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Old 07-18-2018, 02:27 PM   #1
hal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
Default Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

Hello Folks,
I was curious. How many of you have ever run a horror campaign, and what stands out as your favorite "horror" story that unfolded as a consequence of your player's interactions?

Just curious. :)
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Old 07-19-2018, 02:20 AM   #2
ak_aramis
 
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Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

My GURPS Horror campaign, back in 1986-1992, was 3 sessions per year.

Steve the Vampire (Formerly known as Vlad Tepeš) hosts a bunch of students in U of Hawaii Honolulu campus. Steve's next door neighbor is the Robin Masters estate...
PFC Zorea, found to be blind when he couldn't see the targets at the range, but had no problem out to 60m.
The Werebear and his Girlfriend (He was a PC, as was she - but she was literally the 25pt DNPC)
The Modern Wizard...
All of them got Steve as a patron for free, and he got no points for them as dependents... Steve was a 100 point PC plus Vampire.

Year 1: The Demonology class' (PPSY 106) professor blows a summon, and peeves Pele. The demon laughs and lets them know Pele will punish all of them... They break into Kanehoe to raid the armory, and then return to kill the demon. The wizard does a divination, and finds Pele is not appeased. They decide Madam Pele must be appeased with Gin and a Cabana Boy.
So... They go hold TC's kids hostage, and capture Thomas Mangum, and deposit Thomas and a pony keg of gin (via air-drop from TC's chopper) into the caldera.

Year 2: They get a message from Pele to come get Thomas out. (Steve's now an NPC, as the player matriculated out of state for college). Things go haywire trying to find a way to get into Pele's domain without dying. This finally involves a yugo, a dimensional rift, and escaping down a lava tube in said yugo in order to actually hit the rift... then talking Pelee out of killing them for forgetting her Gin. All the while trying to avoid the USMC MP officer trying to get them for last year's raid on the Armory... and wants to capture them, so he can prove the Werewolf really was a werewolf, not a costume.

Year 3: One of Steve's WW I intel unit guys shows up... followed by a few dozen Romanian State Security Troopers... on the shore of the estate. Higgens, of course, is furious about the noise. And the buddy is upset about Steve not having warned him off the cute Wallachian Waitress... who happened to be a clawer, and a werewolf... the good side, tho', is he's also unaging.

Thomas asks them to solve a haunting... and to fill in his missing year.

And the Romanians are trying to prove that Steve is in fact Vlad the Impailer... Steve breaks out his SPF 50 sunscreen, and gives a photo op downtown at noon. The PC's manage to pull off making him appear a few extra times via illusion spells.

I don't remember much of the later years.
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Old 07-19-2018, 06:05 AM   #3
hal
 
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Location: Buffalo, New York
Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ak_aramis View Post
My GURPS Horror campaign, back in 1986-1992, was 3 sessions per year.

Steve the Vampire (Formerly known as Vlad Tepeš) hosts a bunch of students in U of Hawaii Honolulu campus. Steve's next door neighbor is the Robin Masters estate...
PFC Zorea, found to be blind when he couldn't see the targets at the range, but had no problem out to 60m.
The Werebear and his Girlfriend (He was a PC, as was she - but she was literally the 25pt DNPC)
The Modern Wizard...
All of them got Steve as a patron for free, and he got no points for them as dependents... Steve was a 100 point PC plus Vampire.

Year 1: The Demonology class' (PPSY 106) professor blows a summon, and peeves Pele. The demon laughs and lets them know Pele will punish all of them... They break into Kanehoe to raid the armory, and then return to kill the demon. The wizard does a divination, and finds Pele is not appeased. They decide Madam Pele must be appeased with Gin and a Cabana Boy.
So... They go hold TC's kids hostage, and capture Thomas Mangum, and deposit Thomas and a pony keg of gin (via air-drop from TC's chopper) into the caldera.

Year 2: They get a message from Pele to come get Thomas out. (Steve's now an NPC, as the player matriculated out of state for college). Things go haywire trying to find a way to get into Pele's domain without dying. This finally involves a yugo, a dimensional rift, and escaping down a lava tube in said yugo in order to actually hit the rift... then talking Pelee out of killing them for forgetting her Gin. All the while trying to avoid the USMC MP officer trying to get them for last year's raid on the Armory... and wants to capture them, so he can prove the Werewolf really was a werewolf, not a costume.

Year 3: One of Steve's WW I intel unit guys shows up... followed by a few dozen Romanian State Security Troopers... on the shore of the estate. Higgens, of course, is furious about the noise. And the buddy is upset about Steve not having warned him off the cute Wallachian Waitress... who happened to be a clawer, and a werewolf... the good side, tho', is he's also unaging.

Thomas asks them to solve a haunting... and to fill in his missing year.

And the Romanians are trying to prove that Steve is in fact Vlad the Impailer... Steve breaks out his SPF 50 sunscreen, and gives a photo op downtown at noon. The PC's manage to pull off making him appear a few extra times via illusion spells.

I don't remember much of the later years.
That sounds like you had fun then. :)

SPF 50 sunscreen - how did you handle that as a game mechanic? Did the Vampire only suffer normal sunlight damage once every 50 seconds, or did you use it as a McGuffin that permitted the Vampire to walk in daylight without suffering the consequences? (inquiring minds wanna know)
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Old 07-19-2018, 06:21 AM   #4
hal
 
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Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

For one campaign I ran:

A player character receives notification from a law firm in England, that they have come into possession of an estate with certain trust controls enabled, preventing the new owners from doing much of anything in the way of sales etc - in other words, the player can act as an owner only in that they have the right to live on the estate, and make use of a stipend or allowance to spend as they wish within limits.

The player is of course intrigued by this basic premise and looks forward to it. Then the game starts in earnest with the player character arriving in England after a transatlantic flight. Waiting for him is a chauffer with a sign that has his name on it. The ride back is in an Antique Rolls Royce Limo. Throughout the entire ride, the chauffer is entirely mute, and uses hand gestures to communicate limited concepts. They arrive at the estate late at night, and when the player character awakens the next day, the Rolls Royce limo is no where to be seen, but another Rolls Royce limo just like the one he arrived in, lies in a field nearby, rusted into uselessness through time and neglect. The model of the car? A Rolls Royce Phantom (of course).

Then, over time, the player through his character, discovers that the original estate was established just after the end of the Spanish Inquisition, by a Bishop rumored to have been cursed by witches. He later finds out that the previous holder of the estate was investigating the deaths of all of the OTHER previous holders - all of whom died in some fashion, linked with fire. Some were spontaneous combustions (far too many to be comfortable about!) and some in fire related accidents such as collision with vehicles, being in a building that burned down unexpectedly, and some were even under investigation of committing suicide by fire, as the fire marshals couldn't determine why the fire was started in the fashion it did.

Long story short, the player character was having nightmares of being in a cart, with his hands manacled together, and the people around throwing rotten vegetables at him, hurling curses, yelling "WITCH" or "WARLOCK" and "SATAN SPAWN" at him, as well as a few small stones and the like. Awaiting him ahead was a pile of wood and a single post with a chain dangling from its top. Making matters worse? His nightmare seems to have been sparked by a painting in the study of his Mansion. And when he finally noticed it, the painting was changing such that the cart and the man in it, were getting slowly closer and closer to the pile of wood!

The behind the scenes stuff included:

The Bishop had condemned innocent people to die so that he might steal their estates for his own. He finally nailed one victim too many who gave him a death curse - that he would be forever damned if he couldn't get forgiveness from his victims. And sure enough, the souls of those who originally died as his victims would be reincarnated into future bodies. Their birth date coinciding with their former life's original date of birth. Of course, their coming DEATH date would match the date they died in their previous live, as victims of death by fire. The task? Find a witch who was a family member of the witch who gave the death curse to forgive the Bishop's sins so that his soul might rest in peace, otherwise, face eternal damnation.

Had all sorts of ghosts, including a lost legion, plus a few other odds and ends associated with the Supernatural. The player came to call the place "Spook Central".

We had fun - even if the character did end up dying. ;)
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Old 07-19-2018, 08:23 AM   #5
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Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

In some measure, this depends how broadly you take horror.

I've run "House of the Rising Sun" (call of Cthulhu, set in 1930s New Orleans with all black PCs and with its supernatural horror based on black folklore), "Boca del Infierno" (set in 1810s California in the Buffyverse), "Inhuman Space" (Transhuman Space run as Lovecraftian cosmic horror, but with humanity itself as the source of most of the horrors), and "Nowhere Fast" (the Australian analog of the Laundry, set in the world of the Laundry Files, a little closer to Case Nightmare Green, with the PCs being "superheroic" agents). Of these, I think Boca del Infierno may have been the most successful; I was particularly happy when I was able to fit in the destruction of the mission whose ruins Xander fell into during an episode of the original television series. . . .
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Old 07-19-2018, 10:12 AM   #6
tanksoldier
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

The one horror ish campaign used the twilight 2000 rules.

Started as a mercenary campaign, got weird, became hints of “we must be dreaming” to ”we are dreaming” to.. you weren’t actually dreaming
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Old 07-19-2018, 01:27 PM   #7
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Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

Quote:
Originally Posted by tanksoldier View Post
The one horror ish campaign used the twilight 2000 rules.

Started as a mercenary campaign, got weird, became hints of “we must be dreaming” to ”we are dreaming” to.. you weren’t actually dreaming
I've often wanted to run a modern campaign that drags PCs down the rabbit hole ...
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Old 07-20-2018, 02:08 PM   #8
ak_aramis
 
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Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

Quote:
Originally Posted by hal View Post
That sounds like you had fun then. :)

SPF 50 sunscreen - how did you handle that as a game mechanic? Did the Vampire only suffer normal sunlight damage once every 50 seconds, or did you use it as a McGuffin that permitted the Vampire to walk in daylight without suffering the consequences? (inquiring minds wanna know)
That's exactly how I did it. Then doubled for the summoned overcast.
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Old 07-20-2018, 02:39 PM   #9
hal
 
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Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ak_aramis View Post
That's exactly how I did it. Then doubled for the summoned overcast.
So one percent of the time (for an overcast day) counts as actual exposure time - a five minute conversation acting as a 3 second problem. Not bad.
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Old 07-20-2018, 02:46 PM   #10
hal
 
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Default Re: Horror Themed campaigns - what have you done?

In another campaign that I ran, one of the players learned to dread possession in a big way. The party was trying to take down some Voodoo practitioners - and ran into the problem that the spirits were nasty buggers out to do some serious harm. They ended up near a local University (State University of New York at Buffalo if that helps) such that there was an area with some low rent housing with some minor issues *cough* with crime. Long story short, a white investigator ends up in a black neighborhood. They enter into one of the houses of a major bad villain, only to discover themselves being ambushed by a lone spirit with the ability to possess others (even if only for a short time). One of the players decided to go outside, get into a car and bring it round for the rest to get into. THAT is when the spirit struck. The player unfortunately failed to defeat the possession attempt, and could only watch with horror as he (while possessed) floored the acceleration pedal after putting it in gear, and aimed the car for a couple of kids playing out in the street. It was purely by luck that he missed them - and the spirit forced the car to crash into a tree - hoping to injure the investigator.

The aftermath of that incident? The player character was arrested for attempted vehicular manslaughter with tones of depraved indifference based on the accounts of the witnesses involved. He got face time in the newspapers and a mention in the local news television. He also now had a criminal record and was awaiting a trial before the campaign shut down...

After that campaign, the player was VERY nervous around ghosts - can't imagine whhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyy. *innocent look*
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