Any third party occult material for D&D?

[Bryan]

I was wandering around online the other day and came across the old Jack Chick comic, Darkest Dungeon. For anyone that doesn't know, it was a comic from the Eighties' Satanic Panic that denounced D&D as a tool for the devil and a doorway to occultist, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, it occured to me that after playing D&D for decades, I've seen very little occult imagery and I don't know, maybe it's my contrary nature but I kinda want to do a Dark Fantasy / Horror campaign with some occultism but after doing some searches, there is a surprising lack of material out there. Sandy Peterson did some 5e Cthulhu stuff and there's a bit more here and there, mostly some Lamentations of the Flame Princess material that's easy to convert but I was envisioning some weird stuff ala Dr Strange comics from the Seventies but I'm just not finding it.

[tKUUNK]

yesssss....

but firsssst

signnnnnnn in bloooooood

_______________________

Okay actually no, I think you're right. You don't hear about much of this for D&D 5e. Or D&D at all. Curse of Strahd is maybe the closest thing I've played in 5e, and it's only just bordering this style of play.

Maybe adapt a Call of Cthulhu module to 5e? Or run something in Waterdeep, with devils pulling strings behind the scenes as a central plot thread.

in any case, one thing that makes a good horror game is the knowledge that every encounter is going to be deadly. D&D isn't usually great for this, so it's an area you'll want to focus on. Put the players up against horrifying stuff.

[Corlindale]

If you could be persuaded to switch editions for this game, Pathfinder 1.0 has a ton of occult material (maybe 2.0 does too, I'm not that familiar). There's the Occult Adventures book which introduced 6 occult-themed classes, for example (Kineticist, Medium, Mesmerist, Occultist, Psychic and Spiritualist). My group has converted to 5e, but the occult stuff is what I miss the most from Pathfinder.

Even though it predates Occult Adventures, the Carrion Crown adventure path (PF) certainly has the occult feel, with each of the six chapter leaning into its own genre of horror (ghosts, werewolves, vampires, Lovecraftian stuff, etc...). Maybe someone has done a 5e conversion, if you want to stick with 5e.

5e does has a few subclasses that are (or can be) themed in an occult direction. There's the Spirits Bard, at least, and several of the Warlock subclasses. And the Phantom Rogue. The 5e wikidot also lists a 3rd party 'Blood Hunter' class which I haven't read in detail, but which sounds very occult from the descriptions. Pretty much any caster could be flavoured in an occult direction with a bit of work, probably.

[Arkhios]

Check out Grim Hollow rules by Ghostfire Gaming if you get a chance. Those are pretty close to being occult stuff that I can think of.

[Vyke]

I was wandering around online the other day and came across the old Jack Chick comic, Darkest Dungeon. For anyone that doesn't know, it was a comic from the Eighties' Satanic Panic that denounced D&D as a tool for the devil and a doorway to occultist, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, it occured to me that after playing D&D for decades, I've seen very little occult imagery and I don't know, maybe it's my contrary nature but I kinda want to do a Dark Fantasy / Horror campaign with some occultism but after doing some searches, there is a surprising lack of material out there. Sandy Peterson did some 5e Cthulhu stuff and there's a bit more here and there, mostly some Lamentations of the Flame Princess material that's easy to convert but I was envisioning some weird stuff ala Dr Strange comics from the Seventies but I'm just not finding it.

Beasts of Dissonance by Grinning God games is very interesting for a summoner style chacter.

Mage Hand Press have a lot of options for things like Binders and the like.

Kickstarter often has a number of possibilities as well.

[Theodoxus]

I'm in the very early process of converting the Obsidian: Age of Judgement mysticism into 5E. I really like the idea of tiered powers and using them as prerequisites for more powerful rituals. (I'm thinking once I'm done, if it works well, to do the same makeover with spells. So, instead of learning Fireball, from a scroll or at level up for free, you'd need prerequisites, like Firebolt (for fire damage) and Shatter (for an AOE sphere affect). This would let you do things like making a 8d12 Poisonball if you had Poison spray as your damage rider, or an 8d8 Frostball with Ray of Frost, etc.)

But Obsidian: Age of Judgement goes very hard core into the Satanic Panic aspect, with demonic portals opening all over the world and the different levels of hell granting different boons and banes for occultists and mystics alike.

[JLandan]

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft has a ton of occult material, not just Ravenloft. In fact, Ravenloft is only one of the Domains of Dread. There are a whole bunch and great guidelines for making your own. It also covers all different kinds of horror themes, not just occult.

Do a search at DrivethruRPG.com for "occult 5e" filter for horror, and you'll get a lot of occult material, some good, some bad, some very inexpensive. Try the same at DMSGuild.com.