Making a horror based dnd campaign using 5e rules.
Any suggestions or creatures to include or use for inspiratio?
Use a different game system
Also, kyuss worms. Check out age of worms. 3.5 game, but conversion shouldn't be immensely difficult
Zendikar
A wild, adventuring world that got invaded by creatures from beyond time and space.
>>43839517
>Running a horror campaign
>Using a system where people are superhuman and amazing at fighting or magic.
Pick one.
Think about your favourite horror movie, now swap out all the protagonists with the characters from your favourite action movie.
Not gonna be much horror left.
>>43839530
Doing 5e since my players are fairly new. It's an easy system to pick up
>>43839633
Okay maybe not horror but grotesque /dark
>>43839517
>Making a horror based dnd campaign using 5e rules.
Don't use DnD next rules. I know you probably want to justify sunk cost fallacy but DnD 5e is perhaps the shittiest system possible for horror.
>>43839636
>Doing 5e since my players are fairly new. It's an easy system to pick up
There are so many other systems easier to pick up than fucking 5e, if you knew ANYTHING about roleplayng games you would know this.
>>43839517
Heroes of Horror and Libris Mortis from 3.5 edition.
>>43839517
>>43839710
LotFP is fantasy horror RPG - The RPG.
Its also arguably easier to learn than 5e and has piles of modules for inspiration. Check the OSR trove.
>>43839724>>43839721
>>43839530
Thank you guys for suggestions rather than being an elitist over systems
>>43839724
This. Plus it has plenty of random tits because the developers are sexually repressed perverts
>>43839636
I love how D&D players think that's it's an easy game to pick up since it's less of a clusterfuck than some other D&D editions, but jesus, if you genuinely want something easy to pick up there are like a bajillion actually easy games to choose from.
Don't get new players started with D&D or they'll end up thinking it's all like that. It's like introducing virgins to BDSM, except not enjoyable.
>>43839767
Jesus fuck every time.
When did it all turn into a competition in who can point out anything vaguely sexual the fastest?
/tg/ are a bunch of Talibans these days.
>>43839791
Agreed
>>43839517
Real life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5qijI--v9E
there's like a million threads discussing shit like that though.
>>43839962
Sweet. Visual stuff helps a lot actually.
>>43839697
>DnD 5e is perhaps the shittiest system possible for horror.
>Not 3.pf
I agree that 5e is a bad system for horror, but there are FAAR worse choices
>>43840066
Thanks, I found a lot of people have a really big hatred of insects, a lot of fantasy art can't compete with photos
>>43839697
Ah you are back again Virt! you missed the great thread we had about you.
One of ur gaming buddies was on telling stories about ur IRL spurging, elf gore obsessions and threatening people with a knife over games of mtg
it was a great thread, craig, you should have been there (oh ya,, we know ur name now, craig)
>>43839763
You're welcome.
And remember, throw in something light hearted once in a while to keep the players from getting used to the horror.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s27QkHZjKE
>>43839517
Restrict races to only humans or very human-like humanoids. It's hard to involve people in a horror story about monsters if their characters are literally half-dragons or walking bugs.
Use a setting that is not a clusterfuck of elementals, extraplanars, undead, demons, angels and random mages. The less 'weird' and 'bizarre' is the normality in the setting, the more effective will be the supernatural/monstrous/horrific episodes.
Seriously. A poltergeist haunting would leave a telekinetic wizard pretty much unimpressed, I'd say.
For the monsters: the keywords are contrast and mystery. A monster is much more horrifying if it has something human in it. The 'Brundlefly' is much more horrific than just a giant fly, and a great deal of its horror doesn't come from its monstrous features, but from their juxtaposition with the human ones. And a monster isn't as horrific if you can understand its behavior, its biology, is motives ...
For extra creeps, add something morbid, even with sexual undertones (like in Alien, for example) if you think your players will accept that.
Fear, and horror themes, can be invoked primarily from danger, surprise, anguish and disgust. Use these four aspects wisely and you'll have a good horror campaign.
>>43839564
Attack on Titan for Forgotten Realms.
>>43839633
nonsense. you just need things carrier than them.
to an ant, a mere starling is horrifying. to a human, its a pet or maybe dinner at best, ignored at worst.
What is the superhuman magic user's starling?
For starters, something that can ignore their magic and physical prowess as much as the bird can ignore the ant's bite.
>>43839517
>>43839517
Use another game, horror is meant to make players vulnerable. D&D is meant to make them feel like Conan the cimmerian.
This is kinda fun. So every time they fight, keep track of what wounds they get. Make sure they risk infection,disease, ect. Make them try to avoid damage as much as possible. Also make the monsters smart and use gorrila tactics.
>>43840115
3.Pf had actual SoD effects and horror mechanics.
>>43840347
No, fuck no.
A dragon can obliterate most parties. Is fighting a dragon horror? No, it is typical heroic/epic fantasy.
Horror has different themes and atmospheres, which don't work very well with super-powerful magic-infused heroes.
If your suspension of disbelief has been stretched widely enough to allow beholders, dragons, necromancers and archmages as a normal part of the world, 'horrific' monsters and situations would slip in so easily they would lose any 'horrific' power.
>>43840401
And now I'm thinking of Karmans
>>43840181
K, dunno what the Fuck you're on about. Is thus your attempt to form a counterargument.
>>43839517
Remember the saying "if it has stats we can kill it". Horror comes from the unknown, the less you know about the thing stalking you the better. Also when leading the camping refrain from using technical terms like "what is your flatfooted ac" or "what is your will save", these things kill immersion and make the players come closer to accessing the stats of said creature. Pacing is also very important, the thing that gose boo cant aper too quickly but also you cant make them wait for it 10 seccions. Add survival traits to your camping, your players will need to eat, sleep, keep warm etc. This can make the felling of being in danger non-stop even bigger. Avoid direct confrontation for as long as you can, the horror creature should strike from the shadows, attacking and retreating quickly, only allow the players to fight it head on when it has a serious advantage. But most of all, make it as alien as possible, and i dont mean in some "cosmic seans", it's a good start but not perfect. Look at the creepers in mythology, most of the time they will look akin to something we are familiar with (humans, dogs, goats, horses) but act very difrently. A dog that is acting strangely is creeper than a alien that jumps out and attacks. Use a lot of detail in descriptions and always, always remember this, we fear the unknown and the unnatural, if your players get accostomed to something, the thing is no longer scary
>>43840483
>suggesting a superhero game for the horror genre
Yes, keep pretending you arent Virt. typeing mannerisms and condecending attitude all match up perfectly.
and the name, dead giveaway
So, how does it feel to pull a knife on a guy for playing jace in a mtg tournament?
>>43840466
>horror mechanics.
lol. if you need 'horror mechanics' in order to run a horror game, then you are a shit DM and shouldnt be running a horror game.
>>43840285
my most recent plan has been to do a mundanes only campaign.
Pathfinder, everybody picks human fighter (all compatible feats and archetypes are available), everything abnormal is as rare as the lore actually claims it is, instead of everybody and their uncle being wizards.
Its early. Very early. Humans haven't explored much beyond their own lands. No gods exist yet, but are soon to be burgeoning (so if somebody takes those feats that give you cleric 1/days, sure, makes sense. As you and more people devote yourself to it, the concept of that god becomes more and more tangible. Are they the creators you suppose them to be? They will be, retroactively. What is time to a god? But for right now, the only thing they're capable of providing from their still tulpa-like existence is the most basic of assistance.)
Their goal then, is to explore the vast unknown beyond humanities current particularly comfy and earth-like domain, with all its brave new wonders and horrors.
Not at first though. I'll probably make getting sent into the Wilds a task they got rewarded with for repeated shows of competence and valor. That way their dealing with normal, everyday problems. Thugs, animals, human politics. Relatively day-to-day stuff.
Their eventual first encounter with elves is gonna be fun, those all-too-graceful alien freaks.
And I really want to see what'll happen when they encounter a cultist and he starts summoning eldritch monstrosities from the planes.
The key is to never call anything by name, only describe them. In a normal FR campaign I had players freaked out over a basic griffin just by doing that.
If you just say, "you see a griffin," it seems mundane.
If its a winged quadreped with retractable claws and a razor sharp beak, that just noticed you, the party's best sneak, stealthed, from like 80 yards away and screeched angrily, staring right at you, suddenly it seems a lot more intimidating.
>>43840481
>Is fighting a dragon horror?
it is if you do it right. Take Smaug and Bilbo for instance.
>>43840481
>Is fighting a dragon horror?
It is if you're level 4.
>>43841156
You have entirely missed the point of my message, and I'm not going to write it again.
>>43841140
Not very much. Vermitraax Perjorative, on the other hand...
>>43840481
>as a normal part of the world
this is where you made your mistake.
How many commoners have seen a beholder?
Even know what one is?
What's the knowledge: dungeoneering check? like 20 something? How many peasants can make that?
>>43841282
I think you just don't know how to properly run a dragon.
>>43841378
I think you just don't know how to run horror, since it's something quite different from 'big monster that can kill me'.
>>43841282
>>43841378
Or possibly just horror. If its properly slayable in a head-to-head fight, no matter how low the odds, its not a proper horror. A jumpscare maybe at best.
>>43841407
Jurassic Park's Raptors.
>>43841407
What is Jason Vorheez but a big monster that can kill you, that you can't feasibly kill, with proper suspense techniques applied?
>>43839517
>this is a tiny 1/1 that the average Greek philosopher can shitstomp in a fight
Oh MtG, you so crazy. Protip if you're doing horror, never give the scary thing numbers, it makes them killable.
>>43839517
The way I see it there's pretty much two ways to do horro in RPG.
One is mechanic-based: the monsters are far stronger than the players, meaning they can't just solve every problem by charging at it and hitting it with swords and spells, and injury should have lasting consequences. The lives of the characters are in a constant risk, and they feel vulnerable compared to the things they encounter. If the players get invested into their characters, that's a pretty good way to cause tension.
Unfortunately if they aren't invested in the character they're likely to either get annoyed because they can't just bash everything in the head with a sword, or just stop giving a fuck about character death, and just speed-making characters with no background beyond their class since they're going to die immediately anyway.
Other one is narrative-based: creep out the players themselves. It doesn't matter if the encounters aren't any harder than what they'd normally fight (in fact, it probably works better if they don't get into actual fights very often), if the atmosphere is such that the players feel the horror. Describing the weird and grotesque things in detail creates a very different mood than saying "you encounter 5 zombies and a flesh golem". Think psychological, cosmic and body horror instead of just jump scares and splatter.
The problem with this method is that you have to be really good at setting up the atmosphere. If you can't do that, the whole thing falls apart because the horror comes from the mood of the scene. Also, if /tg/ is anything to go by, the players will probably assume you have some weird fetish.
>>43841468
By this logic Avengers is a horror movie too. And One Punch Man is a horror manga. Not to mention My Little Pony being clearly a horror show since I assume at least one of their enemies has probably tried to kill the horses.
Run it in FATAL.
ERP aside, horror is the only type of game where rolling for anal circumference might make sense.
>>43841534
Best scenario is employing both techniques.
>>43841548
It's a matter of how it's presented. A big monster trying to kill you isn't automatically horror, but it can be played for horror.
Plenty of horror movies (the entirity of slasher genre for one) are based on there being an antagonist, usually a monster or some supernatural killer, who the protagonists can't defeat (except possibly at the climax of the movie, and usually even then they'll be back for the sequel) and must instead run away or hide from as it kills the one by one. The horror comes from the viewer placing themselves in the position of the protagonists and sharing their anxiety.
Friday the 13th, Halloween and Alien are all examples (Alien is one of the best examples since while films like Friday the 13th are more of "pocpcorn horror" where you just watch the killer chop up some two-dimension characters, Alien is generally considered genuinely creepy).
>>43841548
They were killable. And it occured.
Half the battle is the despair of implicit knowing you can't defeat, only delay.
>>43841656
Aliens brings out an excellent point of the whole group counting as your big scary, so even if you can kill off some, there's still an inumerable swarm you could never hope to defeat there to replace any headway you might have made.
Delay of the inevitable, instead of defeat.
They also do this >>43841641, being both inherently creepy and scary from being an inescapable hunter you can only hope to delay.
I find this to be terrifying due to the size of it.
>>43839724
I want to play so bad, but their saves, at least as presented in the adventures, are so weird to me- paralysis save to not get thrown from a chariot, things like that.
>>43841641
Indeed. That's why Alien is one of my favourite horror films. The basic structure is a classic slasher film: you got a group of people in an enclosed area with no way out, and a monster they can't directly fight lurking around, picking them off one by one.
But it also has the psychological effect in form of the creepy visuals. The dark, empty corridors, the utter, well, alien-ness of the monster, and of course the H.R. Giger visuals, which are wonderfully unsettling with their blend of creepy organic designs, semi-sexual imaginery used in very unsexy ways and body horror.
Of course, imagine what would happen if you tried to run a game based on Alien in a world where Alien movies didn't exist. You'd have every player bitching you out on "magical realms" and whatsnot, what's with the face-raping bugs that implant their embryos into you and slimy aliens with extremely phallic heads. Because obviously that has to be some fetish stuff, rather than being played for the creepyness.
>>43841656
That's what I was talking about. And the way D&D dragons are inserted in their setting doesn't make them horror material, regardless of how hard would it be for the group to kill them.
As I already pointed out, dragons CAN be used for horror, and this is why I pointed out Vermitraax: it is treated much more like a fiendish abomination whose evil and malice humans can't even comrehend.
>>43841659
I'm tired of arguing with you, it's like discussing microbiology with a creationist. You're not even trying to make sense anymore.
>>43840481
Compare Dead Space 1 and 3.
One feels like like horror, one feels like COD. What's the main difference? The enemies are the same. It's not that necros are too superhero. It's the level of control given to players. When the player feels in control of the situation, there's nothing to be afraid of. It's not scary, it's just challenging. Control leads to hope, leads to courage.
Torture and rape aren't scary because you're being violated or injured. Many of the same people would actively endure such situations voluntarily, if it were for a cause they highly valued, or for self-preservation (cutting your hand off because it's stuck under a boulder for instance). It's the rapid and total loss of control that makes it scary.
>>43841850
Your using dragons for horror improperly if you run them the same as normal DnD.
>>43839517
Pic related is the get go.
Warning, will induce fear, horror, disgust, terror, vomit, paranoia, distrust, gore, violence and assimilation.
When dealing with it, use flames indiscriminately.
>>43839517
"Mana has changed some say a god was born that controls it others that it was some experiment that should had never been attempted some even say it was like this all along and it was simply waiting for the right moment. Whatever the case mana has always been a source of change and it has changed into something horrifying."
>>43843106
Pathfinder's occult adventures feats, classes, and skill unlocks have a lot of feel like this.
Sacculina
Cymothoa exigua
Guinea Worm
Horsehair Worm
Filarial Worm/Mosquito
Leocochloridium Paradoxum
Emerald Jewel Wasp
![maxresdefault[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/grxtgOs.jpg "maxresdefault[1].jpg")
>>43839517
>suggestions
Holy knights changed into unsightly beasts who regain their drive to fight partway through the battle.
>>43839517
A lot of old and forgotten old D&D monsters are perfect for horror. The Meenlock is literally based on a horror movie monster.
http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/meenlock.html
http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/thoughteat.html
http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/mouther.html
http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/forgotten.html
>>43839517
Make everything a little harder than they are supposed to be and add something that comes out of them upon death, may it be maggots, toxic gasses or something vile
I feel like this might be an appropriate time to post the weird body horror themed class I made, but even I admit that's really too weird for /tg/ (it was pretty much pic related as a class; by the way I consider pic related a pretty good monster for a horror-themed campaign as it does succesfully hit several kinds of creepy. Most people seem to hate it, though).
However, I would like advice on something. In a setting I'm making Far Realm stuff is pretty prominent (one of the main antagonistic forces in the setting are a civilisation of dark elves that worship not-Azatoth), so I wanted to give spellcasters an option of making a deal with not-Nyarlathotep for awesome magical bullshit, maybe as a prestige class or something they could take. However I'm kind of stumped on how to properly reflect the kind of weird corruptive influence using Far Realms derived magic would have (you don't just learn horrible truths about the nature of the universe and channel powers man was not meant to wield and walk way unscathed, after all), and what exacly should you gain to make anybody think it might be a good idea to go along with stuff like that.
>>43843939
Warlocks can make deals with not-nyarl
>>43843939
This is worth looking at for you, maybe.
>>43843390
