Plot in a Horror Campaign

Illus. by R. Gallegos

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. . . .

To make a game truly horrifi c, 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 fi nd 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 diffi cult 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.

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 diffi cult. 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

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 affl ict 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 fi nd 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 fl ippantly, but if you base an entire story on fi nding 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 fi ction 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 horrifi c circumstance. For instance, suppose a woman dying in a fi re 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 suffi ce. In others, the DM can determine that only a particular action or sequence of events lifts the curse. Perhaps the man in the fi rst example must be willing—and actually attempt—to sacrifi ce 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 suffi cient 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

cliché and loses its impact—and if it seems too easy, the PCs might wonder why they themselves can’t curse others. Disease: In most instances, diseases are relatively easy to cure so long as the PC can fi nd a mid-level cleric or paladin. Consider the danger, however, of a disease that is resistant to mystical cures but is otherwise nonmagical. It’s not as farfetched as it sounds. In a world with prevalent magic, it seems possible—even likely—that some diseases might mutate to resist spells, even as diseases in the real world mutate to resist antibiotics. Such a disease might also resist standard healing techniques and be impossible to recover from without one very specifi c treatment or ingredient. A character slowly dying of some strange illness has great motivation to hunt for the only cure, be it a rare herb or the blood of a virgin mixed with holy water. You’ll want to create your own disease, or heavily modify the existing ones (see page 292 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide). As written, the diseases progress fairly quickly, as they are designed for settings where cures are plentiful. In circumstances in which cures are rare and diffi cult to fi nd, a disease progressing that quickly would likely incapacitate or kill a character before he could overcome it. Consider keeping the save DC to resist daily damage very low, or even decreasing the frequency from once a day to once a week. Injury: Like disease, injury is not normally a long-running problem for D&D characters. As an optional rule, however, you can decide that a character takes a debilitating wound from which he cannot easily recover. Regenerate would normally resolve the problem (unless the PCs are low-level and far from civilization), but in this case it might only provide temporary relief, especially if you treat the injury as a curse (see above) that can only be healed when a special condition is met. Magical Disease: Lycanthropy is the single most famous magical disease, but others exist as well. These diseases are practically curses in their own right. They do not reduce the victim’s health but instead bestow some other symptom, such as turning into a monstrous animal at the full moon. The character might not at fi rst be aware she’s contracted the disease, only discovering it when she awakens with the blood of the innocent congealing in her throat. Several means of curing lycanthropy exist, but most require either immediate detection of the disease or access to a mid- to high-level cleric. If neither is available, the affl iction can continue for some time. You might decide that, like the mundane diseases described above, lycanthropy is not be so easily cured: The reluctant werewolf questing for a cure is a staple of many fantasy/horror tales because it works. Mechanical Penalties: Several of the options given above, and many spells or attacks in the core rules, bestow long-term or permanent mechanical penalties. These might be realistic, and it’s certainly frightening for a character to suddenly be less capable than he used to be. However, D&D is a game. Even with the understanding that they’re playing in a horror-based campaign, some players can grow frustrated with long-term or constant penalties. Furthermore, a curse or penalty applied to one PC in the party can make that character less effective than his companions, effectively reducing his ECL. If you cannot fi nd a way to bestow such penalties universally, then long-term mechanical penalties should be used sparingly, and for far less time than the other options presented here. Phobias: A character quirk that affl icts many real people and fi ctional characters but is rarely seen in fantasy roleplaying games, phobias are highly appropriate for a horror-oriented campaign. You can work with your players to establish the characters’ phobias during character creation or determine that certain in-game events inspire phobias. For instance, a character who nearly dies after being engulfed by a swarm of spiders could easily develop arachnophobia. See page 61 for more rules on phobias.

The Suffering of Others

Assuming your PCs aren’t completely heartless, the suffering of others can prove far more horrifi c than anything done directly to the characters. The heroes are capable of taking care of themselves, but most of the world’s NPCs—the shopkeepers, the barmaids, the village children, the farmers—are not. If your players are portraying true heroes, atrocities infl icted on the innocent and helpless should bring the PCs’ blood to the boil in a fl ash. The most effective NPC victims are the friends, loved ones, and family of the PCs. Pull victims from the characters’ backgrounds, threatening the old mother they left back in the north, the wife waiting at home, or the brother trying to follow in his older sister’s footsteps and become an adventurer. Alternatively, unless the PCs are remarkably unfriendly and insular, they’ve probably made friends and allies during their travels. Whether it’s a romantic liaison left behind two cities back or simply the barkeep they always go to for information and the best ale in the city, most PCs have someone they care about. In addition to enhancing the mood, casting friends and loved ones as major NPCs in a horror game can generate a staggering number of plot hooks. Murdered or injured people demand vengeance. Kidnapped people require rescue.

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HIDDEN CONDITIONS

The characters, and even the actual players, need not be aware of every condition from which the PCs suffer. Everyone suspects lycanthropy will ensue from a werewolf bite, but what if the lycanthrope were hidden among a pack of normal animals or had coated a dagger with its saliva and attacked in human form? In the case of amnesia, perhaps the entire party is missing a sixmonth period but the PCs don’t yet realize it. With a player willing to stretch the boundaries, it can be possible to include long-running conditions that involve the character’s background. Perhaps the PC has been able to speak to spirits since she was a child, and never realized it was at all unusual (see Spirit Sense on page 124). A character discovers that he is in fact part demon, or that his memories of his modest, pleasant life are faked and he’s actually responsible for a string of horrific crimes. The revelation of hidden conditions can upset players who dislike their character concepts being changed, so be certain that you’re dealing with a player who’s willing to accept such revelations and alterations.