someone cannot fi nd away to stop her, his heir is sure to continue where Vecna left off. Already, entire communities lay burned behind her, their dead marching mindlessly at the forefront of her growing army. . . .
A HORROR CAMPAIGN
CHAPTER 3
PLOT IN A HORROR CAMPAIGN
To make a game truly horrific, you need more than mood, new rules, or even a truly scary villain. You need a solid plot, one that will engross the players and encourage them to keep going to see what happens next, to really get into character. It can be the same sort of plot you would find in any other fantasy campaign. Dungeon crawls, wilderness exploration, behind-the-lines wartime missions, and political maneuvering all have great horror potential. The only true requirement is that the story be solid and believable in the context of the setting: Anything else will make it difficult for your players to really feel what their characters are experiencing. Don’t create all your horror stories as mysteries. Mystery and horror fit well together, and horror usually contains elements of the unknown. But if every story is a mystery, the players can grow bored with a too-familiar pattern. Include mysteries frequently, but don’t rely on them exclusively.
Illus. by R. Gallegos
LONG-TERM HORROR Creating the proper mood of horror is not the hardest part of running a horror campaign. Rather, maintaining that mood is often far more difficult. You cannot expect to keep the level of tension steady throughout the entire campaign. Even when interspersing the horror with stories and events that are less scary, however, it is possible to maintain a low level of tension throughout by using the following techniques.
Curses and Other Lasting Effects
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Most debilitating or penalizing effects in D&D, such as curses, negative levels, and the like, function for a fi xed duration or until cured by a few select spells. On occasion, however, these effects can open up substantial story potential to afflict a PC (or even the entire party) with a more long-term consequence. These effects might be magically induced or simple, mundane issues that the PCs must work to overcome. Amnesia: The PCs all awaken in an unfamiliar cave. They have no memory of how they got there; their last recollection is of sitting down together in their favorite tavern. The only set of footprints they can find appears to be their own. When they return to civilization and speak to someone, they fi nd that two years have passed. What happened to them during that time? Who did this to them? How can they fi nd out? And possibly worst of all, why does everyone seem scared of them? What did they do during that time? Amnesia can be trite if overused or used flippantly, but if you base an entire story on finding out the truth it can drive the experience home for the PCs. The options are practically limitless. Were they possessed? Have their memories been erased? Did they do this to themselves for some reason? What sort of evil acts might they have committed? How has the world changed in the intervening time? Are their friends and family and loved ones all right? It’s best to use amnesia to hide events that have occurred since character creation; unless the player volunteers for it
“Let all those you love leave you even as I do!”
ahead of time, you probably won’t want to use amnesia as an excuse to change major details of a character’s background. The player created the character she wants to play, and a player might naturally object to being told that her character is not who she thought she was. Curses: Curses from mythology and fiction often include far more ornate punishments than those available under the actual bestow curse spell. Such curses cannot be invoked through the simple casting of a spell but only through a combination of great emotional power and horrific circumstance. For instance, suppose a woman dying in a fire set by her lover curses him with the words, “Let all those you love leave you even as I do!” From that point on, horrible misfortune and agonizing death seem to follow the cursed man, striking down his loved ones and friends. Alternatively, a suitor spurned by a vain woman curses her to “always suffer the attentions of others.” The next time a random killer stalks the streets, or a town is looking for someone to blame for the death of a child or the coming of a plague, they focus on her. These curses do not have actual mechanical models of implementation. They are, essentially, story hooks for the DM and motivations for the players, who are most certainly going to seek ways of ridding their characters of the curse. In some instances, powerful spells suffice. In others, the DM can determine that only a particular action or sequence of events lifts the curse. Perhaps the man in the first example must be willing—and actually attempt—to sacrifice his own life to save another; perhaps the woman in the second example must fall in love with an ugly, destitute man who wants nothing to do with her. Let the nature of the curse suggest the means for overcoming it, and don’t make any curse completely impossible to overcome or completely debilitating while in effect. You want to make the character’s life interesting, not unplayable. Similarly, don’t overdo it. Not every slight is sufficient to warrant a curse. Not every angry person has the emotional power to invoke one. One or two per campaign, under the most appropriate circumstances, should be enough. Otherwise, it becomes a
