandoned area, records searches if your version allows, skillful conversation that slowly brings memories into focus, psychic communion with her or others from her time, etc), a picture of a lonely and badly abused life emerges. The party should empathize heavily with her, particularly as investigation reveals a major massacre in the area at about the right time.

The final bits of information would reveal (spoilered to give a chance to think about it and see if you see where this is going)
That she wasn't a victim of the massacre, but the perpetrator - taking a horrible revenge on her tormenters and those who have scorned her

Grod_The_Giant
2022-10-23, 03:46 PM
For things like this, I always suggest Greg Stolze's amazing Jailbreak (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/362073/Jailbreak) one-shot. Four escaped convicts, three hostages, and two "innocent farmers," all stuck in the famers' small house to wait out a killing snowstorm. Everyone is scared, no-one trusts anyone, and the farmhouse itself is Not What It Seems*.

Ideally, you'll have one player per character, all of whom have their own motivations, drives, and derangements. With good players, you barely need to do anything-- you can sit back and watch everyone scheme and backstab, and throw in the supernatural elements bit by bit whenever things start to stabilize.

I got to play through the scenario a few years ago. One character escaped the house; everyone else died through betrayal, rogue supernatural creatures, and psychotic breaks. I remember I died chasing the sole survivor out into the storm, covered in blood and waving a carving knife.



Specifically, one "farmer"--an older man-- is some kind of mad scientist artificer. He killed a man while escaping the old country and reanimated him as some sort of clockwork golem, which he currently has locked in a trunk upstairs. Occasionally it moves.

The other "farmer"--his much younger wife--is aware of that part, but doesn't know that the same thing has happened to her.

----------

Overall, I think one of the keys is to use characters who are a) disposable, and b) much weaker than the usual PCs, and not really capable of fighting the monsters head-on. You need everyone to come in understanding that death and/or madness is the EXPECTED outcome.

animorte
2022-10-23, 03:52 PM
For things like this, I always suggest Greg Stolze's amazing Jailbreak (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/362073/Jailbreak) one-shot.

I got to play through the scenario a few years ago. One character escaped the house; everyone else died through betrayal, rogue supernatural creatures, and psychotic breaks. I remember I died chasing the sole survivor out into the storm, covered in blood and waving a carving knife.
Thanks do much for this. Definitely have done players that would be thrilled to this a run.

That ending sounds like the perfect classic horror movie ending!