Adding Horror to Your D&D Game - Episode 1: What is Dark Fantasy
Hallowed Halls
43,402 views
New video just out in time for... nothing! Thankfully, any audio issues will be all worked out by the next video, at the very least. Send a comment my way if you enjoy, any sort of feedback seriously helps!
20 Comments
@RainMakeR_Workshop 6 years ago
Guess you never made the other vids. Shame, it’s an interesting topic.
@HeadHunter-mv2ht 7 years ago (edited)
random guy: DnD isn't for Horror/Dark Fantasy!
Me: "Looks back at Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Hero's of Horror, Age of Worms, Planescape, Masque of the Red Death, and Midnight, along with various Databooks and Homebrew."
Me: "Looks back at Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Hero's of Horror, Age of Worms, Planescape, Masque of the Red Death, and Midnight, along with various Databooks and Homebrew."
@lolyouwish88 7 years ago
As someone who regularly runs dark fantasy settings, I would also recommend looking into variant rules which do away with alignment. You would be amazed at how much of a difference it makes when things are not laid out black and white, and they can't detect evil their way out of moral situations.
@dylanstacey6782 5 years ago
I played in a horror game in 5e and it was amazing. It was a oneshot and we went to this mansion that seemed to be abandoned. Exploring, we found various letters around the mansion from secret admirers to the lady of the manor, with one of them giving off (to me at least) some seriously rapey vibes. As we entered the rooms where we found these letters, our characters felt uncomfortable in certain places, like above our pelvis in our lower stomach, or our legs just ached mysteriously. We found a key to the basement and found a dead cleric with a letter detailing something horrible happening in the manor, and how he was going to face this thing to the end.
We also found a pentagram ritual circle, and magical darkness descended on us, with the 5 candles on each point of the pentagram being our only light source. Going down the hall, the DM started playing a sound effect of raspy, unnatural breathing. The source was just out of the light range before we reached a door to the library so we had the choice of looking at the source or going to the library. Naturally we chose the library, where we found an eyeball. This caused the breathing to begin approaching us, and this twisted, malformed woman floated into view. The DM described the visceral detail of her, starting with her missing eye, then describing her missing leg, with the other being twisted and broken completely. Her womb had been torn out of her abdomen and she had some other mutilation inflicted on her.
The DM then asked us to make a wisdom saving throw as she let out a gargled moan, which he had a sound clip for that chilled me to the bone.
If we failed, our movement speed was reduced to 0 for 1 turn.
We scrambled, and picked up her body parts from where we found the letters addressed to her before making our way back to the basement after some really close calls. We placed the body parts on each point of the ritual, managing to exorcise the demon, and the DM read out the epilogue
We also found a pentagram ritual circle, and magical darkness descended on us, with the 5 candles on each point of the pentagram being our only light source. Going down the hall, the DM started playing a sound effect of raspy, unnatural breathing. The source was just out of the light range before we reached a door to the library so we had the choice of looking at the source or going to the library. Naturally we chose the library, where we found an eyeball. This caused the breathing to begin approaching us, and this twisted, malformed woman floated into view. The DM described the visceral detail of her, starting with her missing eye, then describing her missing leg, with the other being twisted and broken completely. Her womb had been torn out of her abdomen and she had some other mutilation inflicted on her.
The DM then asked us to make a wisdom saving throw as she let out a gargled moan, which he had a sound clip for that chilled me to the bone.
If we failed, our movement speed was reduced to 0 for 1 turn.
We scrambled, and picked up her body parts from where we found the letters addressed to her before making our way back to the basement after some really close calls. We placed the body parts on each point of the ritual, managing to exorcise the demon, and the DM read out the epilogue
@Pauperknight-578 5 years ago
One way I like to think of making your D&D or chosen alternate a Dark Fantasy World, is to think of how you describe it to your players, the "essence" that you use to describe it.
@MoonbornUwU 6 years ago
No.. no no.. What you do about a players dark vision.. you utilize it. To deal with that and add on to the horror and dire circumstances.. You make the monster, the aspect of horror invisible to those with dark vision.. the only way to see it is a source of light.. What’s more frightening, seeing a monster charging at or watching you in the dark while it’s only details are in black and white.. or the snapping of twigs and branches along with the crunching of fallen leaves behind you.. only to look back as it sounded inches away, only to see nothing. Then suddenly, you feel it’s warm breath creeping down your neck.. It may be a bit simple but the Gloom Stalker Ranger has the ability to appear invisible to creatures with dark vision while in darkness.
@Riflery 4 years ago (edited)
I'd like to add in my 2 ¢, to help you fellow DM's out there.
When your making a Dark Fantasy world, think of Dark Fantasy media. Dragon Age Origins, Witcher 3, Dark Souls. Dishonored.
So what do all these worlds have in common?
Their worlds are brutal, and unforgiving. The bad guys tend to win, the common person has a hard life, and is expected to have a hard death.
Maybe your players will embrace the Darkness, or maybe they will try to be Paragons of the light.
But setting the stage in the beginning is best, so they immediately know what sort of world they're in for. Here's an example, this is how I started my Dragon Age Campaign.
* "You awaken, you feel pressure surrounding you, its dark and wet. You try to look up but something prevents you from moving. Are you buried?
The ground is soft and mushy, yet crusted over, whatever is on top of you is aswell...you push it off, and look up to brown and black clouds, red pouring down your face.
The air is filled with a brown smog, you look around you, you can barely see more than a mile, the ground is covered in decaying bodies, burning wagons, and puddles of black and red liquid.
The air is so thick its hard to breathe, when you do, the smell is rancid, and horrid, like an outhouse with a gutted animal inside it.
You look out and observe the vista of corpses, human,elven, and bodies almost too decayed to recognize, some low to the ground, some mounted on top of one another, like a roaring ocean of corpses spread across the plains, trying to drown you again.
To the right is nothing but fire, a stalwart wall of flame shooting waves of heat, corpses burning and crackling.
Behind you the ground is black and squirming, almost alive. Consuming the bodies that lay in it, leaving a shimmering blackness behind.
In front of you is rubble, the skeleton of what was perhaps a great city, with walls standing tall, now a pile of death and rock.
To the left the sea of bodies thins out, and blood precedes it, you see far off banners shaking in the wave of heat, and burning to ash.
The only source of sunlight, a single ray piercing the clouds, but as soon as you see it, it's gone again, covered by the sickly brown clouds. You hear a roaring screech of pure malice from above the clouds, stabbing your ears, at such a high pitch it would break glass, and shatter hope, the very sound of it seems to drain you of strength. It's gone as quickly as it came.
You see others standing up, amidst the smoke." *
End Scene.
When your making a Dark Fantasy world, think of Dark Fantasy media. Dragon Age Origins, Witcher 3, Dark Souls. Dishonored.
So what do all these worlds have in common?
Their worlds are brutal, and unforgiving. The bad guys tend to win, the common person has a hard life, and is expected to have a hard death.
Maybe your players will embrace the Darkness, or maybe they will try to be Paragons of the light.
But setting the stage in the beginning is best, so they immediately know what sort of world they're in for. Here's an example, this is how I started my Dragon Age Campaign.
* "You awaken, you feel pressure surrounding you, its dark and wet. You try to look up but something prevents you from moving. Are you buried?
The ground is soft and mushy, yet crusted over, whatever is on top of you is aswell...you push it off, and look up to brown and black clouds, red pouring down your face.
The air is filled with a brown smog, you look around you, you can barely see more than a mile, the ground is covered in decaying bodies, burning wagons, and puddles of black and red liquid.
The air is so thick its hard to breathe, when you do, the smell is rancid, and horrid, like an outhouse with a gutted animal inside it.
You look out and observe the vista of corpses, human,elven, and bodies almost too decayed to recognize, some low to the ground, some mounted on top of one another, like a roaring ocean of corpses spread across the plains, trying to drown you again.
To the right is nothing but fire, a stalwart wall of flame shooting waves of heat, corpses burning and crackling.
Behind you the ground is black and squirming, almost alive. Consuming the bodies that lay in it, leaving a shimmering blackness behind.
In front of you is rubble, the skeleton of what was perhaps a great city, with walls standing tall, now a pile of death and rock.
To the left the sea of bodies thins out, and blood precedes it, you see far off banners shaking in the wave of heat, and burning to ash.
The only source of sunlight, a single ray piercing the clouds, but as soon as you see it, it's gone again, covered by the sickly brown clouds. You hear a roaring screech of pure malice from above the clouds, stabbing your ears, at such a high pitch it would break glass, and shatter hope, the very sound of it seems to drain you of strength. It's gone as quickly as it came.
You see others standing up, amidst the smoke." *
End Scene.
@YokoromataroObatahiroDoma 4 years ago (edited)
I always wanted to run dark psychologic fantasy where there are scary monsters and where your party has to make run with packs of torches but the monsters aren’t the scariest part, but the it’s the humans, it’s our inner evil
@mattaffenit9898 4 years ago
Slight caveat I feel needs to be said - horror isn't just scaring people or having nasty encounters. It's also a looming sense of dread and unease, and that's best done in the background with worldbuilding and setong a tonal atmosphere. How exactly one does that depends on the individual, but there's just as much horror in not knowing what lurks in the dark or being forced to listen to the cries of the tormented as being jumped by something ghastly. A lot of people saying D&D and Pathfinder don't work for horror seem to forget that horror can be conceptual and viscerally unsettling based solely off descriptions and tone.
Just last weekend, I ran a game where a player character had a bit of a wakeup call, wanting to mercy kill a felled and bleeding foe, but another PC and an NPC wanted him to suffer as he died, so the second PC blocked them. Having that more innocent character come face to face with the brutality of their own allies in the wake of a nasty scuffle. The pair weren't particularly cruel men on most occasions, but one (the NPC) was a former soldier whose whole regiment was wiped out in a slow, grinding massacre when they were surrounded maybe a decade ago, and he wanted to make the man responsible suffer for not only the deaths of his unit, but all those felled in bringing them down when he could have just let the regiment leave the field. Thd PC who backed him was also a soldier, and while he hadn't dealt with quite the same amount of trauma, he still sympathized and sided with the NPC. There was a general understanding after the session that what the NPC did was understandable, and whole the players were fine with it and found it to be an interesting development, most of them also said it was still a little uncomfortable, and probably deeply disturbing to their characters - largely because he's usually one of the most jovial and amicable characters they've met, and despite that he was driven to such cruelty and malice as to make someone's death as slow and agonizing as possible.
Sorry this is so long, just something that bothers me.
Just last weekend, I ran a game where a player character had a bit of a wakeup call, wanting to mercy kill a felled and bleeding foe, but another PC and an NPC wanted him to suffer as he died, so the second PC blocked them. Having that more innocent character come face to face with the brutality of their own allies in the wake of a nasty scuffle. The pair weren't particularly cruel men on most occasions, but one (the NPC) was a former soldier whose whole regiment was wiped out in a slow, grinding massacre when they were surrounded maybe a decade ago, and he wanted to make the man responsible suffer for not only the deaths of his unit, but all those felled in bringing them down when he could have just let the regiment leave the field. Thd PC who backed him was also a soldier, and while he hadn't dealt with quite the same amount of trauma, he still sympathized and sided with the NPC. There was a general understanding after the session that what the NPC did was understandable, and whole the players were fine with it and found it to be an interesting development, most of them also said it was still a little uncomfortable, and probably deeply disturbing to their characters - largely because he's usually one of the most jovial and amicable characters they've met, and despite that he was driven to such cruelty and malice as to make someone's death as slow and agonizing as possible.
Sorry this is so long, just something that bothers me.
@nyandre4668 3 years ago
I'm making a horror campaign and stumbled upon this video during research. Love the tone and formatting! And the discussion with your friend was great.
@eelthebananapeel 6 years ago
Ran an improvised version of this hag adventure for my group's halloween event, they all loved it! Thank you guys for the inspiration!
@vincentfox9267 6 years ago
I’m goth and I love dark fantasy horror. I want to make dark fantasy horror movies when I graduate high school. I’m glad I found this video that discusses the genre.
@idgaf1153 4 years ago
This was a really helpful outlook. I've been doing some research to prep for a horror style campaign & was kinda sad the rest of the parts didn't follow as your outlook on it was very helpful.
Adding Horror to Your D&D Game - Episode 1: What is Dark Fantasy
Hallowed Halls
43,402 views
New video just out in time for... nothing! Thankfully, any audio issues will be all worked out by the next video, at the very least. Send a comment my way if you enjoy, any sort of feedback seriously helps!