Sorry! Real life got in the way. After a few weeks off, I should probably get back to this.
Chapter 3: A Horror Campaign
We've covered a horror encounter and a horror adventure. Now, it's time to talk about an entire horror campaign. The into does a good job explaining that this type of thing require work on everyone's part and isn't for everyone. A lot of people like to play badasses in their escapist fantasies, and the book mentions this.
The basics of horror gaming
Again, the book mentions that both the players and the DM need to be on board for this to work. We then get a list of five obligations for both the player and the DM. It's mostly good advice on the DM's part. Primarily, don't fuck with the players and respect their comfort level. The players are told to cooperate with the DM and the mood, accept that bad things can happen to them, and make setting-appropriate characters. It says explicitly
not to roll up that badass loner I keep mentioning when the book talks about killing family members. Touché, book.
The one I find really weird is the "don't metagame one", but not for why you might think. This section mostly says "trust the DM and the weird shit he does" rather than "don't use player knowledge for your PC", so the heading is kind of off. They say it's good to recognize that this fire-resistant troll isn't a
normal troll, but it's bad to get mad at the DM for using one. How the second is metagaming (and the first isn't) I don't even.
Setting
The first choice is if you want to run your campaign in a horror-oriented setting or a standard one. The book goes over some advantages and disadvantages of each. There are a few prompts. Nothing super interesting. One point of note is that many of the prompts in and of themselves don't really sound all that horrific. The book has noted in the past that D&D already has a lot of horrific elements, if only you carry them to their logical conclusion. For example:
why is the dragon so interested in maidens? My guess, if he's anything like the other villains in this book, he'll kill her to hurt her friends and family's feelings.
What's the end game here?
We get some suggestions for adding horror to published campaign settings. I'm not super familiar with any of them myself, so I don't know how well they would fit. One I found interesting is in Faerun, where a handful of surviving followers of Iyachtu Xvim refuse to believe he's dead and are super pissed at Bane. They infiltrate positions of power and turn different organizations against Bane. Most good-aligned people are cool with this, so they don't pay too much attention. Then, they get all ends-justify-the-means in their methods of stopping Bane's followers. Whether or not they can actually revive their fallen lord is up to the DM.
Plot in a horror campaign
The advice here focuses on longer-term planning than the plot section last chapter. They give a few ideas, and some good advice about not being a dick about any of them or overusing them:
- Amnesia: PCs forgot who they are. Did they do something bad during this time? Find out!
- Curses: These are the out-of-the-scope-of-the-rules variety, like the ones you find in stories. Maybe they affect the PCs directly or not. Don't overuse, or they become trite, and the players will rightfully start asking why they can't bestow curses every time they lose a fight. These should be curable, either by powerful magic or quests related to the curse.
- Disease: Typically, not for mid/high level games, unless the DM wants to have one that evolves to be resistant to magic. That's actually a really cool idea. This is what happens when you stop going to the cleric when the symptoms go away rather than for the full prescription.
- Injury: You get some type of permanent injury that is not at all covered in the rules. Maybe Regenerate heals it or maybe it comes back because it's a horror injury. Basically, see curses.
- Magical Disease: Again, see curses. While the section says there are many types of magical diseases, they only focus on lycanthropy.
- Mechanical Penalties: Lots of magical effects can deal long-lasting penalties. The book is smart enough to mention how frustrating having these for a long time can be, and how they can lower your ECL, so find a way to spread them across the party or keep them fairly short-term.
- Phobias: Maybe something spooky gives a PC a phobia (rules described later). Talk to the player to work this out.
Right on point, the book mentions how you can invoke horror through the suffering of others. Interestingly, they
finally note not to overdo this, as it both starts to strain willing suspension of disbelief if everything bad always happens to the PCs friends, and also, it incentivizes making badass loners.
Pictured: the start of another session of the horror campaign.
Villains
It's important to make the villains motives make sense, or the whole thing will fall flat. There's advice on one-shot, short-term, and long-term villains. They mention avoiding the pitfalls of making the villain so weak that it goes down like a chump, but so powerful that everyone wonders why they didn't just kill the PCs the moment they became a threat. Also, if the PCs are particularly creative and find a way to kill the villain earlier than anticipated,
don't deny them their victory. Fuck
yes it's nice to see the book actually spell that out.
Player: *rolls 20*
DM: *rolls 1* "Huh... well, that's that. I guess one of your family members doesn't
die."
...But, sometimes the villains
come back. Maybe they get to be a ghost, or the DM breaks the rules and make some shit up. Maybe their minions carry on the plot. Don't overuse this, cuz it starts to piss players off. Also, here's a new trait called "soul-locked" that can make non-ghosts come back like ghosts.
Unhappy endings
Hmmm, maybe now would be a good time for the DM to kill off another family member.
Apart from the occasional (and hopefully rare) TPK, D&D is supposed to end on a high note. Not in a horror campaign, bitches! You can go full CoC and end the game with the PCs driven mad or overcome by taint (heh). Maybe they have to sacrifice themselves to stop the big bad. Perhaps a loved one is turned into a vampire and has to be killed. Wait, can't
Resurrection bring them back?
You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed. You cannot resurrect someone who has died of old age.
Apparently, not in a horror game (more on that in chapter 4)! In a non-horror game, dying of old age seems scarier than becoming a vampire.
Yet again, be mindful of the players, and don't shit all over the game if you don't think they're into that sort of thing.
Sample Campaign: Nightwatch
This is actually something I ran once. The book gives you some setup and prompts, but largely leaves it up to the DM to figure out how to integrate it. I think I had it span something like three or four sessions rather than be a full-blown campaign. It takes up just over two pages in the book, and comes with one map.
It's set on the boarder of a great kingdom. They're used to the occasional monster attacking, but there's an evil shrine out in the wilderness, with growing taint. Now, the borderlands are being attacked by the occasional
spooky monster, and only a handful of NPCs recognize the growing threat. Also, the dopplegangers, demons, and other nasties are spreading into the government.
Yikes!
Part 1: a decaying city
You're supposed to run the first few sessions of this as relatively normally. The PCs are supposed to gradually learn of the worsening situation, and eventually, of the Nightwatch organization. Perhaps the PCs learn of the organization on their own, or perhaps they do something badass enough to be inducted into the group. This is the group of NPCs who seem to know what's going on.
Now, the next few adventures center around doing stuff for the group, learning more about what's going on. Next, they draw the ire of the evil assholes in the corrupt government. These political/criminal adventures are supposed to be about half of this portion. During this time, they uncover evidence of an obscure, violent cult (Scary Moose?).
Part 2: a twisted wilderness
The PCs learn more about the obscure cult, which surprisingly
isn't devoted to Scary Moose. One deity is listed each for a handful of published settings. The cult leader is someone in the city. During the adventures to undercover this, many Nightwatch operatives die. Crime reaches record highs, and the PCs get attacked by actual physical tendrils of taint (represented as taint elementals, introduced later).
Research indicates that these clowns want to manifest their dark god on the material plane. Also, by now, the PCs are supposed to find out or be told that the source of the evil is the shrine that the book otherwise hasn't said should be mentioned to the PCs.
Now, the game shifts to the wilderness. Monsters are big, scary, and tainted. The PCs seem to get specifically targeted by a storm. Plants and animals start to grow tentacles. Gross things happen, like rivers running with pus, or raining eyeballs. A dryad comes out of a tree and eats her own flesh to attempt to cleanse the corruption in the woods (wat?). A once-nice unicorn is now not nice. All of this shit is probably supposed to be inflicting depravity and corruption (two sub-forms of taint described later) on the PCs.
Part 3: lich's shrine
We get a map of the three-level shrine. The DM is told to use whatever traps and monsters he feels like using, but the adventure gives example ideas. Entering the shrine immediately bestows 1d3 points of corruption (Fort DC 30 to negate). Aside from the really high DC, that amount of corruption is really no biggie in this new system.
Several of the rooms feature monsters from Libris Mortis. We get blasphemes, slaughter wights, and a gravetouched ghoul cleric. Then the PCs find the lich and some evidence that he's been communicating with a traitor in Nightwatch.
Part 4: a traitorous heart
Now, the city officials learn of Nightwatch and are convinced it's an insurant organization that might even be the
cause of all this eye-ball rain and angry unicorns. The PCs get to keep fighting monsters while dealing with the political machine working against them, all while knowing there's a traitor in their organization. The DM is supposed to throw some assassination attempts at them mid-task, which gives one avenue of learning who the traitor is.
Of course, even once the traitor is figured out and dealt with, one of the nobles in the city belongs to the cult and wants to see his god worshipped and to rise to power during all this commotion. The traitor and this noble have been working together
all along.
Slaying the lich and the traitor and the noble isn't the end. Doing so triggers the rite they've been building for months (Jesus Christ.
Really!?). You get to fight an elder taint elemental (CR 13), which might be the god or a representation.
Further adventures
Ugh. You have the option of trudging through the aftermath of all of that shit in an area still rampant with crime, taint, and monster attacks, all while nobody knows who to trust. Have fun!
Other campaign models
There are some other ideas for campaigns, each given a paragraph or two.
The touch of taint
Okay, that's never going to stop making me chuckle when I read it. This whole mechanic was really unfortunately named, and it's not like people weren't making taint jokes back then. Anyway, this campaign model suggests using nothing but tainted monsters.
The father of monsters
Some god, demon prince, or whatever is the source of all the problems. Are you a bad enough dude to
save kill him?
Death is only the beginning
All non-humanoid monsters are super rare (possibly unique) and are all soul-locked. So, all that advice about not overdoing the "sometimes they come back" prompt from earlier is thrown out in this model.
Conjunction
The campaign world has come into conjunction with another spooky world, and stuff is coming through the rifts.
The evil that men do
A focus on how some fairly mundane things can still be pretty creepy.
In over their heads
Start the PCs as NPC classes and level them into PC classes as they get exposed to the horrors that are out there.
Dreams and nightmares
The ideas of dreams and nightmares are certainly genre-appropriate for horror. This section of the chapter is actually the longest. It goes over several ways to use dreams in the game. It covers anywhere from the DM just describing dreams to the PC(s), asking the player to describe their dream, prophesies, and actually entering into dreams.
There are several different ways listed to make events dreamlike. They can involve changing just one aspect of something otherwise normal, changing things abruptly, things evoking unusual emotions, ridiculous ideas that are accepted as normal, and the dreamer recognizing something that it's not.
Dreams can be prophesies, which can be made super vague of very clear. They can come from deities or something else. If nothing else, they can probably make a really convenient plot hook for players who just aren't finding all the bread crumbs you're lying around for them. Maybe the prophesy goes unfulfilled. Maybe trying to fulfill it makes you fuck it up even worse! Dreams can be false prophesies sent by people fucking with you. Prophesies can be used as an aftermath for an adventure. Basically, do whatever you want, but make it involve prophetic dreams.
Reoccurring nightmares can fuck with a character. After a number of days equal to their Con mod (minimum 1), they are constantly fatigued. After two weeks plus a number of days equal to Con mod, the character is exhausted constantly. After this, the character risks gaining depravity (a later-described taint sub-mechanic) each day. No mention how the fatigue interacts with
Restoration and its cousins (duration: instantaneous). Does it just reset the timer, have no effect, or what? I guess I'd go with the former. So, as long as you can prep
Lesser Restoration once every Con-modifier number of days, you're good. Maybe.
Get that taken care of sooner rather than later.
Dreams can send messages. Of course. There's a spell that does just that.
Dreams can be used situationally to highlight how spooky a location is, or to prompt a certain action. I'd be careful of this, as it would likely become the focus of the rest of the session, knowing my players.
Adventuring in nightmare realms
"Bitch!"
You can enter a dreamscape "with the proper magic". The proper magic is three feats in a chain and a 4th level spell (
Dream Walk) that the third feat lets you cast. I'm assuming most campaigns featuring dreamscapes also feature a 7th+ level NPC who blew three of their feats on being a subconscious ferryman.
The DM picks how they want to handle dreamscapes. They can be "normal dreams" where what happens in the dreamscape stays in the dreamscape. They can have lasting effects where what happens in the Matrix kills you in real life. You can enter physically or mentally depending on the setup. Perhaps
Astral Projection or
Plane Shift can get you there, so you wait a few more levels, but save three feats. Perhaps you can just get sucked into a dreamscape cuz the DM says so. Maybe the PCs aren't even
aware of it.
Dreamscapes are supposed to be weird and dreamlike. They tend to shift around suddenly and randomly. The DM is advised to design encounters to take full advantage of the PCs fears and the randomness of the environment. "Familiar" locations to the PCs should be off in some way (minor or major). Make the terrain or environment shift with the emotions of the PCs.
Creatures can change very suddenly, including PCs. Change the appearance of a PC, and tell everyone but said player. Perhaps let one or more players run NPCs during the dream.
There's a typical last-paragraph caveat warning DMs not to fuck with their players too much.
Spells in the dreamscape
Not surprisingly, this section opens up with a lolrandom chart for things that can happen with your spells. 10%: spell functions normally, but affects a different (randomly chosen) target or area. 20% of the time, you get a different spell (that you don't necessarily know). It might be 1d4 levels lower or
higher than the one you cast.
"I tried to hit him with a
Scorching Ray, but instead I cast
Heal!"
I'm sure your party members will be fine that you accidentally cast
Implosion instead of
Heal on them. Now, if you have the Oneiromancy feat (feat #2 in that chain), you don't have to put up with all this bullshit, and you even get some boosts in the dreamscape. So, I guess the take-home here is: if your DM wants to run dreamscape stuff more than once or twice, all casters have a new feat tax.
Injury and Death
If you physically enter the dream world, injuries work like normal. If not, we are given some options. Injuries might carry over as HP damage. Injuries might result in Wis and Cha damage based on a division problem. Injuries might result in depravity, based on a division problem.
"It tastes like I lost three points of Wisdom."
Characters who die could suffer different fates. The body could die of shock. You might lose a level (and some memories). You might get hit for a permanent 2 or 4 point loss of Int, Wis, or Cha. If your body is killed while your mind is in the dream world, your mind is trapped (unless your mind later dies, then it goes to the afterlife).
Why use nightmare realms?
In short, because the DM can do whatever the fuck he wants!
Dream magic
It's not actually until now that we're told about the three dreamscape tax feats. I was cheating when I told you about them earlier.
Monsters of the dreamscape
Finally, we get some interesting ideas for how to have monsters that live in the dreamscape. It's up to the DM if certain types of monsters (typically aberrations) exist as "nightmare monsters". The DM decides how he wants them to mechanically interact with the world. This gives these types of monsters a unique feel.
- They only manifest in the waking world if they're near someone dreaming.
- They cannot manifest physically, but can possess people.
- They deal physical damage to people, even if they're not physically in the dreamscape.
- They deal nonlethal damage, but if they deal enough to KO the target, the target becomes mentally enslaved until you use high-level magic.
I could see some of these setups yielding some pretty cool adventures. I think the DM would have to be creative to span this for a whole campaign, but he might have to if people start blowing feats to keep their spells working normally.
Next up: Rules of Horror!