Horror Adventure

[penbed400]

I'm about to run my friends through a one-shot dungeon based in Ravenloft a couple of days from now. It's a horror setting and they all know about it and have submitted to being kind of drawn into it for the ride. I know that one of the big things about horror is not just that you as a DM need to provide a story but that the players need to agree to get into it as well.

So far I've been working on trying to find some good music to just play in the background. I've had trouble finding a good playlist of random dungeon sounds or creepy music that flows really well. Does anybody know of something like this?

Also I'll have somewhat dim-lighting and some candle light as well. The story line seems to work out quite well. I know one-shot dungeons make character connection a little difficult so all of the players have been required to write two page backgrounds and they all agreed. I took the backgrounds and applied some of their pasts into the dungeon because I thought that might make the link even better and cause some more horror feel to it. The party make up so far seems to be a fleshwarper who thinks humans are machines to be tinkered with, a gypsy flavored sorceror, a tactics focused crusader, a ranger and I can't recall what the last player is being.

Have you ever had any horror adventures that particularly stood out for some reason? Any good tips or hints to make it extra fun for the players?

[Adamaro]

Did you read Heroes of horror? They have some nice tips. Besides that, I find computer game music usefull. Interesting, how creepy some "options" backgrounds can be. (Resident evil, Silent hill, Call of Chtulu).

[SpikeFightwicky]

Agreed on the computer game music. Some additional suggestions:

American McGee's Alice Soundtrack (Perfect creepy atmospheric music)
Certain tracks from Quest for Glory 4
Certain Castlevania tracks (the NES songs are too 8-bit to mesh well, but some of the Super Castlevania 4 songs are of good enough quality)
HALF-LIFE!!! If you can find the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 soundtracks, they have some very atmospheric tunes. The Ravenholm background songs are great.


Non-video game:
The Dexter soundtrack has a bunch of spooky/eerie tunes. Used it almost exclusively for a 'haunted house' style game I ran.
The 28 Days Later (ditto on Weeks Later) soundtrack has a few good ones

I'll try to think up some other suggestions.

[Mordokai]

Midnight Syndicate is always a good reccomendation, as far as horror games go, if you ask me.

Born of the Night, one of their albums would be especially appropriate for Ravenloft theme, I'd say.

[penbed400]

Yea, I read through Heroes of Horror and found some stuff there. I just thought I'd check here just in case anyone had experienced any cool effects for the horror games that worked out well.

Also thank you everyone for the music :-)