In the spirit of Halloween, what horror scenarios are you planning on running, have had the awesome chance to play in...

Who shat in your cereal bowl you fun loving shitstain.

Wouldn't that be incredibly frustrating?

He's a retard, don't mind him.

Got to plan adventures I suppose

I'm running a oneshot, I haven't decided on the system. It's essentially gonna be alien/soma/the thing/event horizon. The players are miners on a corporate colony, and a colony ship shows up on sensors after having disappeared for months. Corporation sends them there to look for survivors and report back. On board the spooking begins. I could actually use some help brainstorming for those of you who want to.

The basic structure I have right now is that they'll make it to the ship, and find that there's no one on board, and all the escape pods and shuttles have been launched (except for one shuttle). At some point in here they'll encounter the spookster, which hopefully means that they'll attempt to leave the ship. They'll come to the airlock they were attached to, and see their ship slowly drifting away into space. After that it will open up a little bit to what they want to do.

What I currently have:
*Power is down, so it needs to be repaired before they can use sensors, comms, open maglocks, etc. To repair power, they'll need to go through a blown-out section of ship with no air, only spook
*The remaining shuttle is in a maglocked hangar, if they end up opening that to try and use it, they'll find some spookems origins, weird techno-organic growths, and an additional spookem
*They can use comms to call for help, but upon hearing what it is, the corp will instead send a corporate kill team. If players can get access to their shuttle, they can get off the ship.
*Storage bays will have months worth of dehydrated food, some mining equipment, etc. Some equipment can be used as weapons, but the spookems can only be slowed down, not killed outright

Additionally since the monster is chasing them they won't be able to stay in one place for very long, so I'll have journals and stuff from the crew so the party can piece together what happened.
What happened in next post

What's happened is that at some point some months ago, the sensors picked up a distress signal from the surface of a colony they were passing by, and they sent a shuttle down to pick up survivors. The colony had been exposed to some kind of techno-organic plague, using the biomass of the people it infected the grow all over the base and spawn the spookers. Think structure gel from soma in look and behavior. Some of the survivors turned out to be infected, and they were quarantined in the hangar, where they eventually grew all over the shuttle and hangar, eventually growing into air vents.
Meanwhile, a faction of people on the ship don't like that the survivors haven't just been spaced for the safety of the ship, and mutiny is brewing. This faction ends up making some bombs to sabotage systems, which go off in Power, Life support, some living spaces, and some other places. That's why there's a hole in the ship and power is down. That's when everyone vacates the ship
That's essentially what I have right now. It clearly needs some fleshing out, since it's like 2 plots points and 2 ways to get out with 3 things to do. If anyone has any ideas I would be glad to hear them. Stuff I'm wondering rigbt now is:
Do you think I should have the plague growing all over the ship? Do you like the idea of everyone having evacuated or everyone having been absorbed after the captain launches the empty pods better? In the latter case it would be a revelation of sorts.

Should I have a thing mechanic? Like, if players get caught by the creature and it vomits gel into their mouth, should they start acting against the party or trying to get the whole ship to a new colony?

I need more possible things that they might do to plan encounters based around them. Is there something you've thought of for getting off the ship that I've overlooked?

What system should I use?

I'll probably run Music from a Darkened Room for my Delta Green group. Looks fun and the haunted house vibe is perfect for the occasion.

I'll probably run some kind of Trail of Cthulhu month long campaign with my friends, or a one-shot if their schedules are flaky.

It's probably a good time to get started on planning it out though- I've got tons of premade scenarios but I always feel compelled to make my own up.

This is incredibly nice.

I might try out Night Shift with some friends.

inspiration for my upcoming halloween adventure

Thanks a lot, I hope it goes over well with my group. I'm trying to get into running a one shot every halloween

Well, I was planning something but I'm afraid it isn't scary enough. The characters need to investigate a mansion full of mimics. Every time they aren't watching the mimic just changes locations and turns into another object. I keep describing the rooms as if nothing has changed until they notice that something was added or removed.

A character with a perfect memory would already debunk this, so I think that the plans are already botched and not thát scary.

I mean, do you have a character with perfect memory? If it's a one shot just don't let that happen, leave it up to the players to notice. I once made my players run away from a foght that was several cr lower than the party by scaring them, that'll be scary if you pull it off in a convincing way and not just let them roll against it, and not if you let them walk all over the encounter.

That's implying people here actually play rpgs.

Not that I know of, if I mention 'no perfect recall allowed' then it's already clear what is necessary. Players like to change stuff right before the session. Plus, it's on Roll20. I could look for eery sounds of squeaky doors and slammed window panes.

But what's a Foght? I know the Flard, but not the Foght. I wonder how you made something of low CR scary.

>not building characters with players
>shitty players changing stuff without dm's notice
I mean, I guess

My players are adults, user. Not kindergartners.

Well, it's more along the lines that if everyone builds characters together, and the GM bans and allows different things according to the tone and power level they're shooting for, the party can be made of characters that complement and fit each other in both build and tone, and will be guaranteed to fit your setting as well. You can want crazy unpredictable shenanigans instead, that's fine, but it's not like that's the only way "adults" play

Uhm, no. I just give them the rundown: Stealth mission where you sabotage something, you play a spy, 4d6 drop lowest, level 4, Unearthed Arcana allowed. Make a stealthy character, Barbarian is not recommended.

The rest is up to them and learn how to work together. I help them occasionally if they have questions or want chargen to go a little more smoothly. But I use my time to prep for a session that can be played by any number of players as long as they keep to the description. Plus, as adults, we don't have a lot of time.

Two of my players did look for synergy before a session, they made a Barbarian/Wizard sisters duo. I made for nice little roleplay tidbits. I did check the languages on the Wizard and saw that I could use Gnomish. But the other player told her that sharing the same languages would make more sense so they changed it to Elven. Well, so much for keeping a close eye on characters. I'm not going to waste my time being a control freak.

I played the session described above yesterday. It went fine as they combined a Warlock's illusions with a Ranger's Pass Without Trace spell. They are learning how to work together and I'm seeing how they work individually.

I'm not letting everyone go make random Evil characters all willy-nilly. But I'm not going to restrict spells, classes, races or whatever.

September is the most boring month

Because September is just pre-October anyway

My lovely band of retarded acolytes just made it into the sewer systems of a hive world, chasing down a conspiracy.
Little do they know how far down the sewers go, and that there is a particularly nasty surprise waiting deep within the cisterns known as the Graveyard Echo.
Necrons are scary as fuck yo.

I'm running a Twin Peaks/Silent Hill inspired short campaign.

I've got 2/6 character sheets already, and I'm using a homebrew system.

I figured it was easier to homebrew a simple d6 dice pool system than it would be to rewrite Nemesis or something to omit skills that wouldn't be needed like driving, or command.

You mean just Dead Space basically?

I have a scenario inspired by the spoopy lighthouse threads we had a few months back.

The players are part of a crew for a ghost hunters international style show that has yet to be picked up for a network. The producer is a con man who makes shit up, bribes locals to go along with it and has the actors play up every spooky little detail for dramatic effect. So far their shoots have been pretty uneventful, most of the excitement comes from the producer not always getting the proper permission to shoot in their locations. Their latest shoot takes them to the northern coast of Siberia, to an abandoned soviet RTG lighhouse during the brief summer. The small island once held a small whaling town so ramshackled buildings and piles of gleeming white bone provide the backdrop for the shoot. The first day goes well, poking about finds plenty of stuff that can be made to look spooky or twisted into a tall tale for the viewers. They spend the night shooting with the crew fucking with stuff off camera for dramas sake. A journal is found in a location they'd previous searched, likely the producers doing. In reading it they find it is the journal of a young russian enlisted man, wrighting letters to be later sent to his wife katia. Much of the journal seem mundane, slice after slice of the boring life of an assistant to the lighthouse keeper. The later entrys indicate some strangeness in the keepers behavior, locking himself below in the room housing the RTG for two days and refusing to explain further than "checking the wires below." Things go back to normal for the wrighter but doubt and curiosity linger. The last three intrys take a sharp turn. The keeper has once again gone below and locked the door. Days have passed and the wrighter seems fearful. The keeper returns a frightful mess, his leg and stomach badly lacerated. Before dieing he tells to wrighter to "ignite the light below" before it is two late. The back half of the journal is torn out and missing

I'm probably going to run the first pre-made Dread scenario, the werewolf one. I've never used the system before so we'll see how it goes.

I wouldn't know, I never played it

...

That sounds pretty cool, where does it go?

The producer claims not to have planted the journal but they've seen him lie his ass off to locals at every shoot. Night one passes without incident.

Day two, a strange absence of animal life around. About noon an oily substance is found on the water surrounding the island. I has no smell, clings to the skin like silicone lube but has a consistancy of slippery water and tastes utterly vile. Soap and water fail to entirely remove it from their hands. No matter what mesures are taken residue of the oil clings to their skin. Harmless but anoying. As the day wears on people start jumping at shadows, said they saw someing out of the corner of their eyes. This excites the producer and he starts weaving an elaborate tale of the lost soul of the journal wrighter trying to reach out. Does he want his letters sent to his wife or does he want them to follow him below? So inspired he has them focus on the lighthouse that night, shooting a saiance where they try to contact his ghost. A storm suddenly arives, dashing their boat against the rocks as the waters rise almost to their doorstep. As it dies and the clouds part an alien shy is revield. Lurid red stars in no know constolations, a blue gass giant with great rings and a sulpherous yellow moon. The high waters rest still as glass and the turning light iilluminaes great shapes moving in the deep, before it suddenly goes out and things stir the glassy still waters.

Shadows move out of the corner of their eyes. Food and water are scarce. A page from the journal is found, saying he saw what they see, that he will go below and learn the truth his superiors kept from him.

Dare you follow him into the dark?

By the time Halloween hits, my players will be reaching the 'Literally Castlevania' section of the campaign, with a big spooky structure crawling with various horrors.

Nice

I've been so tempted to run a Castlevania campaign.

What's a good system with messy criticals I can use for a one shot?

[spoilers]TG I love you all. [/spoiler]

Make sure to assert pressure on each character individually and to never have them hold the same hot potato. Otherwise they can refuse to do anything that requires pulling blocks secure in the group.

Read the book carefully. There's a lot in there, and although simple the rules aren't superficial. I've seen some mistakes, like the GM touching the tower, or having several towers because the table is sooo big. That breaks the game.

Tell the players that their chargen answers are also their skills, maybe even put a question in there like
>What qualifies you especially for this? (...and what did you sacrifice to get here)
or
>What's your greatest professional qualification? (...and when was the last time you wished it wasn't)

Out doesn't mean you're out, go away. It just means the player can't touch the tower any more and their character can't solve challenges. In the werewolf scenario it can mean they're a werewolf now, and can whisper what they plot to the GM. It can mean the character goes on normally and is now tainted, a hidden lycantrophy infection in this scenario - pass the player a note informing them of their new urges and their instinctive need to keep this hidden from the prey. You can kill theit character gruesomely but hand them control of the monster once it is out of the shadows. You can have them play a lone park ranger who is out on a whim and discovers tracks of their flight. They just can't touch the tower! In fact sit them back from the table so they don't unintentionally shake it. And you sit back as well.

>messy criticals
Dark Heresy. Maybe teh Warhammer fantasy has them too, I don't know.

I appreciate the advice, man. There's still about a month to go so I've got no doubt I'll be reading through the book again once or twice (it's very short--pamphlet sized, even). The first scenario looks like it gives a lot more in the way of solid "events" than the other two as well, so I'm hoping that can help cover for my improv while we all familiarize ourselves with the system.

It seems to me based off of a first reading that the most difficult part is going to be deciding the session's "baseline" for pulling. Normally I don't care about most rolls unless they're important in some way, but Dread has the added complication of wanting the Tower to be teetering by the time something climactic happens. I'll have to find a way to make sure that happens while not just looking like I'm arbitrarily forcing pulls (although I guess that's exactly what I'm doing).

I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll search around for some play examples on YouTube, they've gotta be out there.

The AP's I've found are tedious because they didn't really read it and just went with the hype.

The players will draw around 25-35 blocks before the tower falls. You can pace that pretty easily by presenting more or less challenges.
>We run to the car - Draw a block each
vs
>We run to the car - Draw a block for getting out the door, one for the sprint over, and one for getting in without the creatures touching you, you pick the order in which you draw.

It's usually smart to keep it simple with few blocks until the horror is after them for good, then rev it up and kill the characters in as short a time as possible.

Watch a playthrough of the first one at least for the beginning. It draws a lot from the stuff you mentioned and is very very similar to the idea you proposed.

That's fucking insidious

I plan on running a tesseract dungeon with a lich stuck in it. The only way for it to leave the place is in a body so it will try to posse one of the player or one of their minions.

This is fucking nice.

They're already selling the spooky skeleton white cheddar cheetos so it's basically Halloween now.

The netkiddies live from one holiday to another.
Halloween started as soon as the BBQ from labour day was in the fridge.

Fucking nice, what's the pay off in the end?

Shut the fuck up, it's September.

You're a goddamn, no-fun-allowed 'tard.

:
goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/false-hydra.html

It would be, yes. But thats the point. One part of terror is taking away the abilities that one normally relies on. When your abilities don't work as they should, its both frustrating, and also makes one feel powerless.

That powerlessness, if used correctly, could be made into outright fright.

But you need to strike that delicate balance between that and player agency. Some players are really particular about what happens to their characters.

You have to make them complicit.

It's their shortcut, greed, or laziness that got them here. Give them a choice, make that choice matter, then make them pay for it.

Pretty much what said.

You need to give them reason that they are in that situation. If its a consequence of their own actions, they can only blame the DM so much. Yes the DM made going to this place attractive, or made it so they get there via tampering with something they shouldn't have, but at the end of the day the players choice is what drives the game forward.

On top of this, Players will inevitably be thrown into situations where they are limited in what they can do. Taking advantage of this is a prime skill of a DM. Not everything will be perfectly viable in every situation. Taking advantage of this, that means that there is the chance that the entire party gets limited in what they can do.

It is indeed a delicate balance, but at the same time if done correctly it could be an excellent spook themed event.

Not exactly horror, but I'd like to get some people together and run a Risus game where they have to fight the zombie of Michael Jackson in a dance-off, and if they win, it'll give them the password to the North American Zombie/Boy Love Association's bar in Detroit. Not sure what other deranged hooks to throw in, though.

Why is the frozen forest yellow?

What the fuck is that noise?
No, seriously what the fuck.
That's horrific in a completely different way.

>a prank at the Wizard college gone horribly wrong leaves the city infested with animated plastic skeletons whose only desire in Un-life is to be perceived as being "spooky"

Started a Battle Generation G game, they thought it was just highschool studebts vs godzilla, they are now fighting against the crawling chaos fir the fate of gaea and the world tree while weilding mechs based on the eastern zodiac. Their childhood friend is possessed by the big bad, the stars are being swallowed by the azaroth void and its mid terms. They were not prepared for it at all.

6 spook 8 mi

Damn straight.

Bump.

What the shit are these?

Goddamn more of this.

What happened to those Lighthouse threads?

Fuck ya.

For you