Setting

A horror game requires an element of cooperation from everyone involved. A DM-against-player attitude, where the players are specifi cally trying to beat the DM, will not work in a horror campaign. The game is still D&D, and there’s certainly an element of competition in combat and the like, but if everyone’s not on the same page and making an effort, it’s simply not going to work. It’s frankly impossible to force a player to portray fear if he doesn’t want to. The DM and players must agree from the get-go that a horror campaign is something in which they all wish to participate. That agreement comes with certain obligations.

Obligations of the DM

To make a horror campaign work, the DM must commit to the following specifi cs. To Provide the Necessary Mood and Detail: Horror requires description; see Creating Horror on page 7. To Go Only as Far as the Players Wish: Some people have a lower threshold for horror than others. No matter how horrifi c you wish to make it, D&D is still a game; it’s meant to be fun. If one of your players is becoming uncomfortable with a scene or a description, stop. To Avoid Taking Advantage of the Situation: Horror often involves foes too powerful for the PCs to defeat, at least by standard or obvious means. Don’t use this as an excuse to slaughter or torment the characters without reason. You’re the

DM; you don’t need to prove that you’ve got the bigger weapons in your arsenal. If you make changes to monsters or rules, do so because they heighten the mood, not because you want to beat the players. And be certain that players know in advance about any rules changes that affect them directly. To Avoid Frustrating the Players: Horror often involves mystery as well as seemingly unbeatable foes. These elements, if drawn out for too long, can prove frustrating for players.

No matter how convoluted your plots or how powerful your villains, you must allow the players to experience victories and discoveries, even if only occasionally. To Avoid Going Too Easy: It’s hard on the player to lose a well-loved character, and you shouldn’t kill one at whim.

At the same time, the danger in a horror game must feel real. If the dice and circumstances say that a character dies or suffers some other gruesome fate, you should probably allow it to happen.

Obligations of the Players

Players must also make certain commitments in order to bring a dark and vivid life to their horror campaign. To Cooperate with the DM in Setting the Mood: A player who refuses to allow himself to be swept up in the game, and who will not portray his character as scared or shocked when the situation warrants, destroys the mood not only for himself but for the entire group.

To Accept that Horrifi c Events will Happen to Them:

In a horror campaign, not every ending is a happy one. The

PCs will, at times, encounter opponents too powerful and too terrible for them to defeat. They will not always be able to prevent their loved ones from suffering. They won’t have as high a survival rate as characters in other campaigns.

They should not expect every fi ght to be winnable and every plotline to end on a positive note. To Create Horror-Appropriate Characters: Horror works only when the characters have something to lose. A character with a rich background, goals and ambitions, and friends and family is a much better choice for a horror game than the stoic loner with no emotional attachments. If a character fears nothing, then nothing inspires fear, and while that might fi t certain heroic archetypes, it doesn’t encourage horror roleplaying. To Avoid Metagame Thinking: A character in a horror game who thinks, “Dear gods, that creature utterly ignored my fi reball! It cannot be a normal troll!” is fi ne. A player who grows irate at the DM for creating a fl ame-breathing troll is not. Fear is about surprises and the unknown. Trust the DM enough to accept that she has a reason for making changes. Further, don’t assume that the DM won’t let a character die; this is a horror game, after all. The danger is real, and players should treat it as such. To Tell the DM if it’s Gone Too Far: This is a game. This is about having fun. If the DM’s idea of horror goes further than you’re comfortable with, tell him so.

As with any D&D game, the choice of setting in a horror campaign is a vital aspect of the game. Even though the setting remains in the background for the most part, its nature and details can make or break the attempts to create tension and terror in the PCs. Unlike the stand-alone horror encounter or adventure, the setting of a campaign is not something into which you can dip a toe and then leave; it’s set for a good long while. The first and most basic decision you have to make is whether you wish to create a setting specifi cally geared toward horror (or a certain type of horror) or whether you want to run a horror game in a fantasy world that feels more traditional, or at least is not overtly designed for horror.

HORROR-ORIENTED SETTINGS

The advantage of building a horror-oriented setting from the ground up is that you won’t have to make alterations in it to encourage feelings of tension and fear. On the other hand, the nature of the setting can forewarn the players of the sort of horrors to expect (all these handy garden stakes stacked in the garlic fi eld), and it makes it harder to intersperse the campaign with nonhorror stories. A horror-oriented setting need not be an entire world. It can be a segment of a world (an isolated backwater or literally benighted kingdom) or even part of a preexisting setting that’s not particularly geared toward horror. If you’re designing or choosing a horror-oriented setting to fi t your campaign, it’s important to decide what sort of horror—which mood or moods (see page 22)—you’re shooting for. That doesn’t mean you have to restrict yourself entirely to stories of that type, simply that you should select a setting that best supports the sort of game you’re most likely to run. Some possibilities for horror-oriented settings include the following. —A land in the midst of a major war. Thousands of stories have been told regarding the horrors of war, and for good reason. The constant death, the gore, the suffering, the potential for battle-magic and monsters run amok, the ghosts

of the dead—all these promote circumstances in which the PCs might have to resort to despicable acts to survive. You could situate the war in a familiar setting, since a war of this magnitude changes the political and cultural landscape to such an extent that it is, for most purposes, a new setting during and after the fact. —A completely alien landscape. Perhaps through planar travel, a major arcane catastrophe, the actions of a mad god, or the results of years of magical warfare, a region (or an entire world) has been rendered utterly alien. The laws of nature, weather, magic, or physics might no longer work as expected. Living beings do not follow their normal patterns of behavior, and creatures the likes of which the PCs have never seen are common place. The terrain is blasted and empty, or it consists of mountains of impossible shapes and growths that can only loosely be termed plants. An alien setting can be diffi cult to sustain in long-term play, and the weirdness can overwhelm any tension the DM is building, so this is probably best for shorter campaigns or unsettling interludes in a longer one. —A region in which humans are not the dominant race. Most D&D settings are written with the perspective that humans are the most numerous and most widespread of all the races. A setting in which this is not the case—in which elves, gnomes, orcs, githyanki, mind fl ayers, or tiefl ings form the majority—is going to feel substantially different. If a relatively benign race holds dominion, the setting might only feel slightly off, due to the unusual cultural, religious, and architectural norms. This atmosphere isn’t horrifi c in itself, but it helps build a sense of dissonance before you spring the real terrors on the PCs. If, however, a malign race controls the region, humans and other usually common races might be oppressed minorities, forced to work in slave camps or surviving only at the whim of their inhuman masters. They might even be reduced to the status of food or breeding stock. —A setting with an unbalanced or malign pantheon. What would the world be like if the gods were literally insane? If an ancient power such as Tharizdun or Cthulhu had returned and assumed control? If one of the setting’s most evil deities had triumphed in war against the other gods? It would certainly be a dark world, full of plague and suffering, with the evil races rising to dominance and every bastion of good slowly hunted down and destroyed. The world has room for wars, hopelessness, claustrophobia, and—just maybe—one fi nal desperate hope for the forces of good. —A land conjoined with another plane. Maybe the gates of Hell have opened, bringing elemental fi re scorching across planar boundaries, or perhaps the realm of nightmares is no longer separated from the waking world. Whatever the case, fi ends and horrors are unleashed upon the world, and the Material Plane can begin transforming into a far less hospitable realm. Can the heroes possibly fi nd some means of separating the worlds, or at least protecting their home from the other realm? Or must they, and the world around them, learn to adapt to the new circumstances? —A tainted world. Tainted areas (see Taint on page 62) can appear in any setting. In worlds where a region is tainted, the borderlands are a truly horrifi c area in which to dwell. Grotesque and dreadful monsters appear from the tainted lands, and brave heroes must occasionally enter the region to rescue others, at the risk of becoming tainted themselves in the process. Even worse, however, is a world entirely in the grip of taint. This approach can work only if sporadic islands of purity still exist, or if you’ve changed the rules for acquiring taint to drastically slow down the progression. Still, picture a world where nature itself has become vile and corrupt, and the PCs can only hope to survive with minimal taint, or perhaps fi nd some means of escape. Particularly surprising to PCs is a region in which the taint is not caused by supernatural evil but by pervasive human evil. This region could be the site of genocidal execution camps, or even a small town where every local is hiding some vile secret or perversion. —An isolated setting. The setting itself somehow traps the PCs in deadly circumstances, allowing little hope for escape or even survival, unless the heroes use every ounce of wit and every resource they possess. This isolation could be physical, such as an underground complex or a haunted castle; geographical, such as a storm-swept island, a mountaintop domain, or a sprawling desert; or even mystical or planar in nature, such as banishment to the Abyss or a demiplane that entraps all who enter within an impassable border of mist.

HORROR IN STANDARD SETTINGS

Most published settings are not specifi cally designed to accommodate horror campaigns. Neither is horror prominently in mind during the development of standard settings based on traditional fantasy elements. But horror can be all the more effective when embedded in a standard setting precisely because it stands out from the norm, stimulating the same sense of shock we feel when we hear about horrifi c acts in the real world. Another benefi t of employing standard settings is that the DM can more easily alternate horror tales and lighter stories. But standard settings probably won’t provide as many horror story hooks as worlds designed with terror in mind. Since most of these settings aren’t inherently horrifi c in their own right (although many of them feature dark areas), here are several techniques for making a traditional world darker or evoking horror from everyday details. Highlight the extremes of the culture in question. If an area is poor and oppressed, describe the environment as depressing and filthy. Few people smile, and laughter is a foreign sound, as workers shuffl e to their shops or till their sparsely sprouting fi elds. The government is corrupt to the core, its offi cials far more interested in playing political games with one another to increase their own power than in seeing to the basic necessities of their people. Crime runs rampant, and terrible creatures lurk in the shadows of alleyways and the nauseating depths of the sewers. Joy is unknown; the people believe that survival is barely more attractive a fate than death, and the question is not if they will suffer some terrible end, but when. Keep in mind that life could be this grim for medieval peasants, and although D&D doesn’t simulate any particular historical period, most fantasy settings embrace some elements of medieval life. Alternatively, the DM can choose the opposite route. The area in which the story takes place is, while perhaps not a paradise, a shining example of the heights of humanoid achievement. Gleaming white towers rise to tickle the clouds. The streets are clean and patrolled by watchmen duty-bound to see to the health and safety of the citizenry. Much of the populace is wealthy, but even the poorer laborers and farmers are not miserable, for the fi elds offer plenty of foodstuffs, and the monarch is just and fair. Life is hardly perfect, and people

still face their share of tragedy and disappointment, but complete unhappiness is a rare thing. At least, it is until the DM’s plot begins and the villains or monsters appear. They might attempt to fi t in, infi ltrating society and masquerading as part of it, or their activities might be more blatant. In either case, the sudden corruption of this pristine environment is all the more terrible for its contrasts, standing out like a bloodstain on white silk sheets. Many of the standard tropes of fantasy are themselves pretty horrifi c if you follow them to their logical conclusions, or seek the meanings and motives behind them. Some examples (such as why dragons might covet wealth or kidnap princesses) are presented in Chapter 6: Creatures of the Night. Also innately horrifi c are creatures (such as ghouls or vampires) that propagate by turning the living into the undead. Working steadily, such creatures could turn an entire community into undead in a matter of nights. The fey who steals children from their beds is scary enough, but what does she want the kids for? What does the dark cult mean to do once it succeeds in summoning Demogorgon or Mephistopheles? What if the ancient relic for which the king’s knights have quested for decades is actually a cursed, malevolent thing that brings suffering and despair to the realm? How does the wizard, locked high in his tower with his crystal ball, intend to use the knowledge he’s gleaned from all across the kingdom? Once the doppelgangers replace the queen and her advisors, what do they plan to do with their new kingdom? These expansions or variations on traditional fantasy stories could fi t in almost any campaign setting and lead to some truly horrifying narratives. Embroil the heroes in a widespread catastrophe, one that has the potential to reshape the entire campaign setting. Plague sweeps the nation, killing thousands and maiming more. People take desperate and violent steps to protect themselves: burning the homes of the diseased with the strickened still inside, slaughtering strangers, blaming foreigners or social minorities for the unclean or unholy habits that brought this curse down upon them all. With so many dying in agony, the numbers of the undead increase within the plague zones. Nations place soldiers along their borders, either to stop the fl ood of refugees or to take advantage of the chaos and invade their neighbors the instant the plague abates. Alternatively, the catastrophe could be environmental, as storms race in from the ocean and water levels rise. People battle for available food as well as for shelter—not only from the storm but from the monsters that ride in on the winds and tides. Or perhaps a war has begun between nations, one that threatens to escalate to the point that the setting is no longer recognizable. Disasters can bring out the worst in people, and sometimes the most horrifi c experience of all is not battling the creatures that accompany disasters but surviving the evil deeds of frightened people who will do anything to survive. A new faction rises to power in the government, or the PCs come into confl ict with the existing one. This situation might not feel particularly horrifi c at fi rst, but consider the resources available to a monarch or ruling church—and then think about historical atrocities committed by governing bodies in the real world. A theocratic inquisition on behalf of a god not the PCs’ own, or an ethnic purge as a racist leader comes to power, should be scarier than any monster creeping out of the shadows—especially if, as is so often the case in history, the government deceives or manipulates most of the population into supporting its actions. Set a portion of the campaign in a foreign land with a very different culture. For instance, if your setting is based loosely on medieval Europe, consider a series of games after the characters have been transplanted to a region modeled after Egypt, Africa, South America, or India. While there is nothing inherently horrifi c about fi nding oneself in an unfamiliar culture, the drastic changes can make the characters feel out of place, unprepared, even somewhat paranoid—giving you a solid foundation on which to layer other techniques that increase tension.

HORROR CAMPAIGNS IN PUBLISHED SETTINGS

What follows is a brief list of suggested plot hooks for running horror campaigns in published D&D settings. In some cases, these simply involve extrapolating possible future events in the setting, while others involve choosing a historical event and altering its outcome, resulting in a very different world than the one currently in print.

Eberron —A serial killer stalks the streets and sky-bridges of Sharn.

Divination magic and watch investigations have failed to turn up even the slightest clue as to his (her?) identity or whereabouts.

His victims have been members of every conceivable race, with only one thing in common: Each has been a veteran of the Last

War. The authorities have not yet realized that he is choosing his victims based on the battles in which they fought—killing them in an order that matches the sequence of the great battles of the war. Given the length of the war, this means his list might have hundreds of victims still earmarked. —Gods only know how it happened, but Dal Quor has been restored to its normal orbit through the Astral Plane. It grows coterminous with Eberron, and creatures far more alien and malicious than even the dreaded illithids are beginning to swarm across the border. Eberron faces nothing less than another invasion by the quori, their minions, and even worse beings, and few of its citizens know yet that they are in danger. —The border of mists surrounding the Mournland begins to slowly but steadily expand. The desolation of the former nation of Cyre (now occupied by horrendous beings) expands with it. Villages evacuate as mile after mile falls to the creeping mist. Will the expansion cease on its own, or continue until the wizards and clerics of Khorvaire fi nd a way to stop it? And what has happened to those communities now trapped behind the mists, unable to fl ee before being overwhelmed? —The Keeper of the Silver Flame has launched a new inquisition, like the one that nearly exterminated the lycanthropes. This new endeavor targets not merely lycanthropes, but shifters, druids, and any beings who possess a strong link to the natural world or the ability to shapeshift. Any who would aid or hide such individuals are also declared enemies of the Silver Flame. Thrane’s populace grows grim and stoic as their lives become a whirl of oppression and fear. Can this truly be the will of the Silver Flame, or has some other entity managed to insinuate itself into the Keeper’s head, passing off its own desires as divine mandate? —Heroes exploring the reaches of Xen’drik discover that the ancient giants might be dead, but they aren’t all gone.

Already beleaguered by rival explorers, the heroes encounter

the surviving servants of the long-dead necromancer king Addis-Ro. They must fi nd their way through dense jungle and ancient ruins, battling undead giants and other terrors forgotten millennia ago.

Faerûn —The rift to the Plane of Shadow through which the city of Shade recently appeared has never completely closed. Hidden from arcane detection by the high-magic of the city itself and the shade wizards who populate it, the rift grows ever larger and ever more ingrained in the fabric of Toril’s reality.

The geographical region around it is inundated with shadow-stuff; living creatures give birth to shades, the dead frequently return as shadows, and color and emotion are slowly fading from the region. If allowed to spread, this effect might reach heavily populated areas or overrun all Toril. —A few surviving followers of Iyachtu Xvim refuse to accept that he has been destroyed and replaced by his father,

Bane. Some infi ltrate the cult of Bane itself, but most have crept into positions of infl uence in various governments, organizations, and even the churches of other gods. They steer these agencies against

Bane’s cult; because this is a goal on which most good beings can agree, they garner no suspicion in doing so. However, the methods of these well-meaning organizations slowly grow more and more dubious, as the

Xvimites argue that the goal of defeating Bane justifi es the means. Eventually, governments and good organizations (such as splinter groups of Harpers) stoop to such evil methods that even the suspicion of aiding Bane’s followers—or simply standing in the way of destroying them—results in dire consequences.

For themselves, the Xvimites believe that if they can both destroy Bane’s power base and corrupt the forces of good in the process, they can raise their own fallen lord. Where they currently gain their power, with Xvim deceased, is unclear. —The heroes are explorers who fi nd themselves lost and alone in the lands of Maztica. They don’t know the culture, the customs, or even the language of the locals. Already off-balance, the heroes are accused of a horrific crime, imprisoned, and awaiting sacrifi ce in an ancient and bloody

Maztican ceremony. They must escape, survive the alien rites and magic of the Maztican priests, and uncover the true killer—which might not even be human or any creature with which the heroes are familiar. —In this vision of the Realms, the Time of Troubles had a very different ending. Few if any of the gods succeeded in regaining their rightful place in the heavens. Rather, the

majority of the pantheon is now made up of risen mortals, most of whom have little notion of the powers they wield. They are beset from all sides by extraplanar and demonic forces seeking to take advantage of their inexperience, and they war with one another for dominance and control of overlapping domains. Toril itself has become a terrifying, desolate place, with wide regions of wild magic and taint where the power of the gods has either fl ed the world or become too concentrated. Churches and nations war with one another in desperate bids to hold on to the power they once wielded in the name of their gods, or for control over rapidly depleting resources. Nothing, from magic to weather to the turn of the seasons, works exactly as it should. Even monsters native to Toril are supplanted by terrors from other worlds, drawn by the collapsing natural laws. Greyhawk —In this variant of history, Iuz won the Greyhawk Wars. The Old One holds sway over the Flanaess, ruling with an iron fi st and commanding armies of humanoid footsoldiers and fi endish generals. Those humans, elves, and dwarves who swore fealty to Iuz serve him as little more than favored slaves or disposable soldiers. The majority are not so lucky and toil in endless misery as downtrodden slaves. Those few kingdoms that survive outside his control are pale shadows of what they once were, rogue states still pursuing a guerilla war they have already lost. Even now, these kingdoms cannot help but squabble among themselves for a preeminent place in the order of dying nations, their skirmishes making A conjunction with Dal Quor Iuz’s remaining tasks all the easier. would unleash horrors —The efforts of Tharizdun’s greatest cultists have fi nally paid off. In the heart of an idol to the mad god, deep in an underground catacomb, a mighty priest has opened a pinprick hole through the dimensional walls of Tharizdun’s prison. The power of the god seeps out into Oerth, corrupting the surrounding lands with taint and madness. Creatures unknown in this world, warped by taint and hailing from the Far Realm, swarm into the Material Plane. As the breach grows, the corruption spreads, and Tharizdun himself will eventually emerge into Oerth, there to wreak untold devastation. —A single individual has obtained both the Hand and the Eye of Vecna—and the Sword of Kas, as well! Combined, these three remnants of the great lich’s powers have transformed her into something considerably more than human. She has the power of a demigod and the mystic might of an archmage and believes herself nothing less than Vecna’s heir (“Vecna’s daughter”). Before his betrayal at his lieutenant’s hands, Vecna nearly conquered Oerth with his armies of undead, summoned fi ends, and mystically empowered soldiers. If

Illus. by W. England