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I've been reading most of these threads about ways to increase the horror factor and the like and one thing that hasn't been mentioned before is the inclusion of something as simple as weather to really bring up the horror factor.
For my adventure I'm going to start off the funeral in the middle of a rainstorm -- yeah it might be clichéd but I find that rain (or any weather which hinders combat and Perception) always ups the fear factor for PCs, no matter the setting. And after the funeral I will probably have the weather get worse and worse until there is a full-on storm by the end of the adventure. (Here are the rules on weather in Pathfinder just as an FYI.)
I'm hoping that the rain will probably not only add to the mood of the adventure but it will help with some of the DM elements and hide things right in front of the PCs, even in the middle of day. So in essence by adding rain it will not only help set the feeling of hopelessness and terror it will make daytime adventuring almost like night adventuring with the restricted visibility.
Of course it will have to be balanced as it can't always rain, but even then I expect the weather to be be overcast and cloudy. Basically the mood will always be one of depressing and confining, almost like the world itself is against them.
I would be curious as to anyone else's ideas on this topic as something as simple as weather can add so much to an overall feel to an adventure.
Of course it will have to be balanced as it can't always rain, but even then I expect the weather to be be overcast and cloudy. Basically the mood will always be one of depressing and confining, almost like the world itself is against them.
Stonesnake, you're going to love Shadows of Gallowspire! The land turning against the adventurers is a very pervasive theme in the finale. =-)
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Stonesnake, you're going to love Shadows of Gallowspire! The land turning against the adventurers is a very pervasive theme in the finale. =-)
Damn that is awesome. I forgot that you are writing that chapter! Can't wait to see what you come up with.
It's so rare to see weather and outside elements besides creatures fighting against the PC that whenever those elements are added to an adventure it's always so memorable for all involved. I really wished more authors used this type of element in their adventures, anything to force PCs to think outside the box and battle with their environment and not just the creatures in front of them.
Richard Pett does this really well, and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next month, and now I can't wait to read yours!
IRL, I lived in Florida in 1998.....in January it rained for a month straight, literally. It would stop for 1/2 hour every once in a while. I was working outside at the time. It was the most miserable experience imaginable. After two weeks straight it gets to you, man.
Then it didn't rain, literally, for almost a year. The damn state burned down.
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On a related note what month would you start Carrion Crown out in? I'm thinking late summer, maybe the end of Arodus or even the beginning of Rova? This way you have rain followed by the leaves falling and eventually snow, progressively making the weather worse as the tension of trying to stop the Whispering Way grows.
--Vrock Salt
IRL, I lived in Florida in 1998.....in January it rained for a month straight, literally. ... Then it didn't rain, literally, for almost a year. The damn state burned down.
Come down to Melbourne in Australia where we normally get around 670mm (just over 26 inches) in a year. For the years from 2003 to 2009 we got an average of 540mm (just over 21 inches). Five inches of rain in a year may not sound like much, but add it up over seven years and you get some pretty dire circumstances--our dams were down to 25% full and we were very close to water restrictions that banned all water use outside the home.
Thankfully the rains started up again in late 2009 and we're back on the road to recovery, but unfortunately not before we had a day of 48ºC (118ºF) day in February 2009 and lost more than 170 people to bushfires in rural and regional Victoria. Two years later and many people are still recovering--and plenty of them who survived but lost their houses are still living in caravans (I think you call them travel trailers in the US).
Everyone I know--including me--knows someone who was affected by the fires, whether they lost loved ones, or just their homes, or merely spent the day wondering whether their family was going to be all right, or whether they were going to have to evacuate. This summer has been quite bland in comparison to 2009, but the next time we have a long, dry heatwave through Melbourne you can bet all those feelings and memories are going to come bubbling up to the surface again.
So weather can absolutely have a profound effect on the psyche.
I'm relatively new to the whole GMing thing, but what I try to do whenever I prep for a session is to see each scene in my mind's eye. When I observe it, the PCs are usually amorphous blobs as their actions in the session should dictate how they fit into the scene, but I try to observe the little details. Are there puddles on the ground? What's the temperature? How noisy is it? Is there a smell on the wind? How windy is it? What state are the buildings in? What are they made of? And so on.
This sort of freeform association for around fifteen to twenty minutes helps to ground the scene in my mind, and allows me to write down on an index card the little tiny pieces that fall out of my mind, ready for use later. So when the players say "I head to the village green", I reply not with "okay; what do you want to do there?" but with "as you arrive the breeze rustles the leaves of the massive oak in the middle of the green. A young mother is sitting on a blanket underneath the tree, with her two children chasing each other around its trunk. In the distance, three of the Village Councillors are discussing something. From their body language, you can tell the discussion is becoming intense. Outside the tavern, Tristan is whittling with the massive knife you gave him yesterday. He gives you a wave."
I don't have any experience to back this up, but I suspect that a significant part of successfully running a horror-themed game has to do with immersion. Music (as discussed at length in other threads) is one potential component to immersion. Fulsome descriptions are, I think, another. And for my gaming group, an upfront discussion about the style of play that will fit well with the AP's content will also help.
In my case I may also swap hit points for vitality/wounds and bring in a sanity mechanic.
Switching a roleplaying group from their standard expectations of heroic high fantasy to horror without changing a bunch of the ingredients will, IMO, only result in a stack of expectations that are not congruent with the material, which can only lead to trouble. You use eggs, sugar, flour and butter to make a cake. You can also use them to make a pancake, which is slightly different but not wildly different. You couldn't use them to make a roast dinner and you'd be silly to try.
I picture Ravengro as a Transylvania town. Dark, shadowy, foggy, misty, rainy, thunderstorms galore. I took the weather charts in the core book and tweaked them to produce more fog, rain and thuderstorms. I will hand-wave weather on certain encounters to help achieve a certain spooky feel I'm looking for.
Whenever I dont have an official start date in mind, I just use the date of the first session to decide. So for my game it is Ustalav in Gozran, but it is pretty far north so it is still cold.
I rolled out the dates for when each letter would show up and then rolled out the weather for that time. First roll i got was a 100, and the players are going to have to deal with a blizzard, and I rolled another one not two weeks later. I really like that the players are going to have to deal with the harsh weather on top of everything else