Horrors deranged?


Strange Aeons

Silver Crusade

Player here. Having fun but finding that the horror is lacking when it seems that we are the scary things.

Party is a grapple monster, a Saladin that makes us immune to fear (awesome feat that), a rather OP kinetist, an undead slaying slayer and a "utility" wizard.

How are you lot finding the horror.

Also instead of calling Hadtur "the king in yellow" we are calling him "Assturd"

Dark Archive

Horror has more to do with atmosphere then power directly. Your party might be over-prepared for the challenges somewhat, but if you have buy in from the other players you can still role-play reactions to the gross and weird you encounter that contribute to the mood. One of the best sequences for my group involved them role-playing the various madnesses they had contracted and dealing with the sub-optimal tactics that caused.


Horror only works if everyone plays along.

It seems like your party isn't really in the mood for a horror campaign and would rather just a high adventure with strange settings and monsters.


No no, keep calling him Assturd, I'm sure he'll like that. :-)


You either need a better GM or players that want to go along with a horror campaign. I'd love a group that tried to mock everything. They'd swiftly learn respect.


I agree with the other guys here. Why bother playing a horror based campain, if you pick yourself the feats that will render these mechanics useless?

Horror is nothing a dice can bring you. In heroic systems like pathfinder and D&D mortality is not that big issue with magic, resurrection and intervention of gods on a regular basis.

You need to be willing to let the horror sink in. If you are all like "Oh look, that tentacle thing there - let´s go kill it" then you rather want to play a straight forward heroic campain with lots of glorious battles instead of a horror game.


You also have 5 players when the encounters are designed for 4. Depending on what point buy you're using (anything higher than 15 is more than the AP is designed for) you may have it easy. Plus the AP is written for low to medium party optimization as to not TPK noobs. Combine all these things and no challenge adjustment from "as written" by the GM and ofcourse you're having a cakewalk.

The real question (which others have raised) is whether you're happy with roflstomping though campaign or if you want more challenge and tension. If so, see if your GM is willing to up the difficulty (which is more work for them)

For reference, my party of 4 moderately optimized PB15 characters isn't finding the AP too difficult but have had a few memorable close calls (ghouls are nasty at low level). I also get the feeling they're more into RPing the sense of dread than your party is.

PS: Call Hastur what you want, the king in yellow cares not for your tragically mortal jests. :P


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There are some things which can possibly help encourage players to buy into a horror campaign a bit more, but these only work if the players are already disposed to enjoy such a thing. I've been using a couple to great effect in my ongoing campaign. Some are mechanical, others aren't.

Equipment. This is something that's too late for your campaign in particular, but I include it anyway in case others have this problem. I enhanced the survival horror aspect of the beginning of this campaign immensely by starting my players with nothing at all - just the rags on their backs. Everything is scarier when you're not wearing armor and all you have are improvised weapons. Makes even padded armor look great! (Discaimer: Absolutely tell players before doing something like this)

Fear Rules. Horror Adventures has optional rules for expanding upon fear, and turning fear immunity into resistances instead. I have a player who really wanted to play a paladin for this, and rather than going with the optional rule from Horror Adventures he decided to go with the Oath Against Corruption pseudo-archetype. Very thematic for this campaign, and trades away the immunity to fear. The cool thing about oaths is that it's not really ever too late to take one, if the GM is willing. So either of these can help.

Lighting. My group is playing this campaign entirely by candle light. We got together enough flame-less candles to just be able to see everything we need. It sets the mood really well.

Music. I've got a special playlist for this campaign. It's got lots of creepy, discordant, and generally unsettling pieces from movie and video game soundtracks. Combined with the darkness of candle light, the mood is well set. The Fallout series in particular is a gold mine for this.

Distractions. My group agreed to minimize the use of electronics at the table for this campaign. We limited all the options to the ones in the books we physically have, and the phones stay away entirely. I usually use a laptop to keep my notes in other campaigns, but for this one I use a dry erase marker on a binder and do everything hand-written. It makes more of a difference than is obvious.

Take it seriously. This doesn't mean don't make jokes. Humor can be a necessary relief valve when the horror is going really well. But try not to disrespect the setting or opponents by constantly making them (or their names) the butt of the joke. As you've seen, this just ruins any attempt at establishing a good atmosphere. This is easier for some groups than others. I give my players a lot of credit for this one. They've constantly done this in other, non-horror campaigns but have been really good about not letting it get out of hand in this one.

I hope that these things which have worked for us can be of help to you or others that might have similar difficulty putting the horror in this campaign. It's such a great adventure, and it works so much better when given the respect it deserves.

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